Not trying to stereotype, but politicians typically lie and only tell people what they want to hear. If they're taking the test for themselves, I have little doubt that they'll lie to get the results that look good.

@FatherOfNyx still better than what we do now.

Yeah, the fanatics have been shown to have specific brain activity.

Lie detectors can be fooled. If they're looking directly at your brain and it's activity, provided they know what they're looking at, there's no fooling that.

The technology already works in way of brain scans. FMRI. Functional MRI.

@Slava3 You think FMRI is going to tell you what you should do for a living?

@FatherOfNyx Provided they know what they are looking for. That's big condition that hasn't been met yet.

That's like a theist saying there isn't a consensus among scientists whether or not God exists just because a small handful of scientists believe in God. There is absolutely no evidence that consciousness exists outside the brain/nervous system. Just like how I am not going to believe in God with a complete lack of evidence, I'm not going to believe that consciousness doesn't arise from the brain with a complete lack of evidence. On the other side though, we have plenty of evidence that physically altering your brain can alter your consciousness, self awareness, how you sense, what you feel, and what you think.

It's common for people to say that science doesn't agree as there will always be scientists on either side of the fence on a topic. They say there is no consensus because the science doesn't fit their belief, yet have no scientific evidence for their belief. So unless you can provide physical evidence and not just a philosophical argument, there is no reason for me to believe consciousness exists apart from brain activity.

@FatherOfNyx I agree that bodily sentience is a trait of the body, but deep conscious awareness is in a totally different category. No one knows what that is and there is certainly no proof that it arises from brain activity. Not knowing the nature of consciousness means that we don’t know who or what we ourselves are and we should not rest so proudly under the aegis of scientific knowledge.

BTW, half of all scientists in the US believe in God. When people say that there is a complete lack of evidence, what it means is that they do not accept the evidence, probably because they are clinging desperately to a shaky world view.

@WilliamFleming That's some good physical evidence you provided ?

Maybe an easier task. Know of any legit neuroscientists who believe consciousness exists outside the brain?

@FatherOfNyx Of course they aren’t going to say with assurance that it exists outside the brain. But many of them say that consciousness is a mystery, David Chalmers and others.

[theguardian.com]

Apparently it’s no mystery to you. Please explain the mechanism by which the firing of neurons causes consciousness. You have made the bald-faced assertion that consciousness arises from the brain, so it is up to you to provide credible evidence for your claim.

Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman has an interesting theory that he calls Conscious Realism.

@WilliamFleming All I've stated was that I'm not going to believe consciousness exists outside the brain with a lack of evidence. By default, that leaves consciousness arising from the brain. Again, it's much like the belief in God. I'm not going to believe in God with a lack of evidence. I don't believe God created life on Earth, so by default that leaves life naturally appearing. You remind me of theists who claim you believe God doesn't exist when you state that you don't believe in God. There is a difference. Just like with abiogenesis, you don't need to know the specifics of consciousness to deny a belief with no evidence supporting it. It still is a mystery. Our neurons form enough connections with one another that if you laid them out in a line, it'd circle the world almost 4 times. There's a ton of complexity there that we will be unravelling over many generations yet. I'm just not going to dip into unravelling under an assumption of a belief with no evidence.

@FatherOfNyx For lack of credible evidence I am withholding belief in your claim.

Did you look at Conscious Realism? What is your opinion?

@WilliamFleming So I am supposed to provide evidence that there is no evidence consciousness exists outside the brain? Lol, ok.

And I briefly looked into it. From what I gather, even though he calls it realism, it's more a form of idealism, which I don't subscribe to.

@WilliamFleming Why do doctors look at brain activity to pronounce someone dead?

@Stephanie99 They are checking for bodily sentience. The body was never anything but a robot. Whenever it appeared to have deep conscious awareness and free will, that was a manifestation of universal consciousness, which lives on and is immortal.

@FatherOfNyx Once you are provided with physical evidence that becomes a knowledge. A bekief is just that, in the abseceof evidence.

@Slava3 What are we referring to here?

@WilliamFleming That would be nice. I don't know of any evidence that would make me believe it though.

@Stephanie99 I don’t actually believe it with 100% certainty either, but the idea fascinates me. It’s the Hindu Brahman, or ultimate reality.

@WilliamFleming The hypothesis that the brain creates consciousness has a vast amount of evidence supporting it. There is no evidence that consciousness creates the brain. In fact, we can clearly see on scans what comes first in decisions - changes in neurochemistry clearly pave the way to changes in consciousness. In other words, we are conscious of our decisions only after the neurochemical change.

@hugh That vast irrefutable evidence certainly proves the correlation of brain activity and bodily sentience, but it doesn’t address knowingness or deep conscious awareness IMO.

The two second time delay in becoming aware of an action ties in nicely with what I am talking about. The body/brain, as an automaton, is set up to survive and accomplish many tasks on its own without conscious oversight. If I want my body to go get a cup of coffe, I have to coax it into action. It’s not me personally who is going for the coffee—I never do anything directly. Why would I know the precise instant that the body will act? That depends on internal processes that are out of my control.

Incidentally, the body is fully capable of making decisions and taking actions on its own, but those actions and decisions are based on instinct, mental analysis, learning, or randomness, and are not an indication of consciousness or free will. It makes total sense that for some bodily actions I would only become aware later.

Neuroscientists might study the correlation between thoughts and neural activity until doomsday and they’ll be no closer to understanding consciousness. Consciousness and thoughts are different things. Ask your local meditator.