佛家说唯识，不一定是为反对唯物法则。这有可能是长度规（Length scale）的取角问题，意即事情在不同的尺寸的基础上，拥有各自不同的物理运作法则，不一定是非此即彼。就像Dr. Bruce Greyson所说的，量子物理学家已经承认“意识”为不可还原的宇宙主要构成部件，如果进一步提出，意识可能才是构成物质世界的最基础部件，那也不一定是无稽之谈。
此前我在Boo Ban Zhu的《禅》一帖中曾经涉及不少有关心意识的讨论，什么是心？什么是意识？这个命题对科学界和哲学界还是一个不可揭开的谜。
这里希望通常分享Dr Bruce Greyson的一篇科学演讲，让大家可从这篇报告汲取资料并中得启发，进而去进行更有助益的哲思和讨论。
Dr. Bruce Greyson,
Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia.
Dr. Bruce Greyson教授的演讲内容要点：
1. It seems that brain can think and feel, but brain cell can't.
看来我们相信大脑能思考能感受，但脑细胞却不能。
2. As Chris said yesterday, Scientist get around this problem by saying consciousness is an emergence properties of brain, a property done when there is emerging large number of masses of brain cells get together. What does that mean, we have no idea what that mean. Saying something as an emergence property, is a way of saying it is a mystery that we can't explain.
3. The materialistic understanding of the world, fails to deal with how an electrical impulse or chemical triggers in the brain can produce thoughts or feelings, or anything that the mind does. And yet despite having no idea about how it could work? Most neuroscientist still continue to maintain this 19th century materialistic view, that the brain in some miraculous way we don't understand produces consciousness. And they discount or ignore the evidence that consciousness in extreme circumstances can functions very well, without a brain.
4. This idea that the mind and the brain are separate things was what most the people believe until a couple of hundreds year ago. But in the 19th century, at least in the west, beginning of the Darwinian, physiological psychologist started to exploring the notion that the physical brain might be the source of all our thoughts and the emotion in due of all the consciousness. To the past century, psychologies has been moving towards the hard core materialism that characterise the 19th century physics, a physics based on classical Newtonian mechanics. They have been attempting to show the consciousness is nothing more than the working of a physical brain.
5. Physicist faced with overwhelming evidence were already moving away from materialistic view of universe to quantum physics, that could not be formulated without the renference of consciousness, playing as the independent role in the universe.
6. The price physicist pay in developing quantum physics was to acknowledge the consciousness as the fundamental aspect of existence, independent of matter. So to the question of the mind-brain relationship.
发展量子物理学的代价就是承认意识是一种有别于物质的基本存在体，这就像“意识和大脑的关系问题”一样。
7. According to buddhist teaching, consciousness can sustain itself without a brain, or even without any physical form. 19th century reductionist science view the consciousness as an emergence property that evolves with complex brain. But just as quantum physicist now view consciousness as irreducible component in the universe. So to scientific research in the past century has explored human experiences that suggested consciousness can function without a brain.
8. Another challenging phenomena is the presence of normal or even higher intelligence in people who has little brain tissue. There are again rare but surprising cases of people who seems to function normally in life with normal intelligence, and normal social function, despite having virtually no brain at all. In one case published in 2007, a high school honour student who has been accepted by the Smith College, underwent surgery after she was injured and not in conscious in automobile accident. An x-ray on her head just before surgery, reveals that she has no cerebral cortex at all. She just has the brain stem in her skull. And when the surgeon opens up her skull and operating, that is exactly what he found, just the brain stem, with no cerebral cortex. Our best understanding of a normal brain is that the brain stem relays the motors and sensory signals to the cerebrum and spinal cord, and integrates heart function, breathing ... and other animal functions. But the brain stem has no connection to perform higher cognitive functions, like thinking, perceiving, making decision, and so on. That can only happens in the cerebral cortex which this young girl did not has. So this young college young honour student, according to our best understanding of brain, should have be completely unable to formulate any thoughts of any kind, left alone functioning at a high intellectual level.
9. 30 years ago, Lorber published an article in a prestige journal of science, entitle "Is your brain really necessary?" The brain on the left of the slide is a normal brain, the grey area is the cerebral cortex, the part of brain that think. And the lack area in the very center is cerebral spinal fluid in the center cabin. On the righ is the brain of an adult with very severe hydrocephalus. The vast majority of his head is filled with cerebral spinal fluid, with only a very thin ridge of brain tissue pressed against the skull. Hardly enough to allow this person to live, left alone function normally according to the modern medical neuro science. However this particular brain scan of the person with hydrocephalus was actually from a graduate student in mathematics Cambridge University, with the IQ of 126.
10. Overwhelming majority （82%）of near death experiencer reports that they have stronger belief that they survive death of body. Just as many （86%） reports that there no longer any fear of death. About Half (53%) reported that they have completely lost interest in material possession. And many (37%) report that they no longer have any interest in personal prestige or status or competition.
11. Some of you may be thinking, some of these people are now following the Buddha. They show more compassion, they tend to try to help others, they are less attached to material possession and status, but as the holiness pointed out yesterday, these values are not uniquely buddhist. These are universal values, almost all spiritual traditions teaches compassions, and the transient of worldly rewards. These near death experiencers are not becoming more buddhist, they are becoming more spiritual.
12. I want to highlight three particular features of near death experience, that particularly suggest that consciousness is not produced by the brain. These 3 features of near death experiences are (1) Clear thinking perception and memory while the brain is incapacitated. (2) Accurate perception from a visual perspective outside the physical body, and (3) Encountered with the deceased persons who conveyed accurate information that no one else could have known, including in some cases, encountered with the deceased person who was not known at the time who has died, or not known by the experiencer at all. Perhaps the most important and the most common is the first.
13. In 1982, an American cardiologist Michal Sabom published a study in which he asked the near death experiencers who have reported leaving their body during CPR to describe in detail what they have seem. He also asked a matched group of seasoned cardiac patients to imagine watching their resuscitation and tried to describe it from a third person perspective. 80% of matched group who did not have near death experiences make major errors in their descriptions. None of the near death experiencers made any errors.
14. A few years ago, the Welsh intensive care nurse Penny Sartori published a five year study, in which she replicated the same findings. She found that all the near death experiencers who claimed to left their bodies, describes accurate resuscitation scenario. Who has all the cardiac arrest survivors who does not have near death experiences gave incorrect description of the equipment and the procedures.
15. An American paediatrician Dr. K.M. Dale treated a nine years boy with meningitis who had a near death for 36 hours before his fever finally broke. During those 36 hours, he was surrounded by his anxious parents, who never left his hospital bed. When his fever finally broke, as soon as he opened his eyes, the boy described having gone to heaven where he saw several deceased relatives. And then he added he also seen his sister Theresa who told him that he has to go back to his body, now the boy's father got very upset when he heard it, because his daughter was in college 1500 km away in another state and was perfectly healthy. But the boy insisted that Theresa has sent him back and told him that she has to stay there. His father then left the hospital promising his wife that he will call the daughter as soon as he got home. But when he tried to telephone Theresa, he learnt that the college officer has been trying unsuccessfully all night to reach the family, to tell them tragically that Theresa has been killed around mid-night in an automobile accident.
16. In University of Virginia, we have studied more than 2416 cases of the very young children who spontaneously started talking about their past life. About half of these cases lived in Asia....They usually began to speak about these past life memory between age of 2 and 5 years, and in most cases, those memory tends to fade between the age of 6 to 9 years... The average time that passed between the death and the past life and the birth of the presence life is twelve years.
17. There is tremendous resistance among the western scientist to the idea that consciousness and brain are separate because most of the western science is built on this materialistic model. The materialistic of looking at things has produced many good things to our society. The problem is that many scientist confused the materialistic philosophy with the scientific method, and all the great things that we enjoyed from modern technology is the result of scientific methods, not necessary of materialistic philosophy. But they have been linked so tightly together in the past several hundreds of years, that is hard for scientist to think of a science without materialism.
18. And there is change in the last century among modern theoretical physicist. They studied things that can't be seem, or felt or measured directly. Particles that are so small and last only a short period of time that they cannot be seen or cannot be measured. So what they do is they shoot these particles through the what is called the bubble chamber, is a pack of bottled liquids. As the particle goes through the liquids, it leaves a trail of bubbles, so you measures the effects of the particles, but you can't measure the particle. You assume that there is a particle there produces the bubbles. And from the trail of bubbles you can learnt a lot about these particles that can't be seem.
19. In the same way, the thing that we talk about, consciousness cannot be seem, but it does leave effects. Consciousness leave the trail of bubbles that we can follow, and through the effects, we can make inferences about consciousness.
Dr Bruce Grayson已经说明了。意识好比粒子，它不可见也不可测量，只能测量的是它的作用。所以传统的物理科学在这个层面近乎是毫无用武之地。人们要透过科学来理解意识，就得放下传统物理，就像当年科学家转向量子科学一样，找出另一种与今天不同的方式，才有可能测量意识的作用。一味要求意识方面的探索必须符合传统科学的定义，那是不可取的。因为依照这种方法，量子科学也就无法建立起来了。
发表于 7-8-2017 04:01 PM
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千斤顶
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发表于 9-8-2017 08:24 PM
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