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We're talking about neurology here - you know, the systematic mapping of the regions and interconnections in the chunk of fat atop our that allow us to perceive everything? A "scientist" that dismisses an OBE, stimulated or not, as just a displacement is a moron, not a researcher.
Now, on the other hand, if you were hoping that neurology would generate a model of what's going on that pairs with mystical assessments, you're shucks outta luck. OBE description and the metaphysics that stem from them are based on self-report, and self-reports are not given a lot of weight in neurological study...what with the whole being imbedded in a giant cultural-interprative framework that hands out metaphors for the experience with bells on, utterly confabulating their validity, even compared cross-report.
What you will end up with from this God spot thingy is a better understanding the aspects of the sensorium and the brain that we really, really take for granted. The five [external-monitoring] senses, as we style them (sometimes the vestibular is counted six, and I'd make an argument for the vomeronasal; to say nothing of the important interal-condition senses), are prominent, out there to recognized by the deficits and absences, consciously controllable and thus ripe for self-assessment. This "God Spot" though, touches on some of the things that we don't think about in a very concrete, doesn't stimulate the neocortex way...that our perception of "being" in space and time, our understanding of our position in three dimensions and sense of having a continuous body and a first-person perspective, are keyed to regions and axes in the lower brain. |
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