Non-physical entity

The 2012 Physics Essays Publication contains a study conducted by six academics with various backgrounds. It revealed that trained meditators with focused minds can have effects on quantum objects in a double-slit experiment, supposedly lending weight and credibility to the ‘consciousness causes wave-function collapse’ model of Quantum Mechanics. This was later debunked as a false positive.[5]

“Variables including temperature, vibration, and signal drift were also tested, and no spurious influences were identified. By contrast, factors associated with consciousness, such as meditation experience, electrocortical markers of focused attention, and psychological factors including openness and absorption, significantly correlated in predicted ways with perturbations in the double-slit interference pattern. The results appear to be consistent with a consciousness-related interpretation of the quantum measurement problem.”[6]

If minds are fundamentally non-physical and non-local, we might expect that organisms without a central nervous system would show cognitive behaviors. Slime mold has no central nervous system, but has been shown in a laboratory environment to displays cognitive behaviors: “These results strongly suggest that, like humans, Physarum doesn’t attach any intrinsic value to the options that are available to it. Instead, it compares its alternatives.”[7]

"What that means, according to Dussutour [...] is that a slime mold can learn — and it can keep that knowledge during dormancy, despite the extensive physical and biochemical changes in the cells that accompany that transformation. Being able to remember where to find food is a useful skill for a slime mold to have in the wild, because its environment can be treacherous. [...] More fundamentally, she said, this result also means that there is such a thing as ‘primitive cognition,’ a form of cognition that is not restricted to organisms with a brain.”[8]

We might expect that is mind is fundamentally non-physical and non-local, that even organisms as small as single cells might have cognitive behaviors without relying on complex brain structures or even a central nervous system.

“For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that an organism devoid of a nervous system is capable of learning. A team from the Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale (CNRS/Université Toulouse III -- Paul Sabatier) has succeeded in showing that a single-celled organism, the protist Physarum polycephalum, is capable of a type of learning called habituation. This discovery throws light on the origins of learning ability during evolution, even before the appearance of a nervous system and brain.”[9][10]

“Associative memory is the main type of learning by which complex organisms endowed with evolved nervous systems respond efficiently to certain environmental stimuli. It has been found in different multicellular species, from cephalopods to humans, but never in individual cells. Here we describe a motility pattern consistent with associative conditioned behavior in the microorganism Amoeba proteus.”[11]

We might expect that if minds are non-physical and non-local, that they could come (or should come) from somewhere else before birth rather than arising in the womb for the first time. Research has been done on this topic.

“Stevenson, an expert on psychosomatic medicine, suspected strong emotions are related to a child’s retention of past-life memories. Traumatic deaths, he thought, leave an emotional imprint. Indeed, most of the children he studied claimed that they had met a violent end previously. There was also a gap of a few years between lives; reincarnation is never immediate. And for the most part, souls seemed to stay local. That's to say, the ‘previous personality’ often lived in a distant village, but not quite so far away as to require a passport.”[12]

"For the past 20 years, Dr. Jim Tucker, now the director of the Division of Perceptual Studies, has focused mainly on cases found in the United States. His most recent book Return to Life offers accounts of very strong American cases of young children who remember previous lives. In this book, Dr. Tucker writes about the now well-known cases of James Leininger, a young boy who had verifiable past-life memories of being a WWII pilot, and Ryan Hammond, who had verifiable memories of being a Hollywood extra and talent agent.”[13]

We might expect that if minds are non-physical and non-local, that they could acquire knowledge non-physically and non-locally when the brain has completely shut off and has no access to the five senses.

Dr. Parnia & Patients with no brain activity: “Conscious awareness appears to have continued for up to three minutes into the period when the heart wasn’t beating, even though the brain typically shuts down within 20-30 seconds after the heart has stopped. This is significant since it has often been assumed that experiences in relation to death are likely hallucinations or illusions, occurring either before the heart stops or after the heart has been successfully restarted, but not an experience corresponding with ‘real’ events when the heart isn’t beating. Furthermore, the detailed recollections of visual awareness in this case were consistent with verified events.”[14]

“There are four lines of evidence to explore [which support the mind being non-physical]. Number one is the unexplained recovery of consciousness for people who’ve been unconscious for prolonged periods of time moments or days before their death. Number two is a complex consciousness in people with minimal brain tissue. Number three is surprisingly complex consciousness in near-death experiencers when the brain is not functioning or functions at a diminished level, and number four; young children who recall details of a past life.”[15]

We might expect that if minds are non-physical and non-local, that they could acquire knowledge non-physically and non-locally, under certain conditions.

“All but one of the nine experiments confirmed the hypothesis that psi exists. The odds against the combined results being due to chance or statistical flukes are about 74 billion to 1, according to Bem.”[16]