i like zapped17's post..

with regards to the '2 competing theories' comment Nathaniel.Dread, i don't know that this is the right way to frame the whole issue, or is at least dualistically limiting..
the Vedanta, for example, theory is that regardless of whether complex or not, or difference in qualities, it is the same consciousness in all cases and conditions.. the analogy would be electrons..whether it's as electrical signals in the brain, or a computer, or lightning, electrons are electrons..hence, in this view, like zapped17 says in another way, the 'changes' in consciousness related to the brain are changes in state or expression, not of the consciousness itself..the brain is a (complex) organ, but not the cause or nature of the consciousness in this view..it isn't about internal or external consciousness, rather consciousness is seen as emergent in matter...it's not receiving from anywhere, rather the brain is a pathway for its flow, which is more complex than an amoeba perhaps, but not different in elementary basis, in this perspective...with no organs or material expression consciousness can still exist in a 'void' (and/or the opposite) without self identification of any physical input/output - meditation and other techniques as subjective analysis of consciousness would indicate this state...
none of this isn't to say the neuroscience isn't interesting..

If the entire physical universe is a mental construct, akin to how one imagines stuff in their mind, but on a much more profound scale, then the entire physical body is no different.

Because the illusions of a physical world that our sense produce are so strong, it seems solid, it seems to be "out there", but that is the delusion that we become strongly convinced of, because we swim in this ocean from the time we are born. Like a fish in water, we become so conditioned by it that we so easily discard and forget that the only true perspective we have is entirely subjective. That is, we perceive purely from consciousness. Our senses produce the illusion of separation, and hide and filter out the truth ~ that we swim in a vast ocean of energy. Our senses merely filter out most of this energy, so we can interact with the world in a sane fashion.


I can agree, because I see where you are coming from, but I also disagree ~ we do have some evidence of what consciousness is based on the existence of phenomena like telepathy, OBEs, and NDEs.

I'll quote eg:




Or perhaps consciousness is where information arises from, like ripples in an ocean?

I have observed an individual ant using a tool and demonstrating an understanding of the concepts of leverage and fulcrum. Seems like a lot for such a small brain. That sort of thing makes me wonder, where is the ant mind located?

What if the importance of brain size, or lack thereof, is has been overly exaggerated by certain sciences, and what if, in fact, brain size doesn't contribute to, or subtract from, the potential intelligence of a living being?

Ants are amazingly intelligent creatures.

Exactly

Ho boy, so I don't think I can respond to each and ever point, but I have to say, I'm really enjoying this discussion. It's fun to dig into the meat of this, so thank you to everyone who's participating



Define intelligence.



See, I just don't buy that, 1) telepathy is real, and 2) that OBEs and NDEs are anything other than changes in the behavior of the brain. The fact that they can be induced in controlled settings, using (afawk) purely physical methods, makes me think they're physical things. I may be wrong, but right now, I have no reason to suspect otherwise. They may feel magic and profound, but so does going to a Penn and Teller show, and I don't assume they're wizards.

Zapped: Great post, there's a lot to digest there. In regards to the electric field example: you're totally right that sometimes the more complex solution is the correct (or better) one, but in those cases, there needs to be a lot of power in the theory. The acceptance of electric fields solved a lot of questions and allowed us to make a lot of strong predictions, which held up under empirical testing. I don't think this receiver/filter model does that.

It doesn't make any predictions that can be tested and it doesn't answer any questions, it just shuffles them around a bit. We're no closer to solving either the Hard or Soft problems, we've just cluttered the picture a bit with a bunch of other stuff that (from my perspective) lack sufficient evidence to make them work taking seriously. Radin lists a lot of studies on his site, but looking at them, a lot of these studies seem to be small, heavily reliant on p-values to make their claim and reproducability seems low.

You cited the psi stuff in the other thread you linked to, and to be honest, so far, I just don't buy it. Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence and all that, and so far, I haven't been wowed. I'll happily eat my words if/when the time comes, but I'm pretty conservative about these things.

As for the last point, I touched on this in another post, BUT if the brain's interaction with the 'outside' consciousness is what gives rise to our qualia, like vision and the 'outside' consciousness has no qualia or qualities that we associated with our day-to-day experience of consciousness, then *for all practical purposes* the brain is still generating consciousness.

I'm a pragmatist, and a scientist. It may be true that 'consciousness is primary,' I can't prove it right or wrong, no one can. It's more religion than neuroscience.

For all practical purposes, consciousness and the brain are inseparable and whatever else is out there is irrelevant. If my goal is to modulate or reduce your consciousness using an anesthetic for a surgical procedure, then, as far as I'm concerned, consciousness is in the brain. Alter the brain, alter consciousness. Same is true of psychedelics: activate those cortical 5HT2Ars, consciousness changes.

Sure, maybe there is some absolute consciousness out there that the brain normally filters out but, as I said before, if it has none of the qualities we associate with a meaningful definition of consciousness and those qualities only emerge through it's interaction with the physical brain, then we're STILL asking 'how does the brain make consciousness (as we experience it)?'

The closest I'll come to non-local consciousness is the field theory I posited 3 posts below yours in the other thread, but as I mentioned before, that doesn't actually answer any real-world questions.

Blessings
~ND

Great reply, ND!


Hmmmm... I tend to look at "intelligence" as being the unique capacity of a living being able to understand and interact wisely with the environment around it, according to its full, unhibited potential, that is, when it is mentally, emotionally and physically in perfect health and balance. The potential range of intelligence depends on the species, and so, has limits of how far it can understand reality.

Hence, all beings are uniquely intelligent in ways that humans cannot understand with our particular brand of intelligence. Because we are not ants, and have never experienced existence as an ant, we cannot truly understand ants. Yes, we can look at their behaviour from our limited human perspectives all we want, and as deeply as those limits allow, but no matter what conclusions we draw, we can still *never* know what it is like to be an ant, to have an ant's emotions, to have an ant's understanding of the world, or the wisdom it may have.

This is true of all species and individuals, even plants, bacteria, minerals, and what-have-you. Took me a while to reach this conclusion, when puzzling over what it might be like to be a frog or bird, and see the world from one. Just as they may not truly understand us humans, nor we them...


If we, for a moment, presume the switchboard analogy of the brain, then of course you can induce NDE and OBE experiences by messing with the switchboard. The switchboard is no more the conscious being, than the radio is the signal it plays, to bring up the worn analogy yet again...

However, it isn't the same, not by a long shot, as OBEs and NDEs induced without physical methods in controlled settings. You cannot truly replicate the wildness of nature in a laboratory, and that is where controlled scientific studies fail, because wild nature is not a controlled scientific study, with certain parameters. The former happens according to the unpredictableness of nature, whereas the latter tries to force predictableness into the equation, which never gets you the reality you want to understand.

It's almost like saying that the a survey of a small group of people is somehow representative of the whole population, which is far more than likely to not be representative of the messy, utterly unpredictable reality.


Consciousness being primary, and the creator of the totality of reality, is much simpler than fumbling around with how different brain states create what behaviours and thoughts. I think it rather the opposite: ideas and thoughts, arising from ideas, start from the subconscious and unconscious, which in turn mirror into brain activity, and then it translates into physical actions, filtering through to the conscious mind sometimes, unless when we're acting on impulse.

It is probably far more complex than this simplified model, overall, given the sea of ordered chaos that the unconscious and subconscious aspects of ego-consciousness are.


I don't agree. Why draw such a conclusion? Why does this mean that the brain is "generating" consciousness? The filter model as a conclusion works better, especially when you throw paranormal, metaphysical weirdness into the mix, that undeniably exist, though some may try and explain it away because it doesn't find into the "brain is mind" blindfold.


Sometimes, the neuroscientists make their science into a religion, too, thus giving the inherent beauty of neuroscience, and how it interplays with the rest of science, a bad name to those who don't find creedance in the physicalist, materialist, worldview, which a number of neuroscientists seem to unfortunately adhere to, without really thinking about it. I don't have names, but the general attitude I see seems to point to such problems in the field.

I respect neuroscience in how it works to understand the brain, but sometimes, I think they draw assumptions and presumptions from their research that it is proof that "brain is mind", whereas I think neuroscience could really work quite well with quantum physics and the idea of a non-local consciousness that the brain taps into, or what-have-you. Or maybe I've just been looking at the wrong section of neuroscience, or something.

I do find myself reminded of the whole analogy of when all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail... why limit yourself to using just a hammer, though? Boggles my mind.


That doesn't mean that consciousness is in the brain. You could just as easily conclude that you're messing with a consciousness filter to block out harmful effects. Alter the filter, alter consciousness. Same with psychedelics.


There's the assumption, it seems to me, that you're making, perhaps without realizing:

WHY does the brain have to make consciousness? There is nothing about the brain that suggests that it has to make consciousness, unless you blind yourself to other logical conclusions and possibilities, such as the brain being a filter, a control panel, a switchboard, for a non-physical consciousness, a consciousness field, perhaps. Just because science cannot currently test it, does not mean it isn't a valid answer.

The current truths that the scientific institutions seem to adhere to will turn out to be a dead end, eventually, I believe. You can only keep following a dead end for so long until you have to conclude that is just that, a dead end.

As Max Planck has humourously stated:

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

"Science advances one funeral at a time."

Sorry, I've been struggling to articulate this thought.

I'm understanding the brain as a filter proposition like this:

There is some kind of consciousness-at-large that is transcendent of material reality. This 'consciousness' is not associated with any qualia besides that of 'being conscious.' I'm thinking of something like Chaitanya, as described in the Rig Veda. We won't bother asking where it comes from, it just IS.

Somehow (no explanation given), this consciousness-at-large interacts with the brain and, through this interaction, it takes on the quality of having qualia. Vision, touch, emotion, etc.

So, if this is true (which actually, I might be willing to buy, at least in some models), we're still left with the question of 'how does the structure/function of the brain alter the qualities of 'consciousness-at-large' in such a way to generate qualia.

From where I stand, that question sounds so similar to the materialst question 'how does the structure/function of the brain generate qualia,' as to be functionally identical. We still have a question (the existance of qualia) and we still have a material organ (the brain) that is necessary for the qualia to occur. Whether consciousness is intrinsic or emergent seems fairly unimportant in this configuration.

Now, you might ask why I think that the consciousness-at-large has no intrinsic qualia. I would respond by going back to an earlier discussion in this topic, the one about brain damage.

Say I have my occipital lobe damaged beyond any sort of recovery or repair. My loss of vision is so complete that, not only am I blind, but I have lost any ability to conceptualize what it means to have sight. The whole sensory modality is just...gone.

IF sight and the qualia of vision were an intrinsic part of consciousness-at-large (of which I am just a part), I think it's reasonable to assume that I would continue to have some 'concept' of sight, even if I had no specific visions. I'm still conscious and have consciousness, it no longer has the flavor of vision though.

Vision, is not necessary for consciousness.

If I suffered damage to my olfactory bulb, I would loose the qualia of smell (and most of taste), but I would still be conscious. Smell and taste, like vision, and not necessary for consciousness.

If you continue the thought, you end with an experience of consciousness (Pure Consciousness) that is devoid of any of the qualia that make up our conscious experience, besides that single qualia of 'being conscious.'

So, despite the fact that 'consciousness-at-large' exists, the brain is 'flavoring' consciousness with qualia.

How does it do that? That's basically the same question as what the materialists ask, just without the 'mind-at-large' bit, which isn't really necessary for the meat of the problem.



Yes, but the brain is what's being manipulated. Whether it's a filter or a generator, the behavior of sodium ion channels under the influence of propofol doesn't change, and neither does it's effect on subjectively experienced consciousness.

Actually, that's a question:

In you view (as a proponent of dualism), what happens to me when I'm anesthetized. There's no persistence of consciousness. My consciousness doesn't 'go' somewhere else, I have no experiences I can bring back, I just...don't exist for a few hours, then I come back.

Blessings
~ND

I'd obviously have to disagree your criticism of psi research. Most of the criticisms above are false, empirically, as I'll try to show below. Of course, I did not expect you (or anyone) to exhaustively look into the entire body of research that has been published on psi (that would just be plain cruel lol) - however, this research should not be cavalierly dismissed. Regarding Radin's page, I'm not sure you looked carefully enough b/c the points you raised don't match the bulk of the data from the studies listed there (however, it is true that some paradigms have been less successful than many of the others, so it's important not to generalize.)

Before I address psi, a word on OBEs (if you'd like complete citations of what I refer to, please ask). When you speak of OBEs being induced in a lab, I suppose you're referring to Olof Blanke's brain stimulation studies w/ epileptic patients. A) It's not at all clear that genuine OBEs were in fact induced in these experiments. If one reads the studies as written by Blanke et al. (and not merely the articles about them in popular science news forums), it's clear from the patients' reports that the phenomenology of the experiences induced by stimulation is significantly different than that of the phenomenology of spontaneous OBEs. Blanke's study has been criticized on these and other grounds, by Greyson, Parnia, and Fenwick (2008 ) and Holden, Long, and Maclurg (2002). B) Even if genuine OBEs had been induced in these experiments, it doesn't necessarily negate their reality. For instance, it would be compatible with theories of the brain as a filter. It's entirely feasible that OBEs (and related phenomena) are mediated by the brain, without being reducible to it. As Aldous Huxley often said (in relation to mystical and psychedelic experiences), certain neural events "are the occasion rather than the (sole) cause". (NDEs are a topic too deep to get into in this comment, but I will note that the majority of researchers who have directly studied NDEs prospectively in the past 2 decades have expressed serious doubts that the phenomena can be reductively explained, and forcefully argued against such a position (e.g., Van Lommel, Parnia, Greyson, Sartori, Fenwick, Beauregard, Ring, Sabom, et al.))

On to psi : Firstly, I mentioned "psi" in response to Valmar's thread which asked "is consciousness a product of the brain or is the brain a receiver of consciousness?" Psi seems to provide evidence that consciousness has non-local properties of some kind, which would suggest that mind or consciousness extends beyond the boundaries of the ordinary sensory channels. Thus, it seems psi could be evidence in favor of a "receiver model" of consciousness. Secondly, it absolutely makes predictions that can be tested - and have been tested, many successfully so. The whole history of research done in this area goes against the contrary assertion.

Yes, psi research is evaluated statistically - both with frequentist and bayesian statistics. But if you are dismissing the findings simply because of this, then you also have to discard the vast majority of findings from the psychological and behavioral sciences, as well as many of the findings in modern physics and biology. All of these fields are evaluated in precisely the same manner, using statistical methods of analysis. If there are problems with applying statistical tests in empirical science, such problems would not be endemic to psi research alone. (I should mention that Dr. Jessica Utts, president of the American Statistical Association in 2016, has evaluated many of the research reports and meta-analyses in the study of psi. In several publications, she has demonstrated that psi phenomena are statistically robust, highly significant and replicable (Utts, 2015. In May and Marwaha (Eds.)) - and she is a major proponent the research. So I find it quite unlikely that there are any statistical errors being made in the assessment of these studies.

I'm not sure what you mean by "these studies are small". If you're referring to how many participants were involved, then that varies based on the study. If your referring the sheer number of studies in total, then the statement is false, as there are literally several hundreds of studies that have demonstrated statistically significant effects in favor of the experimental hypothesis. It's true that the effect sizes of this research are considered to be "small to medium" sized. However, this in and of itself is certainly not grounds for rejection, as one must of course also consider the statistical significance and replication rate of the studies in tandem. Note that the effect of aspirin on reducing heart attack has a much smaller effect size than does effects routinely observed in psi research. This is also holds true the evidence for the Higgs Boson (which was evaluated statistically, btw).

It is also false that the reproducibility rate of psi studies is "low", or low enough such that there is warrant for discarding the evidence. Bapista and Derkshani (2014, 2015) and Utts (1991, 2015) assessed this very question of replication rates, and found that overall, the replicability rates of psi research was comparable to that of mainstream psychological research. A number paradigms assessed in psi research were found to have higher replication rates than the average study published in mainstream psychology, the latter of which are normally accepted as fact. Additionally, the statistical power of psi studies was also found to be comparable to that of mainstream research published in prominent psychology (Rossi 1990), social psychology (Richard, Bond, Stokes-Zoota 2003), and neuroscience (Button, 2013) journals - in fact, for certain classes of psi experiments statistical power was significantly better than in these mainstream areas of research.

You mention another well worn maxim, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I believe this claim has hardened into something of a dogma, accepted uncritically and often wielded in a way that allows one to cursorily "explain-away" a number of troubling experimental results. It's also notoriously difficult and subjective to determine both what is extraordinary, and what constitutes extraordinary evidence. I see no uncontroversial way of defining either terms. (We're all familiar with a heap facts about quantum physics that seem incredibly bizarre, and in conflict with common sense - hence "extraordinary".)

Nevertheless let's take a quick look at a handful of relevant meta-analyses. A number of paradigms in psi research which have been subject to scrutiny indeed demonstrate robust enough evidence to warrant being taken seriously. Roughly 6-sigma data (Z-score), and high levels of statistical significance - far better than a p-value of at least p < .05, which is customarily grounds for rejecting the null hypothesis. Off the top of my head I can think about 3-4 times as many meta-anlyses in addition to these with statistical results roughly in the same ballpark.
- Presentiment/ physiological anticipation of unpredicible stimuli (Mossbridge, Tressoldi, Utts 2014): 26 studies, z = 6.9, p < 2.7 × 10−12 (that's 10 to the negative 12th)
- Ganzfeld (Storm, Tressoldi, Di Risio 2010): 108 total studies, Stouffer Z = 8.31, p = 10-16
- Non-ganzfeld free response (Storm, Tressoldi, Di Risio 2010): 16 studies, Z = 3.35, p = 2.08 x 10-4
- Precognitive habituation (Bem, Tressoldi, Rabeyron, Duggan 2016): 90 studies, z = 6.40, p = 1.2 × 10-10
- Forced choice (Storm, Tressoldi, Di Risio 2012): 72 studies, Stouffer Z = 4.86, p = 5.90 × 10–7
- Forced choice (Honorton and Ferrari 1989): 309 studies, Stouffer Z = 6.02, p = 1.10 × 10−9
- Free response (Milton 1997): 78 studies, Stouffer Z of 5.72, p = 5.40 X 10-9
- Remote viewing (Jahn and Dunne, 2003): 653 tests, composite z-score against chance of 5.418, p = 3 x 10-8

Is this "extraordinary evidence"? I don't know - but it's certainly far beyond sufficient for accepting any kind of "mainstream" phenomena. I think it warrants being taken seriously.

What was it that was aware of the absence of objective perception in that state (which is itself a subject-object dynamic with 'the void' being the object of perception)?

See that's the thing: nothing was aware of it because it didn't exist. You're trying too hard to preserve your terminology even though it's not applicable. There is no void experiencing the act of not experiencing, the silliness of which should be self-evident. You're grasping at straws.

Nothing?

It's not like I was sitting there thinking 'hmm, this is what unconsciousness/nonbeing is like.' One moment I was awake and feeling loopy from drugs, the next, I was waking up. I had a sense that time had passed, but no 'conscious' awareness ever occurred.

Blessings
~ND

Zapped - I will respond to you, I'm going to need more time to look at those studies though.

Ahh, the question of "unconsciousness” I sympathize with Nathaniel.dread here - the apparent fact that consciousness seems to come and go with certain psycho-physical states poses a prima facie problem certain views of consciousness that posit it as being more than the brain. It’s a question that’s intimately related to the question of what the self is, and what its “persistent conditions” are. I think there is a burden on anyone who holds such a view to offer some kind explanation. (It is necessary to note that technically, not all forms of dualism face this problem. For example, versions of property dualism, or so-called “emergent dualist” positions, can readily accommodate such observations (Chalmers 1996). Instead, this is a problem more so for substance dualism.)

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on “dualism”, written by Howard Robinson, briefly discusses the problem of unconsciousness for dualism (specifically in the context of substance dualism). He summarizes four potential options for responding to this problem: “One could claim (i) that we are conscious when we do not seem to be (which was Descartes' view): or (ii) that we exist intermittently, though are still the same thing (which is Swinburne's theory, (1997), 179): or (iii) that each of us consists of a series of substances, changed at any break in consciousness, which pushes one towards a constructivist account of identity through time and so towards the spirit of the bundle theory: or (iv) even more speculatively, that the self stands in such a relation to the normal time series that its own continued existence is not brought into question by its failure to be present in time at those moments when it is not conscious within that series (Robinson, forthcoming).”

Obviously, it would take a very long detailed discussion to properly analyze the merits of each of these options. However, certain empirical observations might brought to bear in support of option 1. Perhaps, it’s rather an issue of memory (or lack thereof).

The phenomena of dreaming and dream recall is relevant. It is well known that during sleep, human beings cycle through REM states several times during the night. However, upon waking we are rarely able to recall every individual dream that we underwent while asleep. In fact, it’s often the case that can’t recall any experience at all from this period. Yet, evidence shows that we do dream multiple times every night. It’s been proposed that the reason we cannot remember our dreams is due to certain memory processes that occur throughout the sleep cycles, which lead to retrograde amnesia. This is supported by the fact that if a person is abruptly woken up while they are in and REM state, they are much better at recalling the experience - conversely, if the individual progresses through the stages of sleep cycles subsequent to REM uninterrupted (an wakes up in the morning), the experience is not as readily consolidated into explicit memory. This also holds true for Non-REM sleep states, in which certain types of experiences do in fact occur as well, but are even less likely to be recalled (subjects in sleep labs are woken up directly once they enter an NREM state - they're then capable of reporting on their experiences).

Secondly, up until very recently it was believed that patients who are in a coma, persistent vegetative state, or locked-in syndrome are indeed unconscious. However, a number recent studies that have indicated consciousness may be present in these patients despite clinically undetectable consciousness. Cruse et al 2011 and Cruse et al 2010 demonstrated conscious awareness during persistent vegetative states using brain imaging techniques. Of course most individuals who come out of a vegetative condition do not remember having awareness - again this is believed to be due top retrograde amnesia. Relatedly, reports of explicit (or conscious) awareness of events during anesthesia have been elicited by hypnosis (Cheek 1964, 1966; Levinson 1965). The study by Levinson, involved 10 highly hypnotizable subjects undergoing surgical procedures carried out under deep anesthesia, which was monitored by EEG. Post surgery, and only under hypnosis, four of these patients recalled verbatim, and four others recalled partially, remarks made by the anesthetist in conjunction with a staged “crisis” in the procedure.

Additionally, the phenomena of near-death experiences (NDEs) are relevant. Approximately 10-20% individuals who undergo cardiac arrest, a situation in which consciousness is clinically undetectable, report lucid experiences consistent with the phenomenology of the so called near-death experience. A similar percentage of experiences has been observed in individuals who undergo deep general anesthesia. However, the question of why it is that only some subjects have these experiences during a period of apparent unconsciousness is perplexing. Sam Parnia et al.’s research into this phenomena suggests the likelihood that a much greater proportion of cardiac arrest survivors and post-anesthesia surgery patients actually undergo NDEs - again, it is believed that memory processes (amnesia that occurs during the recovery of consciousness) affect the explicit recall of experiences that might have occurred during the period of unconsciousness. (Note: I'm not arguing here whether or not NDEs are "real". I bring this phenomenon up because of its relevance to the question of if we are conscious when we seem not to be.)

More speculatively (allow me to get a bit metaphysical here), in the nondual contemplative mystical traditions (e.g. Vedanta, Buddhism, Sufism, Shaivism, Neoplatonism, etc) it is believed that consciousness is ever present throughout all states of being. Long term practitioners of meditative traditions are able to retain consciousness into the deep sleep state (Mason and Orme-Johnson, 2010). These individuals say that once one has experienced a form of mystical consciousness during meditation, it it turn “wakes up” during deep sleep, as well as in ordinary daily activities. At this point, it is said, one gains the realization that he/she was in fact never unconscious at any moment during deep sleep - the reason it seems otherwise is because he/she was previously unable to identify with non-symbolic, object-less consciousness, which is what exists during deep sleep.

Also more speculatively: I think this might have something to do with time or temporality, which, according to the perspective of Vedanta Hinduism or Madhyamika Buddhism, is an aspect of the "relative" world and has no reality in the realm of the "absolute", which is time-less or "outside" of time. In other words, the apparent seeming that there is a flow of time, and periods in that temporal stream where we do not exist (periods of unconsciousness), is illusory from the perspective of absolute consciousness. It only seems that we become unconscious because we are identifying with "ordinary mind" (rational, waking-state mind, or "gross" body-mind in Hinduism) - and ordinary mind is finite and does go in and out of existence.

Nathaniel.dread - since the topic of psi is a bit tangential to the topic of this thread, perhaps if you'd like to follow up with this discussion it would be best to do so via private messages. I have a tendency to write a lot (as you can see) , so I'd rather not clog up this thread with more text about something that's not 100% relevant to Valmar's question.