The Brain Does NOT Create Consciousness

[manxman]

This is an excellent summation of how consciousness works and how we experience reality - should be a sticky post. i think when we forget or perhaps missed that moment of emergence in the infant child, it becomes a lot easier to debate and question just how this whole darn thing works and invent some pretty wild possibilties. it's clarity like this that makes me want to give up on all my reincarnation speculation. damn.

i want to capitalize on nameless' post as it reminded me of a movie i saw of a man who developed his echolocation skills on such a high level that though blind, he could ride a bike. an impressive development. so what other skills have we not yet developed or forgotten?

i heard about the blind 'bat' kid [echo location], blind from birth, made clicking noise's with his mouth and he was good.
shame he got run-over.

 

[trainedobserver]

The paper at the link (a chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty) might provide you with some reasons to think otherwise. I hope you'll find it worthwhile to consider the author's arguments against what he calls the "mediational epistemology" that has assumed a gap between the mind and the world since Descartes. The paper's author, Charles Taylor, explains at the outset that what he means by 'mediational epistemology' is "an understanding of the place of mind in a world such that our only knowledge of reality comes through the representations we have formed of it within ourselves." The title of the paper as it appears in the Cambridge Companion is "Merleau-Ponty and the Epistemological Picture."

http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/188_s05/pdf/Charles_Taylor_Background.pdf

Can you give me an executive summary version? The main points perhaps?

 

[Jeff Davis]

OK, so what does?

We know if you jab a needle in the brain, consciousness either changes, or is degraded, or stops working altogether.

So if the brain doesn't create consciousness, what does? You have to replace it with something, you know.

Even a Harvard neurosurgean can't wave his hands and will a non-material dualistic universe into being. Hell, I believe consciousness can survive death, but that it's obviously highly coupled to the the few pounds of grey matter in your noodle.

And just take an evolutionary perspective: what does this lump of grey goo that takes 20% of your metabolic energy do if not that?

And this statement is just patently false:

"Materialist science is at the end of its days as most scientists are changing their views."

Speaking as a materialist, I say we're just getting cooking.

Marduk,
Why the immense lack of common sense here? Sometimes, I think this is what education does to people. Obviously the brain is EVERYTHING with respect to neural uptake and perception. That's not consciousness. Your, as I believe Mike stated, sensory bandwidth upstairs, is not consciousness either. Nothing "creates" consciousness. It's an attribute of the natural environment that our cognition reacts to and within. The brain is the most important organ that we have with respect to REALITY. It is not consciousness however. No more than a fishes brain produces the water it swims in. The last couple statements merely exemplify that which challenges your religion.

 

[Constance]

Merleau-Ponty expressed this integration of our being in the being of all that is in this metaphor: "the fish is in the water and the water is in the fish."

 

[Randall]

Marduk,
Why the immense lack of common sense here? Sometimes, I think this is what education does to people. Obviously the brain is EVERYTHING with respect to neural uptake and perception. That's not consciousness. Your, as I believe Mike stated, sensory bandwidth upstairs, is not consciousness either. Nothing "creates" consciousness. It's an attribute of the natural environment that our cognition reacts to and within. The brain is the most important organ that we have with respect to REALITY. It is not consciousness however. No more than a fishes brain produces the water it swims in. The last couple statements merely exemplify that which challenges your religion.

There seems to be some confusion. Please allow me to interject and clarify. Saying that consciousness is an emergent property of a normally function brain is not the same as saying consciousness is the brain. A simplistic analogy is that the brain is like a light bulb, and consciousness is like the light that emerges from that bulb when it is switched on. The light is not the light bulb, yet it requires the light bulb. Turn the switch off and everything goes dark. There are no verifiable cases where a person associated with a non-functioning brain has exhibited any real-time signs that they possess consciousness. In contrast every normally functioning brain in a normal healthy aware person exhibits consciousness.

What's more, it's not as if the brain is simply a passive receiver. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that in conjunction with a healthy body, the brain produces it's own energy and transmits its own signals. In contrast there is no evidence of some remote "consciousness transmitter" that sends out some sort of signal that our brains interpret as consciousness. The closest we can come to that is to assume that universe itself is some sort of construct, and by extension, so are we. But even that doesn't mean that things within the construct aren't in-turn capable of creating things on their own, and such appears to be the case with humans. We aren't simply remote controlled biological automatons run by a remote central system. Each of us has our own unique personalities and thoughts and consciousness that springs forth from our individual living selves.

 

[Constance]

Can you give me an executive summary version? The main points perhaps?

Taylor lays out what he's doing quite clearly in the opening pages. Give it a try. If I get enough time for it I'll copy out some extracts illustrating the ways in which the presuppositional frame he reveals (through which we almost unconsciously continue to separate mind from world) continues to affect and short-circuit thinking about our direct experience of being.

 

[ALPHA ROMEO UNIFORM]

The Brain is a organ which feeds on blood and oxygen which has electronical pulse that send messages out side the organ shell (our body) more we become "Transhumanism" our ability to commuicate with each other will be subject to the fabric of free consciouness instead control information will change the patterns of electronical nodes we used to send to out . Threads of 'invisible electronical waves 'which wind into a spindal of knowlegde which all huamans, animals, plants etc travel among space and time. We are all connected through interaction and smell the consciousness web which at time maybe connects to past life events such as the Tibetian Book of the dead suggest we see our reborn self. Moreover our journey depends on the level of openess we choose or belive in oneselve that other demensions of sliding doors exsit and dreams come into play some suggest but rather we live a dream 24 hours a day. Love and Trauma maybe triggers allsort of interaction of electronical pulses which effect brain signals inside and out. Those who face death or come close maybe opens more brain interaction than a secured brain which is not threaten with shutdown maybe it re-wires the brain and the shell?

 

[PCarr]

ARTICLE HERE:
By Debbie West

In a recent interview on Waking Times aired on The People’s Voice Network, Dr. Eben Alexander, Harvard Neurosurgeon presents compelling scientific research in the field of consciousness that examines the unfolding reality that the brain does NOT create consciousness. Misleading concepts that focus on reductive materialism have kept us in the dark about the true nature of the human soul and its integral part in our evolution as spiritual beings.

The doctors who actually treated Eben Alexander when he had his NDE have refuted his account. They induced his coma, and kept him in it using anesthetics. His claim that his brain was "destroyed" when he had his vision of heaven is highly doubtful. A Yale Neurologist explains it all without resorting to the "no brain" claim.

 

[marduk]

Marduk,
Why the immense lack of common sense here? Sometimes, I think this is what education does to people. Obviously the brain is EVERYTHING with respect to neural uptake and perception. That's not consciousness. Your, as I believe Mike stated, sensory bandwidth upstairs, is not consciousness either. Nothing "creates" consciousness. It's an attribute of the natural environment that our cognition reacts to and within. The brain is the most important organ that we have with respect to REALITY. It is not consciousness however. No more than a fishes brain produces the water it swims in. The last couple statements merely exemplify that which challenges your religion.

One would think the first rule of common sense is to find a simple, plausible mechanism for what you assert to be the case.

I think what you are saying is that consciousness is ambient in the environment, and the brain tunes into it?

If so, how is consciousness created by reality? Where? And how does it communicate with the brain? If it's electromagnetism, I would posit a thought experiment: put a human into a tight fitting faraday cage. By your assertion, he should get stupider because he's out of contact with the natural environment.

 

[marduk]

There seems to be some confusion. Please allow me to interject and clarify. Saying that consciousness is an emergent property of a normally function brain is not the same as saying consciousness is the brain. A simplistic analogy is that the brain is like a light bulb, and consciousness is like the light that emerges from that bulb when it is switched on. The light is not the light bulb, yet it requires the light bulb. Turn the switch off and everything goes dark. There are no verifiable cases where a person associated with a non-functioning brain has exhibited any real-time signs that they possess consciousness. In contrast every normally functioning brain in a normal healthy aware person exhibits consciousness.

What's more, it's not as if the brain is simply a passive receiver. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that in conjunction with a healthy body, the brain produces it's own energy and transmits its own signals. In contrast there is no evidence of some remote "consciousness transmitter" that sends out some sort of signal that our brains interpret as consciousness. The closest we can come to that is to assume that universe itself is some sort of construct, and by extension, so are we. But even that doesn't mean that things within the construct aren't in-turn capable of creating things on their own, and such appears to be the case with humans. We aren't simply remote controlled biological automatons run by a remote central system. Each of us has our own unique personalities and thoughts and consciousness that springs forth from our individual living selves.

100% agree, well put.

Let's use modern computers as a metaphor. Not that I'm positing that we're Turing machines (or that we're not).

The brain would be the hardware. The processors, wires, links to the power supply.

The codified rules such has how you see, language, instinct, etc would be the software. The wrinkle would be that the software can modify itself -- think a computer that can write new subroutines to improve it's abilities, learn new things, pattern match the environment,etc. There would be two kinds of software -- hardcoded (keeping your heart breathing, etc) and softcoded (modifiable at run time).

Neither of these are conscious on their own.

What I'm positing is the act of the mental software while being executed in the hardware is consciousness. The process itself.

This is why consciousness goes away when you turn off the brain, and why it may never come back the same even if you turn it back on.

 

[Jeff Davis]

There seems to be some confusion. Please allow me to interject and clarify. Saying that consciousness is an emergent property of a normally function brain is not the same as saying consciousness is the brain. A simplistic analogy is that the brain is like a light bulb, and consciousness is like the light that emerges from that bulb when it is switched on. The light is not the light bulb, yet it requires the light bulb. Turn the switch off and everything goes dark. There are no verifiable cases where a person associated with a non-functioning brain has exhibited any real-time signs that they possess consciousness. In contrast every normally functioning brain in a normal healthy aware person exhibits consciousness.

What's more, it's not as if the brain is simply a passive receiver. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that in conjunction with a healthy body, the brain produces it's own energy and transmits its own signals. In contrast there is no evidence of some remote "consciousness transmitter" that sends out some sort of signal that our brains interpret as consciousness. The closest we can come to that is to assume that universe itself is some sort of construct, and by extension, so are we. But even that doesn't mean that things within the construct aren't in-turn capable of creating things on their own, and such appears to be the case with humans. We aren't simply remote controlled biological automatons run by a remote central system. Each of us has our own unique personalities and thoughts and consciousness that springs forth from our individual living selves.

LOL!! @ufology, you Sir are incorrigible.

 

[Jeff Davis]

One would think the first rule of common sense is to find a simple, plausible mechanism for what you assert to be the case.

I think what you are saying is that consciousness is ambient in the environment, and the brain tunes into it?

If so, how is consciousness created by reality? Where? And how does it communicate with the brain? If it's electromagnetism, I would posit a thought experiment: put a human into a tight fitting faraday cage. By your assertion, he should get stupider because he's out of contact with the natural environment.

And see, this *is* your problem. Do you know what this is? It's called brain washing. Mechanistic thinking might get you a factory someday, but in terms of discovery, or what is exploratory reflective process, you get no where. No, I am not stating that the brain "tunes" into consciousness like a ball game or whatever. Consciousness is not created by reality. Where do you get this stuff?

 

[Jeff Davis]

100% agree, well put.

Let's use modern computers as a metaphor. Not that I'm positing that we're Turing machines (or that we're not).

The brain would be the hardware. The processors, wires, links to the power supply.

The codified rules such has how you see, language, instinct, etc would be the software. The wrinkle would be that the software can modify itself -- think a computer that can write new subroutines to improve it's abilities, learn new things, pattern match the environment,etc. There would be two kinds of software -- hardcoded (keeping your heart breathing, etc) and softcoded (modifiable at run time).

Neither of these are conscious on their own.

What I'm positing is the act of the mental software while being executed in the hardware is consciousness. The process itself.
This is why consciousness goes away when you turn off the brain, and why it may never come back the same even if you turn it back on.

No. Not even close. Cognition interprets consciousness as experience. This is why when the brain goes bye bye, ceases to be functional, dies, whatever, we and our sentience do the same.

Marduk,
This is a GREAT place to start. This is a wonderful perspective regarding consciousness as explained by Julian Jaynes. IMO, one of the greatest consciousness theorists ever. The Consciousness of Consciousness | The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind | Julian Jaynes Society

 

[Stagger Lee]

I'll admit to being a novice to the above discussions concerning the brain and consciousness. There are many accounts I find interesting, involving those who are witness to one who is close to death. Conversations with unseen relatives who have died many years prior to the dying patient, as well as claims by the patient of being visited by the previously deceased. Sure, all could be dismissed as the result of delusion brought on by the expiring faculties of the patient.. but I have a feeling there is much more to it than can be explained.

 

[PCarr]

100% agree, well put.

Let's use modern computers as a metaphor. Not that I'm positing that we're Turing machines (or that we're not).

The brain would be the hardware. The processors, wires, links to the power supply.

The codified rules such has how you see, language, instinct, etc would be the software. The wrinkle would be that the software can modify itself -- think a computer that can write new subroutines to improve it's abilities, learn new things, pattern match the environment,etc. There would be two kinds of software -- hardcoded (keeping your heart breathing, etc) and softcoded (modifiable at run time).

Neither of these are conscious on their own.

What I'm positing is the act of the mental software while being executed in the hardware is consciousness. The process itself.

This is why consciousness goes away when you turn off the brain, and why it may never come back the same even if you turn it back on.

I highly recommend Thomas Metzinger's book "The Ego Tunnel." I'm not sure I agree with his conclusion that there is no self, but he does fine job of summarizing the science of consciousness and clarifying the issues.

 

[Jeff Davis]

I have heard that some zoologists have been contemplating the idea of consciousness covering an idea "larger" than the brain. The concept of "the larger the brain, the more intelligent the animal" has been disputed with the discovery that crows and ravens, with their relatively small brains, can solve some puzzles faster than the great apes can. Not only do they use tools, they can construct them to serve a particular purpose.

Crows are perhaps the most amazing bird on the planet IMO. They are so smart, they will fly out, pick up walnuts, and then drop them in front of moving vehicles to have the exterior and shells cracked and forced opened. They are beyond brilliant. They are also claimed to use their own language amongst themselves.

6 Terrifying Ways Crows Are Way Smarter Than You Think | Cracked.com

 

[marduk]

And see, this *is* your problem. Do you know what this is? It's called brain washing. Mechanistic thinking might get you a factory someday, but in terms of discovery, or what is exploratory reflective process, you get no where. No, I am not stating that the brain "tunes" into consciousness like a ball game or whatever. Consciousness is not created by reality. Where do you get this stuff?

Dude get off your high horse.

You're clearly speculating and I'm neither brain washed nor brain washing.

If consciousness is not created by reality therefore it's created by unrealty?

Complete utter nonsense and I've had enough.

 

[Jeff Davis]

Dude get off your high horse.

You're clearly speculating and I'm neither brain washed nor brain washing.

If consciousness is not created by reality therefore it's created by unrealty?

Complete utter nonsense and I've had enough.

I am on no high horse other than the one I knocked you off that you rode in with your total BS understanding of theoretical QM. I showed you verbatim EVERYTHING you claimed was BS. Guess who was WRONG? High horse? You wrote the book.

 

[marduk]

I highly recommend Thomas Metzinger's book "The Ego Tunnel." I'm not sure I agree with his conclusion that there is no self, but he does fine job of summarizing the science of consciousness and clarifying the issues.

Will do.

 

[marduk]

I am on no high horse other than the one I knocked you off that you rode in with your total BS understanding of theoretical QM. I showed you verbatim EVERYTHING you claimed was BS. Guess who was WRONG? High horse? You wrote the book.

You did? Did I blink and miss it?

Maybe you can for once clearly state your position?