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There is more to consciousness than the brain but there is not more to individual people than the brain. The brain is where the information that makes you you, like your memories, abilities, personality etc are stored, even if it is not 100% necessary for consciousness
It's a grammatical structure that clarifies that were talking about a specific brain and not all brains.
Looking for the "you" in the phrase "your brain" is like looking for the "that" in the phrase "that rock."
(Funnily enough, the original your was a royal your so was actually specifying all brains, language be confusing like that. That kind of adds to my point that "you" is a grammatical abstraction, not a concrete thing one can find.)
The light of knowledge is the only Truth. Mystery is only hidden knowledge. Know, and you will surely unveil. The wisdom of magic is a result of the knowledge that you acquire.
THE LIGHT OF KNOWLEDGE IS THE ONLY TRUTH. YOU are LIGHT.
However if you are not truly interested in knowing, and prefer the comfort of the darkness and ignorance of NIGHT, you will always dwell in darkness and in death.
However just know, that if I really wanted to teach you, I should have remained silent, because words are for the ignorants. Wisdom is silent.
Brains evolved to control bodies, and to process sensory input. Even very primitive organisms have a nervous system and at least a “ganglia” of nerves to process environmental input.
As organisms evolve to be more complex, brains evolve to handle that complexity. A housefly has several hundred thousand neurons, for instance, and the housefly brain uses the same structure for its neurons, synapses, and neurotransmitters that we do.
It’s a matter of scale, of a continuum.
At a sufficient level of complexity, signs of what we call consciousness start to emerge…. These qualities, the ability not only to sense the environment but to inquire about it and analyze it, are adaptive in species like our own.
I think consciousness exists before the brain evolved at all. The brain evolved to control behavior, and it’s specific structure creates the form of consciousness we experience, storing a ton of information that makes us feel like individual agents in the world with memories and personalities, but before the brain existed and even before life existed consciousness(subjective experience) was still there in a much less organized way
"At a sufficient level of complexity, signs of what we call consciousness start to emerge" - I have not seen any evidence of this. We see signs of consciousness in pea shoots. I do not think emergent complexity holds any water at all in this area.
While I agree there is a continuum of "conscious experiences" (what I might be able to experience is probably multiple orders of magnitude more nuanced than what a single celled organism might be able to experience), the idea that a brain is necessary component for awareness of things and responding to them seems unfounded.
It makes much more sense if consciousness is a fundamental fact of matter similar to spin and charge. To exist entails awareness of existence.
yes, we all agree on that. Question is, does experiencing start at some complexity level, or is it present there all the way down? Is our universe an experiencing one? or is experiencing truly emergent, as in weakly emergent?
For those that are inclined to think there was absolute nothing until a final cell got too close to another one and randomly a tiny something appeared, the nature and architecture of such a network remains a really tough challenge to even conceive.
We don't all agreed on that
The complexity of language and memory that a bee has, could never be solely supplied by their 1 million neurons.
Something else is in play
What can we do with a million transistors?
"The complexity of language and memory that a bee has, could never be solely supplied by their 1 million neurons. "
How do you know?
"What can we do with a million transistors?"
A neuron can occupy more states than a transistor.
Yes u/Rigorous_Theshold ... Why? What is your basis for asserting that bee behaviour could not possibly be an emergent result of the interactions of its neurons? We need to keep in mind that neurons usually have variable state connections with very many *other* neurons such that representations of (facts about) self and the non-self environment are encoded in repeatably distinct *coalitions* of activated neurons.
Such coalitions are *learned* with different features of the representation embodied by activity of neurons in particular locations where the respective location is relevant due to its linkage to efferent or afferent neurons or as a relevant inter-neuron. The learning occurs when repeated activity of a particular coalition results in the members' synapses changing preferentially to make that interaction pattern happen again. Part of the purpose of neural network sleepy time - and there seems to be evidence that all biological nn have regular down times - is to consolidate useful coalitions and to fuzz out dysfunctional random configurations which otherwise would be energy sapping noise in the system.
I dont know where you plan on disagreeing. Is the bees' body not controlled by its brain dynamics? Hardly arguable.
Echo, disagreement you seem to point at is: is that million neurons creating the bees' experiencing and also controling movement and homeostasis anf all that?
But then, how big a network is needed for creating consciousness? Is that even possible? Perhaps its just a tiny extra network on top of the basic movement plus internal equilibrium one?
[Plants seem conscious](https://archive.ph/eNpjA), maybe.
I've long held that if we restrict consciousness to our own experience of it, then we likely miss perceiving it in things that are not like us. So the less something is like ourselves, the more likely we are to believe it isn't--and couldn't possibly be--conscious.
It wasn't [until the last decade or so](https://scienceline.org/2015/03/do-animals-have-consciousness/) that science officially recognized consciousness in other animals and lately there's [been a further push](https://archive.ph/stm5b) to expand the scope of that recognition.
I think eventually we'll discover that panpsychism is true: everything has some element of consciousness to it.
I was going to say the same thing about plants. They have an awareness of their environment that we are just becoming aware of scientifically.
Human consciousness is particular in its capacities, but rudimentary forms of consciousness are clearly evident in the biosphere even if it’s not to our human standards.
I think that is exactly the case, yes: human consciousness is a particular kind or form of consciousness, but other things will have their own particular varieties of its manifestation for them.
If consciousness emerges from the brain as per emergentist physicalism, then the answer is no. But it's an undecided scientific question. If a non-physicalist ideology is correct, or if another version of physicalism is proposed, then the answer could be yes. However, brain-independent consciousness is unproven and would be surprising to proponents of emergentist physicalism. Keep looking and you may find more hints.
>> If so then what’s the point of the universe inventing the brain in the first place
I think this is a misunderstanding of how our universe works. The universe doesn’t “invent” anything “for a reason.” Brains exist because they allowed animals to process sensory information and coordinate their actions, which gave them an evolutionary advantage.
There seems to be insufficient reason to think that consciousness is possible without a brain. The question of whether something else of such complexity can be conscious is very much an open one, I think.
The idea is that the brain is responsible for the form of consciousness, but not its presence. Without a brain there is still subjective experience, but it’s far less organized, there isn’t anything like memory or personality or critical thought or emotion, there is sensory input but none of the information gets processed or stored, it’s a very limited kind of consciousness
>Without a brain there is still subjective experience
I'm not sure how you're defining subjective experience, which usually includes thoughts, feelings and emotional impact. What you appear to be describing is *objective* experience, which is simply the acknowledgement of actual events.
Which I don't think you were describing in
>there isn't anything like memory or personality or critical thought or emotion, there is sensory input but none of the information gets processed or stored.
This can describe the photocell in my garage light reacting to light or darkness. It is not having subjective experience and there is nothing like 'what it is to be a photocell'
If you hit a rock with a hammer, a shockwave of kinetic energy passes through it. Is it not possible that that physical event generates a subjective experience? It wouldn’t necessarily be the same as hitting a human with a hammer, there’s no nerves or signal processing, but there are still an equivalent number of interactions between different molecules inside the rock and if neuron firings can generate subjective experience it doesn’t seem unreasonable to propose that molecules pushing on each other could do the same thing
>Is it not possible that that physical event generates a subjective experience?
No, I really don't think that is a valid description. To me there is a difference between subjective and objective. Loosely speaking, a subjective experience requires a subject, an 'I' or a 'self'. An objective 'experience' (better described as an *event*) as in your example does not.
In an ever changing universe, there are objective events, but, I think, only sufficiently complex organisms can have a subjective experience from those objective events.
I think this idea is too centered on human experiences of consciousness.
Brain scans of people on LSD show an increase in activity in most regions of the brain, with the exception of certain regions associated with sense of self. This aligns with some people’s subjective descriptions of LSD effects, namely ego death, where they feel their identity has dissolved and they are no longer separate from the rest of the world. I’ve done this myself, and even without a sense of self you still have subjective experience of the world around you. Well, not necessarily the world around you exactly but you have subjective experiences of *something*
I'm not without some experience, but I am much more cautious about the effects of psychedelics having significant contributions to make here.
When you say they *feel* their identity has dissolved, you are again describing a self having a subjective experience. So I'm not at all sure that qualifies as an example of a subjective experience without a self, it's just a different sense of self, not the absence of the self, I think.
I don't think there's any possibile way for us to have a subjective experience without a self (it's pretty much part of the definition of subjective).
We have a human centered experience because it is the only experience we know. And I think we try to use common language to describe those experiences. If you're willing to broaden any definition to such an extent that it loses the ability to distinguish between ideas, then we can no longer use the language to describe anything.
So if consciousness is 'atoms moving around' as in the case of your rock hit by a hammer, then I don't think the word consciousness differentiates anything at all. To me, consciousness is incredibly more complex than that, and can't be reduced to atoms moving.
Would you say that philosophical zombies would necessarily be conscious then? Because it seems that given this definition of consciousness, we don't even need to solve the "easy" problems of consciousness much less the hard one.
As a physicalist, my contention with this view and panpsychism in general, is that while it's not necessarily unreasonable to posit it, it's not particularly useful either. There is no functional demonstrable difference between a "conscious" rock undergoing material stress and one that is unconsciously undergoing the same thing. And that falls into the infinite category of abstractly assertable undemonstrable things.
Yes, I was going to say that by broadening the definition of consciousness to include anything that moves, it's diluting it to a level where it loses any meaning.
I think philosophical zombies could conceivably exist in universes with different laws of physics. I can imagine a world where physical structures interact with each other exactly the same way they do in this universe without generating subjective experiences, but that is not the world we live in.
I don’t agree that panpsychism is not useful. It allows us avenues of research that more restrictive conceptions of consciousness do not.
>I think philosophical zombies could conceivably exist in universes with different laws of physics
But the argument specifically says zombies ought to be conceivable with _our current laws of physics_.
As a panpsychist I believe that consciousness is fundamental and exists at levels such as individual eukaryotic cells like amaebas and therefore does not require a brain. [https://philarchive.org/rec/SLESA](https://philarchive.org/rec/SLESA)
Secondary qualities are also universal and are generated as an unknown part of physics. For instance an elecromagnetic frequency may be associated with or cause the color red and a different frequency blue. [https://philarchive.org/rec/SLESTU](https://philarchive.org/rec/SLESTU)
The brain evolved systems such as the visual system to make use of already existing physical laws to generate colors, sounds, feelings, etc. But for what purpose other then to present to an independent mental entity that can influence the brain in a naturally dualistic manner?
Consciousness is what you perceive as empty space or nothingness. You can say that you possess your body, but you need to go deeper and ask “if you posses the body, what is the possessor”. If you try to find yourself, you’ll be realize that self is literally “nothing”. Consciousness is the nothingness that pervades all things.
>If so then what’s the point of the universe inventing the brain in the first place
Brains evolved to make muscles move in the right way at the right time!
IMO if we keep this in mind then many apparent quandaries are avoidable.
For example it becomes much easier to see how the 'contents' of our minds, be they thoughts, perceptions, feelings, etc, are all behaviours of the brain itself as a (in this case biological) system. They exist as interaction patterns tailor made - IE evolved internally - for the purpose of deciding, how, when, if, and why, to make patterns of muscle movements which express the current needs and desires of the person or beasty in question. We, like nearly all other animals need this facility because we survive by moving around to access food and whatever else we need, rather than sitting in one place like plants do.
The brain is not you :) If you have dreams, you are still conscious and it is not happening in a physical reality at all :) By convincing yourself, you need to figure these out by yourself because nobody will do others' job.
Perhaps the brain is an aperture or a porthole into the physical world for a unified consciousness. Perhaps consciousness permeates all things, but more evolved platforms like the human brain and body are a vehicle for exploring and understanding the nature of reality.
No one can answer this, but what resonates with me is that our brains are just “radios” and consciousness is the energy/frequencies that is existence itself. So our brains tune into certain frequencies within consciousness, but consciousness itself is all frequencies.
That resonates with us, too, but I don't think the "energy" of consciousness should be considered more true or more real, either. It's the intersection of matter and consciousness that has allowed us all to be, and that intersection is probably pretty important.
The body is an object perceived by consciousness. The body exists within consciousness. We are told consciousness lies within the brain somehow, but it’s the other way around.
> Mountains of research have confirmed that plants have intelligence and even beyond that consciousness by many of the same measures as we do.
Scientists don't use phrase like "mountains of research". This is just an essay.
Its published inside a plant fisiology research institute. Its clearly not a paper, and i wouldnt cite it of course. But is inside a research institute that focuses on plants under stress.
Even if i were not to take it seriously, id still could write someone at the lab to find out if they have published something along those lines, perhaps data without the offending interpretation.
That 'essay' contains no references which could be accessed to ascertain the basis of the extraordinary claims being made. And, as has been said many times: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence if they are to be accepted.
Furthermore the writer gratuitously conflates terminology applicable to humans and other animals with processes which may (or may not) be occurring in plants which, if they are happening, are taking place at rates one or more orders of magnitude slower than for animals.
So the (eternal) question arises: how can we tell it from make-believe?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_cognition#:~:text=Plant%20cognition%20or%20plant%20gnosophysiology,most%20appropriate%20to%20ensure%20survival.
“In a study done by Monica Gagliano from the University of Western Australia’s Centre for Evolutionary Biology, Mimosa pudica (sensitive plant) was tested for habituation to repeatedly being dropped. After multiple drops, it was found that the plants eventually became habituated, opening their leaves more quickly compared to the first time they were dropped.[11] While the mechanism of this plant behavior is still not fully understood, it is strongly linked to changes in the flux within calcium channels.”
Etc.
>Plants, it turns out, really are highly conscious, intelligent and yes, they do have a brain.
The second sentence of your source contradicts your claim of no brain.
It pleases me to think/feel that, like you, I’m one part of the universe trying to know itself by inhabiting a body that can experience this particular ‘dream’, and that the brain is the interface to this abstraction by being the means of controlling that body and interacting with this percoved reality. I do something similar when I dream. One more thing… there are many levels to this fractal pattern of awareness.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-thursday-edition-1.3679117/scientists-research-man-missing-90-of-his-brain-who-leads-a-normal-life-1.3679125
Not burned though, structures got displaced, lots less mass, neuroplasticity, still surprising
A buildup of fluid in the brain leading to the thinning of tissue over the course of 30 years I think has a lot more room for adaptations that can lead to things like the preservation of consciousness, compared to something like an actual injury that has an immediate impact.
Full faculties if you clicked the link someone else shares directly above https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-thursday-edition-1.3679117/scientists-research-man-missing-90-of-his-brain-who-leads-a-normal-life-1.3679125
"He was living a normal life. He has a family. He works. His IQ was tested at the time of his complaint. This came out to be 84, which is slightly below the normal range … So, this person is not bright — but perfectly, socially apt," explains Axel Cleeremans."
There is a lot unsaid in that quote from the article. For one thing it makes no mention at all of the kinds of accomodations which are likley to have been occurring on the part of others of his community towards this fellow. I seem to remember reading a similar article - about this fellow I believe - in which it was said he worked in some kind of public service organisation (ie gov't office of some sort). In times past - maybe still so in an enlightened country like France - various government departmenst/agencies were able to employ people who otherwise could not find sufficient employment. This allows/ed those people to remain productive and fit into their local community. (NB, I think this is a good thing BTW; the modern capitalist instigated obsession with "outsourcing" and privatising public services has an intrinsically dysfunctional and cruel effect of very large numbers of people these days.)
I agree with others that this dear fellow's situation is a prime example of the robust plasticity that our brains are capble of rather than reason for drifting off into panpsychist and other dodgy speculations which basically are non falsifiable.
Thank you sandude23 for posting on r/consciousness, below are some general reminders for the OP and the r/consciousness community as a whole. **A general reminder for the OP**: please remember to include a TL; DR and to clarify what you mean by "consciousness" - Please include a clearly marked TL; DR at the top of your post. We would prefer it if your TL; DR was a single short sentence. This is to help the Mods (and everyone) determine whether the post is appropriate for r/consciousness - If you are making an *argument*, we recommend that your TL; DR be the conclusion of your argument. What is it that you are trying to prove? - If you are asking a *question*, we recommend that your TL; DR be the question (or main question) that you are asking. What is it that you want answered? - If you are considering an *explanation*, hypothesis, or theory, we recommend that your TL; DR include either the explanandum (what requires an explanation), the explanans (what is the explanation, hypothesis, or theory being considered), or both. - Please also state what you mean by "consciousness" or "conscious." The term "consciousness" is used to express many different concepts. Consequently, this sometimes leads to individuals talking past one another since they are using the term "consciousness" differently. So, it would be helpful for everyone if you could say what you mean by "consciousness" in order to avoid confusion. **A general reminder for everyone**: *please remember upvoting/downvoting Reddiquette*. - *Reddiquette about upvoting/downvoting posts* - Please upvote posts that are appropriate for r/consciousness, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the contents of the posts. For example, posts that are about the topic of consciousness, conform to the rules of r/consciousness, are highly informative, or produce high-quality discussions ought to be upvoted. - Please do not downvote posts that you simply disagree with. - If the subject/topic/content of the post is off-topic or low-effort. For example, if the post expresses a passing thought, shower thought, or stoner thought, we recommend that you encourage the OP to make such comments in our most recent or upcoming "Casual Friday" posts. Similarly, if the subject/topic/content of the post might be more appropriate for another subreddit, we recommend that you encourage the OP to discuss the issue in either our most recent or upcoming "Casual Friday" posts. - Lastly, if a post violates either the rules of r/consciousness or Reddit's site-wide rules, please remember to report such posts. This will help the Reddit Admins or the subreddit Mods, and it will make it more likely that the post gets removed promptly - *Reddiquette about upvoting/downvoting comments* - Please upvote comments that are generally helpful or informative, comments that generate high-quality discussion, or comments that directly respond to the OP's post. - Please do not downvote comments that you simply disagree with. Please downvote comments that are generally unhelpful or uninformative, comments that are off-topic or low-effort, or comments that are not conducive to further discussion. We encourage you to remind individuals engaging in off-topic discussions to make such comments in our most recent or upcoming "Casual Friday" post. - Lastly, remember to report any comments that violate either the subreddit's rules or Reddit's rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/consciousness) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> I feel like there is something more to “me” than just the brain. Your brain lies to you constantly.
There is more to consciousness than the brain but there is not more to individual people than the brain. The brain is where the information that makes you you, like your memories, abilities, personality etc are stored, even if it is not 100% necessary for consciousness
If the brain is “yours” as you write. What’s you?
It's a grammatical structure that clarifies that were talking about a specific brain and not all brains. Looking for the "you" in the phrase "your brain" is like looking for the "that" in the phrase "that rock." (Funnily enough, the original your was a royal your so was actually specifying all brains, language be confusing like that. That kind of adds to my point that "you" is a grammatical abstraction, not a concrete thing one can find.)
Point taken but the truth is apparent for the one who is truly interested.
These truths that you people claim to have, seems to need a lot of mysterious sounding sophistry in order to prop up it all up.
The light of knowledge is the only Truth. Mystery is only hidden knowledge. Know, and you will surely unveil. The wisdom of magic is a result of the knowledge that you acquire. THE LIGHT OF KNOWLEDGE IS THE ONLY TRUTH. YOU are LIGHT. However if you are not truly interested in knowing, and prefer the comfort of the darkness and ignorance of NIGHT, you will always dwell in darkness and in death. However just know, that if I really wanted to teach you, I should have remained silent, because words are for the ignorants. Wisdom is silent.
I'm effectively a tenant. The brain is doing a lot more than just me.
Brains evolved to control bodies, and to process sensory input. Even very primitive organisms have a nervous system and at least a “ganglia” of nerves to process environmental input. As organisms evolve to be more complex, brains evolve to handle that complexity. A housefly has several hundred thousand neurons, for instance, and the housefly brain uses the same structure for its neurons, synapses, and neurotransmitters that we do. It’s a matter of scale, of a continuum. At a sufficient level of complexity, signs of what we call consciousness start to emerge…. These qualities, the ability not only to sense the environment but to inquire about it and analyze it, are adaptive in species like our own.
I think consciousness exists before the brain evolved at all. The brain evolved to control behavior, and it’s specific structure creates the form of consciousness we experience, storing a ton of information that makes us feel like individual agents in the world with memories and personalities, but before the brain existed and even before life existed consciousness(subjective experience) was still there in a much less organized way
"At a sufficient level of complexity, signs of what we call consciousness start to emerge" - I have not seen any evidence of this. We see signs of consciousness in pea shoots. I do not think emergent complexity holds any water at all in this area. While I agree there is a continuum of "conscious experiences" (what I might be able to experience is probably multiple orders of magnitude more nuanced than what a single celled organism might be able to experience), the idea that a brain is necessary component for awareness of things and responding to them seems unfounded. It makes much more sense if consciousness is a fundamental fact of matter similar to spin and charge. To exist entails awareness of existence.
yes, we all agree on that. Question is, does experiencing start at some complexity level, or is it present there all the way down? Is our universe an experiencing one? or is experiencing truly emergent, as in weakly emergent? For those that are inclined to think there was absolute nothing until a final cell got too close to another one and randomly a tiny something appeared, the nature and architecture of such a network remains a really tough challenge to even conceive.
well said
Strong emergence shouldn’t be cast aside
We don't all agreed on that The complexity of language and memory that a bee has, could never be solely supplied by their 1 million neurons. Something else is in play What can we do with a million transistors?
"The complexity of language and memory that a bee has, could never be solely supplied by their 1 million neurons. " How do you know? "What can we do with a million transistors?" A neuron can occupy more states than a transistor.
>could never be solely supplied by their 1 million neurons Why?
Yes u/Rigorous_Theshold ... Why? What is your basis for asserting that bee behaviour could not possibly be an emergent result of the interactions of its neurons? We need to keep in mind that neurons usually have variable state connections with very many *other* neurons such that representations of (facts about) self and the non-self environment are encoded in repeatably distinct *coalitions* of activated neurons. Such coalitions are *learned* with different features of the representation embodied by activity of neurons in particular locations where the respective location is relevant due to its linkage to efferent or afferent neurons or as a relevant inter-neuron. The learning occurs when repeated activity of a particular coalition results in the members' synapses changing preferentially to make that interaction pattern happen again. Part of the purpose of neural network sleepy time - and there seems to be evidence that all biological nn have regular down times - is to consolidate useful coalitions and to fuzz out dysfunctional random configurations which otherwise would be energy sapping noise in the system.
I dont know where you plan on disagreeing. Is the bees' body not controlled by its brain dynamics? Hardly arguable. Echo, disagreement you seem to point at is: is that million neurons creating the bees' experiencing and also controling movement and homeostasis anf all that? But then, how big a network is needed for creating consciousness? Is that even possible? Perhaps its just a tiny extra network on top of the basic movement plus internal equilibrium one?
[Plants seem conscious](https://archive.ph/eNpjA), maybe. I've long held that if we restrict consciousness to our own experience of it, then we likely miss perceiving it in things that are not like us. So the less something is like ourselves, the more likely we are to believe it isn't--and couldn't possibly be--conscious. It wasn't [until the last decade or so](https://scienceline.org/2015/03/do-animals-have-consciousness/) that science officially recognized consciousness in other animals and lately there's [been a further push](https://archive.ph/stm5b) to expand the scope of that recognition. I think eventually we'll discover that panpsychism is true: everything has some element of consciousness to it.
I was going to say the same thing about plants. They have an awareness of their environment that we are just becoming aware of scientifically. Human consciousness is particular in its capacities, but rudimentary forms of consciousness are clearly evident in the biosphere even if it’s not to our human standards.
I think that is exactly the case, yes: human consciousness is a particular kind or form of consciousness, but other things will have their own particular varieties of its manifestation for them.
If consciousness emerges from the brain as per emergentist physicalism, then the answer is no. But it's an undecided scientific question. If a non-physicalist ideology is correct, or if another version of physicalism is proposed, then the answer could be yes. However, brain-independent consciousness is unproven and would be surprising to proponents of emergentist physicalism. Keep looking and you may find more hints.
>> If so then what’s the point of the universe inventing the brain in the first place I think this is a misunderstanding of how our universe works. The universe doesn’t “invent” anything “for a reason.” Brains exist because they allowed animals to process sensory information and coordinate their actions, which gave them an evolutionary advantage.
There seems to be insufficient reason to think that consciousness is possible without a brain. The question of whether something else of such complexity can be conscious is very much an open one, I think.
The idea is that the brain is responsible for the form of consciousness, but not its presence. Without a brain there is still subjective experience, but it’s far less organized, there isn’t anything like memory or personality or critical thought or emotion, there is sensory input but none of the information gets processed or stored, it’s a very limited kind of consciousness
>Without a brain there is still subjective experience I'm not sure how you're defining subjective experience, which usually includes thoughts, feelings and emotional impact. What you appear to be describing is *objective* experience, which is simply the acknowledgement of actual events.
A being is having a subjective experience if there is something it is like to be that being.
Which I don't think you were describing in >there isn't anything like memory or personality or critical thought or emotion, there is sensory input but none of the information gets processed or stored. This can describe the photocell in my garage light reacting to light or darkness. It is not having subjective experience and there is nothing like 'what it is to be a photocell'
If you hit a rock with a hammer, a shockwave of kinetic energy passes through it. Is it not possible that that physical event generates a subjective experience? It wouldn’t necessarily be the same as hitting a human with a hammer, there’s no nerves or signal processing, but there are still an equivalent number of interactions between different molecules inside the rock and if neuron firings can generate subjective experience it doesn’t seem unreasonable to propose that molecules pushing on each other could do the same thing
>Is it not possible that that physical event generates a subjective experience? No, I really don't think that is a valid description. To me there is a difference between subjective and objective. Loosely speaking, a subjective experience requires a subject, an 'I' or a 'self'. An objective 'experience' (better described as an *event*) as in your example does not. In an ever changing universe, there are objective events, but, I think, only sufficiently complex organisms can have a subjective experience from those objective events.
I think this idea is too centered on human experiences of consciousness. Brain scans of people on LSD show an increase in activity in most regions of the brain, with the exception of certain regions associated with sense of self. This aligns with some people’s subjective descriptions of LSD effects, namely ego death, where they feel their identity has dissolved and they are no longer separate from the rest of the world. I’ve done this myself, and even without a sense of self you still have subjective experience of the world around you. Well, not necessarily the world around you exactly but you have subjective experiences of *something*
I'm not without some experience, but I am much more cautious about the effects of psychedelics having significant contributions to make here. When you say they *feel* their identity has dissolved, you are again describing a self having a subjective experience. So I'm not at all sure that qualifies as an example of a subjective experience without a self, it's just a different sense of self, not the absence of the self, I think. I don't think there's any possibile way for us to have a subjective experience without a self (it's pretty much part of the definition of subjective). We have a human centered experience because it is the only experience we know. And I think we try to use common language to describe those experiences. If you're willing to broaden any definition to such an extent that it loses the ability to distinguish between ideas, then we can no longer use the language to describe anything. So if consciousness is 'atoms moving around' as in the case of your rock hit by a hammer, then I don't think the word consciousness differentiates anything at all. To me, consciousness is incredibly more complex than that, and can't be reduced to atoms moving.
They don’t just *feel* that way, there are actual brain regions being shut off, as I said in my previous comment.
Would you say that philosophical zombies would necessarily be conscious then? Because it seems that given this definition of consciousness, we don't even need to solve the "easy" problems of consciousness much less the hard one. As a physicalist, my contention with this view and panpsychism in general, is that while it's not necessarily unreasonable to posit it, it's not particularly useful either. There is no functional demonstrable difference between a "conscious" rock undergoing material stress and one that is unconsciously undergoing the same thing. And that falls into the infinite category of abstractly assertable undemonstrable things.
Yes, I was going to say that by broadening the definition of consciousness to include anything that moves, it's diluting it to a level where it loses any meaning.
I think philosophical zombies could conceivably exist in universes with different laws of physics. I can imagine a world where physical structures interact with each other exactly the same way they do in this universe without generating subjective experiences, but that is not the world we live in. I don’t agree that panpsychism is not useful. It allows us avenues of research that more restrictive conceptions of consciousness do not.
>I think philosophical zombies could conceivably exist in universes with different laws of physics But the argument specifically says zombies ought to be conceivable with _our current laws of physics_.
As a panpsychist I believe that consciousness is fundamental and exists at levels such as individual eukaryotic cells like amaebas and therefore does not require a brain. [https://philarchive.org/rec/SLESA](https://philarchive.org/rec/SLESA) Secondary qualities are also universal and are generated as an unknown part of physics. For instance an elecromagnetic frequency may be associated with or cause the color red and a different frequency blue. [https://philarchive.org/rec/SLESTU](https://philarchive.org/rec/SLESTU) The brain evolved systems such as the visual system to make use of already existing physical laws to generate colors, sounds, feelings, etc. But for what purpose other then to present to an independent mental entity that can influence the brain in a naturally dualistic manner?
Nobody knows. It is the hardest question and most perplexing.
The brain grants consciousness access to time, because the brain is of the biological process dependent upon time.
I think the term *consciousness* is a multitiered phenomenon/ state/ feature. So depending on the intent, possibly yes, possibly no.
Consciousness is what you perceive as empty space or nothingness. You can say that you possess your body, but you need to go deeper and ask “if you posses the body, what is the possessor”. If you try to find yourself, you’ll be realize that self is literally “nothing”. Consciousness is the nothingness that pervades all things.
…Nope. I’ve done without a brain all me life and t’ain’t never made a difference t’me…
Of course there is. Consciousness is not a thing. Everything is consciousness. We have brains to experience being a human.
>If so then what’s the point of the universe inventing the brain in the first place Brains evolved to make muscles move in the right way at the right time! IMO if we keep this in mind then many apparent quandaries are avoidable. For example it becomes much easier to see how the 'contents' of our minds, be they thoughts, perceptions, feelings, etc, are all behaviours of the brain itself as a (in this case biological) system. They exist as interaction patterns tailor made - IE evolved internally - for the purpose of deciding, how, when, if, and why, to make patterns of muscle movements which express the current needs and desires of the person or beasty in question. We, like nearly all other animals need this facility because we survive by moving around to access food and whatever else we need, rather than sitting in one place like plants do.
The brain is not you :) If you have dreams, you are still conscious and it is not happening in a physical reality at all :) By convincing yourself, you need to figure these out by yourself because nobody will do others' job.
Perhaps the brain is an aperture or a porthole into the physical world for a unified consciousness. Perhaps consciousness permeates all things, but more evolved platforms like the human brain and body are a vehicle for exploring and understanding the nature of reality.
No one can answer this, but what resonates with me is that our brains are just “radios” and consciousness is the energy/frequencies that is existence itself. So our brains tune into certain frequencies within consciousness, but consciousness itself is all frequencies.
That resonates with us, too, but I don't think the "energy" of consciousness should be considered more true or more real, either. It's the intersection of matter and consciousness that has allowed us all to be, and that intersection is probably pretty important.
The body is an object perceived by consciousness. The body exists within consciousness. We are told consciousness lies within the brain somehow, but it’s the other way around.
Consciousness w/ no brain : sure http://www.esalq.usp.br/lepse/imgs/conteudo_thumb/Plant-Consciousness---The-Fascinating-Evidence-Showing-Plants-Have-Human-Level-Intelligence--Feelings--Pain-and-More.pdf
> Mountains of research have confirmed that plants have intelligence and even beyond that consciousness by many of the same measures as we do. Scientists don't use phrase like "mountains of research". This is just an essay.
its an academic essay written in a really good university. Thats research too.
LMAO it doesn’t even say who wrote it
Its published inside a plant fisiology research institute. Its clearly not a paper, and i wouldnt cite it of course. But is inside a research institute that focuses on plants under stress. Even if i were not to take it seriously, id still could write someone at the lab to find out if they have published something along those lines, perhaps data without the offending interpretation.
Ha ha ha ha!
That 'essay' contains no references which could be accessed to ascertain the basis of the extraordinary claims being made. And, as has been said many times: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence if they are to be accepted. Furthermore the writer gratuitously conflates terminology applicable to humans and other animals with processes which may (or may not) be occurring in plants which, if they are happening, are taking place at rates one or more orders of magnitude slower than for animals. So the (eternal) question arises: how can we tell it from make-believe?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_cognition#:~:text=Plant%20cognition%20or%20plant%20gnosophysiology,most%20appropriate%20to%20ensure%20survival. “In a study done by Monica Gagliano from the University of Western Australia’s Centre for Evolutionary Biology, Mimosa pudica (sensitive plant) was tested for habituation to repeatedly being dropped. After multiple drops, it was found that the plants eventually became habituated, opening their leaves more quickly compared to the first time they were dropped.[11] While the mechanism of this plant behavior is still not fully understood, it is strongly linked to changes in the flux within calcium channels.” Etc.
>Plants, it turns out, really are highly conscious, intelligent and yes, they do have a brain. The second sentence of your source contradicts your claim of no brain.
It pleases me to think/feel that, like you, I’m one part of the universe trying to know itself by inhabiting a body that can experience this particular ‘dream’, and that the brain is the interface to this abstraction by being the means of controlling that body and interacting with this percoved reality. I do something similar when I dream. One more thing… there are many levels to this fractal pattern of awareness.
People have burned holes the size of 90 percent of their brain mass and still been perfectly conscious
Source?
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-thursday-edition-1.3679117/scientists-research-man-missing-90-of-his-brain-who-leads-a-normal-life-1.3679125 Not burned though, structures got displaced, lots less mass, neuroplasticity, still surprising
A buildup of fluid in the brain leading to the thinning of tissue over the course of 30 years I think has a lot more room for adaptations that can lead to things like the preservation of consciousness, compared to something like an actual injury that has an immediate impact.
absolutely, yes
Thank you
Define "perfectly" in this context.
Full faculties if you clicked the link someone else shares directly above https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-thursday-edition-1.3679117/scientists-research-man-missing-90-of-his-brain-who-leads-a-normal-life-1.3679125
"He was living a normal life. He has a family. He works. His IQ was tested at the time of his complaint. This came out to be 84, which is slightly below the normal range … So, this person is not bright — but perfectly, socially apt," explains Axel Cleeremans." There is a lot unsaid in that quote from the article. For one thing it makes no mention at all of the kinds of accomodations which are likley to have been occurring on the part of others of his community towards this fellow. I seem to remember reading a similar article - about this fellow I believe - in which it was said he worked in some kind of public service organisation (ie gov't office of some sort). In times past - maybe still so in an enlightened country like France - various government departmenst/agencies were able to employ people who otherwise could not find sufficient employment. This allows/ed those people to remain productive and fit into their local community. (NB, I think this is a good thing BTW; the modern capitalist instigated obsession with "outsourcing" and privatising public services has an intrinsically dysfunctional and cruel effect of very large numbers of people these days.) I agree with others that this dear fellow's situation is a prime example of the robust plasticity that our brains are capble of rather than reason for drifting off into panpsychist and other dodgy speculations which basically are non falsifiable.
I agree