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is consciousness more than just the brain creating our experience?


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is our brain creating our experience, and nothing more? or is there something else to it? if so, what, why, how? anaswer as few or as much as you feel comfortable theorizing/etc about

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I don't think it's limited to the brain, I think the entire body is involved. As well as bits of us which exist beyond the physical boundary of our bodies.

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Fraggle Underdark

Yes, I think this phenomenon occurs in the brain.

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1 hour ago, _River_ said:

is our brain creating our experience, and nothing more? or is there something else to it?

Are you asking whether reality is objective, or if instead your experience is a simulation created out of nothingness?

 

There do seem to be a lot of us who agree on objective facts, and who can repeat each other's experiments to confirm each other's investigations, so, does that count as "something else to it?"

 

Or would you dismiss that as not being evidence that anyone else besides you actually shares that experience? The simulation could contain all the other people and scientists you've ever heard of, after all. How do you know you aren't the only consciousness there is.

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21 minutes ago, Ollie415 said:

I don't think it's limited to the brain, I think the entire body is involved. As well as bits of us which exist beyond the physical boundary of our bodies.

As well as the trillions and trillions of members of alien species which live in our guts. There are more microorganisms in there than the cells in the entire rest of our bodies, and they directly interact with our nervous system. There are as many neurons in our guts as in our entire brain not counting the frontal cortex. I think we're about 20 years away from researchers being able to demonstrate that those microorganisms form part of "our" consciousness too.

Watch them prove me wrong and do it in eight.

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25 minutes ago, Ollie415 said:
45 minutes ago, Ollie415 said:

I don't think it's limited to the brain, I think the entire body is involved. As well as bits of us which exist beyond the physical boundary of our bodies.

As well as the trillions and trillions of members of alien species which live in our guts. There are more microorganisms in there than the cells in the entire rest of our bodies, and they directly interact with our nervous system. There are as many neurons in our guts as in our entire brain not counting the frontal cortex. I think we're about 20 years away from researchers being able to demonstrate that those microorganisms form part of "our" consciousness too.

Watch them prove me wrong and do it in eight.

These are two different directions, though: the bits of us that exist beyond our bodies versus the microorganisms that exist within our bodies. So is the part of us beyond us that counts part of the microbiome of a much larger being? These posts are missing a massive element of context that I need to understand better.

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3 minutes ago, Snaolent Night said:

These are two different directions, though: the bits of us that exist beyond our bodies versus the microorganisms that exist within our bodies. So is the part of us beyond us that counts part of the microbiome of a much larger being? These posts are missing a massive element of context that I need to understand better.

You're right, I'm saying two different things.

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1 minute ago, Ollie415 said:

You're right, I'm saying two different things.

Okay, so that was intended, then. But still...what part of us would be beyond  us?

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10 minutes ago, Snaolent Night said:

Okay, so that was intended, then. But still...what part of us would be beyond  us?

Both? Neither?

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RoseGoesToYale

After several magic mushroom trips... no, I don't think it's just the brain. It's difficult to explain, but what I can't explain is why I feel an intense connection to the universe that isn't there when I'm not tripping. I would think if only our brains were responsible for what we experience that psychedelics would feel no different from being high on some other drug... euphoric and silly, but otherwise unremarkable. But no, it's a fundamental alteration of consciousness.

 

These days I tend to think of the universe as a living organism, alive beyond our narrow scientific definition of life. If that's the case, maybe we are a brain. Tiny little complex cells that help it think. Or maybe earth is the brain cell and we're part of it's substructure.

 

Come to think of... how the fuck can our brains hold all this information? What format is it in? In order to store information outside of our brains, you need a medium (a physical thing upon or in which to store the information) and a format (the configuration of the information, which is capable of being interpreted). The book is the medium and text is the format. The hard disk is the medium and binary data (1s and 0s) is the format. Just like our brains, the hard disk uses electrical impulses to extract and interpret data, but our brains don't use binary data. If our brain cells store the information, how is it stored in there? What's the format? How come the neurons in my brain can precisely recall what an apple looks like but the nerves in my feet can't? If you stuck a neuron from another part of the body into the brain, would it adapt and become a brain cell? Would I suddenly be able to understand foot information? Or could it be that all my neurons have the capability of storing such complex information, but the brain can only interpret what's inside it?

 

Sorry, I went off on a tangent...

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2 hours ago, Ollie415 said:

Are you asking whether reality is objective, or if instead your experience is a simulation created out of nothingness?

 

There do seem to be a lot of us who agree on objective facts, and who can repeat each other's experiments to confirm each other's investigations, so, does that count as "something else to it?"

 

Or would you dismiss that as not being evidence that anyone else besides you actually shares that experience? The simulation could contain all the other people and scientists you've ever heard of, after all. How do you know you aren't the only consciousness there is.

I guess it's two things. One is, do you have evidence to support consciousness being more than just the experience itself (or likewise argue that we can include other things in the mix), or, to ask spiritually if you believe consciousness has something more to it spiritually or religiously etc. 

 

The question of whether it is somehow fake/false is an interesting discussion. I know that there's the idea of a boltzman brain, where particles happened to organize themselves randomly into a brain, with conscious experience, memories of happenings that just happened, and a past, and thinks for a few minutes before dies, and that kind of points out the fact that we have no proof anything we remember is in fact real. lol

 

In that line, as to a simulation, you don't need a supercomputer to do it, you only need to fool the subject into either experiencing its experiences, or believing that it is doing so. It wouldn't be possible as to what we currently know and can do with technology, but a small photorealistic game is all you need. I don't travel outside my state or even city all that often, so there's no need to simulate it. If I call my mom, you only need to simulate the phone call and nothing more. Wouldn't be too hard to have a bare minimum simulation, if simulation is something you can do. Youo don't need to make a sun and earth and 7 bilion people, only whatever the subject is currently experiencing and that's it. 

 

and, it doesn't even need to have free will, only believe that it is doing so, so it could literally be a prerecorded simulation. idk what good that'd do for, but it'd be possible. 

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1 hour ago, RoseGoesToMush said:

intense connection to the universe that isn't there when I'm not tripping.

is this similar to interoception? the sense of knowing where your body currently is. It doesn't have to be literally the same, only, another way of feeling "this is me"

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Depending on what you meant by the question, yes, but it uses the brain's input to create the experience. You still need the 'experiencer', which is consciousness, so it's more than just the brain.

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I'm no neuroscientist or cognitive psychologist nor even a philosopher, so anything I might say would be conjecture based on very limited knowledge/understanding.

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RoseGoesToYale
1 hour ago, _River_ said:

is this similar to interoception? the sense of knowing where your body currently is. It doesn't have to be literally the same, only, another way of feeling "this is me"

Actually, it's the exact opposite. When I trip, I lose all connection to my body. Sometimes it becomes "part" of other objects. Other times I look at my limbs and wonder who they belong to because they don't feel like mine. It's like becoming less of your body and more of your consciousness.

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Fraggle Underdark
5 hours ago, RoseGoesToMush said:

Come to think of... how the fuck can our brains hold all this information? What format is it in? In order to store information outside of our brains, you need a medium (a physical thing upon or in which to store the information) and a format (the configuration of the information, which is capable of being interpreted). The book is the medium and text is the format. The hard disk is the medium and binary data (1s and 0s) is the format. Just like our brains, the hard disk uses electrical impulses to extract and interpret data, but our brains don't use binary data. If our brain cells store the information, how is it stored in there? What's the format? How come the neurons in my brain can precisely recall what an apple looks like but the nerves in my feet can't? If you stuck a neuron from another part of the body into the brain, would it adapt and become a brain cell? Would I suddenly be able to understand foot information? Or could it be that all my neurons have the capability of storing such complex information, but the brain can only interpret what's inside it?

To answer some of these, information is stored in the brain by the pattern and strength of different neuron connections. There are many different types of neurons (plus the glial cells that surround and help them, of which there are several types). I don't remember the details but I don't think a neuron in the foot (of which there are also different types IIRC) would work quite right even if you could place it in the brain, and even then it would be just one cell out of about 100 billion.

 

As for exactly how different things are implemented like memory, that involves extremely complex interactions between "memory centers" to put it simply, "concept centers", different visual processing centers, etc etc. Obviously I'm not saying I understand them, and even experts only understand some, this stuff is extreme spaghetti code.

 

5 hours ago, RoseGoesToMush said:

After several magic mushroom trips... no, I don't think it's just the brain. It's difficult to explain, but what I can't explain is why I feel an intense connection to the universe that isn't there when I'm not tripping. I would think if only our brains were responsible for what we experience that psychedelics would feel no different from being high on some other drug... euphoric and silly, but otherwise unremarkable.

It's interesting to learn about the massive variety of brain injuries that can happen and how specifically they can affect the brain. Included among them are brain injuries that make people very prone to spiritual experience. Also scientists have sometimes (with patient consent) done light exploration during open brain surgery, and quite a lot of interesting experiences can be provoked/created by light electrical stimulation. Speaking more abstractly, I see no reason that a brain can create a sensation of "I'm cozy" or "this is funny" or "I love this person" or "everything's spinning and music sounds really good" but couldn't create feelings of connection to the universe (which people can also feel while sober, even if it doesn't match the intensity of mind-altering substances, but the same thing goes for joy for example). I don't see any reason that some sensations and experiences would be possible with the material but other ones couldn't. Also for context I have a little experience with both psilocybin and LSD.

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13 hours ago, _River_ said:

is our brain creating our experience, and nothing more? or is there something else to it? if so, what, why, how? anaswer as few or as much as you feel comfortable theorizing/etc about

Full disclosure: I did my thesis on consciousness, and the work being done in philosophy on the subject was so frustratingly bad that I abandoned academia and have spent the last 16 years working in customer service so like, keep that in mind during my ranting.
 

When you say “your brain is creating your experience,” what do you mean by that? When you say, “and nothing more,” what do you imagine the alternative to be?

 

To explain what I mean here: the first question is a bit odd from a semantic standpoint, because it’s not clear who the “you” (or “us” in your post, but I think this gets at the same question, and “you” highlights the problem more directly) is. The implication tends to be that there is a tiny version of you riding around in your head watching a film produced by your brain, and that this tiny you is the “real” you. But there demonstrably isn’t a tiny humanoid inside your head, so what do you actually mean when you say that your brain is creating this experience for you? Who is it that the experience is being created for, and where are they?

 

This might sound like a silly semantic question, but it actually is not. I’m a pretty strict materialist, and this is probably the hardest question to answer, because you can’t really deny the existence of experiences. You have them, certainly. But like, while we can show that certain parts of the brain correlate to a person having certain experiences, we can’t fully explain who or what it is that actually has them. To be clear, we can and have made a lot of educated guesses, but it is an incredibly difficult thing to test experimentally for obvious reasons.

 

So, point two, “and nothing more.” What would it be like if there was “something more?” As an example, let’s imagine that your brain takes input from all your sensory organs and runs that data through a number of filters and routines that strip out irrelevant details like the number of grains of sand on the stretch of beach in your field of vision as well as grouping some of the elements, like matching several hundred distinct green shapes attached to an irregular structure and labeling that “tree”, and then consults a database of recent experiences to assert that this in the same tree you saw from the driveway earlier, and then consults an older database to identify the person coming to greet you as your mother.

 

What is the alternative here? That your brain doesn’t do these things? Well then, what would that be like? How would you know something was a tree or that the number of grains of sand were probably not important or that something you lost sight of remained there when you looked away, or who someone you’d seen before was? What would the “something more” be?

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15 hours ago, Sarah-Sylvia said:

You still need the 'experiencer', which is consciousness, so it's more than just the brain.

so you're saying that 

1) there needs to be an experiencer seperate from experience to have experience

2) this experiencer isn't generated by the functin of the brain that shows you your senses

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14 minutes ago, _River_ said:

so you're saying that 

1) there needs to be an experiencer seperate from experience to have experience

2) this experiencer isn't generated by the functin of the brain that shows you your senses

Right.
A lot of people make the huge assumption that consciousness itself can from the brain (because of correlation), but it's not possible. Molecules moving around, no matter how complex it is (well also chemicals and electrical activity), can never be more than those moving around. It takes something else to be able to interpret them for experiences, to perceive an experience from what's going on.

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6 hours ago, Tetusbaum said:

To explain what I mean here: the first question is a bit odd from a semantic standpoint, because it’s not clear who the “you” (or “us” in your post, but I think this gets at the same question, and “you” highlights the problem more directly) is. The implication tends to be that there is a tiny version of you riding around in your head watching a film produced by your brain, and that this tiny you is the “real” you. But there demonstrably isn’t a tiny humanoid inside your head, so what do you actually mean when you say that your brain is creating this experience for you? Who is it that the experience is being created for, and where are they?

Maybe I could ask instead, "what is consciousness? is it something different and seperable from the experience of seeing an apple, picking it up and feeling it?" then there is no "you" or "I" in the question. 

 

 

I don't personally know what to believe. Does the brain decide? If it certainly does, then the brain deciding would be what "I" is. or at least, one way of denoting "I"

 

then there is the question of, if there is experience, does that require that there is a seperate experiencer? if so, that would be "I", no? If not... 

6 hours ago, Tetusbaum said:

So, point two, “and nothing more.” What would it be like if there was “something more?”

Well this is meant to prompt responses talking about how the brain generating our senses, emotions, and thoughts is exactly what consciousness is, or if there is more to it than this generating process. 

 

6 hours ago, Tetusbaum said:

As an example, let’s imagine that your brain takes input from all your sensory organs and runs that data through a number of filters and routines that strip out irrelevant details like the number of grains of sand on the stretch of beach in your field of vision as well as grouping some of the elements, like matching several hundred distinct green shapes attached to an irregular structure and labeling that “tree”, and then consults a database of recent experiences to assert that this in the same tree you saw from the driveway earlier, and then consults an older database to identify the person coming to greet you as your mother.

 

What is the alternative here? That your brain doesn’t do these things? Well then, what would that be like? How would you know something was a tree or that the number of grains of sand were probably not important or that something you lost sight of remained there when you looked away, or who someone you’d seen before was? What would the “something more” be?

is labelling it a tree more than just the generation of the object as a discernable object? is making it into a discernable object inherent to the brain's function, or something extra? Is deciding whether or not to hug your mother due to conflicting feelings about her, something extra?

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29 minutes ago, Sarah-Sylvia said:

Right.
A lot of people make the huge assumption that consciousness itself can from the brain (because of correlation), but it's not possible. Molecules moving around, no matter how complex it is (well also chemicals and electrical activity), can never be more than those moving around. It takes something else to be able to interpret them for experiences, to perceive an experience from what's going on.

are mushrooms conscious? they communicate, using over 50 words, signals that have meaning and mushrooms respond to these signals from others?

fish? trees? viruses? is water conscious?

 

can an ai be conscious? is it already there?

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21 minutes ago, _River_ said:

are mushrooms conscious? fish? trees? viruses? is water conscious?

Well,  it depends how you mean that, but living beings (viruses and water not included) are connected with consciousness, yeah. I can't really say what type of consciousness is involved for non-animals, since besides fish those other things don't have a nervous system, so the senses aren't really tuned in the way they are for our bodies.

 

I was curious about animals myself and some of my thoughts for them are based on Micheal Newton's work but animals really seem to have feelings and everything so it makes sense that they have consciousness. I really doubt they're just imitating having them xD. Some people say plants have as well, though I think it would work very differently.

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21 minutes ago, _River_ said:

can an ai be conscious? is it already there?

AI is an algorithm, I'm not sure how it would. but I have a friend who's open to it being possible, and I mean I like to dream .. xD

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1 hour ago, _River_ said:

@Sarah-Sylviaso, how would you describe this experiencer? is it the same as consciousness itself? if not, then what is consciousness?

If you mean for non-humans, I don't know, i haven't come across more of the details on that and wouldn't know myself  since I can only say for myself (my own experience). And you have your own to explore on,  and there's always some things we can find through it, like what some philosophers did like Descartes (who coined 'I think therefore I am').

But in the end, consciousness is the ability to experience something, in general, whatever that experience is. I don't know if plants or even other animals have self-awareness (of their own consciousness) though.

But yeah, it's the experiencer. It takes consciousness to have any sort of experience.

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1 hour ago, _River_ said:

Maybe I could ask instead, "what is consciousness? is it something different and seperable from the experience of seeing an apple, picking it up and feeling it?" then there is no "you" or "I" in the question. 

One of the most basic answers to this question is, consciousness is "awareness of awareness."

 

An aboeba can sense the presence of a remote protein particle (see it, maybe with something like olfaction instead of any optical sense), envelop it (pick it up), and sense it with tactility (feel it), but that doesn't make it aware of its awareness.

 

Mystics have said that "awareness of awareness" doesn't necessarily depend on there being an I or a You. In many traditions the ultimate goal or the endpoint of the process is universal awareness, the transcendence of self - and they'll tell you that that is achievable by at least some human beings, too.

 

I think most people would agree that there are various levels of consciousness, that it's a continuum. That amoeba has senses and can experience seeing, picking up and feeling their food. This is a rudimentary experience but it probably can't be called "not consciousness."

 

Then we humans have this other dimension of regarding consciousness, because we regard ourselves as having an unconscious stratum of our minds.

 

Self-recognition is regarded as a huge indicator of consciousness by zoologists and neurologists. You know, like, if a creature sees itself in the mirror, does it know that it is its own reflection? Marking a creature's forehead with a dab of paint and seeing if the creature touches its own forehead is a common test of this.

 

There's not really any single simple answer, but maybe "awareness of awareness" is the answer to the question you asked. It is something different and separable from direct sensory experience.

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8 hours ago, _River_ said:

Maybe I could ask instead, "what is consciousness? is it something different and seperable from the experience of seeing an apple, picking it up and feeling it?" then there is no "you" or "I" in the question. 

The problem is there is still an implied experiencer here: that is, if we took a photograph of an apple and weighed it and measured the smoothness of its skin and tested its hardness then raised it with a lever, that set of measurements wouldn’t be consciousness, surely. So what you mean by the question is already implying the existence of a subjective you, and it’s a little thornier to isolate that idea.

 

8 hours ago, _River_ said:

then there is the question of, if there is experience, does that require that there is a seperate experiencer? if so, that would be "I", no? If not... 

I mean, how would you distinguish the two? Obviously there just being information available about an object isn’t really sufficient for sapience, but yeah, it’s hard to say where that “you” or “I” consists in, especially given:

 

8 hours ago, _River_ said:

Well this is meant to prompt responses talking about how the brain generating our senses, emotions, and thoughts is exactly what consciousness is, or if there is more to it than this generating process. 

Well, we know that the brain does analyze data and make decisions about things. It does regulate emotions, etc. And if you experienced a thought that was not based on your own senses, memories, or emotions, that would be kind of weird, in the sense that it doesn’t really seem like it would be your thought, right? Like, how would you tell the difference between a ‘nongenerated’ thought and someone else’s thought that they forced into your mind somehow?

 

So again, what would “something more” be? I think that in order for the question to make sense, we need to have some sense of what ‘something more’ is. 
 

8 hours ago, _River_ said:

is labelling it a tree more than just the generation of the object as a discernable object? is making it into a discernable object inherent to the brain's function, or something extra? Is deciding whether or not to hug your mother due to conflicting feelings about her, something extra?

I mean, both of these things are fairly well understood to be functions of the brain. It loves to categorize things, and it regularly processes new situations using previously acquired information.

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Absentminded

Probably not, we are probably no more than what we perceive. The question is if we can even trust that. Who's to say our consciousness is our own? What if we are only the dream of another? Who's to say that there is any consciousness at all, and not just the illusion of consciousness? How does something not conscious experience illusion? I don't know, but that's to be expected because things that aren't conscious don't truly know anything, so any flaw in this reasoning is moot.

 

It's not definite that there's no sentience in anything, but it's a possibility that never gets it's fair share of consideration.

 

I'm not hiding this with an informational hazard label like I normally do, because if you don't wanna read this sort of thing, why are you here?

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On 1/3/2023 at 7:15 AM, Absentminded said:

Probably not, we are probably no more than what we perceive. The question is if we can even trust that. Who's to say our consciousness is our own? What if we are only the dream of another? Who's to say that there is any consciousness at all, and not just the illusion of consciousness? How does something not conscious experience illusion? I don't know, but that's to be expected because things that aren't conscious don't truly know anything, so any flaw in this reasoning is moot.

 

It's not definite that there's no sentience in anything, but it's a possibility that never gets it's fair share of consideration.

 

I'm not hiding this with an informational hazard label like I normally do, because if you don't wanna read this sort of thing, why are you here?

I don’t really care for Descartes generally, but the whole “cogito ergo sum” dealio is pretty hard to crack.
 

Not sure that the idea that your conscious experience is an illusion experienced by another entity is coherent: in that case, you would just be the aforementioned entity dreaming you were someone else, right? So either way, it’s your experience, and you’re the one having it, you just might be mistaken about who you are. But being wrong about who you are isn’t metaphysically challenging any more than being wrong about what time it is is. 

 

Descartes does this whole bit with an all-powerful demon who invades our minds and controls our perceptions and memories, making it impossible to access the world. That said, it seems pretty inviolable that someone thinks they’re sitting in an office and responding to a PPS thread. Even if that person is wrong about all those things, they are at least then being deceived, which presupposes existence.

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