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is consciousness more than just the brain creating our experience?


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3 minutes ago, Ollie415 said:

I'm not sure where the frozen-brain or timestream argument gets us, though.

 

Brains aren't like that and time isn't like that, so, if those are to be useful things to have a thought-experiment about, then, you haven't shown how it's useful, all you did was show how a frozen brain can't have subjective experience. That doesn't get us anywhere on the question at hand. It didn't tell us anything about subjective experience which real, interacting brains might have.

 

All I can say is, if an actual human brain was in this state, and didn't have subjective experience but instead only a belief in the case where it did "enter a timestream," if I agreed that there's no reason why this couldn't happen, then we still haven't said anything at all about conscious experience itself and whether it's more than what our brains create.

Yeah, you're totally right.

@Tetusbaum and I got super off topic. (Mostly my fault, I'll admit.) This had pretty much nothing to do with the original question. Instead of debating the nature of consciousness, we were debating the existence of subjective experience.

 

Sorry.

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5 hours ago, Absentminded said:

I'd like to point out that, until it is dropped into the timestream, the mind not actually thinking anything, true or false.

 

It gains subjective experience when it enters the time stream, and upon gaining that experience, incorrectly assumes it has had a subjective experience for a long time.

 

Why can't an actual human be in the same state? Why can't we not have a subjective experience, instead be suspended in this exact current moment, but would believe we had always had a subjective experience if we were to suddenly gain one? What's to say that the exact thought you're having right now hasn't always been and won't always be what you're thinking, unless you were to gain true subjective experience in some way? (Not saying you don't have true subjective experience, just saying you may not in this scenario.)

Being wrong about something in the past is irrelevant. In order to wrongly believe something about the past, you necessarily are experiencing a subjective state at the time you believe the wrong thing. That is, you’re believing.

 

I should apologize because I’m getting more frustrated with this conversation than is warranted. I think I should probably stand by my earlier decision to step back.

 

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18 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

Being wrong about something in the past is irrelevant. In order to wrongly believe something about the past, you necessarily are experiencing a subjective state at the time you believe the wrong thing. That is, you’re believing.

I know this. Once the mind is dropped into the time stream, you are correct, it has a subjective experience. Before that, I'd say it does not, but it also doesn't believe it does because it does nothing.

 

Being wrong has nothing to do with that. I utilized the brain's incorrect assessment of its own experience to point out that it could hold information about an experience without actually experiencing anything.

 

 

My point is not that it believes it has a  subjective experience without one, but rather that it can enter a state where it would falsely believe it had a subjective experience were it capable of believing anything.

 

Consider yourself, for instance. You could have no past, no future, just this one moment, this one thought, forever. If you were to somehow be asked if you have a subjective experience (you cannot ask a frozen brain something, but just for the hypothetical, let's pretend we could) you'd undoubtably say yes.

 

With that prospect certain, the question then becomes: does the frozen brain have a subjective experience while it is frozen. If it does, then you are correct, there is always some form of subjective experience. Otherwise, it contains information about, and therefore the illusion of, subjective experience, without actually having any experience at all.

 

It seems that you would say yes, the frozen brain does have subjective experience. However, I disagree, as experience is processed by thought, which is not occuring because it is frozen. So to claim that the frozen brain has any experience, you'd either have to claim that the capacity to think is unnecessary to process experience, (which would imply that inanimate objects such as rocks also have a subjective experience,) or you'd have to claim that the brain is somehow still actively thinking despite being frozen in time.

 

I do not see how either of these two claims would work, nor do I see a possible third claim.

18 minutes ago, Tetusbaum said:

should apologize because I’m getting more frustrated with this conversation than is warranted. I think I should probably stand by my earlier decision to step back.

Okay. This debate isn't important or anything. I may say some more stuff, because I find this really interesting, but I don't expect you to respond. (Though if you do, I will always welcome reading your thoughts.)

 

Also, no need to apologize. You have a right to feel anything you want, including anger.

 

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  • 2 months later...

maybe it's the other way around: our experience is creating our brain.

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