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Consciousness is NOT caused by the brain
- Thread starter Surya Deva
- Start date
The body is controlled by the central nervous system. When you move your arm or hand your not performing telekinesis.The brain and the body are the same thing
Surya Deva
Well-Known Member
The body and the central nervous system is the same thing
You need to be more specific by what you mean by "body" ?
The brain in the vat actually "proves" consciousness from the brain. All "reality" is created by the brain being stimulated. You cannot be aware you are a brain in a vat because all your thoughts / experience is caused by the supercomputer.
Just because you reject logical areguments and scientific facts does not mean they are not there.
Of course not, it only can because of your brain
no-body
Well-Known Member
If we are talking about a spiritual type consciousness then the brain is the vehicle by which higher consciousness comes through.
If the brain becomes damaged then higher consciousness cannot come through anymore but that is not to say there are other types of consciousness: mineral, vegetable and animal.
If the brain becomes damaged then higher consciousness cannot come through anymore but that is not to say there are other types of consciousness: mineral, vegetable and animal.
The body and the central nervous system is the same thing
You need to be more specific by what you mean by "body" ?
Excuse me, the body parts are controlled by the central nervous system and the brain. Don't be purposely obtuse. The brain doesn't move arms and legs through telekinesis.
As this part is perhaps the most important part of your last post, and goes to the heart of your argument in many ways, I hope you don't mind that I place it first, rather than address your points/responses in order.
I'm not saying that relativity and QM are supported by equal amounts of evidence. The issue is much more complex than this. But I also wonder why you think that the experimental and empirical evidence behind QM somehow falsifies relativity because the measurements in these experiments (those like Aspect's and Gisin's) are less exact and more problematic than the experimental evidence behind GR.
Additionally, I don't think you understand (or perhaps I was too unclear) what I meant by the problems created because of the relationship between the formalism and theoretical framework behind QM, and the methods used in experiments. So I'll use a clearer (I hope) example for illustration.
The wavefunction is a probability function. But obviously there are all sorts of probability functions. So I'll use probability and measurement (which are the foundations for the experimental results of Aspect and others) to demonstrate what I meant. For the sake of clarity and simplicity, I'll sacrifice accuracy (mathematical rigor/precision) and approximate the technical details.
In a number of fields, ranging from anthropology to various disciplines within physics (and basically all the social sciences), the most important probability function is that which is behind the "normal" distribution or normal probability curve (that common bell-shaped graph which appears everywhere). Thanks largely to Laplace and Gauss, certain things about this probability function and its relationship to others have been mathematically proven. Two results will suffice here.
The first is that, given some normally distributed variable X, we can determine with exact precision the probability that any given x from the population (i.e., x is an element of X) will be within some arbitrarily small interval. This is the basis for a great deal of hypothesis testing, because it means that I know that the probablity that a randomly selected x is an element of X will be within just two standard deviations from the mean is 95%, which is huge.
Even better (here's were the work by Gauss and Laplace becomes extremely important, along with the work by Karl Pearson), is how the normal distribution relates to any probability function/probability curve describing some population. Although the probability of sampling single values/elements/members from this population and getting one within 2 standard deviations from the mean may not be anywhere near 95% (i.e., if the curve is very skewed, or has multiple "humps", unless I know the probability curve in advance calculating the probability of a single selection is impossible), things change if I increase my sample size. It has been mathematically proven that, with any probability curve, even one heavily skewed or one in which almost all the population rests at both of the "tails" of the curve, by sampling sufficiently large samples from this population the mean (average) of the samples will approximate a normal distribution. Just about any intro to statistics textbook out there will not only state this (and usually alongside an example), but will proceed to show over several chapters (perhaps the rest of the textbook) how this can be used to confirm hypotheses with samples of merely 20 people when the target population is millions (note: I use people here only because I have found that it is easier conceptually to explain using people rather than arbitrary values/measurement/etc. when talking about populations).
How wonderful! This means that armed with my probability function of a normal distribution, I can sample from any population and know that my samples will approximate the normal distribution such that my mathematical models will tell me about things I can't observe directly (as in QM).
Except there's these two little problems. First, although the examples in textbooks of samples of 40 being quite adequate are all well and good, that's not real life. In reality, however, even arbitrarily departures from normality (which are probably the norm) can drastically change the validity of one's results. Secondly, assuming a symmetric probability curve (even a normal one), all we know really know about the mean (average) is that it's in the middle. In other words, if we could directly observe the population, an infinite number of observations would show us the population mean (average) is at the center, and thus the probability that finite samples from this unobservable population have a .5 chance of being below (smaller, less, etc.) than that mean, if and only if we could only if we already took sample an infinite number of samples from this population. Which means that while mathematical models tell us certain things about the probability that random samples of certain sizes are likely to be adequate enough to approximate some sort of probability concerning how the samples are related to the actual unobservable population, they rely on using sample means, and the probability that these sample means, no matter how large the sample size (even if the almost the entire population is the sample) or how many samples are taken, the probability that the the observed sample means are less than (or greater than) the population mean can be arbitrarily close to zero.
A simple illustration of why (in part, anyway) this is true: suppose my population is the people working for some company. Let's say N (the number of people in the company) is 2,000. Certainly a measurable population, and it's easy enough to get a few random samples of salaries of 40 employees/workers/whatever or so in order to estimate the salary distribution (i.e., the curve representing the amount of money employees receive, including the average amount, the one or several "clusters" where lots of employees receive the same amount, etc.) But imagine I'm a thorough researcher. So I use random samples of 200 over and over again. In fact, although I don't realize it, I've done so well that I've ended up with the salaries of everyone in the company, and for most I used their salary multiple times (this is a case where double counting the same datum is a good thing). So I plug these all into my models and get what seems certain to be perhaps an exact probability curve of salaries at the company.
Unfortunately, My model is completely wrong. Why? Because a single person whose salary was sampled only once has completely distorted all of my data. Most workers at this company make 50,000 or below. A minority make between 50,000 and 150,000. The boss, however, makes hundreds of millions. As a result, the entire curve is distorted and heavily skewed toward the higher end. The average is a joke compared to what most people there actually make.
This may seem like an unlikely an extreme example, but it pops up all the time in actual measurements of all sorts of populations in various sciences. Mathematical models tell us one thing, when it turns out that they are distorting reality or that they are correctly modeling something that we interpret as something else.
There are similar problems with physics, only greater. Here, it's not a matter of a population of people, their salaries, or some other theoretically measurable population. With other sciences, there are ways to make the models more robust, avoid the problems outlined above, detect outliers, and so forth. This is because the measurements which are used to construct the models are independent of the samples and population in question.
This is not the case in QM. The reason that the probabilities in QM are so hard to interpret isn't that the mathematical formalisms may be wrong in this way or inadequate in that way, but because both the math and the measurements are too much a part of the observation to know what is going on. The wavefunction is a probability function. But how does it correspond to reality? Is the photon or some other particle in question located somewhere in the probability space determined by the wavefunction? Or is the wavefunction actually the physically superpositioned particle itself (or rather, a notational device used to represent it)?
(continued from above)
In other words, it isn't a matter of getting lots of good results with GR but that we can throw it all out because all it takes is that one demonstration which contradicts the theory and we have that and more. We don't have that. We don't know what we have, because we're talking about measurements of things we can't measure which are used to construct models we hope to be able to interpret accurately.
The main point of that long example, though, is that having mathematical models which you know are doing what they are supposed to be doesn't mean much if you
1) can't be sure what the models mean
2) can't be sure whether the measurements were adequate such that the accurate model accurately models what you wanted it to
3) that your experimental paradigm and the assumptions you make ahead of time in order to set up your experiment were adequate given what you are studying
With QM, researchers go in with mathematical techniques and measurements which determine the results in a way which makes the resulting mathematical models of quantum reality impossible to interpret precisely.
The same is not true for relativity. With QM, opinions are so diverse because despite the fact that it has been so successful in modeling and so fruitful in research (all of which can be said of GR as well), we usually can't tell how the measurements, models, and data correspond to reality (which is not true of GR).
1) QM (or QFT) involves particles, forces, energy, and matter, along with time and space. Those wavefunctions are (perhaps) probabilities of locating particles in space.
2) The wavefunctions are the "probabilistic mathematics". The issue is we don't know exactly what how they correspond with reality.
This is true of Quantum Mechanics too. That's why everyone uses classical mechanics 99% of the time.
In other words, it isn't a matter of getting lots of good results with GR but that we can throw it all out because all it takes is that one demonstration which contradicts the theory and we have that and more. We don't have that. We don't know what we have, because we're talking about measurements of things we can't measure which are used to construct models we hope to be able to interpret accurately.
The main point of that long example, though, is that having mathematical models which you know are doing what they are supposed to be doesn't mean much if you
1) can't be sure what the models mean
2) can't be sure whether the measurements were adequate such that the accurate model accurately models what you wanted it to
3) that your experimental paradigm and the assumptions you make ahead of time in order to set up your experiment were adequate given what you are studying
With QM, researchers go in with mathematical techniques and measurements which determine the results in a way which makes the resulting mathematical models of quantum reality impossible to interpret precisely.
The same is not true for relativity. With QM, opinions are so diverse because despite the fact that it has been so successful in modeling and so fruitful in research (all of which can be said of GR as well), we usually can't tell how the measurements, models, and data correspond to reality (which is not true of GR).
1) QM (or QFT) involves particles, forces, energy, and matter, along with time and space. Those wavefunctions are (perhaps) probabilities of locating particles in space.
2) The wavefunctions are the "probabilistic mathematics". The issue is we don't know exactly what how they correspond with reality.
This is true of Quantum Mechanics too. That's why everyone uses classical mechanics 99% of the time.
QM hasn't shown any of that.
PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
The computer tells me so. (Because the computer is complicated enough to cause collapse on its own.)
In a hidden variable theory, there is no wavefunction. That is, the wavefunction is just our uncertainty, since we are not able to measure some extra property of the particles that really control what's going on - hence "hidden" variables. As you say, this is false - the wavefunction is the ultimate state of the system, and there is no further detail.
Nothing. Welcome to MWI, enjoy your stay.
But you always detect a particle. The only difference in the double slit experiment is whether or not you collapse the thing into a particle before or after it interferes with itself.
While I work on scaling up my quantum computer, explain to me why the wavefunction has to collapse. Absurdity doesn't count. Quantum itself is absurd.
(Also, watch out: I asked why, not what causes it to collapse.)
String theory is not the standard model. The standard model is the one you claimed was not quantum, when it is in fact the currently accepted theory.
Or a sufficiently complex measuring instrument.
"Everything" doesn't refer to anything coherent, in any paradigm based on logic.
Surya Deva
Well-Known Member
You have obviously not read the OP. The brain in the vat thought experiment proves that it not possible to know the brain in the vat, only the brain in the skull. As the brain the skull is another experience produced by the brain in the vat, it is not the brain in the vat.
Read the OP again.
So far it you who has been rejecting every logical argument and every scientific fact.
Of course not, it only can because of your brain
Again your assumption. It is pointless arguing with you to be honest, because your arguments are circular: You begin with the unproven assumption that the brain is causing all my thoughts and conscious experience, and then use your proven assumption to prove that I can control my body because of my brain.
Prove that the brain produces consciousness, and please do better than the false causal fallacy of "because brain states affect mental states"
PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
You still haven't explained why self-reference isn't a thing, by the way. (Apart from the fact that "my internal model of the brain in the vat" is not "the brain in the vat", despite looking similar.)
The brain in a vat is saying this may not be reality as we may be a brain in a vat hooked hp to a supercomputer that stimulates the brain creating this "reality". It requires experience to be directly from the brain, otherwise it is a wasted argument. You need to be consistent.
Learn the difference between science and pseudo-science, then run controlled experiements on your ridiculous claims and link us the findings.
So can I cut your brain out? I mean, you don't need it...
Prove that the brain produces consciousness, and please do better than the false causal fallacy of "because brain states affect mental states"
Define consciousness. The basoc definition is awareness, and it also tends to be viewed as who you are, almost analogous with the soul. Emotion comes from the brain (fact), memory helps create who we are (fact), brain damage can effect memory, awareness, and who we are (fact), at least some choices are made by the brain six seconds before we are aware of them (fact), the brain processes information taken in by the senses (fact), messing with the brain affects consciousness (fact).... Need I keep going? No brain, no consciousness. Enough of your ancient religious pseudo-scientific crap. Start accepting facts or at least stop pretending your position holds any validity.
otokage007
Well-Known Member
The hypothesis of the brain in the vat, Descartes' evil demon, and crazy philosophical stuff like that, are entertaining, but irrelevant, absurd and explain nothing.
Eh, I like the brain in the vat. It forces you to admit what we know is limited. For example, you have to admit you do not know you are not a brain in a vat, even though there is no reason to think that you are. It can also help your realize that this "reality" should be treated as the reality no matter what absurd thought experiments may be true.
The ironic thing is, for the brain in a vat to matter, the brain has to be the cause of consciousness.
otokage007
Well-Known Member
That's why I don't care about the brain in the vat. But I get your point
Surya Deva
Well-Known Member
Self-reference in a physical system is impossible, and here is why, the causes of mental states cannot themselves self-reference the state they cause
Again a very ancient Samkhya argument:Samkhyakarika 17: (Consciousness exists) Because there must be an experiencer of pain and pleasure. Matter, being possesed of the nature of pain and pleasure, cannot itself experience pain and pleasure. Thus a separate experiencer must be posited.
Another argument, this time from the Nyaya(Indian school of logic) in refutation of the materialist school Charvaka that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon that appears when matter arranges itself into a special configuration.
Nyaya refutes: that the properties of pain, pleasure, knowledge, delusion, ignorance are not found in any of the material elements, hence through a process of elimination we find that consciousness is the only locus of these qualities
Charvaka counters: That fruits like grape do not exhibit the properties of intoxication until they fermented and produce wine which can intoxicate consciousness, thus because consciousness gets intoxicated by the wine, it shows how a different material configuration can produce different consciousness.
Nyaya refutes using an argument similar to Samkhya 17: The wine is the cause of the intoxication, but the wine itself cannot experience its own intoxication! Therefore it impossible any material configuration which produces intoxication, pain or pleasure can experience its own intoxication, pain and pleasure. The experience can only take place in a separate experiencer.
Imagine Vodka that can make itself drunk
Surya Deva
Well-Known Member
It is certainly wasted on you as you miss the point completely
The brain in the vat thought experiment is a type of thought experiment popular in philosophy of mind which attempts to show that we cannot know the cause of our own experience. It is irrelevant it is a brain in a vat being stimulated by supercomputer, it could be mind being controlled by an evil demon, or my own version of a computer character being controlled by a computer gamer - what it shows is that in each case it is impossible for the virtual subject experiencing the virtual matrix like reality to know it is the brain in the vat, or for the mind being controlled by an evil demon to know it is being controlled by the evil demon, or for the computer character to know it is being controlled by a computer gamer.
Geez
Strawman, because I never said you don't need a brain. To say that consciousness is not produced by the brain is not the same as saying we don't need a brain
Yep consciousness is awareness. I am an aware being.
Nope, not a fact, emotions take place in conscious subjects. The brain does not produce emotions, it produces bioelectric currents and releases chemicals which are experienced by conscious subjects as emotions.
Conscious subject: Emotions
Brain: Chemicals and bioelectric currents
The brain does not store memories in any physical location in the body. The brain does not store memories at all. If that was true, it would be possible to get somebodies brain and read all their memories :no:
No brain damage does not affect memory at all in fact, brain damage affects our sensory and motor functions, memories remain intact. This is a proven empirical fact by Karl Pribream and other neuroscientists.
Awareness does not just refer to the conscious, we also have a subconscious and unconscious. The brain receives information from our unconscious and subconscious before we consciously do. That does not mean the brain is producing the choice. It is not in fact, it's just a processor. The processor of my computer makes no choices, I make all the choices and the processor processes it. There maybe a slight delay before the choice I make is processed and manfiested.
This is the only thing that you mentioned that is a fact. There is no denying this we know exactly that our physical sense organs take in the information and relay it to the brain which processes the information. This can be empirically seen.
Messing with not just the brain. Consciousness can be affected by emotional and psychological shock, hypnosis or through autosuggesion. It does not prove anything other than the fact for consciousness to operate in the world it requires a functioning brain. In much the same way a radio can be affected by breaking it, removing its parts, throwing water on it etc. For music to operate in the world it requires a functionig radio.
I am getting tired and bored of your "consciousness is affected by brain, therefore brain produces consciousness" simplistic sophomoric fallacious argument. This is all that you seem to have. If your argument actually entailed its conclusion don't you think the hard problem of consciousness would have been settled in neurophilosophy today? Do you think highly educated philosophers like Nagel, Searl, Chalmers et al who specialize in the subject of philosophy of mind and have more credentials than your 5 classes of philosophy, are all idiots or do not know that conscious experience is indeed affected by brain states and physical states?
Of course we know but the problem remains that physical states of neural discharges and chemical is not the same as the experience of pleasure, pain, love, sadness. This is why we call them neural correlates and the soft problem of consciousness There is no causal explanation for how any kind of brain state and physical state could produce a phenomenological state. If you want to be taken seriously in neurophilosophical debates you need to stop pretending that they are the same thing. Even the one of most leading materialist philosophers and proponents of neurophilosophy Thomas Metzinger knows the difference between neural correlates and phenomenological states.
You need to do some more reading in the subject to contribute something more worthwhile in this debate than incessantly repeating, "BRAIN PRODUCES CONSCOUSNESS
because that is getting really tired....
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Surya Deva your brain may not produce your type of consciousness but my brain is wired for scientific evidence, logic and reason and it produces mine. When you understand that you will understand why I think there is a good chance you are delusional.You need to do some more reading in the subject to contribute something more worthwhile in this debate than incessantly repeating, "BRAIN PRODUCES CONSCOUSNESS