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I find the most difficult question of consciousness is why am I inside my brain and not someone else’s. Out of the billions of people somehow I control only my

I find the most difficult question of consciousness is why am I inside my brain and not someone else’s. Out of the billions of people somehow I control only my brain.

amanaplanacanal 5y ago
It’s a common experience of people who try meditation the first time to discover that they don’t control their brain at all.
skhm 5y ago
I was ruminating on this on a long walk recently and it occurred to me that I'm probably not "only inside my brain", as you put it. "You" aren't only inside your brain at all. Imagine that at every timestep, there's a single consciousness that experiences qualia all at once, across all matter - and the feeling of being "inside your brain" is just that the qualia happening there have a large number of causal relationships to your recent brain activity, your working memory, longer-term memories, inputs from your senses, etc - but at that same instant, "you" are also the person sitting across from you - there just isn't the same level of cross-chatter and so "you" can't experience both brains simultaneously. Kind of like context switching in an OS or something. This would enable a panpsychic view where consciousness was field-like, taking on large values where matter is densely causally connected, such as in the brain, and low values where it isn't, such as in the empty space between two people. Anyway, as Hicks said, "we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively ... here's Tom with the weather."
- fruity123 5y ago
  I actually wrote a longer comment but deleted it because i didn’t think it was fully formed: > Maybe it’s like an operating system context switch. I feel like I am in one mind because I have memories of what came before even microseconds ago. But how do I know that my memories were not just loaded right now for processing...I guess simulation theory stuff. We don’t really have any proof that we were actually in control of the moment that just happened a microsecond ago - that could all be an illusion. Just a funny coincidence that on such a topic as a global consciousness we had such a similar idea ;)
  - skhm 5y ago
    Ha, that's a lovely coincidence, thanks for sharing. FWIW I went down this train of thought while listening to an audiobook of Hofstadter's "I am a Strange Loop", which doesn't quite go down the same road but triggered the idea well enough in my own brain.
mrkramer 5y ago
Because your brain is physically inside your body just like water is physically inside a bottle. Speaking of sci-fi maybe in the future you will get a brain implant and someone could remotely control you or manipulate, transfer or observe your consciousness. Btw notion of mind uploading is very feasible imo.
- fruity123 5y ago
  Strange Days film explores some interesting stuff like this. > brain inside body But why is your experience tied to one brain and not another.
  - mrkramer 5y ago
    >But why is your experience tied to one brain and not another. Because of the evolution. Life evolved from single-celled organism to multicellular organism building on top of individuals. Individuals which lived and cooperated in one community and one habitat evolved individually while living and reproducing together as one specie spreading genes to their offspring. There is no shared brain or shared consciousness in living beings, brain and consciousness are individual properties. Something that is somewhat close to shared brain or shared consciousness is collective intelligence.

I find the most difficult question of consciousness is why am I inside my brain and not someone else’s. Out of the billions of people somehow I control only my brain.

amanaplanacanal 5y ago

It’s a common experience of people who try meditation the first time to discover that they don’t control their brain at all.

skhm 5y ago

I was ruminating on this on a long walk recently and it occurred to me that I'm probably not "only inside my brain", as you put it. "You" aren't only inside your brain at all. Imagine that at every timestep, there's a single consciousness that experiences qualia all at once, across all matter - and the feeling of being "inside your brain" is just that the qualia happening there have a large number of causal relationships to your recent brain activity, your working memory, longer-term memories, inputs from your senses, etc - but at that same instant, "you" are also the person sitting across from you - there just isn't the same level of cross-chatter and so "you" can't experience both brains simultaneously. Kind of like context switching in an OS or something. This would enable a panpsychic view where consciousness was field-like, taking on large values where matter is densely causally connected, such as in the brain, and low values where it isn't, such as in the empty space between two people. Anyway, as Hicks said, "we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively ... here's Tom with the weather."

fruity123 5y ago
I actually wrote a longer comment but deleted it because i didn’t think it was fully formed: > Maybe it’s like an operating system context switch. I feel like I am in one mind because I have memories of what came before even microseconds ago. But how do I know that my memories were not just loaded right now for processing...I guess simulation theory stuff. We don’t really have any proof that we were actually in control of the moment that just happened a microsecond ago - that could all be an illusion. Just a funny coincidence that on such a topic as a global consciousness we had such a similar idea ;)
- skhm 5y ago
  Ha, that's a lovely coincidence, thanks for sharing. FWIW I went down this train of thought while listening to an audiobook of Hofstadter's "I am a Strange Loop", which doesn't quite go down the same road but triggered the idea well enough in my own brain.

mrkramer 5y ago

Because your brain is physically inside your body just like water is physically inside a bottle. Speaking of sci-fi maybe in the future you will get a brain implant and someone could remotely control you or manipulate, transfer or observe your consciousness. Btw notion of mind uploading is very feasible imo.

fruity123 5y ago
Strange Days film explores some interesting stuff like this. > brain inside body But why is your experience tied to one brain and not another.
- mrkramer 5y ago
  >But why is your experience tied to one brain and not another. Because of the evolution. Life evolved from single-celled organism to multicellular organism building on top of individuals. Individuals which lived and cooperated in one community and one habitat evolved individually while living and reproducing together as one specie spreading genes to their offspring. There is no shared brain or shared consciousness in living beings, brain and consciousness are individual properties. Something that is somewhat close to shared brain or shared consciousness is collective intelligence.