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I went to a talk by John Cleese, of Monty Python. He made a point about a recent thought that he landed through meditation. He said he believes less and less t

I went to a talk by John Cleese, of Monty Python. He made a point about a recent thought that he landed through meditation. He said he believes less and less that consciousness is in the brain. Maybe it's something external, shared, and our brains work more like a camera, and make whatever is out there our own. It made an impression on me.

nico 3y ago
This is an excellent observation The idea has been somewhat famously illustrated in the concept of the muse, an external entity or influence that is the actual source of the ideas that we then channel into our reality Similar also to what Michelangelo once said: > The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material. On a similar vein of the “not in the brain” concept, there are many proponents of the “embodied” consciousness, meaning that consciousness is in the whole body, not just our brain/nervous system (this is also very briefly touched upon in one episode of the AppleTV series Extrapolations)
- fsckboy 3y ago
  no shade, i'd heard similar before, but this time I had the urge to look it up https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/22/chip-away/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/22/chip-away/ Quote Investigator has located no substantive evidence that Michelangelo or any other great sculptor made this remark. A comment of this type was published in 1858 in “The Methodist Quarterly Review” without any overt humor. The essay discussed poetry, and the author compared the methods of adroit sculptors and poets.
euroderf 3y ago
I would posit that human consciousness is not limited to the interior of the skull, nor even to an individual's nervous system.
cassianoleal 3y ago
Many people arrive at the same idea/perception, be it through meditation and/or with the help of psychedelics. I think it was Terrence McKenna who described the brain as an antenna that tunes in to a certain band of the universal consciousness, and that's what we consider to be the thoughts of an individual. More or less same idea, slightly different way of phrasing it. I believe some buddhist practitioners also have a similar way of thinking.
- wafer_thin 3y ago
  I've wondered about this and whether it might someday be testable. One thing I keep coming back to is the brain's apparent search power: you see a 5s video clip and can recall the show. This means your brain can trawl all your memories of all the movies and shows that you've ever seen, without generating a fraction of the heat energy of search done in a computer. It's pretty weird to think our brains can actually do this without help...
slothtrop 3y ago
The most miraculous thing to me is being thrown into the world as an individual, and I think this idea of a tapped consciousness is meant to reconcile with that. There's the perspective also that it's entirely illusory like the self, but that's not satisfying by itself. Life in other things seems abstracted away, like machines running on electricity, but being me, right now, you can't help but ask things like "why am I in this body and reduced to an individual? How is it that I can experience this, and presumably, others can too?". It's crazy.

nico 3y ago

This is an excellent observation The idea has been somewhat famously illustrated in the concept of the muse, an external entity or influence that is the actual source of the ideas that we then channel into our reality Similar also to what Michelangelo once said: > The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material. On a similar vein of the “not in the brain” concept, there are many proponents of the “embodied” consciousness, meaning that consciousness is in the whole body, not just our brain/nervous system (this is also very briefly touched upon in one episode of the AppleTV series Extrapolations)

fsckboy 3y ago
no shade, i'd heard similar before, but this time I had the urge to look it up https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/22/chip-away/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/22/chip-away/ Quote Investigator has located no substantive evidence that Michelangelo or any other great sculptor made this remark. A comment of this type was published in 1858 in “The Methodist Quarterly Review” without any overt humor. The essay discussed poetry, and the author compared the methods of adroit sculptors and poets.

euroderf 3y ago

I would posit that human consciousness is not limited to the interior of the skull, nor even to an individual's nervous system.

cassianoleal 3y ago

Many people arrive at the same idea/perception, be it through meditation and/or with the help of psychedelics. I think it was Terrence McKenna who described the brain as an antenna that tunes in to a certain band of the universal consciousness, and that's what we consider to be the thoughts of an individual. More or less same idea, slightly different way of phrasing it. I believe some buddhist practitioners also have a similar way of thinking.

wafer_thin 3y ago
I've wondered about this and whether it might someday be testable. One thing I keep coming back to is the brain's apparent search power: you see a 5s video clip and can recall the show. This means your brain can trawl all your memories of all the movies and shows that you've ever seen, without generating a fraction of the heat energy of search done in a computer. It's pretty weird to think our brains can actually do this without help...

slothtrop 3y ago

The most miraculous thing to me is being thrown into the world as an individual, and I think this idea of a tapped consciousness is meant to reconcile with that. There's the perspective also that it's entirely illusory like the self, but that's not satisfying by itself. Life in other things seems abstracted away, like machines running on electricity, but being me, right now, you can't help but ask things like "why am I in this body and reduced to an individual? How is it that I can experience this, and presumably, others can too?". It's crazy.