12 ms·

If consciousness doesn't arise from the brain, it seems to be suspiciously well correlated with the brain. I think consciousness arises from the brain.

ninetyninenine 2y ago
It's quite obvious given all available information consciousness arises from the brain. When someone talks as if it doesn't arise from the brain they are not choosing the most rational and obvious hypothesis. They are most likely trying to scaffold an explanation to fit a more biased spiritual world view where consciousness comes from this made up thing called spirit. Usually these people believe in something called religion which is an old world view of made up stories created in a time where humanity didn't understand things as much. Don't push the argument. It's not coming from a place of rationality even though he's deliberately not using the word "spirit".
MailleQuiMaille 2y ago
"If the music I dance to doesn't arise from the radio, it seems to be suspiciously well correlated with the radio. I think the music I dance arises from the radio."
- dbtc 2y ago
  Well, it must all come from a singularity some time before the Big Bang. Yet, when I turn the radio on, music really does seem to come out of it. And when I turn the radio off, the music stops (for me, but not for you). Without the radio there is no sound, but the radio needs a signal. Does the radio make the music? Quite an interesting metaphor.
  - MailleQuiMaille 2y ago
    Yes ! I like it even more when you consider the brainwaves that deal with...frequency...hmm...
- kulahan 2y ago
  Note that in this scenario, we’ve never even heard of radio stations or radio waves before.
  - yencabulator 2y ago
    And despite looking for them intensely, we have never found any evidence of the existence of radio waves, or been able to send a signal to a radio ourselves.
- jstanley 2y ago
  Postulate 1: The music is created by the radio in the form of sound waves, the end. Postulate 2: The music was played by a band in the form of sound waves, some time in the past. The band recorded their music on to some storage medium so that it could be transmitted to the future. In the present, the storage medium is connected up to a piece of equipment that turns the recorded signal into some invisible power transmission that spreads throughout space in a way you can't experience directly with any of your natural senses. The radio however can sense these invisible power transmissions and can turn them back into audio that sounds like what the band played in the past. So we're saying that it is possible to create music in the form of sound waves (that's what the band did), and it is possible for the radio to output sound waves that sound like music (that's what the radio does), but the radio is curiously not the thing that is producing music and instead we have an enormous system of technology transmitting the music across space and time. You'd need an awful lot of evidence to convince me that postulate 2 is true and postulate 1 is false. On the one hand you have "consciousness can be created, and it is created by the brain". On the other hand you have "consciousness can be created, and it is created somewhere, but it's not created by the brain, instead it is created somewhere else and there is a system of consciousness transmission that gets it into the brain". There's just no reason to prefer the second explanation. It is a more complicated story.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
selcuka 2y ago
> I think consciousness arises from the brain. I tend to agree, but it doesn't fully explain Benj Hellie's vertiginous question [1]. Everyone seems to have brains, but for some reason only I am me. If we were able to make an atom-by-atom accurate replica of your brain (and optionally your body, too), with all the memories intact, would you suddenly start seeing the world from two different pair of eyes at the same time? If no, why? What would make you (the original) different from your replica? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertiginous_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertiginous_question
- spiderfarmer 2y ago
  New commits.
- card_zero 2y ago
  Yes, the two of you would see through two pairs of eyes, independently. Both of you would be you, and you two would function separately, occupy separate spaces, and diverge slightly in ways that would only rarely make a difference to your personality. But that's not the vertiginous question, which is "why am I me". I've wondered that before. However, it is nonsense. Naturally a person is that person, not some other person (and a tree is a tree, not some other tree). There's nothing strange about this. Why would it be otherwise? So the urge to ask the question really reveals some deep-seated misconception, or some other question that actually makes sense, and I wonder what that is.
  - jodrellblank 2y ago
    I wonder if the origin of the question is the religious idea of a separate immortal soul which popped into this body and not into some other body - but in some way could have. This concept is in popular discourse like “what if I had been born in Italy in 1420?!” as if that were a thing thats plausible - an “I” separate from this body/place/time/life experiences/memories/language/family/etc but somehow still ‘me’. Boring materialism view is that a brain with genetics mixed from my parents and raised in the way I was raised, with the experiences I had here and in this time, is what makes “me” and I couldn’t be anywhere or anyone else. Or another way, we are all everyone else - what it would be like if I was born to your parents and raised like you is … you. What you would be like here is… me.

ninetyninenine 2y ago

It's quite obvious given all available information consciousness arises from the brain. When someone talks as if it doesn't arise from the brain they are not choosing the most rational and obvious hypothesis. They are most likely trying to scaffold an explanation to fit a more biased spiritual world view where consciousness comes from this made up thing called spirit. Usually these people believe in something called religion which is an old world view of made up stories created in a time where humanity didn't understand things as much. Don't push the argument. It's not coming from a place of rationality even though he's deliberately not using the word "spirit".

MailleQuiMaille 2y ago

"If the music I dance to doesn't arise from the radio, it seems to be suspiciously well correlated with the radio. I think the music I dance arises from the radio."

dbtc 2y ago
Well, it must all come from a singularity some time before the Big Bang. Yet, when I turn the radio on, music really does seem to come out of it. And when I turn the radio off, the music stops (for me, but not for you). Without the radio there is no sound, but the radio needs a signal. Does the radio make the music? Quite an interesting metaphor.
- MailleQuiMaille 2y ago
  Yes ! I like it even more when you consider the brainwaves that deal with...frequency...hmm...
kulahan 2y ago
Note that in this scenario, we’ve never even heard of radio stations or radio waves before.
- yencabulator 2y ago
  And despite looking for them intensely, we have never found any evidence of the existence of radio waves, or been able to send a signal to a radio ourselves.
jstanley 2y ago
Postulate 1: The music is created by the radio in the form of sound waves, the end. Postulate 2: The music was played by a band in the form of sound waves, some time in the past. The band recorded their music on to some storage medium so that it could be transmitted to the future. In the present, the storage medium is connected up to a piece of equipment that turns the recorded signal into some invisible power transmission that spreads throughout space in a way you can't experience directly with any of your natural senses. The radio however can sense these invisible power transmissions and can turn them back into audio that sounds like what the band played in the past. So we're saying that it is possible to create music in the form of sound waves (that's what the band did), and it is possible for the radio to output sound waves that sound like music (that's what the radio does), but the radio is curiously not the thing that is producing music and instead we have an enormous system of technology transmitting the music across space and time. You'd need an awful lot of evidence to convince me that postulate 2 is true and postulate 1 is false. On the one hand you have "consciousness can be created, and it is created by the brain". On the other hand you have "consciousness can be created, and it is created somewhere, but it's not created by the brain, instead it is created somewhere else and there is a system of consciousness transmission that gets it into the brain". There's just no reason to prefer the second explanation. It is a more complicated story.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

selcuka 2y ago

> I think consciousness arises from the brain. I tend to agree, but it doesn't fully explain Benj Hellie's vertiginous question [1]. Everyone seems to have brains, but for some reason only I am me. If we were able to make an atom-by-atom accurate replica of your brain (and optionally your body, too), with all the memories intact, would you suddenly start seeing the world from two different pair of eyes at the same time? If no, why? What would make you (the original) different from your replica? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertiginous_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertiginous_question

spiderfarmer 2y ago
New commits.
card_zero 2y ago
Yes, the two of you would see through two pairs of eyes, independently. Both of you would be you, and you two would function separately, occupy separate spaces, and diverge slightly in ways that would only rarely make a difference to your personality. But that's not the vertiginous question, which is "why am I me". I've wondered that before. However, it is nonsense. Naturally a person is that person, not some other person (and a tree is a tree, not some other tree). There's nothing strange about this. Why would it be otherwise? So the urge to ask the question really reveals some deep-seated misconception, or some other question that actually makes sense, and I wonder what that is.
- jodrellblank 2y ago
  I wonder if the origin of the question is the religious idea of a separate immortal soul which popped into this body and not into some other body - but in some way could have. This concept is in popular discourse like “what if I had been born in Italy in 1420?!” as if that were a thing thats plausible - an “I” separate from this body/place/time/life experiences/memories/language/family/etc but somehow still ‘me’. Boring materialism view is that a brain with genetics mixed from my parents and raised in the way I was raised, with the experiences I had here and in this time, is what makes “me” and I couldn’t be anywhere or anyone else. Or another way, we are all everyone else - what it would be like if I was born to your parents and raised like you is … you. What you would be like here is… me.