Write, thank you for some good questions, now we can dig deeper, but today is totally crowded out, so will have to wait.
This is about our relationships
the one between your intellect (the universe of your thoughts, that inner conversation) and your physical body with all it’s “subconscious” … “hemostasis” along with hormones and all that fun stuff. The flesh and the spirit so to speak.
another is our relation, that is the intellectual lens through which we individually perceive the environment (physical reality) we exist within-
I believe most never get past the postcard level of appreciation . . .
Environment from my perspective isn’t a stage, backdrop for ourselves,
for me it’s an active character in forming who I am in this moment.
And so on and so forth. I’m looking forward to a line my line response and I hope it’ll help make some points clearer.
a) “Is all there is?” does that mean, you have no inner voices or conflicts going on? Are there are no layers of personality ready to shine, depending on who shows up? Or that you’ve never felt the pull of competing interests when your mind is anticipating some event?
Ever stumbled and before you know it, your body catches itself, ever wonder how your body pulled it off? Do people have different levels of understanding and mastery over their bodies?
When I look inside myself I see many different levels, mental and physical.
Sure, could be dismissed, hormones. Then we could pile on the papers explaining details til our minds are pounded to mush. It’s nice, even important, to know about those hormones and the mechanics (and for there to be the people who can really master this biology and discover ever more to share with us), but in the end it’s our individual spirits who need to take a hold of a chaotic scene, and keep on, keeping on with the outside word as it ceaselessly rushes at us. .
Indeed it is.
Maybe this will help.
What’s so special about having an appreciation for the “Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide”? Well, for one, it leads to an inevitable understanding that our very existence is proof that our Universe and Earth unfolded down one, internally consistent cascade, and only one.
No matter what we self-absorbed human creatures are capable of imagining. I think that reason is big.
For me, it also brought into focus that Earth herself is my touchstone with reality. This in turn, led to a deep down realization that Earth’s biological processes created creatures and eventually humans along with our human mind. (This is undisputed by science and rational humans - correct?)
From there it becomes self-evident that our Gods are created from within our own minds and bodies, driven by biological, evolutionary and cultural experiences, the ebb and flow of life. Each one of our Gods tailored to our own particular personality and circumstance. Ignoring that, leaves us without a benchmark for sorting out our thoughts, as Donald Hoffman’s “Case Against Reality” flailing exempl
ifies.
The notion of Evolution is given much lip service, but it seems to me that it seldom rises above a post card superficiality.
ahh, yeah, …
And much worse than that. Our entire outlook on life and business - oh and treating Earth and each other with the same foresight as ants isn’t exactly something to be proud of.
That’s a less than accurate description, and I’ll leave it at that, for now.
See and this wording is what drives me up the wall.
It’s so oblivious to Earth’s role, as if it didn’t matter - then you get all upset and explain, oh but I did mention evolution, back their somewhere, of course we all know it’s real.
Still there you are writing up descriptions of human behavior, human thinking devoid of any true deep down appreciation for Earth’s part in making who we are.
And next thing we know, were told consciousness must be something fundamental to the universe. I mean really, how is that supposed to work? Do people who propose that even know what consciousness is? It’s beyond bizarre. And that’s worth calling out.
My task is simple as that. I’m under no pretense of upending science or whatever. Just about exposing a our
Man’s unique brain has placed him outside the natural deterministic chronology of physics
Okay have at it. Explain what that means.
Surely your joking. I’m the one that says consciousness can be understood through biological avenues, with out any need for pixie dust a la Chalmer’s and the contrived story of the “Hard Problem of Consciousness.” I’m the one that is disappoint that our Evolutionary links to consciousness get such short shrift.
I’m the one that has a deep appreciation for my body’s Evolutionary roots, I’m pointing out the science of Mark Solms who has the guts and the knowledge and the bona fides to be able to explain with authority that.
Consciousness is a reflection of the inside of our body/brain as it’s interacting with it’s moment to moment (body & exterior world), via mechanisms Seth, among others, is studying.
And to be clear, I’m not denying the science of Anil Seth, so you can keep him out of this.
re40
Oh lordie no time for that onslaught, besides it misses the point.
Focus, it’s about a simple Zen thought, if you like,
Appreciating the Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide.
Save the horrors for a more appropriate place.
Focus,
It took me over sixty years to recognize my Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide perspective which in hindsight seems rather self-evident, after all the “mind-body problem” has been the source of endless philosophical speculation for millennia, I’ve thought about it since I was a kid, I thought most kids do.
[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:42, topic:9697”]
a) “Is all there is?” does that mean, you have no inner voices or conflicts going on? Are there are no layers of personality ready to shine, depending on who shows up? Or that you’ve never felt the pull of competing interests when your mind is anticipating some event?
Everybody experiences having to make “choices” (unless the person has a clinical psychopathy). Surely you know this is true. The problem is that these choices are based on prior experience (memory). If the brain has nothing to compare the data to, the individual may experience “freezing” and unable to decide what action to take.
Many animals have that also as a third option in the fight or flight instinct.
Some animals play dead when confronted with potential danger.
A perfect example is that school girl who played dead (after smearing herself with the blood of a dead classmate) during the recent shooting in Texas. It probably saved her life.
Ever stumbled and before you know it, your body catches itself, ever wonder how your body pulled it off? Do people have different levels of understanding and mastery over their bodies?
There is also a direct intercellular communication that bypasses the neural network and that comes into play with kinetic stress. This triggers the same MT response as a single celled paramesium that swims into an obstacle and the microtubules respond to the kinetic impact by a change in the cilliar beating.
This is what keeps you from falling due to a gravitational differential equation that triggers an MT corrective response.
Do you know how fast cellular microtubules react in maintaining shape and position?
Are microtubules tension sensors?
Abstract
Mechanical signals play many roles in cell and developmental biology. Several mechanotransduction pathways have been uncovered, but the mechanisms identified so far only address the perception of stress intensity. Mechanical stresses are tensorial in nature, and thus provide dual mechanical information: stress magnitude and direction. Here we propose a parsimonious mechanism for the perception of the principal stress direction. In vitro experiments show that microtubules are stabilized under tension. Based on these results, we explore the possibility that such microtubule stabilization operates in vivo, most notably in plant cells where turgor-driven tensile stresses exceed greatly those observed in animal cells.
Of course, the brain has no control over this at all. This is at the cellular level.
When I look inside myself I see many different levels, mental and physical.
We all do, but you are totally unaware of your subconscious homeostatic control system unless it goes wrong and your body warns you in various different ways, via the neural network.
Sure, could be dismissed, hormones. Then we could pile on the papers explaining details til our minds are pounded to mush. It’s nice, even important, to know about those hormones and the mechanics (and for there to be the people who can really master this biology and discover ever more to share with us), but in the end it’s our individual spirits who need to take a hold of a chaotic scene, and keep on, keeping on with the outside world as it ceaselessly rushes at us.
Of course, there is a difference between theory and practice. But your conscious decisions are always based on sensory data streaming to and from the brain via the neural network.
What’s so special about having an appreciation for the “Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide”?
Well, for one, it leads to an inevitable understanding that our very existence is proof that our Universe and Earth unfolded down one, internally consistent cascade, and only one.
Absolutely!
But I also don’t think it is rare.
Most people I know have a keen interest in our relationship with the Earth.
No matter what we self-absorbed human creatures are capable of imagining. I think that reason is big.
Absolutely!
But I also believe the proposition that we are in the midst of a 6th Anthropocene (manmade) extinction event is indicative that people are taking notice of our bad behavior.
For me, it also brought into focus that Earth herself is my touchstone with reality. This in turn, led to a deep down realization that Earth’s biological processes created creatures and eventually humans along with our human mind. (This is undisputed by science and rational humans - correct?)
Absolutely!
From there it becomes self-evident that our Gods are created from within our own minds and bodies, driven by biological, evolutionary and cultural experiences, the ebb and flow of life. Each one of our Gods tailored to our own particular personality and circumstance. Ignoring that, leaves us without a benchmark for sorting out our thoughts, as Donald Hoffman’s “Case Against Reality” flailing exempl
ifies.
This I disagree with. IMO, religion of any kind except perhaps “sun-worshipping”, does not in any way advance the idea that humans are subject to the earth’s ecological laws, but rather advances the idea that humans, being created in god’s image, can do as we please with impunity .
The Ten Commandments make no mention of respect and moral conduct towards Mother Earth
The notion of Evolution is given much lip service, but it seems to me that it seldom rises above a post card superficiality.
And why is that?
Religion!
And why is that?
Because religion does not recognize Evolution and Natural Selection as the causal agency from which all living things on earth emerged.
Historically, Religion has actively opposed science because it competes for “contemplation” of moral priorities. Fielty to God or to the Earth.
So far Religion has had its way and look what it has brought!
No amount of prayer is going to fix what holy wars have produced in the arena of technology.
Sure, like being keen on looking at pictures of beautiful places reflects a relationship with Earth?
If what you imagine is true please explain: How is it that most people are more than happy listen to absolute transparent lies and deceptions of the Climate Science Denial Community? Not to mention allowing an atrocity like the idiot trump to become president, while we rolled over for Republicans and the billionaires Supreme Court to steal the election away from Al Gore? The world’s last hope for slowing down this climate catastrophe we just love racing toward just as fast as our technology and gluttony will allow.
Yeah, nature is beating us over the head with a big stick.
I don’t think “taking notice” wins any points when it comes to doing anything or actually facing Earth’s reality.
=============================
How in the world did you get from my comment, to your response. I feel like we have two different discussions going on.
Did I say anything about religion and appreciating Earth. The only point I think worth making on this topic is the OUR GODs ARE INVENTED FROM WITHIN THE HUMAN MIND AND IS BASED ON OUR EXPERIENCES, FEARS AND NEEDS.
Anything beyond that is simply chewing on gristle.
That’s a simple observation of a prevailing mental state, I dare say it’s driven by our gluttony, regardless of which religion one might prefer quoting - after all religions are all about facilitating human desires - the rest of creation be damned.
Here again, I’ve no idea what you are responding to with all that.
But, I’ll give you credit, you sure are good at pulling this conversation away from it’s actual heart. I would have thought what I wrote had a better chance of ringing some bells, at least with someone like you. But alas proof is in the pudding and not what I presume.
I ask if you generally agree with my posits , apart from what you expect to hear in relation to your narrative.
All I can say is that I agree with you. I don’t just want to repeat what you wrote. I can’t improve on your narrative.
I just try to expand the conversation to include tangentially related issues, in order to get a more comprehensive whole. If you in the mean agree with my posits , we have complementary perspectives.
Remember Roger Antonsen and his proposal that “knowing” a subject from different perspectives leads to greater understanding?
I am always aware of David Bohm’s admonition that science has become so fractured that different disciplines don’t even use the same terms to identify a natural phenomenon or physical object. I try to pull separate aspects of the same event or state together to arrive at a comprehensive whole.
In the end , everything is connected to everything else.
The First Law of Ecology: Everything Is Connected to Everything Else
It reflects the existence of the elaborate network of interconnections in the ecosphere: among different living organisms, and between populations, species, and individual organisms and their physicochemical surroundings.
The single fact that an ecosystem consists of multiple interconnected parts, which act on one another, has some surprising consequences. Our ability to picture the behavior of such systems has been helped considerably by the development, even more recent than ecology, of the science of cybernetics. We owe the basic concept, and the word itself, to the inventive mind of the late Norbert Wiener.
The amount of stress which an ecosystem can absorb before it is driven to collapse is also a result of its various interconnections and their relative speeds of response. The more complex the ecosystem, the more successfully it can resist a stress. … Most ecosystems are so complex that the cycles are not simple circular paths, but are crisscrossed with branches to form a network or a fabric of interconnections.
Like a net, in which each knot is connected to others by several strands, such a fabric can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of threads—which if cut anywhere breaks down as a whole. Environmental pollution is often a sign that ecological links have been cut and that the ecosystem has been artificially simplified and made more vulnerable to stress and to final collapse.
The feedback characteristics of ecosystems result in amplification and intensification processes of considerable magnitude. For example, the fact that in food chains small organisms are eaten by bigger ones and the latter by still bigger ones inevitably results in the concentration of certain environmental constituents in the bodies of the largest organisms at the top of the food chain.
Smaller organisms always exhibit much higher metabolic rates than larger ones, so that the amount of their food which is oxidized relative to the amount incorporated into the body of the organism is thereby greater. Consequently, an animal at the top of the food chain depends on the consumption of an enormously greater mass of the bodies of organisms lower down in the food chain. Therefore, any non-metabolized material present in the lower organisms of this chain will become concentrated in the body of the top one. …
All this results from a simple fact about ecosystems—everything is connected to everything else: the system is stabilized by its dynamic self-compensating properties; those same properties, if overstressed, can lead to a dramatic collapse; the complexity of the ecological network and its intrinsic rate of turnover determine how much it can be stressed, and for how long, without collapsing; the ecological network is an amplifier, so that a small perturbation in one network may have large, distant, long-delayed effects.
With apologies, based on your responses, you show little indication of understanding what I’m trying to discuss.
I’m exploring the blinding disconnect people have from the reality of Earth’s Evolution -
Sure we give it lip service, just like we give manmade global warming lip service, but there’s nothing any deeper, no actually emotional connection or awareness, at least not enough change expectations or behaviors.
It all gets so glossed over, so easily. Talk about significant evidence, nay proof!, of humanity’s general and profound disconnect from Earth’s physical reality.
All that crap about a Brain in a Vat being one excellent example. It’s intellectual entertainment, what if’s, nifty ivory tower cocktail party musings → because it deliberately ignores huge swaths of known evolutionary facts (physical reality, as interpreted through scientific understanding) (along with physiology), since the human intellect rarely gets its head out of its own head.
We’re too blissfully preoccupied in our own human glory - while seeking to find consciousness everywhere but within our own bodies and biological heritage right down here on Earth.
You are constantly slipping and revealing how wrapped up you are in the human Mind as though it were the center of the Universe - and that’s what I’m trying to discuss and why I find that you toss out distractions rather than actual critiques I could do something with.
Expected response, Of course we are, who else is there is?
Without our minds none of all that out there makes any difference.
The point of the brain in a vat is that it is directly aware only of itself.
All other "knowledge " comes from secondary data.
Every person has a different experience of reality.
I suggested this before. Take a colorlind person and ask them what the world looks like. They can only tell you that it looks in kind of greyish green.
Then they use a corrective color mix via thos special glasses and they enter a new Reality altogether. The result speaks for itself.
Many people with acute but correctable color blindness will look around and start crying from the overwhelming experience of many brilliant colors they had NEVER seen before. They literally enter a new reality!
What you are asking is that everyone experiences reality the exact same way, but nobody does, with exception of rare moments of “empathy” where two (or more) people share the exact same reality.
This requires the alignment of many sensory abilities and memories for comparison, in order to make a shared similar “best guess” of reality.
I know you are addressing the emotional attachment to the majesty and creative potentials of this Earth, that gave birth to life itself.
But how can you appreciate a color when you have never seen one?
How can you appreciate music when you have never heard a sound at all?
How can you smell the sweet perfume of a lilac if cannot smell or taste anything?
Some people cannot feel at all and when they cut themselves they may bleed to death without ever experiencing pain.
Of course these are extremes and I’m sure you will agree that expecting these people to appreciate Nature as much as most of us do is asking too much.
So the range falls somewhere in the middle and for those lucky individuals who have some extraordinary sensory ability, if they are otherwise well balanced they will experience the world with greater depth and emotional experience. Those people usually enter and excell in one of the arts.
Let me restate my signature line;
“Art is the creation of that which evokes an emotional response, leading to thoughts of the noblest kind”.
This video may explain further.
A mind like Trump can only respond to the gleam of gold. He will destroy an entire Natural Reserve or an entire Country, to dig for a few pounds of gold. Don’t expect a person like that to stop and “smell the roses”.
Where he has walked, everything dies.
The point of the vat is a philosophical mind experiment, a what-if, let’s suppose game - the crap begins when people make it out to be an actual model of the brain, (which you so often seem to insist on).
The brain is not isolated from the the body
The body is not isolated from the environment
Hallucination is a misleading term because the senses and the brain and the body are receiving constant feedback from the environment on countless levels.
That is physical reality - physical reality is not all the arguments one can conjure in order to out-do the other guy’s arguments.
Incidentally, I’ve realized it’s another example of Playing Basketball in Zero-Gravity, exactly because so much of the reality of brain/body/environment interactions get’s ignored.
That is why Seth calls it a "controlled hallucination ", and the control is only from the data stored in memory. If that data is faulty the brain can get really confused. ( see the chess board hallucination).
[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:50, topic:9697”]
That is physical reality - physical reality is not all the arguments one can conjure in order to out-do the other guy’s arguments.
The real argument is not about reality, it is about perception and interpretation of reality.
Incidentally, I’ve realized it’s another example of Playing Basketball in Zero-Gravity, exactly because so much of the reality of brain/body/environment interactions get’s ignored.
Actually, all living organisms are extremely sensitive to gravity. The cellular cytoplasm acts like a level bubble and when an organism needs to maintain vertical orientation, the microtubules in the cytoplasm will take corrective action. How does a plant “know” to grow its roots downward and its stalk upwards toward the sun?
See , this is where I completely agree with you that the evolved part of living organisms is evolved from successfully negotiating all of the exterior environmental pressures.
This is why a brainless slime mold uses “subtraction” to solve mazes.
Migrating birds mapping the earth’s magnetic field… etc.
Why do you think I am fascinated with microtubules, even in brainless organisms or plants. They are the cellular control mechanism that “learns” to read and adjust to external pressures and in more complex, brained organisms transmit a lot of that data via the neural network.
Right and that brings us back to a deep appreciation for deep time of change and evolution (which is different from that mechanistic fascination with microtubules as answer to everything, that I keep hearing from you.)
Appreciating the Human Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide.
And then your tendency to toss in left field zingers like
that leaves me stunned.
It’s like you still haven’t a clue what I’m driving at.
++++++++++++++++++++++
Dear Dr. Daniel Dennett, (& others it may interest),
I read your “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” a couple decades back. These past few months I’ve been revisiting it. It’s a beautiful tour of the evolution of scientific thought regarding Evolution. One I completely embrace and I commend you for all those helpful citations. Even after a quarter century the book is worth recommending to young students of Evolution because of how well it documents the evolving ideas and arguments up to that point.
The only problem is that you left out a crucial ingredient early in your introduction that I’d like to ask about. You were transitioning from earlier religious thought into evolving scientific thought and the rest of your story.
I have to wonder why didn’t you stop a moment to review the most fundamental fact of our human condition? A reality that cuts straight to the heart of both our so-called “Hard Problem of Consciousness” and the Origin of God question - namely the “Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide”?
What’s so special about having an appreciation for the “Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide”? Well, for one, it leads to an inevitable understanding that our very existence is proof that our Universe and Earth unfolded down one, internally consistent cascade, and only one. No matter what we self-absorbed human creatures are capable of imagining.
For me, it also brought into focus that Earth herself is my touchstone with reality. This in turn, led to a deep down realization that Earth’s biological processes created creatures and eventually humans along with our human mind. (This is undisputed by science and rational humans - correct?)
From there it becomes self-evident that our Gods are created from within our own minds and bodies, driven by biological, evolutionary and cultural experiences, the ebb and flow of life. Each one of our Gods tailored to our own particular personality and circumstance. Ignoring that, leaves us without a benchmark for sorting out our thoughts, as Donald Hoffman’s “Case Against Reality” flailing exemplifies.
[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:52, topic:9697”]
Right and that brings us back to a deep appreciation for deep time of change and evolution (which is different from that mechanistic fascination with microtubules as answer to everything, that I keep hearing from you.)
No, what you fail to appreciate is the age of the unchanged microtubule since the evolutionary emergence of the first Eukaryotic organisms using 2 parents and mitosis that allowed for a gradual evolutionary change in complexity of DNA, that eventually rewarded our common ancestor with a chromosomal fusion that produced the human brain and the ability for the Human Mindscape ~ Physical Reality Divide…
Don’t you see that I am proposing a valid evolutionary chronology of the emergence of the Human Mindscape.
Appreciating the Human Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide.
Without microtubules, there would be no Human Mindscape!
I am presenting you with a potential baseline for the “hard questions of consciousness” and what sets the human brain (and its Mindscape) apart from the mindscapes of other brained organisms.
The hard problem of consciousness isthe problem of explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than nonconscious. It is the problem of explaining why there is “something it is like” for a subject in conscious experience, why conscious mental states “light up” and directly appear to the subject. Hard Problem of Consciousness | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
But even after we have explained the functional, dynamical, and structural properties of the conscious mind, we can still meaningfully ask the question, Why is it conscious?
Why oh why is the sun so bright.
Just cause a philosopher created a problem with the way he formed his argument, doesn’t mean he’s correct! It’s conscious because living creatures need to be aware, and the more aware they are the more developed their consciousness becomes.
Why does a dynamo create an electrical field?
Why should the electric dynamic brain not produce it’s own consciousness?
Who decreed that a petty human is the one to decide the brain isn’t in a position to produce consciousness?
Dr. Mark Solms deftly demystifies Chalmers’ “Hard Problem” of Consciousness, while coincidentally highlighting why Hoffman’s “Conscious Agents” are luftgeschäft.
The brain only receives environmental information from the body’s senses via the neural network. The brain itself has no direct experience of the exterior. The brain is locked up in a lightproof and near soundproof chamber. It is truly a brain in a vat.
The brain receives data from the eye via the optic nerve (microtubules)
and must translate and compare that data against memory. The brain never has direct access to the exterior, never.
If it is exposed to the exterior you are most likely dead with a busted skull.
Visual Processing: Cortical Pathways
The visual system is unique as much of visual processing occurs outside the brain within the retina of the eye. The previous chapter described how the light-sensitive receptors of the eye convert the image projected onto the retina into spatially distributed neural activity in the first neurons of the visual pathway (i.e., the photoreceptors).
Within the retina, the receptors synapse with bipolar and horizontal cells, which establish the basis for brightness and color contrasts. In turn, the bipolar cells (the 2° visual afferent) synapse with retinal ganglion cells and amacrine cells, which enhance contrast effects that support form vision and establish the basis for movement detection.
The information from the eye is carried by the axons of the retinal ganglion cells (the 3° visual afferent) to the midbrain and diencephalon.
This chapter will provide more information about visual pathway organization and the visual processing that occurs within the brain.
At some point you will need to accept the science, lest you be accused of believing in magical stuff.
This is why and how the brain can be “misinformed” about the exterior conditions. It must rely on the sensory translation and transportation of “data” to get a “sense”, a best guess of what it is dealing with.
Any self-generated thoughts such as in dreams, are imaginary hallucinations. Nothing wrong with that as long as they are not too far removed from the real world.
Then it becomes “psychopathic”.
THAT IS INACCURATE - THE BRAIN IS NOT WITHIN A PERFECT BARRIER THAT BLOCKS OUT THE EXTERIOR WORLD
The brain inside the skull is not soundproof, in fact, some sound wave can really screw with the brain’s functioning.
The brain is not isolated from gravity and turns out that makes a difference.
The brain is not isolated from radiation or other energetic particles.
The brain is not isolated from the effects of motion or impacts.
Among others …
Philosopher’s find it easy to ignore such real world details, but if you want to better appreciate real life on this Earth it matters.
The brain COULD NOT EXIST, IN FACT IT COULD NEVER HAVE EVOLVED, were it not for those connections to sensing organs that some find so, so easy to dismiss.
How that works within the philosopher’s mind I can’t figure out {I take that back, yes I can. Philosophers seem to be extraordinarily capable of disregarding real world facts when it suits their story.
Such as Dennett going on and on about the mystery of how the brain stitches together the incomplete scene that the eye sees, to a complete scene the mind “sees”. He goes on for paragraphs, yet doesn’t mention, the well known fact that our eyes are in constant motion, precisely so the brain/mind can stitch together coherent impressions. Takes care of that mystery. But what fun would that have been, he has a story to tell and a book to sell. }
but it’s what I’m struggling against, the tunnel vision that’s driven by humans’ arrogant self-adulation and self-obsession, not to mention our unspoken pride in having achieved truly god-like status.
Contrive a nifty mind experiment, then insist that we need to torture the facts to fit the thought experiment. Why is it totally irrelevant to philosophers that brains could not exist without that body and those myriad of connections (that still aren’t fully recognized, let along understood)?
So what? Please explain what’s supposed to be so extraordinary about that?
What on this planet does have direct access to the interior or exterior?
Please explain the alternative. Would you also say the sun doesn’t have direct access to Earth?
[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:57, topic:9697”]
The brain inside the skull is not soundproof, in fact, some sound wave can really screw with the brain’s functioning.
So can a KO punch. But that is a purely kinetic trauma, not data!
The brain is not isolated from gravity and turns out that makes a difference.
Nothing is isolated from gravity (3lb brain), but gravitational balance is controlled by microtubules, not the brain per se.
The brain is not isolated from radiation or other energetic particles.
True but that does not mean the brain uses these phenomena as data.
Mostly those internal experiences are harmful except for gravity wich is invariable.
The brain is not isolated from the effects of motion or impacts.
See above. None of these things have anything to do with conscious processing of sensory data.
If I take a sledgehammer to my computer it does not create a printout of AUCHHHHHH!
[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:57, topic:9697”]
The brain COULD NOT EXIST, IN FACT IT COULD NEVER HAVE EVOLVED, were it not for those connections to sensing organs that some find so, so easy to dismiss.
I agree, in fact it is the very point I have been trying to make all along.
No Eukaryotic life could have evolved without microtubular controlled mitosis and the evolution of neural networks.
Yes, as I understand it the brain needs the act of sensory movement to interpret it as moving sensory data.
Let me illustrate with photography and a photographic trick called “panning”.
The back and forth eyemovement is necessary for the brain to be able to record “fixed” data. The brain uses “panning” to make sense of the data.
Can you cite an example?
“Godlike” is the philosophical domain of the religious.
As for myself, I maintain that man isn’t nearly godlike. I prefer the honey bee as an example of near perfect symbiosis and responsible for feeding 70% of the Earth’s living creatures and the indirect creation of the colored and perfumed majesty of flowering plants.
Can you imagine being colorblind and having no sense of smell or taste?
You are singing to the choir here. I am the one who is identifying all those necessary connections, in particular the microtubule network and related filaments.
The body is a biological machine that needs fuel for energy , but is unable to make that fuel itself. It needs help from a host of symbiotic bacteria. The human body is like a ship, with a lot of crew to keep it shipshape. The brain is the captain of the ship.
So what? Please explain what’s supposed to be so extraordinary about that?
Apparently you find the concept of “the brain in a vat” unacceptable.
What on this planet does have direct access to the interior or exterior?
Please explain the alternative.
Anything that is directly exposed to the exterior, i.e surfaces, sensors, chemicals.
Would you also say the sun doesn’t have direct access to Earth?
No I would not But the sun does not have direct access to the brain and a good thing it is. We get heat stroke as it is, just from the heat.
Not Good!
Have you ever considered that humans are not a self-sustaining species.
The human body is unable to convert raw materials into energy. Digestion is not a human activity, it is a symbiotic bacterial activity.
Moreover, symbiotic bacteria defend us from all kinds of environmental hazards.
This is why I do not think of Humans as a distinct organism. Humans are a microbiome, a world all to itself.
Without our symbionts we could not exist!
The microbiome is the largest organ you may have never heard of, weighing up to three kilograms. Human Microbes: The Power within (2018), Author provided
No, but the brain is impacted by it, and what impacts the brain impacts it’s operations. Or are we supposed to disregard those physical realities, for the sake of rhetorical argument?
Tripped up by your own tunnel vision. Gravity has impacts depending on its orientation to the head. It appears to change perception. Google “position of head changes perception” - I wasn’t aware of this stuff until a couple days ago, so it’s not like I “know” about it, except that it does exists and scientists are studying it.
Seems enough for me not to dismiss it outright because of my preconceptions.
Oh and,
Well that’s a abrupt U-turn.
Why are you so fixated on microtubules? They are components, they are not the answer to everything!
A moment ago we were discussing the connections between the brain and the outside world. An awful lot of components and systems happening before we get to the tiniest of tiny components.
But all you have eyes for is microtubules.
Oh dear I like how you ignore that it is also the state of mind of way too many humans!
Medical science is godlike with its practitioners knowing it, even if they don’t trumpet it. How about smashing atoms, pretty damned godlike, especially when we blow up cities with what we’ve attained. Etc., etc.,
For instance this Brain In A Vat notion started long before we had any substantive understanding of chemistry, physics, physiology, what smells are made out of, or even what sunlight was all about. Today we understand these things a physical properties.
Yet, the great god playing philosophers have decreed that the brain is totally isolated from it’s environment.
It occurred to me today that makes about as much sense as saying that getting into locked doors is some great existential mystery, because keys are not structural components of building.
I mean what god decides that, light waves, sound waves, complex molecules, biochemical cascade need to be reduced to utter irrelevance. And for what??? To keep a philosophical line of argument open. Even when it so often has to ignore what’s happen within our actual factual physic world.
Wait a minute. You just complained about me citing an extraordinary example to prove a point and then you turn around and make an extraordinary example to try and prove a point.
Remember this?
Being hit on the head with a rock is not part of the ordinary everyday sensory experience
You are exaggerating the sensory arrangement. The fact is that the brain has no direct sensory experience and must rely on the information that is fed by the sensory neural network such as the optical nerve leading from the eyes that do have direct sensory experience from the exterior environment. They are located at the surface of the body.
The brain has no eyes, no ears, no nose, no touch, it is a processor of information that it receives from the sensory organs via "descriptive coded data ".
Activation and response in the sensory nervous system
The sensory nervous system is a part of the nervous system responsible for processing sensory information. A sensory system consists of sensory neurons (including the sensory receptor cells), neural pathways, and parts of the brain involved in sensory perception. Commonly recognized sensory systems are those for vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell, and balance.
NOTE!!!
Senses are transducers from the physical world to the realm of the mind where people interpret the information, creating their perception of the world around them.[1]
I have and those debunkers are all anthropomorphizing the question with an attempt at an “illogical” argument. .
But not a single experiment proves the brain is aware of the exterior world unless it receives information from the senses.
Why do you think it takes 1000 trillion synapses to process the sensory information int a form the brain can even understand?
Everything the brain knows is “learned” from the senses before the brain has “matured” ( in humans that process takes about 18 years).
Everybody ignores the fact that the brain is always thinking, i.e hallucinating.
But it must have some information, to begin with. And that information can only come from the sensory neural network both exterior (exteroception) and internal (interoception) .
Change the question to "place a virgin brain in a vat and feed it information of an imaginary world, will the brain know the difference? The answer of course is no.
The brain must have a memory to compare the incoming data to, in order to arrive at a “controlled hallucination”. A best guess of what is out there.
As long as the questioner assumes the brain has an inherent sensory awareness of its surroundings any contrived scenarios and conclusions will be false.
Lock a person in a sensory deprivation room and the brain goes mad in a very short time. But that is with an already formed memory, that the brain can draw on to create its own world (reality). This is what it does when dreaming.
Without memory, the brain experiences NOTHING unless it’s fed information that it can never gather on its own. Like a computer OP without input data. Do a print-out and you’ll get a blank page.
