How can we be sure that consciousness is not generated by the brain?

[BipolarGrowth]

I’ve spent years studying nonduality and doing consciousness work. At this point I have to admit that I’m biased toward consciousness generating the brain as well as everything else, but how can we at all be certain that this is the case? Is this not just a belief? Any changes in consciousness seem to be heavily correlated with changes in brain activity. Why is this the case? 

[Bacher]

because consciousness is what created your "brain". Without consciousness you do not exist because consciousness is everything! Your brain is just a reciver. Its an expression of consciousness.

[Someone here]

@BipolarGrowth ey bro what's up? 

Ofcourse we can't be sure.. Don't be silly..... But Think of it this way" ...

 The brain can't be generating your experience.. What you call "the brain" is itself an experience.. You can't say that this" piece of meat" is what is causing experience because that piece of meat IS an experience. 

Ponder this.... What should be generating the experience from outside can't be an experience . It becomes strange loop. The brain which is an appearance in consciousness generated consciousness which is itself!!!!  In both cases there is a mysterious fucking thing there that was generated by nothing.  

Nothing found inside of your experience can be the cause of your experience from outside. Just like if you are playing a video game... The cause of the entire video game world which is the PS device can't be found inside the video game world. 

It's like looking at your own body with a microscope.. Sure you will find some cells and atoms in there.. But those themselves are phenomenon within your experience aka consciousness.. You can't say that atoms or brains are generating consciousness.. Because atoms and brains ARE consciousness.  U dig that lol? 

 

 

[Someone here]

Watch Leo's episodes.. 

"why brains don't exist". 

"what is Consciousness". 

"rant against naive realism". 

"reality is a strange loop". 

Should do the trick. 

[BipolarGrowth]

@Someone here okay, but if consciousness isn’t capable of generating consciousness then you are implicitly suggesting that something outside of consciousness is generating consciousness OR that nothing generates consciousness. Something outside of consciousness generating it can never be verified and is imo more far fetched than believing the bit of consciousness (the brain) most heavily correlated with changes in consciousness is responsible for its generation. The idea that nothing generates consciousness seems more plausible as it would just BE without cause. 

[BipolarGrowth]

@Someone here I’ve watched all of these before lol. They could be worth visiting again, but I doubt I’ll find anything I’m not already aware of right now to some degree. 

[Someone here]

@BipolarGrowth you studied nonduality huh???  Brain vs consciousness. Reality is just one seamless whole. Ultimately it doesn't matter if materialism is correct partially about the brain.  But what is hidden in your question is substance-dualism. There is only one fucking substance out of which everything is made. Could it be otherwise?. 

What is substance-dualism?.???

Well That reality is split into two different substances. One is the appearances or phenomenon or consciousness or qualia (this stuff right here)..which is a second order emergence from the essence which is matter. That matter has no phenomenonolgical qualities. It's not conscious yet it gives arise to consciousness. Notice the absurdity? 

Consciousness is simply everything and anything. This is Consciousness. That is consciousness. You are consciousness. The brain is consciousness. Anything you think or possibly doubt in a million years that isn't consciousness IS fucking consciousness... Tada!

And it can't be "defined" because there is nothing which is not consciousness to define consciousness in terms of it. That's why it's a mystery. 

[Someone here]

28 minutes ago, BipolarGrowth said:

The idea that nothing generates consciousness seems more plausible as it would just BE without cause. 

 

Yes absolutely. The present moment exists mysteriously. it just is. It's unbelievable but hey. Nothing generated it from "outside". All the outsides are actually inside. The causes that you imagine behind consciousness are actually manifestations of consciousness (you are fantasizing them into existence right now) rather than its cause. 

[Osaid]

The brain is a part of consciousness

So, your question properly rephrased is: "How can we be sure that consciousness is not generated by consciousness?"

And the answer is that consciousness IS generated by consciousness, it's a strange loop. 

In fact, consciousness is the only thing that can generate anything. Consciousness = existence

In other words, consciousness generates itself, or you could also say consciousness is made of nothing.

1 hour ago, BipolarGrowth said:

Any changes in consciousness seem to be heavily correlated with changes in brain activity. Why is this the case?

This is not always the case. You can throw a ball at a window and the window will break, no significant change in brain activity required. Just consciousness interacting with itself, as usual.

Consciousness is constantly interacting with itself, whether it be a hammer to your head or a ball to the window. This is nothing new.

 

[BipolarGrowth]

23 minutes ago, Someone here said:

@BipolarGrowth you studied nonduality huh???  Brain vs consciousness. Reality is just one seamless whole. Ultimately it doesn't matter if materialism is correct partially about the brain.  But what is hidden in your question is substance-dualism. There is only one fucking substance out of which everything is made. Could it be otherwise?. 

What is substance-dualism?.???

Well That reality is split into two different substances. One is the appearances or phenomenon or consciousness or qualia (this stuff right here)..which is a second order emergence from the essence which is matter. That matter has no phenomenonolgical qualities. It's not conscious yet it gives arise to consciousness. Notice the absurdity? 

Consciousness is simply everything and anything. This is Consciousness. That is consciousness. You are consciousness. The brain is consciousness. Anything you think or possibly doubt in a million years that isn't consciousness IS fucking consciousness... Tada!

And it can't be "defined" because there is nothing which is not consciousness to define consciousness in terms of it. That's why it's a mystery. 

Notice that I never said the brain was matter or was not consciousness. The fact stands that not all parts of consciousness/existence/everything effect change in consciousness/existence/everything equally. For this discussion, it does not matter what constitutes the brain (such as matter vs. consciousness). Changing the brain can literally cause infinitely different experiences of consciousness/existence/everything. Consciousness is the substance of everything. Okay? I in no way disagree with this, however, you have to admit that you can feed 10 tabs of LSD to your dog, and according to direct experience, there is little change compared to putting those same 10 tabs under your human tongue.
 

This directly verifiable difference occurs more when we play around with the brain in “our” individual human meat suit than in any other thing. This leads us to have to seriously consider the role that the brain, specifically the brain of the individual human being witnessed more in this experience of reality than anything else, has in affecting everything else. It certainly seems that this one thing is at the top of the hierarchy if we were to examine the transformative capabilities of everything experienced in this existence that is all consciousness. 

[BipolarGrowth]

24 minutes ago, Osaid said:

The brain is a part of consciousness

So, your question properly rephrased is: "How can we be sure that consciousness is not generated by consciousness?"

And the answer is that consciousness IS generated by consciousness, it's a strange loop. 

In fact, consciousness is the only thing that can generate anything. Consciousness = existence

In other words, consciousness generates itself, or you could also say consciousness is made of nothing.

This is not always the case. You can throw a ball at a window and the window will break, no significant change in brain activity required. Just consciousness interacting with itself, as usual.

Consciousness is constantly interacting with itself, whether it be a hammer to your head or a ball to the window. This is nothing new.

 

When I was saying changes in consciousness there, I was referring to changes in states of consciousness. I think you knew exactly what I was referring to though but disregarded it to try to prove your point. 
 

A better way to rephrase the question, if you’re going to be picky, is as follows "How can we be sure that all of existence is not generated by this small part of existence typically called the brain?"

Edited January 20, 2021 by BipolarGrowth

[Someone here]

@BipolarGrowth look.. You can't verify what effects your supposed brain have on you.. By that time you would be dead or in coma.  Forget about your own brain.   You never saw your brain.. You never did.. And you never will.    Let's talk about others.. 

Even if you magically expanded the reach of your consciousness to enter the "brain " of another person that still wouldn't answer the question. Instead you would be some sort of hybrid consciousness.. neither the original you or the original them.

This is akin to the measurement problem in quantum physics. You can't measure the state of a system without disturbing the system. More accurately.. whenever you measure a system.. you are merging with it.. to create a hybrid system. You can't disentangle the observer from the observed.  It's all tangled up in itself. 

[SpiritualAwakening]

If you're not sure there's more work to do.

[Someone here]

2 hours ago, BipolarGrowth said:

Any changes in consciousness seem to be heavily correlated with changes in brain activity. Why is this the case? 

And btw.. Correlation doesn't equal causation. The sun rises every day in winter around 5 am (whatever).. That's a correlation. 

That doesn't mean the cause of the rising of the sun is that the time is 5 am. It's the rotation and gravity etc.  So you actually have zero certainty in your claim that just because the brain activity correlates with consciousness shifts that it is actually the cause of these shifts.  

 

[ajai]

To manifest various degrees of potential of the ever pervading consciousness, only faculty you have is your mind, and yes the brain is part of it and it does play certain functions upto an extent, mind why? Brain alone can't do no shit, it needs a full fledged fused structure for that matter, so coming back to the op, to manifest various potentials of ever pervading consciousness or let's say to unravel it's potential we have got mind which has certain capabilities upto some extent and limitations, how am I saying this? Bcuz I don't or can't access all the frequencies or see let's say what a certain kind of insect can see, it might be accessing the levels of consciousness which I can't given my capabilities and limitations, 

3 hours ago, BipolarGrowth said:

Any changes in consciousness seem to be heavily correlated with changes in brain activity.

So ofc, it will happen cause it's an important and perhaps one of the most important organ(brain) that lets you touch/feel/experience— consciousness at various degrees, any hampering with the already present chemicals in brain or let's say in whole structure(body) in certain amount may/may not alter the states of consciousness, since it's all there is already in it's entirety, all it takes on your part is a miniscule change, to make you go ohvie-whoavie about it.

Quote

How can we be sure that consciousness is not generated by the brain?

The only point we can be sure about is, consciousness is not "generated" by brain, on the contrary brain is and rest everything that you see and can't see, categorically speaking.

Edited January 20, 2021 by ajai

[Javfly33]

Because it would an infinite loop.

You could always say "Consciousness is generating the brain" but... who is generating the brain???

Consciousness of course  

[Gesundheit]

Lol there is no such thing as consciousness.

If you can't point to it, then how is your question different from: How can we be sure that otrfhuf is not generated by the brain?

[PopoyeSailor]

If brain creates consciousness, then the senses of the body must also be limited by the brain itself. Then, why is it that People who have a NDE(Near Death Experience) sometimes accurately describe events that had happened far away from their body when they flatlined on the hospital table. How come Yogis able to to Parakaya Pravesha(Entering into another body through Pranic airs). How come people read other's minds that are far away? During a kundalini awakening, a youtuber described seeing through walls. How do you explain various reincarnation stories of children, being born with wound marks on their body, with the memory of dying because of traumatic injury at the wound mark area in their previous life? Which when verified, turns out to be true.

 

Also CIA has released documents of experiments that they conducted which clearly talks about these phenomena. In those reports it was observed and concluded to be real by scientists as well.

Edited January 20, 2021 by PopoyeSailor

[PopoyeSailor]

As for change in brain changing consciousness: When something is connected with something else in a tight knit manner. It is natural that any change you do to it will affect the behavior of the connected thing to a certain degree. In this case, it is not only a connection, but a direct projection. That too for a direct and rapid expression.

Edited January 20, 2021 by PopoyeSailor

[allislove]

How can we be sure that light is not generated by the wall? 

Turn inward.