What does the brain actually do?

[Carl-Richard]

49 minutes ago, Nahm said:

Just take the ‘you’ out. 

Omg 

[Nahm]

2 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Omg 

[Carl-Richard]

31 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I return to the word "reasonable". There seems to be a reasonable level of predictability. For instance, it wouldn't be reasonable to say that taking LSD turns you into a frog for the rest of your life, or that it is identical to the effects of something like Salvia Divinorum. In other words, the neuroscience seems reasonable to me; maybe not magically perfect (unlike reality), but just reasonable.

Maybe the problem lies in me letting the current scientific paradigm define what I perceive as reasonable and expecting there to be some resolution between two inherently incompatible paradigms. I mean... it's not at all reasonable from the perspective of infinite consciousness ?

[LastThursday]

Reasonable causation. Seems reasonable enough. Although I'm being unreasonable.

If you can bear to work with correlation, then you could say that the ground of conscious experience is correlation itself. Everything is correlated with everything else and it all hangs together as such. What's orchestrating all this correlation is what @Leo Gura mentions about Sherlock Holmes, a thing completely outside of or orthogonal to reality.

The materialist paradigm just sits inside of idealism, it is a subset of it. It is not inherently incompatible with it.

If you look at the Yin Yang symbol the white is correlated to the black (inversely), because they are both part of a greater whole. But you wouldn't say that the black causes the white, you can see they're in a symbiotic relationship. It's that way with everything. Taking a drug is correlated to feeling high in a fairly particular way. But maybe it's complete coincidence and one day you'll feel high without having taken the drug. Taking the drug is in a symbiotic relationship with feeling high.

Edited April 2, 2021 by LastThursday

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, LastThursday said:

The materialist paradigm just sits inside of idealism, it is a subset of it. It is not inherently incompatible with it.

I like to think I'm onboard with this line of thinking, but I'm not sure if either 1. I keep forgetting about it or 2. if reading too much neuroscience is inherently poisoning my mind  

Your points about correlation being all there is has been my initial position for a while, but when I keep reading about the claims of causality, I start to wonder if maybe the distinction is useful (useful instead of "true", because like I said, I don't really believe in "true" causality).

On the one hand, I believe I'm making these semi-nuanced distinctions about causality, but on the other hand, I think that maybe sometimes I can slip back into billard ball type thinking and start believing that the brain is actually causing stuff (hence being poisoned and hence my original question).

So far I haven't been moved much away from embracing my old strategy, which is simply about being careful not to lose track of which paradigm is which (which again I'm suspecting becomes progressively harder the longer you immerse yourself in one), and that maybe over time, I will properly develop the sixth sense of system awareness . Anyways, thanks for the input  

Edited April 2, 2021 by Carl-Richard

[Leo Gura]

Causality exists within a relative, imaginary 2D plane of what materialists call reality. Similar to how causality exists in a video game world.

[Carl-Richard]

14 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Causality exists within a relative, imaginary 2D plane of what materialists call reality. Similar to how causality exists in a video game world.

or like a children's drawing. The pen that draws is uncaused and the child's imagination infinite, but the drawing is simplified and limited. The child doesn't know about causality; only the stick figure thinks he does. The child knows pure creativity — that is all he needs in order to create  

[Carl-Richard]

@Zeitgeist Lol. That is some predictable utility right there 

 

On 2.4.2021 at 11:24 PM, Carl-Richard said:

If you were to explain the diversity of experience from this perspective, you would say that it's because the receptors are a part of larger variable system. But this variation is not limitless (if we're limiting ourselves to humans). After all, different people have a lot in common.

Just a little clarification: when I say the variation is not limitless, I mean that in the way we perceive it via our measurements in this specific paradigm. Given an absolutely infinite universe, it is limitless — it's just that the measurements aren't.

Edited April 5, 2021 by Carl-Richard