What if consciousness is material, limited in the brain ?

[Gabith]

Today I visited my father and talked with him about reality.
When he was young he was interested in spirituality, religions and philosophies and he had some "mystical" experiences.

However, he told me that he stopped after a few years because he noticed that the experiences could be interpreted in different ways and that it was impossible to know the "ultimate truth" or Reality as a human being.

Now he reads a lot and he is interested in the Reality and he tells me that the consciousness is not infinite or everywhere, he tells me that it is material and generated by a part of the brain and that when we sleep at night we lose consciousness.

I said to him then why we dream if we are not conscious? He told me that it was a small part of the sleep and that when we do not dream there is no consciousness.
He explained me that the consciousness can only be generated by the brain because we can see with the scientific material which parts are active during the sleep, meditation, death....

That once he will be dead, the consciousness will not be anymore. I answered him that the consciousness is not material and therefore it cannot die. That I believe that consciousness is what inhabits his body and that once his body dies, it will leave the body by force of circumstance.
But he tells me that these are beliefs and that it is not verifiable. But now we can verify the activity of the brain and know where the consciousness moves.

I find it hard to believe but he agrees that Reality is completely mystical, crazy and that we will never know the ultimate truth.
However, I tell him that yogis in the past have done it and that it is only possible through non-thinking and not through the intellectual. But he doesn't believe me and tells me that it is their interpretations of their experiences that are wrong and that it is their brains that produced these states.

I am very open minded and thought to myself "WHAT IF IT WAS THE BRAIN THAT PRODUCED ALL OUR PERCEPTIONS OF REALITY, EXPERIENCES AND ENLIGHTENMENTS INCLUDED?"

Edited June 30, 2021 by Gabith

[impulse9]

Let me know when someone finds consciousness somewhere in the brain.

People think that strong AI is possible too - let me know when someone formally defines intelligence and its inner workings, because without that there's no way to make a machine think.

Truth is far weirder than most are willing to admit.

[kinesin]

@Gabith  Your dad's belief is perfectly valid, but it is just that - a belief.  There is no generally agreed upon answer to the hard problem of consciousness.  Within the field of consciousness research your dad's position is referred to as the strong reductionist model.

I can't help but wonder, given the strength with which he presents his perspective as the actual truth, that he could possibly be exaggerating his belief in that position as an attempt to pull you away from the spiritual perspectives you're exploring and back into the realm of science.  Alternatively if he genuinely does believe it to such an extent, rather than try to change his mind I'd suggest simply informing him that his position is one among many, and that the wider debate is far from settled.

Here's an outline of the main positions in the consciousness debate - https://iep.utm.edu/hard-con/

[Mason Riggle]

2 hours ago, Gabith said:

he tells me that the consciousness is not infinite or everywhere, he tells me that it is material and generated by a part of the brain

 He might ask himself, 'where is material reality?'  'how big is material reality?' 

He won't be able to answer these questions, of course, because there's no frame of reference 'outside of material reality' to compare it to, to say where it is, or how big it is.  

The question of 'where does Reality exist?' can really make you wonder what it even means for something to 'exist'.. and bring about questions similar to the 'tree falling in the woods' question.  For something to exist.. is it required that there's a subject 'for whom it exists'.   Would the material world 'exist', if there was no 'consciousness' to be aware that it existed?  It's possible, but we can't say for sure.

We do know 1 thing for sure, however.. 'it seems like something is occurring' (consciousness).  That's the 1 thing we can be absolutely sure about. 

We can only make assumptions about the [realness of] contents of experience (this could all be a dream, or a simulation, etc).. but we can be certain about experience itself. 

At the end of the day, every experience, even 'experiencing a material world', is 'the contents of experience'.

That the material world exists 'within' consciousness is undeniable.. that consciousness exists within the material world is only an assumption. 

note: ^ these two perspectives can be transcended, to the realization that there is no difference between 'the material world' and 'consciousness'.  The 'separation' between the two is illusion.  We might consider.. is this forum we're now communication on 'really material' or does it just 'seem that way'? And what we find is.. it doesn't matter. It doesn't 'make a difference' because we 'can't tell the difference'.  'real' and 'seeming to be real' are the same thing.   'the material world' and 'consciousness' are the same thing. 

[Rajneeshpuram]

Consciousness is not material  but need material eyes, ears, nerves, brain, to exist. Otherwise is a white blanket. Consciousness is the reciever of the synthesis that your brain creates of all the exterior world.

Yes consciousness can exist without a body and a brain, but this conscious would be aware of nothingness.

[WelcometoReality]

@Gabith From his view of it there is still the problem of dead matter. If consciousness comes from the brain, which are made up of atoms where does consciousness come from? How can dead matter produce life and consciousness? If we instead see the brain as a receiver of consciousness, like the receiver of a radio for example that would be a more solid explanation in my opinion.

[VeganAwake]

@Gabith I like your openness and willingness to examine it. ?

It seems like a big important question doesn't it?

Who is asking the question?

Who wants to know?

What does that one consist of?

 

 

 

 

 

[Gregory1]

4 hours ago, Gabith said:

when we do not dream there is no consciousness

If that is the case, who is experiencing "no conciousness"? If nobody is experiencing it, it doesn't exist. Note that you never find a gap in your conciousness, just different content within it. "Waking up in the morning" is also just an experience that can only be present in the light of conciousness. Your conciousness never stopped. It just imagines that it had slept and "wasn't concious" which is just another experience within conciousness:)

Edited June 30, 2021 by Gregory1

[RMQualtrough]

It is not possible for immaterial things to have spatial dimensions. So they can't be moving around. He is quite wrong... What are the dimensions of love?

What you are seeing is electrical activity. Paired with literal magic under the guise of "emergence", apparently this not only causes the localization of, but the very existence of consciousness and qualia itself. Localization is real, and localization also exists in the dreams we have at night.

When he dies of course his localization will end. Ask him then, if consciousness ends, who and what is mourning at his funeral?

99% of confusion that ever exists, is the result of mistaking ANY elements of the self for what observes the self. This is why people think they should be telepathic or able to switch bodies etc.

Edited June 30, 2021 by RMQualtrough

[Scholar]

4 hours ago, Gabith said:

Today I visited my father and talked with him about reality.
When he was young he was interested in spirituality, religions and philosophies and he had some "mystical" experiences.

However, he told me that he stopped after a few years because he noticed that the experiences could be interpreted in different ways and that it was impossible to know the "ultimate truth" or Reality as a human being.

Now he reads a lot and he is interested in the Reality and he tells me that the consciousness is not infinite or everywhere, he tells me that it is material and generated by a part of the brain and that when we sleep at night we lose consciousness.

I said to him then why we dream if we are not conscious? He told me that it was a small part of the sleep and that when we do not dream there is no consciousness.
He explained me that the consciousness can only be generated by the brain because we can see with the scientific material which parts are active during the sleep, meditation, death....

That once he will be dead, the consciousness will not be anymore. I answered him that the consciousness is not material and therefore it cannot die. That I believe that consciousness is what inhabits his body and that once his body dies, it will leave the body by force of circumstance.
But he tells me that these are beliefs and that it is not verifiable. But now we can verify the activity of the brain and know where the consciousness moves.

I find it hard to believe but he agrees that Reality is completely mystical, crazy and that we will never know the ultimate truth.
However, I tell him that yogis in the past have done it and that it is only possible through non-thinking and not through the intellectual. But he doesn't believe me and tells me that it is their interpretations of their experiences that are wrong and that it is their brains that produced these states.

I am very open minded and thought to myself "WHAT IF IT WAS THE BRAIN THAT PRODUCED ALL OUR PERCEPTIONS OF REALITY, EXPERIENCES AND ENLIGHTENMENTS INCLUDED?"

He is not going deep enough. He has already assumed so many things by postulating that there is perception, that there is Ultimate Truth or that there is such a thing as a "Consciousness". He will be unable to substantiate any of this, infact most likely he lacks the metaphysical intelligence to even comprehend the depth of his own ignorance, the depth of his own unconscious assumptions.

 

How does he know what his perceptions of the brain truly indicate? How does he know what the brain is made of? If he is postulating that the brain is made out of material, what is material but something within his own consciousness?

 

Funny how within your consciousness you have this idea of a brain and a material world, and then you postulate that this very idea, clearly made of consciousness, is that which gives rise to your own consciousness. Anything that you could ever postulate will be consciousness. Any idea, any feeling, any ideology, any scientific fact you will ever come across will always be consciousness. If it was not consciousness, you wouldn't be able to refer to it. Anything you could possibly refer to will always and necessarily be consciousness.

But even this is surface level, this problem of assumptions goes much deeper. It goes so deep that it is hard to even communicate this with language. Usually it is not a lack of understanding that is the problem, but a lack of insight into ignorance. You assume way too much and you are not even aware of any of these assumptions you are making. To even pose the questions you are posing requires assumptions upon assumptions upon assumptions, and none of them are substantiated by anything.

 

What do you even mean by reality? Why do you claim that perception is somehow different from reality? Truly ask yourself this, and ask yourself what even is the substance of the very question you are asking. If perception is unreal, how could you possibly even know that you are asking any question in the first place? If perception is not reality, how can you know that you perceive anything at all? How do you know that anything is here at all? What does verification even mean? If anything you posit to be truthful, that truth will be part of your consciousness. So if you claim anything to be true, whether it is that we cannot know reality, or that the brain creates consciousness, you have just posited that part of your consciousness is Truth.

 

Notice how all of your questions work from assumptions outward. So you have unquestioned assumptions, and with the help of these you outwardly question anything but the very assumptions that allow you to form the question you are posing. Notice whether this is true or not, and then clearly identify the assumptions you are holding and truly ask yourself how you can substantiate them.

Instead of questioning reality, what it is or isn't, question yourself. If you will just claim that the yogis did that, you are not better than your father. You are just constructing beliefs upon beliefs. And then you came here on this forum, posing your belief as a question. You haven't done anything but construct elaborate web of ideas, all of them founded on nothing at all. You aren't actually questioning anything, you are creating new questions, but you are not looking at that which is posing the questions.

 

 

Most people are quite literally incapable of doing this. I am not sure what it is, but my suspicion is that there is a spectrum of metaphysical intelligence. Some people will never be able to see the true depth of the problems they face when questioning reality. They swim in the shallow waters, never able to dare to dive into the depth of the oceans.

 

 

You should not try to create new knowledge, but question your knowledge. Don't speculate about knowledge that you do not have, but inspect the knowledge that you already hold.

This work is not about creating knowledge, this work is about truly being able to see that what you took for self-evident, what you took for so granted that you didn't even know about it at all, is not self-evident and obvious at all. You are walking around trying to find the path to truth, but what you need to do is look on that which you stand on. Look at it very closely. Notice that you haven't looked on the ground you stand upon ever before, and now that you closely inspect it, notice that it is no ground at all. That what you felt like was a path, is no path at all.

The tricky part is to notice that which you do not notice, which is so obvious, so common, so mundane that you never before in your life truly questioned it. This cannot be done by mere intellectualization, it requires far more depth than intellectualization. Most human beings on this planet are not trained to even begin to question reality. They don't even have the tools to begin to do so. They are so blind, no instructions will help them.

 

Be hopeful that you are gifted with enough clarity that you can question reality, because most people are not. They walk on a path of their own making, a path that they think is real, but if only they looked down on the ground the stand upon, would clearly notice that it is no path, no ground at all. And then, the fall begins. The fall into the unknown, into the abyss. To see that there is no ground beneath your feet requires you to open your eyes, not to keep stumbling in the darkness of your own ignorance.

Edited June 30, 2021 by Scholar

[Leo Gura]

6 hours ago, Gabith said:

However, he told me that he stopped after a few years because he noticed that the experiences could be interpreted in different ways and that it was impossible to know the "ultimate truth" or Reality as a human being.

Now he reads a lot and he is interested in the Reality and he tells me that the consciousness is not infinite or everywhere, he tells me that it is material and generated by a part of the brain

Lol

Sorry you tell ya this, but your father is a fool.

[Nahm]

@Gabith

When it is said, “my house”, something is pointed to. When it is said, “my consciousness”, nothing is actually pointed to. 

What if you are what if. 

[Preety_India]

 

Consciousness is infinite and is not limited to the brain.

 

 

[The0Self]

Then it wouldn’t be what’s referred to as Consciousness as synonymous with the absolute, by definition.

It would merely be “consciousness” as in “the awareness function of body-minds, developed in the story by evolution.”

Consciousness of the first sort is perhaps better conceived of simply as “what is.”

Edited July 1, 2021 by The0Self

[Dazgwny]

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Lol

Sorry you tell ya this, but your father is a fool.

Sometimes I find myself highly amused by the simplest things, this quote is one of those things. Tremendous ?

[Twega]

20 hours ago, Gabith said:

But now we can verify the activity of the brain and know where the consciousness moves.

Actually, you can't verify that. You can only see correlations between brain states and consciousness. You cannot see where consciousness is "generated"

A simple rebuke to this line of reasoning is just because things are correlated, doesn't mean one caused the other.

If you take a drug, it will dramatically influence your consciousness. Does that mean the drug causes consciousness? No.

If you change brain activity by something as simple as increasing the temperature of neurons, your consciousness will change. That doesn't mean it caused consciousness.