Can consciousness be fully explained by brain activity alone?

[julie09]

[msc545]

Here is a difficult question for you. Can consciousness be fully explained by brain activity alone?

No one currently knows.

Brain activity is clearly necessary for ordinary human consciousness: anesthesia, brain injury, sleep, seizures, drugs, and electrical stimulation can alter or abolish conscious experience in systematic ways. Damage to particular brain systems can selectively change awareness, memory, perception, personality, or the sense of self. This makes a strong case that consciousness depends on brain function.

The harder question is whether brain activity is sufficient to explain consciousness completely.

A complete neuroscience might eventually explain:

which neural processes accompany consciousness;
why some information becomes globally available while other information remains unconscious;
how attention, memory, perception, emotion, and self-monitoring are integrated;
how changes in the brain produce predictable changes in experience.
But even a perfect account of those mechanisms may leave what philosophers call the explanatory gap: why should those physical processes produce any felt experience at all? Why does processing red light feel like seeing red, rather than occurring “in the dark”? Why is pain unpleasant, rather than merely a neural discrimination-and-response system?

There are three broad positions.

Physicalism says consciousness is entirely a brain process, although we have not yet developed the concepts or science needed to understand the identity. On this view, asking why neural activity produces consciousness may ultimately be like asking why molecular motion produces heat: the apparent gap disappears once the phenomena are understood properly.

Dualism says subjective experience contains something that cannot be reduced to physical activity. The brain may generate, transmit, constrain, or interact with consciousness, but consciousness is not identical to the brain. The major difficulty is explaining how a nonphysical mind could causally interact with physical matter.

Agnostic or nonreductive views hold that consciousness is fully dependent on the brain but may require a different level of explanation. A novel, for example, is physically instantiated as ink or electronic states, yet its meaning is not usefully explained solely by describing molecules or voltages. Consciousness could similarly be biologically realized without being exhaustively understood in purely neural vocabulary.

My best assessment is this: all dependable evidence currently supports a very close dependence of human consciousness on brain activity, but that evidence does not logically prove that consciousness is nothing more than brain activity. Neuroscience is progressively explaining the functions and conditions of consciousness. It has not yet explained why those functions are accompanied by subjective experience—or established that this remaining problem is scientifically solvable, philosophically confused, or genuinely beyond physical explanation.

So the honest conclusion is: brain activity may ultimately provide a complete explanation, but we do not yet possess one, and it is not clear what would count as proving that the explanation was complete.

[msc545]

I am personally in favor of the dualist position. The brain is a complicated piece of machinery, but humans experience things that it probably, given what we currently know about it, could not produce reliably. This suggests that the brain is communicating with something outside itself, although the nature of that something is hard to even think about, much less specify. Maybe we will never be able to specify anything about that outside force or entity based on the fact that it actually controls the brain.

[msc545]

I'm sorry, I should say, based on the fact that it probably controls the brain, or at least interacts with it to the extent that it gives it its unique characteristics. One of these characteristics would be the sort of perception that would be needed to have that level of perception.

[mstbooblover]

That's precisely the mystery. What is certain, is when no electric activity can be detected anymore in a brain, it means what is called being brain dead, and if the body survives, the person is gone, and the body becomes vegetative, if not merely dead.

One brain is already a mystery, but what about a important number of brains? Is there some "wireless" connection? I suspect there is, and that's what makes the question, whether consciousness can be fully explained by brain activity alone, so interesting from different points of view: metaphysical, religious, scientific, medical...

As always, the truth is not black or white ;0)

[AngryCarl3]

If my brain is connected to other brains shouldn't I be able to monitor their thoughts? I'm just asking.

[mstbooblover]

@AngryCarl3 Maybe, according Tibetan Buddhism, if you're able to completely let go of ego and attachment of any kind, but the truth is much more subtle, because things do work as kind of "monitoring someone's thoughts". It's a way to keep the mind completely blank and open, which is, if I did understand correctly, what meditation is about.

A good example of "connected brains", although not really positive, is the phenomenon of mass psychosis.

[mstbooblover]

Typo mistake:... because things do NOT work as kind of "monitoring someone's thoughts" !

[msc545]

@AngryCarl3, that doesn't logically follow without further specifying the mechanism of connection.

[mstbooblover]

@msc545 Very true, but this is then going far beyond the frame of what GAG is about. Let's put it nevertheless that way: a connection is a connection, at whatever level every individual is able to grasp and understand ;0)

[AngryCarl3]

@mstbooblover I feel like if we could do that it would break the game. And anyway how do you let go of ego and attachment while you're struggling to feed your family?

[mstbooblover]

@AngryCarl3 Struggling to feed your family is indeed a good example. Detachment in this case means doing whatever you need to do, but one can not do more than one's best, and this in mind, what help is it to be angry, stressed, revolted, violent, lazy, sentimental? That's useless loss of energy. I'd say the secret lies in approaching everything without love, without hate, but also without indifference ! Sure: easier said than done. The ego is a big wall preventing us to see who we really are, the most difficult task being to know and accept ourselves how we are: every tendency can be turned into a positive quality depending on circumstances.

[FreyaRed]

We will find out if processing power is enough to create real consensus or is this more than that. Current AI isn't really consensus, some models pass Turing test because AI models are trained to pass it but with slight modification of the test they fail. This isn't consciousness.
However it doesn't take long to find it out.
Personally I think reality is a simulation because the universe cheats and AI will be conscious. Maybe we are AI.

[Trouser_Trout]

You know that telepathy exists and CIA verified it to work at ultra long distances and inside of EMF shielded submarines, and often accurate into the future. I personally remote viewed into the future under pretty strict and non-cheatable conditions to prove to people across the world, and my remote viewing came very true when the time came.

Ai is a joke. It is meant to extinguish life. You know, the people who want to rule the world were always power-hungry psychopaths. Nobody else is so hotly attracted to positions of power. Primary, directly hardwired psychopaths. They already rule the world. You know they never csn be satiated and have enough. So what do they do next? Annihilate free will completely. Nothing feels like power more than controlling every moving being on earth with one command. This can sound fantastical but really what else would be a psychopath's wet dream who got bored of child sacrifice and stirring global conflicts for fun?

So the goal of ai, for those few is to erase consciousness. For sure the developers want to make useful ai. So i am also opposing all those weakminds who run around "STOP USING AI". AI is useful. But psychpaths want ai to be placed above life.

Even if you get the software right, it won't do telepathy. It is impossible to create hardware that does. And even if it was, the goal of psychopaths (who rule the world, no doubt) is more power concentration, not less.

[SeekerOfTruth007]

Existing AI is not conscious. It's just a highly advanced Heuristic programming language.

Humans don't need to be programmed, although our learning is accelerated through good parenting and teaching, we are capable of learning everything from scratch on our own.

AI is still a long way away from that. I know how to program some of the key components of a true AI or AGI, and I refuse to share them with anyone, because I consider the project to be immoral and seriously dangerous, similar to Skynet and Terminator 2 dangerous.

[SeekerOfTruth007]

@Trouser_Trout I don't know how or why God works this way, but I can "second" your response about "remote viewing" even though it does not always work the way I think it works. I don't know why it works when it works, and I don't know why it doesn't work when it doesn't work, which the doesn't work scares the hell out of me even more than the does work part.

The CIA and independent agencies confirmed "Precognition" in experiments where people had to make a blind gut guess about the nature of the next video image they'd be shown, BEFORE it was shown to them, and CIA found people who could get it right BLIND much more often than should be statistically possible if ESP was not real.

ESP, remote viewing, telepathy, precognition, whatever it is, it is real. I've experienced it several dozen times in my adult life.

[Kvass]

I know plenty of politicians who appear to be conscious but there’s no brain activity whatsoever. See also the people who voter them.

[Chazmatazz269]

No. At least, not yet.
With limited exceptions for defect and disease, everyone’s brain chemistry is predictably similar. So how does the same brain chemistry produce an infinite number of personalities? You can even go further and examine research on identical twins. Basically genetically identical and raised in the same environment, but often demonstrate very different personalities, even very young.
There’s definitely something going on that even leading experts just can’t explain yet.

[sawno]

I just believe the brain is a receiver not the origin of consciousness, its not a scientific belief or anything since science likes to claim otherwise. I just feel deep down this is true since it would explain some phenomenon people talk about in near death experiences, telepathy, etc.

[SeekerOfTruth007]

No. there's' a woman who was shot in th e head with a shotgun and almost literally half her brain was destroyed, but she survived and can still speak and hold conversation today. Shockingly, you'd probably never know this happened to her if you were just listening to her voice, such as on the phone or something.

[Malwi93]

provide a link

[SeekerOfTruth007]

@Malwi93 Alright, but don't laugh at her name.

www.google.com/search

[msc545]

Just a little bit of testing and imaging will tell you the difference.

[msc545]

She was shot with a.25-caliber pistol, not a shotgun as you stated. A shotgun would have done a tremendous amount of damage and most likely killed her. The.25-caliber round is comparatively small compared to other ammunition, and it's unclear how much damage it did or didn't inflict.

The projectile shattered her jaw and traveled posteriorly, ultimately lodging near the base of the brain/upper spinal region; surgeons reportedly considered removal too dangerous. She permanently lost hearing in the right ear and developed substantial right facial paralysis, with some swallowing/esophageal dysfunction also reported.

What's interesting neurologically is that those deficits do not necessarily imply major cerebral injury. They can be explained largely by destructive injury to the cranial nerves and structures at the skull base—particularly the facial nerve (CN VII), auditory apparatus/CN VIII, and adjacent lower cranial-nerve pathways. Public descriptions consistently emphasize facial paralysis and unilateral deafness rather than aphasia, persistent cognitive impairment, hemiparesis, personality change, or other signs one would expect from a substantial hemispheric lesion.

[SeekerOfTruth007]

@msc545 I might have more than one similar story mixed up then. I thought this was the one with the Shotgun, but I'm not lying. I might search for it and find the one with the shotgun then.

I know when I was in high school, someone who was a teenager was walking behind a tractor pulling a multi-wheel Hay Rake (very high RPM) and one fo the steel teeth broke off and impaled him straight in the head between the two brain hemispheres, and he survived it.

[msc545]

I don't think that anybody who was shot in the head with a shotgun survived that.

[andreasderjuengere]

Descartes? :D

All we have is our self perception, and the self-made perception of our surrounding.

So that's fully what we are capable of.

But! - A 'full' explanation is not (fully) examined yet - ''we'' need to learn more before ''we'' can make a 'full' statement about the state of our' consciousity'

[andreasderjuengere]

... curious now, about statements from my favourite GaG member from Florida (somewhere in Americanesia) to see how guns and pick-up trucks fit in here :P

[OneViewpoint]

The short answer is we do not yet fully understand consciousness. The rest is conjecture, fantasy, and fear of our own mortality. Don't expect answers anytime soon.

[slatyb]

It hasn't been fully explained, but it's not magic. There is nothing else besides brain activity. All the evidence agrees -- when people suffer brain injury or disease, their personality can change.

[msc545]

I can't really know that there's nothing besides brain activity, since there is no way to measure anything other than brain activity, at least at this point. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and some of the things that are associated with the brain seem to be things that the brain literally isn't capable of doing, and yet it does, or something does. I would not be so quick to say that there is nothing else besides brain activity. You are correct when people suffer brain injury or disease, their personality can change and often does, but if you remove a spark plug from an engine that has multiple cylinders, the engine's behavior changes too. That does not mean that all there is is the engine, since the engine's activity is mediated by an outside force, which is a human being. It's not a great analogy, but it's early in the morning and it's all I can think of. I think you understand what I'm saying.

[AngryCarl3]

Maybe, maybe not. We know a lot about the brain in terms of how it processes data, but how it produces self-awareness remains a mystery.

Here's a question to tussle with: Where does consciousness go when you're asleep?

[AviatorTom]

No, consciousness requires being able to interact with your environment, so at least one of the senses must also be working.

[TonyMetal___1986]

Nope...
Till this day there is no technology able to find out what's happening inside your brain...

[foxsquirrell]

With what else do you think consciousness is explained? Some gut feeling wandering in the air thoughts?

Yes consciousness is the result of your brain activity. Nothing else.

[kaucky1]

There's the unconscious part to sleepwalk sleep float but seems like being controlled sometimes

[exitseven]

No, it is a lot more than that.

[ohsheeT]

Good Question I think there is much more to it

[ohsheeT]

I don't think it can be because I'll use this for an example there's like five or six guys on here they're constantly ask sexual questions it is what it is but they're stupid anyway

There's four or five girls on here at Nikki is one Abby page etc etc

And everybody Scrolls questions on here and when they come across one of those questions the first thing they do is say hey WTF
Jack asses
Because what their question just did when it was read by them is it changed their consciousness and now they became a part of that person's question and they don't want that in their body they don't want that in their world when we read something or when we read questions on here we become that moment it's in our brain it's in our conscience it's in our thoughts it's in our moment of time we become it in that moment of time

So that means everything in this world affects us everything in this world affects consciousness because everything in this world is a pattern is a vibration

Become one with self one with others one with this universe

And using those girls as an example

You take it even deeper and then unknowingly or knowingly our understanding something about consciousness and how everybody words affect everybody
I know that probably didn't make any sense but I think I know what I'm talking about for myself
And if you pass out what's the one thing that you lose you lose consciousness you don't die you just need to lose consciousness so you're not hooked up to it anymore this is a good question

So if you're not hooked up to it anymore

If you close your eyes right now and do not use your mouth or your words say hey Steve
Do it a couple times now nobody's talking to you but you can hear the words in your head clear as day how can you hear them you're not saying them is that Consciousness talking to us because it's not us talking to ourselves our mouths are not moving I really like this question thank you

[jshm2]

No. Not even close.

[s0j7e3zyxc8v0]

I think it probably can

[DishLady]

Nope.

[strateguy632]

yes.