this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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What exactly is the brain the substrate for? All evidence up to this point indicates that the brain is the thing doing the thinking and feeling.
Without some seriously compelling evidence to the contrary, I'm going to assume you're talking about a soul or some other supernatural idea.
In your example of the guitarist, where would you say musicality actually comes from? I would say the brain, because there is plenty of evidence that brains exist and can be creative.
That's the question, isn't it!
I'm not ascribing anything unknown (for now!) to anything magical, I'm simply convinced that remaining agnostic on these ideas is the only honest position to occupy at this time.
For now, we simply do not know the origins of consciousness. Certainly the brain is at the center of it all, literally, but much of "what it's up to" remains a mystery when it comes to consciousness. Trying to nail it all down (at this point) to biology+physics+whatever reminds me of that old cartoon of a defeated-looking man staring at a giant chalkboard filled with elaborate equations, parted down the middle by the phrase, "and then a miracle occurs..."
If the stuff happening inside your body can't be "nailed down" by biology+physics+whatever, then you're talking about magic whether or not you call it magic.
"What is the brain the substrate for?" Is not a good question to ask because it assumes there is some unknown invisible force acting on the neurons in our heads. Neurons come from an egg fertilized by a sperm, just like every other cell.
Should we ask what the balls are a substrate for, since they are creating the sperm that will one day have consciousness?
(PS thank you for the discussion. It's all in fun and I think this is genuinely interesting.)
I can see how magic appears to be creeping in!
When I think of "magic" in this context, it's the kind of magic that a citizen of the Roman Empire might see at work in viewing a Facetime call on an iPhone. I think the wall we hit in trying to unpack and nail down consciousness is a similar impediment; we simply lack the knowledge, understanding, context, and even language (at least so far) to begin to address it directly.
We are smart enough to get these questions, but not yet able to answer them. I don't think that means we must somehow use our current understanding of a thing to arrive at comforting explanations; instead, I think that this question in particular is forcing us to admit We Don't Know...and can't even fathom what it might take to actually nail it down. The black and white/color thought experiment is a beautiful allusion to what this unknowing is like, and I think that's where we must be comfortable sitting, at least for now!
(PS agreed! Love me a good thoughtful disagreement)
Ok, obviously we don't know the exact mechanism of consciousness and thoughts, no argument there.
You think the belief that my entire self is nothing but a gooey grey organ inside my skull that can be irrevocably damaged by slipping on the floor is comforting?!
Our current understanding of a thing is an interesting way to phrase this. I would argue that our current understanding of a thing is literally the only way we can meaningfully study something. We start with our best current model and go from there. Of course there are sometimes paradigm shifts and big discoveries that seem to come from nowhere, but those are rare, and generally still fit into a wider model for how the universe works. If you don't understand how some function of the brain works, you shouldn't jump to the assumption that biology can't provide an answer. I'm not saying our neurons can't be the receivers for some extra-dimensional consciousness radio, I'm just saying use Occam's Razor.
You seem to be looking at the explanation of consciousness the way people looked at the explanation for the inheritance of traits from parents before we knew anything about genetics: a complete mystery. I think the current neuroscience on consciousness is closer to how we were dealing with genetics in the 40s: we knew there was genetic material, we were looking for it, we just didn't know exactly what it was (DNA). The problem with consciousness is that it isn't a single thing. It's a process, so until we nail down every individual step of the process, there will always be people saying that the part we don't understand yet is the part that can't be explained by biology.
Have you seen/heard this? https://www.npr.org/2023/08/20/1194905143/how-the-brain-processes-music-with-a-little-help-from-pink-floyd
I think you’ve made some assumptions about my position on this…my sense is that we are essentially in agreement, I’m just a bit more willing to stand in the “we simply don’t know…yet” column?
Yes it deserves study, yes I believe it’s a matter of us not understanding what’s what (and how), not “and then god” or something silly.