Is Consciousness Solely a Product of the Brain?

[Pythagorean]

No, a collective consciousness in the sense that its spoken of in literature (and Jungian theory) wouldn't require that I learn skepticism, but that it's imparted through group experience. The collective unconscious or collective consciousness angle just kicks the can down the road, offering no new insight in my view. I learned through trial and error, interaction with people, and my own thoughts to arrive at the point I'm at today. The words are symbolic conventions I share with some portion of the population, passed down yes, but hardly collective in a grand sense.

We're a distributed consciousness that desperately tries to preserve more than base instinct.

I do not know much Jung, admittedly, but I don't know what you mean by "grand sense". I know Durkheim:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_consciousness

In which the skepticism you practice is simply doing what you're taught. From my point of view, I'm practicing skepticism about the idea of an isolated self, either objectively or subjectively, and I'm doing as I'm taught as well. We're not perfect, we practice skepticism based on our common sense... or our "collection of prejudices acquired by age 18" as Einstein would call them. These prejudices vary from town to town, subculture to subculture.

We have to use logic to overcome common sense. In doing so, we conform to yet another "collective conscious". Scientific method and skepticism are examples of the collective consciousness I speak of. No individual person has the insight or omniscience to hold the "truth" about the universe; we chip away at each other's ideas in science until the most objective statements are what's left behind. And even then, if we had a larger body of peer-review, there would be more chipping and more objectifying. Depending on how much disparity there is between the author's field and the reviewer's field, different aspects of the idea will be chipped at. Sometimes, chipping will occur out of ignorant skepticism. Look at what emerges: a brilliant display of a collective body that draws you and I as students of science.

Fair enough, but how is this relevant?

Perhaps you're searching for mysticism in my definition of collective conscious? I'm talking about an information network that holds very complete ideas that each individual of the network has only a fraction of a grasp of. As an example: not just the body of scientific knowledge, but the way of thinking that allows the body to exist in the first place; the "wave of reason" itself. We keep each other in check, acting as individuals, but we do so according to how the group determines.

And we like this kind of interaction, making democracy a popular choice for politics; our head of management of the collective conscious. They work to sway the collective consciousness of the "mob". So democracy becomes about absorbing people's minds into your collective so that they will empower you (through our voting system, a way to measure the collective consciousness in an effort to look like you care what the people think) to absorb more people into their collective consciousness.

And then you have strong polarizations, like dems vs. reps. Do you really think all of these people arrive at the conclusion of what political party they wanted to follow through personal exploration of self? Or do you think it had a great deal to do with their biology and their upbringing?

All of the common origins and commonalities in the universe won't cause a system of discrete macroscopic entities to somehow collapse into a gestalt. My origins do not mean that previous iterations of me are somehow equally conscious, or a part of me in anything except the most fanciful and artistic sense. Yes, we're all stardust, but the arrangement matters, the flux or lack matters, the ability to produce a universal signal of "on/off" at will matters.

I've read about Gestalt theory. I don't even know what you mean by "collapse into a gestalt" or "previous iterations of me".

But if you're denying that your genetic and stimulus history is a part of you, that's an interesting claim considering what behavior science says...

Again, we're back on familiar ground; nature and nurture both play an important role, and the complexity is hard for us to track... no argument there, but it doesn't act in support of your other points. Still, I agree.

How it supports my point is that both "nature" and "nurture" represent distinct histories of events. Both forms of event can be pervasive. Giant events that effect everyone at once in the similar ways: The motion of the planets drives our circadian rhythm, gigantic events like earthquakes and volcanoes become extremely significant to everyone in the vicinity at the same time for the same reasons. Speciation, differentiation, and phenotypes are the "nature" example of a pervasive collective event within organisms.

 

[apeiron]

Perhaps you're searching for mysticism in my definition of collective conscious? I'm talking about an information network that holds very complete ideas that each individual of the network has only a fraction of a grasp of. As an example: not just the body of scientific knowledge, but the way of thinking that allows the body to exist in the first place; the "wave of reason" itself. We keep each other in check, acting as individuals, but we do so according to how the group determines.

So what's your next step when you correctly realize that "you" are socially-constructed - even down to the very way you think and reason? It is not just about your beliefs and attitudes but even your habits of "logic".

 

[Pythagorean]

I agree. I believe I alluded to this in my third paragraph.

As to the next step, I don't know. It's something I'm only beginning to appreciate. I have to work slowly through the history of what's already been thought about (returning again to the collective conscious of my new subculture).

 

[Pythagorean]

I guess subjectifying logic itself might be a next step.

 

[Forestman]

The important part to read is the nine lines of evidence.

http://www.evidenceoftheafterlife.com/

 

[Forestman]

Victor Zammit is a really cool guy.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

In post #118, I made a mistake writing “links”, I meant what I read of Strawson which wasn’t linked, e.g.

http://cognet.mit.edu/posters/TUCSON3/Strawson.html

“One can simply declare oneself to be a experiential-and-non-experiential monist: one who registers the indubitable reality of experiential phenomena and takes it that there are also non-experiential phenomena. I nominate this position for the title realistic monism.”

And I think reading on through the thread, Ken G answers my question about the word “create”.

I think pftest is making a basic point about language, which is actually very important to recognize because language is all we have here. Langauge involves hanging labels on things, but what are these "things"? They are the only things we are in any position to hang labels on: shared experiences. Period, that's what language is, hanging labels on experiences that we (assume we) share. So we cannot actually label the object "table", all we can label are the shared experiences we have around that object. This is quite important when we come to physicalism, and the OP question of whether or not a brain "creates" consciousness.

Both brain, consciousness, and create, are words, so can be nothing but hanging labels on shared experiences. We are looking for connections between these shared experiences, to make sense of them. Just like with cause and effect, we are looking for basic relationships, and also just like with cause and effect, we cannot actually demonstrate that the cause "creates" the effect, all we can say is the former gives us a way to make sense of the appearance of the latter, given that we experience things in temporal order. Using precise language like that saves us from making wrong terms based on assumptions we have made that we cannot actually demonstrate are true, and the same holds for claims that brains create consciousness, or are the "source" of consciousness, whatever we imagine a "source" is.

I was wondering whether it was suggested that brains invent (new) experience from discovered (already existing) information, or some other suggestion, given the idea involves a broad range of existence being both information and experientialists, and has a monist nature.

 

[King Wildog]

It seems perhaps in the question, too many things are undefined and unstated. Every happening will be due to availability, location, timing, potential difference, etc. All beings, then, would have to be questioned in their decision capability, so you are left with an incomplete question in that you must ask "conscious of what?" So it seems consciousness itself is defined case by case and that "conscious of what?" is always needed in that definition. Do you, pehaps mean "conscious of self"?

 

[rogerl]

Guys. Is it already categorically that all the mind function is emergent of the brain? Or is there some part of the mind that is beyond biochemistry and biology?

If your answer is maybe it is possible some part of the mind is beyond biochemistry and biology and perhaps our brain is just antennae to a mind somewhere via the microtubules or some hidden biophysics. It is possible parapsychology has any possibility? Or are you categorical that all of parapsychology is all fraud? If so, why? Is it because it violates lorentz invariance? That is, if the mind is outside the brain and it can move in space and time anywhere. It violates special relativity. So is Special Relativity and Lorentz Invariance the primary reason we categorically reject any claim of parapsychology and so repulsed by it that our blood pressure rise up the moment we hear the word and become so angry, etc.?

 

[Forestman]

The second link is all about the study in the Netherlands on NDE's.

http://www.ndelight.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=117&Itemid=63

http://lkm.fri.uni-lj.si/xaigor/slo/znanclanki/neardeat.htm

 

[Forever]

To bad there is so extremely little research in out of body experiences.

 

[Forestman]

There has been a lot of research done, it has just not been done through the university system. And mainly because they won't do it. Any person or group can do the scientific method. The university system doesn't hold any monopoly on scientific truth. The evidence is out there, and has been gained by scientific means, but you are not going to find it in a main stream scientific journal, except for rare cases. Like the study in the Netherlands for example.

 

[Ken G]

The second link is all about the study in the Netherlands on NDE's.

http://www.ndelight.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=117&Itemid=63

http://lkm.fri.uni-lj.si/xaigor/slo/znanclanki/neardeat.htm

Memory lapse was the first idea that popped into my head on that second paper, I wonder how those authors could have overlooked it.

 

[Calrid]

I think the best answer to this is that brains do in fact create consciousness but they are reliant on more than just that to be a coherent picture, whilst this does not invite dualism into the equation at all it does make for a more coherent picture of consciousness. Consciousness is an iterative process based on feedback from x that is not necessarily a part of the brain. Like evolution relies on the environment, conscious evolution does too.

 

[Calrid]

The second link is all about the study in the Netherlands on NDE's.

http://www.ndelight.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=117&Itemid=63

http://lkm.fri.uni-lj.si/xaigor/slo/znanclanki/neardeat.htm

I find NDE experiments are really not that robust. Firstly they can be induced without being near death and secondly they are often plagued with interpretation issues.

I attended a lecture on this from a student at Cambridge who had created all the experiences associated with NDEs by using chemicals. NDE may be a practical evolutionary solution to cope with the fear of death, it is hard to say if it is more than that, so the conclusions become moot. It may only be fairly ubiquitous because like belief in God we have evolved to be open to religious social induction because of the way our brains have evolved in groups by a long term social conditioning that may well be instinctive now too. After all how do instincts form if not by reiterative learning processes that slowly become intrinsic.

A good example is that certain forms of epilepsy in the frontal cortex invoke religious hallucinations even in atheists, some of which can be extremely disturbing. How would this be possible if there wasn't a propensity to be religious in the first place inherent somewhere? What we need to know is what is the reason for this and is it more than just evolution. I suspect not but then not being religious I am biased.

 

[Forestman]

Calrid, was the drug that was used to induce NDE elements ketamine? I don't feel that inducing NDE with drugs invalidates their being objectively real at all. If the brain and the mind are two separate things then it would be natural that some drugs would mimic what is going on in the brain near death, thus causing the mind and brain to separate. There is more than one way to interpret the data. For example, ketamine acts similar to chemicals that are released near death that protect the brain from and overload of glutamate. Even LSD can sometimes cause NDE's. IMO these drugs act as a gateway. Never the less I don't feel that people should take them. Simply being because they fry your brain in the process of making it open to higher forms of information. What convinces me is not the tunnel, light, and heaven or hell, but the information gained while a person has a OBE, and also people being able to feel other peoples emotions during their life review. If it were not for this I would believe that NDE's were merely a hallucination.

I am not religious either.