the "the brain is a radio" analogy

The Sparrow

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The Sparrow
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I was youtubing a debate with Sam Harris and Deepak Chopra and Deepak essentially bought this up. The idea that consciousness exists outside of the human brain, and the brain is just an organ to express it into a material world.
I don't believe it, simply because there is no evidence, but I find it a clever argument in that it is difficult to actually disprove.
For example, if people's brains are damaged in a way that they can no longer feel empathy, its not that empathy originates in the brain, its that the (if you will) projector can no longer project empathy (which still originates in the...metaphysical ether) into the material world.

How do the experts here deal with this particular "theory"?
 
Radios pick up radio waves. What particle, field, or wave does the brain pick up? If the brain can pick it up, then we can build an artificial consciousness antenna. If we can't, then it doesn't exist.
 
ehcks said:
Radios pick up radio waves. What particle, field, or wave does the brain pick up? If the brain can pick it up, then we can build an artificial consciousness antenna. If we can't, then it doesn't exist.
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My radio sends messages to my brain. At 08:55 I hear voices telling me what the weather will be like for the next few days.
 
The Sparrow said:
I was youtubing a debate with Sam Harris and Deepak Chopra and Deepak essentially bought this up. The idea that consciousness exists outside of the human brain, and the brain is just an organ to express it into a material world.
I don't believe it, simply because there is no evidence, but I find it a clever argument in that it is difficult to actually disprove.
For example, if people's brains are damaged in a way that they can no longer feel empathy, its not that empathy originates in the brain, its that the (if you will) projector can no longer project empathy (which still originates in the...metaphysical ether) into the material world.

How do the experts here deal with this particular "theory"?
Click to expand...
There's a thread around here somewhere... Basically, we've accounted for all the fields and forces that act upon the material world, and we can detect them all. If anything "paranormal" were acting on the brain from the outside, we would have already detected the effect and investigated the cause.

It would show up in MRIs, for example.
 
Just the same, physics cannot currently account for the subjective perceptual experience. This is a real phenomenon.

I am not saying it is mystical, but I am saying "neurons and neural nets!" is not enough. That's an adequate method to explain the data processing; it says nothing about how that real experience arises.
 
Beerina said:
Just the same, physics cannot currently account for the subjective perceptual experience. This is a real phenomenon.

I am not saying it is mystical, but I am saying "neurons and neural nets!" is not enough. That's an adequate method to explain the data processing; it says nothing about how that real experience arises.
Click to expand...

That's kinda what Deepak said. Unfortunately he uses that as an excuse to slip "god" in.
 
theprestige said:
There's a thread around here somewhere... Basically, we've accounted for all the fields and forces that act upon the material world, and we can detect them all. If anything "paranormal" were acting on the brain from the outside, we would have already detected the effect and investigated the cause.

It would show up in MRIs, for example.
Click to expand...

Just to play the devils advocate, I think the 'radio' side would argue that there MUST be a force we don't know about yet or do not have the tools to measure.
 
Beerina said:
Just the same, physics cannot currently account for the subjective perceptual experience.
Click to expand...
Physics can't explain gravity either. We know what it does, but we have no idea how it works.

I am saying "neurons and neural nets!" is not enough.
Click to expand...
For countering psychic claims it is. You don't need to know the intimate details of a particular computer architecture to know that it is made from logic gates and data processing. Same with the human brain - we haven't figured out the algorithms yet, but we do know that it's all done with neurons.

That's an adequate method to explain the data processing; it says nothing about how that real experience arises.
Click to expand...
Just because we don't know the specifics of how something works doesn't mean we don't know the boundaries. When Darwin developed his Theory of Evolution he didn't know about DNA, he just knew that somehow traits were passed from one generation to the next. But when searching for the mechanism we expected it to be biological - not radio waves.
 
It's one of those unfalsifiable statements. We know a great deal more about the brain's activity now than we ever did. We can watch processing in real time and trace neural pathways and networks....We understand the function of most neurochemicals and the functions of synapses and uptake and re-uptake and much more besides.
To all appearances, to all evidence, consciousness is a result of the electrochemical activity of the brain, and nothing more.

We know that the physical structure of the brain is directly tied to consciousness and that damage or lesion in one part produces observable effects. That stimulation of the brain in some areas produces specific results...Memories are elicited or physical actions performed.
Alter the chemical functioning of the brain and again, observable results on consciousness occur. Hallucination or paranoia or euphoria or depression.

Yet a woomeister like Chopra would look at all this and say..."So what"....You're just messing with the receiver!"

Evidence can never trump "Faith".
 
Yes. And if someone challenged him and said there is no evidence that consciousness arises from an external force, he would claim you are "misinterpreting" the evidence from the experiments you site.
 
Beerina said:
Just the same, physics cannot currently account for the subjective perceptual experience. This is a real phenomenon.

I am not saying it is mystical, but I am saying "neurons and neural nets!" is not enough. That's an adequate method to explain the data processing; it says nothing about how that real experience arises.
Click to expand...

Only if you beg the question.
 
The Sparrow said:
I was youtubing a debate with Sam Harris and Deepak Chopra and Deepak essentially bought this up. The idea that consciousness exists outside of the human brain, and the brain is just an organ to express it into a material world.
I don't believe it, simply because there is no evidence, but I find it a clever argument in that it is difficult to actually disprove.
For example, if people's brains are damaged in a way that they can no longer feel empathy, its not that empathy originates in the brain, its that the (if you will) projector can no longer project empathy (which still originates in the...metaphysical ether) into the material world.

How do the experts here deal with this particular "theory"?
Click to expand...

The best refutation of something like this is a coherent explanation of how brains produce consciousness. We keep finding neural correlates to conscious activity, but it always fall short of causation, leaving the door open for dualistic claims like the above.
 
gerdbonk said:
Why don't we all receive the same consciousness?
Click to expand...

[channeling Chopra] Who says we don't? Or at least parts of the same grand consciousness. This accounts for things like empathy or the ability to put yourself in another's shoes so to speak. You just happen to be better tuned to those aspects of that grand consciousness that you generally and more strongly experience but other aspects do come through from time to time[/channeling Chopra]

It's easy when you can just make crap up.


gerdbonk said:
How many consciousness stations are out there broadcasting?
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And that's the rub of it gerdbonk, it doesn't solve the issue or question of how exactly consciousness is generated it just moves the source of where it is generated. Perhaps to some unreachable or inaccessible domain to make attempts to figure it out or recreate it seem futile.
 
Beerina said:
Just the same, physics cannot currently account for the subjective perceptual experience. This is a real phenomenon.
Click to expand...

That is because you are asking the wrong guy. All physic can tell you is that we are composed of molecules, that we have only chemical reaction in our body, that pretty much on QM level everything is de-corelated because it is in a huge water heat bath, and that particle interaction in the standard model are pretty much known to 100% in those pretty bog standard PT conditions.

Since there is *nothing* which has been evidenced as being non-standard, all physic can tell is that however complicated , if the brain has anything special , it is not due to its composition or particle interaction.

Now biologist can tell you a bit more, and as far as I can tell the current general idea is that the brain however complicated is not mystical or special no matter what abstruse definition or request of explanation for "subjective perceptual experience" one require, there has not been any evidence of a anything but normal biological or physical interaction.

I am not saying it is mystical, but I am saying "neurons and neural nets!" is not enough. That's an adequate method to explain the data processing; it says nothing about how that real experience arises.
Click to expand...

The data processing *is* the phenomenon. The perception is only the emergent activity rising from it. There is no evidence of anything beyond that.
 
Fudbucker said:
The best refutation of something like this is a coherent explanation of how brains produce consciousness. We keep finding neural correlates to conscious activity, but it always fall short of causation, leaving the door open for dualistic claims like the above.
Click to expand...
No explanation will ever be good enough for the dualists. They 'know' that their minds are separate from their bodies because that's how they feel. The argument for dualism has never been about evidence.
 
Beerina said:
Just the same, physics cannot currently account for the subjective perceptual experience. This is a real phenomenon.

I am not saying it is mystical, but I am saying "neurons and neural nets!" is not enough. That's an adequate method to explain the data processing; it says nothing about how that real experience arises.
Click to expand...

Only because you refuse to accept any physical explanation.
 
The Sparrow said:
I was youtubing a debate with Sam Harris and Deepak Chopra and Deepak essentially bought this up. The idea that consciousness exists outside of the human brain, and the brain is just an organ to express it into a material world.
I don't believe it, simply because there is no evidence, but I find it a clever argument in that it is difficult to actually disprove.
For example, if people's brains are damaged in a way that they can no longer feel empathy, its not that empathy originates in the brain, its that the (if you will) projector can no longer project empathy (which still originates in the...metaphysical ether) into the material world.

How do the experts here deal with this particular "theory"?
Click to expand...

If the brain is a radio what's doing the transmitting?
 
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