the "the brain is a radio" analogy

[MinnesotaBrant]

When I was a preteen, if I held my teeth a certain way, I could get radio stations playing in my head.

 

[fuelair]

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"?

Don't know about Harris, but Chopra's brain is a morass of faulty wiring and short circuits. Don't believe the ether, don't whiff it either!!!!!

 

[gerdbonk]

When I was a preteen, if I held my teeth a certain way, I could get radio stations playing in my head.

Deepak?

 

[Ladewig]

When I was a preteen, if I held my teeth a certain way, I could get radio stations playing in my head.

When you say stations, do you mean more than one was playing simultaneously or that you could acquire a variety of individual stations through some means?

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

When I was a preteen, if I held my teeth a certain way, I could get radio stations playing in my head.

Gavin? Is that you?

 

[nelsondogg]

If the brain is just a radio then why do alcohol and drugs change behavior and decision making? Messing with a radio receiver doesn't change the broadcast.

 

[Brian-M]

When I was a preteen, if I held my teeth a certain way, I could get radio stations playing in my head.

Anyone can do that. The trick is to remove the internal workings of a portable radio from its casing, and hold your teeth against the speaker while the radio is operating.

 

[Brian-M]

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.

It doesn't seem like a clever argument to me at all.

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.

That doesn't make any sense.

If the brain were simply acting as a transceiver for an external mind, then nothing done to the brain or body could directly affect the functioning/processes of the mind itself, it could only interfere with the ability of the mind to control/interact with the body.

And because things such as the ability to experience empathy, or do math, or understand language, are all internal processes of the mind, nothing that could be done to the brain could possibly interfere with the mind's capacity to perform these things.

The fact that damage to the brain can interfere with the mind's capacity to perform these things is extremely compelling evidence that the mind is a product of brain activity, and does not exist independently of it.

To use a more common example, let's look at alcohol.

If the brain were only a transceiver, then alcohol consumption could only interfere with the mind/body connection, but not with the mind itself. People might lose co-ordination, have trouble focusing their eyes, ect. But their thought-processes, emotions, ect, would be unaffected, because the alcohol has no mechanism by which it can interfere with thought-processes, emotions, ect, since the mind isn't part of the body, which is where the alcohol is.

But if the mind is a product of brain activity, then alcohol could easily interfere with thought-processes, emotions, ect, because it's directly affecting the brain.

And so the fact that alcohol does interfere with thought-processes, emotions, reaction-times, alertness, ect, then this is demonstrable evidence that the mind actually is the product of brain-activity, and that the brain is not merely a transceiver for an external mind.

(Although nelsondogg seems to have beaten me to making this point.)

 

[Tassman]

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.

There's no reason to think that the brain doesn't process subjective perceptual experience. Clearly brain damage or chemical input affects how we process such information so why would one posit something other than the brain processing it?

 

[MinnesotaBrant]

When you say stations, do you mean more than one was playing simultaneously or that you could acquire a variety of individual stations through some means?

I could change stations by moving my front teeth backwards or forwards. I was told as a kid this is impossible, so as an adult, I harbor some doubts as to whether or not this happened.

 

[The Man]

It doesn't seem like a clever argument to me at all.



That doesn't make any sense.

If the brain were simply acting as a transceiver for an external mind, then nothing done to the brain or body could directly affect the functioning/processes of the mind itself, it could only interfere with the ability of the mind to control/interact with the body.

And because things such as the ability to experience empathy, or do math, or understand language, are all internal processes of the mind, nothing that could be done to the brain could possibly interfere with the mind's capacity to perform these things.

The fact that damage to the brain can interfere with the mind's capacity to perform these things is extremely compelling evidence that the mind is a product of brain activity, and does not exist independently of it.

To use a more common example, let's look at alcohol.

If the brain were only a transceiver, then alcohol consumption could only interfere with the mind/body connection, but not with the mind itself. People might lose co-ordination, have trouble focusing their eyes, ect. But their thought-processes, emotions, ect, would be unaffected, because the alcohol has no mechanism by which it can interfere with thought-processes, emotions, ect, since the mind isn't part of the body, which is where the alcohol is.

But if the mind is a product of brain activity, then alcohol could easily interfere with thought-processes, emotions, ect, because it's directly affecting the brain.

And so the fact that alcohol does interfere with thought-processes, emotions, reaction-times, alertness, ect, then this is demonstrable evidence that the mind actually is the product of brain-activity, and that the brain is not merely a transceiver for an external mind.

(Although nelsondogg seems to have beaten me to making this point.)

Again as a devil's advocate...

The alcohol effects the sensory input data, the transmission of said data up stream and the reception of the resulting, though now erroneous due to the compromised data, remote processing.

Returning to my sceptic self again...

More to the fact that given what is considered to be remote is just the processing it would seem unlikely that we wouldn't have more problems in transmission and reception just under normal conditions. Also processing is exactly what neurons and collections of neurons do, so removing the only thing they essentially do to some imagined removed location or source just makes them rather superfluous.

 

[Myriad]

It's one of those unfalsifiable statements... Yet a woomeister like Chopra would look at all this and say..."So what"....You're just messing with the receiver!"

The "radio" model itself might be unfalsifiable, but the claim that some aspect of the self survives the death of the brain due to the continued existence of the transmitter or transmission (which is the usual reason for the radio model being posited) can be addressed more directly.

One question is, what aspect of the self can thereby survive? Not memories; those can be lost when the brain is damaged. Not personality; that can change radically when the brain is damaged. Not language; that can be lost when the brain is damaged. Not skills or knowledge; those can be lost when the brain is damaged.

Unless, besides a transmitter, there's also a receiver and a database maintaining a backup copy. Yet oddly, that backup information must be embargoed while you're still alive in any condition. If you have advanced Alzheimer's, the database remembers your children's names (or else, how could what survives after your death be anything like yourself?), but won't transmit that knowledge to your brain even though you're awake, talking, and experiencing.

 

[Myriad]

It occurs to me that if brain radio works anything like the cell phone network, next time I have trouble remembering something I should go to the most inconvenient corner of the house.

Maybe that's why gurus sit on mountaintops (at least, in cartoons). Clearer signal.

 

[The Sparrow]

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

Some sort of magical quantum universal consciousness, whatever the hell that means.

 

[The Man]

The "radio" model itself might be unfalsifiable, but the claim that some aspect of the self survives the death of the brain due to the continued existence of the transmitter or transmission (which is the usual reason for the radio model being posited) can be addressed more directly.

One question is, what aspect of the self can thereby survive? Not memories; those can be lost when the brain is damaged. Not personality; that can change radically when the brain is damaged. Not language; that can be lost when the brain is damaged. Not skills or knowledge; those can be lost when the brain is damaged.

Unless, besides a transmitter, there's also a receiver and a database maintaining a backup copy. Yet oddly, that backup information must be embargoed while you're still alive in any condition. If you have advanced Alzheimer's, the database remembers your children's names (or else, how could what survives after your death be anything like yourself?), but won't transmit that knowledge to your brain even though you're awake, talking, and experiencing.

It occurs to me that if brain radio works anything like the cell phone network, next time I have trouble remembering something I should go to the most inconvenient corner of the house.

Maybe that's why gurus sit on mountaintops (at least, in cartoons). Clearer signal.

Exactly, any fault resulting form brain damage or degradation simply means transmission/reception is messed up.

You gotta get more brian bars.

Also if brain network service is anything like any other service then some network errors or outages are to be expected.

 

[The Sparrow]

It doesn't seem like a clever argument to me at all.



That doesn't make any sense.

If the brain were simply acting as a transceiver for an external mind, then nothing done to the brain or body could directly affect the functioning/processes of the mind itself, it could only interfere with the ability of the mind to control/interact with the body.

Pretend Deepak: No No, what is being damaged is the machine that allows our universal consciousness mind from interacting with this particular physical reality.

And because things such as the ability to experience empathy, or do math, or understand language, are all internal processes of the mind, nothing that could be done to the brain could possibly interfere with the mind's capacity to perform these things.

Pretend Deepak: No, things like empathy and love come from the universal consciousness, and our brains are required to process this "energy" into our physical reality.

The fact that damage to the brain can interfere with the mind's capacity to perform these things is extremely compelling evidence that the mind is a product of brain activity, and does not exist independently of it.

No no, you are a biased objective materialist and are projecting that bias onto your interpretation of the evidence.

...
(Although nelsondogg seems to have beaten me to making this point.)

I debated this for weeks with someone on beliefnet, even the memories they claimed were stored in the universal consciousness. The brain was just used to express it into our physical realility.

I also used schizophrenia and he claimed that the universal consciousness was quite sane and intact, just the brain transmitter was broken. Same for depression.
Most frustrating and futile. Especially having someone tell me what my depression feels like and what it really is. What crap!

 

[I Am The Scum]

Even under the most favorable concessions, the "radio" argument is still just making stuff up.

To use an analogy, let's take an old-fashioned pocket watch. I, personally, don't know a whole lot about how they work. There's a knob on the top, and turning that winds up a spring which stores power, and that power engages the gears and eventually makes the hands turn. I couldn't really give you any details beyond that. But it would be ridiculous of me to say that the gears telepathically link with an invisible gremlin and he punches in the time from his computer on Mars. I don't get to fill in the blanks with my wild imagination.

 

[The Sparrow]

Even under the most favorable concessions, the "radio" argument is still just making stuff up.

To use an analogy, let's take an old-fashioned pocket watch. I, personally, don't know a whole lot about how they work. There's a knob on the top, and turning that winds up a spring which stores power, and that power engages the gears and eventually makes the hands turn. I couldn't really give you any details beyond that. But it would be ridiculous of me to say that the gears telepathically link with an invisible gremlin and he punches in the time from his computer on Mars. I don't get to fill in the blanks with my wild imagination.

Well, I think that;s what ultimately I am left with. You can make up anything you want, but there is no evidence for it. The best I can say is that you have no proof, but I also can't disprove it. that apparently is enough for some woomeisters to declare victory.

 

[Porpoise of Life]

So this theory basically produces the same physical and mental phenomena as the regular scientific theories about brain function, only it adds an extraneous and unfalsifiable entity.
I wonder what a certain mr. Occam would have to say about that.

Unless the 'brain as receiver' camp can explain or predict things that the scientific model can't, it's basically useless.

 

[pharphis]

I don't see how this is anything beyond speculation to save face for his new age woo woo.

When defended, does he do anything other than draw (false) analogies or argue from ignorance? I doubt it

Also, Chopra debating (anyone) sounds more absurd than a creationist debating an evolutionary biologist.