Mad ramblings about brains not existing.

[Ibn Sina]

 

Arguement 1- Inference from medical cases

The brain is such a squishy  substance. It can be held on ones hand, and can be touched , and seen and smelled and what not, just like a football or a volleyball. Both objects come under the category of 'touchable'.  But when something happens to the brain of an organism, the entire functioning of the organism changes. This is a well known fact. There is the cerebellum which if it gets damaged there is no motor activity. There is an area in the brain called broca's area which if it gets damaged you won't be able to speak. Damage to some other areas leads to inability to read, or understand. Damage to medulla oblangata might end your life then and there. But no matter how much we talk about these squishy areas in the brain which influences the various functioning of the organism, what doesn't ever change is the nothingness that lies behind them. For example there was a guy who had a rod rammed up through his head (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage) and even that guy had consciousness, may be a very low quality consciousness but still consciousness it is.  The damage to the brain did change the quality and the complexity of the consciousness, but it didn't change the fact that he had lost  no consciousness or more precisely the 'nothingness. You can have a high quality consciousness, or a low quality consciousness, you can be high as a kite or in a vegetable state  like in  coma, but the 'nothingness' simply never goes away. You can hypothetically think of a person who was born blind, couldn't feel anything or touch anything, couldn't move, couldn't hear, couldn't taste nothing, only his vital  functions were  working. Now, what would this person feel like? The person is completely barred from the contents of reality. He has no means to react to even the slightest modification in reality. What would his consciousness look like? A completely null void. And that is the ultimate substrate of all existence.  

Argument 2- Evolutionary history of consciousness

You do have the knowledge of the complex experience of being a human. Now think of lesser form, what about hippos? They are not capable of doing higher cognition. They just eat, and breed and die. What about insects? Look at their brain. It's almost negligible. So their experience is less richer than that of mammals. Now look at poriferans.  They are just attached to a substratum until all their cells disintegrate. They don't have eyes, they don't walk. Water comes in and goes out through them and that is how they get their nutrients.  They have no nervous system, nothing at all. As you can see, their consciousness must be nearer to that of nothingness, as they have no systems to absorb those experience from reality. All right , now think of amoeba and bacteria. They are like 98% water, just a  bit of ions and organic molecules floating around , they are like very tiny minsicule drop of water. And yet they can reproduce , they can produce toxins and so on, so even in them there is a consciousness, which is even nearer to nothingness because they are even more simple.

From a long chain of evolutionary history, the human brain has developed which has helped to make the interaction of the human organism with it's immediate reality, more richer. But this long chain of evolutionary history shows the source of the ultimate basis of life and consciousness, moving more and more towards a simpler consciousness thus more and more towards nothingness. And that is the ultimate reality.

Our brain is complex enough to keep us distracting with the modifications of reality and hence toward a continuous bondage of suffering, but if we can keep on peeling off this complexity, and keep directing our consciousness towards a more and more simpler form, we too can experience the non-existence of existence. 

 

Argument 3- examining the molecular nature of matter

So yes, it is true that the brain has our experience richer, but what subtends the brain? What is holding the brain? What is the substance of the brain? Neurons? A collection of neurons? Sodium moving in and potassium moving out through the neurons of the brain in response to the stimuli picked up by the sensory organs? Well yes it has created the experience but where do these ions come from? Where do these neuronal cells come from? They are just a collection of specific proteins and carbohydrates, and what are these proteins? Just a bunch of amino acids. What are these amino acids? Just a bunch of nitrogenous compounds made up of nitrogen and hydrogen atoms and what do these atoms contain? You  guessed it. NOTHINGNESS!

 

 

Edited June 5, 2018 by Ibn Sina