What does the brain actually do?

[Carl-Richard]

I know the brain can't produce what I define as consciousness, because it exists prior to the brain. The brain, either as a mental concept or a sensory experience, always arises as an appearance within consciousness. This insight made me initially very skeptical of the brain in general, maybe to a fault, and made me want to minimize any type of mechanistic explanation of reality if it involved anything about neural activity.

However, as I've been reading about cognitive psychology and neuroscience, I've been willing to refine my skepticism by conceding that it's possible to find evidence for some cases of causality between brain activity and much of our behavior and experiences. This is NOT the same as saying the brain is responsible for "everything" (as maybe a materialist would say). I'm talking about specific activity explaining specific functioning through a causal relationship (while using a reasonable definition of causality).

The important distinction here lies in correlation vs. causation. Brain imaging techniques like fMRI and EEG are correlational methods and cannot establish a causal relationship. However, methods like TMS are theoretically able to find evidence for causality as you can directly stimulate activity and monitor the experiential/behavioral consequences. Here the problems boil down to practicalities, like how to accurately isolate specific activity/behavior.

You also have so-called "double dissociation" cases when studying the effects of brain damage. A famous case is the discovery of Wernicke's and Broca's area. Wernicke's patient had damage in one area and had trouble with speech production (but could understand speech just fine) while Broca's patient had damage in another area and had trouble with language comprehension (but could produce speech, albeit incoherently). This seems to demonstrate that speech production and language comprehension are mediated separately by these two places.

When you take a drug, like an anesthetic or a psychedelic, there obviously seems to be a predictable change in subjective experience and behavior. Surely, without going into details, this as well must count as a demonstration of causality, must it not?

In short, my view is essentially that materialististic models about the brain aren't completely full of crap if we dare to look beyond the metaphysical confusion about consciousness and similar matters. Are there any important principles that could give some insight into this question? Where do you guys draw the line? Consciousness? Experiences? Behavior?

Edited April 1, 2021 by Carl-Richard

[Boethius]

I've been slowly reading through this book

https://www.amazon.com/Where-Buddhism-Meets-Neuroscience-Conversations/dp/1559394781/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=neuroscience+of+buddhism&qid=1617307505&sr=8-5

that explores these questions among neuroscientific researches and Buddhist leaders (including the Dalai Lama). Suffice it to say that these conversations are very complicated and subtle and that there's probably no final "resolution" in understanding the issues involved.

[Tim R]

I think the brain functions as some sort of mechanism/method for (re-)arranging the contents within consciousness. 

If we think of consciousness as something like a mirror which has no qualities on its own and is therefore able to contain/create every possible quality, the brain would be something like a grid / lens / prism which "overlays" itself on the mirror without changing anything about the mirror itself, but enables consciousness / the mirror to look at all the content in different ways. Which is of course how psychedelics / neurotransmitters work, they "unlock" different functions / structures of the brain, i. e. rearrange/change the grid / lens / prism and thereby change they content of consciousness. Taking psychedelics doesn't change consciousness itself, it only changes the contents.

Consciousness is absolutely and completely untouchable.

Imagine this mirror would exude white light to create a visual domain of being. The brain would be like a very, very complicated prism, which doesn't fundamentally change anything about the white light itself, but simply rearranges it in an extremely complicated way.

 

And yet, all of it, including the brain, is an illusion. You could say the brain is that which creates the illusion in the first place. And since the nature of illusions is illusory in and of itself, the brain creates itself. Therefore of course, it was never even real. 

The prism is the mirror. The white light, pretending to be a prism. 

Maya is Brahman, but Brahman is not Maya. 

Edited April 1, 2021 by Tim R

[Batman]

The brain is a distinction (or an appearance) in the mind (which is the prism for experiencing reality as a self). As a distinction, it serves the reality of self-survival.  This appearance or distinction has a certain uniqueness to it, because within the reality of mind, altering the form of the brain may cause changes in that reality. 

However, because it is only a distinction in a relative reality (the reality of self-survival), any changes to this distinction it will only affect the relative reality, whether by destroying the ability the experience it, or by expanding or contracting the mind, changing it's parameters and causing a different experience (or awareness). Nevertheless, it will still remain the reality of self-survival, albeit different.

So, the brain is a unique distinction within consciousness, which appears to be the distinction that is most closely linked to the ability to experience consciousness in a specific fashion (due to it's inherent limits and capacities). Of course, according to science the brain has much more functionality other than generating experience or awareness, which we are not aware of (such as self-regulation of hormones). All the functions of the brain (including generating experience) seems, I suspect, to serve the persistence of a life form (human, dog, cat). Thus, the brain is the primary organ evolved in sentient creatures (aka form that can actively resist dissolution) to regulate survival. 

[Moksha]

I lean toward the valve theory, as espoused by Aldous Huxley and others.

His letter explained his motivations as being rooted in an idea that the brain is a reducing valve that restricts consciousness, and hoping mescaline might help access a greater degree of awareness (an idea he later included in the book).

The brain is a mechanism used by Consciousness, to hide from itself, until it discovers itself. The challenge of the game is to unlock the deep subconscious reality that is there, initially beyond our grasp, but ultimately obtainable through sincere seeking.

[LastThursday]

3 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

The important distinction here lies in correlation vs. causation.

You hit the nail on the head, but it slipped. In reality there's only ever correlation. Causation is just the extreme end of correlation. So the brain and its activity is correlated to consciousness (via asking questions to the experimental subject(!)) yes, but causation can never be proven in principle. You can never be 100% certain of anything.

Importantly, correlation always works in both directions. Does brain activity produce consciousness, or does conscious phenomena produce brain activity? It's even worse however, because all that brain monitoring and stimulation is happening in the consciousness of the experimenter. And worse still, the experimenter and the experiment is happening in your consciousness, and you don't even know if the experimenter is conscious or not (you'd have to probe their brain first).

Edited April 1, 2021 by LastThursday

[Carl-Richard]

@Boethius Cool thanks

Btw, I wasn't sure to post this in self-actualization or meditation/consciousness/spirtuality, because it clearly falls under "philosophy", but it also touches on all of those other topics ?

 

9 hours ago, LastThursday said:

You hit the nail on the head, but it slipped. In reality there's only ever correlation. Causation is just the extreme end of correlation. So the brain and its activity is correlated to consciousness (via asking questions to the experimental subject(!)) yes, but causation can never be proven in principle. You can never be 100% certain of anything.

Which is why I cheekily added "while using a reasonable definition of causation" at the end of the previous paragraph, with which I mean that in some ways I'm conceding to the materialists own definition or treatment of it. Let me also clarify again that consciousness as The Absolute is out of the picture (it's "uncaused"). I'm concerned about the "contents" of consciousness, of which the brain is included.

I'm familiar with Hume's problem of induction and how causality is impossible to prove, but if we were to somewhat borrow Kant's critique: from a human perspective, causality seems to be a natural law, or atleast we treat it as such (not that materialists are transcendental idealists, but nevertheless, they seem to follow in the same footsteps, atleast out from how they treat it in language).

If I only concerned myself with what is provided by my direct experience (beyond thought-laden perception), I would stop right at the very first paragraph, but here I am, talking about "the content of the dream" so to speak. I'm already aware of the silliness of it 

So in other words, granted the silliness of defining anything as causal, granted the reductionism and general lack of comprehensiveness of materialistic models, I do sympathize with pointing to the brain as a way to consistently predict some aspects of behavior or experience (as with any physiological apparatus) in ways that let's say exceeds the "common conception" of correlation and its limitations.

You could say I'm trying to reconcile my "consciousness first" model with the question of "what does the materialists gain from making their distinction between causality and correlation, and can I have some of it?"

Edited April 2, 2021 by Carl-Richard

[Leo Gura]

Same as the Earth. What does the Earth do? The Earth is made of consciousness. Consciousness imagines an Earth to anchor your human dream. A human dream needs anchors like Earths and brains.

What does Sherlock Holms' brain do? It runs his life -- within the limited frame of that fictional universe.

[Tim R]

6 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

A human dream needs anchors like Earths and brains.

But why does a dream need anchors?

When I dream in sleep and something seriously weird happens, most of the time I don't even question the logical or metaphysical validity of what happened. 

Why then should this dream have to be convincing? Why set up "explanations" like brains and earths and whatnot?

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Tim R said:

Why then should this dream have to be convincing?

It doesn't have to be. But if it wasn't convincing you would no longer call it "reality". It would be a fluid and wacky as your nightly dreams.

The anchors are needed IF you want things to feel "real" and solid.

Just notice how you'd feel if you no longer used the notions of an Earth or brains to explain your daily experience. Notice how it would feel to not have any anchors.

[LastThursday]

10 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

If I only concerned myself with what is provided by my direct experience (beyond thought-laden perception), I would stop right at the very first paragraph, but here I am, talking about "the content of the dream" so to speak. I'm already aware of the silliness of it 

My work is done.

Ok I'll come out to play. Bear with me...

10 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

You could say I'm trying to reconcile my "consciousness first" model with the question of "what does the materialists gain from making their distinction between causality and correlation, and can I have some of it?"

It's the black box phenomenon isn't it? You have a black box that is attached to wires going in and wires going out. The materialist is convinced the black box does something important like generate consciousness, but would like to prove it. What the materialist wants is a theory of causation. That whatever the black box does to the input, causes the output. The input in this case is perhaps the outside world and its physics and the output is consciousness. How to go about it?

The conventional way is to experiment by poking in different types of input and seeing what comes out. So, you stab a needle in the subject's hand and they shout an obscenity, input, output. And much like seismologist monitors tremors and their reverberations around the world, a model is built up of what's in the black box (or the centre of the earth say).

The unconventional way is to go and shove a screwdriver into the black box and see what happens. Hmm. When you poke the screwdriver in this part, this happens and that part, that happens. Correlation. You poke the screwdriver in the same part a thousand times and get the same result. Causation. It's all a matter of degree. Ask the scientists at CERN about seven sigma confidence, even they don't believe in causation.

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/143497-cern-now-99-999999999-sure-it-has-found-the-higgs-boson

Obviously, in every day speak causation is just a shorthand for I've seen this happen a thousand times before or I believe that that thing was the cause (and I don't really care too much if it was or not).

15 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

When you take a drug, like an anesthetic or a psychedelic, there obviously seems to be a predictable change in subjective experience and behavior. Surely, without going into details, this as well must count as a demonstration of causality, must it not?

Yes! You're getting closer. The only proper experiment is one that you carry out on yourself. Especially so with consciousness experiments. You simply cannot know if other people are conscious or not. The ground of all experience is your consciousness.

You seem unsure when you say that "there obviously seems to be a predictable change". Is the change really predictable? Does taking a drug on Sunday have the same effect as taking the drug on Tuesday? How do you realiably compare the two experiences. You don't. That's a problem.

Taking a drug in any case is just messing around with the inputs and seeing a highly correlated output (maybe 7 sigma!). It tells you very little if in fact the experience is mediated by the brain at all. Maybe it's the heart, or the blood or who knows what. Maybe it's just consciousness playing with itself. But perhaps like a seismologist you can try and infer what the black box in the middle is doing and work out if indeed it is the brain doing it.

[Leo Gura]

15 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

When you take a drug, like an anesthetic or a psychedelic, there obviously seems to be a predictable change in subjective experience and behavior. Surely, without going into details, this as well must count as a demonstration of causality, must it not?

If Sherlock Holmes ate some mushrooms or hit himself in the head with a hammer, he would experience some odd subjective experiences. And he would consider it a demonstration of causality.

But is it really? All of that "causality" is occurring within an imaginary dimension. The true cause of Sherlock Holmes' odd subjective experiences is not the mushroom or the hammer or his brain, it's the author who imagined him and his entire universe -- of which Sherlock is totally clueless because the author exists outside the plane of his reality.

@Carl-Richard The answers to your question exist outside the plane of your reality. You need to figure out a way to go orthogonal to all of material existence, or you will forever be stuck within that plane and your questions will never be answered.

Causality is imaginary, as is time and history.

[LastThursday]

@Leo Gura I simply can't restrain myself sorry. What you say is elementary my dear Watson. I'll leave now.

[Rajneeshpuram]

13 hours ago, Moksha said:

I lean toward the valve theory, as espoused by Aldous Huxley and others.

His letter explained his motivations as being rooted in an idea that the brain is a reducing valve that restricts consciousness, and hoping mescaline might help access a greater degree of awareness (an idea he later included in the book).

The brain is a mechanism used by Consciousness, to hide from itself, until it discovers itself. The challenge of the game is to unlock the deep subconscious reality that is there, initially beyond our grasp, but ultimately obtainable through sincere seeking.

This makes a lot of sense, I was thinking similar before knowing the Aldous Huxley theory. I see the brain like a magnet that imprison our consiousness into the human individual point of view and this create the duality effect.

[Leo Gura]

It's more strange-loopy than that.

The brain is not a reducing valve of consciousness, consciousness imagined a reducing valve and called it "a brain".

The paradox is that the brain reduces consciousness not by some material mechanism, but simply you imagining you have one. When you buy the idea that "I have a brain and it produces my consciousness" -- that idea itself reduces your consciousness and THAT is true function of "the brain". The concept of "the brain" is there to ground you in finite consciousness, for without that concept everything would be seen to be as it truly is: infinite

Imagine if you were locked in a prison with an open lock, and the only thing keeping you locked in there was your idea that the door was locked! For decades you planned how to break through the lock, and none of your methods worked, until one day you realized there was no lock, and suddenly the door opened.

You ARE the lock and you ARE the key!

Ta-da!

- - - - -

How else could it be,

But that you are the key,

That will set you free,

To simply be,

United with me.

[seeking_brilliance]

Do you guys give the 'function' of the brain more importance than the kidneys? 

[fridjonk]

@Leo Gura You're On-Point today ma man 

[Nahm]

17 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

 

consciousness knows the consciousness can't produce what consciousness defines as consciousness, because consciousness exists prior to the consciousness. The consciousness, either as a mental concept or a sensory experience, always arises as an appearance within consciousness. This insight made consciousness initially very skeptical of the consciousness in general, maybe to a fault, and made consciousness want to minimize any type of mechanistic explanation of consciousness if consciousness involved anything about consciousness

 

Just take the ‘you’ out. 

[Gesundheit]

17 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

I know

Stop right there.

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Causality is imaginary, as is time and history.

It is, as are all distinctions. The question is about when or if it is ever warranted to distinguish between imaginary correlation and imaginary causation.

 

3 hours ago, LastThursday said:

You seem unsure when you say that "there obviously seems to be a predictable change". Is the change really predictable? Does taking a drug on Sunday have the same effect as taking the drug on Tuesday? How do you realiably compare the two experiences. You don't. That's a problem.

It's true that predictability is a shaky concept. For instance, psychedelics used to have a very different effect on me a couple of years ago than today.

If you were to take the neuroscientific perspective of causation, you would say that the drug predictably triggers the same receptors, leading to the same type of signalling cascades.

If you were to explain the diversity of experience from this perspective, you would say that it's because the receptors are a part of larger variable system. But this variation is not limitless (if we're limiting ourselves to humans). After all, different people have a lot in common.

I return to the word "reasonable". There seems to be a reasonable level of predictability. For instance, it wouldn't be reasonable to say that taking LSD turns you into a frog for the rest of your life, or that it is identical to the effects of something like Salvia Divinorum. In other words, the neuroscience seems reasonable to me; maybe not magically perfect (unlike reality), but just reasonable.

Edited April 2, 2021 by Carl-Richard