Quack.

Digestion cannot be reduced to stomach. So what?

:up:

Digestion cannot be reduced to stomach. So what? — Banno

It would be silly since it leaves out the intestines, for example. But oddly, and I mean from a purely physicalist, non-dualist perspective, people often talk about brains thinking as if it is the only part of the body involved. Like, say, not the endocrine system, not the large neuronal networks around the heart or in the gut. In fact there is a tremendous tendency to focus on neurons alone, since people don't seem aware of all the research on glial cells and cognition. Next time I encounter that kind of unjustified reduction I am going to use your nice quote here. With credit, here, anyway.

It's from Searle.

Oh, good, he'll never notice.

Semantics cannot be reduced to syntax either. But you need both, otherwise trouble get you in all kinds of.

Basically his opening argument is ‘without stimuli there is no consciousness’. I agree. That is literally all there is to the comparison of the brain to a cellphone. A cellphone with no signal does very little. A human brain with no input does very little.

Cognitive Neuroscientists are the one’s on the forefront of this field not psychiatrists. Psychiatry is a discipline involved with treating brain disorders/illnesses with drugs - which most pharmaceutical companies have pretty much given up pursuing because they cannot make a profit from them due to the carpet bombing effect on the brain (depending on the person, or even some specific period of time for a person, the effects of drugs can be completely different).

If we lock someone in a room with minimal stimuli would they cease to be ‘conscious’ much like a cellphone in a tunnel? There are studies on sensory deprivation.

Listened on a few more seconds ... he doesn’t know what ‘emergent’ means.

Ignore the fool, but explore the question as a ‘what if’ question.

So, what if the brain isn’t responsible for consciousness? What if the brain is merely a conduit for ‘consciousness’? How far can we stretch our imagination and what do we find of substance from doing so?

Brains can stimulate themselves.

I am pretty sure the pharmaceutical companies are still making a lot of money off of psychotropics.

adderall
Xanax
Alprazolam

are all up there with the most common prescriptions total in medicine, for example.

What’s your point?

Psychiatry is a discipline involved with treating brain disorders/illnesses with drugs - which most pharmaceutical companies have pretty much given up pursuing because they cannot make a profit from them due to the carpet bombing effect on the brain (depending on the person, or even some specific period of time for a person, the effects of drugs can be completely different). — I like sushi

One point is that I don't think this is true. There has been a deceleration in the growth - in part because some of the patents on common psychotropics are running out. But that's a reduction in the amount of growth, theire's still growth, and that's something they are not going to give up on.

The other part is that brains can surive a lack of external stimulus while continuing to experience. Sensory depirivation can even be experienced as stimulating over short periods of time. That was a bit of a tangent, but mainly I was responding to what seemed to be implicit that the brain's stimuli only come from outside the brain.

One point is that I don't think this is true. — Coben

I’ve heard several people say the exact opposite recently regarding funding for such treatments - because it’s seriously unpredictable (essentially there is more profit elsewhere).

Note: ‘people’ being professionals in or related to the field - podcasts mainly.

The other part is that brains can surive a lack of external stimulus while continuing to experience. Sensory depirivation can even be experienced as stimulating over short periods of time. That was a bit of a tangent, but mainly I was responding to what seemed to be implicit that the brain's stimuli only come from outside the brain. — Coben

I said a brain with no input does very little. That is true. Deprived of any sensory input from birth the brain would die quite quickly. The comparison made in the video I was pointing out as ridiculous was the simplistic comparison of a brain to a cellphone.

Anyway, at best a brain in a vat deprived of sensory input would die quickly enough because most the neurons would be redundant. Remember we have the most neurons at birth. They die out if they are not used - simple efficiency.

In simpler terms you cannot imagine what something looks like if you’re born with no eyes.

The OP and subsequent comments seem to regard "mind" as an entity separate from the brain, repeating Descartes' mistake of conflating the concepts of soul and mind. — Greylorn Ell

The mind could be strongly emergent, in a systems theoretic sense, for example, without postulating a separate immaterial entity such as a soul.

I’ve heard several people say the exact opposite recently regarding funding for such treatments - because it’s seriously unpredictable (essentially there is more profit elsewhere). — I like sushi

Well, I looked at the money, just to make sure I wasn't confused. The psychotropic drugs are still huge sellers People like 'magic bullets', my quotes intentional. I'm no fan of psychotropics, though I am sure they've been useful for some people, especially as stopgap measures.

I was talking about new drugs. Funding has pretty much stopped for research development for the kind of drugs I mentioned.

The issue is the brain is complex and what works for one person does the opposite for others. Psychotropics are certainly the way to imo, but the kind of substances that have a lot of potential have been illegal to research until recently - psilocybin, DMT and other substances are interesting avenues to explore.

Discourse on the Method - Descartes. He, and many before him, argued this. Check it out if you want a thorough introduction to the idea and how to formulate your own theses.

I was talking about new drugs. Funding has pretty much stopped for research development for the kind of drugs I mentioned. — I like sushi

Oh, ok. I think that's because generic versions are cutting into profits so the companies are looking for drugs in other areas like oncology.

The issue is the brain is complex and what works for one person does the opposite for others. Psychotropics are certainly the way to imo, but the kind of substances that have a lot of potential have been illegal to research until recently - psilocybin, DMT and other substances are interesting avenues to explore. — I like sushi

I certainly agree that these are interesting avenues. I'd vastly prefer a plant based treatment that has been used for centuries over big pharma's latest side effect monstrosity. And they have way too much control over their own oversight. Revolving door stuff, lobbying, control of candidates.

That is the core of classical Buddhism, which treats soul as an epiphenomenon initially created by a brain, yet capable of retaining consciousness after the brain's demise, whereupon it finds and merges with another brain in the fetal stage or shortly after birth so as to resume whatever passes for a normal life.

A.I. people have been trying unsuccessfully to get some manifestation of consciousness out of computers, since the sixties. I imagine that some of them try it with serious supercomputers. So the theory you reference has yet to be implemented in practice, after a half century of work by many brilliant researchers, each eager to earn the inevitable Nobel prize and eternal place in the history of science that must follow a success.

No doubt you've examined Chalmer's "Hard Problem." Would you share your thoughts about it?

Okay, so mind is fundamental. There is no brain that exists without mind. You cannot see, touch, taste or look at any brain unless you have your subjective conscious experience. Done. In assuming materialism, you've refuted it. Because even a materialist assumes his own subjective conscious experience in an attempt to refute it. It's a self-destructive argumentum ad absurdum.

No doubt you've examined Chalmer's "Hard Problem." Would you share your thoughts about it? — Greylorn Ell

So I used to be much obsessed with the mind-body problem (Chalmer's hard problem). I favoured a kind of idealist-cartesian perspective as it suited my intuitions about the hegemony (free will) and autonomy of consciousness. When I immersed myself in systems philosophy last year, I became aware that the problematic nature of the mind-body phenomenon is a function of the reductionist approach. By taking the system as fundamental (in a paradigm-shifting sense) all events are comprehended in situ, specifically, insofar as they are elements (holons) within hierarchically nested systems. So the mind-body problem just isn't something that gives me pause anymore. There are psychological entia, intersubjective entia, empirical entia. They all participate in the operation (and self-reorganization) of the complex adaptive systems that constitute our reality. I'm finding Popper's scientific realism really works well with this perspective, especially his three worlds and critical objectivism. Habermas' theory of communicative action too, as it also carves experience up into subjective/social/objective realms which mutually interpenetrate.

Thank you!