Thread: can the mind exist independent from the brain?

inb4 "string theory can account for that!"

Originally Posted by RideTheWalrus

I don't think that our current explanation 'works' at all. It does adequately address some of the correlations between mind and brain, but it also dismisses a great deal of inconvenient observable evidence that throws the whole model into question.

For example, in the case of dying people who have developed severe brain damage. Often, in the later stages of disease, these people can't even remember the names and faces of family members. In the hours approaching their death, sometimes these people will spontaneously become lucid and clear of thought. They will remember faces, names, and be able to speak clearly despite the fact that the brain damage supposedly responsible for their cognitive affliction is still very much there. This phenomenon is well known as "Terminal Lucidity".

Similarly there is a brain affliction known as hydrocephalus. In the most severe cases of hydrocephalus, a patient can be left with less than 5% of the brain mass of a normal person - and yet, even in these most severe cases there are patients who have above average IQs and seemingly no mental deficits.

The last one I'll bring up here is acquired savant syndrome - where brain damage actually results in radically increased mental abilities.

Those who believe consciousness to be a creation of the brain are left in an uncomfortable position by these kinds of mysteries. After all, if the brain produces consciousness why would brain damage result in radically increased mental abilities? Why are some people with severe brain tumors suddenly able to transcend their brain damage and remember people, faces, and hold a normal conversation as their death nears? How would people be able to live a normal life with a miniscule fraction of a normal brain?

You mentioned three possible challenges to our current explanation, and I will address them as best I can:

Terminal lucidity is indeed a mysterious thing. Little research has been done into the matter, most likely due to the obvious methodological difficulties involved. I did find one paper (Terminal lucidity in patients with chronic schizop... [J Nerv Ment Dis. 2009] - PubMed result) that attempted to glean some kind of quantifiable data from a survey of the literature. Considerable text from this paper can be found in a blog post here (Imminent Death and Spontaneous Return to Mental Awareness | Havealittletalk's Blog).

You're right that we can't explain it and that it seems very odd, given what we currently believe about diseases like Alzheimers. The truth is that we really don't know all that much about these diseases in the first place. It's entirely possible that they disable retrieval of memories rather than the memories themselves. In this case, like a deleted file, a trivial change in the brain might enable their return. Perhaps such a change occurs near death.We can both agree that it's a strange phenomenon, so the question boils down to this: does it make more sense to accept the leap of dualism (which is a massive assertion) in order to cling to our current understanding of Alzheimers, or to consider that we may misunderstand the disease? The former option is made even less attractive when you realize that dualism
does not explain terminal lucidity either - a mechanism for brain change near death is still needed to explain the change in 'filtering', as you would say. The nail in the coffin for me is that, as I mentioned, this phenomenon is by nature difficult to examine scientifically. We're left with a confusing phenomenon which we know little about that seems to challenge our notions of a disease we know little about. These are hardly the rock and hard place you would want to use to force us to accept a costly claim like dualism.

Hydrocephalus is also an interesting phenomenon, but I believe your facts are a bit off here. I believe you're referring to a specific case where a man was found to be leading a functional life with a severe case that left him with only a smallish portion of brain matter. You can see pictures of his brain in this article: Brain of a white-collar worker : The Lancet For fun and reference, here are some slices of my own brain: imgur: the simple image sharer

First I should point out that although the article does not specify what percent of his brain matter is left, it does look significantly more than 5%. Next, and most importantly, his IQ was 75. This is a barely functional level of intelligence, just above qualifying legally as mentally disabled. Thus this example in fact continues to support the correlation between 'mind' and brain. I don't believe any other cases of such severe Hydrocephalus have been found in adults.

As for acquired savantism, I found this article by Dr. Darold Treffert who appears to be an authority on the matter: Accidental Genius

He points out that most cases of this appear to follow damage to the left anterior temporal region. The prevailing theory is that this area is responsible for significant inhibition, and messing with it allows otherwise buried 'skills' to arise. Given how little we know about how the brain works, this seems a very reasonable hypothesis. Think about our attention system - we are able to recognize objects in busy settings because when we focus on them our brain inhibits processing of clutter and extraneous things around them in the visual field. Without this inhibition, we might be 'savants' of perception, percieving every single thing in the visual field all of the time. This ability would probably be accompanied by increased distractability and difficulty focusing. In many of these accidental savantism cases, the increase in artistic skill is accompanied by dementia or other important losses. It's difficult to say why the brain does what it does, but we can be fairly certain that it has evolved towards a local maximum of performance for human survival. If we posit that this local maximum includes having inhibited 'savant' functions, then the whole thing ceases to be an issue.

All of these phenomena may be cause for some relatively minor revisions of our current ideas about how the brain is probably related to consciousness, but none of them are anywhere near problematic enough to warrant discarding the notion of brain=mind. Even if they were, you would still need to come up with evidence that specifically supports your 'consciousness filtering' theory rather than simply providing problems with materialism.

My question is this: what would evidence for the existence of (anything) non-physical look like? What predictions does your consciousness-filtering theory make that clash with those of materialism?

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

But then what is the sensation of pain. Neurons doing their thing. Physical.

Its a good point I tend to agree that mental states can be reduced to physical states in the brain. I guess the reason why I brought it up was because the other day I heard someone trying to refute identity materialism by arguing that pain is a result of c-fibers being stimulated in the brain and refuting that the sensation of pain is c-fibers being stimulated which I was defending.

Originally Posted by StonedApe

Show me one thing that exists that isn't physical. How can something exist if it isn't made of anything? I'm tempted to repeat my first post.

Even if the mind is non-physical, it has to be made of something, some kind of non-physical substance.

I don’t think that consciousness necessarily has to be ‘made’ of anything at all. It may simply BE an intrinsic irreducible basic part of the universe in the same way that matter simply IS.

What you’re doing is looking at consciousness in a material context. Ex: If it exists, it must be observable and measurable. I don’t necessarily think that must be the case, although I don’t discount the possibility.

If that is the case and consciousness is made of ‘something’, then I’ll readily admit I don’t know what consciousness IS, and I’m in good company, given the rest of the world doesn’t seem to know what it is IS either.

Mainstream materialism has not solved this either. It holds that consciousness ‘somehow’ arises as a byproduct of the combined processes of the brain. It’s essentially saying, we don’t know how consciousness comes to be, but it must be in there somewhere. It can’t define what consciousness IS either, nor can it tell you how insentient matter gains a sense of awareness. That's the hard problem.

Originally Posted by stormcrow

the sensation of pain is c-fibers being stimulated which I was defending.

How do you defend this position? Nothing we know about c-fibers suggests that their activation should 'be' a sensation. Are you positing that qualia is a property of matter somehow, or that it is an emergent property? The second seems more reasonable, but is not entirely the same as 'qualia IS neural activation patterns'.

Thanks for the reply thegnome54:

I'm aware that there is still much we don't know about the way Alzheimer's and Schizophrenia effect the brain, but these are not the only diseases that Terminal Lucidity has been reported in occurring. I recall one particular article that made it to Times Science Magazine called 'The Brain: The Power of Hope' where a man was in very advanced stages of brain cancer. Towards the end when doctors scanned his head, there was barely any brain left and he was exhibiting no expression or response to anything - he was vacant. Later, the man gained lucidity and clearly spoke to his loved ones, before passing away.

It's true that all we have are anecdotes on the subject of Terminal Lucidity at present, but there are many such anecdotes. In examples such as this, where a fraction of the brain remains, it does make a strong case when one can speak, think, and remember clearly with a fraction of their brain remaining.

(I'd link the article for you but I just signed up and can't post links for a week, but a quick google search should find it)

Originally Posted by thegnome54

The former option is made even less attractive when you realize that dualism
does not explain terminal lucidity either - a mechanism for brain change near death is still needed to explain the change in 'filtering', as you would say.

IMO, things like Terminal Lucidity are better explained by a 'filter' theory because under the filter theory memory and consciousness are inherently separate from the brain. The process of dying itself, at least, in some instances could reasonably account for the brain’s change in filtering ability.

If you look at the same situation from a materialist standpoint, memories must inherently be stored in the brain and consciousness must arise from the brain, so, after catastrophic brain damage one would expect memories and consciousness to be damaged as well. Clear memory and cognitive function in such cases as patients near death is not what one would expect at all.

As for hydrocephalus, I'm aware of the article that you're talking about. It circulated the news, I think it was called "Tiny brain normal life" or something along those lines. I was not talking about that specific example, although it was impressive in itself. The article I was citing that made these claims was called "Where is consciousness? I've lost it!"

All of these phenomena may be cause for some relatively minor revisions of our current ideas about how the brain is probably related to consciousness, but none of them are anywhere near problematic enough to warrant discarding the notion of brain=mind. Even if they were, you would still need to come up with evidence that specifically supports your 'consciousness filtering' theory rather than simply providing problems with materialism.

I'm going to borrow a quote from R. Craig Hogan here.

"Our interpretation of reality must account for all the evidence. If we had all the evidence about our existence, including neurobiology, physics principles, the afterlife, and psychic activity on note cards and spread them out on a huge table, we would have to draw conclusions that accommodated as many note cards as possible. That is logical positivism and satisfies the requirement for an explanation that fits Occam's Razor and the rule of parsimony. That means the explanation or conclusion we derive should fit as many of the facts on the cards as possible. We won't call it "Truth" because Truth changes as humankind changes. However, the explanation is the best fit that accommodates the most facts known right now, and leaves the fewest anomalies.

If we have a small number of facts that our explanation can't explain, we may stay with the only conclusion we have that fits the facts in most note cards until we have more knowledge that enables us to fit the facts in the few that don't quite fit now. That conclusion we come to must be the simplest one that includes the most facts from among competing explanations."

I like the filter view because it does not have to discard near death experiences, out of body experiences, and other such subjective accounts.

It also solves a wide variety of neurological mysteries, and it does not clash with neuroscience. As far as I’m aware there are no findings in brain science that conflict with this view.

IMO, it better fits all of the evidence we have available.

My question is this: what would evidence for the existence of (anything) non-physical look like?

When it comes to things that cannot be directly observed, the only evidence we can have are from the effects those things have on things that can be observed.

I’ll use quantum physics as an example. The Higgs Boson, I believe, has never been directly observed. Its existence was theorized to as a missing link that several key theories required.

We are searching for the Higgs Boson by looking at observable particles as they collide with each other. While we can’t directly observe it, its existence will be proven or disproved based on what we can observe.

What predictions does your consciousness-filtering theory make that clash with those of materialism

It would conflict with materialism in a number of ways. If somebody, for example, claimed to have experienced an OBE that they correlated with reality, it would not need to automatically discard their story as rubbish to survive as a model.

It would not need to discard the subjective experiences of thousands of near death experiencers as fabrications of their brain.

Too often, I think, these things are not even given the time of day because they conflict with our current model.

I wonder

the main question in this thread really is "Do we have a soul and what happens to us after death? ... heaven, hell, reincarnation, nothing or something else ... can we save that like a computer program into a machine or another living thing with brains, like a clone of ours"


when we die, we will find it out, for sure, that`s we`ll know it 100%

so I have a better question:

Are you in a hurry?

I believe in cases of like Alzheimer, the memories inside the brain are not destroyed, only the ability to access them are. So the memories are still there. In cases where there is very slow degrading of the brain, like in the case of the small brain normal life thing, the brain has shown to be very adaptable, and what is remaining of the brain can continue on and make due. People who suffer brain damage are often able to retrain abilities using other parts of their brains, which may originally been used for something else. Also even if a a chunk of brain is destroyed it is possible that memories can still survive.

If you think about it there is really no difference between the parts of the brain that stores memories or 'filters' memories in that theory. If something happens in the brain prior to death that temporary restores the brain filtering abilities, there is no reason to believe that it would restore normal brain functions. In either case the same thing is basically happening. That theory doesn't explain the sudden restoring of filtering ability any more than the sudden restoring of memory. All your doing is adding another competent to how our bodies work, which doesn't effect anything.

So you guys are giving up? No one can show me a single example of a non-physical thing? If not, what leads you to believe that consciousness is such a thing? You're inventing a new category of things just so that you can entertain the idea that you will live on after death in some new shell. There is no shell.

Originally Posted by RideTheWalrus

I don’t think that consciousness necessarily has to be ‘made’ of anything at all. It may simply BE an intrinsic irreducible basic part of the universe in the same way that matter simply IS.

If that is the case, that it is an intrinsic part of the universe, it is still made of something, the universe.

I am currently conscious of a delicious sandwich going down my esophagus. My consciousness of this sandwich is created by(made up of, same thing) a number of physical things. The sandwich, my body, my nerves in my digestive system, and the signals this creates in my brain.

Even if consciousness is some kind of mystical essence it is an essence, it is something. In order for something to be something there has to be something there god dammit! If it isn't made of anything then it is by definition nothing, it doesn't exist.

Originally Posted by RideTheWalrus

What you’re doing is looking at consciousness in a material context. Ex: If it exists, it must be observable and measurable. I don’t necessarily think that must be the case, although I don’t discount the possibility.

I've never said that it has to be observable or measurable, though I would hope you can observe you're own consciousness, it's quite an important skill. What I'm saying is that it has to be something or it is nothing. I'm pretty sure that isn't a false dichotomy, there isn't some third category. And if it is something we can only assume that it's made of energy like everything else*. It's physical.

Originally Posted by RideTheWalrus

If that is the case and consciousness is made of ‘something’, then I’ll readily admit I don’t know what consciousness IS, and I’m in good company, given the rest of the world doesn’t seem to know what it is IS either.

Mainstream materialism has not solved this either. It holds that consciousness ‘somehow’ arises as a byproduct of the combined processes of the brain. It’s essentially saying, we don’t know how consciousness comes to be, but it must be in there somewhere. It can’t define what consciousness IS either, nor can it tell you how insentient matter gains a sense of awareness. That's the hard problem.

Honestly I am not the best person to explain this. I admittedly don't know much about how the brain functions. But science does have a good idea of how this all works. Do you have any idea how a non-physical consciousness would function? Would you care to explain?

If you really don't know what consciousness is, then how are you supposed to have any clue if it's physical or not, or if it exists independently from the body. Reason from what you know. If you don't know how can you reason or experiment? How can you have any kind of a clue at all. If you don't know what it is, any theory you come up with is just you making stuff up because you want the world to be a certain way. Let go of self clinging and live life right now.

If you don't know what consciousness is, maybe you could google it or something, there's an assload of different definitions. But I'd assume that the reason why you don't know what it is is that you are assuming it's something that exists independent of other things rather than just a byproduct of things.

*disclaimer, I haven't been paying attention to or studying science much lately, maybe it's really strings or whatever the hell the latest theory is. Bottom line is that anything that is real can be considered physical. And at their basis, even imaginary things are physical, as are sensations and all forms of consciousness.

tooo much philosophy

waaaaaay to much, hurts my head to read it

so let`s simplify

some people use out of body experiences as a proof for this non-physical thing and there are some people on this site interested in such things along heling crystals and such ... so I got an idea

if any of you has an OBE next time, why don`t you try influencing something tangible with your astral body

like brake the window of the neighbour, whom you utterly dispise ... no, not with sticks and stones, with your astral body please

that would solve a couple of mysteries including the question posted here

Originally Posted by hpnfreak

tooo much philosophy

waaaaaay to much, hurts my head to read it

so let`s simplify

some people use out of body experiences as a proof for this non-physical thing and there are some people on this site interested in such things along heling crystals and such ... so I got an idea

if any of you has an OBE next time, why don`t you try influencing something tangible with your astral body

like brake the window of the neighbour, whom you utterly dispise ... no, not with sticks and stones, with your astral body please

that would solve a couple of mysteries including the question posted here

Nope.

WARNING MORE PHILOSOPHY[IN THE PHILOSOPHY SUB_FORUM]


I've had OBEs. In retrospect the were probably just [lucid]dreams where I was in my house. They seemed incredibly real and I was convinced it was proof at the time. But I doubt it now, I'm not even sure they were true OBEs, which makes me wonder how many, if any really are.

But even if OBEs are real they most likely occur through some kind of physical means. I'd like to elaborate but I have to go.

The problem with hpnfreak's suggestion is that 'astral material' can't interact with regular 'non-astral' material. Unless it's making the body move of course ...

So yeah, no experiment.

Originally Posted by StonedApe

WARNING MORE PHILOSOPHY[IN THE PHILOSOPHY SUB_FORUM]

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

The problem with hpnfreak's suggestion is that 'astral material' can't interact with regular 'non-astral' material. Unless it's making the body move of course ...

momy says I`m special

It can be separate, but relies on the brain being there.

I guess an OBE is basically your mind existing away from your brain..? Or am I talking garbage here?

How do you folks suggesting that the mind can exist independently define mind? And what do you think it's made of?

Personally I think of mind as your stream of thoughts, whereas what you seem to be talking about would either be consciousness or self. If there was just a mind wandering around it would be nothing but thoughts. A mind can't see any more than an eye can think.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

The problem with hpnfreak's suggestion is that 'astral material' can't interact with regular 'non-astral' material. Unless it's making the body move of course ...

So yeah, no experiment.

Well if we wanna get astral, OBEs aren't considered astral. They're considered etheric. But thats more info than necessary.

The etheric stuff that composes the OBE body is considered physical material that CAN interact with the physical material world. With exceptions. It's believed the etheric body is something in the electromagnetic range. They believe this for two reasons: people who testify to OBE claim when they come into contact with electrical appliances weird things happen. Just touching a radio can cause immense pain. Others feel this fuzzy static charge, sometimes repelling or attracting, when they come near a plugged in electrical appliance.

This is why ghost hunters carry with them EEG readers. They believe ghosts have the same type of electrical body as an OBEr, and this is why ghosts can "haunt" a place by screwing around with the lights and appliances.

I know that's not the best science if you even want to call it science. But when studying OBEs we do have to take OBE testimonies into account, and a lot of them do claim to electromagnetic weirdness. It's something to keep in mind.

Fair enough. Then somebody in an OBE should be able to do something to electronic devices on a regular basis. Can you OBE? Have you noticed anything that happens with regularity that could potentially be measured with an EEG?

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

Fair enough. Then somebody in an OBE should be able to do something to electronic devices on a regular basis. Can you OBE? Have you noticed anything that happens with regularity that could potentially be measured with an EEG?

No I've never had any experiences that I would call an OBE (maybe astral, but not OBE). But I think that would make for an interesting experiment based on the experiences of others.