You Are Not Your Brain | Hacker News Reader

You Are Not Your Brain

salon.com

23 pointscolins_pride27 comments

Must be dense today, but I don't really see what the arguing was about. That the environment conditions and affects consciousness? There's hardly a single neuroscientist who would object to that.

The analogy with car was really horrible, not to mention the point of it is unclear.

It is understandable however that many people would find the idea of consciousness as product of neural interaction uncomfortable. It strips human of certain degree of divinity. I haven't read the book, but from the article this seems to be author's major concern.

"That the environment conditions and affects consciousness?"

That the environment is an integral part of consciousness.

This suggests two interpretations for me: one is that the environment directly affects the flow, shape and composition of one's conscious experience (i.e. what I said), the other that the conscious process happens to some degree extra-corporal so to say. Maybe there's some third interpretation that I miss?

"one is that the environment directly affects the flow, shape and composition of one's conscious experience"

I think he is saying not just that the environment "affects" consciousness, but is part of what we mean when we use the word "consciousness." In other words, the idea that you can "see" consciousness in an MRI scan is fundamentally in error. You need to also examine the environment and context in which that scan was taken, in order to make any progress in understanding what consciousness is.

Environment is integral to conscious in the same sense that the road surface is integral to driving. It's the medium we interpret.

Despite claims to the contrary, it really seems to me like the philosopher in this article is marking territory for a turf war.

People think they're smart because they've "realized" that consciousness doesn't exist and substance dualism is false. But, everyone stops there and just continue to be substance dualists, or greater arity, of some other stripe. I.e. there is no consciousness but there are apples, and kittens, and rainbows, and pots of gold. The real takeaway is that NO abstract concepts exist. It doesn't even make sense to say "every thing is only itself" since this again differentiates substances of "thing" and "self."

No no no no no. Consciousness is a process (which you probably agree) but one which involves both the brain and the environment.

The car analogy isn't that bad, though it's a bit incomplete. Imagine you want to study ways to optimize traffic in a city. You can use a car in a garage, since you have all the information necessary inside it (and you do, technically). Or you can use a model of the city with many toy cars inside it. Which will help you most? It's about the level of abstraction you choose to use. And it's important not only because some models are more efficient then others, but because some models have inherent biases. In this case, considering consciousness trapped inside the skull makes it a lot harder to see things which would be obvious when defining it as interaction between brains and environment.

I think by "consciousness" he may mean a different thing than I was expecting. My definition goes back to the classic Cartesian "I think, therefore I am", though I reject his subsequent dualism.

I think a brain-in-a-jar could also realize that he exists; he thinks, after all, if life support is there. Of course, the world may well be necessary for consciousness; maybe a brain-in-a-jar would never realize that he exists. But the world is not involved in the "being conscious", any more than the road is involved in my driving on it.

FTA: "Consciousness requires the joint operation of the brain, the body and the world."

Well, yeah. Things occur in the the world, and then the brain interprets them, decides what to do, and has the body do it. I don't see how this interferes at all with the notion of brain-as-self.

I'm not upset by the idea that (as the later example in the article) the love I feel is a chemical reaction. As the interviewee says, it's all context. Me (that is, brain) interprets things based on context, and assigns value to them based on that context. I, for lack of a better word, like "love," whatever it is.

Of course the brain is consciousness. It's doesn't exist in isolation, sure, but I think that it is both necessary and sufficient for the human experience, as inklesspen says above.

"any more than the road is involved in my driving on it."

The road is absolutely involved in you driving on it. If it was not there, you certainly would not be driving on it.

But you can drive off the road.

The road does not actively participate in your driving; it is indifferent to it. Were you not driving, the road would still be there.

s/road/world/

s/driving/thinking/

"But the view that the self and consciousness can be explained in terms of the brain, that the real us is found inside our skulls, isn't just misleading and wrong, it's ugly. <snip> I find this a very sad and ugly picture of our circumstance. Now contrast that view with a sense of ourselves as engaged in the flow, responsive to the things going on around us, part of the world. It's a very different picture."

So...is he arguing that brain-as-self is wrong because it's untrue, or wrong because it's depressing? I've always understood myself as a being within a brain, using my body for I/O. I agree that on its face it's a somewhat alienating concept, and I'd love to believe otherwise, but Noë did nothing to convince me it's untrue. Another example:

"The dominant view in neuroscience today represents us as if we were strangers in an alien environment. It says that we go about gathering information, building up representations, performing calculations and making choices based on that data. But in reality, when we get up in the morning we put our feet on the floor and start to walk. We take the floor for granted and the world supports us, houses us, facilitates us and enables us to carry on whatever our tasks might be. That kind of fluency, that kind of flow, is, I think, a fundamental feature of our lives. Our fitting into the world is not an illusion created by our brains, it's a fundamental truth about our nature. That's what I mean by home sweet home."

I don't understand how he can assert that the process he describes has no part in the way we start our day. We may not consciously decide whether the floor is something we should walk on every day, but that doesn't mean it's not a subconscious or instinctual decision that takes place within the brain. It seems to me all he's advocating is a change in perspective, suggesting that we are comfortable beings in a familiar "home," but this does nothing to shed light on the nature of consciousness. Of course consciousness is an emergent process that rises out of mind, body, and environment, but if it doesn't take place within the brain, then where is it?

"Of course consciousness is an emergent process that rises out of mind, body, and environment,"

This, I think, is his point.

"but if it doesn't take place within the brain, then where is it?"

My guess is he might say asking "where" consciousness takes place is a meaningless question.

I take his point, but I think you can agree with it and still treat consciousness as something that takes place within the brain. I guess the disagreement is over whether body, brain, and environment are all literally parts of consciousness, or whether environment interpreted through the body is an input to a consciousness process that takes place within the brain. Noë doesn't make much of a case for his position, he only says it's a more comforting way to go about things. Well that's fine, but that doesn't say much about whether it's true.

He is doing what all second tier philosophers do: fiddling with semantics.

Oh, burn!

Alva Noe has simply demonstrated that he is uncomfortable with science and incapable of logical thought with regards to the brain. Neuroscience probably invalidates his career.

Since when is reductionism a bad thing?

Reductionism is a bad thing when you reduct away useful or necessary information.

Then you are slitting your wrists with Occam's razor. Nobody ought to do that.

No true Scotsman would reduce too far.

"Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler."

I highly recommend reading "Concsciousness Explained" by Dan Dennett. After reading that it will be very easy to see how one's self can be identical to one's brain.

So what's his proof?

I AM my brain. All of my experiences happen within the physical construct that floats in the calcium construct of my skull. The physical processes of my neurons happen within the same physics that allow everything from quarks to quasars to function. There is a physical process, not yet fully described, that will describe how experience is formed and perceived. We're still getting the data, and are working on the answers.

I've always liked the "brain is to self as guitar is to music" analogy. Sensory input is the guitar player. The monkey represents sharing.

You are a product of your environment. --Clement Stone

Reply on news.ycombinator.com