Article Brain as receiver is still wrong

[C C]

https://theness.com/neurologicablog/brai...ill-wrong/

EXCERPT: Back to the video at hand – the author begins with an unsourced vague claim, but one that is not uncommon in the “new age” subculture, that our brains are mostly just receivers for a vast intelligence that comes from somewhere outside the brain. He states this as if it is a scientific fact. He then goes on to muse about some new age nonsense regarding being on a higher or lower “frequency” and therefore attracting good thoughts or bad thoughts.

Is there any plausibility or evidence for the notion that some of the information that comes to our brain originates somewhere outside the brain? By this I do not mean through the known senses, but that part or all of the “mind” is a non-physical phenomenon, and the brain is a conduit for the mind, interfacing it with the physical body.

This is one formulation of what is known as dualism, which I have written about here many times – that mind and brain are not entirely one phenomenon, but two. My position, which tracks with the consensus opinion of neuroscientists, is that the mind is what the brain does. There is only the brain. The mind is not software running on the brain – it is the brain, simply describing our perception of what the brain is doing.

That sci-fi trope of a “consciousness” being transferred from one body to another, or into an object, is simply impossible. Just as you cannot “upload” yourself into a computer. At best you can make a copy that replicates some of your mental functions, but it is in no meaningful way you. You are your brain.

How do we know this is true? This is, far and away, the best inference from all available data... (MORE - missing details)

[Magical Realist]

This is one formulation of what is known as dualism, which I have written about here many times – that mind and brain are not entirely one phenomenon, but two. My position, which tracks with the consensus opinion of neuroscientists, is that the mind is what the brain does. There is only the brain. The mind is not software running on the brain – it is the brain, simply describing our perception of what the brain is doing.

Nice to know the consensus of neuroscientists all share the same metaphysical assumptions. But I have a hard time equating what a brain "does" with a subjective first hand experience of existing as a physical body in a physical world. Physical objects generally "do" things that are also entirely physical, like computers and dishwashers and my TV. For a brain that's pretty much limited to synaptic firings and ionic chemical reactions and electrical wave generations across different parts of itself, as well as controlling many of the functions of the body. I would no more expect it to be "doing" consciousness than expect my dishwasher of doing anything more than just washing and rinsing my dishes. The causal connection between the brain and these activities is quite clear and traceable at every point. It doesn't suddenly get to do ideational non-physical things like falling in love or philosophizing about time or mourning the death of a sibling or making a life-changing moral decision in addition to all the physical things it is doing. That's why we say it is the PERSON who is doing these things instead of a brain. And last I checked persons are non-physical albeit embodied entities who own their own brains like they do their heart and their liver and their whole body.

[Syne]

Are thoughts, intents, consciousness, etc. "information"?
Or are these what process information?
If the latter, "the notion that some of the information that comes to our brain originates somewhere outside the brain" is a strawman of dualism.

[stryder]

There is such thing as [wiki=computer_interface]BCIs[/url] which prove that it's possible to not just read from the brain directly but to also stimulate it to access memories or forge intended responses.

The problem is that the only view of BCIs that people us as evidence are linked to either having direct implants or large machines inducing wavefunction manipulation through countless wires. Funnily enough there isn't much mentioned about interfacing through wireless methodologies which the entire world is dominated by (tv/radio, satellite, wifi, mobile phones etc).

It means there is a very high likelihood that wireless development has been done, but it's about the corner cutting of safety levels and how it would be prohibited that has kept it from being publicly admitted to.

As for the new age "crap", people attach their own interpretation to events they perceive, so if they are kept in the dark about what something actually is, they will attempt to fill in the gap with something they rationalise, no matter how irrational.