Posted: Mar 30, 2012 1:01 pm
JWG wrote:[Reveal] Spoiler: snipJoeB wrote:
Well there is evidence that our brain creates our consciousness, for example these three points:
- It can be seen in terms of brain activity, conscious persons have more and different brain activity than unconscious persons
- When one cuts off oxygen supply to the brain so that it fails to function consciousness is one of the first things to fail
- Physical damage to the brain, and aging of the brain, causes changes in personality, moods and character.
Of course one can dismiss such evidence and say it merely means the brain functions as some sort of transmitter, but then I would like to ask the one making such claims to demonstrate what the source is other than the brain itself. There has simply never been any evidence that there is something other than the material brain at work. In fact, the third point about brain damage affecting personality pretty much falsifies dualism.
And before you mention them, out of body experiences and near death experiences have been shown to be physical effects, not spiritual.
I want to say once more, I am not trying to prove a notion that the brain is in fact a transmitter of consciousness as opposed to the source of it outright. I am going to say, however, that each of your points are only valid in proving the brain is THE source of consciousness if you assume that there can be no other medium or factor involved other than the organ of the brain. We hear, but our ears don't create the sound; they are a tool for receiving it and experiencing it. The notion that our brain may perhaps be better viewed as a tool for processing data from our other sensory organs and transmitting these in combination (forming our conscious experience) to what we call our 'consciousness' is an interesting one.
Consciousness will always be a sort of elusive topic when it comes to science due to the fact that it's the very thing we rely on to even discuss it or try and observe it, I think. I hope I'm wrong though, but nonetheless it's entertaining and interesting to think about and discuss.
The brain does all the things you say it does, and it also creates our consciousness, I do not know of anything else that could create our consciousness instead. I agree with your ideas about the brain collecting all impulses and presenting them to our consciousness, but that doesn't mean that consciousness itself is separate from the rest of the brain right?
Another piece of evidence might be that drugs that affect the neurotransmitters in our brain cause changes in personality, this shows that the mechanisms (those affected neurotransmitters) in our brain do indeed create a form of self-awareness etc. that we call consciousness.