Smarter than your brain?
- Vikrant C
- New Trial Member
- Posts: 2
- Joined: May 2nd, 2015, 10:41 pm
Smarter than your brain?
Yet in assuming that the "brain" is a privileged object, neuroscience contradicts itself. Objects are things; things have working parts; the working parts, when fully understood, define the thing you are studying and want to understand. But there is nothing privileged about the brain's working parts. Its basic chemicals are the same as in the rest of the body. The glucose on which neurons feed isn't smarter than the glucose coursing through the bloodstream everywhere else. Nor is there a point, biologically speaking, where you can say, "Here is where all of this physical stuff learned to think."
The brain's inability to understand the brain is a profound dilemma that isn't solved through biology.
But neuroscientists insist that biology holds the key to everything about the mind. In fact, most of them firmly believe that Brain = Mind. The promise that brain biology is sufficient to explain the mind, morality, religion, metaphysics, thinking, feeling, creativity, and so on is empty.
So how can we become smarter than our brains? If biology is a dead end, what path to understanding will get past biology? The first step is to acknowledge that the brain isn't a privileged object. It isn't the source of the mind any more than a radio is the source of Mozart and Beethoven. The brain, like a radio, is a receiver. The reason the brain doesn't know that it is a receiver--aside from the fact that it doesn't know anything about itself--is that it is too involved in the reception. When thoughts, feelings, sensations, and images fill our minds, we are creatures of experience, enveloped by those experiences.
The second step is to clearly define the question: "How do we know what we know?" The only viable way to begin to find the correct answers is to concede something very basic: All knowledge comes from experience, and all experience is in consciousness. Neuroscience resists such an answer because it goes beyond biology, yet the subject of the brain always did go beyond biology, into philosophy, psychology, and metaphysics. Trying to fence the mind inside the confines of the brain's apparatus was never valid to begin with. The problem of the mind is a human problem, not a neuroscience problem.
All knowledge comes from experience and all experience is in consciousness. Thoughts, memories and our experience of a universe in space-time are all conscious phenomena. If you agree on this, then to truly understand the mind, you must abandon the brain entirely from its privileged position, demoting it to the lump of atoms and molecules that it actually is.
You have now freed the mind from any dependence whatsoever on the brain. Mozart lived before the radio and didn't depend upon it to create music. The mind existed before the brain and isn't dependent upon it to create thoughts. Explaining the mind without the brain is unthinkable in the present context of scientists--but it will happen.
Overall, the main idea for me is that - our body is a tool to gain experience from the surrounding i.e. infinity so we can move toward infinity, the vastness of knowledge.
- Burning ghost
- Posts: 3065
- Joined: February 27th, 2016, 3:10 am
Re: Smarter than your brain?
- Vikrant C
- New Trial Member
- Posts: 2
- Joined: May 2nd, 2015, 10:41 pm
Re: Smarter than your brain?
They are conscious because "They are alive", "They take food and perform function", "They move".
- LuckyR
- Moderator
- Posts: 7940
- Joined: January 18th, 2015, 1:16 am
Re: Smarter than your brain?
An opinion unencumbered by data.Vikrant C wrote:Left to its own devices, your brain knows zero about neurons; it has no idea from where the thoughts come. Because the brain knows nothing about itself, neuroscience began by assuming that the brain is the only privileged object in the known universe that is conscious. This assumption is almost never questioned by any neuroscientist because the everyday work in that field consists of tinkering with the brain's biology. All higher questions about mind, psychology, religion, morals, aesthetics, and metaphysics are reduced to biology.
Yet in assuming that the "brain" is a privileged object, neuroscience contradicts itself. Objects are things; things have working parts; the working parts, when fully understood, define the thing you are studying and want to understand. But there is nothing privileged about the brain's working parts. Its basic chemicals are the same as in the rest of the body. The glucose on which neurons feed isn't smarter than the glucose coursing through the bloodstream everywhere else. Nor is there a point, biologically speaking, where you can say, "Here is where all of this physical stuff learned to think."
The brain's inability to understand the brain is a profound dilemma that isn't solved through biology.
But neuroscientists insist that biology holds the key to everything about the mind. In fact, most of them firmly believe that Brain = Mind. The promise that brain biology is sufficient to explain the mind, morality, religion, metaphysics, thinking, feeling, creativity, and so on is empty.
So how can we become smarter than our brains? If biology is a dead end, what path to understanding will get past biology? The first step is to acknowledge that the brain isn't a privileged object. It isn't the source of the mind any more than a radio is the source of Mozart and Beethoven. The brain, like a radio, is a receiver. The reason the brain doesn't know that it is a receiver--aside from the fact that it doesn't know anything about itself--is that it is too involved in the reception. When thoughts, feelings, sensations, and images fill our minds, we are creatures of experience, enveloped by those experiences.
The second step is to clearly define the question: "How do we know what we know?" The only viable way to begin to find the correct answers is to concede something very basic: All knowledge comes from experience, and all experience is in consciousness. Neuroscience resists such an answer because it goes beyond biology, yet the subject of the brain always did go beyond biology, into philosophy, psychology, and metaphysics. Trying to fence the mind inside the confines of the brain's apparatus was never valid to begin with. The problem of the mind is a human problem, not a neuroscience problem.
All knowledge comes from experience and all experience is in consciousness. Thoughts, memories and our experience of a universe in space-time are all conscious phenomena. If you agree on this, then to truly understand the mind, you must abandon the brain entirely from its privileged position, demoting it to the lump of atoms and molecules that it actually is.
You have now freed the mind from any dependence whatsoever on the brain. Mozart lived before the radio and didn't depend upon it to create music. The mind existed before the brain and isn't dependent upon it to create thoughts. Explaining the mind without the brain is unthinkable in the present context of scientists--but it will happen.
Overall, the main idea for me is that - our body is a tool to gain experience from the surrounding i.e. infinity so we can move toward infinity, the vastness of knowledge.
-
- Posts: 2181
- Joined: January 7th, 2015, 7:09 am
Re: Smarter than your brain?
- ExodusMe
- New Trial Member
- Posts: 2
- Joined: January 30th, 2017, 1:16 pm
Re: Smarter than your brain?
God is commonly thought of as having an 'immaterial mind' that is conscious and does not have a physical brain. Just FYI.Burning ghost wrote:Show me someone consciousness without a brain and I'll start to take you seriously.
- Atreyu
- Posts: 1737
- Joined: June 17th, 2014, 3:11 am
- Favorite Philosopher: P.D. Ouspensky
- Location: Orlando, FL
Re: Smarter than your brain?
The brain is the physical object that resides in your skull, while the mind is our thoughts as we experience them. No doubt that our subjective experience of thinking is strongly related to the physical brain, but obviously there is a lot more to it than that. Other aspects of our physiology also affect our thoughts, not just the neurological system.
- Sy Borg
- Site Admin
- Posts: 14997
- Joined: December 16th, 2013, 9:05 pm
Re: Smarter than your brain?
A paramecium is a microbe that swims around and finds food, finds a mate, has sex and can learn. It is a single-celled organism, with no synapses, neurons or brain. Yet it performs functions that require awareness, even if not as sophisticated as chordates.Burning ghost wrote:Show me someone consciousness without a brain and I'll start to take you seriously.
-
- Posts: 10339
- Joined: June 15th, 2011, 5:53 pm
Re: Smarter than your brain?
It is perfectly possible to believe that biology holds the key to everything about the mind while also holding the view that the mind is not the brain. The usual analogy that people use is between hardware and software. Software does not exist as something separate from hardware. But software is not hardware.But neuroscientists insist that biology holds the key to everything about the mind. In fact, most of them firmly believe that Brain = Mind. The promise that brain biology is sufficient to explain the mind, morality, religion, metaphysics, thinking, feeling, creativity, and so on is empty.
A more troubling question: If biology does indeed hold the key to everything about the mind and if biology is entirely describable by discoverable natural laws of the underlying physics and chemistry, then our thoughts must, in principle, be entirely describable by those laws. But that includes the thoughts which discovered the laws which describe the thoughts. So, much like the time-travel paradox inherent in the way that the Terminator robot was invented in Terminators 1 and 2, the thoughts and the laws, which both govern them were discovered by them, are part of an arbitrary closed loop.
- Sy Borg
- Site Admin
- Posts: 14997
- Joined: December 16th, 2013, 9:05 pm
Re: Smarter than your brain?
There was a funny moment in a panel debate that occurred between a neuroscientists and a philosopher (amongst others). The former said that he believed there were two components to reality - the equivalents of hardware and software. The philosopher (forgot name) jumped, claiming him to be a dualist in what I suppose is a slam dunk in some philosophical circles.Steve3007 wrote:OP:It is perfectly possible to believe that biology holds the key to everything about the mind while also holding the view that the mind is not the brain. The usual analogy that people use is between hardware and software. Software does not exist as something separate from hardware. But software is not hardware.But neuroscientists insist that biology holds the key to everything about the mind. In fact, most of them firmly believe that Brain = Mind. The promise that brain biology is sufficient to explain the mind, morality, religion, metaphysics, thinking, feeling, creativity, and so on is empty.
A more troubling question: If biology does indeed hold the key to everything about the mind and if biology is entirely describable by discoverable natural laws of the underlying physics and chemistry, then our thoughts must, in principle, be entirely describable by those laws. But that includes the thoughts which discovered the laws which describe the thoughts. So, much like the time-travel paradox inherent in the way that the Terminator robot was invented in Terminators 1 and 2, the thoughts and the laws, which both govern them were discovered by them, are part of an arbitrary closed loop.
The neuroscientist just looked bemused, unaware of the long-term jousting of philosophers and said, "So what?". You can imagine his level of interest in the subsequent monism/dualism explanation. He said, "Then I am a dualist". It's hard to defeat those who don't agree with the match's result :)
Is the gradual process of universal self discovery surprising? Like all of us, you yourself first started to exist (operating within the bounds of the physical laws) thoroughly clueless, and then took years to make some small sense of existence.
Meanwhile, we can at least say that the brain is not the sole repository of neurons; there's gut neurons and sensory neurons all over the body. That may not be the end of it either. Microbial studies suggest that simple sensing is possible with equivalent systems than nervous systems (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3971467/). I suspect sensing runs deeper than we have so far learned.
So I see us as smarter than our brains in the same way as the solar system is more massive than the Sun, although the Sun is more massive than all other material in its system combined, even though there is more additional material than we once realised.
One of "those" thoughts occurs to me. In a sense, the gut is akin to a scaled up version of a mitochondrion in a cell - a discrete energy source in an interdependent relationship with the host organism. As with mitochondria, the DNA of our gut microflora differs from that of the organism. Being as big a fan of fractals as our old pal Leo, I suggest that humans will become akin to mitochondria, locked inside their cubicles, safe from the increasingly hostile elements, environmental toxins and crowding, a power source of one "cell" (both meanings apply) of the internet. The "mitochondriac" will be ever more dependent upon its electronic communications (PC/TV v transmitter chemicals) to stay in touch with the host, and will rely on home deliveries of resources rather than brave the problems of the outside world. South Korea looks closest so far to this idea, but Beijing's issues are forcing people indoors.
Therefore, more of our brains are being downloaded, starting with short term memory. If more of our brains are being downloaded, that suggests minds becoming ever more adept at working the system but ever less able to do anything physical for themselves. We are tending to be better at knowing, say, which buttons to press to order new socks than how to mend a sock. Like ants, we are becoming so enmeshed as to be mysteriously ridiculous and irrational in our behaviours - constantly fiddling around with abstractions that are utterly meaningless to other species and, increasingly, even other cultures. Money exchange is the most clear example.
Ancient hunter gatherers would think us moderns to be witless weirdos, more or less as Huxley's Savages on the Reservation thought of the caste members who would visit - and Huxley invites the reader to form the same opinion of the book's blinkered and caste-controlled characters.
- Atreyu
- Posts: 1737
- Joined: June 17th, 2014, 3:11 am
- Favorite Philosopher: P.D. Ouspensky
- Location: Orlando, FL
Re: Smarter than your brain?
Another way of putting it is to say that the study of the Mind is properly psychology, not physiology. And science doesn't know how to do (practice) psychology. They can only do physiology. Modern "psychology" is quackery....
- TSBU
- Posts: 151
- Joined: August 17th, 2016, 5:32 pm
Re: Smarter than your brain?
Not mine, my brain knows a couple of things about neurons, not a lot, but not zero.Vikrant C wrote:Left to its own devices, your brain knows zero about neurons
You mean at the begining? cause I/my brain can explain where the thoughts come from, at least more than zero.; it has no idea from where the thoughts come.
No. That's not neuroscience, find a neuroscience book saying that and post it here.Because the brain knows nothing about itself, neuroscience began by assuming that the brain is the only privileged object in the known universe that is conscious.
No. Neuroscientist can think in those things too, and I would say they study more than biology, it's more related with medicine, or chemistry, than biology (as a science). Saying that your brain is what we usually understand by you, doesn't imply that you aren't still you.This assumption is almost never questioned by any neuroscientist because the everyday work in that field consists of tinkering with the brain's biology. All higher questions about mind, psychology, religion, morals, aesthetics, and metaphysics are reduced to biology.
Define "priviliged" (not a very scientific word...), and... find a book saying it.Yet in assuming that the "brain" is a privileged object, neuroscience contradicts itself.
Everything is a thing XD.Objects are things
Well, not necesarily, they can be things with no parts, simple concepts.things have working parts; the working parts, when fully understood, define the thing you are studying and want to understand.
Yes, there is, but it would take a while to explain you where. Maybe you should start by reading about Turing machines.But there is nothing privileged about the brain's working parts. Its basic chemicals are the same as in the rest of the body. The glucose on which neurons feed isn't smarter than the glucose coursing through the bloodstream everywhere else. Nor is there a point, biologically speaking, where you can say, "Here is where all of this physical stuff learned to think."
A cage can't contain itself. If you knew what would you do in the future before thinking it, you wouldn't be thinking. There are too many things to control in our brain, but there aren't too many things in a dog brain. That's why you can easily predict an amoeba and not a person.The brain's inability to understand the brain is a profound dilemma that isn't solved through biology.
Empty? Not at all. Read a neuroscience book, they are not very empty, they ar full of interesting and complex things about you.But neuroscientists insist that biology holds the key to everything about the mind. In fact, most of them firmly believe that Brain = Mind. The promise that brain biology is sufficient to explain the mind, morality, religion, metaphysics, thinking, feeling, creativity, and so on is empty.
The real question is what exactly is you. Using a calculator or improving your brain, ading techonology maybe.So how can we become smarter than our brains?
Why does this topic has so many answers? I won't read anymore.The brain, like a radio, is a receiver. The reason the brain doesn't know that it is a receiver--aside from the fact that it doesn't know anything about itself--is that it is too involved in the reception. When thoughts, feelings, sensations, and images fill our minds, we are creatures of experience, enveloped by those experiences.
- Sy Borg
- Site Admin
- Posts: 14997
- Joined: December 16th, 2013, 9:05 pm
Re: Smarter than your brain?
Atreyu wrote:I agree that "the Mind" does not equal the brain, but it's naive to expect that science could be any different. Science can only study what it knows how to study. Science cannot study the Mind directly simply because it cannot "pin it down" and say exactly what it is. For science, the "mind" is an abstract concept, and science doesn't deal with the abstract. But the brain can easily be seen and analyzed.
Another way of putting it is to say that the study of the Mind is properly psychology, not physiology. And science doesn't know how to do (practice) psychology. They can only do physiology. Modern "psychology" is quackery....
That's harsh :lol:. It sounds like you're channelling GG.Atreyu wrote:Modern "psychology" is quackery....
Each general advance of humanity brings an associated loss of skills and creativity within professions. The uploading of our individual minds into a communal mind comes at the expense of sensitivity and instinct. Every generation mourns the losses of their individual qualities in the next generation. However, the next generation still end up being far more empowered than the prior one en masse, despite on average being less individually capable.
Instinct and emotions are basically "intelligence hacks" where organisms can perform efficacious actions that are too complex to process, or at least not in a timely manner. These "hacks", when finely honed, can allow humans to perform great individual feats and perhaps reach their highest potentials as individuals. Certainly this is the case in any performance-based activity, from public speaking and negotiation to music and sports.
However, instincts and emotions are unreliable and concentrated populations require much ordering. Thus came science - the quest for reliability. If I do x, then y should happen. Predictability, control and order in a wild and hostile world. The scientific method provided reliability, and with that confidence and empowerment. The empowerment is less to to individuals than to the society at large. When compared with our natural individual instinctive gifts the scientific method is plodding, obvious and is sometimes blinkered to the point of obtuseness, but the benefits are generalised rather than individual. Individual gifts become increasingly less important than being able to access the knowledge of the most gifted who came before.
The result could be expected to be an ever greater homogenisation or "flattening" of individual abilities, with a increase in societal empowerment. Our minds are certainly not all in our brains, not any more at least, with storage, retrieval and transfer of our memories and ideas stored as binary code in magnetic, optical or electronic media.
The whole of humanity is becoming ever more than the sum of its parts, which raises some existential questions.
- TSBU
- Posts: 151
- Joined: August 17th, 2016, 5:32 pm
Re: Smarter than your brain?
False. Maybe you should put examples, say how or... something more than the sentence...Greta wrote:
Each general advance of humanity brings an associated loss of skills and creativity within professions.
The uploading of our individual minds into a communal mind comes at the expense of sensitivity and instinct.
Communal mind doesn't exist.
Not really. And... really, I think you should try to say why do you say what you say...Every generation mourns the losses of their individual qualities in the next generation.
Maybe an "empowered" definition would be necesary here XD.However, the next generation still end up being far more empowered than the prior one en masse, despite on average being less individually capable.
I don't agree with that.Instinct and emotions are basically "intelligence hacks" where organisms can perform efficacious actions that are too complex to process, or at least not in a timely manner.
And this is absurd, reaching any "performance-based activity" (any activity) is more and more based in logic all the time. 50 years ago some sportperoople smoked, today they count the calories they eat, they know exactly how much hours they can train, etc. Music is math, and it has been always teached, etc.These "hacks", when finely honed, can allow humans to perform great individual feats and perhaps reach their highest potentials as individuals. Certainly this is the case in any performance-based activity, from public speaking and negotiation to music and sports.
As I've said many times, order can't be measured. And there is not many order here, it is a glorious mess.However, instincts and emotions are unreliable and concentrated populations require much ordering.
I think you don't understand what some people want to call scientific method.The empowerment is less to to individuals than to the society at large. When compared with our natural individual instinctive gifts the scientific method is plodding, obvious and is sometimes blinkered to the point of obtuseness
Your post is whole of afirmations, but you don't explain any of them.but the benefits are generalised rather than individual
Not at all. 50 years ago, many people could go to any job, today, you have to prove your skills and make an exam. For example, a bomberman now has to be very fit. And now more than ever, we are seeing how many individuals develop new things and make possible what the rest can't. Automatization will make more and more difficult to majority to be more than "other cheap tool like the previous one", having more knowledge acces for everybody make things very different to the past, where those in power were those who had it (and the man who worked with iron was one whose father had been working with iron).Individual gifts become increasingly less important than being able to access the knowledge of the most gifted who came before.
What I see is not like that at all, it is a place where, even though people want (when they are in the floor) to stop those who can fly, it's easier than ever to fly (if you can). Now you can access to every knowledge easily, and I see lies and control everywhere over those who can't see it, and many people out of that.The result could be expected to be an ever greater homogenisation or "flattening" of individual abilities, with a increase in societal empowerment.
They are as "ours" as when some people invented how to write. If we have one.Our minds are certainly not all in our brains, not any more at least, with storage, retrieval and transfer of our memories and ideas stored as binary code in magnetic, optical or electronic media.
The first sentence is a pretty nosense. I don't know, maybe you are right and people are becoming stupid, but I can't see that as a good thing :/The whole of humanity is becoming ever more than the sum of its parts, which raises some existential questions.
- Sy Borg
- Site Admin
- Posts: 14997
- Joined: December 16th, 2013, 9:05 pm
Re: Smarter than your brain?
Yes, I did not go into specialisation of roles and specific skills in that post, which I should have done. However, most of your final comment on the forum above were baseless assertions.
2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023