Can consciousness exist without any brain at all?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Consul
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Re: Can consciousness exist without any brain at all?

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Belindi wrote: September 17th, 2021, 11:16 amBiology and psychology are both materialistic . It is the nature of science to be materialistic. This is a main reason that parapsychology is hard to experiment with in the laboratory.
Teleological Notions in Biology: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleology-biology/
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Re: Can consciousness exist without any brain at all?

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Consul wrote: September 17th, 2021, 2:56 pm
Belindi wrote: September 17th, 2021, 11:16 amBiology and psychology are both materialistic . It is the nature of science to be materialistic. This is a main reason that parapsychology is hard to experiment with in the laboratory.
Teleological Notions in Biology: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleology-biology/
I have not got very far with reading it, Consul, but immediately I sided with Aristotle not Plato. I also thought that the following is of special interest , it's from the first section and I tried and failed to copy and paste the bit about Kant's idea of human goal-directedness. The idealist stance is that goal directedness is universally true of humans but contra Kant an idealist does not need to posit things in themselves, numenous being.

Teleological reasoning gets its bad reputation because of the fundamental presupposition of science that existence is matter not mind. Science is a tremendous methodology but despite science's enormous success it's not a royal road to ontic truth. Parapsychology perhaps more than any other scientific enquiry is disabled(and some claim is pseudo science) because materialism fails the study of what are without reasonable doubt subjective phenomena. James Randi's offer was never been successfully claimed.
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Re: Can consciousness exist without any brain at all?

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For the sake of clarity, is this thread addressing simple consciousness (reaction to pain and fear etc.) or the reflective conscious of a self-aware being?
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Re: Can consciousness exist without any brain at all?

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Frog wrote: October 2nd, 2021, 10:45 am For the sake of clarity, is this thread addressing simple consciousness (reaction to pain and fear etc.) or the reflective conscious of a self-aware being?
Some posters regard consciousness as waking awareness of environment. Others think of consciousness as a stage in a continuum of experiences. Others think of consciousness as experiencing subjective qualia.
For the sake of clarity it's well to define not only what one thinks consciousness is or may be, but also what brain is or may be.

For instance a human being alive is subject to reactions to gravity and other forces, reactions to sensory stimuli, and the reflective conscious of a self-aware being. The same human being dead is subject only to reactions to gravity and other forces.
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Re: Can consciousness exist without any brain at all?

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Belindi wrote: October 2nd, 2021, 1:07 pm
Frog wrote: October 2nd, 2021, 10:45 am For the sake of clarity, is this thread addressing simple consciousness (reaction to pain and fear etc.) or the reflective conscious of a self-aware being?
Some posters regard consciousness as waking awareness of environment. Others think of consciousness as a stage in a continuum of experiences. Others think of consciousness as experiencing subjective qualia.
For the sake of clarity it's well to define not only what one thinks consciousness is or may be, but also what brain is or may be.

For instance a human being alive is subject to reactions to gravity and other forces, reactions to sensory stimuli, and the reflective conscious of a self-aware being. The same human being dead is subject only to reactions to gravity and other forces.
I agree and your post reminds me that, for clarity, we need a definition of death as it affects the states of conscious/unconcious too.
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Re: Can consciousness exist without any brain at all?

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Frog wrote: October 2nd, 2021, 10:45 amFor the sake of clarity, is this thread addressing simple consciousness (reaction to pain and fear etc.) or the reflective conscious of a self-aware being?
"[C]onsciousness is the presence of any kind of subjective experience whatsoever."

(Seth, Anil. "Consciousness and the Self: A Conversation with Anil Seth." In Sam Harris, Making Sense: Conversations on Consciousness, Morality, and the Future of Humanity, 95-156. New York: Ecco, 2020. p. 98)

This is the sort of consciousness (aka phenomenal consciousness) we've been talking about here.
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Re: Can consciousness exist without any brain at all?

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Ah, ok. Thanks for the clarification.
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Re: Can consciousness exist without any brain at all?

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The AWARE—AWAreness during REsuscitation study by Sam Parnia, director of the Human Consciousness Project at the University of Southampton may provide evidence that consciousness is independent from the brain.

(2019) Does Consciousness Continue After Brain Flat-line?
How can people brought back from death after cardiac arrest report having experienced lucid and vivid memories and recollections without a functioning brain? The study of near-death experiences is challenging the idea our consciousness originates in the brain.
https://www.sca-aware.org/sca-news/life ... eart-stops

Dr. Sam Parnia studies what happens to the human mind and consciousness after people go beyond the threshold of death..

Dr. Sam Parnia estimates that a man in the study experienced conscious awareness for five minutes in the absence of detectable brain activity, a time, he has said, “when no human experience should be happening whatsoever.”. The man could accurately describe events and people.

Evidence from AWARE and other studies, he says, raises the possibility that the mind or consciousness — the psyche, the “self,” the thing that “makes me Sam” and that makes us uniquely who we are — may not originate in the brain and may be a separate, undiscovered scientific entity.

Modern science simply lacks the tools to show it. When we die and the brain and heart stop functioning, that entity we call consciousness or the self doesn’t necessarily become “immediately annihilated,”.

The moment the heart stops, the brain shuts down from a functional perspective, he said. “Yet, paradoxically, what we started to see is that millions of people have now been resuscitated, and many of them have reported these very lucid, well-structured thought processes.” They’re able to form memories, describe conversations and what people were wearing. “Except that their brain has shut down and they’ve gone through death. Which is completely a paradox, it should not happen. If your mind is simply a product of your brain, if your brain has shut down, there should be no consciousness.”

Video interview about NDE and consciousness: https://www.closertotruth.com/series/wh ... ideo-49279
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Re: Can consciousness exist without any brain at all?

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psyreporter wrote: October 8th, 2021, 11:04 amEvidence from AWARE and other studies, he says, raises the possibility that the mind or consciousness — the psyche, the “self,” the thing that “makes me Sam” and that makes us uniquely who we are — may not originate in the brain and may be a separate, undiscovered scientific entity.
Modern science simply lacks the tools to show it. When we die and the brain and heart stop functioning, that entity we call consciousness or the self doesn’t necessarily become “immediately annihilated,”.
The theoretical problem with those NDE researchers you refer to is that they disparage scientific brain theories of the psyche in favor of occultistic ghost theories of it, which are inherently implausible or not even coherently intelligible.

QUOTE>
"Again and again the arguments [in NDE research] come back to whether someone actually saw something they should not have been able to see, or consciously saw anything at all when their brain was silent. And then what? Then, you might believe from reading Morse, Parnia, Fenwick, Rivas or van Lommel, we have ‘proof’ that the scientists are all wrong, that the materialist, reductionist (and heartless and anti-spiritual?) Western scientific paradigm must be overthrown. And then?
Then nothing. The ‘new paradigm’ and the ‘visions of a new science of consciousness’ (Parnia & Fenwick, 2002) are empty. We are told that a few special cases prove the reality of the human soul and its survival of bodily death, that memory is stored outside of the brain and consciousness does not depend upon having a body. And then? What do these new ‘theories’ predict? If I take them seriously, I want to ask questions such as, ‘What is the soul made of?’, ‘What capabilities does it have and not have? And how can we find out?’, ‘If memory is stored outside the brain, how is it stored, and what does this tell us about learning, forgetting, or retrieving old memories?’, ‘What is consciousness and what is left of it when the eyes and ears, visual and auditory cortices, vestibular system and self-systems are all dead?’ And I get no answers. It is not that the research has yet to be done, it is that these theories don’t tell us what research needs to be done. They provide no predictions, no interesting questions that can be answered with experiments, and no ways of finding out which of them fits the data better. Like the theory of astral projection, they are empty."

(Blackmore, Susan. Seeing Myself: The New Science of Out-Of-Body Experiences. London: Robinson, 2017.)
———
"Compare now what the neuroscientist can tell us about the brain, and what she can do with that knowledge, with what the dualist can tell us about spiritual substance, and what he can do with those assumptions. Can the dualist tell us anything about the internal constitution of mind-stuff? Of the nonmaterial elements that make it up? Of the nonphysical laws that govern their behavior? Of the mind's structural connections with the body? Of the manner of the mind's operations? Can he explain human capacities and pathologies in terms of its structures and defects? The fact is, the dualist can do none of these things because no detailed theory of mind-stuff has ever even be formulated. Compared to the rich resources and the explanatory successes of current materialism, dualism is not so much a theory of mind as it is an empty space waiting for a genuine theory of mind to be put in it."

(Churchland, Paul M. Matter and Consciousness. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013. p. 31)
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Re: Can consciousness exist without any brain at all?

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The arguments appear to be merely intended to discredit the NDE scientists. Even in the case that NDE scientists would argue something questionable in place of the brain-mind idea, e.g. the mentioned 'scientists are all wrong, that the materialist, reductionist (and heartless and anti-spiritual?) Western scientific paradigm must be overthrown'), the evidence that conscious experience is possible while the brain is shut down does provide a clue that consciousness may not originate in the brain.

What then?

Dr. Sam Parnia clearly mentions that in place of the brain-mind idea, mind potentially originates from an 'undiscovered scientific entity'.
Dr. Sam Parnia wrote:Evidence from AWARE and other studies, he says, raises the possibility that the mind or consciousness — the psyche, the “self," and that makes us uniquely who we are — may not originate in the brain and may be a separate, undiscovered scientific entity.
This appears to be a quest that is compatible with established science and does not match the accusations in the cited article.
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Re: Can consciousness exist without any brain at all?

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psyreporter wrote: October 9th, 2021, 5:40 am What then?

Dr. Sam Parnia clearly mentions that in place of the brain-mind idea, mind potentially originates from an 'undiscovered scientific entity'.
Dr. Sam Parnia wrote:Evidence from AWARE and other studies, he says, raises the possibility that the mind or consciousness — the psyche, the “self," and that makes us uniquely who we are — may not originate in the brain and may be a separate, undiscovered scientific entity.
This appears to be a quest that is compatible with established science and does not match the accusations in the cited article.
Yes, it does match the accusations, because it's nothing but substance-dualistic hand-waving: "a separate, undiscovered scientific entity"? There will never be a real science of occult immaterial entities such as ghosts or souls.
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Re: Can consciousness exist without any brain at all?

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I just listened to an interview with Sam Parnia: https://www.facebook.com/CloserToTruthT ... 932027531/

Parnia clearly endorses or favors substance dualism; but, surprisingly, he denies the immateriality of the soul (psyche). According to him, it is made of some matter, but it's a "subtle" kind of matter that is distinct from the kind of matter bodies and brains are made of. Behind this is the good old occultistic distinction between "thick", "coarse" matter (the one accessible to and observable by normal physical science) and "thin", "fine", "subtle", "ethereal" matter. The soul is regarded as a body, but it's an invisible "spiritual body" made of "thin" matter. This is an intramaterialistic substance dualism rather than a transmaterialistic one (such as Cartesian substance dualism), but it's nonetheless an unscientific sort of occultism. There isn't a shred of physical evidence for such paramaterial souls.
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Re: Can consciousness exist without any brain at all?

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As for "the body in occult thought", see this post of mine: viewtopic.php?p=284977#p284977
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Re: Can consciousness exist without any brain at all?

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Consul wrote: October 9th, 2021, 1:12 pm…This is an intramaterialistic substance dualism rather than a transmaterialistic one (such as Cartesian substance dualism), but it's nonetheless an unscientific sort of occultism. There isn't a shred of physical evidence for such paramaterial souls.
I'm sure occultists love the comparison with dark matter or dark energy.

By the way, physics does deal with unobservable entities too; but the occult entities postulated by "paraphysics" or "cryptophysics" such as "spiritual bodies" are not amenable to serious treatment by natural science.
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Re: Can consciousness exist without any brain at all?

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There's even a Wikipedia entry on "the Subtle Body": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtle_body
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