In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

[Queequeg]

n8, I hope my attempt at an answer was not tone deaf. I've reflected and thought maybe such a technical response was not appropriate.

Even if your mother is losing capacity and though she may be limited in what she can do for herself, there are practices that you and others can do for her. All merit you develop is shared with your mother. Things she hears and sees, even passively, can make impressions on the deepest levels of her consciousness - the levels beyond those that might be affected or diminished by the prion disease.

[tkp67]

People are making the same mistake as the materialists, in my mind. Just because you amass a certain number of subjective impressions does not mean that at some point, as if by magic, objectivity leaps to the stage. Nor does adopting a set of inferences that have predictive value indicate the ontological truth of those inferences--- just because something is useful does not make it true. And indeed, inferences are always subject to falsification in any instance. 100 instances of smoke leading to fire doesn't mean it will do so on the 101st (for example, dry ice "smokes," as does smouldering peat or an ember.)

Nor does this skepticism amount to a denial of some kind of physical or external reality.By definition, everything we know is subjective. Shades of color aren't hanging out there, they are generated by sentient beings. With no observers, there is simply no qualia: no color, no sound, no texture. These are not only specific to the environment, they also vary from observer to observer (i.e. a color blind person may see no red). Those are all subjective qualities. If you don't accept that, explain how the motion of light relates to different colors, or how the vibration of molecules relates to the sounds we hear. It doesn't even make sense-- the redness of red is due to how light moves?

It is a tautology. However, because we have been conditioned into naive realism (i.e. things exist as we see them), we think this is not the case. If you wish to posit a colorless, soundless, textureless, non-experienced (because all of these are subjective) external reality, then by all means do so, although I don't know what you are positing.

Thanks, you explained this much better than I could. The bolded bit is the tacit belief of some materialists, and is exactly why the idea that subjective experience is completely reducible to physical components (again, referencing the OP) is questionable, to my mind at least.

The human experience cannot be facilitated outside the human body. This experience does not occur outside of a real time moment.

The is the contextual framework in which the Buddha's existence was directly experienced.

While reductive methods to eliminate self were left as instructions there was also a proof, a view from here in regards to what objective experience would look like through the eyes of the buddha. I think this makes understanding appearance more reasonable.

The true aspect of all phenomena can only be understood and shared between buddhas. This reality consists of the appearance, nature, entity, power, influence, internal cause, relation, latent effect, manifest effect, and their consistency from beginning to end.”

Two buddha in essence see the same thing as it exist in a given moment according to those characteristics. I think this represents the buddha's awareness of function with changes with time but is identifiable as thus within any given moment of time.

[LastLegend]

My guess is that there is only dreamed contact between the dreamed object and the dreamed eye. Really, its all within the mental consciousness.

in the Surangama Sutra, the Buddha explains that the mental consciousness has become sort of divided up among the senses.

Like hearing, then followed by consciousness.