In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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Tata1
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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Johnny Dangerous wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:36 pm
PadmaVonSamba wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:20 pm When we talk about experience, there is both physical and non-physical. When we experience fear, our heart rate increases, we perspire, and the little hairs on the neck and arms stand up.
The experience of those things is subjective, it is not an objective physical property..in fact, there is no such experience as an objective phsyical property. it is a deduction made via subjective experience of measurements, visual observation, etc....all of which can only take place within the realm of subjective experience.
As Fransisco Varella use to say, we can't get behind experience
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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Tata1 wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 1:27 am
Johnny Dangerous wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:36 pm
PadmaVonSamba wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:20 pm When we talk about experience, there is both physical and non-physical. When we experience fear, our heart rate increases, we perspire, and the little hairs on the neck and arms stand up.
The experience of those things is subjective, it is not an objective physical property..in fact, there is no such experience as an objective phsyical property. it is a deduction made via subjective experience of measurements, visual observation, etc....all of which can only take place within the realm of subjective experience.
As Fransisco Varella use to say, we can't get behind experience
:thumbsup: I like that.
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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Johnny Dangerous wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:36 pm
PadmaVonSamba wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:20 pm When we talk about experience, there is both physical and non-physical. When we experience fear, our heart rate increases, we perspire, and the little hairs on the neck and arms stand up.
The experience of those things is subjective, it is not an objective physical property..in fact, there is no such experience as an objective phsyical property. it is a deduction made via subjective experience of measurements, visual observation, etc....all of which can only take place within the realm of subjective experience.
The observation is subjective.
The physiological events themselves are simply chemical interactions, like stomach acids digesting food.
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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PadmaVonSamba wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 3:37 am
Johnny Dangerous wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:36 pm
PadmaVonSamba wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:20 pm When we talk about experience, there is both physical and non-physical. When we experience fear, our heart rate increases, we perspire, and the little hairs on the neck and arms stand up.
The experience of those things is subjective, it is not an objective physical property..in fact, there is no such experience as an objective phsyical property. it is a deduction made via subjective experience of measurements, visual observation, etc....all of which can only take place within the realm of subjective experience.
The observation is subjective.
The physiological events themselves are simply chemical interactions, like stomach acids digesting food.
You can only observe physiological events such as chemical interactions through inferences based on data obtained through subjective experiences. You do not experience your thoughts as chemical interactions.

Physiological process observations are not outside of subjective experience, nothing is, that is the point. It is a kind of thought error of mindy/body dualism to believe that there are really existing mechanistic processes which are divorced from the subjective experiences needed to categorize and study them, there are not.

If there is such an animal, clearly we cannot experience it, and it can only remain at a theoretical level. There are no observations that can be made independent of an observer. The idea of a mechanistic "physical" world divorced from conscious experience is actually an absurd notion, or at least one which is fully impossible for us to experience.
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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Johnny Dangerous wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 5:27 am
PadmaVonSamba wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 3:37 am
Johnny Dangerous wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:36 pm

The experience of those things is subjective, it is not an objective physical property..in fact, there is no such experience as an objective phsyical property. it is a deduction made via subjective experience of measurements, visual observation, etc....all of which can only take place within the realm of subjective experience.
The observation is subjective.
The physiological events themselves are simply chemical interactions, like stomach acids digesting food.
You can only observe physiological events such as chemical interactions through inferences based on data obtained through subjective experiences. You do not experience your thoughts as chemical interactions.

Physiological process observations are not outside of subjective experience, nothing is, that is the point. It is a kind of thought error of mindy/body dualism to believe that there are really existing mechanistic processes which are divorced from the subjective experiences needed to categorize and study them, there are not.

If there is such an animal, clearly we cannot experience it, and it can only remain at a theoretical level. There are no observations that can be made independent of an observer. The idea of a mechanistic "physical" world divorced from conscious experience is actually an absurd notion, or at least one which is fully impossible for us to experience.
It’s true that we don’t ‘experience’ the chemical interactions in the brain merely as chemical interactions. That to me is a curious thing.

But it also sounds as though you are saying that because something either is not or cannot be directly experienced, therefore it cannot be occurring.
If that’s what you are saying, it doesn’t hold up. Let me know if I’ve misunderstood that.
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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If a tree falls in a forest...
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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PadmaVonSamba wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 11:41 am

It’s true that we don’t ‘experience’ the chemical interactions in the brain merely as chemical interactions. That to me is a curious thing.

But it also sounds as though you are saying that because something either is not or cannot be directly experienced, therefore it cannot be occurring.
If that’s what you are saying, it doesn’t hold up. Let me know if I’ve misunderstood that.
No, I'm saying that you cannot verify that it occurs in some platonic "objective" fashion, because your subjective awareness is needed to even perform the experiment. In other words, you cannot separate observer and observed.

There are no "objective phenomena" is one way of putting on it. There are agreed upon premises and observations (which are quite useful), but no way to get behind the curtain, and definitely no way of reasonably reducing thoughts to being mere chemical interaction..because we do not experience chemical interactions, in a phenomenological sense (which is not the same as their practical usefulness in the relative world, obviously) these observations are just abstractions of our experience.
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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Johnny Dangerous wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:51 pm
PadmaVonSamba wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 11:41 am

It’s true that we don’t ‘experience’ the chemical interactions in the brain merely as chemical interactions. That to me is a curious thing.

But it also sounds as though you are saying that because something either is not or cannot be directly experienced, therefore it cannot be occurring.
If that’s what you are saying, it doesn’t hold up. Let me know if I’ve misunderstood that.
No, I'm saying that you cannot verify that it occurs in some platonic "objective" fashion, because your subjective awareness is needed to even perform the experiment. In other words, you cannot separate observer and observed.

There are no "objective phenomena".
This is obviously madhyamaka. But would science also say this?
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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SilenceMonkey wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:52 pm
Johnny Dangerous wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:51 pm
PadmaVonSamba wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 11:41 am

It’s true that we don’t ‘experience’ the chemical interactions in the brain merely as chemical interactions. That to me is a curious thing.

But it also sounds as though you are saying that because something either is not or cannot be directly experienced, therefore it cannot be occurring.
If that’s what you are saying, it doesn’t hold up. Let me know if I’ve misunderstood that.
No, I'm saying that you cannot verify that it occurs in some platonic "objective" fashion, because your subjective awareness is needed to even perform the experiment. In other words, you cannot separate observer and observed.

There are no "objective phenomena".
This is obviously madhyamaka. But would science also say this?
AFAIK it actually does, to some degree. Most of what we are talking about is some assumptions that come with our present worldview, but are not actually "scientific" at all.

I think that people like Daniel Dennet basically admit that subjective reality is an illusion..they just take the nihilist road basically, and say that there is nothing else, just an illusory bubble, then maybe some very basic mechanistic universal machinery surrounding it. They believe in namtok, but not much else.

At any rate, the point is that "science" does not claim that people are simply collections of neurons or chemicals at all. That is just an assumption that some scientists might have, but not one which is not actually based on any scientific method at all. Like I said, such a claim is demonstrably absurd and reductionist.

Even Sam Harris of all people has remarked on this sort of thing:

https://bigthink.com/think-tank/the-sub ... sam-harris

If people don't get what I'm saying, here's the contemplation I was given by one of my teachers that helped me get this:

Just go spend about and hour trying to find something you believe is "outside" of your mind, and then explain why you think it's outside of your mind. This is not about theory I think, but about how you react to the question, and examining the assumptions there.
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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Johnny Dangerous wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:51 pm
PadmaVonSamba wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 11:41 am

It’s true that we don’t ‘experience’ the chemical interactions in the brain merely as chemical interactions. That to me is a curious thing.

But it also sounds as though you are saying that because something either is not or cannot be directly experienced, therefore it cannot be occurring.
If that’s what you are saying, it doesn’t hold up. Let me know if I’ve misunderstood that.
No, I'm saying that you cannot verify that it occurs in some platonic "objective" fashion, because your subjective awareness is needed to even perform the experiment. In other words, you cannot separate observer and observed.

There are no "objective phenomena" is one way of putting on it. There are agreed upon premises and observations (which are quite useful), but no way to get behind the curtain, and definitely no way of reasonably reducing thoughts to being mere chemical interaction..because we do not experience chemical interactions, in a phenomenological sense (which is not the same as their practical usefulness in the relative world, obviously) these observations are just abstractions of our experience.
When observing one’s own awareness, it doesn’t matter if it’s objective of not. It doesn’t need to be objective.
Likewise, when I said:
When we talk about experience, there is both physical and non-physical. When we experience fear, our heart rate increases, we perspire, and the little hairs on the neck and arms stand up.
Subjective/objective doesn’t have any bearing on that. You still sweat, your hair stands on end and your heart beats faster when you are frightened.
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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PadmaVonSamba wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 9:43 pm
Johnny Dangerous wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:51 pm
PadmaVonSamba wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 11:41 am

It’s true that we don’t ‘experience’ the chemical interactions in the brain merely as chemical interactions. That to me is a curious thing.

But it also sounds as though you are saying that because something either is not or cannot be directly experienced, therefore it cannot be occurring.
If that’s what you are saying, it doesn’t hold up. Let me know if I’ve misunderstood that.
No, I'm saying that you cannot verify that it occurs in some platonic "objective" fashion, because your subjective awareness is needed to even perform the experiment. In other words, you cannot separate observer and observed.

There are no "objective phenomena" is one way of putting on it. There are agreed upon premises and observations (which are quite useful), but no way to get behind the curtain, and definitely no way of reasonably reducing thoughts to being mere chemical interaction..because we do not experience chemical interactions, in a phenomenological sense (which is not the same as their practical usefulness in the relative world, obviously) these observations are just abstractions of our experience.
When observing one’s own awareness, it doesn’t matter if it’s objective of not. It doesn’t need to be objective.
Likewise, when I said:
When we talk about experience, there is both physical and non-physical. When we experience fear, our heart rate increases, we perspire, and the little hairs on the neck and arms stand up.
Subjective/objective doesn’t have any bearing on that. You still sweat, your hair stands on end and your heart beats faster when you are frightened.
Either you still aren't quite getting it, or I'm just misunderstanding some additional point you are making. This is unassailable once you get it, it's not an opinion of mine. You can read the Sam Harris piece and he explains it. Your experience of physiological things is entirely subjective, the categorization of these things done by science can only take place in the field of subjective experience. So, while these things have bearing relatively speaking, they are all based on inference within that field of subjective experience. There is no argument here that physiological things don't happen or anything like that.

For that reason (in relation to the OP) reducing subjective experience to mere chemical components is absurd, because the measurement of said chemical components can only tale place within that field of subjective experience, like everything.

There is nothing else we know. There is not some platonist notion of real or ideal sweat, or chemical process that can be found somehow "outside" of or directing that experience that we can find. All of those things are in way or another categorizations and measurements of subjective experiences. Again, it is impossible to separate observer from observation. This is the best argument against reductionism of the mind to only physical components, because the idea of a purely physical world is again, patently absurd.

I also remembered a book the OP might find interesting, which is Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel.

When this book came out he was (very unfairly) maligned by the New Athiest crew, but it quite well explains the philosophical conundrum of reducing experiences only to mechanistic and physical properties. The book is unconnected to Buddhism except tangentially and is mostly a critique of this sort of unspoken worldview, but it make some good points about the materialist concept of the universe.
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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Does this mean that everything is subjective?
That there is no objective actions?
I do not understand.

The dinosaurs dies 60 million years ago.
We weren't there at the time so there is no subjective experience of it
The reason we know about dinosaurs is the physical world leaves us with clues
Fossils of dinosaurs. Are you saying our experience of fossils is subjective?
And the reason it is subjective is because we can only experience the world through our senses?

Now, are you saying that dinosaurs are a subjective experience??
That they do not exist if we do not experience it??
A falling tree makes no sound because there is no one to hear it??
Does that mean there is no tree and it does not fall down??

When I read the title, I thought the OP would be talking about question of "ghost in the machine".
That there would be something more than just biochemicals creating this person to believe they are conscious??

To say everything is subjective due to the nature of the way we experience the world around us??
Is that also saying that things do not exist and no objective events if we do not know about it or experience it???
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

Post by Schrödinger’s Yidam »

A snarky answer would be based on altering your brain chemistry. If your experience of life and reality can be altered by a chemical in your brain it is a function of brain chemistry,—by definition.

However the teachings say that the actual true nature of your mind cannot be altered. So the whatever isn’t effected by altering you brain chemistry is the nature of your mind.

I apologize for my snarkiness.
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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Schrödinger’s Yidam wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2021 3:58 am A snarky answer would be based on altering your brain chemistry. If your experience of life and reality can be altered by a chemical in your brain it is a function of brain chemistry,—by definition.

However the teachings say that the actual true nature of your mind cannot be altered. So the whatever isn’t effected by altering you brain chemistry is the nature of your mind.

I apologize for my snarkiness.
Right but like I said earlier, neuroplasticity kind of ends that snark abruptly, because it means activities of "the mind" - i.e. your thoughts etc. alters neurons, brain structure, hormonal balance etc., which they do, and are all the time. We used to think it was just kids too, now they pretty much think that it's a lifetime thing. It is not a one way street. So such a claim is not a very "scientific" observation, and as far as I know it's one most scientists quit claiming a long time ago.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basi ... plasticity
The dinosaurs dies 60 million years ago.
We weren't there at the time so there is no subjective experience of it
The reason we know about dinosaurs is the physical world leaves us with clues
Fossils of dinosaurs. Are you saying our experience of fossils is subjective?
All experience is subjective, by definition. That is undisputable. Stop focusing on the content and look at the act of experiencing. There is no such thing as an objective experience, objective facts are correlated and agreed upon subjective experiences.

So yes, are misunderstanding I think. It's not denying the value of science in measuring and explaining the world, and in fact what I'm talking is acknowledged by plenty of scientists, because it's undeniable. All observations are made through our subjective experience, and we are not separate from our observations.

Maybe read the Sam Harris article.

You can look up the Double Slit experiment if you want a deeper look and what little experimentation exists here. I know there are some new experiments in this vein too.

Or, you can just go and read the first line of the Dhammapada;)

Seriously, anyone who wants to dispute this, do the thought experiment and show me how you can make an observation which is outside of your experience.
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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Maybe this excerpt from physicist Andrei Linde will assist in what JD is pointing at:
Now let us turn to consciousness. According to standard materialistic doctrine, consciousness, like space-time before the invention of general relativity, plays a secondary, subservient role, being considered just a function of matter and a tool for the description of the truly existing material world. But let us remember that our knowledge of the world begins not with matter but with perceptions. I know for sure that my pain exists, my “green” exists, and my “sweet” exists. I do not need any proof of their existence, because these events are a part of me; everything else is a theory. Later we find out that our perceptions obey some laws, which can be most conveniently formulated if we assume that there is some underlying reality beyond our perceptions. This model of material world obeying laws of physics is so successful that soon we forget about our starting point and say that matter is the only reality, and perceptions are only helpful for its description. This assumption is almost as natural (and maybe as false) as our previous assumption that space is only a mathematical tool for the description of matter. But in fact we are substituting reality of our feelings by a successfully working theory of an independently existing material world. And the theory is so successful that we almost never think about its limitations until we must address some really deep issues, which do not fit into our model of reality.
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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Watch some David Chalmers speeches on Youtube.
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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Johnny Dangerous wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2021 4:15 am You can look up the Double Slit experiment if you want a deeper look and what little experimentation exists here. I know there are some new experiments in this vein too.

Seriously, anyone who wants to dispute this, do the thought experiment and show me how you can make an observation which is outside of your experience.
Not disputing, ...
Trying to wrap my mind around your concept of everything being subjective due to how we experience the world.
The double slit experiment presents how we the observer influences the world through our act of observing.
The earlier being that one perceptions are through one's senses
The latter being how one's act of observation influencing the way particles act (especially on a sub atomic level)
Not quite the same.

Guess what I was really asking is, is there an objective world that exist outside of our observation??
Again the example of the tree falling in the woods. If no one is there to observe then does it make a sound?
Or does it even really exist? Another example would be a mouse living in your house.
If you do not observe it then does it exist? And then when you do observe it, did it just suddenly come into existence?
Yes, the world is a subjective experience. That is the nature of our existence.
But, does your concept allow for the world to exist outside of our perceptions? That was my question.
Cause if it does then there can be objective actions or events beyond our perceptions.
And if it doesn't then it does not allow for what is consensus of the world we perceive.
Sorry, that is just the logic or thought process. :jawdrop:
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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I don’t know how else to explain it, all experience is subjective by definition. It’s not a concept or theory about how this or that exists.

Find what is outside of your experience, and let me know when you do.

I know this is a tough one to wrap your head around. Once you do it will seem obvious and self evident. It is, it’s just hiding in plain sight for most of us I think.

Also, double slit indicates that the observer effects outcomes of observation, so it’s relevant, though unneeded to prove this point.
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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

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Johnny Dangerous wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2021 6:30 pm Find what is outside of your experience,
Is this a practice (or something that certain practices direct you toward) in Buddhism? Or is it more rhetorical

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Re: In what sense is the brain and consciousness not just biochemicals

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

Johnny Dangerous wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2021 6:30 pm I don’t know how else to explain it, all experience is subjective by definition. It’s not a concept or theory about how this or that exists.

Find what is outside of your experience, and let me know when you do.

I know this is a tough one to wrap your head around. Once you do it will seem obvious and self evident. It is, it’s just hiding in plain sight for most of us I think.

Also, double slit indicates that the observer effects outcomes of observation, so it’s relevant, though unneeded to prove this point.
Although all experience is subjective, and indeed, no experience occurs outside of the mind,
that doesn’t mean that all phenomena only occur subjectively.
If that were the case, there would be no such thing as undetected illnesses caused by conditions of which one is unaware until it is too late.
There would be no discovery of anything.
There would be no Buddhist tradition existing before one found out about it.
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