*The Ultimate solution to Consciousness.*

I realised one night the most sane way of truly exploring philosophy is to tie me to a table and dissect my brain against my will.
This is the only way I will understand why I am trapped inside my brain and what exactly consciousness is.

Science needs to be able to find a way to (remotely) deactivate neurons inside the brain. This has to be temporary and disabled neurons need to eventually turn back on so they can experiment with turning on and turning off certain sectors.
This is the only way to truly understand what consciousness is and why we are trapped in brains. Philosophy has been waiting for this for over 2000 years.

Whilst that sounds like fun, I don’t think it will reveal anything about ‘you’ et al.

Dissecting remotely. The damage can’t be permanent, we also need to explore their on off states and comparisons of various sectors, which require the neurons to be able to be disabled and enabled, rather than just permanently disabled.

The average person might not learn anything from the experience, but I am more “in tune” with these sorts of things.

Ok but if we knew everything about your neurons would we know anything about you? If you examine any picture it will reveal details but the whole never says what it is ~ is open to interpretation which brings any ideas into the foreground. Neurons are just a bunch of info in the foreground if you look at any of them specifically, and even if you could read them all its still just info and not you.

There is a technique being developed which takes micro slices of a dead brain, and builds the complete info matrix layer by layer. So would the result be you/us, what we actually are? You could add-remove such matrix’s if you were an android with such functionality. So multiple personalities surely add up to ‘character’ and not the thing acting in that way.

I don’t think you get the goal of this experiment.

I am an active part of the experiment, it isn’t a matter of just raw data analysis, but me analysing my own consciousness in real time and finding revelations as my brain is being modified in real time. I am the prime scientist, the experiment isn’t about data analyzing images in the background but modifying and exploring consciousness in real time. Data analysis may be needed to analyse my revelations after the fact, but the core of the experiment is my consciousness itself.

Hello Ultimate,

Take your brain, expand it to the size of a building and walk into it. All you will see is mostly fat, protein and water. This will translate into neurons, axons, dendrites, and synapse mostly. No where will you see an idea, a motive a desire, a thought at all, nor a sensation–no matter how meticulously you dissect it on the butcher’s board with a dissecting needle and anatomical blow pipes. This is the problem of consciousness. How does these physical stuff that we can observe come to form subjective stuff? Whats the difference between a brain state and a mental state? What’s the difference of love vs the chemical stuff? This debate has a very long beard.

Bad analogy.

If I look at a small microwire I cannot see electricity.

If I get a pigger electrowire, like a 120 v home extension cord, I cannot see electricity.

If I get a bigger electrowire, like a military grade telephone pole, I still cannot see electricity.

Ideas are electric signals. Sounds are atom signals. Same thing. Your cd player converts it. You don’t say sound doesn’t exist because you can’t see it. Like, if I enlarged a cd player to be larger than godzilla, all I would see is metal, plastic, and a couple of ergonomic wires, I still could not see the sound or electricty behind the sound.

?

The average human brain operates on about 8 watts of electricity. It cannot be seen, but exists. An accurate realization of what brains do would involve electricity and chemicals. Deactivating neurons could possibly reveal the electro-chemical nature of diseases.

Why would that suggestion of deactivating anything amount to something good? Nope, rephrase that or ditch it. Diseases serve purposes and are a part of nature. Not enjoying how the diseases ravage a person but I asked for my suffering.

It is mostly via diseases or dissections that we can understand how a normal brain would function. Read any elementary book on the mind and you’ll find this to be true.
I’d suggest you start with Hooper & Teresi’s (SIC) “The Three Pound Universe”. Although written in the 1980s, the book explores many facets of brain study that are only becoming recognized in the 21st century. It’s a fun read for anyone interested in what human brains are and can do.
See also Crick’s, “The Amazing Hypothesis.”
Or I could recommend a dozen other references.

Ierr,

While I love holding books and smelling books and I love the words in them, unless they are fiction they lose me more often than not. Reading is a highly selective process for me. If I’m not sold within a few hundred words, that book becomes a pet rock of sorts. :confusion-shrug: Now the few books that capture my imagination, I’ll tear through pretty fast.

I suggest that that animal studies would be much more effective, higher primates are eerily similar in their, neurological, physiological and psychological aspects, not to mention that protocol and medical-ethical concerns would not need to be weighed.

Such studies have been done, and some near and far flung conclusions have been offered , in sync with how the human brain functions, even in regarded to the highly speculative OP.

True, but we still have moral obligations, not to test animals by utilizing anything other than brain probes. A technique of rendering certain neuronal loops inoperative would tell something of the topology of the brain’s interior e.g., what part of the brain is responsible for aggressive behavior.

I am not sure if medical ethics are pro-forma, irrespective as of equally applied human/animal cross specie studies.

Nevertheless, Your point well taken.

I find books on neuroscience exciting. Sorry you don’t

I find books on neuroscience exciting. Sorry you don’t

Books on neuroscience are helpful, but they still beg the question, how do we have consciousness? We can point to corpuscles and say, corpuscles exist, but we can’t point to an idea. You can point to a lot on men on a battle field, but you can’t point to the virtue of courage on that field. Furthermore, how do you tell if someone is conscious or not? You can’t see consciousness out side of your own, you can’t point to a brain and see consciousness, you can’t even be 100% sure if another is conscious, you just have to, at some point, believe they are.

I really don’t understand how all these neurons made of fat protein and water mostly let consciousness arise. I don’t know if we are a ghost in the machines, or if there is a machine in the ghost. Maybe everything has a fundemantal bit of consciousness to it as David Chalmer’s argues, a notable philosopher from Berkley. I’m thinking that latter Is the case since it seems like we can manipulate whatever matter is in the brain, not that the brain is the only thing that has consciousness.

Brains produce consciousness and ideas. Looking for an idea inside the brain is like looking for a televised image inside a t.v. set. There is no ghost in the machine; the machine produces the ghost. There is no such animal as free floating consciousness outside of brains. The question that should be asked is how do brains make consciousness/ideas? What is the mechanics of brains that allows ideas to happen? Brains are organs that produce thought. Plants do not have brains, hence they have no ideas. Abstracting consciousness to some universal, not produced by brains is new wave religion, not neuroscience.