Philosophical Speculations

Hi Everyone, first post so please be gentle

Bernardo has talked about the brain being more of a radio that receives/channels consciousness rather than something that creates it. I tend to agree with this. He's also quoted Sam Harris about nothing in the brain pointing to it being a 'consciousness-generator' - I think this is the quote of Sam's that he remarks on: "Absolutely nothing about a brain, when surveyed as a physical system, suggests that it is a locus of experience."

Has Bernardo spoken or written about anything about the brain, "when surveyed as a physical system", suggesting that it is such a radio?

I lean towards Bernardo's view of reality and Idealism, but in some senses I see it having the same struggle as materialism with some of the more specific questions like the one I ask above. From what I have read (which admittedly isn't everything), it seems to me that Bernardo does a great job exposing the flaws of materialism (and other theories of consciousness like panpsychism), but hasn't spent as much time giving the case for Idealism.

I'm not looking to dispute Idealism here, but rather read more about why it is a closer model to reality than other systems being failed models of reality. I do know of the split personality argument, and that is compelling, but not of many others.

Thanks much to anyone who can point me in the right direction!

Bernardo made an interesting comment recently - in artificially generating a brain/neural type structure we could artificially trigger or induce a new alter of mind at large. If matter is the extrinsic appearance of subjective states, then that is not impossible in principle. However, this is more a process of correspondence rather than radio metaphor of reception or translation.

Here's a scientific account about how the brain could generate its own "radio" signals.

https://aeon.co/essays/does-consciousne ... etic-field

OP wrote:
the brain being more of a radio that receives/channels consciousness rather than something that creates it.

I strongly believe that that fits more closely with the evidence, albeit, not a proof.
As a Christian Idealist, this is the model I prefer, and in fact, some agnostics do as well.
-
-

BK's main point about the brain (and the body) is that it is the partial image or representation of the mind of a dissociated alter. As such, it does not channel or receive consciousness (that would be dualistic). It's just the appearance of a dissociated mind when perceived by our evolved senses. The image doesn't tell us much about what's going on in that mind, though facial expressions help, simply giving as much information as has proven useful in evolutionary terms.

Here is the study of 2012 of neuroscientists Carhart Harris and co about how psilocybin only decreased brain activity and the discovery that there was a positive correlation between a decrease of neural activity and an increase of subjective experience due to psilocybin. These findings support the 'brain as a filter of consciousness'-theory:

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/109/6/2138.full.pdf

Friston is a leading contemporary neuroscientist whose free-energy principle is an
elegant, empirically-informed model of how the brain works. Huxley was a brilliant
author and philosopher but not a neuroscientist. The reducing valve idea is quite
nice as a metaphor but I think people take it too literally and sometimes even want
to use it in a sort of pseudo-scientific way, to suggest that there is a filter that stops
us seeing what’s really “out-there” in a matrix-esque kind of way.
If the metaphor is useful however, it’s useful because it proposes that “the brain,
in main, is eliminative rather than productive”. That idea is consistent with the freeenergy principle because top-down inferences work to explain bottom-up sensory
information – so there’s some functional suppression going on but suppression in
the sense of predictive processing. Basically, I wouldn’t worry too much about
Bergson, Broad and Huxley or indeed Kant when it comes to a contemporary
account of how the brain works. It’s best to see where the field is now, and Friston’s
free-energy model is one of the best the field has.

From interview with Carhart-Harris

https://www.aliusresearch.org/uploads/9 ... df#page=11

Jim Cross wrote: ↑Fri May 14, 2021 3:30 pm

Friston is a leading contemporary neuroscientist whose free-energy principle is an
elegant, empirically-informed model of how the brain works. Huxley was a brilliant
author and philosopher but not a neuroscientist. The reducing valve idea is quite
nice as a metaphor but I think people take it too literally and sometimes even want
to use it in a sort of pseudo-scientific way, to suggest that there is a filter that stops
us seeing what’s really “out-there” in a matrix-esque kind of way.
If the metaphor is useful however, it’s useful because it proposes that “the brain,
in main, is eliminative rather than productive”. That idea is consistent with the freeenergy principle because top-down inferences work to explain bottom-up sensory
information – so there’s some functional suppression going on but suppression in
the sense of predictive processing. Basically, I wouldn’t worry too much about
Bergson, Broad and Huxley or indeed Kant when it comes to a contemporary
account of how the brain works. It’s best to see where the field is now, and Friston’s
free-energy model is one of the best the field has.

From interview with Carhart-Harris

https://www.aliusresearch.org/uploads/9 ... df#page=11

I mean, I'm not advocating for the filter theory but I just want to say we do know the brain blocks out things. Like we know we can't see UV rays or x-rays, we just aren't equipped to. It wouldn't serve any function. So to say we do see everything outside clear as day as it actually is would be a mistake but I don't think psychedelics show you that either. I think the power of psychedelics comes from how they change your mental world and the way you approach things, you don't have to think the visuals you're seeing are somehow literally real.

Somebody may have already pointed this out, but whenever Bernardo uses the 'radio' metaphor he is making a concession to dualism. He acknowledges that this metaphor helps people who are trying to get a handle on how to begin thinking of consciousness, but he wants us to realize that the 'radio' metaphor is dualistic in a way that he certainly does not suppor.t