this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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I mean no? Where did you get we have any idea how consciousness works at all? We have no idea what structures on the brain have anything to do with it, or if they have anything to do with it at all.
We know about brain structures shaping our personalities, memories and senses. But that’s not consciousness. Not at all.
Perhaps that is the misunderstanding?
Consciousness is awareness, experience. It’s the “observer” under the experience. THAT is a mystery, that is the hardest problem in science. Not “where in the brain do we process sadness?”…
Is your point that memory, emotions, and sensory input don't have anything to do with consciousness?
What exactly is consciousness doing without sensory input to process and memory to give those inputs context?
Why do you think "awareness" of sights and sounds is separate from the parts of the brain that process those sights and sounds?
When you look through a microscope, or hear music through headphones, are you those tools? Or are you the thing that hears and sees?
How can you “have” emotions? When you try to reach the baseline of your experience, when you try to find the thing that experiences reality, what do you think you’ll find?
Grey goo, a network of neurons, a brain. You can literally inject chemicals into your body that change your emotions and consciousness. Physical things can interrupt my consciousness, so why would you assume consciousness is not a physical phenomenon?
When I look through a microscope, photons go through the lens of the microscope, then similarly go through the lens of my eye. My retina absorbs those photons and translates them into action potentials a.k.a. chemical/electrical signals. Those action potentials reach my occipital lobe (going through some synapses as purely chemical signals) where they interact with other action potentials from other parts of my brain, and I have the experience of seeing an image.
If my occipital is not the final destination of these signals, then what is? Where does the information go after it's processed by my brain?