Can Brain Alone Explain Consciousness? | Episode 1607 | Closer To Truth

35 thoughts on “Can Brain Alone Explain Consciousness? | Episode 1607 | Closer To Truth”

1. Sir, when you say "Can brain alone produce consciousness" you are already imposing a pseudo-truth, an erroneus premise which could lead to a disaster conclusion. What if the brain does not produce consciousness at all ? Have you ever thought about it ? What if consciousness would be prior to the universe ? These kind of human models, work like prisons, It is the same as assuming that aliens can´t reach the earth because the distance is so vast that their solid fuel rocket combustion ships would take millions of years, as if any other civilization on the universe should be guided by earth current technology, like gas, oil and propelents.

2. A fundamental statement: we are suffering from the traditions of a superior entity and for the believe that there are entities that cannot be studied by science (minute 22)

3. Great great work, product of many years of maturity. I am surprised that David Chalmers is still looking for the “long route” instead of a less Artropic position.

4. Theists are the proof that you can have immaterial consciousness without a material brain. Because they don't seem to have a brain but they still seem to be conscious anyway.

5. Consciousness is the epiphenomenon produced by matter and spirit. Brain alone can perform many things such as responding to stimuli, robotic types of "intelligent behaviour" such as playing chess, pack and social behaviour, etc. But higher states of consciousness and deep self-awareness needs something beyond just the "hardware".

6. The Quantum Physics must have a huge influence. I think that's the way our Brain is working in its deepest Core(?)

7. A more down to Earth Question would be WHAT DO WE CALL OR DEFINE ONE WITHOUT A BRAIN ?
   What is wrong with some of our highly educated Scientists ??

8. I think that if you give physicalists a heavy dose of psilocybin they will drop their dogmatic assertion, cease being physicalists, and say "I don't know."

9. We are Eternal Living Beings, We always had our Consciousness,
   so, Mr. Kuhn's confusion dont explain any thing, just misleading.
   There is a very big confusion, that understanding of consciousness, have to do with the brain. It is two very different subjects, with it's own separate analysis.
   so this is the short answer, on the non-question which is just another of Mr. Kuhn's many speculative inventions.

10. Y do u add the background music.
    Plz remove it

11. No it can't.

12. It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine.

13. Many years ago I read a book with the following information : An english gentleman who had come to India in the beginning of 1900 hears rumours about some "indian fakirs" performing curious things. One day when he was going out on the streets looking for these fakirs, he finally finds a group of people gathered around a fakir. The fakir, with a little boy beside him, starts playing his pipe and a pile of rope in front of him rises and erects like a tree. Then the boy climbs up the rope and disappears when he reaches the top. Then the fakir stops playing and the rope falls down. Suddenly, people hear the boy shouting and he appears behind the audience and runs to the fakir. Everybody, including the english gentleman , is impressed. So, the english gentleman brings a camera the next time and takes a lot of pictures. When he returns to London, the film is developed and all the pictures show the same thing, which is the fakir is standing with his eyes closed and there are many people around with their eyes open..

14. We create consciousness all the time. It's called having sex. In fact, humanity can't help but accidentally create these things…

15. Please interview Bernardo Kastrup.

16. Searle is a typical scientist. He follows the Sheldrake rule describing general science. "Give us one free miracle and we'll explain everything else". Searle is also typically humanocentric in thinking there is only version of Consciousness, and the human version is the only one. He is stuck firmly in his rut. More fun to watch Don Hoffman…

17. If basic Quantum Physics says there is no such thing as matter (99.9999%) of an atom is vacuum, there cannot be a brain to do the things they say it is does. If Universal Consciousness is what makes up matter at the Planck Scale, then it only underscores that further….

18. In principle, a philosopher is no more an "expert" on the matter, than he is on a question about Cosmology or particle Physics. Once, Philosophy was everything: it literally means "love of wisdom", in Greek. Philosophers were the only scientists we had. But, as Science progressed, the niche of Philosophy became smaller and smaller. There are areas – like, for example, moral or political Philosophy – in which nothing will replace it. But we are talking about brains here. Having said that, the views of John Searle are, for me as a neuroscientist, spot – on, which, I guess, negates my first paragraph! What people who are not actively involved in Neuroscience often miss, is the concept of "emergent properties" -ie, that the result of extremely complex interactions between huge numbers of players, creates outcomes that are impossible to predict and do not resemble any computation. We have dozens of BILLIONS of neurons in our brains, and each of those can have many, many synapses – up to 10.000. A single human brain is more complex than a whole galaxy. If by "understanding" consciousness, we mean reduce it to an algorithm, I am pretty sure we will never achieve it. If we, instead, understand that the nature of this phenomenon is such that, while it all takes place inside our skulls, it is still beyond computation, at least in the foreseeable future, then we will have grown out of our false dilemmas. As for considering elementary particle "conscious", that is really a play with words. Reactivity is not the same as consciousness, no more than a single letter is the same as great work of literature – and my example is rather poor and understated, because the gap is even larger.

19. There are so many cases of the Out of Body Experience occurring where people describe having "two selves"..the physical body and the separation of the self..or pure consciousness as I like to refer to it..I think the typical explanation of consciousness as a product of the brain has been so drilled into us since school days that it's hard to imagine consciousness as anything other than a product of matter. My gut feeling is consciousness is 'lost' when the brain disintegrates..but then again consciousness is not a physical entity..so I suppose the networks of the brain which support awareness dissolve and therefore we no longer exist..maybe because we rely on the brain for consciousness, then logically we cannot be aware or have consciousness post-death. The deeper question, where does consciousness go without the brain. Does it just linger in time and space, does it evolve into something else, does it transcend to space..who knows. I do not think the brain Produces consciousness, but I do think in order to have awareness we need the tool to make it work ie brain matter.
    We will only know when we die.

20. Consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. End of discussion.

21. I do think that it is produced within the brian, Actually I have a theory, maybe consciousness is just possible because of Memories? I mean, think about it if someone cannot remenber anything (nor far away memories or recent ones) will that person be conscious? is consciousness just the result of the brain recalling this memories (informartion) and nothing else?. I remenber once I had a small surgery and the doctors gave me anesthesia… I woke up but there is like 30 minutes after I was awake that I dont remenber, My mom and nurses was telling me that I was talking, and saying things (some of those things of course kind of weird) the thing is I wasnt able to form memories during those 30 minutes… therefore I wansn't experiencing what we call "being conscious" so… thats of course my graine of salt, I just think we are overthinking about something that perhaps is more simple (sorry for my english grammar, I am not a native english speaker)

22. The brain can't be a machine because organic beings have meabolism and machines have not.

23. The consciousness question has been answered already which is that materialist theories cannot ever explain consciousness. So why is this channel still debating it?

24. So disappointed , no answer , nothing new. My guess is we will never know as we are not ever supposed to know as we have only a finite amount of intelligence. If i created a robo cat , i wouldnt let it know how to reprogramme itself to create a robo dog. I have control of that entity. The more and more i see makes me think of an intelligent creator that knew if we probed we would only get so far and never know the real reasons to anything. In essence should we just sit back and accept what happens to us as its all likely mapped and we are mere actors with a perceived knowledge of free will or lack of.

25. Looking in the brain for consciousness is like looking in the TV for people

26. doing or observing,,zenning and explaining zen,,being-in the moment,,being happy or in love or realizing it

27. Many theories have been put forward about how the brain works. I subscribe to the late Gerald Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. Many aspects of the TNGS have been demonstrated in "robots" called Brain Based Devices, BBD's. In the Extended TNGS he creates a biological theory of consciousness, described in his book, The Remembered Present. A machine with human adult level consciousness will have to be based on the only thing we know creates that, the human brain. Such a machine(s) is at least 50 to 100 years away.

28. We are all the result of activity in our brain. Our mind is all a result of our brain. Damage our brain & our behavior will change. No brain, no consciousness. No book was written without a brain thinking about it first. We have religions because we want to be conscious forever even it is in hell.

29. A living body with a dead brain lacks of consciousness, this condition cannot EXISTS without the physical components; a person or animal have a conscience of being alive.

30. Consciousness is a physical process? Yet noone has the very first clue on how it works.
    We know what the outcome is but cant replicate into another being
    Also we can not create a life!
    We can transfer the DNA and genes but cant create anything new from nothing!

31. I would accept the material explanation of consciousness if they could explain how a memory gets stored in the brain, which neurons are involved, what kind of code is used to make them understandable to a person, which seems to be beyond current neuroscience. And yet, they say there must be such things going on in the brain, there can't be any other explanation.

32. Of course consciousness doesn't exist, arguing against that is saying that we're special and magic exists

33. The evidence for consciousness being separate from the brain is all there in the vast literature on Near Death Experiences. If you thoroughly review the scientific peer reviewed cases, you can logically come to no other conclusion.

34. When John Searle says "we're doing pretty good in physics" is he talking about philosophers? Yeah, didn't think so. Start by looking at other mammals. Unfortunately human language complicates everything and creates signifiers for things that don't exist – like god and mind.

35. Panpsychism and Donald Hoffman's Conscious Realism ….. Are both….. ARGUMENTS FROM IGNORANCE…..or

    HYPOTHESES FROM IGNORANCE

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