I know that people's have different experience with what is it like to be people, but I will recount my experience of being a person with a chatty brain. For me, part of maturing into adult hood...
I know that people's have different experience with what is it like to be people, but I will recount my experience of being a person with a chatty brain.
For me, part of maturing into adult hood was recognizing the story teller part of my brain, the one that produced random thoughts, and realize that that was not me, just my brain trying to make sense of the world. There is a big difference between not being able to stop a thought and taking it as reality. I am not my thoughts, I am the one who uses my mental processes to interrogate my thoughts, emotions and instincts against a set of morals, standards and accumulated knowledge to the best of my ability. This is not a perfect process by any means but I believe that this is what Descartes was referring to when he said "I think, therefore I am." He was not saying "I have random ideas and notions that flash through my brain, therefore I exist." The whole book is an interrogation of himself and his own ability to be certain of anything, including his own personhood. He eventually comes to a starting point in the fact that he is able to have this self-inquiry at all and be aware of it.This is what gives him a claim to existence as an entity separate from his base inputs and outputs. This is what he means by "thinking."
The questions is not about what part of you is the storyteller, but what is the part of you that is hearing and believing those stories without question? This is where suffering come it, the unexamined life, the person who cannot or doesn't know how change their story about themselves when faces with facts and proof. This is where magical thinking comes from. I don't know that telling people that they don't exist is helpful in combating this in any way.
"There is a big difference between not being able to stop a thought and taking it as reality." This is something which I've been working on lately- My brain is also chatty, often too chatty, and I...
"There is a big difference between not being able to stop a thought and taking it as reality."
This is something which I've been working on lately- My brain is also chatty, often too chatty, and I forget where I saw something very similar to what you said there, but it's been a valuable thought to internalize. I also listened to this talk and very much liked the concept of "non-identification": "I am not my body, I am not my mind, I am not my emotions."
Interesting article. After reading, I feel like there's a subtle tension between two of Niebauer's ideas that he's not fully resolving. His first major point is that the left hemisphere of the...
Interesting article. After reading, I feel like there's a subtle tension between two of Niebauer's ideas that he's not fully resolving. His first major point is that the left hemisphere of the brain is constantly storytelling, but it's full of shit, sort of like a neural GPT-4:
the left side of the brain excels at creating an explanation for what’s going on, even if it isn’t correct, even in people with normal brain functioning.
But then he extends this point to argue that there is no such thing as a self:
the individual self is more akin to a fictional character than a real thing
Here, the argument (I believe) is that since we construct the self via the bullshit storytelling our left hemisphere constantly prattles on with, the story we thus create (which may have very little connection to reality) becomes how we view ourselves. It becomes the self.
I think Niebauer makes a strong point, but I'm not sure he's correct in extending that observation to the idea that there is no self, because what is a self, anyway? Is your self the story you tell about who you are? Is it your self-explanation? Your personal narrative? Or is it something more subtle, more ephemeral, more difficult to grasp?
I mean, if I asked you, "Describe your self in detail", nobody with a bit of experience in the world expects a serious or accurate answer. I think most of us intuitively know that our insight into people's character (and I realize the author is arguing there is no such fixed thing) is imperfect, and that people continually reveal new and surprising things about themselves through their actions.
If you want to know something about a person, I've always thought, pay attention to their behavior. That's where the buck stops, and the best part is that you can objectively capture the results. No need for theorycrafting.
Thought provoking article. I'm personally not a fan of the notion that consciousness can be reduced to biological/"neurophysiological" processes, but I do find the core idea of the article...
Thought provoking article. I'm personally not a fan of the notion that consciousness can be reduced to biological/"neurophysiological" processes, but I do find the core idea of the article compelling. What do you think?
I think consciousness is very likely a byproduct of physical processes, but a singular "self" at any moment doesn't exist. Also don't think consciousness has much control over how we act, most of...
I think consciousness is very likely a byproduct of physical processes, but a singular "self" at any moment doesn't exist. Also don't think consciousness has much control over how we act, most of the time, and the relationship between your current and possible future selves (ala Parfit) throws another messy layer on that.
Consciousness tells a plausible story, and different parts of your brain get a weighted vote. Chimeric images feel like a good example of this sort of "consensus based reality". Depending on how you look, or how you're primed, the same image may flicker between a crone and a lamp as the vote count of one side gets an edge on the other.
One of my favorite experiments from V.S. Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain is the Pinnochio experiment. You seat someone behind another person, blindfolded. Their arm reaches out to touch the nose of the person in front of them at the same tempo a 3rd person is tapping their nose. In supposedly ~50% of people the brain resolves the texture of a nose, the extension of your arm, and the corroboration by the temporal component of the tapping to make you feel as if your nose has grown a foot to reach your extended hand.
Practically every function of the mind has been mapped to the brain with one important exception: the self.
Some of the assertions of the article, like the one above or characterization of "left brain right brain" stuff (afaik a lot of that hasn't aged well) I don't agree with, or at least I wouldn't call it settled. Not an expert, but books like After Phrenology argue that the brain is a lot less localized/specialized than is sometimes taught. Abnormal psychology cases like people functioning after a hemispherectomy also give a lot of insight into how the brain can work vs. how it usually will:
Overall, hemispherectomy is a successful procedure. A 1996 study of 52 individuals who underwent the surgery found that 96% of patients experienced reduced or completely ceased occurrence of seizures post-surgery.[25] Studies have found no significant long-term effects on memory, personality, or humor,[26] and minimal changes in cognitive function overall.[27] For example, one case followed a patient who had completed college, attended graduate school and scored above average on intelligence tests after undergoing this procedure at age 5. This patient eventually developed "superior language and intellectual abilities" despite the removal of the left hemisphere, which contains the classical language zones.
Also recall Incognito, The Secret Lives of the Brain doing a decent/accessible job talking about how "the self" is largely influenced by environment and not steering the ship, but it's been a while. Natural-Born Cyborgs was a personally influential book which argued one of the most unique things about humans is how readily we incorporate our environment (writing, computers, other people/minds) into our own cognition/consciousness.
I know that people's have different experience with what is it like to be people, but I will recount my experience of being a person with a chatty brain.
For me, part of maturing into adult hood was recognizing the story teller part of my brain, the one that produced random thoughts, and realize that that was not me, just my brain trying to make sense of the world. There is a big difference between not being able to stop a thought and taking it as reality. I am not my thoughts, I am the one who uses my mental processes to interrogate my thoughts, emotions and instincts against a set of morals, standards and accumulated knowledge to the best of my ability. This is not a perfect process by any means but I believe that this is what Descartes was referring to when he said "I think, therefore I am." He was not saying "I have random ideas and notions that flash through my brain, therefore I exist." The whole book is an interrogation of himself and his own ability to be certain of anything, including his own personhood. He eventually comes to a starting point in the fact that he is able to have this self-inquiry at all and be aware of it.This is what gives him a claim to existence as an entity separate from his base inputs and outputs. This is what he means by "thinking."
The questions is not about what part of you is the storyteller, but what is the part of you that is hearing and believing those stories without question? This is where suffering come it, the unexamined life, the person who cannot or doesn't know how change their story about themselves when faces with facts and proof. This is where magical thinking comes from. I don't know that telling people that they don't exist is helpful in combating this in any way.
"There is a big difference between not being able to stop a thought and taking it as reality."
This is something which I've been working on lately- My brain is also chatty, often too chatty, and I forget where I saw something very similar to what you said there, but it's been a valuable thought to internalize. I also listened to this talk and very much liked the concept of "non-identification": "I am not my body, I am not my mind, I am not my emotions."
Interesting article. After reading, I feel like there's a subtle tension between two of Niebauer's ideas that he's not fully resolving. His first major point is that the left hemisphere of the brain is constantly storytelling, but it's full of shit, sort of like a neural GPT-4:
But then he extends this point to argue that there is no such thing as a self:
Here, the argument (I believe) is that since we construct the self via the bullshit storytelling our left hemisphere constantly prattles on with, the story we thus create (which may have very little connection to reality) becomes how we view ourselves. It becomes the self.
I think Niebauer makes a strong point, but I'm not sure he's correct in extending that observation to the idea that there is no self, because what is a self, anyway? Is your self the story you tell about who you are? Is it your self-explanation? Your personal narrative? Or is it something more subtle, more ephemeral, more difficult to grasp?
I mean, if I asked you, "Describe your self in detail", nobody with a bit of experience in the world expects a serious or accurate answer. I think most of us intuitively know that our insight into people's character (and I realize the author is arguing there is no such fixed thing) is imperfect, and that people continually reveal new and surprising things about themselves through their actions.
If you want to know something about a person, I've always thought, pay attention to their behavior. That's where the buck stops, and the best part is that you can objectively capture the results. No need for theorycrafting.
Thought provoking article. I'm personally not a fan of the notion that consciousness can be reduced to biological/"neurophysiological" processes, but I do find the core idea of the article compelling. What do you think?
I think consciousness is very likely a byproduct of physical processes, but a singular "self" at any moment doesn't exist. Also don't think consciousness has much control over how we act, most of the time, and the relationship between your current and possible future selves (ala Parfit) throws another messy layer on that.
Consciousness tells a plausible story, and different parts of your brain get a weighted vote. Chimeric images feel like a good example of this sort of "consensus based reality". Depending on how you look, or how you're primed, the same image may flicker between a crone and a lamp as the vote count of one side gets an edge on the other.
One of my favorite experiments from V.S. Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain is the Pinnochio experiment. You seat someone behind another person, blindfolded. Their arm reaches out to touch the nose of the person in front of them at the same tempo a 3rd person is tapping their nose. In supposedly ~50% of people the brain resolves the texture of a nose, the extension of your arm, and the corroboration by the temporal component of the tapping to make you feel as if your nose has grown a foot to reach your extended hand.
Some of the assertions of the article, like the one above or characterization of "left brain right brain" stuff (afaik a lot of that hasn't aged well) I don't agree with, or at least I wouldn't call it settled. Not an expert, but books like After Phrenology argue that the brain is a lot less localized/specialized than is sometimes taught. Abnormal psychology cases like people functioning after a hemispherectomy also give a lot of insight into how the brain can work vs. how it usually will:
Also recall Incognito, The Secret Lives of the Brain doing a decent/accessible job talking about how "the self" is largely influenced by environment and not steering the ship, but it's been a while. Natural-Born Cyborgs was a personally influential book which argued one of the most unique things about humans is how readily we incorporate our environment (writing, computers, other people/minds) into our own cognition/consciousness.