Alva Noë - How do Human Brains Think and Feel?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 เม.ย. 2023
- Nothing means anything without our brains. Not science, not theology, not politics, not love. Everything we know and do-all the sense of human thought, all the feelings of human emotion, all the fullness of human achievement-all are the product of the brains in our heads. By what processes do human brains work? How much can science discover?
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Alva Noë is a writer and Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also a member of the Center for New Media and the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences. His work is centered around the nature of mind and human experience.
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Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
I really like the dance analogy. There is a lot of truth in that...
nah, illusionists are perfectly happy to assert that since mind is what the brain does, we should not study maths textbooks or listen to phd mathematicians but instead just get good at neural imaging of the maths activity in the brain, eventually copying it and injecting it into someone else so they get it too automatically.
similarly theres no need to train muscle coordination, you need only look at the brain really really good!
Noe's book Action in Perception changed my life.
I had cataract surgury. The cataract that was in/on my left eye was so large that my vision was so completely blurree that i couldnt tell you how many fingers someone was hokding up even neat inches away... forbyears i was afraid to have the operation bcuz i knew that id be awake for it. It turned out to be a lot easier than i inagined it. I was catatonic bcuz they do give some anethesia just not enough to knock you out... i still dont remember only them telling me i was done... Anyways my viaion was restored by next day when they removed the eye patch. The only thing was that i had double vision - it took my brain a couple of weeks before my two eyes put everything together... alot of times i still read with one eye closed tho.
THIS is why I watch this channel!
I love this channel. Feeds my soul.❤
Very good 🙏🏻 food for thought , as from many guests and of course the host of the show, great stuff 👍
Excellent argument, Alva Noë!
Finally someone who can think outside the box
Hamilton's 4D quaternion algebra and consciousness:
Quaternions are a type of mathematical object that extend the idea of complex numbers to four dimensions. They are often used in computer graphics and other applications where rotations in three-dimensional space are important. Some scientists and philosophers have proposed that quaternions might provide a mathematical framework for understanding aspects of consciousness that go beyond what can be explained by classical physics.
One such theory is called the Orch-OR theory, which proposes that consciousness arises from quantum vibrations in microtubules inside neurons. This theory suggests that the vibrations can be modeled mathematically using 4D quaternions, which may provide a way to understand how the brain generates conscious experience.
This was phenomenal and I think it gave me an Idealist epiphany.
where is the top down structure in brain? what does top down structure do that might lead to understanding? how does the top down structure interact with bottom up processing of information?
Indeed perception is factored highly by understanding, knowledge, awareness of your surroundings, and how yous and others actions affect it! Most times, groups of ppl perceive a situation all very different differently. . Even just asking who is the threat here? And how u come to that conclusion. We also being unaware of others intentions, makes our perception off. . So all based discernment... no 2 ppl will perceive a situation exactly the same.. and it's frustrating! So we have to be understanding of this and accept others perception rather then argue it!
Yes. It is frustrating. It's a major ignorance of society, and really should be one of if not the top educational priority. Perplexing how it hasn't been. I suppose it's not so easy to control and manipulate those who have an understanding of how it works.
energy impulses are transmitted through movement, both physical and neuronal?
as information is processed bottom up in brain, what happens to energy impulses in neuron?
Awesome. Perception is a simplified and very personal 3 dimensional model a person builds in their brain over time, and it’s constantly changing and evolving. Definitely disagree w his ultimate point though that we are not our brains. While there is definitely an aspect of gestalt/emergent synergism when looking at the final product, we are quite literally our brains
What you or I "believe" is irrelevant when it comes down to understanding the truth. We should open the mind to all possibilities. I am sure, we know nothing at this stage. What is knowledge? Is it our brain? How to "know" that? The brain consists of what -- down to wave functions of sub atomic particles? Where and when comes consciousness into play? Knowledge is a property of consciousness, otherwise, there is no knowledge.
@@saigopala I never bought that stuff bc quite simply, you can have a direct impact on somebody’s cognition, behavior, thoughts, etc by physically damaging various parts of the brain. Different areas will impact different cognitive properties. Simple and fairly conclusive proof that they are the same. Also idk why we feel the need for consciousness to be separate from the structure that houses it, we do this for no other phenomena but the one that our understanding self has a personal stake in being special.
@@Jm-wt1fs you can have a direct impact on the image by hitting a tv screen with a hammer but that doesn’t prove the source of the signal is the tv.
Sure, we enrich our mental models of the world by interacting with the world. That's an obvious point that the guest wants us to think about. But thinking about it is unlikely to help solve the "hard problem" of explaining how conscious experience emerges from brain activity, and also unlikely to help show that consciousness does not emerge from brain activity.
You don’t need to explain that to me, I am a human.
6:50: "that the fibers are more going the other way"...maybe thats what we call human thought. A characteristic of the more advanced brain.
Robert needs to follow up with Earl Miller's work on how feed forward into the PFC feeds back as waves to the other modules of the brain.
are you aware that if the fibers were the basis for the emergence property of thought, then those thoughts would be perceived when observing the fibers? you know....the way every other emergent property ever also works.
The point about more neural fibres going from the brain down, rather than from the eye up; I'm really interested in this but I can't find any information online about it. Could anyone help me with this?
not sure if TH-cam AI will allow remaining the links I put here, but if you Google "neurons downstream visual perception" you should have the same results I had.
Hello Mr. Kuhn. I have watched your channel for quite sometime now and it has really broadened my mind. Like you, I want to know the fundamental reason of our existence, what is consciousness, is there a God, etc. My question is, have you delved into dreams as a manifestation of a multiverse and that what we are dreaming is actually our other selves in those multiverses?
Dream, by nature, is an ephemeral, mirage-like phenomenon. That by itself tells us a very big thing about dreams. Their events are FALSE, distinct from the events of the true, waking state. Therefore, from their nature itself, we should not take dreams seriously. They're to be regarded as the result of one of the modes in which the brain, the organ of consciousness, operates; producing phenomenal experiences for the conscious personality. 🙏
@@Arunava_Gupta Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the matter. The idea of a multiverse and the possibility that we have several versions of our life have intrigued me immensely. Perhaps because I still grieve for the loss of loved ones and that only in my dreams that they’re still alive.
@@OurFurryTribe The conscious personality is definitely distinct from the brain (albeit connected to it) and being immaterial is absolutely impartite and (in consequence of this) INDESTRUCTIBLE. This transcendental personality is life itself and the very antithesis of death, having characteristics that are diametrically opposite to dead material substance.
The material brain is merely the sensorium which provides sensory input to this conscious personality and it also sends motor signals to the various organs.
Therefore our loved ones who have passed are, in fact, very much alive not merely as contents of our dreams but well and truly in an absolutely real sense. 👍
I think he's on to something; my appreciation of this conversation was greatly enhanced when I turned the audio off! 🤣
Some comments I hadn't heard before
You are the placeholder of consciousness residing in you. The consciousness outside of you is used to enrich the one in you. How this is done depend on what you want cleared and replenished.
Why would this be the case? Is there anything else we’ve ever seen scientifically that works like this? What level consciousness is able to behave magically, do a dog and a snail and an orca and a spider all show this stuff? What about trees?
This is a lot of nonsense.
Nonsense.
@@Jm-wt1fs There is no science here. It is beyond science and rationality. It is a Koan.
for conscious perception and thought, something more than energy impulses are needed?
Probably not
Alva Noe: "Perception depends on two components: sensory stimulation and sensory motor understanding. (without the latter)..... It has become just a blinding confusion rather than an encounter with the world....
Is what hes saying similar to what Hoffman says about perceiving for fitness and not truth?
The problem is Mind is not equivalent to brain. mind is a metaphor for our subjective experience. All these words that we use to describe the mind: the "soul", "spirit", "consciousness", etc. are pretty vague terms. They can mean almost anything. There is something to Descartes option of dualism, because unlike material things, things in the mind are indeterminate. But Descartes oversimplified this difference by calling thinking a different substance than physical matter. Thinking isn't a different kind of thing, it is a different kind of knowing. It's using our imagination to understand things not present to our senses.
Interestingly enough, he is speaking of second hand expeeiences where body perceives, but not us, in first person
He said, "Nobody has ever to this date given even the outlines of what an explanation of consciousness in terms of neuro-phenomenon alone would look like." I disagree. Graziano came up with a good explanation.
His attention schema theory is without a doubt the closest thing to the guaranteed correct path forward. It’s strangely gonna be proven through AI first though imo, but you’re 100% correct here
hes quite bad, and decades of work and millions in research funding will be washed away by a mere 4 hours of measuring someone with perfect single-pointed concentration who unlike he has developed a method of rigorously observing the mind. the smarter ie. stupider the physicalist gets and the better the neural imaging tech gets, the harder you lose.
I don't know. This seems similar to the line of argumentation of some religious people who say: “Well, actually, you need more faith to be an atheist than a believer” or “I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.” Misleading at best.
All things that exist have a degree of knowledge. But only living things with a brain/mind/senses interface can process new information and then act upon it.
Your wrong, a simple pea plant 🪴 can process NEW information and act upon it.
@@mrbwatson8081
Not wrong at all. A pea plant is a living thing with a form of mind-sense interface, even if lacking a proper brain.
information is the inverse square of the entropy of a physical system. in other words its a measurement of a physical system. thats not the meaning of information that is meant when discussing consciousness. the information meant in the context of consciousness/qualia is semantic information, which nothing but subjectivity possesses/is
Robert, you were testing me with this video excerpt, weren’t you? 🤔🤨😉 According to this guy (but, again, it’s fair to say that this is an old interview), a paraplegic lying in his hospital bed doesn’t have “sensory perception” because he’s unable to “dance around” [my syntagma] in order to have an “interplay with reality” (pardon my deductive brute force of language used). No, that’s not right… [Intentional ambiguity on my part, a doubletalk.] However, I do agree with his closing statement that consciousness is “immaterial”. Wait, what!? Well, yeah! With clinical patients who are “brain-dead”, the body is still vital (the heart is beating, the lungs are breathing, the cells use all these ATPs and dispense heat), but that “character” is gone for good: no brain activity, whatsoever. The sensory class inputs are intact, but there are no downstream (feedback loop) control signals (like “wait, what’s this; give me a more detailed view of this” etc.), and there is no integration of gathered information (with data already stored in the internal relational database)… Another way to put it: The CPU (with ALU & FPU) might not be fried, but it seems the algorithm (the code) is not executing… | The other point: Let’s not make a rule out of some exceptions… | Finally: I would take a guess and answer one of the questions: Maybe the “causal substrate” [whatever that may scholastically mean] might be ‘purely digital information’ [TM] and the purely mathematical laws that operate over these immaterial operands - but with lucid oversight! [Boy, am I smart, or what?] 🤓😯🤫2023-05-02 🥳
So, physical matter must have emergent properties, unobservable in the outside world, but present in the brain.
Yes/No?
all emergent properties are observed upon observing the basis of emergence
eg. the sharpness of a knife is observed upon observing the knife
@@5piles
Where we can observe the "consciousness properties" in matter in the outside world?
@@5piles
Not sure if sharpness in a good example of emergent property, more like a point of view, the characteristics of matter stays the same, does not add any "magic" to it.
Aren't most states of consciousness accompanied by particular increased activity in certain areas of the brains, different wave pattern?
If I dream or am awake or have a lucid dream is consciousness more present in certain states?
Yes, exactly. The correlation is 1:1 and extremely complex and specific. Bc consciousness literally is one of the activities going on in the brain
State of real consciousness is a total stop of activities however the path to that is one pointed mind. The pointed mind dissolves just as one enters real consciousness, all one can stay in real conscience is few seconds, after that journey of return begins back to outopilot or unconscious reality
@@bharat1876 Sounds like something a hindu guru once said. I have experience with altered states and samadhi but let's be real here, if you remove the religiosity and suggestions about how to interpret/conclusions that are reached regarding these states, all that is really left is subjective experiences of altered states. I feel it is important to really strip the states down and not ascribe any grandiose conclusions/suggestions onto them.
@@JessTarn yes agree, not via religious pathways, brain needs to racionalize it and that way reach there whenever it requires
@@JessTarn walking consciousness becomes always real state after that peep in and I would not call that enlightenment
*Brains are information processors.* They are the organic byproducts of inanimate information that can assimilate, process, and evaluate all other forms of information and produce _new information_ in the form of "value judgments." Existence is an ongoing exchange of information, and humans help keep the information stream constantly pushing forward.
I think the consciousness thing just comes from the trait of brains to observe themselves and keep simple models of themselves alongside their models of the rest of the world. It’s the self referencing bit that gives it a sense of self in the world separate from the rest of the information
Define information? Define information processer? Define existence?
@@mrbwatson8081 *"Define information? Define information processer? Define existence?"*
... You can use the readily available definitions found online for all of the above. ... I'm not redefining anything, nor is there any need.
Lastime I checked the universe and all its content is ANIMATE just on different timescales. Could you give us an example of something inanimate?
@@mrbwatson8081 *"Lastime I checked the universe and all its content is ANIMATE just on different timescales."*
... A rock represents inanimate information. Biological life represents animated information.
*"Could you give us an example of something inanimate?"*
... (see above).
how can energy impulses be made intelligible?
perception is not explained by neuron energy?
If we are asking the wrong questions, we still need a brain to figure it out.
perhaps because you have no method of rigorously observing the mind
the brain scans of fellows who can suggest otherwise
but hey....at least you finally managed to escape the static model of the brain which dominated philosophy of mind til the very late 90s 😂 can you imagine talking to ppl like you back then? yiiiiikes
@@5piles 💪
Perhaps brains mediate what the mind thinks
9:48 at the current state of knowledge nobody
9:51 knows for reasons that I don't fully
9:53 understand
That's it. the grand finale of the sensory show is hidden from us... any hope that it will be revealed?
Oooo
the "Buddhist 5 aggregates" shows no self (anatta). sense perceptions, thoughts, emotions, are all impermanent and changing. just like the cells in our body.
Right, we aren't just our brains. We are a collection of sensory organs that function internally in chemical reactions from external sources.
embodiment is a distraction for later consideration, since illusionism states the color blue must be physically located in the brain.
Yup
To understand consciousness may not be by way of understanding perception. Perception is the activity of percieving, such as a sense perceptive-object and a relationship of object - subject. Understanding perception is understanding what's been perceived, which is an impression left in the mind like a Seal pressed in wax. No longer are you even acknowledging what you might consider 'real', rather now you are acknowledging an intelligible form which was even prior to the manifestation or thing coming in to 'being'. Perception as in perceiving a thing even applies duality, which is nescience. What are you trying to figure out now, really. Consciousness is NOT OBJECTIVE. It's not that, or that, or that, or this, or this, or this, or that, this or that that or this. You acknowledge Consciousness by what it is NOT. Call it Self, Consciouness, Intellect, Light, the Word.
no, currently perception of for example eyesight is merely a description of particular ion channels and how their interactions develop specific proteins which emerge into more advanced ones, upon some threshold being able to declare inferentially that light has been detected. NONE of this imparts any information or mechanism or anything to do with light/color as an appearance. it is purely and strictly akin to carefully understanding and watching the operation of a complex hydraulics system as far as the path that science is currently on is concerned.
@5piles what are you refuting, and what are you trying to imply?
'Perception of' isn't eye sight, it's the object that's being perceived; it's not the physical object that impressed the form or made the form in the intelligible realities, rather a recollection has occured. The object that's impressed in the mind isn't an atom but rather an intelligible form, remembered from the physical representation of a specific form of compounded atoms. You want to argue 'ion channels'? You say 'their' interactions - ions - develop specific proteins. Atoms now have 'mind' - you imply that atoms do all this. I acknowledge light to be intelligent, never questioned if atoms are. What has this to do with form or consciousness? What is the prelude 'act' that conduce 'interactions' ? "Proteins which emerge into more advanced ones" - is this right, though? Or, is it the form that emerges, or more properly said, comes into being - not the merely the emergence of proteins.
Ugh... I stand by my initial comment.
@@S3RAVA3LM firstly there is no external object that exists the way it appears...the way it appears is entirely dependent on the set of sense organs you possess. eg. there is no version 2023ad human color in the external world.
but my point was there is no physical representation of an intelligible form taking place in the body at all. the color, light, sound, etcetc we see has never been observed scientifically before. what is observed when eyes and the visual cortex are carefully examined are as i said ion channels and protein development, thats all we can detect. past that the test subject will report that sight of something has occurred when these proteins and their behaviors etc have grown past a certain threshold, but we cant see that anywhere the way we see the eye and brain.
do we call the external mass-energy causing protein growth inside our sense organs the perception? do we call the actual seeing of a light/color the perception? you say perception is to perceive the intelligible...where does that object reside and why has that not been detected in any physical object
@5piles reply to your two last sentences.
perception, a faculty of sight or rather, truly, the intellect; a sense perceptive object becoming known to and also by the Intellect is the activity of perceiving, and then a form of that which is being precieved is impressed into the mind, so seemingly, and so later on when considered or inquired, the form precieved, is actually an intelligible form - you remember it, you dont merely need to actually see it again. That physical thing didn't press itself into your mind, like a seal in wax; the atoms did not compile into your mind and form another image in their like the one outside that was first precieved. The intellect, more properly said, recollected the intelligible form by, perhaps, being reminded, from perceiving the sense perceptive object which was a mimic of its archtype.
Moreover, it's not where the object resides. Rather, the archtype intelligible form, resides, in the intelligible realities. The realm that Intellect may acknowledge, comprehend, apprehend things etc. The alleged physical object was a mimic, and too, a reminder. It did not jump into your head so you could remember later, or dream about it. Rather, more properly, it recollected, the form that was always there.
I value platonics. It is rational.
@@5piles i don't know what, you, mean by scientifically other than tangible. I'm not a materialist. And although science utilizes mathematics, math isn't science.
Color, from what ive learned, is circumscribed to objects, by the brain, even then, that doesn't explain much. Interesting that color, isn't of the objects. Im aware of some theories - perhaps is all holographic. Regardless, platonic's still reigns as triumphant over any modern alleged scientists.
just want to share a video "The mathematics behind the relationship between human and god @Jeffrey Lang which might be useful..peace be upon us all
prob from all those synapses ...
Aliens.
STOP! You're going nuts/in circles. You will never understand it. It resides outside of you, in another dimension you can't comprehend
Dead wrong
PLEASE Stop interrupting your guests Robert. You did this in EVERY FILM.
No offense but I feel like that was 12 minutes of saying nothing
amitya4 ° Correct!😂🤣
The best for Alva would have been to say "I don't know anything about this subject, Robert!"
Instead he kept going deeper and deeper in BS.
@@mikel4879
Knowledge is gained by very small steps at a time until an epiphany is attained. I understood what he was saying and his saying that information flowing toward a stimulus rather toward the brain helped me understand how my brain operates.
Our brains work by logic which is a comparison process and by sending accumulated logic processed information out to understand what our senses are picking up helps us to process that stimuli quicker so we can react in an appropriate way if necessary. If an action is not necessary then it helps build our library of distinctions.
I'm afraid the bases are neuroscience matter, very specific and "new" things. If you have no idea about the ideas of Andy Clark, Bateson, Damasio and others, this hardly makes any sense. It is a question of scale and levels of complexity (in the same way that quantum physics cannot be explained to someone who does not have the initial foundations of Newtonian physics)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition#Scope
Because they all refuse to accept the freewill, nature, senses, thought, memory, reasoning, cognition, perceptions ... & ... consciousness ... are simply processes or functions of the MIND of an entiry.
Consciousness is simply a state of awareness & responsiveness of the environment ... by an entity ... with a mind.
Animals & Man ... are NATURAL entities ... with NATURAL minds(brain & body) ... with their own type of freewill, nature & consciousness.
But Man ... has the Mind of an Intelligence ... which is clearly more than a brain & body .... as Chimps share 99% of Human Genes but can not think & do .... 9% of what the Mind & body of Man can do.
The Mind of an Intelligence ... must be UNNATURAL (soul/spirit).
The Mind of Man ... with freewill, nature & consciousness ... is natural (body) & unnatural (soul).
God ( Unnatural Intelligence) really did create Man (Natural intelligence) in His image ... with a body & soul ... and freewill, nature & conscious to live forever but will die if Man sins(breaks the Law).
The Body belongs to the Natural System.
The Soul belongs to the Unnatural System.
And both body & soul .... have freewill, nature, memory, senses, thought, reasoning, cognition, perception & ... consciousness of the environment that they belong to.
In other words - the brain in a vat is not a possible way of being.
8:53
kuhn is basically only a propagandist at this point.
his claim of 'a quest of trying to truly know what consciousness is' is a grift.
I don't think it's a grift! Like I, Robert Lawrence Kuhn is unsatisfied with explanations of what consciousness is. He is merely expanding the question to explain causal substrates, seeing how Noe will reply.
@@quantumkath nah, kuhn explicitly states it as fact that it arises from some physical substrate, to the point he has to be rebuked by the interviewee, to which kuhn reacts with incredulity
@5piles I hear ya! Alva Noe had his chance to convince us. I thought his argument made sense. Surely grift and propagandist are a bit harsh. Robert Lawrence Kuhn challenges all views.
A BS comment by Alva.
Unbelievable ignorance in this domain! ☹️
Non sense. He shows perception though neuro . however squizofrenic neuros show brains funcions arent in reality. Thedefore his concept lack neuro Science proceedings truly.
What do you mean brain functions aren’t in reality? What could that possibly mean lol
@@Jm-wt1fs if you are squizofrenic your never are living in reality.
Wow, good point. And the salesman never bother mentioning such information
There is a lot of bibliography in neuroscience, but you are not going to read it xDD
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3817588/
.
publications.aston.ac.uk/id/eprint/21241/1/VPT2_IndivDiff_accepted.pdf
Hurr durr
Is it not pompous to say that there is no: God, mystery, Soul, Self, mind, Divine, and use an implausible explanation such as all yhis are perceptions and feeling due to neurological networking. Is this borederline evil? Because if you ask me, if anybody denies the Divine, i can not have any kind of relation with such a fool. Imagine living life, and your core truth is neuronal networking - got it all figured out, per reviewed and everything.
How can such a person not be ashamed?
It’s not about shame, it’s about truth.
See? Preaching and gaslighting is all you have to offer...
@@anteodedi8937 you're a bad man. You're bad. You have no authority or right.
The video is about whether brains need the supernatural in order to produce thoughts and the self .
I’m an atheist . But god won’t look kindly on you if you persist in thinking he is limited in some way . I thought your god can do anything ?
@@S3RAVA3LM there is no such thing as demons. But whatever
He's not right. Consciousness arises from having read and write access to the sustained representations the brain sets up, as though they were extrernal things to be sensed and acted upon. In short, it is the ability to self reference.