Is the brain indispensable to consciousness?

Question

Please confine your answer in a philosophical context. My great appreciation if you do so. Thank you. Have a great day!

Answer 1

No.

Whatever we think about the mind body problem it is generally believed that whatever we do to one effects the other. E.g. If I put an axe through your brain your thoughts will be influenced.

Other parts of the body may also have somethinmg to do with consciousness. E.g. people who have had transplants sometimes seem to have feelings or memories of the doner.

Some animals have very complex behaviors but do not have a central nervous system or brain like ours, presumably they could have feelings etc.

If we assume things that act as intelligently as people have feelings l.ike ours we would have to assume that our sun has feelings since it has a higher IQ than most people according to cybernetics.

Answer 2

No, but our own consciousness does depend on the brain. There could be other systems which are conscious, for example there is no reason why a very sophisticated robot could be built which is conscious, On another planet there might be a colonial organism which is conscious, or an animal without no nervous system but with a system of vessels and valves which allow it to respond to stimuli in a sophisticated manner which would be conscious. Consciousness is an emergent property of matter, but its fundamental elements exist in all matter.

Answer 3

What an opportunity to put things right, especially since I give not a whit about earning ThirdP's appreciation or keeping my answer within a "philosophical context". The answer comes, as it were, "before philosophy", and allows us to dispense completely with the conceit responsible for this question, and so the excessively formalized specie of rogatory that can only serve to congratulate the one who strives for equivocacy over lucidity.

Consciousness per se does not admit itself to the same class of denoted objects it is responsible for. By using the phrase "indispensable to", ThirdP has equivocated the real issue, which is the "nature of" or "origin of" conciousness proper.

In my answer to a similar question (see below) I addressed this problem of psychological conceit entering through the back door into legitimate philosophical inquiries. So long as there are ThirdP's misrepresenting the inquiry, we will continually have to step away from the purposeless chatter and "discriminate in reflection", as suggested by Parmenides.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AvMdH1nYc5thiysegWg3GLrsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20071114080551AAF7zZ8&show=7#profile-info-6f32cdd72e26fc9863121b4bd37979afaa

Answer 4

At the present time, yes. With sufficient technology, no.
Consciousness appears to be the operating system over the wetware of your brain, this is supported by the fact that the brain can be physically fine but you can still be in a coma or technically braindead. The mind is something else entirely, and so in theory can exist over any suitably complex and interactive network or system. The brain is just where it has been so far....theres nothing to say it couldn't exist in, say, a computer matrix or the like.

Answer 5

I don't know. To know an others consciousness symptoms for it are needed for its identification. We know radio waves continue on after their source is gone and radio is recordable into materials but it is uncertain if electromagnetic energy may sustain a form in unstable material of an inanimate or non-biological nature. Perhaps there is a special relation in energy to energy actualities that would make such energy forms stably possible, i.e. an unseen medium such as water is for fish.

Answer 6

Yes, it is through the brain's sensory apparatus that we process reality and develop a greater and greater awareness of being OTHER than only the brain/body system. Our mind is the intersection of soul/consciousness and brain/body.

Answer 7

That depends on whether you believe in an afterlife. If you did I guess you would say that consciousness resides or would at that point take up residence in the soul and would go on after the body died. In this life, I would think consciousness would be linked to the brain.

Answer 8

A plant can be said to be "conscious" of the sun because it turns its leaves to the sun. It has no brain.
That said, I must guess that you mean "self-consciousness," as in thinking about thinking. I put it that way because there is no evidence that other animals with brains think about thinking.
So yes, the brain is indispensable, but there must be more to it than that. There must be a connection--be it chemical, electrical, or whatever--that causes one to be conscious of one's own cognitive powers.
I believe we have that "whatever" only by the grace of evolutionary patterns.

Answer 9

Yes, without the brain there is no consciousness. We'd be dead to the world around us.

Answer 10

I think that you and many of those answering may be confusing mind with brain. Your brain is an amazing organ it controls our muscles, respiration, pulmonary function and a host of other lesser known functions, but it does not think.

Thought is a function of mind that exists independent of anything physical. What appears to be the brain thinking in brain function imaging and other brain measuring attempts is only blood flow being measured to the part of the brain that acts as an interface between the mind and the body. This is the secondary function of the brain after regulating bodily functions. It acts as the interface, or the mind body connection.

Without it there would be no way for the nonphysical mind to exert any control over the physical body.
It is interesting that science has done its best to overlook this fact for so long. The silly idea that thought is some magical function of some mysterious electrochemical reaction is so vague as to be hilarious. There are several ways to disprove this theory beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Being nonphysical in source your mind is in no way effected by the death of the body and loss of the mind body interface, or brain.

Love and blessings.
don