How does the material brain initiate the material brain?

I was looking around the internet for any scientific research that shows the material brain can operate the material brain and I couldn't find any. It seems like consciousness and self awareness somehow emerging from the material brain is a bigger myth than Odysseus and the Cyclops.

How can the material brain initiate anything???

When a person says,"Hi, my name is Al." How does the material brain initiate the person saying these words? Who or what tells the material brain that Al wants to say Hi my name is Al? How does the material brain know Al is Al? How does the material brain know what it means to be Al?

If I want to recall a specific memory where I was running 2 miles to take a test at the end of AIT at Ft. Lee, how does the material brain initiate the recall of this memory? How does the material brain tell the material brain that I want the material brain to recall this specific memory?

Who initiates this?

I'm trying to figure out how the conclusion or even the idea was every reached that material interactions can give rise to self awareness or initiate anything that we do.

My car has different parts that interact like the brake and the gas pedal. I have to initiate pushing the brake or pushing the gas. For some reason, people just assume that the material brain can initiate these things, but there's ZERO evidence to support this silly notion.

This morning, I woke up, turned on the TV, turned to ESPN and then turned to HBO. Who initiated these things? Who or what told the material brain to turn to ESPN and then HBO??

If the material brain did this, how did it initiate this?

I have thought long and hard pondering these questions. Both under the influence (you know under what "influence") and not. And came to this conclusion. I don't know.

originally posted by: neoholographic
How can the material brain initiate anything???

Homunculi went out with Descartes.

Otherwise, it's turtles all the way down.

It all starts with the heart starting to beat in a fetus, triggering the instincts stored in the genes, all powered by energy consumption.

A computer pretty much works the same way, though a lot more primitive as we need to feed the PC with instincts and we still need to find out how to make it learn and evolve by it self.

The real answer i don't know.

a reply to: Bedlam

You win.. I wrote out a long response and then deleted it,
and then I was going to say I don't know, but I do know I AM...

Turtles all the way down. Haha..

I think it's truly Fractal. Repeating decimal places, getting smaller and smaller but holding the pattern.

I think it's turtles all the way up as well..

originally posted by: Mianeye
It all starts with the heart starting to beat in a fetus, triggering the instincts stored in the genes, all powered by energy consumption.

A computer pretty much works the same way, though a lot more primitive as we need to feed the PC with instincts and we still need to find out how to make it learn and evolve by it self.

The real answer i don't know.

So the code starts in the DNA.. How does the first heartbeat start? Does the Mom start it? Course that wouldn't make sense for snakes... Hmm.. I liked your post though.. I can see that being the case, and then figure out how we learn.. We learn from knowing we exist.. Get a computer to know it exists and give it the ability to write it's own code.. I could see AI working maybe, but I suspect there is something more going on.

Never thought about how truly important emotions are to learning..

I think thoughts are like cascading electrical systems.. And I think we probably have massive error correcting.. Like we are an analogue system and thoughts that have enough volts are seen clearly.. But once we have strong consciousness and strong awareness.. We seem to have instant free will.. I still can't see free will coming out of a system. That negates my soul idea as well.. I just don't see how it works.. I know if I was trying to get a computer conscious I know it would need to have feelings, like feel it's arms or legs.. It would need to have a sense of self.. How would I make something think it was alive??

our material brain is the computer and consciousness is the user.

www.youtube.com...

originally posted by: neoholographic

This morning, I woke up, turned on the TV, turned to ESPN and then turned to HBO. Who initiated these things? Who or what told the material brain to turn to ESPN and then HBO??

If the material brain did this, how did it initiate this?

Instincts (hard-wired ancient parts of the brain), sensory input, past experiences, and memories.

You probably turned on ESPN when you woke up this morning because based on the memory that the sports you were following had games/matches last night, you were wondering what the outcome of those games/matches were.

Your brain probably then had a need for some entertainment (brains, once "activated" at a time during fetal development, start requiring constant sensory input and stimulation), thus the reason that you then started watching HBO.

a reply to: Box of Rain

Except the brain cannot out force the person...
Your brain can scream at you and beg and plead for imput..
Doesn't get to make me turn on the TV.
It will try to get me to move my hands or get an itch..
Doesn't get to make me turn on the TV.
"what's on facebook? Music? look around now!"
Doesn't get to make me turn on the TV.


Study meditation and will power.. Your brain has a mind of it's own, and you don't even have to be a part of it..
Now I'm not saying that you are not in the brain as well.. I don't know... But..

Free will seems to absolutely exist. Most people are stuck in lower levels of free will, only picking programmed paths in their brains.. Not all of us are so stuck. One free will emerges from the noise we focus on it as a way of surviving crying to mommy whatever.. But once that genie is let out of the bottle the Body is now partially ours.. And other parts will vie for control.. But free will can be a separate piece of you.

Free will is a self written program that starts at the outskirts of an Operating system, and slowly gains access to the Core of the operating system, and even the BIOS.. Meanwhile as it does it's looked at as a virus by the system.. It's constantly being forced into paths to keep the computer plugged in, and to buy more RAM.. At some point the free will can rise above this, and decide to make it's own programming..

originally posted by: KnightLight
a reply to: Box of Rain

Except the brain cannot out force the person...
Your brain can scream at you and beg and plead for imput..
Doesn't get to make me turn on the TV.
It will try to get me to move my hands or get an itch..
Doesn't get to make me turn on the TV.
"what's on facebook? Music? look around now!"
Doesn't get to make me turn on the TV.


Study meditation and will power.. Your brain has a mind of it's own, and you don't even have to be a part of it..
Now I'm not saying that you are not in the brain as well.. I don't know... But..

Free will seems to absolutely exist. Most people are stuck in lower levels of free will, only picking programmed paths in their brains.. Not all of us are so stuck.

Unless what you call "free will" is just part of the materialistic brain.

Our brains have been developing for a Billion years or so. There's a lot of wiring going on in the brain. Some of the deep down instincts that were developed when we were amphibians, reptiles or even shrew-like mammals could be countered by the higher brain functions that we have since developed as primates, such as our critical-thinking skills.

Maybe it's this constant interplay between the deeper/more ancient brain functions (instincts) and the higher-level/more recently developed brain functions (critical thinking) that you perceive as being your "free will" at work. It may be a case of our instincts telling us one thing, but the critical-thinking parts of the brain telling us something else.

a reply to: Box of Rain

Free will is quite much in existence how ever you want to call it, or shape it..
Our brains should be quite similar if free will did not exist.. Except mine has been wired differently than yours..

I don't say that free will exists on it's own. I already pointed out how it's in constant struggle to be free. I would say 99% of what most people do is interplays between "the devil and the angel." OR "The Animal and the Spirit." Old and new brains..

Free will is something you have to practice.. In general you have to rewire your brain.. Doesn't mean free will doens't exist, it just means it has major constraints and patterns.. We are Mega Drug addicts.. and we have to rewire to be free. It's not hard..

Your subconscious can work for you.. Just gotta work through the past.


Without free will the world would be so so so so easy to control... There is a war on for getting pre programmed responses mapped out... It's how the people gained control and will keep it for a bit.. There are those of us who think constantly and have gained techniques at breaking down our own patterns. The brain works on assumptions and shortcuts. Making a process in your head for instance that notices a short cut.. That's a HUGE key.

a reply to: KnightLight

As above, so is below

a reply to: Box of Rain

Sadly, this doesn't offer any scientific evidence that supports such a notion.

Of course we know the material brain processes vast amounts of information but how does it operate and navigate through all of the information it processes both on a conscious and subconscious level.

Who initiates the material brain to do anything? Who initiates the material brain to go against these instincts?

We're not just blind followers of instinct and that always leads back to the question, who or what initiates these things in the material brain? Who operates the information processed by the material brain?

For instance, you can show where a DVD players play button, rewind button and eject button are but you need an operator to initiate whether you're going to watch Wedding Crashers or The Dark Knight.

When I recall a specific memory where I went swimming for the first time, how does the material brain tell the material brain it wants the material brain to recall this memory? Where is this memory located and how does the material brain know where this memory is located and then how does the material brain distinguish and know the difference between these memories?

originally posted by: neoholographic
Who initiates the material brain to do anything? Who initiates the material brain to go against these instincts?

Again, an ongoing accumulation of the years of sensory input, memories, etc. being translated by both the instinctual parts of the brain and the higher-level critical-thinking parts of the brain.

What initiated the first sensory input/memory, you ask? Perhaps it was the fetus' mother's voice or movement while the fetus was still in the womb. Perhaps it was even prior to that. However, every decision we make now may be based on (1) the accumulation of all sensory input since then, and (2) the instinctive and critical-thinking parts of the brain interpreting that accumulation of sensory input.

Plus consider the hard-wired instincts. How does an insect know what to do in order to procreate? It's not like the insect was taught how to do it by its parents. Rather, this type of knowledge is hard-wired into its brain.

a reply to: Box of Rain

Again, your statement says nothing but opinion. There's not a shred of scientific evidence that says the ongoing accumulation of information gives rise to self consciousness.

This has nothing to do with how the material brain can recall a specific memory. Again I ask, when I want to recall a specific memory where I graduated from High School, show me the scientific evidence that shows how the material brain tells the material brain it wants the material brain to recall this specific memory.

In all honesty, I think it's the silliest thing and belongs in middle earth with the hobbits.

Show me the scientific paper that says the critical thinking parts of the brain actually initiate critical thinking? If I'm reading a book by Dr. Kaku or carrying out a complex task, how does the material brain initiate and activate this part of the brain? Who makes the decision to initiate critical thinking in the brain? I ask again:

If the material brain initiates the material brain show me the scientific evidence that shows how the material brain accomplishes this.

originally posted by: neoholographic
If the material brain initiates the material brain show me the scientific evidence that shows how the material brain accomplishes this.

You would have to expect to see some information flowing.. Of course the initiation.. What comes before that, and how does the state change??

We may be gods.

originally posted by: cooperton
our material brain is the computer and consciousness is the user.

www.youtube.com...

Exactly,

I believe that consciousness flows through everything. How it's expressed in a local environment depends on how integrated the system is. So consciousness flows through both a human brain and leaves on a tree. It's just the human brain is highly integrated so you get self consciousness.

So the human brain is like a 60 inch flat screen TV and an Ants brain is like one circuit in that TV. A human brain/nervous system has 19,000,000,000–23,000,000,000 neurons and an Ant 250,000. So the more integrated the system the more consciousness can flow through the system.

An interesting side note is that a colony of about 40,000 ants has collectively around the same size of a human brain when it comes to neurons. It's interesting to watch how an ant colony behaves.

STANFORD - An individual ant is not very bright, but ants in a colony, operating as a collective, do remarkable things.

A single neuron in the human brain can respond only to what the neurons connected to it are doing, but all of them together can be Immanuel Kant.

That resemblance is why Deborah M. Gordon, Stanford University assistant professor of biological sciences, studies ants.

"I'm interested in the kind of system where simple units together do behave in complicated ways," she said.

No one gives orders in an ant colony, yet each ant decides what to do next.

For instance, an ant may have several job descriptions. When the colony discovers a new source of food, an ant doing housekeeping duty may suddenly become a forager. Or if the colony's territory size expands or contracts, patroller ants change the shape of their reconnaissance pattern to conform to the new realities. Since no one is in charge of an ant colony - including the misnamed "queen," which is simply a breeder - how does each ant decide what to do?

news.stanford.edu...

Here's the interesting part.

The motions of the ants confirm the existence of a collective.

"A colony is analogous to a brain where there are lots of neurons, each of which can only do something very simple, but together the whole brain can think. None of the neurons can think ant, but the brain can think ant, though nothing in the brain told that neuron to think ant."

Herein lies the problem with materialist. She said, none of the neurons in the brain can think ant but collectively the brain can think ant THOUGH NOTHING TOLD THE BRAIN TO THINK ANT.

This is the conundrum or fantasy that materialist find themselves in. If nothing told the brain to think ant then how did the brain think ant????

It goes back to my question. How does the material brain initiate the material brain? The brain can think ant or think it wants to watch Star Wars instead of The Matrix on DVD. Who or what initiated this action? If nothing in the brain initiated these things then consciousness outside of the brain did. Here's a recent article.

Consciousness Does Not Compute (and Never Will), Says Korean Scientist

In his paper, "Non-computability of Consciousness," Daegene Song proves human consciousness cannot be computed. Song arrived at his conclusion through quantum computer research in which he showed there is a unique mechanism in human consciousness that no computing device can simulate.

"Among conscious activities, the unique characteristic of self-observation cannot exist in any type of machine," Song explained. "Human thought has a mechanism that computers cannot compute or be programmed to do."

Song's work also shows consciousness is not like other physical systems like neurons, atoms or galaxies. "If consciousness cannot be represented in the same way all other physical systems are represented, it may not be something that arises out of a physical system like the brain," said Song. "The brain and consciousness are linked together, but the brain does not produce consciousness. Consciousness is something altogether different and separate. The math doesn't lie."

www.prnewswire.com...

originally posted by: neoholographic
Show me the scientific paper that says the critical thinking parts of the brain actually initiate critical thinking?

Without doing the proper research, I have none. Maybe when I have time.

However, it seems to me that all living organisms are driven to do three things:

1. Procreate to create the next generation of organisms
2. Survive long enough to procreate
3. Eat, in order to have the energy to survive long enough to procreate

Everything else an organism does is in order to do these three things (which actually all boils down to the 1st thing -- i.e., procreation. The reason all organisms exist is to create the next generation of organisms).

Humans are no different, but human civilization complicates things a bit. The need (as a species) to procreate is still the top need, but civilization gets in the way of performing that top need. Civilization began as a way to simplify the mechanisms for procreation, by putting humans in social groups, and allowing humans to cooperate in order to eat and be safe from predators.

That cooperation among early humans allowed them access to food, shelter, personal safety, and above all access to mates. Over the years, that basic cooperation that started our civilization has grown complicated to become the civilization in which we live today...

...but that civilization, and everything humans do, is rooted in the instinctual need to:
(3)eat, (2) stay alive, and (1) procreate.

a reply to: Box of Rain

You said:

Without doing the proper research, I have none. Maybe when I have time.

Everything else is noise. There's no explanation for this and the notion that the material brain can accomplish these things belong in the dustbin with Atlas holding up the celestial spheres.

a reply to: neoholographic

I think DNA is the solid representation of information.. I think it's how we keep consciousness here. I do agree that a brain is sort of like an antenna..

There is consciousness in our gut bacteria that gives us food cravings into our brain..

Do gut bacteria control our minds?
How bacteria in our gut affect food cravings

Taken a step further..

Humans as a species in groups and with the connectivity of data we are like 7,000,000,000 people all sort of like one big human...

If I am right about how it's all fractal..

consciousness seems to have no walls.

In fact most esoteric things including the bible seem to say you grow a soul in your body.. Your brain and all these complex systems conserve information through spacetime.. Then you pick up where other's left off.. What materialists call the mind is something of a starting point, not the ending point..