The Ghost in the Machine

Everything we see, touch, smell, hear and taste are only electrical impulses. So who is to say that the universe even exist, at this time we can only prove it exist in our head and thats it.

So if everything is an electrical impulse then that means our brain is just an electrical impulse.
For example if you looked in the mirror while you head was opened up you would see your brain, even might be able to touch it. So that means it is only a image manifested from our senses. Everything perceived are only electrical signals.

Matter consist of perception veiwed by the soul. So who is this ghost in the machine perceiving all these electrical impulses? If everything is just an electrical impulse formed by senses including our brain who is the person seeing everything?

There is no proof for physical reality, that kinda scares me for some reason. I wonder who I really am.


[edit on 8-7-2007 by earth2]

Sorry I posted my message in the wrong thread.

[edit on 8-7-2007 by wigit]

Hi, this kind of scares me too when I think about it & usually always reminds me of the song "Row, row, row, your boat , gently down the stream...... Dunno why. When I was small I always asked "what part of me is me?" I thought if you took all my parts away I'd have to still be me so therefore I wil always exist, and always have. It is a kind of lonely feeling. I've read that some scientists have come to the conclusion that the universe appears to be more like a giant dream than an objective reality. When we think of everything in a subjective way it can then explain all the anomalies in "reality" that we all come across, some more than others. I think we are the ghost in the machine and the realities we create are made from pure emotion. If you think you're lucky then you are lucky etc. If it's true then the implications and things to look forward are unlimited and if we can control the fear then "life" will be great.

I concure with the electricity theory, but also might suggest a great movie for you to watch called "what the bleep do we know?" This should expand your theory quite a bit and also add much more to it.

Its true that your brain is just reacting to electrical impulses but something has to happen to make your brain receive those messages your nerves are telling you! i.e. you get burned from fire you pull back as a response.
Everyone is living out their lives as normal and everything is as it is, the thing you gotta worry about is that we only use basic senses knowingly and maybe we cant pick up things that may be happening we arent aware of from just having these basic senses!?

There is no proof for all those facts in the scientific world, since all is based on our own assumptions / speculation / perception.

However to think this is like a giant dream, I'd say no.
At least not a collaboration by all the people in this world, I'd say I'm stuck in a dream, being dreamt by someone else, else I'd be able to change ''reality'' as I know it at will, but I can't. (Or at least not to my perception or the perception of anyone else in the vicinity).

That said my dreams are as ''realistic'' as reality when it comes to senses and locations, aside that I can change everything at will.

If you want to follow the dream theory though
Let's assume god exists.
God goes to sleep. (This is his dream)
Since God is an expert at ''lucid dreaming'' this is like a giant sandbox to him. And creature known as god can sleep for all eternity if he wants to.

God creates dream characters known as humans, and a whole timeline comes forth.

Now those of us that also learn to be experts at lucid dreaming, become new gods in our own dreams. And so on and so on.

Would be funny if there would be a collapse of the universe, "God waking up".


[edit on 8/7/07 by -0mega-]

Ghost in the Machine.

I really love that term.

Electrical impulses directed by our own biological functions enacted through chemistry like hormones and such.

Interesting thread.

It is certainly easier to define what we aren't than what we are.

Originally posted by Tofu9
Its true that your brain is just reacting to electrical impulses but something has to happen to make your brain receive those messages your nerves are telling you! i.e. you get burned from fire you pull back as a response.
Everyone is living out their lives as normal and everything is as it is, the thing you gotta worry about is that we only use basic senses knowingly and maybe we cant pick up things that may be happening we arent aware of from just having these basic senses!?

Yes but if you take away the senses, touch for example then you dont get burned. take away sight and it isnt there, take away all senses and it doesnt exist.
At this point everything is a picture in our brain.
There is no physical proof for anything except the pictures in our head, isnt that a little freaky?

I like what you had to say with this thread it's an interesting proposition. I say that you are right to some degree, reality is what we focus on. notice how we never notice certain cars and then you buy one and you see it everywhere. The brain does that with the electrical impulses that it creates in response to OUTSIDE stimuli.

As for me, I am almost certain that the ghost in the machine concept more accuratlly reflects the human soul and conciousness. I think our own personalities, self will cognisance (sp) is a form of the ghost in the machine phenomina. I believe since the brain or our nervouse system is more or less a huge bundle and network of simpler elements (neurons etc) that are all trying to perform a specific function which must compete with resources to get the job done like all the other nuerons. a effect that we would call conciousness manifests if the process is complex enough. hopefully this makes some sense to somebody who is reading this.

My question is if my theory is right than what happens to computers once they get complex enough. do they too develop a soul or conciousness. or are they different from us in some way and are simply just machines that have only a ghost in the machine instead of true intelligent life weather or not we created it or weather it's constructed from different material that animals. it preforms all the same functions. So when is a robot truly considered alive and equal to us humans.

Isn't this the exact same idea that is questioned in the "Ghost in the Shell" franchise? I recommend that you watch the second movie and if you are up to it watch the series(rent it). The whole point in the story of the franchise is about the same thing as this thread.

I also wondered the same thing, what is me? My cells can't be me, they have an existence of there own. Then am I a recording made by the cells/neurons in my brain? Am I a ghost? spirit or God? Or am I really just a recording? Software generated by the organic machine made up of many different living things. Then how does my body stay as one, if it is made out of a bunch of different living things? Do they all have souls?

I spent so much time wondering about this that I almost gave up. I kinda believe that we are some form of entity that has always existed and is for some reason working together with the life on this planet(cells), we humans just seem too different from the rest of the other animals. We may never know.

I like the show ghost in the shell. Season 2 is about the individual 11 correct? it's been a while since i've watched it. great show though although the tachikomas need to have less child like voices. that can get a nnoying after a while. I agree with a lot of what it has to say. What I was talking about was something I came up with over time independantly.

Seriously though I think that even conciousness is just a ghost in the machine effect along with what we precieve as a soul. we could actually be not special at all. just another well build biological machine.

You can sort of introduce ideas of reductionism into this. We as humans can't be described as the individual actions of the cells which run us. There's also the idea that organisms can't actually control their sub-structures. A human can't individually control a liver, or a heart.

In the movie Waking Life, it's said that after 6 months, every cell in the human body is replaced and renewed. If this is so, then every 6 months, I'm a totally different person. Where does my memory reside?

Sounds like we are machines of some kind of organic material.

Maybe we are the bodies for the spirits to possess. Then would we be the body or the spirit possessing it?

Would the individual *I* be the ghost or the machine?

[edit on 9-7-2007 by interestedalways]

You could easily(if we had the tech) hook a brain up to a computer and send all the necesary signals to trick it into thinking it was living in whatever world you piped into it. Body and all it would think it was living in a physical world kinda like the matrix.

Now lets think for a minute, lets say we had the tech to grow a brain in a lab and do all this, would it have a soul? Does the brain need a soul to be aware?

[edit on 9-7-2007 by earth2]

Where does the endoctrine system fit into this? If is was merely part of the brain activity causing them to fire off then how does '___' the spirit molecule fit?

If everything is a perception formed by our senses then that would include our brain because it is matter also. And like I said earlier if you could look at it in a mirror, who is looking at it? The ghost in the machine.



[edit on 9-7-2007 by earth2]

Not sure where '___' stands in the Ghost in the machine phenomina. '___' might not be a spirit molecule but just a very hallucinagenic chemical. That being said I'd love to get my patuitary or whatever is resonsible for producing '___' (penal) to go crazy and trip me out. I'd be the greatest graphic designer of set designer in the world! maybe the worlds greatest novelist. I'd be rich! an unparalleled imagination, infact do creative people simply have more '___' on average than other people. could '___' be the creative molecule instead? I don't know.

All I know is if you meditate for long enough in certain ways you can shut off the part of the brain that regulates where you preceive your physical body to stop and the rest of the universe to begin. it's an important part of your brain located (i think it's been a while) in the lower section of the right parietal lobe. The brain needs to figure out the dimensions of the body it runs to interact with the world. Existential meditation among others will eventually shut off that part of the brain for a little bit. when this happens people have a hard time differentiating themselves from the grater universe. Franciscan nuns say when this happens that they are one with God. buddhists when the same thing happens claim that they are experiencing satori.

So such a simple thing can temporarily cause a human to loose it's personal identity. A program in the brain stops running and what makes us human and individualistic goes away. interesting.