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interstellargator t1_j2d4zog wrote

Reply to comment by qbookfox in ELI5: How did we realise the mind is in the brain? by theembryo

Do you interpret inner voice, thinking, and dreaming as occurring in the head because you innately know that's where it actually happens, or because you were told that's where it happens?

Plenty of emotions are felt in the chest. Excitement, love, despair, heartbreak. Seems just as reasonable to "intuitively know" that the soul lives in the heart or stomach.

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54yroldHOTMOM t1_j2ddx8d wrote

It could also be that the brain is simply a receiver and cpu. Like a dial up connection to the internet. But instead it connects to the mind. Which may or may not be present in the body. If the receiver breaks down or the cpu and mem gets damaged, the information downloaded obviously gets misinterpreted and or causes memory fails and bad computations.

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SirTruffleberry t1_j2dhe2n wrote

Sure, but ya know, Occam's Razor. Why suppose the brain is the middle man to an unseen object when treating it as the final object works fine?

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54yroldHOTMOM t1_j2dj0im wrote

Why philosophy when we all die anyway?

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SirTruffleberry t1_j2dpqw8 wrote

I don't think it reduces the quality or scope of philosophy if one doesn't assume a soul/immaterial mind.

Assuming unnecessary things to explain phenomena does, on the other hand, usually have negative consequences. Every one of your postulates is like a filter through which the truth must pass. More/stronger filters means it's more likely that the truth snags on one of those assumptions.

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54yroldHOTMOM t1_j2dvxb3 wrote

What is truth? Are they facts or what someone believes to be true? And what if everything is true? Even the things that “aren’t”. Or if truth is in a state of flux until someone observes it.

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SirTruffleberry t1_j2dx0ol wrote

I would say that empirical truths (obviously not mathematical or abstract truths) are statements about an efficient model that seems to agree with sensory data and predicts incoming data. That's pretty streamlined but hits the biggest points, I think.

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Ken_Field t1_j2divzy wrote

Recently read a theory like this, that consciousness is more of a universal field that our individual bodies “pick up on” with our brains acting as the sensing object, similar to how our ears might hear a noise in the distance but that doesn’t mean our ears are the object that generated that noise.

I don’t think it’s true tbh, but it’s an interesting thought experiment in the goal of understanding consciousness.

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