If the brain can't think, what does?

Alkis Piskas

I often read in philosophical discussions (in here and elsewhere) the word "brain" connected to higher level human functions, like thought, even consciousness. If this was a scientific place, I certainly wouldn't be surprised. But this is a philosophical place.

So, I made a small "research" in the Web on the subject of where does thought take place. I tried to collect information from sources/references that are generally accepted as standard and/or reliable. I present below the results of this "research", in a concise form. (Comments within brackets [] are mine.)

Human brain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain

"The philosophy of the mind studies such issues as the problem of understanding consciousness and the mind–body problem. The relationship between the brain and the mind is a significant challenge both philosophically and scientifically. This is because of the difficulty in explaining how mental activities, such as thoughts and emotions, can be implemented by physical structures such as neurons and synapses, or by any other type of physical mechanism. This difficulty was expressed by Gottfried Leibniz in the analogy known as Leibniz's Mill:

"One is obliged to admit that perception and what depends upon it is inexplicable on mechanical principles, that is, by figures and motions. In imagining that there is a machine whose construction would enable it to think, to sense, and to have perception, one could conceive it enlarged while retaining the same proportions, so that one could enter into it, just like into a windmill. Supposing this, one should, when visiting within it, find only parts pushing one another, and never anything by which to explain a perception." (Leibniz, Monadology)

"Doubt about the possibility of a mechanistic explanation of thought drove René Descartes, and most other philosophers along with him, to dualism: the belief that the mind is to some degree independent of the brain.

"There has always, however, been a strong argument in the opposite direction. There is clear empirical evidence that physical manipulations of, or injuries to, the brain (for example by drugs or by lesions, respectively) can affect the mind in potent and intimate ways. In the 19th century, the case of Phineas Gage, a railway worker who was injured by a stout iron rod passing through his brain, convinced both researchers and the public that cognitive functions were localized in the brain. Following this line of thinking, a large body of empirical evidence for a close relationship between brain activity and mental activity has led most neuroscientists and contemporary philosophers to be materialists, believing that mental phenomena are ultimately the result of, or reducible to, physical phenomena

Comment: This case helped to convince people that mental functions were localized in the brain. This is also where Science (with capital "S") had initially based its "belief" (i\unscientific concept!) that thought was created and processed by the brain! But let's see how the subject has evolved in Science since then ...

***

Ask a Scientist: Neurons help explain how our brains think
https://eu.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/2019/03/18/ask-scientist-how-do-thoughts-work-our-brain/3153303002/

"Although the science of brain cell communication is well-understood, the complexity of thought processes is not well-defined.
"The brain is primarily composed of neurons, which are cells that generate electrical impulses for communication.
"Neurons release brain chemicals, known as neurotransmitters, which generate these electrical signals in neighboring neurons. The electrical signals propagate like a wave to thousands of neurons, which leads to thought formation.
"One theory explains that thoughts are generated when neurons fire."

[Comment: Well, they don't mention any other theory!]

***

The Brain Building Blocks
https://www.livestrong.com/article/202078-human-brain-thinking-process/

"The brain's primary building element starts with the brain cells known as neurons. Chemical processes in the brain send out messages through the neurons that determine the mental processes along with thinking. Cells called glia exist between the neurons in the brain. Mark Treadwell, an educator from New Zealand at I-learnt Website, indicates the glia interact with the neurons and hormones chemically in the production of thought. The motor neurons produce the action in our muscles and the sensory neurons connect to our five senses."

Thinking Process
"The American College of Radiology and the Radiology Society describe functional MRI as a diagnostic procedure that can determine precisely the location of thought processes in the brain. A positron emission topography scan also can document images of the brain during a range of thought processes. The future has promise for new insights into the thinking process using these new technologies."

Reasoning Process
[They just describe it. They don't connect it to the brain in any way ... I wonder why ...]

***

Brain Anatomy and How the Brain Works
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/anatomy-of-the-brain

"The brain is a complex organ that controls thought, memory, emotion, touch, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, hunger and every process that regulates our body. Together, the brain and spinal cord that extends from it make up the central nervous system, or CNS.

"New studies are exploring the cerebellum’s roles in thought, emotions and social behavior, as well as its possible involvement in addiction, autism and schizophrenia."

[Comment: This is all about "thought". In a text of about 2,000 words. Isn't that incredible?]

***

The following section is all mine.

Conclusion

This how much the scientific world understands thought! And they are so arrogant that, even if they are so evidently ignorant on the subject, they insist placing thought in the brain, which they study since ages, having found maybe everything they could about at this date. And this is most probably because, as pure materialists, they think, "Where else can it be located?" What has happened to the scientific method: observation -> hypothesis -> testing (experimentation) -> proof? I have not found that such a thing has been applied in the case of thought. And even if they arrive in explaining some simple process of thought, e.g. "thinking of a tree", what could one say about the whole range of human thought, including higher-level of mind/thinking processes, such as imagination, computing, reasoning and so on?

So, my position is that thought is neither created by nor is taking place in the brain.

And my three part question is "What is thinking, how thought is created and where does it take place?/b].

***

You can find my answer to the above question at https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/586700

View Answer

Count Timothy von Icarus

Who is thinking?
It's probably better to think of what is doing the thinking. While folk psychology generally has an individual as a unified whole, an indivisible actor, modern psychology and neuroscience paints a picture of multiple interlocking systems, with varying degrees of specialization and autonomy. And indeed this view predates modern science by millenia, with plenty of writers pointing out that we often don't act as a unified whole. Nietzsche was writing about a "congress of souls" instead of a unitary soul at the opening of Beyond Good and Evil long before we had MRIs.

When Descartes went to "I think, therefore I am," he is perhaps making a bit too much of a leap with the "I" part of the claim (this was a critique of Hume's).

As an example of this, people with split brains, brains that have had the major connections between the two hemispheres of the brain severed, experiences a lot of abnormal cognitive issues. For instance, if you ask them to write down their ideal career, each hand will give a different answer, and they will not be aware of the discrepancy. So which answer is the real one? I'd say both. Both are the results of thought, they just aren't being edited into a single result due to lack of communication.

You see this with the experience of volition as well. Folk psychology posits an individual decider, the soul or ego, which makes choices and enacts voluntary actions. However, when testing voluntary movement, research finds that the begining of a voluntary motion begins before a person experiences the sense of deciding to move. The movement begins, and the sense of choosing is retroactively formulated.

This is common to all movement, but blindsight provides another good example. People with damaged eyes can't see, but they can still imagine sights and dream of vision. On the other hand, people with a sufficiently damaged visual cortex do not experience sight, despite having working eyes. They cannot visualize and do not dream of vision. However, some of the connections from the eyes to the brain don't run through the visual cortex, some run to the motor cortex. And so you get blindsight. People who don't experience sight can nonetheless navigate rooms using vision and even catch things thrown at them. When they make these movements based on a sight they do not experience, they come up with all sorts of explanations for why they made the 'voluntary' movements they did that appear to be inaccurate. Again, an example of a lack of unity in thought.

---

As for your position that thought isn't created in the brain, how do you explain the fact that injuries to the brain result in profound effects on thought?

Is thought non-physical, existing in a sort of ether?

If so, how does this non-physical thing interact with our physical bodies?

Why do drugs radically alter perceptions by changing the chemistry of the brain? Thought should be safe if it doesn't live in the brain.

Why are brain imaging techniques so effective at predicting mental health disorders or the effects of brain injury?

dimosthenis9

↪Alkis Piskas

Really interesting topic. To me it seems like the hardware-software case. I don't think thought can exist without brain. But I am not so sure that thought gets "produced" only there,in a specific part of the brain.

What always troubled me is how all this invisible world (thoughts, ideas, feelings etc) and whatever is going on in unconscious mind are stored inside the brain? And is indeed in the brain at a specific place (part) or spread all over it? If it is spread all over shouldn't something to exist as to keep all that "world" united? The world that we experience via consciousness??

Could ever be possible that this "place", where all these information exist, to be some kind form of energy ? Energy that passes through the brain but also "circles" all human body. Bringing on surface also conscious mind via brain's hardware of course.
I know sounds extreme. To myself also. It's just a desperate attempt my mind to wrap around these questions.

Prishon

Nietzsche was writing about a "congress of souls" instead of a unitary soul at the opening of Beyond Good and Evil long before we had MRIs. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You make my day! :smile:

180 Proof

"Who is thinking, how thought is created and where does it take place? — Alkis Piskas

Thinking (occasionally) happens; "who one is" is a thought entertained recursively and then (mis)attributed ex post facto as the "cause" of thinking. It seems, however, a category error to assume "thinking happens somewhere" (which is like assuming "light comes from / goes somewhere when switched on / off ").

Pop

So, my position is that thought is neither created by nor is taking place in the brain.

And my three part question is "Who is thinking, how thought is created and where does it take place?/b]. — Alkis Piskas

Nice intro and good question. :up:

That a brain and senses are a crucial element of this is without question, but they are not the source of "thinking". The source of "thinking" is consciousness, but what is that?

In evolutionary psychology, it is thought that language developed before self awareness and a symbolic self concept. So, a self concept developed in a collective of minds - as you would expect given the need for cohesion in early hunter gatherer groups. So, thinking, "as we know it", from the very beginning, is not even located in a body, let alone a brain, but in a collective consciousness!

Of course, this is not it's source. to trace it's source requires an understanding of systems theory, and particularly the concept of self organization. In systems theory everything is a self organizing system, enmeshed with all the other self organizing systems around it. The whole enmeshment is articulated and driven by information. Information in this instance = the evolutionary interaction of form, as explained by this hugely popular thread.

In this view, everything is an evolving body of information, in the particular, and in the collective. Such that a cell in the body is one self organizing system, forming a larger self organizing system of organs, forming a larger self organizing system of body, forming a larger self organizing system of families, communities , countries, and finally a collective humanity, enmeshed within a likewise formed and interrelated biosphere.

Self organization is the source of life and thus thinking, but what is the essence or the source of self organization? In yogic logic, consciousness is the source of self organization. So, in yogic logic all that exists is consciousness and information, where information is the evolutionary interaction / interrelation of form. But again, what is this consciousness? In the range of answers, we get back to: God, convergent forces, emotions, a phase state of order, anthropic principle, etc. :smile: Your guess is as good as mine, but regardless of how we relate to the source, and that is what we do when we define it, it doesn't change it, it only changes us! And I think this is an amusing fact. :lol: It seems to me we should just lump all these different conceptions into the one conception, and call it something like the Source, and be done with all this bickering, imo.

**The source does the thinking and will continue to do so regardless of what we think! :lol:

Seppo

↪Count Timothy von Icarus

:strong: :up: :ok:

Good call on Nietzsche, too (he was definitely ahead of the game in his suspicion of any supposed unity/transparency/etc of consciousness and the self)

Banno

So, my position is that thought is neither created by nor is taking place in the brain. — Alkis Piskas

Then it is incumbent on you to answer your own question. If not the brain, where? And if not in the brain, how do you explain the range of observations you so curtly dismiss?

InPitzotl

The source of "thinking" is consciousness, but what is that? — Pop

Given that the processes behind thought do not appear to be consciously accessible, what does it mean to attribute the source of thinking to consciousness?

Pop

Given that the processes behind thought do not appear to be consciously accessible, what does it mean to attribute the source of thinking to consciousness? — InPitzotl

I have outlined the processes leading to thought, but it's source is elusive. When we give this source some definition, it does not change the source, but it changes how we relate to it. So we change ourselves if we say it is god, and then we change to something different If we say it is bosonic forces.

If we say the source is a physical force, then it creates a material reality such as we are used to. But when we say the source is consciousness, the possibilities of our reality are hugely expanded - expanded far beyond anything I can conceive! :smile:

Manuel

↪Alkis Piskas

A person is thinking. How the thought is created is quite obscure, it seems we are extremely far from finding an answer to this. The thought isn't realized in my pinky, nor in my stomach, nor in my hair. My brain must be involved somehow and I think it is the best candidate to say that thought takes place in my brain.

But from speaking to brains to speaking about persons, complexity sky rockets. Which isn't helpful as brain already are formidably complex.

Banno

I'm not sure it is a good idea to proceed as if it is clear what thinking is.

Are you considering just ratiocination - forming judgements by proceeding logically? Or the conscious monologue with which some are afflicted? Or will you include a person's ideas and opinions? What of their emotions? What of feelings - is having a pain having a thought?

You ain't going to work out where thoughts are unless you are fairly clear as to what they are.

Mark Nyquist

Thoughts are the things that occur in the brain region that has thoughts.
Banno, I wrote that just for you.

Mark Nyquist

So, my position is that thought is neither created by nor is taking place in the brain. — Alkis Piskas

If you can remember you birthday doesn't that confirm the information or thought is contained in your physical brain?

Mark Nyquist

A doctor might check brain memory by asking a person to repeat 'banana, phone, door'.

theRiddler

I feel like the brain generates thought as a qualitative result of direct communication with the environment.

It practices thought, and can generate language, but this is all sourced from interference outside the head. It isn't just a perfect reasoning machine.

180 Proof

So, my position is that thought is neither created by nor is taking place in the brain. — Alkis Piskas

False. Neuroscientists, for instance, routinely use 'probes' in specific sites of a human subject's neocortex in order to elicit or inhibit thoughts and feelings – e.g. false memories, phantom limb sensations, dissociated voices, ideational associations – from her brain.

Alkis Piskas

t's probably better to think of what is doing the thinking — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thank you for your response.
Yes, I know, I thought about this later and I corrected it. In fact my choice of the word "who" was biased, it has to do with my personal view, which of course I have not included in here.

When Descartes went to "I think, therefore I am," he is perhaps making a bit too much of a leap with the "I" part of the claim (this was a critique of Hume's). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I can't remember Hume's position on this subject (I have read his philosophy too long ago), but Descartes indeed did a big leap with his dualistic system (I wouldn't say "too much" though) and think our civilization in the West was lucky to have him! But this was expected and it would have happened anyway, esp. as West were meeting East ...

...people with split brains, brains that have had the major connections between the two hemispheres of the brain severed, experiences a lot of abnormal cognitive issues. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You talk about very low --actually bodily-- human cognitive functions. I have already mentioned the classic case of Phineas Gage. But this is too far away from major cognitive processes of a human being. (Even from the behaviour highly intelligent animals exhibit.)

However, when testing voluntary movement, research finds that the begining of a voluntary motion begins before a person experiences the sense of deciding to move ... This is common to all movement, but blindsight provides another good example. ... etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Likewise. All these are basically bodily functions. Human thinking is very far away from all that.

As for your position that thought isn't created in the brain, how do you explain the fact that injuries to the brain result in profound effects on thought? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I couldn't explain my position as part of the topic. It is already quite loaded! :smile: I created the topic so that different view points are presented. And of course, I cannot explain my position on an individual basis, for everyone who asks. So, at some point, depending on how this discussion is evolved, I will add a short note at the end of my description of the topic and refer to it everyone who wants to know. So, I will let you know if and when this will be done! :smile:

Alkis Piskas

Really interesting topic — dimosthenis9

Thanks. I was expecting someone to say that! :smile:
(Although I believe that it must be interesting for most of us in here ...)

To me it seems like the hardware-software case. I don't think thought can exist without brain. — dimosthenis9

Yes, I know. This subject has come up during our long discussion in another Topic, I think yours!

What always troubled me is how all this invisible world (thoughts, ideas, feelings etc) and whatever is going on in unconscious mind are stored inside the brain? — dimosthenis9

Right! Isn't this something that indicates the existence of something else gets into play. I call "all this invisible world" higher-level human mind functions. Science (with capital "S"), still after all these years of brain studies, cannot handle them. The reason is evident: they are not material.

Could ever be possible that this "place", where all these information exist, to be some kind form of energy ? — dimosthenis9

Still of material nature. If it were enery, they would have found about it and explained, with their MRI and other instruments ... As it seems, it is not energy either. At least, not the kind of energy we know.

It's just a desperate attempt my mind to wrap around these questions. — dimosthenis9

I think that Science is as much "desperate" as you. The difference is that you can admit it, whereas Science cannot! It cannot admit that there's such a huge void in this area and "lose face", after all these discoveries and developents trhough the ages! So, it just makes a note that "thought" --as other highr-level functions-- is part of the brain. No proofs. (Other than changes in the human behavior because of brain injuries.)

Alkis Piskas

Thinking (occasionally) happens; "who one is" is a thought entertained recursively and then (mis)attributed ex post facto as the "cause" of thinking. It seems, however, a category error to assume "thinking happens somewhere" (which is like assuming "light comes from / goes somewhere when switched on / off "). — 180 Proof

Thank you for your response.

Just a note: I have changed the word "who" to "what" as more approriate. (I used word "who" by bias and habit.)

Re "thinking happening": It can, but that would refer to "reactive", involuntary, thinking. As e.g. thoughts produced by the subconsious, emotions, etc. These thoughts always exist and are happening, since the subconscious is always at work.

But there is also a voluntary, analytical thinking. The function and process human beings use to analyze. compute and solve problems, to reason. This discussion, for instance, although it includes some involuntary thoughts (They always exist!) This doesn't just happen. It is created, controlled and directed by us. Isn't that right?

Alkis Piskas

Nice intro and good question — Pop

Thank you. :smile:

That a brain and senses are a crucial element of this is without question, but they are not the source of "thinking". The source of "thinking" is consciousness — Pop

I am very glad to read this quite original (for me) view on the subject!
Very interesting, really! :up:

Alkis Piskas

Then it is incumbent on you to answer your own question. — Banno

Thank you for your response.

You are right about my not answering the question. But, as I already replied on this:

I couldn't explain my position as part of the topic. It is already quite loaded! I created the topic so that different view points are presented. And of course, I cannot explain my position on an individual basis, for everyone who asks. So, at some point, depending on how this discussion is evolved, I will add a short note at the end of my description of the topic and refer to it everyone who wants to know. So, I will let you know if and when this will be done! :smile: — Alkis Piskas

And if not in the brain, how do you explain the range of observations you so curtly dismiss? — Banno

I have already indicated these "observations" are on a totally phisical (bodily) level. They consist actually of reactions, reflexes, behavioral changes, etc. All these belong to a low-level human mind functions. The higher-level functions (thinking, imagination, computing, problem solving, reasoning, etc. are very far away from what Science can explain. Besides, it is not me or anyone else who "dismiss" observations, etc. This is documentation on the subject. That is why I made all this effort to collect it and posted in my topic! If you have not actually read it, please do. It will answer your question.

Wayfarer

So, I made a small "research" in the Web on the subject of where does thought take place — Alkis Piskas

You might enjoy Alva Noë‘s book, Out of our Heads: Why You are Not your Brain.

Our culture is obsessed with the brain―how it perceives; how it remembers; how it determines our intelligence, our morality, our likes and our dislikes. It's widely believed that consciousness itself, that Holy Grail of science and philosophy, will soon be given a neural explanation. And yet, after decades of research, only one proposition about how the brain makes us conscious―how it gives rise to sensation, feeling, and subjectivity―has emerged unchallenged: we don't have a clue.

In this inventive work, Noë suggests that rather than being something that happens inside us, consciousness is something we do. Debunking an outmoded philosophy that holds the scientific study of consciousness captive, Out of Our Heads is a fresh attempt at understanding our minds and how we interact with the world around us.

He is part of a broader movement called ‘enactivism’ which argues that cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment. It claims that the environment of an organism is brought about, or enacted, by the active exercise of that organism's sensorimotor processes.

Obviously, brains are an important part of that; ‘embrained’ beings have many advantages over their vegetative relatives, or organisms without much in the way of brain. But this approach is not looking at the brain as an ultimate source of explanation in the way that neuro-reductionism is prone to doing, with its hope of reducing ‘humanity’s hopes and fears’ to electro-chemical signal pathways in organised goo. It’s a more holistic, as opposed to reductionist, approach, which can take advantage of the new perspectives afforded by science without necessarily giving the game away to ‘neuromania’.

Alkis Piskas

My brain must be involved somehow and I think it is the best candidate to say that thought takes place in my brain. — Manuel

Thank you for your response.

Thinking for a "best candidate" is how, as I said, scientists most probably think about thought (as well as consciousnes, etc.): "Where else can it be located?" But 1) this is not a scientific answer and 2) material (matter/energy) is something that can be directly observed, measured, detailed, experimented on, etc., so if thought is totally material, how comes then that they have so liitle data on it, and only on a body level?

Prishon

material (matter/energy) is something that can be directly observed, measured, detailed, experimented on, etc., so if thought is totally material, how comes then that they have so liitle data on it, and only on a body level? — Alkis Piskas

That's because the detailed information is hard to get. The moment you try to get that detailed information you are interfering with that process you distort it, more or less. The more if you wanna know more details. Thoughts in living creatures are very hard to study objectively.

180 Proof

↪Alkis Piskas

Yeah, but like waves on the ocean, "voluntary thinking" is very much the exception to the rule of – just the rippling surface of the deep – involuntary thinking.

Alkis Piskas

If you can remember you birthday doesn't that confirm the information or thought is contained in your physical brain? — Mark Nyquist

Thank you for your response.

Remembering a birthday, and where an information is containded refers to memory. So this would be another topic. e.g. "Where is memory located?". But, even if remembering involves some thinking, it is still a different subject.

Alkis Piskas

A doctor might check brain memory by asking a person to repeat 'banana, phone, door'. — Mark Nyquist

Does this mean that you have in mind some kind of memory other than "brain memory"?

Then, isn't this too mechanical and extremely simplistic an experiment to describe thought in general, esp. higher-level thinking (imagination, computing, problem solving, reasoning, etc.?
As the information I brought in as part of the description of the topic as well as I mentioned realier in this thread, this is as far as Science can go with the connection of thought to the brain.

Alkis Piskas

Neuroscientists, for instance, routinely use 'probes' in specific sites of a human subject's neocortex in order to elicit or inhibit thoughts and feelings – e.g. false memories, phantom limb sensations, dissociated voices, ideational associations – from her brain. — 180 Proof

Thank you for your response.

Like the Phineas Cage case! Not much of a progress, is there? :smile:
But I don't have to tamper the brain to produce bodily resonses, emotions, etc. I can to that by hitting someone. (I wouldn't, actually! :smile:) But all these are reactions. In fact, bodily reactions. Science has not and cannot explain how they are produced and what is their source. Science (with capital "S") cannot see anything else than a body. It can't see the human being as a whole.

180 Proof

Science has not and cannot explain how they are produced and what is their source — Alkis Piskas

Explain how you know this.

Science (with capital "S") cannot see anything else than a body. It can't see the human being as a whole.

Explain why you assume that "the human being as a whole" is something other, or more, than "a body".

TheMadFool

Science has not and cannot explain how they are produced and what is their source
— Alkis Piskas
Explain how you know this. — 180 Proof

It appears that what science has established is that the brain is necessary for thinking - no brain, no thinking. However, is the brain sufficient for thinking? Can AI think? Can silicon-based life-forms think?

If the brain can't think, what does?

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