What phenomena are in the brain and if so how? — Andrew4Handel

The brain itself does not have 'senses' of its own so "phenomena in the brain" – humuncular theory – does not make sense.

We know that we have memories.

My oldest brother died a couple of years ago and I could tell you a lot about him from my memories without referring to photos or a written account etc. I could try and describe smells, sensations. I know where he used to live. I lived with him for a few years. Colours, DVDs he owned. His catheters. Pressure sores. Thousands of things potentially.

I mention this because he has passed on which emphasises the ability of memories to capture things that are long gone or not in current spacial temporality (and may be described as representations the common term for mind brain correlated).

It does seem that the brain is the only candidate for these memories to reside in. Yet nothing in the brain is like my memories of my brother.

Memories are vivid and multidimensional. I can remember things such as my brothers beliefs, his religious beliefs, political beliefs etc. Yet all we have in the brain is neurons, dendrites, axons, support cells, blood, synapses, chemical or electrical transmitters etc and none of these things share the characteristics of mental states.

The only possible options that spring to mind for me right now is another realm of mental objects or a new perspective on the physical world that supports mental and physical entities.

We know that we have memories — Andrew4Handel

"Memories" are functions, not "phenomena".

"Memories" are functions, not "phenomena". — 180 Proof

What function do the memories of my brother serve. Or what function does my earliest memory of having a cold and being in a pram sucking a cough sweet on a wet day serve?

What function do the memories of my brother serve — Andrew4Handel

I'd say we developed memory because it had significant utility - remembering what was safe to eat, what caused sickness sand death, how to stay safe from predators, etc. Recognizing friend from foe, family from stranger requires memory too. No doubt memory has a range of other utilities that allows humans to plan, strategize, nurture, survive. The bonus is that you have early memories of siblings, parents, friends.

180 proof claimed memories were not phenomena.

Well as I mentioned my memories are vivid and have a lot of detail (that might be referred to as qualia).

I am describing the phenomenal properties of mental states here not their function.

The function or potential uses of a mental state doesn't explain its emergence.

For example I am using the computer and internet now. But it's usefulness to me is not a history of its development. An evolutionary explanation of something in my opinion has to be an explicit causal explanation explaining emergent properties. Not a story of the benefit of a trait. I think the two things are conflated.

Eliminative materialism and behaviourism do contain explicit attempts to ignore or deny the phenomenal aspects of mental states. If they were just physical functions we wouldn't call them mental states.

Ok. I thought you were asking a different question.

Nevermind. Carry on with ... :roll:

By function @180 Proof is indicating a means of existing, not so much saying that they play a role, I think. Memories exist, but not as structure, not as property, but as function (or action, behaviours of neurons, something like that.) Driving exists, but if we take apart a car and its driver and examine all the parts, we don't find anything we can call driving. Thinking exists, but if we take apart a brain we don't find a object or property called 'thinking', but, the argument goes, we do observe the brain doing stuff, and that is thinking.

Talk of ‘what brains do’ was called ‘the mereological fallacy’ in a well-known book on neuroscience and philosophy. The mereological fallacy is to ascribe to parts of the body what only agents or actors are capable of doing. ‘The brain’ becomes a kind of explanatory unit, an idealised black box which ‘does’ this or ‘produces’ that and so on. But ascribing thoughts to ‘the brain’ is like saying your computer writes your entries in this thread. Humans think, humans write. They need normal brain function to do so, but it’s not ‘the brain’ which is doing that. Brains are always situated as part of a whole, which is precisely what ‘mereology’ refers to.

And, memories are not ‘phenomena’. Phenomena means, strictly speaking, ‘what appears’. The northern lights are a fascinating and colourful phenomena, caused by radiation from the sun reacting with the Earth’s ionosphere. But the explanation is not ‘a phenomenon’. What appears as a consequence of those reactions is the phenomenon.

It doesn't make sense to attribute mental states like my memory of my grandmother or my belief that 2 + 2 = 4 to the whole of my body or a function.

But that does sound like a rehash of behaviourism.

I have distinct mental contents which is not similar or identical to any part of my body or behaviour.

This is usually discussed under the concept of mental representations in cognitive science.

It doesn't make sense to attribute mental states like my memory of my grandmother or my belief that 2 + 2 = 4 to the whole of my body or a function.

But that does sound like a rehash of behaviourism. — Andrew4Handel

It's not behaviourism but on re-reading your OP, I'm inclined to agree with it. You are indeed referring to the explanatory gap.

But when I have a pain in my foot I experience that is in my foot extended out yet that is also a sensation supposed to be experienced in the head. — Andrew4Handel

The pain is in your foot -- but neurons communicate with each other to send to your brain the message that your foot hurts. Your brain doesn't "hurt", it's the acuity of the pain receptors that's responsible for exciting the spinal cord.

What phenomena are in the brain and if so how? — Andrew4Handel

Neuronal processes are in the brain, just as digestion is in the body. That said neuronal porcesses are not just in the brain apparently:

Neurons do exist throughout the body, performing a variety of functions. Most neurons fall into three classifications: sensory, motor, or interneuron.

Sensory neurons are spread throughout organs, including the skin, muscles, and joints.

Motor neurons are found in cell in the heart, intestinal system, diaphragm, and glands.

The third major category of neurons is the interneurons. These neurons are specialized to provide for communication between the sensory and motor neurons. Interneurons are also able to communicate each other.

It doesn't seem quite right to assign any specific location to thoughts, memories and desires, although it might be reasonable to say that they are associated with the persons who 'have' them or are aware of them.

Not all questions can be expected to have a definitive answer.

The pain is in your foot -- but neurons communicate with each other to send to your brain the message that your foot hurts — L'éléphant

There are phantoms pains. People experience pain in a missing limb. This what suggest pain is all in the brain.

There is Congenital insensitivity pain where a person doesn't experience tissue damage as pain (something that can also happen under anesthetics.)

I actually think or belief in the physicality of the world is based on a spectrum of pain. (from mild to strong) and Haptic sensations in general (touch).

I have actually has someone say something to me like "if you don't believe in the physical world then let me bash you over the head with this baseball bat and see how you feel"

But all that would prove is that I have pain sensations. So what information is being transmitted by neurons exactly? Is it accurate? Just rambling here on the surrounding topic.

It doesn't seem quite right to assign any specific location to thoughts, memories and desires, although it might be reasonable to say that they are associated with the persons who 'have' them or are aware of them. — Janus

My issue is that we clearly have (or at least I do) vivid mental states including beliefs like "Paris is the capital of France" and images of an external world, dreams, hallucinations and so on.

I think they have to exist somewhere. If we are physicalist of some sort and think things have to supervene on a physical reality or emerge from it. But mental stuff does seem to really challenge physicalism. We probably do need a radical new paradigm or end up with the Mysterian stance of Colin McGinn.

But I think theorists should really focus on this phenomenological explanatory gap.

Another issue about brain states is how they can have truth values. How can brain activity which may be automatic and unreflective preserve truth value or evaluate it? It seems that 2+2= 4 should be true in any gover world and not depend on the right brain state.

If you accept that all those vivid mental states are underpinned by neuronal processes and neuronal processes are in the brain or brain/body, then I guess the only answer you could give would be that those states are in the brain/ body. The problem is that neuronal processes can be more or less precisely located, but mental states cannot unless they are equated with brain activity. Are there any other alternative approaches you can imagine or even begin to imagine?

Some have conjectured that the brain does not produce thoughts and memories but rather that it is like a transceiver. How could we test whether that or the standard picture is the true one?

If we assume that mental states and brainstates are really the same, then the ability of brainstates to be truth-apt is a mystery: how could a neuronal process that underpins a true belief be distinguished physically from a neuronal process that underpins a false belief? If they cannot be distinguished physically then there is something about different mental states that can be distinguished that cannot be distinguished in the corresponding brain states, and that does seem to be a problem, at least for eliminative physicalism.

There are phantoms pains. People experience pain in a missing limb. This what suggest pain is all in the brain. — Andrew4Handel

No. It just means that the spinal cord and the brain sustained a major trauma (losing a limb) that threw the system into disorder. We never said that the system is perfect -- brains aren't perfect.
When we talk about consciousness, we know we're talking about the system as it functions in human beings.

It's all Kant's fault. It's nearly always either Kant or Descartes, But this is Kant. The whole point of talking about phenomena was to be as vague as possible about what he was talking about; that is to say NOT to make any assumptions. So I talk about a phenomenon that occurred in the desert, that might have been an oasis, or might have been a mirage. If it was a mirage, it would be odd to ask where it is.

What phenomena are in the brain and if so how? — Andrew4Handel

When one locates something, it is not the phenomenon, but the cause or origin of the phenomenon; which is to say the noumenon. the phenomenon is the appearance, and has no location. The rainbow is not in your head, because then I could not see it, but nor is it there where we see it, otherwise we could find the pot of gold at the end. It's 'a trick of the light' – a phenomenon.

A vivid memory of a deceased relative can be so vivid that one seems to see them in the world, or hear their voice, or catch their scent. Call them a 'trick of the brain' if it pleases you, or be satisfied to call them phenomena, but I would say that the phenomenon is no more in your brain than the phenomenon of the tree I can see at the bottom of the garden is in my brain. Brains are wrinkled rubbery phenomena, not recommended eating.

"Where are hallucinations?" is a wrong question. One might want to say that they originate in the brain, but they are not experienced in the brain but in the world. Yet they are not in the world either, they are nowhere - they are hallucinations.

Mirages, rainbows, memories, trees, brains, movies, hallucinations phantoms, as phenomena are appearances that are if anywhere, exactly where they appear to be and what they appear to be; the function of talking about them as phenomena is to talk about the appearance of things and not the reality of them.

That makes no sense … but neither does the OP :D

Meaning our ‘sense of the world’ is ‘in our brain’. We do NOT ‘see’ with our eyes nor ‘hear’ with our ears for example.

"Sense of the world" is not "memories are phenomena in the brain". My comment "makes sense" when read in context.

"Where are hallucinations?" is a wrong question. One might want to say that they originate in the brain, but they are not experienced in the brain but in the world. Yet they are not in the world either, they are nowhere - they are hallucinations. — unenlightened

These days, I say we put them in the world. Just as we use entities like good intentions and bad moods in the reasons we offer for our doings, so can we use hallucinations. The inferences we allow and disallow will keep these 'internal' or 'private' entities from flooding us with confusion. One doesn't crash a car into a hallucination but possibly because of it.

"Memories" are functions, not "phenomena". — 180 Proof

1.
the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information.
"I've a great memory for faces"
2.
something remembered from the past.
"one of my earliest memories is of sitting on his knee"

When one has a memory of an event, it seems to me that memory is a phenomenon. One could put it in verb form: I just remembered what it smelled like in the car, but it seems 'memory' can refer to the function or the phenomenon of remembering. That experience.

So, where does the process of sensing take place. (this is not skeptical question - for example, how could it be other than in the brain? - but rather one trying to see what your position is)

To my mind: a "memory" is a map and "phenomenon" is the territory. A "rememberance" isn't an appearance to the senses (i.e. phenomenon).

The peripheral nervous system. The brain 'binds' disparate sense-data from all bodily senses into 'experience' that is temporarily held in 'working memory' to begin with. I see perceptual cognition something like this: phenomena —> data —> experience <——> memory traces <——> information (signal:noise) ... etc.

I suppose this is due to my computing background, but at the most fundamental level, I perceive what human/brain does, as an IPO system. Input - process - output. To me, we created computers to emulate this system. The other main component of an IPO system is memory/storage.

A 'thought' then becomes a 'wetware' output. Would you consider the IPO model useful here or of little value?

I feel like it is too convenient just to try and correlate any concept and or mental state with a brain state and assume the brain state does all the explanatory work we need without an actual causal explanation. — Andrew4Handel

Memory (my vivid memory of a deceased relative, their voice and appearance etc)? — Andrew4Handel

Based on my very simplistic IPO model as described above, the detailed causal explanation that explains why a memory suddenly gets activated, must exist within the IPO model.
Some Input trigger or some, operating system kernal routine which has a randomised input causing a memory to activate in a brain.

Perhaps my IPO model of what's happening 'In the brain,' is far too simplistic, to be of any significant value but I think I could 'explain' any thought I have, to a 'certain level of detail,' as a list of algorithmic style (pseudocode) steps.
If I were a neuroscientist, I could probably refine my list into sub-lists (refinements) with more detail.
This 'stepwise refinement' process, would reach a stage where not enough is scientifically known, to be able to refine any further. Does this not, in a simplistic way, take us to where we currently are in trying to describe human consciousness?

For me a memory, for example, is something a person experiences. It's an odd thing for instance to come to a place you believe you've never been before, and realise you were wrong. It's as if the memory of that place resides partly in that place: the experience is an interaction between person, place and time. In a sense then the philosophical question feels more like, Why do I want to specify a location for my memory? Must a memory be allocated to a body-part, or even to a location within that particular person? One of my long-time favourite poems is Henry Reed's 'The naming of parts', a wartime poem which riffs on the purported provision of part-naming, amid the natural experiences of Spring. Here's the poem.

the detailed causal explanation that explains why a memory suddenly gets activated, — universeness

I don't think the problem is the storage of the memory but the phenomenal access to mental content. A machine could place something in a box and retrieve it later with no awareness.

One theory of consciousness does invoke the idea that certain activity in the brain is firing together in such a strong unison that that somehow leads to that brain activity reaching consciousness, but it is not clear how or what "reaches consciousness" means.
I think consciousness requires a self and we have point of view in front of which we experience things. It almost invokes a homunculus in the middle of the brain watching a screen with images on it or some central location where we can have a unified coherent perception or thought.

I feel that people forget that mental states are conscious. So they are all tied to whatever causes consciousness. I don't think the term mental should be applied to subconscious brain processing. (But that is a whole nother topic)

I could store a hundred toys in a cupboard and retrieve them randomly at a later date when I wanted to use one or more. Is a computer doing anything more than this?

I don't think anything in computation invokes mental states. The information we garner from the screen is for our conscious consumption but the computer isn't aware of it. The computer doesn't benefit from any of the info stored on it.

I think consciousness requires a self and we have point of view in front of which we experience things. It almost invokes a homunculus in the middle of the brain watching a screen with images on it or some central location where we can have a unified coherent perception or thought. — Andrew4Handel

Then the self is not the experiences but the capacity to have experiences and persists longer than the experiences themselves and the experiences are seperate and made from sensations created in the brain.

Then the self is not the experiences — lorenzo sleakes

That does seem to follow. I don't not consider things I think or perceive to be me.

It seems you must have to differentiate between yourself and input into your senses.

It is hard to give analogy but may be it is like when you watch a film but don't consider yourself a character in the film.

Strangely none of the biophysical matter of the brain features in our consciousness. We were unaware that we had neurons and neurotransmitters until scientists discovered them.