I'm happy for us to look at the language issues about "consciousness" and related words as you have done, but no, the post is not about language in general or Latin and English in particular. It's about a mental phenomenon or phenomena. — T Clark

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me — George Bush

:lol:

Fool, and I ain't dumb enough to dumb it down any further. — 180 Proof

:rofl: Says you! :rofl:

That didn't come out right! :)

I meant to say it takes brains to dumb things down!

Two ways, probably mutually incompatible, of looking at the issue of what is in fact someone undergoing a psychological "transformation", Transformation in quotes for the reason that it could very well be an illusion.

I will use an analogy because firstly, it's usually easier to wrap your head around and secondly, it's my preferred teaching tool, not that I'm a teacher, also not as good as I'd like to be with analogies.

Here goes...

Imagine a room and it's dark. There are two things you can do:

1. Go to the hardware store, buy yourself a bulb, go back, install it in the room and hey! light!

2. Look for a switch, the room may already have a working bulb. All you have to do is throw the switch, and hey presto! light!

In the first case, the room has changed in the sense it acquired a new bulb. In the second case, the room hasn't changed in that the bulb was already there, it only had to be turned on.

Psychological change could be like this. Sometimes, a person changes i.e. acquires a new idea that provides faer with a new perspective and at other times, a person may only be needed to be made aware of an idea that's dormant in faer, with the same results in this case too.

If we get rid of the "maybe". I would need evidence to do that. — Down The Rabbit Hole

:clap: The way you say it is sometimes as important and at other times more important than what you say!

The mistake is in thinking it's a discussion. It's not a discussion, it never was — baker

My mind is blown! :up:

To piggyback on what others have said: philosophy (mostly) consists in reasoning to better, or more probitive, questions; when answers to such questions are decidable, even in principle, by cumulative data (evidence), they can be treated as problems to be solved aka "sciences" (as Banno points out); until then, at the mercy of undecidable answers, philosophy proposes ways of 'cultivating well-being' in spite of lacking decidable answers aka "uncertainty" (as Foolos4 points out). And so philosophy "progresses" only in so far as philosophers discover / invent new questions and refine less probitive questions into more probitive questions. IMO 'reducing misuses/abuses of ignorance' (speculatively and/or dialectically and/or methodologically) is the philosopher's Sisyphusean stone. — 180 Proof

:clap: Superb Monsieur 180 Proof.

Hey, 180 Proof, cut me some slack here. I'll get back to you later, ok?

I'm yet to read of a single one, rather tragic really. Plato outlined the most important problems in philosophy around 2500 years ago, and we are yet to solve one, we haven't even made progress.
Is progress in this domain even possible? If not, why not? And if not, why bother? — forrest-sounds

A very good question, I thought of it myself many suns ago. I felt a sense of pride rush through me at what was to me the profundity of this...er..."discovery."

Alas, it didn't take long for real, professional, true, philosophers to school me on that score - it was old news, it was what every genuine philosopher already knew. In fact, trying to solve evidently unsolvable problems is what philosophy is all about. Of course, solving one or two would be the highlight of any philosophical career but such occasions are either imaginary or few and far between.

Socrates was known to have confessed his abject ignorance with the words, "I know that I know nothing" and he was a giant in philosophy, having founded it in the west. Perhaps, philosophy isn't about solving as much as it is about getting a handle on the problem. Philosophy isn't about knowing something or anything but is essentially a journey through life that ends when the philosopher confronts faer own ignorance and comes to terms with it.

In a sense then, philosophy is less about solving problems and more about creating them.

My definition of a philosopher: Ugly, irritating, and preferrably Greek (description of Socrates, the Athenian gadfly).

Proof you either haven't read my first post thoroughly or can't ubderstand what you've read. — 180 Proof

Your entire argument hinges on this: absence of evidence is evidence of absence. I gave an appropriate response to that.

True that I might not have understood what you wrote but set that aside for the moment and, if it isn't too much trouble, answer the questions I posed to you in the previous post. Dumb it down for me will ya? Thanks.

I watched the video and although much of it was above my paygrade, I could get some idea of what the speaker had to say.

It seems that the Bell inequality is an equation inequality that claims that a certain probability must be greater than or equal to another probability IFF there are hidden variables which seems to be just another way of saying quantum mechanics is incomplete in the sense something is missing from it in its present form.

Experimental evidence seems to violate the Bell inequality which implies that there are no hidden variables so to speak and quantum mechanics is complete.

Neils Bohr won!

Also, since you don't seem to appreciate my interpretation of the two ideas discussed in the OP, why don't you share your own thoughts on them?

What's your take on,

1. You can't prove a negative

2. Burden of proof

?

This is a genuine inquiry, attempted in good faith.

Read the link provided in "negative proof". Your post is completely strawman / non sequitur — 180 Proof

I have to admit I was trying to make an argument but non sequitur/strawman??? Please kindly expand and elaborate, if you don't mind.

For. Fuck's. Sake. Here's a negative proof: 'Self-evidently, there was not an adult elephant sitting on your chest while you typed the OP.' :yawn: — 180 Proof

Your argument boils down to, absence of evidence is evidence of absence which, fortunately or not, is not as good as you seem to think it is. For instance, back in the heydays of exploration, as Europe likes to call it, there was absolutely no evidence that germs caused diseases and yet here we are in the, medically speaking, antibiotic age. Many more similar stories are available at the click of a mouse.

To sum up, absence of evidence is evidence of absence ain't really the appropriate response to theistic claims of god's existence.

By the way, you're barking up the wrong tree. What I really want to do is investigate the rationale behind,

1. Demanding that someone prove a negative is asking that person to do the impossible and thus the expression, "you can't prove a negative".

Since you seem more concerned about the example (theism vs atheism) than what it's supposed to illustrate (you're not supposed to ask someone to prove a negative), you should rest easy in that this response is used often and to good effect by atheists.

2. The burden of proof falls on the one making a positive claim which in the case of religious debates means the theist has to furnish the proof and not the atheist.

Oh, so I didn't post in the wrong thread?! :lol:

Numbers are abstractions of/patterns in the world at large is how I see it. I recall a video in which the speaker points to a picture of 5 fruits, was it?, and then spreads his 5 fingers and says, I'm paraphrasing, "that someone figured out there's the quantitiy 5 in common between these two common everyday objects is an amazing achievement."

Hey careful now. Patterns are regular - the Fibonacci sequence. But do the prime numbers form a pattern? I think not (although there’s this.) Anyway, that’s a philosophy of math subject, not a good (or bad) physics subject. — Wayfarer

Oops! I posted in the wrong thread. Sorry!

Anyway...

Good point! However, the holy grail of number theory - understanding prime numbers - is, all said and done, the search for a pattern within a pattern. The parent pattern (natural numbers) is extracted from nature; the daughter pattern (primes) is an altogether different story.

I'll watch the video later and get back to you later if I think of anything worthwhile. G'day.

Is "pure" mathematics, meaning, mathematics that does not apply to the world (via physics, for example), something invented or discovered? — Manuel

Since math began with numbers, that looks like a good place to start. Numbers are, whatever else they might be, patterns or abstractions. Being patterns, they need to exist out there - external to the mind - for them to be perceived. In this sense numbers (math) is a discovery (of a pattern in nature).

On the other hand, it seems we can create, from scratch, entire worlds based on nothing else but numbers - numerical universes as it were - with no corresponding real world objects/phenomena. In this sense, numbers (math) is an invention.

I wish I could've given some relevant examples but none spring to mind. My apologies.

It appears that math is both an invention and a discovery.

I don’t want to discuss consciousness, I want to discuss “consciousness.” — T Clark

A novel approach to the subject of mind. You threw me off with that sentence but I suppose it was meant to evoke a zen moment. @Banno should've caught on early, he's a diehard Wittgenstein fan.

If "consciousness", the word, is what the OP wants to analyze then this thread needs to be contextualized in re the so-called linguistic turn philosophy allegedly underwent some time ago in its past. All thanks to Wittgenstein? I'm not sure.

My own contribution for what it's worth is to provide a short etymological report:

The English word "conscious" originally derived from the Latin conscius (con- "together" and scio "to know"), but the Latin word did not have the same meaning as the English word—it meant "knowing with", in other words, "having joint or common knowledge with another" — Google

Now that we have some idea of the word's origins, the question that pops into my mind is, what would a linguist do next? Your guess is as good as mine.

If I may offer my two cents, the next step would be to analyze the pronunciation of "consciousness" which may involve the particular shape the mouth needs to assume, the movement and contact points of the tongue, the role of the nasal sinuses as echo chambers, etc.

How does all this contribute to understanding the word "consciousness"? For my money, it'll go towards providing insight into Latin and English as languages, one as the source and the other as a spin-off. In short, the OP isn't really about the word "consciousness", nor is it about consciousness, it's actually about language in general and Latin & English in particular. :joke:

1. Can the nature of the curious mind be explained throughout history relative to sociology (norms, beliefs, rituals, practices)? — 3017amen

I would say that the curious mind isn't restricted as such to social animals. Many animals, solitary and social exhibit similar behavior. It boils down to, in the simplest of terms, a questioning attitude, something which all prey and predators - hunter & hunted being a universal theme of life - must possess either to capture prey/evade predators.


That said, a social existence, can give a boost to curiosity as a trait for the simple reason that it is, all things considered, an environment unto itself, something solitary animals miss out on. The exact impetus to the evolution of the curious mind as you put seems difficult to pinpoint but if I were to hazard a guess, confining myself to homo sapiens, we have language, we imitate, we reason fairly well and these abilities, if they are abilities, make curiosity communicable and transmissible, also providing it with context. Curiosity would flourish, do very well, in social animals like us who've evolved certain abilities mentioned above that facilitate such.

2. Does curiosity in itself confer any biological advantages? — 3017amen

I already answered that question but let's talk about the downsides of curiosity. It's said that curiosity killed the cat and surely such a well-phrased adage cum warning must contain, at best a sound advice, at worst a grain of truth in it.

As I mentioned earlier and it must be getting tedious for you, curiosity is, in a sense, the difference between a full belly and an empty one. However, if an animal acts on its curiosity, attempts to answer the question, say, "can this be eaten?" it must also contend with the converse query, "can this eat me?" Many lives have probably been lost because of the inherent ambiguity (hunter/game) that lies at the heart of curiosity viz. an encounter with the unknown. It's essentially a trade-off between finding lunch and ending up as one and that's why strong social groups - human socities for example - that reduce/minimize the risk of injury/death that comes with the curious mind tend to be more/most curious.

3. Can Religion offer any pathway to understanding the nature of reality and the phenomena of the experiences associated with self-awareness/consciousness? — 3017amen

There seems to be an intriguing paradox lurking beneath the trio of social existence, religion, and science as the poster-child of curiosity. As I said earlier, human social existence is the current-best setting for the curious mind to reach stratospheric heights. Compare that to religion - essentially moral in nature, consolidating the bond between individuals and thus the cohesive force that maintains society's integrity - and how it, in its own way, stifles curiosity. Religion, as the late Christopher Hitchens said, is forced down our throats as some kind of final solution, the answer to answer all questions, it is the ultimate truth. Go down that road and you'll come to a grave, buried in it the curious mind.

The paradox is that though society is the best available soil as it were for the flower of curiosity to grow, one existing force that keeps people together in harmonious union (religion) is dead against curiosity.

To answer your question, religion isn't really a search for truth; au contraire, its a position that truth has not only been found but also that the search for it must be put to an end. It's not a "...pathway..." to some unknown destination, it's a place we're told we've already arrived at. In this, it differs from science which works under the assumption that there are many things we're still clueless about. It appears then that religion and science as a partnership in the search for truth falls at the first hurdle - one believes it knows what reality is, the other insists it doesn't have the faintest idea what reality is.

4. Can cognitive science study the Religious experience in order to gain insight on the phenomenon of the conscious mind (what is self-awareness)? — 3017amen

This seems a promising line of inquiry. I second the motion.

In my humble opinion, a very deep question.

First, what is a shadow? There are many ways to answer this question but that which seems to be of immediate importance for animals is it indicates a presence of a threat (predator)/ opportunity (prey). If we simply take into account how valuable being sensitive to any signs of threat/opportunity can be to survival, we should expect animals to be in the know about shadows; after all? they're like red flags which animals need to keep a close watch on (either you get a meal or you become one). Evolution simply wouldn't allow animals that didn't process/aren't aware of shadows to live long enough to scoodelypoop.

That said, it bears mentioning that even if an animal is aware of shadows, it doesn't necessarily imply that such an animal has an edge over animals that are, in a sense, blind to shadows. The reason? Shadows are, in all cases, right where the object that casts the shadow are i.e. both a predator and its shadow are in close proximity. This means the warning that a shadow of a predator provides may come too late for prey - they predator is literally just a leap or a paw-swipe away.

However, for predators, shadows don't have a downside for they indicate the prey are close enough to make a kill.

In short, prey animals, for the reasons given above, maybe less aware of shadows (threats) - aware/unaware, its too late to make a run for it with the result that the next generation will fail to inherit the trait if it evolves at all - but predators maybe fully cognizant of shadows (opportunities) and the generations that follow will inherit that trait.

More can be said but my head hurts from all that thinking.

So, you finally got it. Nirvana, — Apollodorus

No, for better or worse, I didn't get it! :rofl:

Addendum: It appears that, from a certain perspective, the problem - is the brain/prefrontal cortex/consciousness the most or the least important - is unsolvable.

Assume, for the sake of argument, that the blood under severe stress contains both nutrients and toxins. If so, the diversion of blood away from the brain/prefrontal cortex/consciousness can be explained in two diametrically opposite ways.

Explanation 1. The reason for shunting blood away from the brain/prefrontal cortex/consciousness is to ensure the falling supply of nutrients reach more vital organs/processes. Conclusion: the brain/prefrontal cortex/consciousness is the least important organ/process.

Explanation 2. Blood circulation to the brain/prefrontal cortex/consciousness is reduced to prevent toxins from damaging the organ/process. Conclusion: the brain/prefrontal cortex/consciousness is the most important organ/process.

Since the only medium for nutrients is the blood and necessarily that if there are toxins, they will be blood-borne, we can't find out whether the brain/prefrontal cortex/consciousness is the least important or the most important organ/process. That both nutrients and toxins use the same medium (blood) makes that impossible.

Paradox?

There’s no need to be facetious — Possibility

If it is facetious, why avoid it?

Better not say. I don’t want to die. — Wayfarer

Of course, of course.

Live long and prosper! — Captain Spock

The wise would say that this is the perspective of the disinterested intelligence, subjectivity unsullied by egotism. (Don’t include me in that, by the way, it’s only something I’ve read about.) — Wayfarer

My hunch is that you're already a part of what you don't want to be a part of. It's a good thing so don't fret!

they can only be really understood in the first person (take them or leave them.) — Wayfarer

:clap: :up: Fantabulous. You took the words right out of my mouth! The general sentiment expressed therein seems to be at the heart of what's offered to us as so-called wisdom. Whatever wisdom/liberation/nirvana/moksha is, it always seems to have a, for lack of a better word, subjective side to it that's above and beyond that which is objective about. Remaining within the buddhist context, nirvana, for example, what it is to be precise. can't be described in a way that we can get; no third-person point of view of nirvana can accurately and completely describe what it is like to be enlightened. I suspect many areas of life are like this - the proof of the pudding, I guess, is in the eating. I think you touched on this issue in another thread where you emphasized the importance of practice in religion.

f***k with me and you die — Wayfarer

:rofl: You can say that again but just out of curiosity which religion would that be?

See through it, rise above it. It can't be 'snuffed out', the Gordian knot has to be untied, somehow or other. — Wayfarer

This is the kind of insight that puts you well ahead of the rest of us in what is evidently a rat race to the finish line whatever one believes that to be. Excelente señora!

Actually in the early 20th C, it was fashionable to say that Buddhism was a 'scientific religion' due to its recognition of 'the law of cause and effect', by comparing it to 'action and reaction'. — Wayfarer

My thoughts exactly. I once opened a thread on Buddhism along those lines. How very comforting to know there are others who think like me.

Do you think this scientific quality to Buddhism sets it apart from other religions or are other religions equally scientific for the reason that they too subscribe to causality albeit a moral version of it?

But again, I can’t see how there can be any scientific provision for karma in explaining the causal connection between action and result, especially from one life to another. From the Buddhist’s p.o.v., there need be no such validation, but from the Western p.o.v., it can’t be considered effective in the absence of a scientifically-comprehensible causal medium. — Wayfarer

My take on this is rather simple: first of all, in the life we're living now as we engage in this conversation, moral causality is real, as real as a these words (effect) follows from my hitting keys on my phone (cause); look around you. if I were to, god forbid, insult you, you would feel something and that would make you react in a predictable way, assuming you aren't acquainted with some philosophy that explains why such behavior is silly/foolish.

All this is perfectly understandable against the backdrop of the lives we're living but we all know that sometimes the response (effect) to an action (cause) doesn't/can't take place as when we die. This, whatever else it might be, leaves the cause hanging in the air, in suspended animation as it were, unable to, in a sense, discharge the responsibility causality has conferred upon it viz. to produce a reaction/response. If this is the case, it has to be that a person be reborn to complete the causal process - allowing the cause (action) to, in a sense, complete itself as an effect (reaction).

This squares well what Buddhism and even other religions recommend viz. calm and poise in the face of harm, deliberate or unintentional - the idea is to break and thus break free from the chain of causation. What this amounts to is a refusal to let yourself (by reacting) and others (by acting) get sucked into the karmic cycle of samsara. I suppose the main point of Buddhism is to end/snuff out karma...nirvana is essentially liberation from moral causality i.e. karma and the net effect is you'll be shown the door out of the six realms of existence.

There's more that can be said but chew on this for the time being.

Credentials aren’t necessary — Possibility

I suppose you're right. Are you or any of your family suffering from any ailments? I could prescribe medication or even, if I feel like it, perform surgery.

I want to bounce a certain idea vis-à-vis reincarnation off you for feedback.

Reincarnation is, all said and done, simply just a kind of causation, right? You reap (effect) what you sow (cause) kinda deal.

A vital piece of information in re causation is the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), one entry in it being that every effect has an cause. What will be relevant in a while is the missing causal principle in the PSR, the converse, every cause has an effect.

Time to get down to business, to the brass tacks...

1. There are certain occasions in one's life - usually unpleasant but also, sometimes, satisfying ones - when one is so moved by events in our lives that we ask ourselves, "why is this happening to me?" or "I can't believe my luck!" or "what are the odds of that happening?". The questions are emotionally charged and one is usually in the grips of strong feelings whether good or bad but, more importantly and also intriguingly, they indicate one crucial fact about the event that provokes the question - there are no explanations for them. Put differently, our attempts to find an appropriate cause in this life is unsuccessful.

Yet, the PSR necessitates a cause for such events and since none can be found in this life, it must be that the putative cause be in a past life. Ergo, reincarnation has to be a fact.

2. The second point is premised on the missing element in the PSR viz. every cause has an effect. If one performs a good deed or a bad deed and one is, for some reason, unable to experience its effects [repurcussions, an equal and opposite reaction in Newtonian terms], this law is violated. But this law can't be broken and ergo, you must be reborn to experience the effects of one's good/bad actions. Therefore, reincarnation must be true.

Basically, it all boils down to the following argument...

1. If there's no reincarnation then causality (cause and effect) is violated.

2. Causality (cause and effect) can't be violated

Hence,

3. There is reincarnation [1, 2 Modus Tollens]

N.B. General causality implies moral causality (good/bad karma)

Your version of shock is amusing, astoundingly inaccurate, but entertaining. The digestion system will slow to crawl, the peripheral circulatory system will shutdown next, hence cold fingers and hands, as the body shunts blood to the more critical systems in the core (central nervous system, heart, lungs etc). Then the kidneys will shutdown, liver, etc. So pretty much exactly the opposite of what you said. Thanks for coming out. — Book273

Credentials, if any? I happen to know something about physiology - took a course back in college quite a long time ago. Something, they say, is better than nothing :rofl: Plus, did you read the NCBI link I provided?

It appears that there's a lot we don't know...a lot. Diametrically opposite hypotheses can be generated to explain a simple, observable, fact viz. loss of consciousness brought on by severe injury.

Is it that the prefrontal cortex (consciousness) is of least importance, the most nonessential organ, and is immediately shut down when the body suffers critical damage? Compare this to how we turn off nonessential appliances when faced with power shortages.

Is it that the prefrontal cortex (consciousness) is of the greatest importance, the most essential organ, and is shut down to protect it from further damage. This analogous to disconnecting your PC from the worldwide web in the event of a raging computer virus outbreak.

:chin:

Your OP talks about brains, and minds, and consciousness, and blood, and the relative importance of other organs. It also suggests than none of that is what makes us human. When you look at animals (which we are), it is folly to talk of parsing out one essential revolutionary character as being more important from another. Loss of blood is more or less, from one place to another, and your brain loses some function with some loss, and all function with all loss. Unless you are going to start talking about souls or something, then all your considerations are nothing that hasn't been gleaned from the study of non-human animals. (I don't even think we are different in that regard, but it's beyond the scope of this thread.)

I think my original post sums it up quite nicely, and I stand by it. If folks would spend as much time analyzing what I say, as they do trying to understand the deep, profound thinking, and learned terms-of-art used by the more sophisticated posts on this forum, they would have gotten all of that from this rube. :grin: — James Riley

I'm aware of the fact/possibility that all the information I'm throwing out there for analysis could be extracted from animal models and that medical knowledge could be dubious in that respect. However, human experiments have been/are also conducted albeit in an extremely limited manner and some of the data I presented here are from such.

For what it's worth...

Using the sheep model, we were able to continuously measure region-specific CBFs. During controlled hypovolemia, cortical CBF remained constant until a blood loss of 10% compared to subcortical CBF, which remained constant until a blood loss of 20%. Even more important, the rate of reduction of CBF is more than three-fold higher in the cortex as compared to the subcortex, indicating that effective redistribution of blood flow is confined to the latter. — NCBI

From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5454943/


It's interesting to consider the possibility that the redistribution of blood to the subcortex and away from the cortex could be a "wise" decision on the body's part. This would mean that, our biology was/is, in a certain sense, "designed" for jt seems to always, if not that most times, make the "correct" choices insofar as staying alive is the issue. There's plenty of room in this simple truth for a lot of what seems to be fancy ideas, one being the prefrontal cortex/mind deliberately, knowingly, intentionally switches itself off to live and fight another day as it were. :chin:

An analogy might help in clarifying the matter. If a power surge is on the cards, your immediate reaction would be to disconnect your most valuable electrical appliances. :chin:

We are animals. — James Riley

And...?

If it is consciousness that you wish to discuss, then think about folllowing the advice offered by Possibility

I’m thinking you might need to be clearer with your use of ‘brain’, ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’.
— Possibility

visiting the relevant Wikipedia pages
— TheMadFool

If you haven't already researched 'Consciousness', here's a start:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness

At the very least, it is necessary to differentiate between the different types and approaches. — Amity

Thank you for your concern. Frankly speaking, I should've given the matter more thought - the OP clearly isn't as good as I thought it was. Consider my thesis a work in progress if you will. As the discussion proceeds, posters like yourself and Possibility will expose the flaws in my argument, which the two of you have, and I'll make the necessary changes to make my thesis better, stronger, faster

The issue of my having flip-flopped between consciousness and brain isn't really as damaging to my case as you seem to be implying. Vide infra, an excerpt from the OP:

mankind's entire story can be condensed in one word "brain" or "mind" if that's more to your taste — TheMadFool

Mind = Consciousness

No fallacy of equivocation has been committed.

That said, all this is just a test-drive for my hypothesis that the brain/prefrontal cortex) isn't nearly as high-ranking as it thinks it is in the pecking order of organs in our body and it's (my thesis) doing quite well to my reckoning.

If my statement that the brain is not, as it seems to think it is, the highest-ranking organ in our body is true, an intriguing mystery that needs solving is, what is?

You’re right — Joshs

Not absolutely right? :groan:

The brain-mind don’t dominate. It’s brain-mind-body and environment together. They cannot be separated except artificially — Joshs

This will need to be looked into with the utmost care.

The philosophical ideal, best-case scenario, would be to keep dogmatism (insisting what you say is the truth) at bay, engage in philosophical debate only to pursue truths that inhere to the topic being discussed and if that isn't possible, usually isn't, assume scout-mode and just explore ideas.

It may appear as if philosophers are being dogmatic when they cross swords with each other but they're most assuredly not committing that grave error. Don't judge a book by its cover.

@Possibility@Amity@James Riley

If you're still in the game, meditate on the following:

First off, I crosschecked my hypothesis by visiting the relevant Wikipedia pages and it seems your objections are well-founded. Despite it being true that the brain, the alleged seat of concsiousness, does take a hit when the body is badly injured, the response to the ensuing shock is to divert all the available blood and its nutrient contents to vital organs only and that includes the brain. Thank you bringing that to my attention - I learnt something new today.

At this juncture it's necessary to understand that the brain is itself a complex organ consisting of many parts - cerebrum, prefrontal cortex, cerebellum, to name a few. The precious flow of blood during shock is diverted to the brain, yes, but not all parts of the brain get an equal share of the blood pie. The parts of the brain that have a role in maintaing physiological functions like breathing, heart beat, swallowing, are given the lion's share of the blood and the prefrontal cortex where consciousness resides receive very little blood at all and thus fainting/syncope occurs. To make the long story short, consciousness isn't as important as it thinks it is.

I know when blood rushes from one head to the other head, we discover a beautiful truth. In that sense, two heads are better than one. But neither one can live without the other. It's like the chicken/egg question: Which came first, the big head or the little head? — James Riley

Do you have a relevant point to make or are you just passing random comments?

That consciousness isn’t necessary for life is plausible — Possibility

Plausible? Bacteria, yeast, and some worms too I suspect.

That the brain isn’t necessary seems ridiculous — Possibility

Isn't necessary for____

Before you fill in the blanks take a moment to think about what you said earlier, I quote you as saying, "That consciousness isn't necessary for life is plausible"

Consciousness is the first function to switch off in a crisis.
Therefore,
The brain is the least important organ in the body.

Sorry, try again. — Possibility

You're cherry-picking and you're also guilty of the strawman fallacy.

P

The brain does not shut down in the case of loss of consciousness.
See previous responses: — Amity

It really doesn't matter which organ shuts down when we're severely injured. All we need to know is consciousness, wherever it resides, is the first - let's call it - bodily process to malfunction so to speak but this is done "intentionally" (Google peripheral vasoconstriction in shock) and that's precisely the biological fact my thesis - the brain isn't the most important organ in the body and if you feel that it is, you're in the grips of an elaborate illusion - hinges on.

You have moved from claiming that the brain is non-essential to consciousness being of least importance. — Amity

If I have moved, it's a response to your move.

I’m not convinced that it’s the first to be switched off, though. — Possibility

Sorry, you're wrong.

All I can say is that we zonk out and to tell you the truth, it doesn't even matter which part of the body consciousness resides in; the point is consciousness is the first to be switche off and that implies, it's of least importance.

I don't see the brain as the only source of awareness — Jack Cummins

Interesting to say the least but what explains the loss of consciousness when the brain shuts down?

Is there a difference between being asleep and awake? If there is and there is or seems to be and that difference is the essence of what consciousness is then consciousness can't be an illusion.

I wonder how Daniel Dennett would answer the question that appears in the first line of the preceding paragraph.