r/consciousness

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If your brain creates your thoughts, your memories, your perceptions and even your sense of self… then who is actually experiencing all of it?

That question took me much further than I expected. There is a very interesting book exploring this matter.

The book begins with something relatively familiar: free will and decision-making.

From there, it moves into consciousness, the brain, personal identity, death and the possibility that our current understanding of reality may be incomplete.

One idea became the central hypothesis of the book: the Vessel Hypothesis, the possibility that the biological body may be more than simply who we are, but could be the vessel through which consciousness experiences the world.

Some things in the book are supported by evidence.
Some are philosophical arguments.
Some remain disputed.
And some are deliberately speculative.

Do you think consciousness is entirely produced by the brain, or is there a possibility that consciousness is something more fundamental?

Let’s discuss.

On the last days, the Medicine Nobel Prize was given to a group of scientists that discovered a way to switch neurons with incredible precision simply with light. They were capable of reviving memories, create emotions and much more.

This a great finding to engineering and neuroscience. But I want to know the most interesting question. What does this experiments tell us about consciousness. Does this proves materialism?

My personal opinion is no. It does not. For me, this experiments are a highly sophisticated and effective relative of the old seizure-inducing experiments that allowed us to create memories, emotions and much more. This proves, as we all know, that consciousness is highly related to the brain and its processes. It does not prove in any sense that it causes it. I don't think it even proves that memories and emotions, which I do agree that are created by the brain, but I don't think this experiment gives us anything new on this theme.

Still, this a great advencement to neuroscience, medicine and engineering and we should celebrate it.

What do you all think?

Edit: Let me clarify that I don't think consciousness is magic. When I say materialism, I refer to the classical view of the brain, as a computer. I only try to refute that

I don't understand much but i've recently become very interested in this sub and its discussions, and i find it hard to figure out what you all mean by 'materialism'.

What's going on with this concept, why is it so controversial and why does it generate so much discussion?

argues that naturalism cannot explain how we know subjective experience exists.

A major 2025 adversarial test of GNWT and IIT found results that challenged predictions from both theories rather than cleanly vindicating either.

So we need a better theory folks. What’s it gonna be?

I was thinking about the mirror box experiment for phantom limb pain. It involves an amputee who feels agonizing cramps in an arm that is no longer there. The framework treats this pain as a continuous motor command trapped in a loop.

If you look at how the cure works, a simple visual reflection produces a physical release in a limb that doesnt exist. The reflection travels from the mirror as photons, and the photons travel through the optic nerve. The brain processes them into shapes, shapes into a hand, the hand into an open posture, the posture into a state of relaxation, and the relaxation into a felt sensation of relief in an arm that was amputated years ago.

So, what is actually happening is that clenching a real fist takes two steps. First, the motor command arrives. Then, the muscles contract. Under normal conditions, the physical feedback of the open hand tells the ego the tension is gone. The ego then reports this release back to the brain. But with a phantom limb, the motor command arrives as before, yet there is no physical tissue to receive it and send back the signal of release. The feedback loop has nowhere to go. This is where the ego fails. Because it receives no visual or physical proof that the arm has opened, the ego assumes the tension remains, and it never reports back to the brain to release the grip. The brain just keeps clenching the phantom, generating the pain entirely on its own.

The mirror box solves this by hacking the ego. By showing the brain a reflection of the intact arm opening, the ego finally gets the visual proof it needs. It registers the release, updates its model, and tells the brain to stop clenching then the pain vanishes.

This brings back to the question of where actions end and words begin, if the word is the action. The egos native language is words. In the mirror box, the visual reflection is translated into the egos verbal narrative. It is a symbolic input the ego accepts as physical reality to break a neurological loop.

A command is the word that provides the cognitive feedback, the ego later uses to falsely claim responsibility for the motor action. The words are the egos way of signing of the action into existence, thereby completing the loop. The word authorizes the movement. Yet, for all this narrative authority, the ego has no direct input in the actual gap between the silent impulse and the physical world.

Anyway, let me know if you think the mechanism that causes phantom limb pain is different.

More examples of these ego illusions in the essay. https://www.academia.edu/176835174/The_Self_That_Wasnt_There_A_meditation_on_the_phantom_that_runs_from_the_thought_to_civilization