We’re not the hardware, we’re the software running on it
What?
If our brains were fully connected to our bodies, we would have an innate knowledge of the human body without having to go to school for biology.
Nope
Your brain can be aware of everything in your body without you realizing it at a conscious level. Most of our brains are dedicated to subconscious processes.
Yep
?
Just because we aren’t aware of something ourselves does not mean our brain is not aware of it. If you have ever been drunk you probably know not to trust your top level narrative as the end-all-be-all of your nervous system.
Your body gets a fever without your awareness. Create saliva without your awareness.
So “we” are not our brains
Only if you think an iceberg is not an iceberg.
This feels closer to the truth.
Exactly, tried to argue this point many times. You are not a brain with a body, you are a body with a brain!!!
The “I” is not the brain, the “I” is a part of the brain, which cannot function properly without the rest of the brain. Just like the brain cannot properly function without the rest of the body, or a hypothetical simulated body.
So rather: the brain is not us, but we are a part the brain.
If you want to see how weird it can get look at blightsight. Your consciousness can be blind but your body can still react to visual stimulus.
“We” don’t exist, or rather “we” don’t know what makes us “us”, except for what we do know. Consciousness isn’t fully understood.
… is this something I’m not high enough to understand?
You probably have too many brain cells left.
This only makes sense if you assume the only part of your brain is the conscious part. But it’s got much more to it than that
Your brain is nearly fully connected with your body and controls a ton of its function, but your brain is not a single unit. Your brain itself does things you’re not conscious of. Like you ever tried to think of something you can’t quite remember, and then you give up and spend hours not consciously thinking about that thing and then suddenly you recall it out of nowhere? That’s clearly your brain at work in the background trying to recall the information independent of your conscious mind. Likewise, you conscious mind can be in secondary control of some functions like breathing (your lower brain controlls this by default unless your higher brain overrides it), or entirely removed from control of some functions like your heart beating (no matter how hard you try, you can’t make your heart beat to the rhythm of your favorite song). The brain is not just your mind, but a number of sections with different unconscious functions, only some of which do they ever directly communicate to or allow control from the conscious mind. Your conscious mind is actually a relatively small part of your brain’s functions, or more likely a manifestation of several different higher level functions together. But your mid and lower brain are wholly sectioned off from your conscious mind and merely interface with it.
I did recently partake in a presentation about control of our own mind. He said much the same as you, but that the brain’s subconsciness is pretty much an autopilot with insane processing power, much more than our conscious self. It preprocessed all data we receive, from visual to touch to hunger, even takes full control of a lot of inner organs functions, and then passes simplified and easy to process data to our conscious self, so we can make high level decisions or even reprogram the subconsciness if needed.
We can sometimes even turn off our consciousness and let the autopilot drive, like when you wake up and get ready for work and then suddenly are at you workplace, not remembering how you drove there.
Now interfacing with our subconsciousness or changing our habits can be difficult, as our subconsciness is driven by desire and has the intelligence of a baby who has not yet attained consciousness (or something like that).
Obviously I cannot compress the whole lesson into this comment, and neither can I remember it perfectly, but I find it wildly fascinating.
The fact that you don’t know what Grimm’s Law is means you don’t actually know English.
You know how you don’t see your nose all day every day? You should see it. It’s there.
Your brain ignores your nose because, you don’t need that information. It wants to focus on what’s happening around you, and the nose “disappears”.
You’re brain is connected to everything, it just doesn’t CARE about everything all the time.
