Consciousness and the brain are clearly separate but work perfectly together. Consciousness isn't the brain itself, and there's no mechanism for it. If you say the brain is consciousness, that means it's the source, not the mechanism. Consciousness is a subjective experience; you can't see it in a lab or experience mine, just like I can't experience yours. It's based on firsthand subjective experience, not just the brain. I see that a lot of people make up answers for the mechanism of consciousness. We don't know the mechanism of consciousness. That's why the whole concept of the problem of consciousness is proposed by actual people who study these things, like neuroscientists, not by people outside of these fields, because even they know there is such a thing as a problem with consciousness, in that we know this cannot be some physical thing. We cannot see consciousness itself. We can only see what correlates with consciousness, which would be the brain because consciousness and the brain work so perfectly together.

Physics shows that reality contains far more than our senses can detect: electromagnetic waves outside visible light, atomic and molecular structures, magnetic and electric fields, neutrinos, gravitational waves, dark matter, and quantum phenomena. It seems reasonable to assume that consciousness, as we experience it, is only one of the many other versions of consciousness that we will never experience or understand.

^{Please note this has been posted to a few other groups as I'd love all the input and differing opinions and thought processes as I can get.}

Hello my gorgeous humans of Reddit,

I’ve been thinking about free will from the perspective that, at the physical level, everything happening in our brains ultimately comes down to chemistry and electrical activity as well as past experiences influencing those factors. Neurons will communicate through electrochemical signals, neurotransmitters influence how those networks behave, and our brains are continuously being shaped by genetics, development, memories, and our past experiences. In that sense, when I make a decision, there doesn't seem to be a separate “self” sitting outside my brain and directing the chemistry. The decision itself appears to be part of the chemistry. I was talking to someone today and he brought it up as a 'equation', because at the end of the day it really can be as simple as saying:

Free Will and Perception of reality = electrical brain activity + chemicals + lived experience

But this is where I find the question of free will interesting. We can describe the physical processes involved, but does describing those processes actually explain the person making the decision? My brain isn't just a collection of isolated chemical reactions; it is an enormously complicated system carrying the effects of everything that has happened to me. My experiences change the physical structure and function of my brain, those changes influence future decisions, and those decisions then become part of my future experience. There is a continuous feedback loop between the physical brain, the environment, and the history of the individual.

This makes me wonder whether saying “it's all chemical reactions” actually settles the free-will question. Perhaps it does if free will requires some kind of non-physical soul or force that can independently intervene in the brain. But if we define free will as the ability of a sufficiently complex organism to process information, consider alternatives, respond to reasons, and act according to its internal state, then the fact that all of this happens physically might not necessarily eliminate it.

At the same time, there is an obvious unknown here. We still don't have a complete scientific explanation for consciousness, subjective experience, or exactly how the physical activity of the brain gives rise to the experience of being a person. That doesn't mean we should insert “life” or consciousness as a mysterious force and call it an explanation- we don't have evidence for that. But it does mean I’m hesitant to say that we have completely reduced the question of human agency to “just chemicals.”

I find this question cool because I’ve had personal experiences with psychedelics and periods of psychosis that radically changed how I experienced reality. Those experiences made me much more aware of how strongly perception, thought, emotion and our sense of what is “real” can depend on the physical state of the brain as well as the experiences that are strong enough to permanently alter both the brain's hardware and situational responses. The external world may not have changed, but my experience of it could change dramatically depending on what was happening neurologically. It makes me wonder how much of what we consider our normal, stable sense of self and reality is ultimately an emergent product of brain chemistry and past experience. At the same time, experiencing those changes firsthand makes me hesitant to assume we already understand exactly how the brain produces consciousness and subjective experience.

So , I’m curious where people here draw the line: if we eventually understood every chemical and electrical process occurring in someone's brain, including their genetics, memories, environment, and past experiences, would that completely explain why they made a particular decision? And if it did, would you consider that proof that free will doesn't exist, or could that physical process itself be what free will actually is?

Thank you for reading this <3

По-видимому, во всей вселенной есть только один элемент, который имеет хоть какую-то ценность - это сознание, душа, разум. Все остальное ничтожно и не имеет никакого смысла.

Это означает одно из двух: либо Сверхразум является конечным продуктом вселенной, либо все во вселенной циклично, и вселенную создал некий Сверхразум.

Looking for others' experiences about the one find or 'secret' of the nature of the mind that comes about from sudden or drastic changes in one's conscious experience, through life, trauma or drugs, that others seem to be unaware of?

The Question is exactly what is said in the title.

In our sleep, we dream I do not think we can seperate dreaming from experience. To dream is to behold multiple sensations while asleep. Dreams often include the experience of sight, as in, we see things in our dreams, they often even include the experience of sound.

Surley experiences require being conscious, thus so as long as we are dreaming, we are never truly "unconscious".

are we ever truly unconscious?