Neuroscience and Experience through the Mind

Doctor Tardiff, Theology teacher at Bishop Hendricken High School, posted:

"What the Bleep" convinced me that you cannot do much good with popular presentation of complex stuff. I tried not to ridicule or dismiss the presenters, but in the end I couldn't sift very well the solid known parts from what seemed to be personal philosophical musings. Still, I really liked the love peptides. Speaking of which, suppose Neo sees a woman in a red dress in the Matrix. Tank is looking at his computer screen and he tells Morpheus, "Neo is looking at Mouse's woman in the red dress." Do Tank and Neo see the same thing? Do they have the same experience? Well, Tank is seeing the causes of Neo's experience (as fictionalized by the film), and so he can tell Morpheus what is going on in Neo's head, but he is not having the same experience; green computer code is just not the same.

Somewhat more true to life, suppose someone, Fred, is given a smutty magazine (sorry) by some well-intentioned and morally challenged scientists, and suppose that these scientists are recording everything that is happening in Fred's brain. Still, their experiences will be quite different from Fred's (certainly no sexual stimulation). Also, their consciousness will be full of things that poor Fred's is not, such as awareness of electrical discharges. Of course Fred is actually having electrical discharges in his brain, but he is not aware of them (just ask him). Suppose one of the scientist's conscience gets to him and he decides to clean up the situation by burning Fred with a match to snap him out of it. All the while the scientists are still carefully logging all Fred's subsequent brain activity. Still, they do not experience the same thing Fred does. They don't experience pain as Fred does even if they detect every aspect of its physiological causes. They may not have to ask Fred to describe the pain, because they understand it thoroughly, but they are not feeling it, and he is. For these reasons I think that experiencing objective causes is not remotely the same as the subjective experience itself.

Last, I have been sitting on this green stool that Andrew Bartolini made for me last year. I really like it, but it's hard. Because I have been sitting on it all this while, I have been having a host of corresponding brain activity (my butt works and in a certain sense it is attached to my brain), The interesting thing, 'though, is that I didn't experience any of this brain activity; I paid no attention to it, so while it was there (and the scientists would have recorded it if they were tracking every event in my brain), I had no experience of it. I am actually experiencing it now (off and on), and I'm even going to make a choice based on this experience: end this post and move to a new chair. There are countless events going on in your brain that you don't experience (if you did, you couldn't function). Again, the basis for experience is different from experience itself.


My response:
Doc, you said "There are countless events going on in your brain that you don't experience (if you did, you couldn't function). Again, the basis for experience is different from experience itself."

I would somewhat agree with this statement, in that the basis for experience is different from experience itself (the underlying "code" and "science" of the brain as opposed to a physical or tangible awareness or experience. Yet I would like to pose the question "are the two really that different after all?" Sure, we personally cannot measure our brain electrowaves or whatever else goes on in the mind, but does that mean that they are that different? Just because we cannot tangibly sense something doesn't mean its not a part of our experience. The basis for experience in this case directly leads to experience, feelings, emotions without our own knowing.

Without a basis for experience there exists no experience. I guess it depends on your definition of experience, though. For me, the basis for experience exists on the same level as experience because without the basis there is no experience. Subconsciously, these waves and electrical charges are directly responsible for our "mind" function. So, in my opinion, we are technically "aware" and "experiencing" the basis for experience without knowing it since we can only really articulate this basis through language and our own mind function.

I'm actually so interested in the difference and similarities between underlying brain function (the science of the brain) and seemingly "physical" brain function (the psychology of the brain) that I plan to major in Neuroscience in college. Also another question: I don't understand why simply because you don't pay attention to something eliminates your experience of it. How could you recall the pain caused by the stool if, according to you, you didn't experience it in the first place? I guess you could say this discussion brings up the age- old philosophical quandary of if a tree falls in a distant forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?