Adam Maier-Clayton

That's exactly what this topic is about. Disregard you.

aeon.co/essays/how-consciousness-works-and-why-we-believe-in-ghosts
>A friend of mine, a psychiatrist, once told me about one of his patients. This patient was delusional: he thought that he had a squirrel in his head. Odd delusions of this nature do occur, and this patient was adamant about the squirrel. When told that a cranial rodent was illogical and incompatible with physics, he agreed, but then went on to note that logic and physics cannot account for everything in the universe. When asked whether he could feel the squirrel — that is to say, whether he suffered from a sensory hallucination — he denied any particular feeling about it. He simply knew that he had a squirrel in his head.
>We can ask two types of questions. The first is rather foolish but I will spell it out here. How does that man’s brain produce an actual squirrel? How can neurons secrete the claws and the tail? Why doesn’t the squirrel show up on an MRI scan? Does the squirrel belong to a different, non-physical world that can’t be measured with scientific equipment? This line of thought is, of course, nonsensical. It has no answer because it is incoherent.
>The second type of question goes something like this. How does that man’s brain process information so as to attribute a squirrel to his head? What brain regions are involved in the computations? What history led to that strange informational model? Is it entirely pathological or does it in fact do something useful?
>So far, most brain-based theories of consciousness have focused on the first type of question. How do neurons produce a magic internal experience? How does the magic emerge from the neurons? The theory that I am proposing dispenses with all of that. It concerns itself instead with the second type of question: how, and for what survival advantage, does a brain attribute subjective experience to itself?

do you have a link that covers all this explain to me, hopefully something not too dense

...

Are posters in this thread mentally deficient?
Have you ever felt pain while dreaming?
That's similar to what the guy was experiencing, only he was awake.
His illness is simply rare.

How exactly does that contradict all the other posts in this thread?

i think you just described how sin can manifest physically, when you become devoid of God (love) you become vulnerable to outsides forces of influence which can come in any form, earthly or spiritual

In other words, that author disregards the hard problem of consciousness, and proceeds to tackle one of the easy problems.

I did not read them.
I just wanted to sound smart.

If that were true, then why does pain hurt so much?

Disputing isn't disregarding. I'm not disregarding a claim that 2+2=5 if I disagree with it and show you why it's wrong. You really have two options with the "hard problem" claim.
1) Dispute the premise that there are non-physical phantasms that can't be explained by physics.
2) Accept the premise and proceed to keep an unsolvable "problem" around forever.

so whats your succinct point for lay men individuals, if you please

Pain is a social construct.
You feel pain because of peer pressure.

Meant for

>why does pain hurt so much?
You're compelled to engage in pain / hurting behavior, which includes reporting that "it hurts so much" and believing that "it hurts so much." That's what "hurting" actually means in reality. It all comes back to behavior. If you always keep your eye on the actual behavior with these questions and don't get caught up in overrating the literal reality of reporting behavior everything starts to make a lot of sense.

Mental illnesses are rooted in cognitive processes. Believing the cia is after you is far less "real" than having some sort of CNS issue where you are in constant pain.

Nah, you engage in pain behavior because your brain makes you engage in pain behavior. The "feeling" part is a fictional reference point we behave around, the behavior is the real thing that's going on. When we say "but it feels so real," what's really going on is you're engaging in the reporting behavior of insisting it "feels real."

Belief in the CIA being after you comes from the CNS too. You can't have the belief the CIA is after you without corresponding CNS activity for that belief.

Some cns activity is more real than others. It is a spectrum. Lumping in constant pain sensation with various mentally illnesses isn't fair.

What specifically makes one instance of CNS activity more "real" than another?

being less involved with higher-level brain function
it's easier to explain a faulty ion channel producing pain impulses than to explain why someone believes he's napoleon, though calling it "real" is misleading

The more it is rooted in the reptilian brain the more it is real.

This dude wouldn't have been treated with antipsychotics or antidepressants. He would have been loaded up with pain killers and sent on his way. Being in a state of constant pain is a much more catastrophic failure of the CNS overall and thus should be considered distinct from mentally illness.

Mental illness is a poorly programmed app with bugs that never performs the way it is expected to. What this dude went through is more akin to a hardware issue.

Always viewed it this way. I was originally going to school for philosophy and switched over to science as I couldn't deal with the illogical nature of things like the "hard problem".

In other words, you're a brainlet who switched to a field more suited to your mental capacity.

Is delusion really that much more "higher level" in origin than pain? Both can be initiated or suppressed with pharmaceuticals and both can appear to be effectively involuntary e.g. certain varieties of brain trauma like stroke pretty reliably produce delusions like denying that your arm is paralyzed when it actually is. And it's not like these patients are sitting there consciously thinking through some elaborate train of thought that mistakenly ends them up at this delusional conclusion. The delusion appears as spontaneously and involuntarily as a toothache would appear, and it's clearly related to the brain injury rather than to the subject's higher level thinking.

Yet psychiatrists make a distinction between stroke induced delusions and schizophrenic ones. They probably don't even treat them similarly.

What about the delusions we all have when we dream each night? Those mostly aren't voluntary, are they? We just happen to switch over to a mode of operation that involves unquestionably accepting blatantly illogical and/or impossible happenstances even though we might be perfectly rational and mentally healthy while awake.
I think even in most cases of mental illness delusion is largely an involuntary neurological event that happens rather than a conscious failing on the patient's part.

What if he was actually on fire, but it was a dark matter fire

>qualia

I'll have a double decaff latte and a bran muffin to go please.

I think an easy answer to that is that the subjective world is part of the world the brain is modelling. The brain models an organisms interaction with its environment and that necessrily includes modelling itself. Especially for homeostatic reasons. We cant regulate our bodies without modelling it

Yeah but if the pain has no real cause then its not real

>Muh brain is a computer!

Idiotic. The brain isn't "hardware" running mental "software", it's a completely bogus analogy that merely confuses simpletons like you.

Tbh if the pain isnt physical then it can be mental. People forgot we only process pain through our brains. Cognition. The same parts of the cortex that are well known for process pain are ones that are also most well known in mental health problems like anxiety and depression. Maybe because pain and our behaviour both have a homeostatic function for aversive and appertive behaviour. Remember, mental illnesses like depression and anxiety have very close relationships to our body. And so do our everyday mental states like hunger and joy or excitement. It seems reasonable that if nothings wrong with the patient it is part of a mental phenomena. Maybe neurological at most but i wonder if those were checked.

>mental illness
>aka a complex neurological disorder that medicine is not able to address with current technology

mental illnesses are not real. Every mental illness has a direct physiological cause. You cannot make your self better by just thinking

Delusions arent totally spontaneous or without cause. And what you say contradicts itself because delusions like the hand one are from interrupting parts of the brain to do with higher thought

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy says hi.

It's a valid analogy.

and that is a therapy which goes beyond just thinking.

No, it isn't. Mental states are what the brain "does", they aren't separate from it. You might as well say "my guts are like a computer, and digestion is the software!"

In what sense? Also are you seriously claiming thoughts can't change the brain? You are aware that thoughts are, by definition, changes in the brain? That every time you remember something, you are changing your brain?

>brainlet can't into abstraction

>HURR

You're beyond help.

>brainlet cannot into abstraction

not at all what im claiming. Stop strawmaning me loser

>HURR

Then explain yourself you fucking retard. I'm not psychic.

When people compare the brain to a computer the software is supposed to be consciousness, not just neural activity.

People misuse the word neurology as if it refers to neurobiology. I think you were looking for the word neurobiology here not neurology. Neurology is a medical field which is largely historically and arbitrarily defined. Neurobiology is the actual brain architecture.

Its not. Look up things like enactivism or embodied cognition. These are largely and rapidly replacing outdated computer analogies of the brain.

>Look up this flavor of the year philosophy of mind bullshit

>You might as well say "my guts are like a computer, and digestion is the software!"
Not even wrong desu

Its not philosophy of mind, its ideas developed by neuroscientists.

wtf is going on in this thread, so what is this final consensus on this man's condition, was it software or hardware? explain in laymen terms please

Software i imagine.

anyone?

>Sadly committed suicide
You would rather he live in agony.

What does that even mean you Veeky Forums bastard.
His nervous system had defects.

>You would rather he live in agony.
That's the decision all parents make when they have their children, yeah.

...

meaning it was indeed physical right? so was there something he could do to treat it like a procedure or was he doomed to feel like that for the rest of his life on earth?

telegraph.co.uk/news/health/11635758/Psychosomatic-disorders-When-illness-really-is-all-in-the-mind.html

>telegraph.co.uk/news/health/11635758/Psychosomatic-disorders-When-illness-really-is-all-in-the-mind.html
>Dude bro it's psychosomatic do not kill yourself.

Why are you trying to convince people they don't really feel pain and pretending you don't? btw, it's possible to feel pain without acting like it and vice versa.

sounds like auto immune attacking his nerves. poor guy simple diet change and ozone therapy would have cured him

Are you mentally retarded? Serious question.

>Why are you trying to convince people they don't really feel pain and pretending you don't?
That first one you quoted was sarcastic and posted by someone else. And to answer your question, I'm explaining how the phenomenon works. We all *believe* and report that we're "feeling pain," but this doesn't mean there's a literal non-physical "pain" phantasm behind this happenstance. The real thing going on is we've evolved pain behavior routines which include believing, reporting to others, and storing memories about "feeling pain," with the trick being that the belief, reports, memories, and other behaviors in reference to this "pain" are the actual real things going on and the "pain" these behaviors all arrange themselves around is not a real thing beyond being a useful, fictional reference point in the same way money isn't a real thing and serves as a useful, fictional reference point for the abstract concept of value exchanges. With money we operate a little more consciously around the pretense of treating it as though it were real, while with pain it's something biological / somewhat automatic that we behave around it as though it were real, but the principle's the same otherwise.

I used to have the same thing as a child. It was, probably, caused by food sensitivities. Which are a consequence of increased intestinal permeability via chronic inflammation. Resembled early stages of MS. Whole body felt "raw", would ache, and would be a haze of a deep burning pain. My hands and feet would turn blood red and take on a leathery texture, they would throb terribly.

I understand exactly why he killed himself. It doesn't happen often anymore. Dietary changes resolved much of it. I'm also not surprised myopic, yet arrogant "experts", tried to tell him it was psychogenic.

youtu.be/H08EDUMwFFE

Hear it from the man himself

Don't have a computer with audio output.

>health.harvard.edu/blog/can-an-infection-suddenly-cause-ocd-201202274417

>antibodies can inflame basal ganglia

>vaccines can't cause autismal symptoms through some similar or translatable mechanism

(Phone), really nigga?

> wikipedia page has a section "connections with the sciences"

>don't understand neuroscience or medicine at all
>make a claim about neuroscience or medicine

This man is a protoubersuberchad

>I think you were looking for the word neurobiology here not neurology.

I wasn't looking for either word... hence me not using either of them.

>Doesnt have telepathic access to another persons mind
>Makes a claim about his state of mind
Lel what an idiot.

Obviously a computer's CPU is well defined and makes precise calculations

A brain is a computer that is not well defined and makes imprecise calculations

Wtf does that mean

Old midrange laptop from ~2004, that someone was throwing away. Grabbed it some number of years ago. The power and signal leads to the embedded GPU were disconnected. I didn't have flux paste but eventually managed to solder it anyway. It's missing the 9, o, h, and n keys. Headphone jack is disconnected and not feasible to get to, so it isn't capable of sending to the built in speakers.

The brain makes precise calculations. Every instance of computational machinery in the universe generates precise calculations. It can do nothing else.

>MaGuyver over here

It's a monte carlo computer

>That first one you quoted was sarcastic
Are you sure? Because taken literally, it's no more retarded than what you're arguing.

>mentally ill person kills himself
>nothing of value was lost

"muh LePage's Demon"
Luddite

you were of no value to Adam Maier-Clayton yet he wasn't trying to genocide you

So what's the verdict was it psychosomatic meaning the treatment he needed was from psychiatry or was it totally somatic meaning he needed a procedure or diet change etc.?

Well my readings about these subjects have been from articles not wikipedia. Im not exactly sure what wiki says but the articles ice read are by experimental and theoretical nauroscientists

You said complex neurplogical disorder idiot

I dream about getting kicked in the nuts and do feel it. I wake up in a cold terror gasping for air.

>Do you want to know what qualia like
Honestly stopped reading there.