Philosophy Discussion Forums

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"Anencephaly is a defect in the closure of the neural tube during fetal development. The neural tube is a narrow channel that folds and closes between the 3rd and 4th weeks of pregnancy to form the brain and spinal cord of the embryo. Anencephaly occurs when the "cephalic" or head end of the neural tube fails to close, resulting in the absence of a major portion of the brain, skull, and scalp. Infants with this disorder are born without a forebrain (the front part of the brain) and a cerebrum (the thinking and coordinating part of the brain). The remaining brain tissue is often exposed--not covered by bone or skin. A baby born with anencephaly is usually blind, deaf, unconscious, and unable to feel pain. Although some individuals with anencephaly may be born with a rudimentary brain stem, the lack of a functioning cerebrum permanently rules out the possibility of ever gaining consciousness. Reflex actions such as breathing and responses to sound or touch may occur."

Source: https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/All ... ation-Page
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"Because anencephalic infants lack functioning cerebral hemispheres, they never experience any degree of consciousness nor have thoughts, feelings, sensations, desires, or emotions, and there is no purposeful activity, social interaction, memory, pain, or suffering. Anencephalic infants may have fully or partially functioning brain stems and can maintain sufficient autonomic functions to remain alive for varying periods of time. They may also be able to breathe; suck; engage in spontaneous movements of their eyes, arms, and legs; respond to noxious stimuli with crying or avoidance maneuvers; and exhibit facial expressions typical of healthy infants."
(p. 251)

"All available scientific evidence supports the conclusion that anencephalic infants are permanently unconscious. Although some have raised concerns that consciousness may be preserved in the brain stems of such infants because this is a developmental rather than an acquired brain lesion, medical evidence to support this contention has not been published.

Vare and Bansall in their anatomic studies of 41 infants with anencephaly observed that the brain stem was rudimentary in 25% and absent in the remaining 75%. In another study of 57 anencephalic infants, the authors determined the percentage of infants with remnants of brain tissue at the following levels: (1) below the lower diencephalon—1.7%; (2) below the midpons—28%; (3) below the upper medulla—49.1 %; and (4) below the middle section of the medulla—21%. Pathologic descriptions of the residual tissue showed few neurons and no significant tracts or fiber bundles. In another detailed study of nine anencephalic infants, the brain stem was absent in one infant, showed no neural elements in another, and in the remaining seven infants the rudimentary brain stem ended in the area cerebrovasculosa. In these seven infants, only a few brainstem nuclei were detected: trigeminal motor nucleus (n = 3), abducens nucleus (1), dorsal efferent vagal nucleus (4), sensory nuclei of the trigeminal nerve (3), and portions of the vestibular nuclei (6).

The above detailed anatomic descriptions, as well as our own observations, provide convincing evidence that the brain stems of anencephalic infants are almost completely devoid of neurons, fiber tracts, neural networks, or any evidence of primitive functional organization. With this in mind, it seems evident that there is no anatomic basis to remotely believe that consciousness is present in such infants at birth. It has also been suggested that if such infants were kept alive, developmental plasticity would allow organization of neural systems to attain a functional level so the anencephalic infant would become conscious. The available anatomic descriptions disprove this contention."
(p. 252)

(Walters, James, Stephen Ashwal, and Theodore Masek. "Anencephaly: Where Do We Now Stand?" Seminars in Neurology 17/3 (1997): 249–255.)
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The paper was published 23 years go, so there might now be new scientific evidence for (phenomenal) consciousness in anencephalics—but is there?

Perusing this thread just clarifies - people's take on the degree to which everything from the human brain's capacity for hallucination to the amount of leverage that can be gotten out of a few scraps of gray matter seems to vary exponentially based on worldview. No wonder any sort of 'meeting in the middle' is impossible.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 10th, 2020, 9:03 am

Greta wrote: ↑May 9th, 2020, 8:26 pm You misunderstood my point.

But you misunderstood mine, and I hate "arguing."

What is volcanism in its essence?

In its essence? Essences are about what an individual requires to call some x an F (some particular a type/class/concept name). Essences tell us about how an individual has formulated their concept of F-ness. So it depends on who we ask, and that's just going to tell us about how the person in question has formulated the concept in question (at the time they answer).

A leak caused by underlying pressure forcing material through a break in a surface. That dynamic is seen all over the place in nature. Volcanoes, Geysers. Cryovolcanoes. Broken membranes in biology.

It's not found in every instance of matter/structures/processes, is it?

I understood your point perfectly well because I argued the brains-only approach for years before realising that it was probably wrong. Much must be ignored or downplayed to retain that position.

No point diverting with technicalities with the definition of essences. Fluid outpourings through breaks or gaps is very common in nature. That is a volcano in essence, and geysers, anywhere that water or other fluids are pushed through gaps under some degree of pressure beneath, which may be thermally or mechanically driven.

Greta wrote: ↑May 10th, 2020, 6:28 pm Fluid outpourings through breaks or gaps is very common in nature.

But not omnipresent, and it supervenes on specific materials/structures (or relations)/processes, which is the point. Every single property of anything is a factor of specific materials, structures/relations and processes.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 10th, 2020, 6:32 pm

Greta wrote: ↑May 10th, 2020, 6:28 pm Fluid outpourings through breaks or gaps is very common in nature.

But not omnipresent, and it supervenes on specific materials/structures (or relations)/processes, which is the point. Every single property of anything is a factor of specific materials, structures/relations and processes.

As mentioned, the processes of nature are always similar in nature to other things. No exceptions. There are no truly unique processes; there are always equivalents. So why would a sense of internality be so unique, the only outlier?

It strikes me as being more realistic, more according to how nature works, to think of internality as an exponential continuum which, at its "base" would be simple reactivity and the resonances that run through entities when they react.

arjand wrote: ↑May 10th, 2020, 4:00 amSome appear to be functioning normally with an above average IQ (the average in the US is 98) and are capable of achieving an academic degree with just 5% brain tissue. On what basis would you assume that the mentioned people are not capable of philosophy and perhaps unique and exceptional insights?

I'd like to see the scientific texts verifying those alleged cases!

arjand wrote: ↑May 7th, 2020, 3:55 pm Many people are convinced that consciousness originates in the brain and that human emotions, behaviors and thoughts correlate with brain states.

Daniel Dennett, the high-profile atheist and philosophy professor at Tufts University outside Boston, argues that consciousness, as we think of it, is an illusion: there just isn’t anything in addition to the spongy stuff of the brain, and that spongy stuff doesn’t actually give rise to something called consciousness. However hard it feels to accept, we should concede that consciousness is just the physical brain, doing what brains do.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.10 ... 03633-1_11

There are many people without a brain that are conscious and capable of living a normal human life. This topic is intended to discuss the implications for theories of consciousness.

An example case is that of a French man who has just 10% brain tissue. At 44 years age, at a random hospital check, it was discovered that 90% of his brains were missing. The man is married, has two children and works as a civil servant.


klein-brein1-300x234.jpg


(2016) Meet The Man Who Lives Normally With Damage to 90% of His Brain

A French man who lives a relatively normal, healthy life - despite damaging 90 percent of his brain - is causing scientists to rethink what it is from a biological perspective that makes us conscious.

Despite decades of research, our understanding of consciousness - being aware of one's existence - is still pretty thin. Many scientists think that the physical source of consciousness is based in the brain, but then how can someone lose the majority of their neurons and still be aware of themselves and their surroundings?

First described in The Lancet in 2007, the case of the man who appears to be missing most of his brain has been puzzling scientists for almost 10 years.

Not only did his case study cause scientists to question what it takes to survive, it also challenges our understanding of consciousness.

In the past, researchers have suggested that consciousness might be linked to various specific brain regions - such as the claustrum, a thin sheet of neurons running between major brain regions, or the visual cortex.

But if those hypotheses were correct, then the French man shouldn't be conscious, with the majority of his brain damaged.

"Any theory of consciousness has to be able to explain why a person like that, who's missing 90 percent of his neurons, still exhibits normal behaviour," Axel Cleeremans, a cognitive psychologist from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium"

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-man-who- ... sciousness

(2007) Man with tiny brain shocks doctors (first publication)
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... s-doctors/

Some have argued, based on the fact that the publication of the case in The Lancet did not mention the percentage of brain tissue that was missing, that the brain is merely compressed.

(2018) So his brain’s just squished (rather than only 10% there): A Bonsai Brain
https://www.untrammeledmind.com/2018/02 ... ai-brains/

90% compression potential for a brain does not seem plausible. The research by pediatrics professor John Lorber, a specialist, indicates that brain weight is reduced to grams compared to the default 1.5 kg, which implies that brain tissue is actually missing. That it is actually the case, is evident from the notion that holding a light besides the head of the children will light up their skull.

Children with hydranencephaly are essentially missing every part of their brain except for the brain stem and cerebellum and a few other structures. Holding a light near such a child's head illuminates the skull like a jack-o'-lantern.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... ple-brain/

Professor John Lorber studied hundreds of cases including that of a student with an IQ of 126.

Remarkable story of maths genius who had almost no brain

The student was bright, having an IQ of 126. The doctor noticed that the student's head seemed a little larger than normal and he referred him to Dr Lorber for further examination. Dr Lorber examined the boy's head by Cat-scan to discover that the student had virtually no brain.

Dr Lorber systematically studied hydrocephalus and documented over 600 scans of people with this condition. He divided them into four groups: people with nearly normal brains; those with between 50 per cent and 70 per cent of the cranium filled with fluid; those with 70 per cent to 90 per cent of the cranium filled with fluid; those with 95 per cent of the cranium filled with fluid. The latter group constituted less than 10 per cent of the study and half of these people were profoundly mentally disabled. However, the other half had IQs over 100.

"I can't say whether the mathematics student with an IQ of 126 had a brain weighing 50 grams or 150 grams, but it is clear it is nowhere near the normal 1.5kg and much of the brain he does have is in the more primitive deep structures that are relatively spared in hydrochephalus".

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/remarka ... -1.1026845

Note: the case about a student with an IQ of 126 was apparently never published @Consul.

(1980) Professor Lorber: Is Your Brain Really Necessary?
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/210/4475/1232

There are many similar cases:

(1989) Boy Born Without Brain Proves Doctors Wrong
Doctors said he would never smile and would be lucky to live more than a few weeks, but a boy born without a brain is now 5 years old and laughs at Disney Channel programs, says his adoptive mother.
https://apnews.com/08099b98348a930469a232b9250f1509

(2018) Boy with 'no brain' stuns doctors as he learns to count and attends school in touching new documentary
Noah Wall was born with less than 2% of a brain - but he has amazed medics by growing into a happy, chatty little boy
https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/boy ... rs-9778554

Questions:

1) is it evident from the mentioned cases that consciousness does not originate in the brain?
2) is there a theory of consciousness that could explain the mentioned cases?

When you look at the cited article, the guy with the CT scans has an IQ of 75, which used to be called feeblemindedness and is one point awsy from being a moron. I guess brains are important after all...

Consul wrote: ↑May 10th, 2020, 10:10 pm I'd like to see the scientific texts verifying those alleged cases!

I found the following via Google:

Revisiting hydrocephalus as a model to study brain resilience
Later, a young man with macrocephaly was referred to Lorber (Lewin, 1980). Although the man had an IQ of 126 and had a first class honors degree in mathematics, he had “virtually no brain.” Thus, he thought, there should be a tremendous amount of redundancy or spare capacity in the brain. These ideas were shared with scientifical community in a pediatric conference in 1980. Later in the same year, his ideas were published by Roger Levin in Science magazine.

https://rifters.com/real/articles/Olive ... phalus.pdf

It may require historical research. The case must have received attention from pediatricians in 1980. It may be possible to contact them to ask for information which may have never reached the internet. It could be considered that others (science reporters) may likely have tried this path, but perhaps it was never done.

Are there others who were specialized in the condition? If there were 600 cases in 1980, there must be a lot more information. But perhaps the cases never reached the internet.

With regard to the cited Seminars in Neurology 17/3 (1997). Your citation writes that the children that were studied were aborted and the assumption that they did not have the capacity to become conscious was based on theory.

Consul wrote: ↑May 10th, 2020, 2:30 pm With this in mind, it seems evident that there is no anatomic basis to remotely believe that consciousness is present in such infants at birth. It has also been suggested that if such infants were kept alive, developmental plasticity would allow organization of neural systems to attain a functional level so the anencephalic infant would become conscious. The available anatomic descriptions disprove this contention.

As it appears, evidence would only be possible from accidental cases in people that were not aborted before birth. In modern times it may be increasingly unlikely that people are born with the condition. It may therefore be necessary to seek evidence by examining cases from a time before the internet.

LuckyR wrote: ↑May 11th, 2020, 3:21 amWhen you look at the cited article, the guy with the CT scans has an IQ of 75, which used to be called feeblemindedness and is one point awsy from being a moron. I guess brains are important after all...

I do not agree. For example, some top performing music artists and TV stars have not completed lower level education and have a low IQ (~100) while their performance in life (their talent) cannot be matched by many people.

Emotional intelligence is something very different from IQ and I do not believe that it is of lesser value. It is known that processing social relations requires the most brain processing power so in a way, completing a math degree may be a lesser sign of intelligence than performing as a music artist.

Beethoven once said: "Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.".

Is a musician with a low IQ low intelligent? Perhaps the IQ score is not a valid perspective on intelligence per se.

It is widely known that the IQ score can differ by as much as 20 points at different moments in time. For example, when one is deeply in love the score could be higher than when one is depressed.

No, Your IQ Is Not Constant
For any given individual, the change in IQ score changed from -20 to +23 for verbal IQ and -28- to +17 for non-verbal IQ.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/bl ... t-constant

On a blog I read the following:

The point, though, is that under the right conditions, brain damage may paradoxically result in brain enhancement. Small-world, scale-free networking— focused, intensified, overclocked— might turbocharge a fragment of a brain into acting like the whole thing.

Can you imagine what would happen if we applied that trick to a normal brain?
https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116

I would share this perspective. Similar to the proposition by Jabob Barnett that any normal child can become a genius by "thinking differently" (TED talk), the fact that people manage to live a normal life with merely 5% brain tissue may be indicative of what potential could lay in using 100% brain tissue in the most optimal way.

Greta wrote: ↑May 10th, 2020, 7:36 pm
There are no truly unique processes;

We don't at all agree on this. Oh my view, every process, every bit of matter, every relation, and thus every property as well is truly unique. None of it is literally the same as any other process, any other bit of matter, any other relation, any other property.

This doesn't imply that there are no real similarities, but similarities are never literally the same. Numerically distinct matter, relations, processes And properties (so "this" and "that") are never literally shared between the numerically distinct things.

That makes everything truly unique--every bit of matter, every relation, every process, every property is literally, in terms of its extramental existence, the only one of its "kind."

Considering numerically distinct things the same, or the same kind is only a mental abstraction--it's a fiction of sorts, gained by glossing over details and pretending that two or more unique things are instead two instances of just one thing.

So no. There is no property that obtains in one entity that literally also obtains in another.

Faustus5 wrote: ↑May 10th, 2020, 11:09 am

Atla wrote: ↑May 9th, 2020, 9:11 amI think that's simply a lie. He never addressed why there are any experiences in the first place.

He does address these issues, just not in the way you prefer or approve of. And obviously, you are far from being alone in this regard.

No, he simply does not address it. That's the whole point.
The Easy problems are scientific problems, and the Hard problem is probably a philosophical problem.

By mixing them together, and only seeing one scientific problem, he is simply being intellectually dishonest or delusional. And this "dismissal" of consciousness is detrimental to humanity at large.

I didn't read the whole initial post of this thread, but arjand is referencing a lot of garbage that has long since been debunked.

Atla wrote: ↑May 11th, 2020, 10:39 am No, he simply does not address it. That's the whole point.

Sorry, he does address it, and you just don't like the way he does.

Dennett simply does not share core assumptions that philosophers such as yourself deem essential to any discussion of consciousness. It would be more intellectually honest if you just acknowledged those disagreements instead of accusing him of avoiding the issue. One of the starting points of any fair and responsible debate is to find the most charitable interpretation of what someone is saying and attacking that instead of inventing a strawman.

Atla wrote: ↑May 11th, 2020, 10:39 amThe Easy problems are scientific problems, and the Hard problem is probably a philosophical problem.

Correct, the hard problem is entirely an artifact of ideologies and assumptions coming from some members--not all!--of the philosophical community. You take those ideologies and assumptions seriously, and Dennett rejects them, going as far as to deny that the hard problem is actually real.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people simply assume that the hard problem has been established rather than acknowledging that just about every aspect of it is still being debated.

Atla wrote: ↑May 11th, 2020, 10:39 amBy mixing them together, and only seeing one scientific problem, he is simply being intellectually dishonest or delusional.

No, he just disagrees with you about the extent to which some philosophical assumptions and traditions about consciousness make sense. Perhaps you could start a thread about his theory of consciousness, citing what he says in his own words with proper context, and show specific instances of genuine dishonesty or delusion. That would be fun.

Atla wrote: ↑May 11th, 2020, 10:39 am And this "dismissal" of consciousness is detrimental to humanity at large.

Oh, please, this approaches pure hysteria. I'd love it if you could articulate so much as a single way anyone would actually have a diminished life experience due to Dennett having a theory of consciousness you disagree with.

Faustus5 wrote: ↑May 11th, 2020, 11:11 am

Atla wrote: ↑May 11th, 2020, 10:39 am No, he simply does not address it. That's the whole point.

Sorry, he does address it, and you just don't like the way he does.

Dennett simply does not share core assumptions that philosophers such as yourself deem essential to any discussion of consciousness. It would be more intellectually honest if you just acknowledged those disagreements instead of accusing him of avoiding the issue. One of the starting points of any fair and responsible debate is to find the most charitable interpretation of what someone is saying and attacking that instead of inventing a strawman.

Atla wrote: ↑May 11th, 2020, 10:39 amThe Easy problems are scientific problems, and the Hard problem is probably a philosophical problem.

Correct, the hard problem is entirely an artifact of ideologies and assumptions coming from some members--not all!--of the philosophical community. You take those ideologies and assumptions seriously, and Dennett rejects them, going as far as to deny that the hard problem is actually real.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people simply assume that the hard problem has been established rather than acknowledging that just about every aspect of it is still being debated.

Atla wrote: ↑May 11th, 2020, 10:39 amBy mixing them together, and only seeing one scientific problem, he is simply being intellectually dishonest or delusional.

No, he just disagrees with you about the extent to which some philosophical assumptions and traditions about consciousness make sense. Perhaps you could start a thread about his theory of consciousness, citing what he says in his own words with proper context, and show specific instances of genuine dishonesty or delusion. That would be fun.

Atla wrote: ↑May 11th, 2020, 10:39 am And this "dismissal" of consciousness is detrimental to humanity at large.

Oh, please, this approaches pure hysteria. I'd love it if you could articulate so much as a single way anyone would actually have a diminished life experience due to Dennett having a theory of consciousness you disagree with.

I'll put it as simply as I can. Denying the Hard problem is not a choice or philosophical option or whatever, but a form of insanity.
Dennett is either mentally ill or dishonest. Making other people insane as well is not good for humanity at larger.

Atla wrote: ↑May 11th, 2020, 12:35 pm I'll put it as simply as I can. Denying the Hard problem is not a choice or philosophical option or whatever, but a form of insanity.