What is reality?

[happystuff]

I have been reading Why We Sleep, a book about sleep by a guy who has sudied it for decades. Well reviewed and popular. He writes about how the brain waves during REM sleep, the time when we dream, are very similar to our waking brain waves. He also gets into lucid dreaming a little bit where we can direct or control dreams. It sort of make you wonder about the reality we have in our dream state, a mostly black hole of forgetfulness when we're awake. Two concepts of reality that are not very aware of each other, and who's to say one is real and the other not.

I supose sci-fi has covered variations of the story, some possibly belivable.

This made me think... how much of our brain does the average human use? I know it used to be a very low percentage. Has it increased any? Off to Google! LOL

[LDAHL]

You read that only some small portion of the human brain is “used”, but I wonder if that may in part be an artifact of our inability to measure which portions are used for which purposes. Could it be that we simply have only a limited understanding of everything the brain does at this point? I find it difficult to understand how our evolution could produce such inefficiency.

[herbgeek]

I know it used to be a very low percentage.

Nope, urban legend https://www.thoughtco.com/percentage...n-used-4159438

[Rogar]

I think there are large gaps between the knowledge of the chemical and biological functions of the brain and what we think of as conciousness. I can't recall if this is the man I've read about earier of if there are more. They are calling this radical plasticity, but probably the more common examples are stoke victims where new parts of the brain learn skills that the damaged portion is not long capable of.

"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.

He only went to the doctor complaining of mild weakness in his left leg, when brain scans revealed that his skull was mostly filled with fluid, leaving just a thin outer layer of actual brain tissue, with the internal part of his brain almost totally eroded away."

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-man-who-lives-without-90-of-his-brain-is-challenging-our-understanding-of-consciousness

[razz]

is it possible that the brain is not that important, consciousness is innate to all but has been assigned to the brain. Remember the question in the OP - what is reality?

[JaneV2.0]

I've heard/read it postulated that the brain is hardware, while consciousness is software. personally, I would lean toward that hypothesis if by software, you mean "in the cloud."

[LDAHL]

is it possible that the brain is not that important, consciousness is innate to all but has been assigned to the brain. Remember the question in the OP - what is reality?

While smarter people than me haven’t solved the mind/body problem, I don’t know of any evidence of consciousness in people without functioning brains. On the other hand, I don’t know if we all mean the same thing when we talk about “consciousness”.

[happystuff]

I knew this was going to be an interesting thread!

[Rogar]

While smarter people than me haven’t solved the mind/body problem, I don’t know of any evidence of consciousness in people without functioning brains. On the other hand, I don’t know if we all mean the same thing when we talk about “consciousness”.

Well, there are the near death experiences where the brain is flat line and people can recall details about their operating rooms or other things going on around them that would seem impossible. Though I'm not sure what it all means, but they seem well documented.

[LDAHL]

Well, there are the near death experiences where the brain is flat line and people can recall details about their operating rooms or other things going on around them that would seem impossible. Though I'm not sure what it all means, but they seem well documented.

But couldn’t that phenomenon also be a result of the imperfect means available to us for measuring brain death?