ABC Radio National

All In The Mind





Date/Time 25 Jul 2014 7:35:26pm
The research is interesting but the theoretical framework is awash with mind-body confusion.

First and foremost, if the brain is the chief organ of perception, as we presume it is, then it is necessarily the case that the brain cannot thoroughly perceive its own mechanisms of perception (because this would lead to an infinite regression). Given that we understand brain structure to be cellular, we can strongly assert that the brain does not perceive in any detail its own mechanisms of perception. Why would it? What purpose could such perception serve?

So in direct contradiction to Mlodinow we can say that there are NOT "different processes around the brain that we are aware of". Vague almost sub-conscious perceptions of things are examples of perception, not the perception of brain processes.

Generally scientists are able to examine the real without considering the relationship of their own perception to the real. In the examination of human experience this is not possible. Mlodinow enquires into my perception as if my perception is like his and therefore what he is really doing is displacing an examination of his own perception. He is deceived into imagining his own experience existing inside the world that he knows only through his own experience.

The critical issue when we enquire into the brain is how we explain our own experience in terms of our own perception of the real. This problem simply cannot be resolved in terms of existent perceptions because such an enquiry is confined (as Berkeley pointed out) to existent perceptions. A resolution to this problem requires us to interpret human experience.

The proper understanding of human experience is to suppose that people are objects that perceive. In this understanding experience is expressed, not by saying "The perceptions of the screen I am looking at exist in my mind" but by saying "I perceive the screen" where 'I' is the object that perceives and the process of perception is a mechanism in the real. The perception of thought is expressed not as "I have a thought" (because thought is not an existent thing that can be owned) but as "I perceive a thought". Why the thought is perceived can be examined at various levels but the notion that some abstract self conjures it out of nothing through an act of wilfulness is a bad theory that neuroscience thoroughly contradicts - because it can enquire into such processes in terms of the real.

In this understanding, my brain does not produce my awareness - because the conceptualisation is expressed entirely in terms of my own awareness. Rather I interpret awareness as "I perceive X" and because I understand 'I' to be real and perception to be a real process I am in a position to enquire thoroughly into any aspect of my perception, including what I am aware of and not aware of and what I am able to report and what I am not able t
