Does Seeing Take Place in the Brain?


00:00 if I could ask about what you’re talking this morning refer to that asking where
0:07 vision takes place where site takes place I want to play devil’s advocate in
0:14 a sense I i live in a in a in an area where there are hundreds of neuro
0:21 scientist and I have a dear friend who’s a neurologist and if this and I like to
0:29 talk about these concerns are these the these ideas but they always stick to the
0:40 notion for example if i were to say well you know where does vision take place
0:45 where does it really took place of course they would say well that’s of
0:49 course in the occipital lobes of the brain and if you sever the optic nerves
0:57 are the optic nerve
0:59 you can’t see so I don’t know what to counter to that I mean in one sense it
1:10 is true if you know my retinas don’t work right so I i can see just barely
1:20 little bit okay but it’s because of that so that the others that there’s
1:27 something broken with the mechanism there so it is I i tend to feel that our
1:39 brain is like a is like on an apparatus through which consciousness expresses
1:46 itself doesn’t give rise to consciousness but it’s an instant could
1:51 say it’s an instrument by which consciousness can manifest itself as
1:57 well as our whole bodies but what tell me what would be a good way to get
2:04 beyond that totally materialistic reductionist way of
2:13 of ending the argument really and maybe i’m wrong about the brain being not you
2:29 know an instrument of awareness or consciousness as well and that the first
2:35 thing you could ask your your own scientists friend is have you ever
2:39 experienced anything in the absence of awareness sure I mean I’m not saying
2:47 sure ever but not know I’m sure that that that they’d have to admit the day
2:52 I’m yeah and then you could ask them if they did admit that they hadn’t you can
3:03 ask them why then do you believe that there is something that exists in the
3:11 absence of awareness the first question have you ever experienced anything in
3:21 the absence of awareness it you very optimistically believe that they would
3:27 agree that they had never well they could all these are then it’s hope they
3:33 were let’s hope they would agree that some of them don’t believe that the
3:38 second think this client smooth sexual okay well then let’s let’s leave that
3:43 aside that’s wrote so first of all let’s hope you’re right that your friend would
3:49 agree yes I’ve never experienced anything row in the absence of awareness
3:53 then your friend would almost certainly admit to you that he believes that there
4:00 is something that exists in the absence of awareness such as a universe or a
4:06 world or a brain
4:07 yeah but then you ask him why why are you not a scientist isn’t experience the
4:14 test of reality you admit on the one hand that you’ve never experienced
4:18 anything in the absence of awareness your next statement is I believe there
4:23 is something that exists in the absence of
4:26 awareness but that’s pure that’s religion its belief
4:32 yeah sure it’s not science right so that right there you could just ask your
4:39 friend what do you think about that did you see that you have a belief right bro
4:44 dude
4:47 yeah that the work you do is founded upon a belief that there is an object
4:53 called the brain made out of matter in which something called mind takes place
5:01 you could ask him have you ever opened up a brain and found the experience of
5:10 seeing or something called consciousness
5:14 mhm but then they can say well of course we can’t and see consciousness directly
5:22 but we can see the myth that the traces of consciousness in measured neural
5:33 activity in the brain using various devices electrical sensores great
5:41 radioactive fluids that could be injected into the brain and watch the
5:47 way that that blood is is it moves from various parts of the brain according to
5:53 what the person is asked to think of our yes but they’re not seeing traces of
5:59 consciousness that seeing an image on their computer screen yeah yeah yeah
6:04 they’re presuming that that image is measuring consciousness yeah but the
6:11 that they just seeing an image that if you ask them what is that image made of
6:15 it it’s made of the experience of seeing you ask them what the experience of
6:21 seeing is made of
6:23 it’s made of consciousness in other words they would have to admit if they
6:28 were open enough that consciousness was their primary experience the
6:33 consciousness in order to experience a brain
6:36 there must be consciousness row
6:39 but at the same time if you exercise parts of the brain that will obviate
6:47 that kind of experience if you remove the occipital lobes you’re going to see
6:53 but that doesn’t implicate consciousness
6:59 yeah well consciousness made no longer able be able to rise in the form of
7:08 seeing yeah yeah but nevertheless this stuff out of which seeing is made hasn’t
7:18 been harmed in any way
7:19 all right yeah yeah but it does suggest the dependence of consciousness on the
7:27 electrochemical mechanism call the brain to manifest to see it let me ask you
7:38 this can and to do dream they just did you want to have site abnormal oh yeah
7:44 you did it so did you dream i do as someone with regular so yeah very very
7:51 visual a very good rule everything ok so so you you are able to see ya at the
8:00 dreamed subject that you feel you are in the dream yeah is able to see absolutely
8:06 perfect three-dimensional world yes how do you manage that I don’t exactly
8:11 exactly
8:14 if if but in other words you manage to see perfectly clear in the dream state
8:20 without your eyes i do in and you think that that would clue me in to the fact
8:25 that i’m dreaming and I would have a lucid dream but it wasn’t that may be
8:30 the case but that wasn’t where i was going to the question where I was going
8:34 you said you’d think it might through your euros you knew your new neurologist
8:38 friend
8:40 yeah you’re into the fact that the eyes weren’t absolutely necessary are seeing
8:44 ya
8:45 now go back to the time when you remember seeing seeing that the regular
8:51 world right as we all
8:53 right and now compare that so for all of us we can see the world now fie fo you
8:58 have to remember or imagined yet but now all of us including you can compare our
9:03 current experience for you you’re remembered experience yep of the dream
9:08 world that we see in 3-dimensional color row
9:12 what’s the difference well when you’re dreaming there isn’t exactly exactly how
9:18 do we know that we’re not dreaming now we’re not dreaming another kind of dream
9:25 we don’t because it is identical to the dream but when we’re in the dream yeah
9:31 the dream seems to be just as rain waking world just as real as this world
9:37 ever
9:38 and in that dream we have eyes right went through which we seem to see how I
9:45 dreamed world but when we wake up we realized know that dreamed world was not
9:50 seen through my dream to eyes right how do we know it’s not the same in the
9:55 waking state we towed it’s a presumption
10:00 yeah
10:09 would it be would be well okay so awareness itself as such does not depend
10:28 upon the relative dimension in anyway right
10:33 I the screen does not depend upon what manifests on the screen although what
10:39 manifests exactly but what manifests on the screen depends upon the screen
10:44 exactly yeah exactly but we go even further than that you say awareness
10:55 doesn’t depend in any way on the relative right world
11:01 yeah from awarenesses point of view there isn’t a relative where are the
11:09 relative world is only such wrong the relative point of view area in other
11:16 words it is only a separate subject that knows something called a separate object
11:22 other or world right but can’t you can’t you experience separate subjects and
11:32 conventional reality in the at the same time that you realize that it’s only
11:39 conventional he know you can
11:42 exactly just as you can watch a movie
11:45 yeah yeah you see the appearance of a landscape but the difference is that you
11:50 know the reality of the landscape is this green yeah so in the same way you
11:56 can see the appearance of a world right or a collection of objects but without
12:03 losing sight of their reality so how would that how do you think that would
12:09 alter a person’s way of relating to the relative world would that mean that they
12:14 don’t take things so seriously what
12:18 that would be one outcome
12:25 yes

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