[rendx]

It's still an open debate whether the seat of consciousness (or even simpler, perception) is the brain.

see e.g. Wahbeh, H., Radin, D., Cannard, C., & Delorme, A. (2022). What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 955594. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955594

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

Same for memory, which is "needed" as well for your question to make sense. The more current theories assume memories are stored not only in the brain, but throughout the body.

see e.g. Repetto, C., & Riva, G. (2023). The neuroscience of body memory: Recent findings and conceptual advances. EXCLI journal, 22, 191–206. https://doi.org/10.17179/excli2023-5877

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_memory

[ywain]

Ok, I only skimmed the paper but it seems like all of the "non-local phenomena" in support of their theory are basically psychic powers. Not exactly strong evidence.

[rendx]

You're free to stop there. We can also turn it around, and I can ask you for any paper that details the theory of why the brain should be the location of consciousness.

I only gave one example and Wikipedia to start with. There's a lot of material out there if you're (rightfully) skeptical of that one paper. I don't even know what you're refering to as "their theory", as the way I read it, they're basically documenting various co-existing theories, and the authors don't disclose which one they find the most likely. I also don't see it as necessary for science to pick one; it's all about theories. I prefer documentation of all possible theories, and see no reason to dismiss one over the other unless they're disproven. I pointed to that paper, because any paper that talks about alternative theories shows the point I was making: We don't know yet. The point was not to claim that they've managed to put together good or bad arguments.

[hackingonempty]

We understand the fundamental laws of physics well enough to say there is not some mysterious soul influencing the brain. Just like we can say that the moon is not made from cheese.

> Modern physics, in other words, provides evidence for what philosophers call “causal closure of the physical”: physical events have purely physical causes (Loewer 1995, Papineau 1995), at least in the regime relevant to human life. Without dramatically upending our understanding of quantum field theory, there is no room for any new influences that could bear on the problem of consciousness.

https://philpapers.org/archive/CARCAT-33

[rendx]

> We understand the fundamental laws of physics well enough to say there is not some mysterious soul influencing the brain. Just like we can say that the moon is not made from cheese.

I don't see how this relates to the "seat of consciousness" (with)in a human body, or how the biological system works together to "form it". Or where thinking or memory storage or retrieval takes place. At least that was what I was talking about. You're talking about something else.

It is a theory that we think in the brain. As far as I understand it, and please prove me wrong, there are other, valid theories? It's unscientific to discard theories purely based on belief. You seem to be arguing from a certain belief, not from science.

The modern term for "soul" is "psyche".

Remember that the OP was asking: "How do you ensure that you aren’t torturing a brain that can’t see, hear or scream?" -- clearly refering to something... conscious?

[hackingonempty]

> It is a theory that we think in the brain. As far as I understand it, and please prove me wrong, there are other, valid theories? It's unscientific to discard theories purely based on belief. You seem to be arguing from a certain belief, not from science.

The evidence that the brain is where thinking happens is overwhelming, the minor influence of the rest of the body notwithstanding. There are no other theories.

[rendx]

How can you claim that "There are no other theories"? Do we operate from a different definition of "theory" perhaps?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind

Plenty of examples of theories listed there, no? Picking a random one: "Open individualism states that individual personal identity is an illusion and all individual conscious minds are in reality the same being".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_mind_thesis

"the extended mind thesis says that the mind does not exclusively reside in the brain or even the body, but extends into the physical world"

To state it explicitly, I am not saying I believe in these alternative theories. I am also not stating anything about their probabilities. I just want to be accurate in my understanding, which is that multiple theories do exist and none of them have been proven or disproven. It is not known whether you only need a brain to think, or how much other regions like the nervous system spread throughout the body play a crucial role for "thoughts" to form.

If you discard a theory just because you judge there not to be sufficient evidence, you're working from a belief, and not from scientific reason.

In this particular thread, we're not even coming from "thinking" or "mind", but from sentience -- the stated idea that the "brain can feel pain", as brain alone (!). Depending on which physical regions and matter you include in "brain", it doesn't even have any structures that according to the current scientific consensus provide or relay perceptive data. Unless you believe in one of the many theories that place the mind outside of the physical structures of the brain.

[ywain]

Sure. We can't even agree on a good definition for "consciousness", we certainly don't know _how_ it works. I don't think there's a lot of debate around that specific point.

I'll try and read the paper more carefully after work, but my quick read was: they posit that consciousness might not be localized in the brain because if it were, then how would people be able to perform telepathy / remote viewing / future foresight? I can't assert that their non-local hypothesis is wrong, but I can pretty confidently say that the evidence they're using to back it up is unscientific BS.

[47282847]

Agreed. I don’t consider what they present as “evidence”. But that doesn’t turn it into evidence against the theories either. There are other theories that explain “out of body experiences”. We just don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be convincing enough evidence to make the case for “the brain is where consciousness resides”, nor is there against it.

[cogman10]

> It's still an open debate

No it's not, not by anyone serious.

We know the brain is the seat of consciousness because damage to the brain damages consciousness. There is no other organ in the body where that's true. You can completely replace all other organs without changing consciousness.

You can always find a paper by a quack that posits the earth is flat, that doesn't mean there's serious debate.

[rendx]

Can you point me to a paper or other source that proves that the brain is the seat of consciousness? Or that disproves other theories?

I am familiar with the works of Oliver Sacks, Paul Broks, and others, who have spent their lives researching damage to brains and the potential consequences for the psyche. I agree that it sounds like damage to the brain can have big impact, but none of that research, as far as I am aware, proves or even tries to argue that the brain is the only component necessary for consciousness to exist.

I am not interested in beliefs in one theory over another. I am not even asking for probabilities. I am asking for a scientific approach, which is to detail all possible (potentially fringe) theories until they're proven wrong. Anything else is the business of religion.

    Singer, J., & Damasio, A. (2025). The physiology of interoception and its adaptive role in consciousness. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 380(1939), 20240305. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0305

We think that organs can be replaced with little apparent change in consciousness (- this is an active research area, too, by the way). There is also research into how body tissues may form a part of what other theories place exclusively in the brain.

    Aderinto, N., Olatunji, G., Kokori, E., Ogieuhi, I. J., Moradeyo, A., Woldehana, N. A., Lawal, Z. D., Adetunji, B., Assi, G., Nazar, M. W., & Adebayo, Y. A. (2025). A narrative review on the psychosocial domains of the impact of organ transplantation. Discover mental health, 5(1), 20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44192-025-00148-y

> "Having its own enteric nervous system, sometimes referred to as the “second brain,” the gut is also an immune organ and has a large surface area interacting with gut microbiota. The gut has been shown to play an important role in many physiological processes, and may arguably do so as well in perception and cognition."

    Boem F, Greslehner GP, Konsman JP and Chiu L (2024) Minding the gut: extending embodied cognition and perception to the gut complex. Front. Neurosci. 17:1172783. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2023.1172783

[cogman10]

Ok, I've actually read into the 3 articles you've suggested and none of them are making the argument you are making. I think you just title mined.

Article 1. is about how the brain interprets incoming signals from the body

Article 2. is about dealing with psychiatric needs, such as medication compliance and stress, which result from organ transplants.

And, as I addressed in another comment, Article 3. is a discussion about the impacts of gut microbiome on mood. It is not a discussion of "consciousness".

[cogman10]

Three are a million case studies and studies on it. So much so that you'll find studies on the best ways to repair consciousness after traumatic brain injuries [1].

You can't find a single case study where someone's consciousness was notably altered due to bowel resection. Something that has happened all the time.

Where are the people losing or having alerted consciousness after having their stomachs stapled? Their perforated bowels resected? Their bowel cancer polyps removed?

The closest you'll find is soldiers suffering from, understandable, PTSD.

Also, I'd point out that the studies you referenced aren't suggesting your point. They are saying that the gut can affect our mood and cravings. But as anyone that's taken a powerful antibiotic can attest, that did not modify their consciousness even though it nuked a huge portion of their biome.

People also get fecal transplants, they don't share consciousness as a result.

Unless you want to define consciousness as an eternal soul that exists in rocks, then you'll find no support for the suggestion that it exists outside a brain.

You also need to explain why it is that traumatic brain injuries alter consciousness and memory. Why it is that we can observe physical changes in the brains of dementia patients.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2931585/

[rendx]

Agreed.

Let's wait and see what happens with brain or head transplantation. :)

[rcxdude]

If you're going full philosophy of science, are these alternative theories falsifiable in the first place? Much of this kind of argument turns into philosophy and metaphysics instead of empirical science.

[rendx]

Imagine what would happen if we transplanted a head, or full brain, and the consciousness self would still remain the same, like with other organ transplantation.

We'll see!

I am saying: we can guess, but we don't know. I am not saying it's likely. I just want to remain precise in what are theories. It is a theory that consciousness "lives" inside the physical brain, as much as it is one that it doesn't. It is physically possible that it exists energetically and moves and stays with "the larger chunk of body".

[raffael_de]

I believe to some extent that everything is conscious and that it's specifically our species' prized mental features that lessen it's level at least temporarily. purely esoterically the statement "a rock is more conscious than a human being" doesn't even seem too outrageous to me.

[echelon_musk]

See also: Hridaya.