Consciousness: Is it seperate from the human body?

[Jenny A]

Lately I've been fascinated with the idea of consciousness. I've been reading a bit on quantum physics, and have come to the idea that the conscious state of mind is completely seperate from the brain.

Really? Let's look at your evidence for this feeling:

1) I feel as though I am not my body. For instance, if I cut my own hand off, my hand is no longer me, I'm still in the larger portion of my own body (of course I know that's mainly because my brain is still communicating with the rest of my body).

What you are really saying here is that you are separate from your body, not your brain. Cut off a everything but your brain, and if you could keep the brain alive you'd still be you. That makes it pretty clear to me that you are your brain, so to speak.

The funny thing is that the mind/body connection is both stronger and weaker than that. Neurologists have plotted the brain's map of the body on the brain itself. The map doesn't go away just because the limb has. Amputees commonly both benefit (in the use of prosthetic) and suffer from (pain and itching) from brain's unwillingness to really believe a missing limb is gone. Sometimes itching phantom limbs can be relieved by scratching the body parts next to them on the brain's map of the body. Cramped or twisted phantom limbs can be provided relief by fooling the eye with mirrors into believe the limb is being stretched.

Brain damage can sometimes cause the opposite and rather more disconcerting notion that one of your limbs is not yours.

Notice that all of this takes perception and missperception takes place in the brain, not somewhere outside the brain.

2) It takes the brain roughly 80 milliseconds to process new stimulus, including getting that information to the brain via the nervous system. Which introduces the idea that time may not exist if it is all according to how fast the brain can process whats going on.

Okay, now you are just being silly. How fast your brain processes information has everything to do with how fast you can perceive and nothing to do with how fast objects or time is really occurring. Basically what you've said is that your brain's perception of the world is bound by the laws of physics. Well, yeah it is.

I would say that mostly what you've shown here is that you are firmly bound to your body and brain which are material, and not that you exist outside it in anyway.

3) Finally, there are all types of optical, tactile and auditory illusions that can play tricks on the brain. We can only perceive our world through our senses, even certain animals can percieve colors invisible to the naked eye. Which, too me, all says that the brain is a magnificent instrument, but is not perfect. And instruments aren't autonomous.

Yep. The brain is far from perfect and we don't have the physical organs to perecieve all possible wave lengths of light, or hear all air vibrations, or see radio waves. Those are all by the way, things our other organs lack, not something wanting in the brain.

Illusions on the other hand, do take place because of how your brain interprets sensory input.

What on earth about any of this causes you to think your mind is separate from your brain. I read through your examples and become more and more convinced that we are completely limited by our brains because in a very real sense we are our brains.

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We were never really born and we cannot really die, the mind body organism dies and is born, but we are not the mind body organism. When I say we, I mean we as one, so its not really plural, even to say that we are one isn't correct, for that makes it sound like there is more than one. Like our lungs, they don't really just stop in our bodies, they extend outward, they are one with the tree's where the oxygen comes from, the tree's are one with the sun where they get their sunlight to be able to produce oxygen, and so it goes on and on right back to the so called beginning, or the big bang, yes its all One.

Yes our bodies interact with the outside world. And our bodies contain a number of micro organisms that arguably aren't strictly speaking us either. But that doesn't make us everything else in any real way. Your car, if you have one, uses oxygen to move every bit as much as you do, but that doesn't make your care one with the cosmos. Interacting with and using are not the same as being one with.

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I have no arguments, this is simply my experience, my truth, you don't need to prove truth, if you don't agree with me then that's fine, that's how it should be.

Arguments from personal experience not verifiable by others are essentially worthless for determining what the world is and how it works. What you've just said is "I feel at one with the cosmos." Fine I won't dispute that. But I will dispute whether you are really one with the cosmos. You aren't.