Dear Dr. Dohan,

I very much agree that mind originates from brain function. There is plenty of evidence in this regard, and I would even go as far as to say that mind and brain are synonymous — mind is brain function — similarly as software and hardware are inextricable (we cannot have one without the other and there is no definitive boundary where one starts and the other ends).

I agree that philosophy at large is more often than not an intellectual self-gratification to say the least, and I understand your faith in power of science and potential progress in terms of new discoveries, because I completely share that enthusiasm with you.

It is, nevertheless, merely a philosophical standpoint. Thus, I’m glad you have mentioned Karl Popper as it was apparently he who termed this — one can almost say — belief, “promissory materialism”. And I must admit that I share Graham’s skepticism when it comes to neurophysiology of conscious, if only for the direction in which the current trends in research are heading and try to tackle the whole problem.

It didn’t escape me that you are a (hopefully practicing) Buddhist. Or at least, that Buddhism isn’t strange to you. The next time you have the opportunity, please, try the following little experiment: While meditating, simply observe yourself. Your body-mind and everything that goes with it. Obviously, anything you are able to observe is not the observer. Next, try to point your attention to the observer by asking the question, “Who am I?”

Eventually you should realize that you cannot turn the attention directly at yourself, that you are the observer or that-which-experiences, i.e. consciousness, and that all your attributes without fail (including awareness and also that part which asks) is what is observed. At that point it should be also obvious to you that the paradox is migraine-inducing only if one tries to solve the conundrum from the vantage point of (observable!) mind-brain.

Thus, if I take the hope of “promissory materialism” at face value, the questions I deem relevant, but never heard asked, are:

• Considering that research during the last few decades provided sufficient amount of evidence (e.g. here, here, or here) for morphological and physiological similarities between mind-brains of mammals, what is the minimal necessary neural complexity to generate consciousness?
• Considering the above and that consciousness is observably (or better said, existentially) without attributes, how can billions of unique mind-brains of various species produce something which is (quite obviously) identical to a T?

YS, Sender Spike