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

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cogman10 30 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> 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.

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ywain 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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rendx 2 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

	▲	ywain 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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raffael_de 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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echelon_musk 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]