Why you are not your brain

And it wasn't 'just the drugs'

Why you are not your brain

If I had a nickel for every time that people mistake themselves from their brain, and for every time the phenomenology and existential implications of drug-induced experiences were written off as ‘just the drugs’, I would be a man with many nickels.

So, I am writing this as a place to direct people who make either of those claims, or both (they usually come along together).

So, why are you not your brain?

The scientific materialist view of the world believes that everything is fundamentally physical. This is the de-facto worldview of most people. Mostly because this is what we are taught in schools. I remember our physics teacher telling us that “everything is made of atoms”, and our chemistry teacher telling us that “everything is made of chemicals”. This feeds into the minds of the young that there is nothing other than the physical world and that everything else is reducible to physical stuff.

At some point along the way, we are then told that we are our brains. That everything in our minds is the result of brain chemistry, and that the idea that ‘you’ are something more than this brain chemistry is just an illusion. Brain scans are shown as irrefutable evidence that when we think about tennis, for example, a certain brain area lights up, and so thinking about tennis must be reducible to interactions in the brain – just like everything else.

We are then told about studies that claim to show that the brain lights up in certain areas before you make a conscious choice, and so therefore you only have the illusion of choice, but really it was your brain that decided for ‘you’.

Consciousness is just an illusion caused by ‘complex’, brain chemistry, we are told, and therefore, we are nothing other than our brains.

And look, if someone gets a brain injury, or has a stroke, their conscious experience changes – they can’t remember certain things, slur their words, or out of nowhere know Swedish. So, if the brain gets injured and causes a change in consciousness, then surely that is clear evidence that consciousness is reducible to the brain, and we really are just our brains.

This is pretty much the story we are told. Maybe you have a slightly different story. Maybe you’ve never thought about it very much. Maybe some details are a little different in your story. But fundamentally, if we could somehow see past the illusion of free will and consciousness, we are told that we are our brains.

But is any of this story true?

Let’s first imagine that this story is true, and see if it takes us anywhere self-refuting (spoiler alert: it does).

So, you are just your brain. Nice. Cool. Hello brain. What nice folds you have.

If you are just your brain, then you are just the result of the laws of physics and the laws of evolution (given you are a biological being). So, your brain is the result of millions of years of evolution. What drove this evolution? Survival of the fittest. Your brain is the result of other brains and organisms surviving and passing on the joys of existence to you.

Many assume that ‘the ability to perceive the truth about reality’ is a trait chosen for my evolution, as, the argument goes, the ability to perceive the truth about reality allows beings to survive better.

For example, if there is a tiger in the bush about to jump out and eat me, my ability to perceive accurately the fact there is a tiger in the bush about to jump out and eat me, allows me to then avoid that tiger and therefore survive.

Okay, this makes pretty good sense. However, what if, what I thought was a tiger in the bush was actually a cute little kitty cat? Does my ability to accurately perceive that in the bushes is a cute cat and not a tiger help me to survive?

I think that it doesn’t. What if the cute cat has rabies and is going to bite me? What if the cute cat is the cat-child of a big scary tiger who will come looking for me if I approach the cute cat?

Ideal for survival is not that I accurately perceive whether a cute cat or a tiger is in the bush. Ideal for survival is for me to perceive a tiger in the bush even if it is a cute cat. That way I avoid the situation either way. Ideal for survival is for me to perceive threats even where there actually might not be one. That way I stay extra safe from threats, and survive longer.

This is part of the reason the human being is programmed for negativity, depression, anxiety, and pessimism… it pays to be more worried than you need to be. It has helped us to survive evolutionarily. (Thankfully, it is possible to transcend this programming, and life can start to feel much, much better.)

Okay, but you might say, what if in the bush was a cow? And therefore, by accurately perceiving that in the bush was a cow and not a tiger, I could hunt, kill and eat the cow, and therefore I’d survive better. Well fed. That way, accurate perception does seem like it helps survival.

If we accept this, we can extrapolate. What helps us to survive is to know whether in the bush is a threat or food. We therefore abstract from the reality of what’s in the bush, and create icons, or concepts, ‘threat’, ‘food’… and perceiving accurately whether in the bush is ‘threat’ or ‘food’, we can accept, does help us to survive.

But, is the tiger the same as ‘threat’? ‘Threat’ is a concept, an idea. The tiger is a living, breathing, beast. Flesh and bone and teeth. But perceiving ‘threat’, not perceiving the actual tiger, is the part that makes us jump and run away or avoid the bush. It is not the perception of the actual tiger itself. Maybe we can’t see the full tiger. Maybe we just see eyes peeking out from the bush. We perceive the icon, ‘threat’, not the reality.

This spirals all the way down into Alice’s Wonderland when we realise that even the so-called ‘actual tiger’ too is just an icon for ‘reality’. We do not ever actually perceive the world as it is. We perceive icons. Because this is what helps us best to survive.

Don’t just take my word for it. The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that he has created a mathematical model showing that evolutionary survival is the entire game; ‘the ability to perceive reality accurately’ doesn’t even feature on the board. Accurate perception of reality simply plays no part in survival. Perception of an icon which best allows for survival is the entire game.

Hoffman argues the world we perceive is akin to a laptop screen – with its icons. Inside a laptop, the reality of the laptop, is semiconductors, a battery, etc… but all we see is the faux-reality of icons on the screen. Hoffman argues human perception is the same. We never perceive reality as it is, everything is an icon.

Coming full circle

So, how does this apply to our ‘I am just my brain’ claim? Well, if ‘you’ are arguing that ‘you’ are just ‘your’ brain, then it is really just your brain that is making that claim – since after all, you are just your brain.

Hello brain, what nice electrical signals you have.

But, if your brain is just a physical object that is under the control of the laws of physics and evolutionary processes, and those evolutionary processes are not designed to perceive reality accurately (but rather are just focused towards survival)… then your brain cannot possibly perceive reality accurately. Therefore, and here is the kicker, your brain cannot possibly be accurate in the claim it is making that ‘I am just my brain’.

So, to sum up so far, the brain argues that ‘you’ are just your brain. But the brain itself cannot perceive reality accurately as it is just the result of evolutionary processes focused purely on survival and not accurate perception. Therefore, the brain’s claim that ‘you’ (your consciousness, your feelings, your choices) are all reducible to it (the brain) has no basis on which to defend the accuracy of its claim.

Therefore, the claim ‘I am just my brain’, is self-refuting, as brains, by the theories contained within scientific materialism itself, are not the type of things that could be able to accurately perceive the supposed reality that ‘I am just my brain’.

And it wasn’t just the drugs

Okay, now that we know that you are not the brain. We can now realise that it wasn’t ‘just the drugs’.

I have had several drug-induced experiences in my life. Some of them showed me how much I love my friends and family. Some of them showed me that depression was not the only possible response to life, and that the universe might be benevolent. Some of them gave me an experience of what felt like God.

A common response to people hearing of such stories is that ‘well that is all very good and nice, but those experiences aren’t true, they were just the result of the drugs you took, which have messed with your brain and were showing you hallucinations, not reality’.

Okay, so, there are many issues with this response.

One: nobody knows what reality is. Partly due to our previous arguments about the ‘you are not your brain’ situation. But even if we remove those arguments and decide that I am not my brain but some consciousness that is not subject to evolution and therefore at least believes, and may have good arguments for, the idea that it can perceive reality as it really is… even if we accept all this, nobody really knows reality.

Even if we did have good arguments to show that we can perceive reality as it is, how could we be sure about those arguments themselves? How could we ever be certain about certainty itself?

We are thrown into life, and have ideas and perceptions about what reality is, but how can we ever verify them against ‘the truth’? Scientific experiments simply verify our perceptions against our other perceptions (even mathematical theories are perceptions, where else is a mathematical theory if it is not a perception within consciousness, how many mathematical theories do you know while you’re asleep?)

Furthermore, we only ever have our perception. We can never know the mind of another, in order to verify that our perception is ‘true’ or at least shared by the other person. Even if they claimed to also perceive the tree, for example, we can never know we are seeing the same tree. Or that the tree isn’t really hallucinated. Or whether we’re dreaming both the tree and the other person. Or whether we’re a brain in a vat, and we really are just our brains, being tricked by electrical signals that we’re perceiving a tree. We can never know any of these things.

Therefore, since nobody knows what reality is, then how do you know that my experiences under the influence of drugs are not reality? Since you can’t know what reality is, then how can you know drug-induced experiences are not it?

Drug-induced experiences are at least as real as regular perceptions. Now, given our arguments previously, you might say that that means they’re not very real at all, since our regular perceptions don’t show us reality, drug-included experiences don’t either.

This may indeed be accurate.

But maybe drug experiences are more real

However, in defence of the ‘more real’ nature of drug-induced experiences over regular perception, I offer a couple of arguments:

1. If normal brain chemistry is the result of evolutionary processes focused purely on survival, then it makes sense that irregular brain chemistry caused by drugs may scramble the ‘survival focus’ of the brain, and allow in more of the ‘really real’ – outside of that which purely helps us to survive.

Aldous Huxley argued for this. He argued that the brain is a filter of reality, and that drugs can open up that filter and therefore let more of reality in.

2. Drug-induced experiences feel real. A classic trait of the psychedelic experience is that it feels ‘more real than regular reality’, and that some mystical, capital T Truth is revealed, some kind of secret of the universe.

Now, this might not seem like a very good argument; that something ‘feels true’. But if we reject the idea that ‘we are just our brains’, and instead embrace the idea that we are a consciousness with sometimes more, sometimes less accurate perceptions of reality, then the experiences that ‘feel more true’ may really be showing us that they really are more true. The perception might be accurate. If we are not a brain with 0% accurate perceptions, and instead we are a consciousness with some more accurate perceptions and some less accurate perceptions (for of course we are not always accurately perceiving (tricks of the eye, illusions and all that)), then it does provide evidence that the perceptions that feel most true may indeed be the ones that are more true. That feeling, in this worldview, provides real, actual, evidence for their actual, real truth status.

The main point though, about it not being ‘just the drugs’, is that if our regular brain chemistry does not perceive reality, then your claim that my drugged-up brain chemistry also doesn’t perceive reality holds zero weight. Because in neither instance was ‘reality’ perceived at all.

However, if we reject the ‘I am my brain’ view of the world, then the ‘feeling of truth’ that comes along with some drug-induced experiences holds actual weight for our wonderings about whether they are true, because the perception of them ‘feeling true’ may itself be an accurate perception – but I accept we cannot know this for sure, there may be other reasons for this feeling of truth.

And, furthermore, the bypassing of the evolutionary, survival focus of our biological, animal tendencies that the drugs may facilitate adds an extra argument to the idea that the drug-induced experience might actually be more true than regular experiences. Because we, and our brain chemistry, are not focused purely on survival anymore, it’s possible we let in more truth, more reality – there are also arguments relating to the Freudian ego and ego defences which also support this line of thinking.

Conclusion

So, there we have it. You are not your brain. And it wasn’t ‘just the drugs’. This is not to say that all drug-induced experiences are definitely true. They almost certainly are not. And if you’ve seen something scary, and it helps to believe that the thing you saw wasn’t ‘real’, then keep on believing that it wasn’t. It most likely wasn’t. Or maybe it was an icon – like on a laptop screen – for some fear in your subconscious. Maybe it was a real alien, a real lizard or a real giant insect you communicated with telepathically. But probably not. Maybe it really was, and maybe you just really are, completely reducible to physical processes in your brain. But probably not.

Epilogue

Possibly due to the arguments in this article, this article itself is self-refuting. So be it. The snake eats its own tail. We are human, and know very little, or nothing, of ultimate reality…