Who sees the goings on in your head?

This has already been blogged but very clear now.

In the common neural processing process view of consciousness and mind there is a chain of events that makes up mental activity. Say in vision we are presented with an object, light enters the eye and is converted into neuron impulses which stimulate the brain where regions are activated and classifications and modelling happens and if the subject is asked to speak about the experience the chain activates speak centres which activate the mouth and pharynx muscles and speak is made.

But there is an odd thing. We expect the chain to arrive "somewhere." We are expecting a point to receive the experience.

In the past people have suggested a point in the brain like the Pineal Gland to be the centre of experience. But as many including Daniel Dennett have pointed out what if this idea of there being a centre is actually just an idea rather than a real fact about experience.

The other view is not a point but a holism of the brain so the whole thing receives the experience. But we can ask why stop the holism at the brain? Can we suggest that the whole universe is connected in one massive holism? Such a view does not preserve the brain as the seat of experience either.

ANOTHER oddity is how we are seemingly aware of all the stages of say seeing the tree. I just had an experience of wanted to put one of two things in the garage and took the wrong one. In reflection I can see the decision to put something in the garage, and I can see the selection process needing to pick one, but they got separated because I was thinking about something else, and when I came back to focus on the job I was carrying the wrong one. So I can reflect on what is going on in my head quite deeply. Yet if my reflections were just mental processes how can I gain access to these processes without adding more processing to them? What I mean is that if "came back to focus" meant started up a new reflection stream then am I not compounding the complexity of the situation rather than what appears to be the case of simplifying and tidying up the mistakes. Being focused seems to clean up the space, not what we would expect of adding a new thread of processing. Suggests "focus" is not new processing but rather a quality of the existing stream. But then how would I gain meta knowledge about a processing stream unless things were happening outside processing.

Perhaps that exposition got complex itself. Another way is to look at the experience above of seeing the Xmas tree. So there is a tree before us. As mentioned in this blog we usually take that to be the start of experience. Because then we need to see it, which is why we are in the room looking at it. But actually the end point has already happened! If you can see a tree in the room then the "seeing" has already happened and there is nothing left to do! The person you imagine being in the room who still needs to see the tree is actually just part f your modelling. The question here is who is noting all these things. If we look deeply into the experience of the tree and this takes long practice we can start to separate parts of it. As a recent video on Youtube asks (TODO find this): try and look at the object without giving it a name or deciding what it is. That is hard. But the fact that there are two parts here shows that seeing a tree is compound. In the context of this discussion here: how in the world do I know this? If I can get behind language then is that some new pre-linguistic processing?

CONCLUSION

So the big reveal that for some reason no one in the West I know of ever really saw is that, as mentioned above, is that it is the "self", the expectation of a centre or receiver, that is just a part of the processing.

So when there is no longer an expected receiver it means, and this is the mic drop, all the mental phenomena we have talked about above exist as they are. That idea that we need a new thread or processing stream to explain "how I know" is just a sophisticated version of the idea that I still need to see the tree when it is already there. When something happens, then it has happened. All the stuff we stick on to that about someone needing to receive that event to make it real is just modern myths we tell afterwards. In Buddhism it is the "second arrow."

So for example when examining the tree and separating the form (rupa) from the name (nama) in Pali there is no massive backroom computer doing this: what is created of a distinct form and name is just what is created. Likewise returning to the top when I refocus and find myself carrying the wrong thing, that is just what happened. It did not involved a new thread of processing, it already happened.

So when a mental event like refocus happens, the idea that to know about this requires new processing for an imaginary "self" to experience it is hopelessly confused. The plain fact is refocus happened, and that is all that refocus is. No one knows that refocus happened, no one needs to know, it happened.

So what happened when a thought emerged that I want to put in a blog? Exactly that! A thought happened! And now a lot of pushing on keys on a computer. If we are honest it is all just happening.

The "I" does exist in that this crops up a lot. But where it does not belong is in the "physics" of all this.

So it is true that behind the scenes the "refocus" event must have also triggered something in the thought and linguistic centres. From this I can talk about it. But the issue is that this is all normal brain functioning, it is not involving any "centre" or "point of observation" or "watcher." This experience of being a "watcher' in my own brain is clear nonsense, as the brain is what watches, and a brain watching itself cannot explain "watching"! But despite being nonsense it is the common metaphor we use to describe experience.

It is of growing important in this blog to note this metaphor and call it out as unrealistic!