The brain — what even is it?

The brain is at the crux of the mind-body problem. Everyone hits a dead-end on this subject. This essay finds a way out of this impasse.

The obvious and undeniable connection between the brain and consciousness is one of the main reasons people are convinced of materialism. Changes in the brain result in changes to consciousness, thus apparently reducing consciousness to matter.

Putting aside the well-known ‘hard problem’, there is a fundamental epistemic problem here. Odd as it may sound, we cannot analytically distinguish between these two propositions:

• Consciousness emerges from brain activity

• Consciousness is making sense of brain activity

This might sound trite at first, but there is a real problem at hand here.

Consider someone wearing VR goggles being shown various images. You could conclude that the VR goggles’ electrical activity correlates with conscious states, and thus produces those conscious states. Obviously this would be foolish, as we know the already-conscious being is simply conscious of the VR goggles’ activity.