I’d be happy to know what Gazzaniga’s experiment is.

Thank you for the answer, Rabbi. I still don’t understand what makes you reject Gazzaniga’s experiment and claim that my left hemisphere does not create my consciousness. What I meant here is that from the fact that it sometimes “makes things up” or “fills in gaps,” you can’t argue that it’s unreliable — just as the senses are generally reliable. So basically, what is the argument by which you reject Gazzaniga’s proof?
You mentioned Descartes there, but I didn’t really understand the argument you took from him.

David, Gazzaniga presents a case in which a person with a split brain (there is no connection between the two hemispheres) invents for himself a story about events that happen because he has no information from the right half of the brain. From this, Gazzaniga concludes that in fact the left brain is what unifies the information we have into an orderly doctrine, and essentially it is what constructs our consciousness.
Rabbi Michael was not convinced by this argument, and I’m trying to understand why.

What? Before this experiment we knew that without a brain there is no consciousness, meaning on your view “the brain is what constructs our consciousness.”
Now we’ve narrowed it down to the left part. So what?

No. Before this, we didn’t know at all that the brain creates consciousness. That is, we knew there is a brain, we knew there is consciousness, and we thought these were two completely different things. One is biological-chemical (brain) and one is mental (mind). Now we’ve learned that the left half of the brain is what creates consciousness. It has the ability to build a unified picture of the world. That is the novelty as I understand it.

What do you mean when you say “consciousness”? The feeling of “I,” or a world-picture of sounds, sights, etc.? With the second possibility you can work with illusions, and the brain can produce that, as the experiment shows. The first, no.

I mean that consciousness “attaches itself” to the left side. If a split-brain person had two consciousnesses, that would prove that the brain controls it.

I didn’t understand either of the responses. When I say consciousness I mean one coherent consciousness of “I.” Why couldn’t the brain create that? The proof is that when there is missing information from the right brain, the left brain completes it with information that makes sense to it. That’s what happened in Gazzaniga’s experiment. Nobody is saying that the right brain creates consciousness. It doesn’t have that capability. It drives other things, but not the coherence of the “I.”
Also — I’ll just note that I’m only asking based on Rabbi Michael’s book and trying to understand the issue better. I still haven’t decided whether I’m a determinist or a libertarian (despite a natural inclination toward the latter).

To say that the conclusion is unreliable because you were forced to reach it suggests that this thought is disconnected from the chain of cause and effect (as Ron Aharoni pointed out regarding the lazy man’s argument).

aaaa dear — which part of this thread are you talking about/responding to? Please elaborate on what you mean about Ron Aharoni.

Ariel,
First, this is not on p. 328 but on p. 416 and on. ???
Second, I explained it there and I do not understand your question. What isn’t clear? I said that even if the left lobe creates conscious unity, the question is: within what consciousness is that unified experience created? From this it follows that there is some consciousness, and that it is specifically not split. At most, you have identified the deceiving demon. So what? Whom is it deceiving?
As for your “sometimes” point, I answered that here. I do not see what is unclear.
Beyond that, there are also other relevant points there (p. 429 and on), and this is not the place to expand.

Indeed, Rabbi, you are right — it starts from page 416 in the book.
Let me try asking again: seemingly, from Gazzaniga’s experiments we see that the brain creates a unified picture, translates reality / does not translate reality according to its wholeness and health. That is, what is difficult for me here is that Occam’s razor seems very relevant here. If we see that the brain creates reality and a unified consciousness, then why assume there is some additional entity here that is unnecessary? What is unclear to me is how you rejected that claim. I understood the problem that Gazzaniga describes the brain as both subject and object together, but okay, that’s confusion on his part — seemingly it’s simple to say that the brain creates a false consciousness that there is a harmonious “I,” but all this is its own product. Where is your rejection of that claim? You wrote: “My claim is that even if the first self is a fiction, the handiwork of our left hemisphere, the second cannot be a fiction” — why???!!! And you continue: “This is nothing but a version of Descartes’ cogito argument presented in the prologue: I perceive (even if what I perceive is a polyphonic consciousness), therefore I am one: there is one unified awareness that experiences (or does not experience) polyphony.”

Is the rejection of Gazzaniga’s claim based on Descartes’ cogito argument? If so, I don’t understand it either. After all, the deceiving demon could be the one who pours into me thought/doubt, and there is no “I” at all — everything is an illusion. So what exactly has been proven here, and how does that translate into rejecting Gazzaniga? Does doubting the system “break” the infinite circle of the deceiving demon? Or of causality and determinism? It isn’t clear to me. It also isn’t clear to me why you wrote that “the unity of consciousness is strong evidence in favor of dualist libertarianism” — why? Why is it more reasonable to say that the unity of consciousness is evidence for libertarianism rather than just another false mechanism of the brain? Isn’t that begging the question — assuming that our natural intuitions are indeed correct, and therefore also assuming that this is strong evidence?

I don’t really understand the question. I asked you: in what consciousness is the product of our mischievous left hemisphere created? The brain does not create consciousness; rather, it creates content that is poured into consciousness. But what is that unified consciousness within which everything is created? And in general, what is consciousness? A lump of matter is not endowed with consciousness, at least as far as we know.
I also don’t understand how this differs from a claim that arises even without any connection to all these phenomena: we see that when the brain changes, our consciousness and sensations change, and therefore there is no soul but only brain. When there is a wound, it hurts. Does that mean pain is a wound? Who experiences the pain?
That is the essence of the cogito argument: I experience, therefore there is one who experiences.

Meaning: consciousness cannot be a fiction of the demon deceiving us, because if so, there is no one *to deceive*?

Exactly.

Thank you, Rabbi, for your patience. With your permission I’ll keep asking, because things still aren’t clear to me.
It is clear to me that there is such a phenomenon as consciousness. But what still isn’t clear to me is why we can’t assume that my brain creates consciousness exactly the way it creates information. Why is it obvious to you that a lump of matter is not endowed with consciousness, but is endowed with the ability to transfer information and invent information when it is missing? Maybe that’s just another function it has, exactly like the other things it can do?
And as a separate question(?) I still don’t understand Descartes’ proof. Why is he certain that there is an “I”? Maybe the “I” too is a fiction of the deceiving demon, and he chose to make us believe there is such a thing as an “I,” while in truth there is none and we are nothing but a lump of matter devoid of awareness.

You can assume anything, but it is not reasonable. If someone told you that the stone next to you has consciousness, I assume you would not be inclined to accept that. The same is true of a chair or a fig tree.
No lump of matter creates information or transfers it. Information is a mental matter. Take a computer, for example. It does not create information and does not transfer it. The computer moves electrons around (and even that it does not really do. It performs what its programmer caused it to perform). When an image appears on the screen that looks like this: 1+1=2, from the computer’s standpoint this means nothing. It is not information. Only a human observer who interprets that image as the result of a calculation turns it into information. Therefore material objects have absolutely nothing to do with information. See also post no. 35, which discusses the question of what intelligence is and whether inanimate things or animals have it.
The “I” is a fiction of the demon created in whom? Who feels that fiction of “I”? There is nobody who feels it? Feeling, by definition, is a mental function, and it is not reasonable to attribute it to inanimate matter. It’s like the claim that the contraction is not literal and this is all just an illusion. And I ask about that: whose illusion? Who experiences that illusion? After all, if only the Holy One, blessed be He, exists in the world and we are all illusions, then there is no one to experience that illusion.

I liked the comparison to contraction. Thanks!

As for the brain creating consciousness — I read post no. 35, but I was still left with questions. You wrote that “a lump of matter does not create information and does not transfer it” — but in your book, in Gazzaniga’s experiment, we saw that the brain does indeed build logical connections on its own! Isn’t that creating information that did not previously exist? Isn’t that “information”? And the question comes back — if it really can fill in missing pieces (information) on its own, is it not reasonable that the brain can also create conscious sensation?

Bottom line — is what I said possible but not likely? Or is there some misunderstanding on my part in one of the details? And if it is not likely — why? A lump of stone indeed is not likely to have consciousness, but it also does not process information and complete missing information, instruct limbs to move, etc.

The brain does not build logical connections but biological ones. They receive logical meaning and the status of information-transmitters only because there is a factor that decodes those logical connections and gives them the meaning of information. Exactly as in the computer example I gave. The factor that decodes those connections (the computer user) is our consciousness/soul. Without it, there is no information here at all.
I am repeating myself, and it doesn’t seem that we are making progress. If there is no agreement, that is also perfectly fine, but there is no point in repeating things again and again.

Hello Rabbi,
It’s really not from disagreement but from not understanding a certain point. I’ll summarize what I understand from you, and I’d be glad if you agree/disagree/add:

What you mean about the fact that we have consciousness, which is separate from this lump called the brain, is because the brain as a lump of matter has no ability to “create” anything at all really, and it is only a kind of computer that moves things from here to there and from there to here; and just as a computer has no consciousness, so too it is not likely that the brain has consciousness. Even so — that does not mean it is impossible to propose the hypothesis that the brain is what creates consciousness and the thought that there is such a thing called an “I,” and that it is different from all other inanimate matter (it’s just that science still hasn’t understood how, etc.) — but it is not likely, again because of the way we look at nature and because of the computer example.

Indeed. Nothing is impossible. It is a matter of probabilities.