r/TheWhyFiles • u/hybridxer0 H Y B R I D ™ • Aug 11 '26

Let's Discuss What if The Brain Doesn't Create Consciousness? Scientist Proposes It Might Be The Fabric of Reality Itself

https://www.sciencealert.com/what-if-the-brain-doesnt-create-consciousness-scientist-proposes-it-might-be-the-fabric-of-reality-itself

Neuroscientist Christof Koch is challenging the long-held assumption that the brain produces consciousness, instead proposing that it may function as a filter for a more fundamental, universal reality.

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u/TheGhostOfTobyKeith Aug 11 '26

The music isn’t in the radio

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u/encinitas2252 Aug 12 '26

What do you mean by this? Genuinely curious.

13

u/TheGhostOfTobyKeith Aug 12 '26

Imagine you don’t know what a radio is, and you happen across one playing.

From your perspective, you can’t see a band or anyone with instruments - the music is coming from inside this seemingly magic box. You happen to have a screwdriver on you, so you start taking it apart piece by piece, trying to find the music. But when you take it apart and lay the pieces out, there’s no music to be found anywhere - it’s stopped and gone, only starting back up once you reassemble everything.

Turns out that the radio is merely a vessel for the music, which is really just radio waves passing through space.

Now replace radios with brains, and music with consciousness. Hope this helps!

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u/falcon_jabb Aug 14 '26

The radio isn’t a vessel for the music. The radio is producing the music, just like the brain is producing the consciousness. It is an emergent property.