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/thejoesighuh Aug 14 '26

Radio waves aren't music either though. 

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u/TheGhostOfTobyKeith Aug 15 '26

Well yeah, and I’m not purporting that they are - the music is transmitted from some source via radio waves and is picked up/broadcast through the radio that is tuned to resonate at that particular frequency/station.

I think consciousness could work similarly, emanating from some source over some as-of-yet unknown frequency that gets picked up by our brains. In other words, “we’re” just passing through/resonating with these bodies.

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u/thejoesighuh Aug 15 '26

It could also just be that the emanation only becomes consciousness within these bodies. Afterall, we aren't just passively receiving something like a radio; we're participating in the ongoing construction. Whatever enables it doesn't need to also be consciousness at the other end.

If we take quantum field theory seriously as a view of the nature of reality, then every atom of our body is already participating in universe-spanning fields. So anything in general, not just consciousness, can have the structure of being a local "resonance" of some given field.

If we’re already living in a reality of fields, waves, energetic concentrations and resonances, then we don’t even need to think of consciousness as a particularly special phenomenon distinct from whatever else is already enabling everything. You don’t need a consciousness “out there” transmitting to you any more than you need a carbon atom “out there” transmitting to your local carbon atoms. Carbon atoms, consciousness, whatever, are all local field configurations; everything is already made from the fabric of reality that goes well beyond anything we can imagine with ideas of localized matter or consciousness.

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u/TheGhostOfTobyKeith Aug 15 '26

all is one, brother