Combination Problem

[Michael McMahon]

The combination problem of how consciousness is unified in the mind might be helped if the brain were viewed as mono-sensory. So the brain could be viewed as exclusively visual for an able bodied person or exclusively audial for a blind person. That’s a simplistic solution to avoid the need to reconcile other senses! So one way to think of a lobotomy of removing your frontal cortex is much like blindsight where you can’t focus on the background even if you can detect far-sighted scenes such that you’d be less able to think clearly. Alternatively you might be less able to subvocalise when your frontal cortex is close to your mouth. We could think of secondary senses slower than the speed of light like touch or taste as being almost self-sufficient in the sense organ or the peripheral nervous system without burdening the visual brain too much. Were perspective viewed as a real force much like objects contracting into the distance as if objects were formed by lasers then a simplistic observation is that more computational power would be needed to consciously perceive an object. That way the entire brain rather than just the occipital lobe might be required for vision. One way to think of tinnitus might be that the brain is detecting the empty cavity in the skull connecting you to your ear as if your head shape is misperceived. Were the brain entirely visual then this would help overcome your eyelids to your vision as spherical like your brain instead of square like a TV! 

[KJW]

About 30 years ago, I experienced something quite extraordinary: I got glasses to correct my short-sightedness. The new clarity of vision was like being reborn. But everywhere I looked, it was like I was in a depression, with the ground and other horizontal surfaces sloping upward away from me. Then after about six months, I noticed that I was no longer in a depression, the ground and other surfaces were flat again. I didn't notice my sight correcting itself over the time. I had simply forgotten about the distorted vision until I suddenly noticed that the distortion was gone. It's extraordinary because it raises the question of how the brain managed to correct the distorted perception.
 

 

Edited September 8 by KJW

[Michael McMahon]

21 minutes ago, KJW said:

About 30 years ago, I experienced something quite extraordinary: I got glasses to correct my short-sightedness. The new clarity of vision was like being reborn. But everywhere I looked, it was like I was in a depression, with the ground and other horizontal surfaces sloping upward away from me. Then after about six months, I noticed that I was no longer in a depression, the ground and other surfaces were flat again. I didn't notice my sight correcting itself over the time. I had simply forgotten about the distorted vision until I suddenly noticed that the distortion was gone. It's extraordinary because it raises the question of how the brain managed to correct the distorted perception.
 

 

One reason emotional intelligence is tested in medical aptitude entrance exams might be that those nerdy students opposing the exams lacked enough emotional wit to do so more intensely! 

Edited September 8 by Michael McMahon

[swansont]

2 hours ago, Michael McMahon said:

One way to think of tinnitus might be that the brain is detecting the empty cavity in the skull connecting you to your ear as if your head shape is misperceived

Is there any science that supports this claim?

[LuckyR]

On 9/8/2024 at 2:09 PM, KJW said:

About 30 years ago, I experienced something quite extraordinary: I got glasses to correct my short-sightedness. The new clarity of vision was like being reborn. But everywhere I looked, it was like I was in a depression, with the ground and other horizontal surfaces sloping upward away from me. Then after about six months, I noticed that I was no longer in a depression, the ground and other surfaces were flat again. I didn't notice my sight correcting itself over the time. I had simply forgotten about the distorted vision until I suddenly noticed that the distortion was gone. It's extraordinary because it raises the question of how the brain managed to correct the distorted perception.
 

 

Well it underscores the fact that we see with our brain, not our eyes. My left eye's natural preferred focal length happens to be at infinity whereas my right was about 3 feet so I needed reading glasses, but when I was fitted with regular glasses, the left lens was a blank (since I had perfect distance vision there). The glasses gave me a literal headache. My ophthalmologist explained to me that since the left image was larger than the right one, since corrected images are smaller than uncorrected) my brain was having to reconcile the two, but if I continued to wear them my brain would "learn" to do it and the headaches would go away. 

 

I never wore them again.