weirdway

So we all know the two basic arguments used to assert that the mind is identical with or rooted in the waking brain.

1. Chemicals which affect the brain alter your mind. Therefore your mind is influenced by physical objects.

2. Different regions of the brain can be measured and associated in their activity with various forms of mental activity.

Of course in principle these are obviously fallacious arguments because in principle you could have similar dream experiences regarding dream brains. However, arguments are much less convincing than experience so I set out to have the corresponding dream experiences myself.

The first one I had many months ago. It was a non lucid dream. I was in a grocery store at night shopping. I met a friend there and he asked me if I wanted to smoke cannabis and I did. So we went out and smoked. Within a few seconds I began to feel high. But not like I was high on weed awake. It was a totally unique altered state of consciousness. I woke up later and was thinking 'wtf!? How did dream neurochemicals affect my dream brain and then my chemically altered dream brain affect my consciousness?' I realized it was all an illusion of my unconscious dreaming mind. Then I thought 'aha! Well of course it was and so it is when I use any mind altering chemical when awake, even something like caffeine!' This dream arose in context of a lot of contemplation of the nature of drugs and psychonautics in relation to subjective idealism.

After the first dream I decided I wanted to have one other similar dream experience. I wanted to get a brain scan from a dream doctor and have them explain how the dream brain regions affected my mind. I commanded myself to create this sort of dream during my next random lucid dream. I visualized the basics of what doing that would feel like and habituated the idea that this is what I would do in my next lucid dream. A couple months later I had this dream when I became lucid. When I became lucid I decided that I had an appointment set up at a local brain doctors office. I then decided that the office was just down the street. I entered the building and the decor was unusual for a doctor's office. Occult symbolism everywhere. Pentagrams, books about voodoo, the tree of life, little talismans everywhere. I walked into the office where I decided they had the brain scan machine and the doctor was waiting. I sat in the chair opposite the doctor and their brain scan technology was different from ours. It was a c-shaped piece of metal which moved above your head from front to back and there was something like an iPad in front of me and one in front of the doctor which displayed info about the system. The doctor tried to have a conversation with me but I knew the risks for me of getting lost in a conversation with a dream character while lucid, so I ignored her and clicked the go button on my screen. It happened very fast. Then I got up and looked at the doctors screen where the results were shown. It was different from what our brain readouts look like. This was brain shaped, but it was a 3d network of lines indicating connecting parts of my dream brain. Where the lines connected were brain nodes. Each node had a number associated with it indicating the level of development and degree of use of that node. Different regions were marked in different colors to indicate function. After I understood the results of the scan I immediately became bored and flew out the window superman style to go have lucid dream fun. My experience with brain scans and drugs and conversations about brains causing behavior and feelings had totally changed. I just don't take the ideas seriously anymore. They no longer feel like an ideological threat.

Theses two experiences, particularly the second, have deeply solidified my view of brain centered arguments for the nature of the mind as totally unconvincing.

Feel free to share similar experiences or your thoughts on this.