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Dispelling the flawed analogy about consciousness as a radio station and brain as a radio receiver

I was watching the following video on Closer to the Truth channel on YouTube.

BTW, I highly recommend the Closer to the Truth channel for people interested in Philosophy and Science and sometimes religion.


I made some comments on the video. In the other comments some people put forth a the following analogy:

One's consciousness is like a radio station and one's brain is like a radio that is tuned to it.

In this post I would like to show a flaw in that analogy in a straightforward, simple explanation. Here goes:

  • Many radios can tune into a radio station. All radios that tune into a given radio station play the same song that the radio station is broadcasting. It is generally accepted that one's consciousness is only theirs or their brains. More than one person or their brains cannot tune into same consciousness.

  • A radio station can exit independent of existence of any radios at all (even though it will be a useless radio station) and continue to broadcast even if there is not even a single or many more radio's that are tuned to it and playing it. I have never seen or heard of a consciousness without a brain except for in stories that your friend's friend or somebody they know claim to have seen/heard of it in the form of ghosts. I have seen many brains without consciousness.

With this plain counter argument I hope to dispel that analogy once and for all. Surprisingly though it is a very popular idea held by many people.


Here I will simply say - consciousness is not a thing. It is a short hand name given to a range of processes or behaviors that brains generate and in turn bodies that those brains control, exhibit. It is like wetness of collection of large enough collection of water molecules in liquid state of water.


I will be writing about this in my future posts in great details. Stay tuned!

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