In school textbooks, Wikipedia articles and talk shows the sentence "the brain produces consciousness" is presented as established fact. In reality it is an unproven metaphysical conjecture. What brain research actually offers are correlations – and correlations are not proof. This article works out methodically why the production thesis is not empirically secured, which alternatives remain logically permissible, and why the underlying materialism no longer stands on solid ground even in fundamental physics.
What brain research actually shows
When patients receive anaesthesia, their reported consciousness disappears. With lesions in specific brain regions, perception, memory or personality change. fMRI and EEG studies show that conscious states go along with characteristic activity patterns. These findings are real and well documented.
But they do not show what is often made of them. In 1990 Francis Crick and Christof Koch deliberately coined the term Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC) – not "Neural Producers of Consciousness". What is measured is a statistical relationship between brain activity and conscious state, not a production. Popular-science accounts routinely blur this distinction.
What a correlation logically permits
If two quantities A and B systematically occur together, this leaves four explanations open:
- A causes B.
- B causes A.
- A third C causes both (common cause).
- The connection is coincidence (spurious correlation).
From a correlation alone none of these four options can be selected. A correlation does not even prove a causal connection – let alone its direction. Yet this very logical step is tacitly performed in the thesis "brain produces consciousness": the correlation between brain activity and consciousness is treated as production of the latter by the former. Methodologically inadmissible.
The frog joke
Physicists like to tell the following anecdote about confusing correlation with causation: A medical researcher wants to find out what a frog hears with. He says "Frog, jump!" – the frog jumps. Then he cuts off its legs and again says "Frog, jump!". The frog does not jump any more. The researcher concludes: the frog hears with its legs.
Exactly this logic is in play when anaesthesia data or brain lesions are taken to show that the brain produces consciousness. An intervention in the brain visibly changes something – but it does not follow what the source of consciousness is. It only follows that the brain is involved in its manifestation.
In mathematics this would not count as proof
Mathematical proofs are deductive. A statement is shown by being derived from axioms or previously proved theorems through logically permissible steps. Concepts such as injective, surjective and bijective are precisely defined structures used in proofs – and they are established by deductive argument, not by correlation. A correlation would not be admitted as proof in mathematics.
In parts of the life sciences, however, it is de facto treated as a substitute for proof. That is a methodological weakness, not a sign of strength. Anyone who rests a fundamental metaphysical claim – "nothing exists but matter, and consciousness is a product of matter" – on correlational data is building on a fragile foundation.
The receiver model: a logically permissible alternative
Turning the volume knob of a radio visibly changes the audible music. Hitting the radio with a hammer silences the music entirely. From this it follows that the radio is involved in the manifestation of the music. It does not follow that the radio produces the music. It might just as well be receiving it – from a source located outside the device.
Transferring this picture to brain and consciousness yields the so-called receiver model or transmission model of consciousness: the brain is not the producer but a filter and mediator of a consciousness that is more fundamental than the neural activity with which it correlates. All NCC data collected so far is just as compatible with this model as with the production model. Both models explain the correlations. The experimental data does not decide between them.
The hard problem (Chalmers)
In 1995, in his essay Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, the philosopher David Chalmers drew a precise distinction between the "easy problems" of consciousness (attention, reportability, behavioural control – in principle all explainable by neural mechanisms) and the hard problem: why does neural processing go along with subjective experience?
Even if every neural firing pattern is fully known, it does not follow that and why seeing red feels like seeing red. This explanatory gap is usually side-stepped in mainstream neuroscience, either by denying the hard problem or by deferring it as a research gap. It has never been resolved. As long as that is the case, the claim "brain produces consciousness" is the anticipation of an explanation that does not yet exist.
Materialism itself is in trouble
The thesis "consciousness is produced by the brain" stands and falls with a materialist worldview in which the ultimate reality is solid, observer-independent matter. Yet this very category no longer exists in modern physics in that form. In the Standard Model of particle physics the elementary particles are intrinsically massless; the mass we measure is an interaction phenomenon with the Higgs field, and of that mass about 99 % of visible matter comes from binding energy in the gluon fields – not from "stuff". Atoms are more than 99.999 % empty space.
To this come the Bell tests (2022 Nobel Prize in Physics to Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger): they have experimentally shown that the assumption of an observer-independent, locally realistic concept of matter is untenable. Anyone who dismisses the existence of non-material phenomena by appealing to materialism must first explain which concept of matter they are actually using. It is not the one of the Standard Model or quantum mechanics – i.e. the best currently on offer in physics.
Why the claim nevertheless dominates
If the production thesis is empirically not secured and methodologically vulnerable – why is it then presented in textbooks, Wikipedia articles and science journalism as if it were fact? The answer lies not in epistemology but in the sociology of science: chair appointments, funding policy, peer-review circles and broad media consensus sort career incentives along a materialist standard position. Anyone who publicly voices doubts risks reputation – regardless of whether the doubts are substantively justified.
We have worked this out in a separate article on majority against experts.
Consequence for near-death experiences and mediumship
A common blanket dismissal of near-death experiences, mediumistic communication and similar phenomena runs roughly: "Can't be true – consciousness is, after all, dependent on the brain." This justification does not hold. It appeals to a conjecture that is itself unproven. The empirical data on NDEs – for example from the prospective studies of van Lommel, Penny Sartori and Bruce Greyson – is therefore not a priori impossible but observation worth taking seriously, observation that has to be fitted into the overall picture.
Anyone who wants to defend the production thesis is of course free to do so. But they must label it for what it is: a working hypothesis, not a proven natural connection. As long as this hypothesis cannot be empirically separated from the receiver thesis, there is no scientific reason to declare one of the two "the correct one".
This is precisely the position taken by neurologist Prof. Wilfried Kuhn (head of the neurology department at Leopoldina Hospital in Schweinfurt), whom we discussed at length in a separate article:
"Neither the organic thesis is proven, nor is the other thesis proven. The possibility is completely open. You can believe either." – Wilfried Kuhn
Context
This article belongs to our series on the scientific framing of consciousness, near-death experiences and afterlife contact: Matter and the Higgs Field (physics background), Brüntrup on the philosophy of NDEs, the neurological and medical perspective, and majority against experts.
Sources: David Chalmers, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 (3), 1995, pp. 200–219. Francis Crick & Christof Koch, Towards a neurobiological theory of consciousness, Seminars in the Neurosciences 2, 1990, pp. 263–275. Thomas Nagel, What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, The Philosophical Review 83 (4), 1974, pp. 435–450. Philip Goff, Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, Pantheon 2019. For the physics, see the source references in our article Matter and the Higgs Field (Lesch & Gaßner; Peskin/Schroeder; Weinberg; PDG).
For more, see our curated knowledge collection – it links to talks, interviews and studies on consciousness, near-death experiences and afterlife contact.