He's a really ugly but useful sketch which shows my conception of the relation of the brain, mind, and consciousness:

http://www.free-webmaster-resources.net/pics/illustration.gif

The arrows show interaction. Note that brain to mind is only one direction, I'm assuming the brain produces the mind's thoughts rather than the mind producing the brain's patterns simply because it makes more sense based on our observations of the physical world -- you could call this a deterministic view I suppose. Also note that there's no interaction between consciousness and mind, the consciousness simply envelops the mind. Of course there is no consciousness of the objective world -- only of the subjective. (This is shown easily enough by skeptical arguments, which demonstrate that the only direct experiences we have are experiences of mental states -- everything else could be false data theoretically because we aren't directly conscious of it.)

There are two realms. There's the objective realm of the physical world, which we all (well, most) presume exists. We deduce based on seeing bodies in the physical world which look like the body attached to us that there are other being similar to ourselves who similarly have their own subjective world and also interact with the objective one in a similar way to how we interact with it. The other realm, closely related, is the subjective one. This is the self, which includes those metal states we directly experience and the consciousness that experiences them. The mental states are results of the physical world, which is where this differs so obviously from cartesian dualism. The mind is a sort of extension of the brain... in fact you could say it's the bridge between the brain and the consciousness.


Counter-arguments? If you disagree, please illustrate your own ideas of brain, mind, and consciousness.

I agree with that Hoth. That exactly what i'm trying to describe sometimes. You've describred it well. Subjective world you mentioned above, i believe realy exist in "other dimension".

This way we can describe psychic pnenomenons wich actually "happen between people's consciousness". Even the exact proccess might be different, but this can help to understand what's going on. So, you should draw a bigger circle around 'consciousness' such as 'abstract substance' which belong to us, but only useful for experienced psychic. And also to describe on dreaming.

It's interesting how this works sometimes... in agreeing with me somebody says something I don't agree with at all. :) Your model of the individual system would be the same as mine I guess, but when you involve more people it changes.

Would you draw arrows between the consciousness bubbles of different people to show interaction them, or just inlcude them all in a larger pool they can each draw from?

Personally, I don't believe the concept of space or movement is intelligible on the subjective, nonphysical level. I don't choose to apply the same ideas of space to the subjective world as the objective world has, so I just see each consciousness as a separate bubble (figuratively of course, since there's no space for an actual bubble to exist in) which is entirely unconnected to other bubbles of consciousness. To put it simply, I believe in the entirely private subjective world while you seem to believe in a subjective world with interaction. :)

I found this link last week but didn't post it. The article is rather long but does establish an approach to showing how to link neural activity with consciousness. It also attempts to better define consciousness.

You might it useful.

http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~koch/crick-koch-cc-97.html

Cris

Your model of the individual system would be the same as mine I guess, but when you involve more people it changes.

Yup. It's seems we got same picture with different stories :D .

Also note that there's no interaction between consciousness and mind, the consciousness simply envelops the mind.

Instead of drawing a bigger circle, now i prefer to draw a donut around consciousness, between subjective world and objective world. see attachment I still believe that there is "something" influence to our consciousness and mind. The signals thru someones donuts may influence to mind and consciousness or may not according to strength of the signals and subject's condition. This donut may percepted as objective or subjective, up to the donut owner.

Ismu, if you don't mind, can I perceive the donut as glazed and chocolate covered? :p It's interesting how you almost end up with 3 types of things though... objective, subjective, and that which hasn't decided.


Cris, they explain the relations between the brain and the mind, which is all neuroscience can ever do. They clearly don't have a very good philosophical understanding of consciousness at least in the sense I mean -- the type that's outside of the mind. Of course a lot of philosophers don't either, so I guess I shouldn't expect scientists to understand the distinction.

The consciousness is the observer of the mind (which is in turn a sort of aspect produced by the brain). The observer cannot observe itself. That's probably why so many people (like most all of western philosophy) mistake the consciousness for being the brain... they have a hard time imagining something you can know nothing about, so they place it a step down, in the mind where you can know things (but still a comfortable step up from the brain to avoid all the physicalism problems). Of course the fact that we observe thoughts in the mind is actually what shows that the self (the consciousness) is outside of the mind.

A quick issue on the side: Looking at my illustration, I'm wondering if the mind could exist without consciousness. The brain could, but is the mind really resting inside consciousness in such a way that it's dependent on consciousness to exist? I'm not sure, but I'm leaning towards saying it couldn't.

There's no outside perspective to take to make observation of the consciousness possible. That, in essence, is why any amount of scientific investigation will logically never be able to determine subjective reality. Scientists don't like that so they pretend the subjectivity doesn't exist... essentially, they ignore the fact that their ability to observe the objective physical world depends entirely on them having a conscious subjective reality to observe from.

Never let logical impossibilities stand in the way of neuroscience, though. :D (The link is useful reading when it comes to mind/brain stuff though, despite their confusion about the nature of consciousness, so thanks for the link. :) )

Cris (or anyone with similar beliefs), do you think this would be an accurate way to illustrate what neural scientists would say?

[edit: image moved to bottom of post]

The mind and consciousness kind of merged as one, and both of them being in the physical world but as properties that the brain takes on as it becomes a large neural network. That is, things that develop as properties of the whole of the brain somehow... some sort of an emergent property of the brain. Or would they just put all three in the brain without the mysticism of trying to call it an emergent property of the whole? Or, would they have some other way to draw it?

[edit: illustration updated to better show the view, which is just regular materialism, based on feedback from Cris. :) ]

http://www.free-webmaster-resources.net/pics/neural.gif

Hoth,

We know from clinical studies, where usually the patient has suffered brain damage, that direct probing of parts of the brain can result in feelings of emotion, or can trigger memories. Hallucinogenic drugs can also stimulate intense emotions, dream-like visions, and altered behavior.

Nicotine from cigarettes takes about 7 seconds to reach the brain where it attacks the synapses. The synapses are the connections between neurons; actually they are the connections between the dendrites of one neuron to the body of another neuron. These connections are not electrical but chemical, primarily proteins. Nicotine and most other hallucinogenic drugs alter the manner in which the synapses behave. Nicotine will have a soporific effect, which wears off after about 30 minutes when the synapse attempts to correct itself and usually overcompensates resulting in some agitation that the person senses as a craving for more nicotine. Other hallucinogenics affect the synapses more intensely and as a result the whole functioning of the brain is affected. Continued and prolonged use of such brain altering drugs eventually results in permanent brain damage, i.e. the synapses lose their ability to return to their normal function.

Now are the effects, caused by such drugs and clinical procedures, subjective or not?

Based on just these simple observations I would hypothesize that the mind/consciousness has a direct correlation with neuronal activity. Will that correlation hold for all mental activities? That has yet to be proved, but I see no reason why it should not in the absence of any other credible thesis.

Let’s consider another area: Sleep and dreaming. Clearly the brain is experiencing synaptic changes since dream visions are occurring and emotions can also be generated (nightmares, suddenly woken from an intense dream, etc). During normal waking times the proteins within the synapses are being consumed and become partially depleted, you experience this as loss of focus, difficulty concentrating, and tiredness. In effect the brain can no longer function correctly. Sleep is the process that re-builds and refuels the synapses. You’ll generally notice that if you have a busy day with lots of brain activity that you can often fall into a very deep sleep quite quickly. My point here is that you experience dreams because the synapses themselves are being changed by the process of refueling. All your muscles and motor activities are suppressed during this time otherwise you would be flailling all over the place.

So to answer your question: No the mind/consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain. The m/c is the brain.

The danger you face is the natural temptation to separate the ‘you’ from your ‘brain’, but they are one and the same thing. When you experience a thought that is just a focus in a part of your brain of dynamic neural behavior. The neural network of electrical and chemical signals are the thought, are the experience. The brain is not transmitting a message to you because you and your brain are the same thing.

The other big modern danger is to compare the brain with a computer with a running program. Clearly there are two vehicles present, the processor, and the program (list of instructions). That is not a good analogy of a brain. In the brain the actual physical architecture is the program, and the architecture is dynamically changing all the time.

So for your diagram: Just one bubble that says ‘brain/mind/consciousness’, they are inseparable and essentially all one and the same thing.

Hope that helps, although I cannot speak for all neuroscientists of which I’m not one anyway.

Cris

Ok Cris, I see, a direct old-fashioned materialist approach. I've changed the picture accordingly. Also glad to see that even the materialist approach recogized that the way we go about designing computers is far different from the way brains work.

Based on the things you're bringing up in your arguments it seems like you still don't understand my position. You probably never will I guess, seems like you're great at taking a step back to look at things but don't have the capability of taking a step in, probably because you're afraid of the unobservable... you want to see something rather than deduce it, even though in reality you have to make deductions from what you see to actually observe things anyway.

I don't disagree with any of the stuff you mention, just the interpretation. I fully agree that by studying the brain you can (theoretically speaking of course) know what's going on in the mind. The cause of the thought of the concept of sciforums is too complicated for people to realistically be able to interpret it, but I believe there is a physical cause in the brain there and so that cause is within the realm of that which is theoretically possible to observe. Theoretically you could have a certain very detailed pattern in the brain you could point to and say "that means they're thinking of sciforums."

Where neuroscience covers its eyes is when it comes to the ability (or lack thereof) to actually find a physical thought. You can have found all the causes of thoughts, and you can have the exact pattern of the brain that corresponds to a thought of sciforums, and you can even get into that in enough detail to know what all the words are in the thread the person is reading. Then you can even wire yourself up to something that produces the sensation in your mind of the same things that they're conscious of, such as the idea of typing a post at sciforums. Nowhere in there have you physically located the actual thought -- you can't set the thought of posting at sciforums down on your desk, because even if you set someone's brain down there that's simply a cause of thought and no matter how long you stare at the brain you aren't staring at sciforums. (It's a basic logical truth that a cause and the effect of that cause cannot be the same thing. Cause and effect are always distinct, no violation has ever been demonstrated.) Of course theoretically you could plug the pattern into your brain, but if you do that it's still not a thought until it's in you -- and, most importantly, it's still not objectively observable. The thought of sciforums is still no more objectively observable to the scientists around you when you've plugged it into yourself than it was when it was in the other person.

Neuroscience will hopefully someday be able to map out all the causes, and that's very useful for understanding thought, but at the end it people will still never have viewed a thought from anywhere outside of their own mind... or just so you don't say I'm presupposing the mind to prove it, you can say they won't have ever viewed a thought outside of their brain. I don't see how you possibly dispute that.

What does this mean? It means there's such a thing as something nonphysical and subjective -- perspective itself being the obvious incidence of that. If you don't like the concept of nonphysical, it's probably because you strangely associate it with religion and mysticism when there's no reason to. Nonphysical simply means not independently observable... no more, no less. Not everything that exists is independently observable, as I already showed with plenty of clarity in observing how neuroscience simply shows causes. The perspective from which you observe, as I already showed with neuroscience, is not independently observable (a.k.a. nonphysical).

Now, if you're being a natural curious person and want to know how we can know that something exists if it isn't observable, without getting into some sort of mysticism or something, that's actually not such a hard question. We can logically deduce the existence... we can't logically deduce any details, simply that it exists. We've already basically done it above, but I'll do it more formally now:

The idea of something being "self-aware" is nonsensical. Of course people talk about looking at their self, but that's simply linguistic convenience, any neuroscientist can tell you it's the brain looking at sensory input, and even a simplistic thinker might say when they think about it that it's actually the eyes looking at the body. There's no such thing as self-aware, because awareness inherently involves both an observed and an observer. That's simply a fact of what awareness describes. Again, as I've brought up in other posts, what direction does an eye look in to see itself? (Directly observe, that is... if you mention a mirror, that's kind of like the logical mirror I'm using.) That's a crucial thing you simply refuse to acknowledge when you put the consciousness and in the brain. A thing can't be conscious of itself.

So, it would seem like there's something that's conscious of the brain. Now the only complication (you knew there'd be one ;)) is that we aren't conscious of the brain in the direct physical sense, because to be conscious of a bunch of quarks in nonsensical... besides the fact that there'd be no logic to suggesting being aware of just a certain physical area or certain pattern if there were nothing special about that pattern. This is where the mental aspect of the brain -- meaning the mind -- becomes a logical implication. To be directly conscious of the physical is unintelligible, but the physical can have/produce an aspect/property (even though we obviously don't know exactly how it works) that's basically a direct logical translation of the into something which is limited so that awareness of the entirety of it can be what consciousness is. (If we were conscious of the entire universe, then perhaps [haven't thought about that scenario much] there'd be no need for a mental aspect to enter the picture and reality would be simply what the neurologist sees plus an awareness of that. Sadly, we aren't conscious of the entire universe.)

It's funny, as far as everything observable I agree with you, except for the slight complication between cause and actual experience which is meaningless when we look at people other than ourselves anyway. Problem is, you just don't seem to believe in anything non-observable, even though an unobservable thing is the automatic logical implication of the ability to observe.

Considering a picture of these theories seems to make things clearer than a few thousand words, at least for me, I'll just post a gallery of theories in this post. I've tried to add in illustrations of other viewpoints not mentioned so far (dualism, hinduism, idealism), hopefully correctly.

Dualism:
http://www.free-webmaster-resources.net/pics/dualism.gif

Hinduism as near as I understand:
http://www.free-webmaster-resources.net/pics/hinduism.gif

Idealism:
http://www.free-webmaster-resources.net/pics/idealism.gif

Materialism:
http://www.free-webmaster-resources.net/pics/neural.gif

Hothism:
http://www.free-webmaster-resources.net/pics/illustration.gif

Ismuism:
http://www.free-webmaster-resources.net/pics/ismu.gif

Anyone have any other theories?

:)
Enlightening discussion...

Hoth,

I am a little concerned that your arrows from brain to mind go in only one direction. When you decide to take a walk somewhere, what does the deciding - your mind or your brain? If your mind has any part in it, how does the body find out about that?

James, even though it's hard to illustrate this in a picture, I'm calling the mind something closely related to the brain. The brain does all the thinking, as in it generates the thoughts. The mind doesn't generate any thoughts, the mind simply is the thoughts. (Thoughts we're conscious of seem related to the brain, but we aren't conscious of atoms since that makes no sense really. Thus, a mental aspect which can be consciously experienced.) Hopefully that makes sense.

The question of how your body would find out about it if your mind was making decisions is one of the problems with dualism.

Consciousness by definition dichotomizes Soul and Spirit; this is
obvious in the meaning of Conscious - as being awake or alert. Conscience is also derived semantically from consciousness as the awareness of spiritual qualities of ethical morality. Old English however uses the term - Inwyt - for conscience and semantically to wit....is the classic perspective - INTUITION.
Keeping one's wits about them can be the key to survival (under many circumstances). Brain and Mind dichotomize Spirit....in that as your diagrams outline - the Mind is more than just the brain.....although as sentient beings it would be very difficult to imagine being without our brains (although some amongst us appear never to use it). The aptitude for abstract reasoning; is Mind; the Mind to the Hebrew is believed to be the Soul; whereas the Greek would consider that their soul is about 18 inches lower in their Heart. Some call this the 18 inch conversion....(first heard from Senator Scoop Jackson of Washington State). As you have properly discerned (according to my information) philosophies pivot on this important
point......Is abstract reasoning a product of this dichotomy.....or do these abstract qualities of Being belong to higher dimensions and higher powers. My upbringing in the judeo-christian tradition obviously predisposes an outlook that requires the spiritual awareness argument or how is it that one can reason intuitively.
If philosophy seeks "universal truth"....then this quality of Being.... ie. consciousness - is an important starting point.

Consciousness is the part of your mind that is used for understanding, like a filter for analytical thinking. I'm stupid with computers so I don't have a floofing clue on how to put a picture in the post, so I have an attachment that shows a diagram of it.

I think your mind, body and consciousness form a 'triad' that composes yourself as an entity and not as a solid object with certain attributes. I'd say our thoughts project themselves outwards into the common world, so the extent of our existence must not be concrete and rather abstract; we exist with our environment, not as a part of it. Our attributes come from how we inhabit the space we take with us.

Congrats, if your consciousness is in a corner of your mind, how can you possibly be aware of your mind? :confused: I have to agree with integral on that part, that if you can be aware of considering the question then by definition you must have a consciousness observing/encompassing your mind.

I think abstract reasoning would fit better as a part of the mind that could act like a filter for understanding. That leads to what integral was mentioning. Abstract reasoning is something where I can't even begin to understand how it works, beyond saying that I think the presence of consciousness observing it is what makes it truly abstract.

By the way, integral, welcome to sciforums. :)

And why is it separate from the brain ? Consciousness is very much within the brain .... so technically the diagram is wrong, dont you think ?

And Integral, are you the same Integral who posts (and moderates) Physics Forums ?

- Sivakami.

Originally posted by ssivakami
And why is it separate from the brain ? Consciousness is very much within the brain .... so technically the diagram is wrong, dont you think ?

If you're actually conscious of your brain, then all those neuroscientists are wasting their time studying something that they can just directly internally observe. They should know everything about their brain if their brain is what they are directly conscious of. That's why the logical distinction, as explained towards the top of this thread, is necessary.

Also for consciousness to be “within the brain”, the brain would have to magically break the rules of logic to be an object which can observe itself.

The brain is just the only one with location, it's the only externally observable (3rd party observable) part of self.

Going by the logic of perception alone, it does make sense that consciousness cannot be contained within something we can easily define the paramaters of. But going by basic logic, our consciousness is merely a function of the brain! We perceive it as an outer sphere because it encompasses everything we do. Rather than actually encompassing the mind as well, it merely exists infinitely within it.

If what you're calling "basic logic" doesn't follow more formal logic, maybe it's simply a trick of perception and one of the many things that seem obvious but aren't when looked at from another perspective. After all, using basic logic on casual observations you'd say the Earth is flat and unmoving and the sun rises.

However, I fail to see how it contradicts any natural ideas to have the consciousness logically separate, since it isn't self-aware. Obviously, you'd remain aware of only your mind whether the mind were magically self-aware or the awareness of it were taken as logically separate... it's the same result, the same perceptions no matter how you look at it. (Thus I'd rather look at it in a way that solves more problems.)

Could you explain how something can be conscious of itself? Your infinitely within idea makes no logical sense to me. The brain can be conscious because it's infinitely within itself? A rock is infinitely within itself, so that makes the rock conscious?

Well, the consciousness could be thought of as within the brain as well as it could be thought of at any other physical location I suppose, since nonphysical things don't have locations. It's the perspective from which location is observed, it couldn't have a location itself really.

Originally posted by Hoth


If you're actually conscious of your brain, then all those neuroscientists are wasting their time studying something that they can just directly internally observe. They should know everything about their brain if their brain is what they are directly conscious of. That's why the logical distinction, as explained towards the top of this thread, is necessary.

Also for consciousness to be “within the brain”, the brain would have to magically break the rules of logic to be an object which can observe itself.


I'm afraid I dont see why it is illogical for consciousness to exist within the brain. In fact I believe scientists have even pin-pointed the area of the brain where it resides.

- Sivakami.

Sivakami, "consciousness" of the external world is within the brain of course. Naturally science can show what parts of the brain relate to observation of the world, that's just the brain's "awareness" of sense data, which is more accurately called processing of sense data. Science also may be able to associate an area of the brain with abstract thoughts of the concept of self, but that's again all simply the brain processing data which we deduce to be connected to an idea of self. We can't simply reach into the brain and grab an idea or thought, we can only grab neurons and the quarks they're made of... neuroscience simply shows all the causes of thought that reside in the brain and never touches the thoughts themselves which are the effect of those causes. In fact, the way in which they do these experiments shows perfectly how they're looking for causes rather than effects. The experiments involve asking people to report their mental sensations so that the scientists can attempt to match up the reported mental sensation with a physical pattern in the brain. If the physical sensations were themselves mental sensations (rather than just causes), the scientists would just look into the brain and see "ah, this is a thought of x" without having ever involved asking the person what they're experiencing. If the experience of the thought were in the brain itself, then the experience would be objectively observable without having to go through the trouble of matching up subjective reports people make of their mental state with the observed brain pattern. In other words, when science matches up brain state causes with experienced effects, they're perfectly demonstrating that the two are different... the brain state is the cause, the sensation is the effect.

Anyway, that's the mind (thought/experience) vs. brain, now let's get back to the consciousness I was talking about before which lies within neither the brain nor the thoughts but which of course is very much related.

What I'm talking about when I say consciousness is conscious awareness of thought itself. If thought is the experience, then consciousness is the experiencer. We observe/experience thought, and where there's something being observed or experienced it logically follows that there's a perspective doing the observing or experiencing. Logically, wherever there is observation there is also a perspective from which the observation is taking place, and that perspective cannot possibly reside within a part of the thing it's observing since it couldn't observe it if it weren't outside it. (To have a consciousness within the mind or brain would be like trying to take a picture of your own camera with that same camera.)

Just as an analogy, a single eyeball floating in space would never observe that there's an eyeball there. The eye would look in every direction and only see space around it but never itself. Everything that can be observed in the scene has been observed, without the eyeball ever seeing an eyeball... so do you conclude that there is no eye? No, the eye logically has to be there, even though you will never be able to see it.

Our great and wonderous anatomy has the quality of oneness;
the philosophic debate.....consciousness of being.....this is the
realization of the existentialist and many believe the beginning
of a great convergence with eastern philosophy and so-called "higher consciousness"....which has many aspects. Somehow the debate is superceded by quantum field theory and science reenters with its abstractions......yet in proposing a multi-dimensional universe - it has not contradicted the impetus of the philosophic dialogue. Philosophy's probem became the new science of psychology and the brain's importance in human behavior was established. Material reality and Spiritual Reality have to correspond.....this is tautologic; that is why many today have returned to the rationalist arguement of conscience and the responsibility for one's actions. Heart, Mind and Strength; this somehow determines the health of the brain.
Consciousness and Mind have to be directly related to one another......the brain containing the information to realize both.
The greater issue of life, birth, death, infinity quickened through
sharing thoughts, insights, information of this great passage.

well i should have posted my riddle in this section because it pertains to this discussion. how are any of your thoughts on the soul (or self awareness). does it mature along with your body or is it at a constant form of thought or whatever one may call it? i think i was hearing that it is of a constant form. is this what was beeing said?

Either way, I'm home free. I'm not really responsible for my dispositions because they are purely determined by genetics and enviorment. As well, if it's my soul, than God simply didn't do a good enough job.

yeah i tend to think that all u learn and know is purely do to your physical state and that your soul is a constant variable forever alive even after the physical body dies. i just am try to determine, which i most likely will never, whether or not the soul is developed with your body from day one, or was your soul created before your body.

In the judeo-christian ethic; the soul is protected until the age of consent (when a person begins to make decisions for themselves). This distinguishes between innocence and guilt.....the implication being that self-awareness and the presence of responsiblity are acquired through experience (the long youth and long life of the human being) of "growing up". In recent times the law has begun to require this responsibility at an increasingly younger age......this is an implication of a corrupt society....where children have to be held accountable for grievious crimes which they commit by "imitating" others. The bible teaches that the soul of the innocent child does not suffer judgement whereas the grown up is charged with responsibility. This is why so-called rites of passage are part of every civilization.

ahhhh but!!! what if u, at say age 58, get hit by a car and u suffer from a massive head injury which causes u to loose all of you memmories AND your mind again must relearn everything. basicaly your are at this point a child again with the same thoughts u had from when u were a year old. would u be candidate again for the protective soul period?

Re. "The bible teaches that the soul of the innocent child does not suffer
judgement whereas the grown up is charged with responsibility. This is
why so-called rites of passage are part of every civilization.

And I thought it had to do with proving the individual was brave enough
to be a warrior, with the carrot being that they could then mate.

Foolish me.

Take care ;)

i wonder why such things, as my above post says, are not addressed in the bible. maybe its because at the time it was written, man did not know that such things could possibly happen and so they dont state anything to the contrary. but then again im sure anyone at any day and age could slam there head into a brick wall and get that sort of amnesia heh. but still i wonder why it is not addressed.

ssiva where do they say our self awarness resides? would be another cool thing for me to know :)