It is indeed refreshing to actually engage in some civilized discussion here. To your points: As I said, I have a suspicion that the totality of my experiences is not determined. What I mean here is that I doubt that I am not the same person/experiencer/observer that I was 10 years ago; I'm reasonably confident that what I recall (and have evidence for) happening 10 years ago did indeed happen (and that it involved me). Similarly, I'm reasonably confident that I do indeed have the power of election; that the choices I make are indeed mine, and not predetermined. Is it possible that I am simply a 'cog' running through behaviours that were set in motion years ago? I admit it is a possibility. However, I think it more reasonable to doubt this possibility. The 'other-minds' problem: this one is huge and nasty, and doesn't really belong here but.... strictly speaking, we have more cause to doubt the supposed consciousness of others than we do our own. Simply because other beings resemble me physically, and tend to behave somewhat similarly, gives me no reason to presume that they are similarly 'composed', so to speak. This problem is more seriously dealt with when we look at the Turing-Test, particularly in our day and age. It is quite possible that a computer could fool a human into believing that they were in fact dealing with (usually speaking to, or asking questions of) another human. Sadly, if we are to tackle the consciousness problem, we can look for no aid whatsoever from 'other minds'. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Essentially yes, lowest levels of consciousness would be for bacteria, plants, and such, humans have the most complex brain on this planet as far as I know. But that doesn't mean we have to romanticise it. Most things in this universe are peculiar (at least for the human mind). So is dark energy and gravity waves (just entering experimental stage), but we don't propose that it's a breath of god, just because it's not yet fully explored.
Good evening all. As I am looking at this thing called Consciousness and listening in to your words, I'm hearing how 'we participate in consciousness'. I see Consciousness 'participating' in us. Consciousness touches 'possibility/probability wave' (quonton) collapsing it into a particular 'hologramic reality' within Mind. A speck of the vast Sea of Chaos (quontons=(?)Mind) collapsing into a flash of 'quark'. Mind might well be the 'quonton field', the field of 'probability/possibility/INFORMATION waves' ('Quontons' are the stuff of which Dreams are truly made!) The senses now have 'something' to 'detect'. The senses (self) 'arising', within Mind, simultaneously/mutually with their 'objects'. The 'hologramic self' simultaneously with it's 'context', fractally propagating into the multiversal hologram. Also called Indra's Web.... So I see Consciousness poking its tendrils of awareness throughout Mind, throughout the little hologramic Mental concepts/constructs/egos that are 'us'. It has been known for millennia that the egoic sense of self only blocks and distorts the 'free flow' of Consciousness, within Mind, and the more that the 'personality' is 'removed from the equation' the 'greater' is unhindered Consciousness in the 'vicinity'; but, of course, the less that Consciousness has to be conscious 'of'. Which is why, parhaps, it 'touched the quontons' in the first place? And thats what it looks like, for the moment, anyway, from here...
I like where this discussion is going, thanks everyone for great points of view. I too am very interested in this question. So it seems that finding the source of consciousness would be to grasp ones origin. Note that we are not necessarily looking for the origin of everything, that is, some explanation of totalized or infinitized existence. For that kind of origin, I think it's not inaccruate to generally reserve the term 'God' (divorced here from its theological or religious connotations) to describe an origin higher than our own. With consciousness, however, we are looking only for the origin of OUR experience of ANYthing and everything. The problem is not so much that our subjective perspective is limited; it is that our perspective is mediated and constituted THROUGH the very process we are attempting to explain. If we say it's a process, then we ARE the process which is trying to furnish a functional description OF the process, or rather the underlying mechanism or substratum responsible for its emergence. Consciousness is one of those interesting whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts kind of phenomena; there is an inherent difficulty in pinning down exactly WHAT gives you the "what-it-is-to-be-like-you" that you have all the time and which is unique to you. Without getting lost in semantics, there is at least one series of gestures and actions which leads to the creation of aconsciousness exterior to our own, and that's procreation. The mystery seems to be that, before you were around, your conscious experience didn't exist. Since matter/energy cannot be created or destroyed, every part of your body was grown or transformed from already existing energy, so we have a definitive origin for the physical body. But this conscious experience 'entity' or 'process' just kind of blossoms from the sum of the parts, and neither its current existence nor its originating 'kickstart' can be localized in any piece of it. I see the analogy here with a universal Mind, or some kind of cosmic consciousness we all participate in, but I'd advise Occam's Razor here as well. In general, I think that quantum mechanics is best left out of discussions about free will and consciousness--searching for consciousness in the interplay of so-called 'fundamental' quantum particles still doesn't explain that 'hard problem' of where and how experience arises. Saying it's an emergent property of interacting nondeterministic particles on many levels is just confusing the fact that there's something special about how hard this particular problem is; we have to face up to the problem of consciousness if we're ever to make any progress.
Quite so, wonderful, isn't it? But I don't think it's something unprecendented, for example we are made of atoms and these atoms have assembled themselves into structures that ponder on their very own origin (origin of atoms).
i would enjoy it to if it wasn't for the overbearing know-it-all presence of the unspeakable who has seeemingly hijacked my tread with his pretence of knowing consciousness when he doesn't even know how to not offend people, and take responsibility when he does.....fukin phony tats all i am gonna sy for nw. dont want to disrail MY tread now do i
fuk you you cheeky not-normal. tis is MY fukin thread already. go and make yer won thread. yer talkin outta yer arse anyhow cause you are a coontradiction. pretending tp know consciousness yet dont know how to BE human. you are te same as a woman batterer who blames the woman for makin you angry. wanker
look lad. there really should be a 'fight club' forum here sos when someone offends, offened can get a go with offender in appropriate forum rather tan disrailing. true all we gothere is cesspit....NOW. for some reason i cant open treads there. so heres an offer........you open one there and we will have tis out there so as not to spoil MY fukin thread, NOTyours mr conciousness-man OK?!!!
dont aplogize for me you sorry little boy with no manners to his name. who doesn't know how to behave and needsa a fukin good spank. aplogize for yourself....!
There is no need for an universal mind. Let me explain my view. I think you put forward this analogy, because you put matter/energy on par with a process, but they are esentially different things, because process arises from the interaction of matter/energy. As for the beginning of the consciousness: Even when just born we and other animals have information in us that we can read, i.e., particular instincts to the particular species (if you wish I can give an example/evidence for this). And then we also have the sensory ability, i.e., we get new data atop the data that is already there. Now, to make any use of the received data we must put it in relation to the data we already have (for example: see a distant hill, put our experience/information about perspective related to it, have an estimation of the distance). So the kickstart might be the point where a new life form starts recording new data and in order to put it in the data bank/memory, it must make sense of it. This making sense essentially may be the process we are talking about. Why does it must make a sense of it? Well.. maybe because that's our biological structure, i.e., our consciousness is a required process that is forced by our own biological structure and the way our biology records data. Why does it must record it in that way I haven't thought of, it seems that that may be the field of our quantum world experts. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ------- edit: just ignore duendy's offtopics, he's genuinly not well a bit.
actually it is all rather ironic. ok....i start a thread called 'what is consciousness' and talk to one of the members about it. next thing he is slanering me in another thread later on telling Buddha1 i have done to many drugs and cannot do logic etc now excuuuuuse me. any humans here? are you teling me that wouldn't piss you off? i am not saying would you repond as i have, but would it piss you off someone having the audacity to say that? course it wouold so you get back to the person who is all over your thread spouting 'what conscious IS;....so you consciously confornt him. whats this dude's reaction?...that it is YOUR fault to be offended!..what the fuck do you do with that? and this is the second time he has done noooow. it is not likfely i am gonn let this pass and get back to a nice little cozy chat aout cnsciousness with him is it. and i coldn't get in edgeways cause he's all over the thread ;ordin it about, and then tells me to quit MY thread...hahahahahahmanic laughter so it is obvious. this 'avatar' IS what he thinks he is-----a computer. computer's tend to not have FEELINGS
glaucon: Consider this: You do everything for a reason, no? You are incapable of doing something "simply because", no? For even "simply because" likely has a root in various semi-emotional states, or vague predetermined likes and or dislikes, no? So if you have a reason, would you really be free to buck against it? Here's a proof for other minds I have developed as part of my yet-to-be-written Refutation of Transcendental Idealism (a sort of twin to my prior Refutation of Non-Transcendental Idealism): If we are to take the empirical foundation of knowledge to mind (as the heart isn't proper for intellectual thought!) then we must conclude that it is impossible for us to learn language alone, and since language exists, and you and I surely are fluent or at least proficient in one (English), then we must conclude that there are other minds. Avatar: Fair enough, I personally assert something similar. Surely this is so, but the difference betwixt mental and physical phenomena do differ in many key ways, as I noted. Let's see what your response to them is... Surely not, but we must allow to truly discover a very odd term of events with mental ones. To resort to the "breath of God" would indeed be folly, but as regards Dark Energy/Matter, which all ready displays the pecularity of only interacting with the force of gravity, we would be foolish to disregard many exciting new possibilities. JoeTheMan: I would agree. Yet due to the capacity for consciousness to determine such things, introspective evaluation, or evaluation of similar beings, ought to furnish us with some semblance of understanding of how it imght arise, no? The notion that consciousness is related to emergence is an interesting one and most certainly possible. Of course, emergence seems to be rooted in almost every physical phenomena, as relationship produces things which are not found in the individual parts. Why do you find this necessary, even if you're willing to potentially get rid of it due to Ockham's? I agree. Just signing it off as an emergent property doesn't deal with it as much in depth as is needed, but it could be a nice foundation. However, yes, I would agree that we need to tackle the problem of consciousness. Duendy: Your usefulness in this thread has gone. Avatar: It would seem to me that sense itself requires the formation of a conscious receptor of said sensation, no? A sensory stimulus we do not consciously take in seems to have no impact us on at all, such as when one falls into a "day dreaming" state . water: I think that picture was taken in Upstate NY. I knew a man who had similar photographs in his office who lived up there.
With sense I meant meaning, not sensuality (damn English), i.e., rock -> wow, what is this, hard, heavy, does not cause pain, feels cold, has a particular structure, touch., I'll call it a rock. Thus our brain has created a rock in itself. And when for example it sees something other that might be a rock it compares to the information that it already has. Yes and no. For example people have particular dreams while dreaming in relation to the sensations the unconscious body receives, for example, people tend to have nightmares and unpleasant dreams when their body is too hot. Minor stimuli maybe are disregarded, but they might still have an impact. Just like when awake our unconsciousness is still active and recording, even if we are not aware of its' thinking process (like see some man and he seems unpleasant to you for apparently no known reason - that's a product of unconscious thought). As for day dreaming, we are able to create inner stimuli for ourselves, let's say, feel like flying, laughing, running, etc, that is the new data that our brain creates. Our brain can create new data or receive new data from outer stimuli, essentially it's all new data to our brain.
As for consciouss receptors,i.e., why we feel cold like that and not like some other feeling I don't know. Here might be interesting reading about studies of people who taste spoken words and see different shapes in different colours. It seems that their conscious reception/understanding/perceiving is different, but(!) also the physical structure of their brain is different, because these traits have been recorded to run in family, i.e., genetical traits, they have nothing to do with data aquired by experience. So it is most likely that how we feel cold and perceive other outer stimuli has to do with the biological structure of our brain although I have no idea what particular differences those might be.
