How do you explain consciousness?

Armchair amature talking to the Scientist about "how things work" in Science ... OK .. thats nice .. but this conversation is not about Science .. so feel not inferior . in any way .. nor should you feel superior .. in the off chance that you have published more papers than me. These are Philosophical questions - and yes .. Science comes out of Philosophy .. but that branch not needed for this discussion .. just a few basic rules of logic - although we may draw on elements from science from time to time ... for context and color.

I don't see the distinction either .. as I have no clue what you are talking about .. who said one could be conscious .. but incapable of having ideas ? not from my mouth did you hear .. obviously got if somewhere from what I wrote .. but have misunderstood something along the way .. again your failure as a Student -- is likely my failure as a Teacher .. and admittedly these are not easy concepts .. but the distinction is real .. albeit subtle .. ontological in nature .. to use big word - trying to describe the metaphysical nature of being.

So First .. Consciousness "IS" the idea - I like the term "The Will" - the question we are broaching is how the will manifested itself into physical reality ..... the missing link I am hopelessly trying to describe.

You know one thing "For Sure" "I think therefore I Am" .. and that's it .. everything else can be existentialized away ... life is but a dream kind of arguments .. but this we know for sure .. you esperience something .. you have a conscious .. and a will - a regular thought generating machine you are...

What follows ? you are made of matter-energy (which transform into each other at subatomic level) - at some point this "Stuff" arranged itself in such a way .. as to gain knowledge of itself .. ahhh "I AM" .. how this happens is another big question .. but . nor the why or the where .. It Happened.. hence there was a finite probability .. that this stuff would arrange itself in such a way as to achieve awareness.

At this crossroads .. we have the .. did the "Stuff" do this all by itself .. or was there some external mechanism guiding it - we know some of the rules from Science - but where did these rules come from .. perhaps in different realms the rules are different .. unanswerable question this one .. "or is it" !? Should we not at least try ?

So .. this lump of stuff has gained awareness of itself -- for the first time -- >> crazy as it may sound . and it has the first thought "I would like to move my pinky" . how does that thought -- get manifested into physical reality ..

You are wanting to say they are connected .. but they are not .. this is the first expression of the will . there has been no other prior .. sure we can say this will is a function of electrical impulses in the brain .. but, how did those electrical impulses figure out how to make matter move on command ..



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If I understand your question at all, I think you're missing the point.

Remember that I pointed out how it doesn't require consciousness to have an idea, form a plan and carry it out.

Dogs do it all the time. So do many other animals.

You've given no justification for believing that some "external force" or intelligence is required or that consciousness is required.

To study how that works, it's only logical to study the problem in the context of simpler brains that still carry out those same functions.

 

of course dogs have consciousness - . good grief .. no idea nor plan gets carried out without consciousness .. be it dog or human.

 

RE: How do you explain consciousness?
※→ WillReadmore, Giftedone, et al,

I agree, our friend, Giftedone, has jumped the rails. I think that it must be understood that the "mind" and "consciousness" are actually in the "black box." The "mind" and "consciousness" can be evaluated in some respects by comparing inputs to outputs but without knowledge about the inner workings and hidden mechanisms in the internal processors of that information.

(COMMENT)

It takes a life form to set a computational automaton into some processes. But a "computational automaton," no matter how sophisticated, does not simulate a life form in total.

(COMMENT)

We do not know how the "Black Box" ("mind" and "consciousness") works. We can disassemble it, study all the components, know all the bioelectric pathways, and all the neurochemical balances. But when we reassemble it (alla Dr Frankenstein) we discover that it will not work. There is something essential that we don't understand. In fact, we cannot disassemble the brain of any life form, reassemble it, and it begins to work in terms of "mind" and "consciousness." It is a Metaphysics component of an unknown origin.

(COMMENT)

Simpler brains! Hummm →. The assumption is that if science studies the simpler brain, something will be revealed.

Yesssss... This is a very difficult scientific terrain to challenge. And the are derivative moral, ethical, and humanitarian obstacles to overcome in the realm of traditional medicine, psychology in moral judgments, and neuroscientific experimentation.

We do not understand the neuroscientific difference and life force between a normal and rational human and a savant with extraordinary knowledge, skills, and abilities. We do not know if there is a difference in the "mind" and "consciousness" between a normal and a psychopath. We do not know if these differences are a neurodevelopmental abnormality or a future step in human development for which we are all afraid and try to suppress. As an experiment, the scientific community has not attempted to build a society, in a controlled environment, by assembling a community of savants with different strengths. Part of the reasoning is reservations in the soft sciences from the human development standpoint.

(AΩ)

The subject of "mind" and "consciousness" is the study of a "black box." And what protocols we use will determine what contributions will be developed. This may be part of a greater investigation into the noetic science.

An alternative perspective.

Most Respectfully,
R

 

OK, then it makes sense to recast your questions in terms of the brains of dogs or, hopefully, lesser animals that still show the same phenomena, doesn't it?

I'm pointing at this as purely being a method of simplifying the question.

 

Great post!

Yes, we can't take apart and reassemble the brain and then have it continue living. One of the problems is that brains are stupendously interconnected soft blobs with tiny delicate cells and made out of fragile material.. Another is the issue of kickstarting life. Then there are the ethical questions involved. There are probably other problems, too.

Yes, creating an automaton with similar complexity is something that is nowhere close to being accomplished. For one thing, the silicon and other stuff we use for making automata end up causing a gigantic power requirement. So, models of brains have been severely limited for even just the power issue, thus constituting a small small modules, not what's required for consciousness.

I agree that we're starting with a black box, but we've come a long way in learning how brains work. We have Steven Pinker's books, for example, describing in significant detail how vision, memory, language, etc. work - what parts are brain hardware, what is more learned, where this stuff is, etc.

I think we can continue shedding light on what's in the black box we started with. I don't think it is a case of some permanent road block.

 

You said thoughts can exist outside of coinsciousness - Your premise is false .. your example failed miserably .. and now you are digressing further ... down a well off ... cant think of the right adjective so try some hieroglyphics .. ..

 

Great thread with interesting insights into a fascinating subject.

While my own experience that I am going to describe is anecdotal it had a neurological diagnosis which means that others have had the same experience.

I was working from home one day and shortly after joining a virtual meeting at 2 pm my long term memory shut down and I have no recollection of anything that occurred from that point in time until I found myself in the ER eight and half hours later.

During the period that my long term memory was "offline" as far as recording memories was concerned I was apparently fully conscience and interacting normally. No one in the meeting noticed anything at all odd about my behavior and apparently I continued to "work" until around 7 pm when my late wife asked me about making supper. Since I had said that I would make supper because I was working from home I came downstairs and then started wandering around rather than doing the cooking.

This caused my wife to wonder if I had had a stroke and apparently I was able to recall who was president and what day it was and who she was but nothing at all about what I was going to cook. She took me to the ER where my long term memory came back "online" and then I was able to start remembering things that had occurred 15 minutes earlier. The neurologist asked me if I knew who she was and when I said no she told me her name. 15 minutes later she returned and I could recall her name. That was the end of the episode as far as the event itself is concerned.

Apparently these random events can last as long as 24 hours and there is no known cause for them. Having one does not mean that you will ever have another. Subsequent testing, including wearing a recoding device for 24 hours, revealed nothing at all abnormal with my brain itself.

So what can we learn from this event?

Apparently we can be fully conscience and interact normally without the ability to store long term memories. I have zero recollection of anything that occurred during that period and yet I was able to talk to people normally. According to my wife I kept asking her where my wallet was even though she told she had it with her. She would tell me that and 5 minutes later I would ask the same question because I had no recollection of asking her and her response. In essence I knew who she was and that I owned a wallet but I was not able to update my long term memory as to the current location of my wallet.

It is possible to be fully conscience and aware and not have a functioning long term memory at the same time. Obviously the longer this continues the less likely one is to be able to be a functioning member of society.

Once my ability to recall long term memories "rebooted" I was able to recall everything from prior to it shutting down and all subsequent events after "rebooting" which returned me to "normal".

With the above in mind and referencing the quotes we can gain some insight into what is required in order to be fully conscience. At no point during that period was I asleep so I was conscience and I was able to interact but only using my short term memory and that part of my long term memory that was still accessible prior to the shutting down of the ability to store long term memory.

Were the neuron pathways that stored long term memories just "dormant" and if so what put them into that state and what caused them to resume functioning again?

What was my state of conscience during that period? I was definitely aware of what was happening within the immediate span of my short term memory so I cannot be said to have been unaware either.

There was nothing otherwise abnormal about what happened and it might have passed unnoticed if my wife had made supper that evening and I had just come down when it was ready.

The complexity of our brains leaves us with more questions than answers but when we keep our minds open and willing to learn new things then it is possible that we might one day understand ourselves and our brains more fully than we do at present.

 

Seems like you are using the term "long term memory" incorrectly.

 

Dogs do indeed have a consciousness as do most organic lifeforms. Some even think plants have consciousness.
It is unclear where living things stop being aware of its own "being"...for example at the plankton level, higher up the chain of living complexity or below it?

Consciousness is the result of the development of the brain and its being the communications centre for the body it developed in.
Will, IMO, is one exercise undertaken by the consciousness. Some living things have less than others depending in how it protects its life. Staying alive is the prime motive of the consciousness. Some living things need will, some do it almost purely by unconscious instinct, generated in an ancient and specific part of the brain which humans too retain. Instinct is the most vital and first part of a brain if the species is to develop but it doesn't necessarily need Will to activate it.
Consciousness to me is awareness and can be generated by deliberately connecting neurons of it can generate itself ...which is instinct.

 

RE: How do you explain consciousness?
SUBTOPIC: Item Under Test (IUT)
※→ WillReadmore, et al,

I agree with most of your Posting #106. I do have some minor opinionated differences in your optimism. (A beacon of light in a place where we need it.)

(COMMENT)

And this is very optimistic. The brain, where we believe the "mind" and "consciousness" reside, is much like the TADIS in the popular program "Dr Who." It is much bigger in the inside than the outside dimensions would suggest. In part, the question arises, in illuminating the "black box" can we interpret what we see?

(COMMENT)

Well, yes... There have been great strides in some understanding the range of our five senses (Audio, Olfactory, Vision, Tasting and Feeling), as well as physical location where certain special functions that (for example: language, recognition, memory, distinctions, computational, coordination and atomic functions necessary for continued life) and social actions are (for the lack of a better term) processed. We can stimulate certain of these activities and watch as certain locations charge-up and was certain pathways begin to conduct modulated bioelectric signals. Scientists can certainly cause an effect through chemical induction or by altering sensory perceptions. But giving all things equal, we cannot change key mental and information processing [for example: Prosopagnosia (face blindness)]. If the eyes are functioning properly, and the pathways unobstructed, then why cannot a person recognize a face? How and why does the brain store and retrieve information, and do its analysis?

We have detected certain location of the brain we call association areas. And we have detected a relationship between Prosopagnosia, Autism, and Asperger's Syndrome.

(AΩ)

While you are right on the money, and I recognize that some of the advancements and understanding on these topics is as important to these conditions as the 1905 Papers by Professor Einstein were to Physics, I also afraid that some of these results will be misinterpreted. Sir Issacs Newton gave us the Newtonian understandings and formula we still use today; they are not quite correct. And that is what I think is happening in the neurosciences.

(EPILOG)

Under the scientific method, Quantum Mechanics and Relativity have been test. And neither of them is wrong. It leads to a paradox. There are several possibilities that might explain and nullify the contradictions. One of the two is wrong. Our theories on mathematics are wrong. The interpretations are illusionary, etc., etc., etc... (Newton had to invent calculus in his explanations.) Our understanding today of the concepts behind the "mind" and "consciousness" may be wrong as well.

An alternative perspective.

Most Respectfully,
R

 

An interesting twist: One school of thought in terms of "the self" - each of our unique identities and awareness of that identity - depends on a continuous stream of thought. This comes up in consideration of concepts like quantum teleportation. Would the you that arrives be the same you that transported? The answer almost certainly is no; an identical copy isn't the same consciousness.

That all makes sense but also suggests that we each effectively die when we sleep. The person who awakes in the morning has all of the memories of the person who went to sleep. But the discontinuity in consciousness means the person who went to sleep is dead.

 

Well, the Greeks had never seen a biological cell. In fact, no one would actually see a biological cell until the year 1607 CE.

The Greeks certainly knew what a brain was, because they had seen people's heads get bashed due to any number of causes and their brains spill out, but the Greeks thought the brain was a single.

Because the Greeks had no way of knowing that the brain is comprised of Millions of highly specialized biological cells, they had no way of knowing that chemical interactions among those cells is what gave rise to consciousness, and note that we lacked the technology to figure that out until the 20th Century of the Common Era.

As a result, the only way the Greeks could explain consciousness was to concoct the idea of a soul that inhabited a person's body.

If those Greeks were alive today and had access to the technology and information that we have, they would have the courage to admit how wrong they were and flat out reject the idea of soul, which would make those Greeks more courageous, intelligent and human than x-tians.

 

Already in the 4th century BC, Aristotle thought that the heart was the seat of intelligence, while the brain was a cooling mechanism for the blood. He reasoned that humans are more rational than the beasts because, among other reasons, they have a larger brain to cool their hot-bloodedness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_neuroscience#Antiquity


He thought the brain was a radiator, lol. Maybe because the folds look like cooling fins?

 

So then consciousness = soul?
If consciousness = soul then how can soul not = consciousness?

Im not sure what a soul is? Neither have I found anything nor heard anything in these threads that definitively demonstrates the nonexistence of 'soul' whatever that is?

the whole body is a radiator lol
We maintain a body temperature of roughly 98.6 and radiate heat every moment of our lives

 

I think what humans have is above what dogs have, and that we're not using the same understanding of consciousness.

 

My thoughts are with you. And, your closing thoughts about it are right on target.

The model of how brains work derived by Steven Pinker (look up for credentials) does show a modular brain - sectioned by function. He's worked with patients who for various reasons had specific deficits with known reasons - such as people who lost their word dictionary, or other specific capabilities while all else functions well.

Of course, the study of the brain has probably gone beyond that, but at least he writes about scientific findings and in ways that a lay person can understand.

 

We seem to be in full agreement. I'd add one little bit about "wrongnes".

I think there are degrees of wrongness. Science depends on proving ideas to be wrong, course - eliminating bad ideas.

However, we still use Newtonian physics whenever possible. We just learned about the limitations and what to do outside those limitations. I wouldn't really call Newton that "wrong".

Physicists I listen to seem to look forward to finding similar kinds of unifications for the difference between quantum mechanics and the standard model that includes gravity. I haven't heard any of them suggest that one or the other is wrong.

I'm not so sure about the statement of math being wrong, as mathematics tends to work in fully defined domains, making proofs possible - unlike in natural science where one must depend on proof of falsity to eliminate failed ideas.

But, I'm certainly not a mathematician and the field gets pretty amazing on its edges!

 

Seems logical - but has nothing to do with how "the will" managed to move your pinky -- the first time .. Not for you .. but the first time a thought -"Period" was manifested into physical reality. You still don't see the gap .. never mind figure out how to get across it.

For example .. my thought .. was able to get your pinky to move .. how did that happen .. you recieved esternal input - and you had a thought on that basis .. and decided to will your pinky to move

You brought up a dog ... lets go further .. suppose you are a tree -- and want to wave one of your branches .. something no tree has ever done before ... because trees don't have that capability .. how did the will .. create the genetic programing .. and electrical grid .. to somehow manifest itself .. into physical reality ... "The First Time" -- this is the part you are not getting .. the gap you are not "distinguishing" You are looking down at your pnky and saying ... Ohh .. its like this .. I will the pinky to move .. and it moves .. but NOOO .. you don't have that ability - and no entity has ever had that ability .. but .. its somethign you want to do .. somehow the thought has to create that ability ..

 

Me either since relativity failed and the fact is that it was newton-lorentz that made your gps accurate enough to write your name on a 8x11 sheet of paper

 

Even babies take action. They learn to move their appendages at a young age.

It IS interesting that it has to be learned. But, I don't see it as even slightly surprising that such actions can be learned.

Do you have any idea how much time athletes put into learning how to move their body parts?

I'm not so sure what you mean by "will". The reason I move my pinky is that there is some reward for doing so. How is that not sufficient?

 

Babies already have that ability ... not what is being discussed .. not understanding what is being said to you.

 

???
Human babies grow up to be .. human adults.

You keep claiming there is a deficit somewhere along the line.

I've pointed out that some of what you are commenting on is not specific to humans - it developed over evolution.

I've pointed out that some of what you are talking about exists in babies - came as original equiment.

If you think there is something else missing, you need to differentiate it in some way.

 

It was the Greek philosopher Democritus who came up with the Atomic Theory of the Universe so I would be reluctant to underestimate their understanding of the functioning of the brain. A lot of their writing has not survived.

 

And yet NOW we have discovered NEURONS in the HEART!

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31728781/#:~:text=Recent findings: Dr.,has its own nervous system.

Anyone who has felt the full pain of heartache from losing a loved one will appreciate that there is more to this than we are currently aware of at the present time.

There have been anecdotal experiences of people who have received heart transplants feeling a kinship with the relatives of the late donor.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31739081/