Consciousness, A Discussion

Are you implying that I have created my personal philosophy to stroke my own ego? Oh contrare, I have been very careful to be objective when it comes to my own welfare. I do not necessarily believe I will survive physical death. I do not know or care. But I am concerned with the truth, and the truth is that time is relative to the observer. The observer is a conscious one, i.e. time may be utterly dependent upon consciousness. The link between observation and time isn't just some phenomena you can throw away as garbage because it happens to be ideallyic. Other things are ideallyic and also true. Like, it's ideallyic that evolution exists. I don't believe in evolution just because it strokes my own ego, and the same goes for time being an illusion. Time is proven to be illusory.

Where there is imagination there exists the non-physical, don't you see? We can imagine things that have yet to come to pass. The universe at such points exists in a state of flux, of uncertainty. There is no ultimately physical correlate. There is only a big question mark. Your deterministic world view has been completely annihilated by modern scientific understanding, yet you still cling to it, and I'd really like to know why.

Is it a need for death, or is it a need for utter certainty? The "ego" argument can work both ways.

Then it has the qualia of having no qualia. It is still a phenomenal experience.

 

Well, what is your truth? I believe that a fully conscious mind will ask questions. If you tell me that the leaves are falling here, I will believe you because i can see for myself that that is the truth;......If you tell me something, i don;t see for myself or it does not add up in some way to me, I will continue to ask questions...and not just take everything I here as the truth......
i heard someone say recently....a confused mind is the devil's work....in metaphor language, i find this to be true....someone who is just trying to confuse another and talk circles around your brain makes you more susceptible


to their agendas......
always ask questions...always seek real truths.

 

The argument that they are illusion is just as strong as them not being illusion---Berkeley and Hume (Locke?) I forget who it was, but they both had produced arguments so strong, on the opposite side (Berkeley that it was all mind and the physical was illusion, and the other that it was all physical, and mind was illusion) that it left philosophy in a state of crisis. It took Kant to move it forward by more or less acknowledging and then sweeping the problem under the rug. We do not actually experience physical objects----we only experience the phenomena of the objects.

But it doesn't matter if physical reality is illusion or not---because it all exists as physical reality. If it is illusion, then it is simply that the non-physical is more real than the physical-----but because the world is as it is, physical reality (the illusion) is still constructed as it is. (And the Super-ego, by the way is a Freudian concept not Jungian.)

Time? The Special Theory of Relativity shows us that time is only experienced for objects that are moving slower than the speed of light----yet the universe really is nothing more than light. Prior to the Big Bang, or at the point of the Big Bang, only light existed.

Where is the physical location of tomorrow? or yesterday? We can remember the past, and plan for tomorrow, but do they have physical existence?

You say that the thoughts in your head are physical, but by definition, physical as an adjective, excludes the mind (pertaining to physical things, material or concrete, excluding the mind). However, I assume we are talking in a scientific sense here, and therefore we would be using the definition as follows: "of, or relating to that which is material; and, of or pertaining to such things as matter and energy that has one or more physical properties (mass, color, density, volume, temperature, etc.).

We think we know what produces the phenomena of thought---electrons traveling across the synapses in the brain. We can see those thoughts in a sense---within our head. If we think of a rock sitting on the surface of Venus underneath all the toxic gases---we can see a picture in our heads of what that rock could look like, on the Venusian ground, amidst the gasses. The rock therefore appears to have physical properties. But does that rock then actually exist? Probably not really on Venus, so do you then have rocks in your head? The chances of that are less likely than that rock actually existing on Venus. There are no actual physical properties at all within that thought.

On the other hand, on a Jacob’s Ladder, electrons cross the gap between the two metal terminals, does that create consciousness for that device? Or, for example, when you mix two different chemical substances, and a chemical reaction occurs, is there an awareness that happens as electrons are exchanged between atoms in the reaction? We could make the same argument for a molecule of water, for example----electrons are shared between the two hydrogen atoms and the oxygen atom---does this create a consciousness? After all, just as between the synapses of the brain, electrons are simply moving from one side to another. I haven’t read through the whole thread yet----but I believe that you or someone else like minded to you already made some kind of point to the effect that inanimate things are not conscious.

So we can understand, at a rudimentary level, the physics behind the phenomena of consciousness, but that still does not explain the phenomena. But we do know this----the phenomena of thought is completely different from all other phenomena in that all other phenomena reflects a physical object. All other phenomena represents an objective reality, thought alone represents a subjective construct.

For example, when we look at an object, say a rock (again)---there is a process where photons of light are hitting atoms on the surface of the rock, which are then absorbed into the atoms, inducing other photons to be released from those atoms (photons are not actually reflected as we think in Newtonian terms). The photons then race through space-time to our eyes where we experience the phenomena of seeing that rock. But unlike the rock we pictured on Venus, the phenomena of vision is showing us an actual physical rock, or, whether it is illusion or not---a physical reality. Only thought arises from something that is not physically present at the source. If the source of the phenomena of thought is not a thing (remember we are not talking physical process, as it is present in both cases but with different sources), then its source is ‘nothing.’ The rock we are picturing on Venus is a nothing. Even if we can picture it, we have no idea what it looks like on the surface of Venus, so we cannot even refer to it as representing a physical reality. It is, like all consciousness, a nothingness!

 

It's understood that the brain exhibits neuroplasticity, meaning that there are constantly new pathways being created, reorganized or pruned for new and/or efficient communication between synapses, this phenomena occurs in everyone, regardless of brain damage or not. If you understand that your senses each have special brain pathways with which they relay information, I think it is pretty intuitive and reflected in studies I've seen that memories are often multi-modal events, where they can be 'processed' through different parts of the brain. Children's brains in particular, seem adept to be able recover from various brain injuries because I think they tend to have higher level of neural networks formation.


So that would lead me to speculate initially before seeing any of these incidents you mention, that at least some of them are retrieving the memories from a secondary pathway then what they were originally most accessible from.

Admittedly, we could probably be like inquisitive toddlers and continuously ask 'why?' to a lot of this phenomena that is not fully understood by science yet, however while such occurrences are good for further research into our realms of ignorance, I don't think it's a beneficial approach to have those rare mysteries supersede all the information that is being learned through brain damage via types of amnesia or diseases such as alzheimer's or understanding of brain functioning in general. This is in regards to if you ascribe to the brain being involved in such phenomena.

 

That is true. Some of these case histories involve parts of the brain that were brain dead and it was believed that such memories could never be retrieved. Initially it was suspected that somehow new neural pathways made their way into dead parts of the brain. However, as you say:

The holographic theories of mind theorize about how, for example, a single memory will be accessed through various parts of the brain, but if it is holographic, each part will have the whole memory, but it will not be as detailed or complete as each location put together.

That is what the philosopher is for, as opposed to the scientist.

 

I am of the belief that all of aperson's cells hold memories of them. Ever hear about people who have had organ transplants and have memories that were of someone else? i will take it further to the cell level.....

 

I suppose so... This is an observation over the course of the thread, it seems implementing the Socratic Method (which some more or less attempt to do) is more difficult, or perhaps messy in the age of the internet, when we often have multiple paradigms being discussed in the span of a page.

 

This is an interesting subject----I have a book in my library that explores this----I'll have to look for it if you would like the title.

 

You have had neurons, which are cells, die many times over throughout the course of your life, are you going to suggest you lost a memory with each and every one of those?

 

No, g, because each cell has the memory.....so there are countless others that keep the memories alive.

 

Yes, please, thank you...every cell in my being believes it.....for something small once, I had the choice of crushed bone from someone else......It wasn't a major thing, so i said forget it....something in me did not want it.

 

Not sure I follow...

 

Each one of your cells is your blueprint.

 

But under certain transplants, someone else's blueprint supercedes yours?

 

No, I wouldn't say supersedes but may confuse, depending on the amount of tissue that is transplanted.
I may feel something or remember something that is foreign to me and confuse me at certain times. Nothing could supersede all that is anyone really as for the most part you are still you.

 

That's awkward , I think . The scientist gets up and goes to work , and upon arriving asks what time
it is . The reply : it's about time you got here . Yes , that's very good is the scientific reply to that - and
then the scientist does the good work for the relativity day . So it goes with the Philosophy of Carpentry
as well .

Philosophers don't have to work . Neither does the Artist . Days off are free and easy .

It's raining on the farm today . We're not picking corn .

 

Ahhhhh to be a French philosopher...

Idly spending the days in Cafes, supported by the many patrons who worship me...

The nights spent bedding those of them that are female...

A National hero.

 

I have espoused my truth, and though it may be confusing to others, it's perfectly sensible to me. I honestly don't have to make much of a mental stretch to see the consciousness supercedes physical matter and that time is illusory. I guess to others this is all very confusing, but it seems perfectly ordinary to me. So far no one has made a convincing argument to the contrary, and I guess I'm supposed to feel guilty because of it. Because the conversation has in a sense ended, with mystery in the place of some profound truth (mystery being the only profound truth).

It's funny what a barrier wishful thinking can be to one's ability to perceive the truth. It's surprisingly difficult to convince yourself that you're not just fooling yourself. I think for this reason people will find it exceedingly difficult to grasp the truth. Which is that you are not just this body "accidentally-on-purpose" witnessing creation. What one must comprehend is that the physical world doesn't look any more physical than it looks like a phantasm, which is what it is.

There are truths that will come to light that will revolutionize the way we see the world. Our current collective worldview is really one built out of ignorance, not knowledge. We fail to collectively grasp the sheer magnitude of the cosmos and our place within it. We fail to grasp the true power of consciousness and its control over concepts like time. We fail, we fail, we fail. Anyone who tells you we are succeeding is a liar. We're so ignorant we don't even know what we're ignorant of. We are too caught up in our own successes and they are blinding us further, because we believe they give credence to some philosophy that hasn't even been established. But the working philosophy of the day is just "man is God".

 

Your example doesn't make sense to me. Acute sense of smell or adept vision are of obvious use in catching prey or avoiding predators, as is intelligence. My question was how does subjective phenomenal awareness help in survival?

 

If by that you mean what we call self-awareness, then it only becomes of use in terms of survival whenever it leads to a recognition of being a separate entity and a recognition of a similarity with others which leads to empathy which is beneficial for the survival of a single member of a group as well as the group as a whole. that is predominately why humans formed into the social groups we have.
The few animals that clearly demonstrate this self awareness often also engage in altruistic behaviors towards other species as well.

so in short, self awareness can lead to empathy which is needed for a complex social group to function and survive, IMHO.


also the idea that DNA holds memory should be obvious.
If it didn't, instincts would not be passed down from one generation to the next.

The real puzzle is finding out the how, why and when of a new learned behavior becoming integrated into the genetic material as an instinct.