Consciousness, A Discussion

Good example...

 

A person who reports that his/her soup has no taste is obviously still conscious enough to be aware of it. Neurologist Nichols Schiff hypothesizes that to be conscious of anything requires activity from a ribbon of neurons in the intralaminarnuclei of the central thalamus, which in turn is regulated by neurons in the brainstem, a primitive evolutionary structure. The neurons of the central thalamus, in turn, have pathways to every part of the cerebral cortex, suggesting that consciousness and unconsciousness invovlve upregulation and downregulaion, respectively, of the entire cortex. Looping neurons from the upper levels of the cortex projecting back to the central cortex allow the "lights to stay on" even when the soup is tasteless. The taste of the soup results from neurons from the taste buds connected to a specific region of the thalmus and project only a particular cortical area. Qualia confuses the issue, since it connotes consciousness of particular stimuli rather than being conscious in general.

But getting back to the main issue, a pleasant taste is a strong motivator for a conscious being. It's just not clear to me why that would be necessary for a highly functional intelligent zombie or automaton. Maybe we aren't ready yet to address that question, or maybe it's forever beyond our reach, like my dog trying to figure out why I yell a him when he shits on the rug. Incidentally though, your description of the value of consciousness is similar to my theory of the function of religion. It evolved to give us a sense of meaning and add to our joi de virvre.

"Consciousness", in the sense of "creating a model of the world using multiple feedback loops in various parameters in order to accomplish a goal" (Michio Kaku) invloves the limbic system (thalmus for sensory information, hippocampus for memories, and amygdala for emotions), and human consciousness, involving the ability to create a model of the world and then simulating it in time by evaluating the past to simulate the future, seems to be located in are 10 (the internal granular area layer IV) in the lateral prefrontal cortex, which is involved with memory, planning, abstract thinking and initiating or inhibiting appropriate or inappropriate behavior. (Kaku). I guess if I had to identify the seat of the "soul", that would be it. And certainly those functions would be useful or vital to human survival and development. In this regard, you might be interested in the work of Finnish cognitive neuroscientist Atti Revonsuo, who does research on dreams and has developed the "threat simulation" theory--that dreams are a means of simulating, rehearsing and testing responses to various scenarios. (Revensuo, Consciousness, The Science of Subjectivity, 2010). I think it's significant that Pennfield was able to use electrical stimulation of the brain to cause subjects to relive (not just remember) past experiences, as though they were happening again.Throw mirror neurons into the mix, and I might be willing to concede that our "hard problem" is close to being solved. But why subjective phenomenal awareness?

 

Conservatively , consciousness may be full even as the physical life be almost gone . So what if the dying man is not
being properly social , diminishing alone , yet also extending with climatic epiphany . For this grace , I say life is kind .

.

In the perception of my beginning ... there is only Space . The self that must be there to perceive that time of first
existence is a hologram . It is a hologram of this physical body now , but with neither gravity nor orientation and
all is blackness . To sense a time before the womb , then is the Nothingness . Nothing that is self can speak of that .

So I must feel where I am as hologram - in Space again , pausing , to spin there ... and now step forward from that and
the child I am begins to grow . To grow is the knowing and the feeling of life . Togetherness begins here : ah dah ... of
the womb and woman . The place to grow is realized , memorized , and shall always be the primary and most important
space . A fullness of mind extends to this inception .

I cannot conceive of consciousness without the ideas of fullness and extension . This is a sacred relationship for me .
It's sacred like a forest is sacred . And that sort of sacred means anyone can live there respectfully , no one may own it ,
and is no place for war .

 

Unless you have another argument that consciousness is not, in the physical sense, a nothingness, then let me move on to another key point that science has a hard time dealing with...

...yes, some of you were probably wondering when I was going to bring this up-----the double slit experiment (ta daaa!!! -----LOL)

But seriously, the Double Slit experiment is a sharp thorn in the side of many scientists that no matter how hard they try to dig at it, it just won't come out. They have tried variation after variation to get different results, but the more they do, the deeper down the rabbit hole they go... So they largely ignore it.

In fact, this is a perfect example of how philosophy is not keeping up with science. And the fact that in the English speaking world, scientists would rather play word games (Analytical Philosophy) rather than approach this is a perfect example of how philosophy is in a state of crisis, or as Stephen Hawking said, “dead.” Yes, philosophy has looked at this experiment, and commented, but then it was left for the scientists to deal with---trapped in their overly materialist, exceedingly reductionist worldview:

Again, as Tikoo said:

We have discussed the double slit experiment numerous times before---and by we, I think that includes many of the people in this thread. But if anyone wants me to go through it I will.

But for now, I will state this very critical implication:

The light (or other sub atomic particle, atom, molecule, bucky ball, or whatever else is used in the experiment) changes from waveform to particle whenever a conscious observation is made (i.e. there is a probability wave collapse). This is how we normally state it and therefore it has been said, for almost a century now, that quantum mechanics suggests that it takes a conscious observer to create reality.

The problem is, scientists and philosophers take this kind of statement at face value, without considering what exactly constitutes conscious observation. Also significant is that later versions of the experiment have demonstrated that automated or other mechanically induced observations, where there is no conscious observation of the results, does not produce any change.

More importantly, we must consider that we don’t actually see the individual particle that is subject to observation. In the case of light, we don’t peer into a little window and see a photon pass by and say, “There’s one!” In fact, that photon was gone, literally in a flash, by the time we were even aware that we had measured a photon’s position. Furthermore, Wheeler’s Delayed Observation version of the experiment indicates that time or sequence does not matter. In fact, since these photons are all moving at the speed of light, clearly all such observations are already a past event by the time we have any awareness of the measurement.

So what then is this conscious act that causes a probability wave collapse if we are changing a state of existence that should have already happened, and that we cannot even truly see? It is first of all intention—the intention to measure the position of the quantum. Second of all, it is knowledge of a reality. This is because we do not see the position itself, in fact we do not even measure the exact position in space-time—therefore we only have knowledge or awareness that a photon has a position, and will therefore manifest as a particle rather than a wave.

So what does this mean? It means that a non-physical thing (a nothingness as per my post #283) through intention and knowledge changes physical reality----consciousness takes part in creating reality.

But there is something inherently different in this nothingness from mere physical matter. The measuring devices by themselves do not alter the Double Slit Experiment—it takes a conscious observation. These measuring devices consist of a network of wires and devices with electrons moving across them, which in terms of mere physical matter, cannot be that greatly different from a neural network in the brain, with its electrons, that the results would be so different. Is the physical nature of organic material so different from any other physical matter that it could have such an effect without taking into account some nonphysical process?

Furthermore there is the problem that if it is the physical brain that makes the change to the experiment—at what location does this happen in. After all, the physical observation involves vision cells in the eyes, nerves to the brain, a whole network of various synapses in all kinds of neurons and other brain material---what makes one piece of bioelectric organic material any different than another?

And this does not even address the problem that there is a certain non-locality involved in this experiment. We are not literally changing the quanta by touch to change them to particles. If it is all a mere physical event—how exactly does it happen, in the case of this experiment, accross both space and time

 

I just caught a typo in Post #302. In paragraph 3, second line, the word should be area 10.

 

I still don't follow why the smell and vision example you're so readily to accept but hung up on the explanation(s) for consciousness. If it seems a bit quirky, The why may just be why it's natural selection and evolution and why it's not intelligent design.

 

That is very simple----the same reason we have an ego, which traps us into a physical existence----in order to experience life. This is why it takes humans much longer than other animals to mature----we gain life experiences and learn lessons within the physical reality during that time of development. What kind of life would it be if all of us entered into the physical realm fully aware? How would we develop differing opinions, have the wide variety of experiences we do have, and truly exercise free will.

If we are products of our environment no one would ever rise above that environment and the product it produces. As it has been stated several times in this thread---most decisions have already been made before we face them. If this is the case, then the one time we rise up and do something different from what the biochemical interactions in our brain are telling us to do. This is why suicide, for example, was so significant to existentialists.

 

I find it very interesting that much of this thread is devoted to a materialist rationale in such a reductionist manner. Any belief that would lead one to conclude that consciousness is of a supernatural nature, is summarily written off as a crock of shit. The idea that consciousness may give rise to matter is demeaned and labeled as overly simplistic. And apparently science and empirical evidence provides absolutely no proof or suggestion that consciousness exists in any other form than the simple result of the mental activities of the physical brain (I highly disagree).

As I finally read through the rest of the thread this evening---I asked myself several times----'my word, haven't these people ever experienced anything supernatural, that defied explanation?' But finally I remembered that most of my own life I was looking for that proof of anything beyond the physical, and that I always wrote off anything that didn't fit objectivist and rational conclusions as mere coincidence, hallucination, or superstition. In the 1980's I had resinged myself to the idea that there could be no proof, and became quite agnostic.

But this is exactly why we do not see the real problem behind the nihilism of the modern age, and why this thread reappears over and over in different forms, but always as the same essential argument. As I said previously----we do not recognize the real problem we are still facing: the question of physical versus nonphysical.

Culturally we are programmed to focus entirely on the objective physical world. That is the world we live in as conscious beings----and we are thus entirely oblivious to the whole other reality that is a part of our nature, but which we encounter through our subconscious mind. This is the realm philosophers refert to as the irrational----and in the early stages of the Modern Age----it was feared, and was understood to be that Nothingness, where no thing can exist, and from where the evils of humanity would sneak out to haunt us.

Just look at how you guys went round and around arguing over the unconscious versus the conscious. It may have seemed mundane, and as if your opponent just didn't understand----but there is a cultural reasoning behind why you would argue over such things in trying to discuss consciousness----it is a cultural problem that goes back several hundred years.

This is the world that Kant created for us, and for good reason---it enabled science to bring us to where we are today. But he believed the mind to be of a supernatural nature, and that reality was not how we perceived it-----he just shoved metaphysics under the rug, saying there was no way to prove it, and over time it simply died.

And this is also the logical end conclusion of Judeo-Christian thought, and Greek Philosophy----the two sources of Western rationalist objectivism. This is exactly why Nietzsche said God was dead, and that it was the very men meant to protect him that killed him.

This cultural programming enables your ego to most effectively filter out anything that would even hint of nonphysicality. You can never see it if you are not open to it. Even those who think they are open to such things, are still largely trapped in this Western frame of mind. And when it comes to metaphysics our hollowed Western institutions of religion are no better----they may have theories, and stories----but they are like children playing make believe when it comes to providing anything of true metaphysical substance.

Many of you know that I spend a lot of time with Native Americans who 'walk the red road.' They live in a completely different world----and I mean a --completely-- --different-- --world--. They may live and function on the same land, even hold down jobs and deal with the White world. But most of them grew up and live in a world where an alternative reality that is very real, and very empirical, is just the start of one ceremony away. For them, the whole question of this thread would be very silly.

But they live in a culture that is still very open to such things we do not see or experience. Experience tells them that it would be needless to question higher beings.

 

You are confusing "something that I cannot explain" with "supernatural". There are literally countless natural facts about the world that you haven't a hope in hell of explaining, that doesn't make them supernatural. For example, your understanding of the double slit experiment and the implications that it holds for physics and how scientists approach it (they certainly do NOT ignore it) shows that you cannot explain that either; still, this is "merely" the mundane behavior of particles, there's no magician here waving a wand.

This is a reflection on your ability to understand and explain, not on the workings of the cosmos.

Your position reads like a god of a gaps argument; "I cannot understand phenomenon x, therefore it must be something supernatural that defies all known natural processes and laws", and as an addendum, you posit "Oh and hey, here's these guys who believe a bronze age cult about a jewish guy who rose from the dead and provides eternal life, so maybe this is something? Who knows right? I mean, if the whole double slit thing is so weird, who knows right? Better to just play it safe and assume that they could be right too". Kind of a passive allowance of BS into the marketplace of ideas. When you come up against something you can't explain, that doesn't open the door to nonsense; that should prod you to learn how to understand it, to join the men and women who spend their lives actually learning about the workings of the cosmos. It may very well be the case that "consciousness creates reality", whatever on earth that sentence means, because if you REALLY break it down, it's nonsense, but you're not going to find that out by throwing jabs at attempts to understand the cosmos which result in strange tentative answers which await further data. This is how solving a mystery works.

"Gosh detective, I just can't figure out how this guy was stabbed but there's no knife anywhere here! And you know, those scientologists around the corner, they say that THETANS inhabit our bodies, so i mean its POSSIBLE that his inner thetan murdered him, we really can't know either way, there's really no evidence either way, so why don't I go ahead and contact the family and let them know that we at least have a possible lead on his killer"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-D8Mf9DdQI

 

Actually, the entire foundations of Science are built upon throwing jabs of experimentation at the Universe, which lead to many of the findings that Science relies on today. The Alchemists.

 

And so break down for me the notion of why Consciousness creates reality is nonsense when even some Scientists feel this way. Be as specific as possible.

 

Define "consciousness" and define "reality" and then explain to me what you mean by "consciousness creates reality". It's actually verbal nonsense; meat noises. A confusion of categories from mammalian thinking.

 

And yet, Consciousness and Reality are very clearly absolute aspects of the universe. You could argue the same thing about the word Universe.

 

Shall it be that only the fully concious may define conciousness ? Seeking to know , we of the lesser conciousness are
not likely to be comfortable with a definition created by the insistent stubbornly slobbering suppressed and barely concious .

 

Very perceptive. I hold the intermediate view, biological naturalism, developed by U. Cal. professor John Searle in The Rediscovery of Mind, which argues persuasively that consciousness is a real subjective experience, caused entirely by the physical processes of the brain. It seems to me that there's a sizeable body of empirical research on the neural correlates of consciousness, such as the work of Baars, Crick (of double helix fame), Revensuo, Edelman, Koch and Tononi. Relaxx has presented us with videos by Koch, presenting some of this research. These scientists didn't sit on their couches speculating on the subject, but did rigorous testing of their hypotheses using fMRI, PET, EEG,and MEG technology. I don't think the results come close to a complete understanding of consciousness., and the researchers disagree about the neural mechanisms of consciousness and the relation between higher cognition and consciousness. But I find it hard to believe that the phenomenon is completely or largely independent of a material brain. Searle argues, however, against the reductionism and materialism you mention, of which Relaxx is a good example, and argues convincingly for emergence--i.e., that consciousness is fundamentally different from the biological processes that produce it. Water has properties which differ fundamentally from hydorgen and oxygen, and it is impossible to predict or understand the properties of water by focusing on the properties of its molecular constituents. Likewise, it would be absurd to provide an adequate theory of economics or politics as "nothing but" matter and motion. I find it equally strange, however, to deny the existence of physical reality or to say it is caused by the mind. I certainly wouldn't turn to pre-scientific Native American traditional beliefs as state-of the-art understanding of reality. I do think you've hit the nail on the head about cultural resistance to anything that isn't material--which it seems consciousness isn't--as shown in the strange case of Daniel Dennett. As Searle point out,"No one would think of saying, for example, "Having a hand is just being disposed to certain sorts of behavior such as grasping" (manual behaviorism), or "Hands can be defined entirely in terms of their causes and effects" (manual functionalism), or "For a system to have a hand is just for it to be in a certain computer state with the right sorts of inputs and outputs" (manual Turing Machine functionalism), or "Saying that a system has hands is just adopting a certain stance toward it" (the manual stance). (p. 263) But this seems to be what the "nothing butters" try to do with consciousness. But I don't think it necessarily has anything to do with the supernatural.

 

Perhaps you cannot . Fear this : that the golden eagle will shit upon a curmugeonly head . Or may it respectfully say hello , friend ,
as it stands on the earth and looking up eye to eye with human ?

Anyway , all living thoughts are contemporary . And living conciousness relates to reality with a single , steadfast view . It is
what we may share - and is as a heart-song of flutes , earth and sky . The Double Flute of Kwee sings creation with one breath .

 

Define "matter" and define "consciousness" and then explain to us what you mean by "matter creates consciousness." You're the one insisting we're all just meat, so as far as meat noises go...what's even the purpose of this conversation? What philosophy can meat offer us?

Mountain Valley Wolf makes my favorite point, which is that you offer no philosophy. First of all, as ethical people, we're supposed to assume that matter can spontaneously create meaningful subjective experience, despite the fact that matter inherently carries no discernable meaning itself whatsoever. I've got that much. I don't understand why that assumption is the ethical one to make.

I find it absurd that we who believe this have to answer to you who don't simply because you want to be right so badly. You have as little evidence for what you are saying as we have for what we are saying. You can't come from a standpoint of mind and reduce it to matter no matter how many slices you cut the brain into. You're still going to be left with mind -- the only thing that has ever technically been definitely experienced.

Things like the double-slit experiment do support our viewpoint. The evidence is that probabilities exist and are collapsed into more definite forms by consciousness. But even these forms aren't definite, really. They're temporary and changing drastically from moment to moment. Nothing here is static; nothing here is certain. We live in a pool of possibilities that cannot seem to fix themselves. So we aren't even in agreement as to what matter seems like, though you grossly just assume that we are. You assume that I am worried that I might be as meaningless as dead matter and that's why I refuse to believe that I am dead matter, but that is not the case. It's just obvious to me that nothing here is certain. There is no "matter" as such. There is nothing here that is the same from one moment to the next whatsoever. Except our personalities.

I wish you would elaborate tikoo. You speak very poetically and I enjoy reading what you have to say, but it's hard for me to make sense of it all the time. What do you mean by "fullness and extension" and have I said something to make you think I preclude these things from my philosophy?

 

I don't think you include the opposite of fullness and extension in your philosophy . Wouldn't such an aspect of Opposition be
depressive ? I do think you are positive at the center . Please spin on .

 

I feel like I'm not getting what you're saying and I would like to. You seem to me to say that I don't include emptiness in my philosophy. It's funny, I never thought of that as a shortcoming. But maybe fullness needs emptiness in order to be stable and sustainable? Maybe I go too far in my quest for the truth and don't really understand how it seems to others. I will try to be a more positive person and may just give up philosophy altogether. One thing I'll never stop doing is spinning, though!

 

Wait a minute Mr. Writer----when I said supernatural in the last post----I wasn't referring to the Double Slit Experiment (And I do have my own model of the universe that goes quite far in explaining what goes on in the Double Slit Experiment, and it is based largely on Quantum Mechanics, the Theories of Relativity, and other theories that have come about in the past decade or two, thank you very much). I wasn't referring to the quirks of quantum mechanics, and not even to the research at MIT where they have sucesfully used human intention to alter reality (e.g. coagulation of blood, .ph of water, growth of insect larva, etc) in a series of very well documented experiments that can be duplicated in other laboratories.

I was referring to actual supernatural experiences. After all, wasn't that clear when I wrote?

Yes---I'm talking about ghosts, premonitions, weird things. Or even things like what happened to my mom---she started getting chest pains, and a tightness in her chest, but doctors could never find a cause for it. After so many years it was written off as hypochondria or some kind of psychosomatic issue. That is until she was going around Europe with my aunt. They were travelling in France and happened to get on the wrong train. My mom suggested they go somewhere unplanned for the day, and just explore. The train pulled into a small mountain town and my mom suddenly felt like she had been there before. Suddenly she knew that she had been in an avalanche or rock slide as a young girl there and was crushed to death. She immediately knew why she had the chest pains. She had my Aunt (who taught High School French and Spanish) ask if anyone knew anything about it. In fact in a cafe they asked and people said that there was such a history in the 1800's destroying half the town. They then had them go to a library or town hall or something where they learned the history. The story was just as she knew it. She never had those pains or tightness of chest again.

Did this really happen---you don't know, I don't know either----because it didn't happen to any of us. But my mom knows, and she does believe it. But how could such memories survive death? As a younger man I had trouble believing the story because of that reason. And especially because nothing like that ever happened to me. And no----it isn't a memory that was buried in her DNA----her family is Dutch and English, not French. And her death happened as a young girl with no children of her own---in fact she may have said that her whole family was killed.

But that is the kind of thing I am talking about.

Now am I trying to use science to prove religion? let me tell you, after Jesus came into my life and I found... NO, I am not religious, and I have trouble with religion. I am not a Christian either. But I won't attack anyone for their religion. I will talk about the problems of religion, and its social impact, and I will respect others in their religious beliefs. OK, I will joke about it too---but...

Am I simply throwing jabs at Modern Man's attempts to understand the cosmos? Not at all. But I do find fault with the reductionist belief system that is just as dogmatic as that of Christians and other religious people. And by the way---I do find fault with the dogma as well. You, for example, stated that the idea that consciousness creates reality is utter nonsense---yet that is what happens in the double slit experiment, because a superpositioned wave that exists simultaneously all across the universe (and time) is very different from a single particle with a single position in space-time. And it is undeniably a conscious awareness of this that creates such a result----it is not some weird coincidence that always happens at the right time, and has been happening for around a 100 years now.

My question is, do you understand the double slit experiment?

This isn't an idea I suddenly came up with----I didn't suddenly say, "Wow, man, like either this is some really bad acid, or consciousness shapes reality." There have been very many noted and highly respected scientists over the past hundred years that have said this. And frankly, it makes far more sense than the multiverse theory that for every quantum wave collapse, say, four new universes emerge---one for each possibility. (And this isn't the only way a quantum wave collapse ocurs either---there is also decoherence).

I also have a problem with the rationalist objectivism of the Modern Age---because it degrades everything and everyone to nothing but an object. This is as much a cultural, social, and political problem as it is a scientific one. It is at the root of the modern nihilism that has gripped our society. And this Nihilism is at the root of the Anti-science that is preached all around America today.

And this brings me to my next point, considering that we have debated on this forum before, in fact, even in regards to the double slit experiment and the nature of light---I find it insulting that you would suggest that I am speaking from a position of God of the Gaps. I am not so dogmatic or simple minded that anything I don't understand, I simply write off as the workings of the Gods. Yes, I talk about consciousness as a 'first cause.' Yes, I have experienced first hand some very crazy shit that defies non-spiritual explanation-----but I am not so simple minded as to say, "I don't understand how this happened so it must be that the Lord God done come down from the heavens and put his hands on it."

In fact, I am just as disgusted with Anti-Science as the next rationally minded person. I would not want creationism crammed down the throats of my children at school (fortunately they are all grown now). There is so much evidence for evolution it is ridiculous to try to give any creedence to something as stupid as creationism.

Let me take this the next step further----we are living in a culture without a Unifying Truth (or Unifying Myth as many Post-Modern theorists say) which means that we are living in a dying culture. The church traditionally played this role for Western Culture but after the Enlightenment, the justification for it gradually eroded away. Today, Modern Western Culture is Global Culture, even if it is largely defined by American Culture. We cannot turn backwards and try to place the church back up there as the source of meaning, value, and truth for our culture. We have to rediscover that unifying truth for ourselves---and the only source that could be possibly accepted on a culture-wide basis is that of science.

That last post was, not intended to be an attack on science, or our attempts to understand the cosmos-----it was a comment on our culture----since you missed it the first time, let me sum it up for you again: Our culture, with its focus on consciously perceived physicality of an objective world, blocks off our ability to see or perceive the non-physical nature of reality.