About Consciousness.

[Xenophon]

It's 2 o'clock on Friday night, and I smoked weed for the first time in a month tonight, so I figured I would try to start a thread. I would like to hear some peoples views on what consciousness is. I don't know if this thread has been done before, but I can't recall reading about it lately. I am interested in views on a few different things:

Human consciousness: What is the scope of human consciousness? How large is a human consciousness? Can it focus on more than one thing? Is your memory part of the consciousness? Does your consciousness exist in a specific location? (Be as technical, philosophical, or spiritual as you want.)

Consciousness and Mortality: Does a person retain consciousness when they die? Is consciousness altered in any way by death?

Consciousness and Spirituality: Is god conscious?

Don't answer these questions specifically, I would rather just hear general views. I'm gonna post this and start working on my answers.

[Xenophon]

When I think about consciousness, two images pop into my mind. The first is a story from Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung. I can't find it right now, but he talks about how he dreamed he was walking in a huge storm, and he was holding a little candle, and he knew whatever he did he couldn't let the candle be blown out. The candle was his candle, it represented his consciousness. It shows how small and focused the consciousness really is. The second is a lesson from Tich Naht Han (sp?) the Vietnamese Buddhist. He talks about meditation as a spotlight that illuminates all the things that are already there. I sort of think of consciousness like that. I am a spotlight that is trapped between the physical world that we live in, and the internal world of my psyche. As an intuitive type I focus much more on my psyche than the physical world, but nonetheless they exist as two seperate external environments which I operate within, but do not encompass as a consciousness. As I don't think that the consciousness is part of the physical world, rather it is something outside that perceives it, I think the idea of locating a consciousness to be silly.

As for mortality and spirituality, I believe that individual consciousness can not possibly exist in the afterlife or in a supreme power. However, I believe that there is something beyond an individual consciousness that in fact can be the definition of the afterlife and god, and that is the collective consciousness. Now, I'm sure you all just rolled your eyes and told yourselves that I'm just a quack, but I'm going to try to explain this with as much technical detail as I can. I believe that the consciousness is basically an extremely complicated control system, it takes input from your surroundings through your senses (and from your psyche through intuition), and in turn gives output commands to the body. This means that the consciousness does not actually retain anything, signals are passing through it and exciting different areas all the time. These signals are interpreted using certain rules, the most important of which is probably language. More generally however, I think these rules are Thinking and Feeling. Thinking and Feeling don't exist in the physical world, yet they are universally present wherever there is a person, as they exist in every consciousness. I believe that "god" is really another way of saying, "the functions that are present in every human being." These functions are not conscious in and of themselves, rather they are the rules in which consciousness is formed. In a way these rules prexist human consciousness, and have grown as a result of the continued evolution of humanity. I think that each and every one of us is integrated into this ruleset throughout life, and the afterlife is our continued existance as part of that collective consciousness (that isn't really conscious.)

It's 3 o'clock now, and I'm completely fried. Time to go to bed. Hopefully some other people will give some ideas while I sleep.

[philonightmare]

On Human Consciousness:

I believe it is possible for some humans to be complete robots and function solely off of "Zombie Agents." These agents are what one could call "programmed wires and commands" that are either pre-programmed (via genetics) or learned behaviors (learning how to type without looking down for example, or driving). Once certain behaviors have been "learned" effectively, one does not even need to be conscious in order to survive. One can put up a "front" of "conscious" behavior. This does, in fact assert that more than one person is 75% of their time on Earth a "zombie" and not conscious.

I also think that human consciousness, when not subject to "zombie agents," is a pretty "free-flow" distribution of neurons connecting to other neurons that connect to other neurons endlessly...and just when you think that those connections are DONE...They aren't. They keep reforming, fixing, modifying, what have you, until the end of time. The end of time of course being the end of your mortality, of which I believe means the stop of thought, the end of thinking and learning and so effectively shutting down the system of neurons-connecting-neurons-etc...

For post-mortality:

I believe that one retains their soul or the embodiment of what their thoughts and feelings (non-physical feelings) were while living. I don't think that upon death we are DEAD and not anything else. I think we keep going in some fashion. Ok, so the after-life for me is a pretty real thing. I wonder what'll happen in the grave, while waiting for a hell or heaven to devour my soul, but I know that I'll still exist in some form after I "die."

[garak]

It seems like people always focus on consciousness in humans in general, and not consciousness solely in oneself. Consciousness in others can easily be scientifically explained, but the real problem is -- how am I able to sit here and feel conscious? What the hell is it? Does science just as easily explain this feeling of consciousness I have? It does in a way.. but it doesn't explain that there is SOMETHING in here -- inside of the flesh and neurons and whatever, there is a "me" that is completely beyond explanation. It's weird. And hard to put into words.

[Shai Gar]

perhaps the human consiousness is this universe

[n0mad]

I never liked to discuss about consciousness from a psychological or philosophical perspective (and I don't even want to talk about it in context of religion). I did, however, wanted to percieve consciousness in scientifical way, but there's so little facts on which I could base a decent discussion.
And yes, hereby I denounce psychology and philosophy as being sciences.

[philonightmare]

I never liked to discuss about consciousness from a psychological or philosophical perspective (and I don't even want to talk about it in context of religion). I did, however, wanted to percieve consciousness in scientifical way, but there's so little facts on which I could base a decent discussion.
And yes, hereby I denounce psychology and philosophy as being sciences.

Actually, there are sufficient amounts of scientific facts to pull many theories from for discussion. Neuronal connections being just one of them. Zombie agents+N.Connections being another. They do exist. ;) Go read my comment on the top. That's as scientific as you can get (at least the first part is, I got kinda spiritual toward the end).

[kuranes]

Where's Floyd when you need him? K

[Sackanaka]

Floyd or floid, the enlightened one?

[kuranes]

The enlightened one, of course. You're right Sackanaka. It's Floid. I'd forgotten. Floydian slip as I listen to my Pink Floyd in the background, perhaps. I'm sure he could set us right in a jiff, on consciousness. K

[tragula]

From what I've read recently consciousness is best explained by a little section of our brains responsible for self awareness. Of course this part of our brain enables us to be aware of all our other thoughts and emotions. And of course language actually gives us the tools needed to "think".

But without that little corner of self awareness people wouldn't function well socially at all.

[nBT]

from a jungian view consiousness would be that part of your psyche that you have control over. the 3rd and 4th function in the mbti system are unconsious. Introversion (and not intuition) is your ego looking into the 'collective unconsiousness'. jung defined intuition as 'seeing possibilities'.

this consiousness uses a judging and a perception function to navigate both worlds. consiousness is precieved by the 'tool' mbti.

for me consiousness is indeed a flame, spotlight, attention spot. little gnome that runs around to and from all the brians functions like input, memory, different processing modes, etc.
it can only be at one place at a time. a little you in a physical you. perhaps this is your spiritual self. morality happens on this plane.

i havent got a clue who this person is, his desires, motivations. but this is where religion (for me) starts.

[Autumn]

It seems like people always focus on consciousness in humans in general, and not consciousness solely in oneself. Consciousness in others can easily be scientifically explained, but the real problem is -- how am I able to sit here and feel conscious? What the hell is it? Does science just as easily explain this feeling of consciousness I have? It does in a way.. but it doesn't explain that there is SOMETHING in here -- inside of the flesh and neurons and whatever, there is a "me" that is completely beyond explanation. It's weird. And hard to put into words.

Exactly! I can easyly imagine all those moleculas, photons, neurons which is supposed to be me interacting with the physical world. But how come it's not complete darkness in here inside my mind? How come "I" actually see all this world around me?
I was about to launch a thread about consciousness but I found out there is some already so I chose to continue this one.
I lean towards believing that "I" (my conscious self) exist in a kind of bubble-universe that was created by my birth and will be disposed by my death. (This means I'll never be dead since I only existed in my own reality which in turn only exists while I do. So there will be no "context" for me to be dead in.)
My other concept is that all physical particle has it's own micro-consciousness (rather a primitive self-awareness merely about it's physical attributes i.e. velocity, direction, etc). Then my brain functionates as some kind of amplifier which integrates these micro-consciousnesses into a macro-consciousness: myself. I've read a pretty intresting article on a similar thought here: http://users.aristotle.net/~diogenes/meaning1.htm

[tinribz]

First rid yourself of fanciful egocentric notions that it is exclusive to humans or any of that mystical nonsense. Consciousness is in the brain, that much we can be sure of, shut that down and there is none.

Lets go back to the beginning, to the first 'animal' life forms worms rolling around on the bottom of the sea. They have a mouth one end and well you can guess what at the other, that’s about it. First thing that happens is very slight touch sensitive cells randomly mutated at the mouth end helping them locate food. To process the data effectively you need some sort of nerve reactions so you start to see what is becoming a head, but we are still see and react. Moving on we start to interpret and then record data input and we are getting to more complex nerves. All existing animal life can be traced to a family of trilobites that eventually developed these cells into light sensitive and nerves that interpreted the data you could call a primitive brain.

Moving a lot further on, a brain that can tell and remember the difference between a predator and food and remember it, or even learn is going to be a lot more effective. Take that another step further to one that can construct accurate models of the world, make predictions of the effect their own behavior will have, a concept of time and even of themselves in time and we are talking about the consciousness we are all experiencing.

Simply put it is our own streaming internal awareness of ourselves inside the 4d model of the world we have in out heads - length, width, depth, time. Although we live in the moment our brain is constantly putting things in context of the past and future giving the illusion of a linier consciousness.

[PiccoloNamek]

My consciousness is the sum total of all of the neuronal processes going on in my brain. All of it comes together to form some thing that I call my "self". Although to tell you the truth, I don't believe there is such a thing as "my" consciousness, or "my" brain. "My" brain and myself are one and the same. In order for there to be such a thing as "my" brain, there would have to be a self seperate from the brain that can claim ownership to it, and of course, there isn't.

I am a lump of wet, squishy matter that has somehow become aware of itself...

[Autumn]

It's all nice and good from the outside: I see people walking around and I know they have consciousness. But I'm in the freakin' head of one of them! I cannot view myself from an outside perspective for I'm locked inside. (Maybe the geocentric world model is not that bad after all). Which I think of as "myself" is actually not myself but the self made model of myself. Since my mind is only able to comprehend models.

I do believe that primitive animals have primitive consciousness. But this may lead even more primitive physical particles to have even more primitive consciousness. Furthermore even more complex structures (i.e. societys) to have even more complex consciousness. Ever thought of the internet as a huge brain whith all those people connected just like neurons? Maybe it's self aware...

[Xenophon]

Hey Autumn, I really like your views on consciousness. It actually reminds me a lot of the writings of Ken Wilber who I used to try to get people to read all the time. He talks about how there are actually four perspectives through which we can view anything. He sets them up as two axes -> Internal/External & Individual/Collective. The consciousness that you are talking about is really the individual-internal (subjective) view of anything. He calls the internal consciousness or will of all objects "volition".

I strongly believe that you are right about the idea that even inanimate objects have some primitive form of consciousness. The hard thing about this is that we can never have any definitive proof of this idea, as internal information can only be transfered through the external world, and it requires interpretation (model fitting) to be understood.