Someone asked me this the other day and it jogged memories of an old debate I had with myself about the difference in levels of conciousness between humans and animals - even different people.
How does conciousness arise? We're just a network of electrical charges, so how does this transform in to "conciousness?"
I have my theories, pretty well mapped out in my head. But I'd like to see what other people think.
Define conciousness, self awareness... just talk about it. See what comes out.
theres some chubby black professor type guy has a good speech about this.
maybe one of the other members will know how i mean and post his name, because i cant remember it.
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"When the government fears the people you have Liberty,
when the people fear the government yo have tyranny,
when injustice becomes law, Rebellion becomes Duty!"
~ Thomas Jefferson.
conciousness is as you say depending on electrical signals and charges in our brain. The psychological/neuroscentific explanation is that in our brain unconciousness is the things our brains do, which we can't talk about are done in less then a 500th part of a milisecond. the things we are able to remember(the concious things) take longer then a 500th part of a milisecond. That's sadly all that i know about conciousness and unconciousness.
We dabated this a little in a philosophy class a while back and the conclusion I came to that consciousness exists when a creature is able to retain memory.
I would probably have to agree that consciousness has something to do with memory... Like it relies on memory to function. I think it's starts, or arises, when the brain recognizes that it needs to be aware of its surroundings. An example would be waking up in the middle of the night if your house was on fire. The brain would need to know the surrounding situation so it can command itself, or your whole body to be specific, out of the danger. I'm not saying that you only become conscious in emergency situations; I was using it as an example as its easy to understand what I'm talking about in concerns of "being aware of its surroundings". Your brain also needs to know where the fridge is so you can make food to eat, or another example is getting up in the morning so you can find the bathroom.
I would say consciousness is a specific application of computational capacity. Computational capacity is insufficient by itself, of course. What else? Would we say that computation is distinct from thought, or would we say that computation is a subset of thought? Nothing can be both conscious and incapable of thought, but can something be capable of thought but not consciousness?
I think only one thing can possibly explain what a consciousness is. This isn't fact so don't quote me. This is just the only way for me to understand what our pointless existence is.
Okay let's start with physics in our physical wold.
Thermodynamics: all matter cannot be created nor destroyed. Only transform.
That means all the ingredients to everything possible in the universe and what the universe is made of is already here.
When you die your body decomposes and all the subatomic matter turns into other subatomic matter.
So where the hell does our conscious come from and and go?
I have a theory. Imagine the universe as a stack of paper. Each sheet represents one specific component of the universe. Let's say one of those sheets represets consciousness.
EverytimeA a new living creature is born (with a brain) a small share of that
sheet is stretched to the brain allowing awareness
And when you die it springs right back to it's original place.
Reused just like everything else we and this universe is made of.
Like we are all are intertwined in the same conscious. But what separates us as individuals is the fact that we all experience different things if different surroundings Which could creates the alusion.
If this isn't the right explanation for you then great. The idea is to have an idea. Ty for reading
alexander2, I love the Chinese room thought experiment, because it is so incredibly skewed. If you left a person in a room with a book titled "how to make grammatically correct sentences in Chinese", then the person can't necessarily be said to actually know Chinese. If, however, the person were in the room with a book labelled "how to reverse-engineer languages", then after a while, yes, that person knows Chinese.
to discount strong AI is to squash our only hope of a functional understanding of how consciousness works. Furthermore, any argument against strong AI, in a materialist context, implies that there is no real intelligence among beings we normally perceive as sentient, making the whole idea moot. If mind is an emergent behavior of matter, then a mind can rearrange matter to make a new mind, albeit of limited complexity.
Consciousness remains the big part of religion due to the mystery of how particles ever got to exist from the start; And particles in their own motion have a rhythm we can call consciousness.
What came first the Question.. or the Answer??? I believe it may have started with two words... Am I or I Am!!!! Have you ever noticed how when you ask a ? and get an answer it only sparks more ?'s... On an atomic level... it is almost like one subatomic particle is missing and the rest of the Universe keeps breaking apart and reforming itself to find stability... Whether looking through a microscope or a telescope all we find is more and more Universes... even the atomic structure of an Atom resembles a solar system with subatomic particles caught in an orbit around a nucleus... I love the subject for sure!!! You?
I do like the repetition of forms resonant throughout the Universe. The map of the brain looks like the map of the dispersion of matter through the Universe - is the Universe just a big brain for some other incomprehensible being? Everything that happens in the Universe could be this being having thoughts.
The universe is the universe, a brain is a brain, and its composites are manifestations of other composites, else humans are only separate units of atoms that have their own consciousness, but a unit that is a massive composite of composites with other various consciousness, uhmmm! - This thing about separateness, alternative examiners of what's already here?
From what I understand consciousness has no discrete beginning. It emerges from the matter of the body with its largest processing center being the brain.
In a computer you have hardware > firmware > operating system > and software. The human mind has no discrete abstraction layers. Instead it is all interlaced in a multidimensional manner. Like threads in a fabric to give a two dimensional analogy. So consciousness 'emerges', or becomes greater at a higher grade of abstraction.
Consider a process analogy. Simple computationally weak patterns associate with other patterns to form groups. These groups group into more powerful and flexible processes... until you chain up to the conscious mind. The groupings themselves are by no means static nor exclusive in nature.
This is why you have the unconscious > subconscious > conscious effect, which is by no means discrete.
if you choose such a paradigm. Consciousness has no set boundary, and no definite boundary. In fact self-awareness can be extended deeper into ones self. One must first believe it is possible, then gain the knowledge to do so, then act.
I would probably have to agree that consciousness has something to do with memory... Like it relies on memory to function. I think it's starts, or arises, when the brain recognizes that it needs to be aware of its surroundings. An example would be waking up in the middle of the night if your house was on fire. The brain would need to know the surrounding situation so it can command itself, or your whole body to be specific, out of the danger. I'm not saying that you only become conscious in emergency situations; I was using it as an example as its easy to understand what I'm talking about in concerns of "being aware of its surroundings". Your brain also needs to know where the fridge is so you can make food to eat, or another example is getting up in the morning so you can find the bathroom.
alexander2
