Why did you bother asking if you already had an answer? Since all answers are barely more than idle speculation, how can you argue that someone else's speculation is wrong because it doesn't agree with yours?


Whatever. Every time I hear this, all that is presented is an ad hoc analogy between a science article someone read in the newspaper and a very liberal interpretation of the "ancient" mystical views.

It's been fun Filip, but I don't think this discussion is going anywhere. It's not really anything you or I can prove one way or another.

Filip Sandor,

Well, I tried to guide things in a certain direction by pointing out water, a substance taken for granted every single day.

To elaborate:

The properties of water cannot be found in hydrogen nor oxygen individually. But when combined, they form a "superstructure" that is a result of the patterns of energy or movement formed by the interaction of the constituent parts. And it is this pattern that appears to be water. Hydrogen does not cease to be hydrogen and oxygen does not cease to be oxygen. But you get all these "new" properties that belong to niether of them.

When you can grasp or accept why water can be water even though "waterness" is not in hydrogen nor oxygen, I think you will have gone a long way toward grasping how a superstructure such as awareness or thought can exist while being entirely dependent on its parts (not prior to them, but posterior to and resulting from them.)

The brain is a hugely more complex interaction, but I think it follows similar principles. Bring a huge number of factors together and you have what we call consciousness. It may be nothing more than the dynamic interaction of a great many inputs, from outside and from within, feedback from its own outputs, with a little quantum randomness (or whatever) thrown in for good measure. A storm brews in your head, and all your decisions and movements are the result of the lightning fast ebb and flow within. I think our internal and external interaction is so complex, we call it "consciousness" to distininguish it, although I think animals share a lot of that with us, and even plants have a rudimentary consciousness in the way they interact with their environment (ever see a Venus Fly Trap? Very limited awareness and capability, but very spooky.)

And that my brain is saying this about itself is pretty remarkable, don't you think?

[This message has been edited by Zar (edited April 17, 2001).]

As mental development continues there are several of these phase transitions
The psychologist, Jean Piaget showed the early childhood's mental development was not a smooth process of learning but rather typified by rather abrupt changes in a child's ability to conceptualize. Like for example a child may give up looking for a ball once it has rolled out of his/her line of sight like behind an opaque barrier and so believe that objects only exist when they in the child's line of sight. But after one month they suddenly believe that objects do exist outside their own perception and will continue to look for the ball even after it is hidden.

There is also my favorite the lollypop test
This a nice little test that can be done on children before they reach the age of four. Effectively demonstrating that children do not really experience their individuality until the age of about four. To begin with you use a little lollypop box, and ask a little child under four , what is in the box? that under four year old child says "lollypops".
You then said "no its not, it is pencils". Then you opened up the box and showed them to under four year old, and that proved to the child they were pencils.
After that, you then said to the under four year old "Your friend Joey is going to come into the room now, what will he say is in the box?" and not realizing Joey would think differently, the under four year old child answered "he will say pencils too!"
So on the basis of that little test a child under four will not recognize that other children think differently to them and believe other children see exactly same world as they do, whereas a child over four, if you do the same experiment with the lollypop box the four year old will just say "ha ha Joey will just think they're lollypops", and so his intuition tells him he is a separate individual who can think independently from everybody else.

I feel the under four year old child is half right to some extent that is that genetically generated version of consciousness in REM sleep, or dream sleep as the first experience of a developing fetus and each fetus is incapable of thinking independently from each other until further neural connections are made. Genetic information is merely [information per se[/b] and information as we well know has no well defined boundaries. That under four year old child is still hanging on to a relic of a state of consciousness that existed when it was first genetically generated into existence as REM sleep (or something else) in the developing fetus, and is yet to cotton on to morphological changes in his/her brain that allows him to feel unique and separate from other children.

We also must consider that there are nearly seven billion people in the world at the present moment, all of those people, like that over four year old child have cottoned on the fact that they were all separate and unique individuals in their own private universe that would mean nearly seven billion states of this conscious perceiver you describe. But the combined number of genes as listed by Celera Genomics is just a mere thirty thousand with a very small slice of the genetic cake dedicated to consciousness like circadian rhythms and the development of the brain. So I conclude what causes consciousness, and thus what leads on the the conscious perceiver, can be traced back to just a single universal pattern like what triggers us in to having REM sleep, or dream sleep as a fetus in the womb.

Stormcloud

I don't think you're missunderstanding the question I asked at all, but if you are going to pretend you missunderstand, so be it.

You are so stubborn, I have to be blunt. You won't even take PEEK at something that might go against your beliefs. What are you afraid of...?

I don't mean to be rude, but here I am, facing a thread full of people who are mostly atheists; I read the links they post, because it is that much more informed I can be in the discussion. And here you are, not even willing to think about the things I say, your only objective seems to be to prove me wrong.

...like you said, whatever.

I only want people to open their eyes and see what they might not be seeing. I don't know why, but it makes me feel good if people see what I see and even feel what I feel. I like to be the 'winner' in an intellectual conversation, but the best part for me is when someone says, "wow, I can't believe I haven't seen it all along..."

Anyway, thanks for all the replies you gave... maybe we can continue this discussion another time, if you are up to it.

I see the analogy you draw and I think it shows a vivid picture of just how magnificently complex and intricate nature proves to be in her manifestations. Also, how basic building blocks of different 'classes' can grow in complexity, beyond our comprehension into astounding, different forms.

I'm sorry, but I am just stuck on this one thought mixed in this discussion... I can't figure out why nobody sees what I am asking.

Just about all of the threads here explain what consciousness may be or how it may work, but not a single thread targets an explanation to what I asked.

[b]What experiences consciousness... what is the conscious perceiver that we term "You" or "I??"[b]

I could probably ask this a thousand times and a thousand different ways... only to get a thousand different explanations of what consciousness is, but not one explanation as to what the conscious perceiver is.

If nobody will attempt to answer the question, and support their answer... at least have the academic sportsmanship to admit you don't know. You people could even show some real dignity, by giving some merit to my theory, which unless proven wrong, is very good proof that we are indeed metaphysical beings.

Filip, I'm sorry if I'm being overly... harsh? Is that the word I'm looking for. It's not a simple subject, I've looked into it quite a bit, and as to the soul and "mystic" experience, I've never seen evidence nor an advantage to them as explanations. I don't deny that they exist, nor do I disbelieve them. What I do think is that the concept of a supernatural/natural dualism is a complexity that carries no pragmatic benefit for me. There are natural things that I can be reasonably (*cough* *cough*, shut up Mr Hume) certain about, and invoking an entirely new system on top of that without fully exploring the known would be premature at best.

I'm taking your position as an argument. When one argues, the offensive postition is almost always the strong one. You're idea of a soul is not necessarily wrong, I'm just trying to get you to explain why you need to invoke a spiritual realm when the established and communicable rules of naturalism have many possible explainations. From a skeptical perspective, nothing can be established with certainty, some apparent things just have to be assumed real, but those things should be kept as few as possible.

Also, I'm not mad, or even being close minded. I consider these things all the time. I have my opinion about consciousness, and you have yours. For us to rationally compare them, we have to agree upon some common foundation to compare them. Now I can start yelling at you about empirical evidence, and you can start yelling at me about faith, mystical experience, or whatever, but we still won't get anywhere, and regardless, I'll admit straight up that the position I presented is a potential route for exploration, not a theory in and of itself. I'd just rather sit down and work on implementing it, or do something productive, than get into an argument about a decision procedure for an argument that I don't even hold true.

I feel the same way. That's why I responded to you. I came across the concept of mixed levels of meaning, godel's theorem, intertwined formal systems and the complexities of all of these things just about a month ago, and it floored me. However, I'm probably not right. In the grand scheme of things, I ain't that smart. Winning an argument feels real good, but learning something new, feeling that knowledge click, beats that winning feeling any day. Anyway, unless we go through the rigamarole of defining everything, investing a lot of time in well formed arguments and doing a lot of research, all we're doing is blowing smoke at each other. That's just not a priority for me.

Regards.

Filip Sandor wrote :

"If nobody will attempt to answer the question, and support their answer... at least have the academic sportsmanship to admit you don't know. You people could even show some real dignity, by giving some merit to my theory, which unless proven wrong, is very good proof that we are indeed metaphysical beings. "

You wanna know how many times I've been round this one? Trying to get the atheist-materialists to admit they "don't know" is one thing. Getting them to understand the relevance of that "don't know" is next to impossible. Not completely impossible though - it just takes a long time. A lot of them start out from a position of not even realising then massive significance of the conscious experience. Obviously the discussion here is of a rather more informed nature but I am beginning to wonder whether an understanding of this as you and I see it can only occur in persons who have started to think about it in a slightly different way (more intuitively). Saying this will always draw the accusation "That is what the theists say about belief in God." I don't know how to get around this. I have pretty much given up trying to 'convince' anyone of any of it anymore, unless they specifically show an interest in understanding my views, which is why I have stayed away from this thread. I just can't be bothered getting into discussions with people like Cat Jesus who stand no chance whatsoever of understanding what I am trying to communicate. You MUST go looking for it yourself, if you are going to find it, and you must look everywhere - not just science and not just philosophy. The process of moving from "there" to "here" could not just have happened during a debate with someone. It was a "coming-together" of all sorts of things. This is almost impossible to explain, although paradoxically I seem to remember nialscorva telling me he was a fellow ADHD-brained person so perhaps is better able to understand than most. I certainly consider my 'condition' to have contributed beneficially to my understanding of some of this. Rant over.

stormcloud:
I think that dreams are our brain searching through our intuitions for patterns. This would greatly improve our learning capabilities. I don't think that we really need to be conscious of it though. This pattern searching would need working memory, but it doesn't really have to be the same one as our conscious own. Perhaps the pattern searching could be done in the background while the artificial brain is still conscious.
There is a definite difference between reptiles and birds/mammals. As far as I know, birds and mammals can reason about things, and reptiles (and lower animals) can't. I think that they can reason about things by having a goal in their working memory and putting triggered memories (from plans, perceptions) into the working memory and seeing if you can get to the goal. By reasoning I also mean creativity and imagination. The reptiles still would have working memories I think, for storing short term information, but it mightn't be large or sophisticated enough to do reasoning. Maybe dreams and the ability to do reasoning are connected.

I despise it when, failing to convince others of something, people always resort to ad hominem attacks and assumptions that there must be something internally wrong with the person who disagrees. If you guys have this subject nailed, then go collect your Nobel Prize and your Medal of Freedom and your Cognitive Science Honors, or whatever. By all means stop wasting your time here.

This "metaphysical" explanation is no explanation at all. It does not provide any answer other than to give a name to an unknown region of the universe. It also begs the question: If we must posit a metaphysical perceiver or consciousness that ultimately does the "perceiving" of all that happens, of what is the perceiver made? Does it not come into contact with the material world somehow in order to perceive it? Then that part that comes in contact is the "sensory organ" of the "perceiving body." But then that means there is a sub-perceiving body inside the perceiving body. And the perceiving body then, in turn has a part which accepts the input from the input from the outer shell of the perceiving body. This process goes on ad infinitum.

As I have repeatedly pointed out, just about everything lacks an explanation for its cohesion as an oject or process when we consider its component parts versus its "totality," so to speak. But the argument from ignorance lacks a certain ring of authenticity to me, so that is why I don't just jump on the bandwagon here.

What IS the "perciever"? Who knows? Perhaps there is no perceiver at all. Maybe we should first be asking "is there any such thing as a perciever, or is it just an illusion to which we give a name?"

Filip Sandor:
You say a lot of the (New Age) esoteric material you have read makes a lot of sense... yet, you seem to take a firm stance against the possibility of such a thing as a metaphysical, conscious entity?
Well though those books say that our true selves exist as a pure observer (not interacting at all), I have been wary of believing this. This is partly because I believe that I can't be absolutely sure of anything at all (except that something exists and I am connected to it somehow) and also because I have had an understanding of naturalistic consciousness for at least a year.
If there is some kind of supernatural component to this, when is this perceiver born? How do we establish a connection with the supernatural realm? What about apes? What about *severely* retarded humans that have ultra-low i.q.'s? What about insects? Do they have a connection to this supernatural realm? What about worms? What about algae?
What gives them this power? Naturalistic evolution? God?

Just curious, I would like to hear how you would describe, just roughly, your own vision of what higher-consciousness is;
Ken Keyes talks about 7 "centers" of consciousness. The lowest 3 result in a rollercoaster life where you are miserable half the time. The forth one is where you love everything. The fifth is where your life is filled with abundance - it is like the world revolves around you (though you care about everyone). I forgot what the sixth one was, but the seventh one was that you feel at one with the cosmos. I've been near that stage - you basically get there by being at a lower stage (loving everything) and losing your voice in your head. That way your brain interacts directly with the world. You just let your intuitions take over. You lose a sense of time and you drift from one rich experience to another in what seems like a complete dream. So it is like the "observer" has taken over - you just observe - your actions are mainly controlled by your intuitions - instead of being controlled by your neurotic restless mind. Basically, to me, "higher-consciousness" means being happy all the time and having your life feel like it is a dream.

what it means to be enlightened.
I don't believe that anyone is ever enlightened. Semi-enlightened perhaps. I might say that they *seem* enlightened, but I don't mean it literally. Being more enlightened basically means to understand things on a deeper level. e.g. understanding what happiness is precisely, etc.

I'm really tired right now, so I won't be responding in great detail (sorry). I am in 'resonance' with most of the views you express... but I believe things like emotions go much deeper, beneath biological functions. It's pretty tough to explain emotions, they seem to 'evade' what we see as logical.
Emotions seem so powerful and close because they can control us against our will. (That is their whole purpose - to motivate us to get things done) I think they are just another data type in our working memory like smells and the sensation of temperature. Both of those things are indescribeable in language really. Emotions are basically desireable or undesireable feelings. They feel desireable or undesireable because that is the point of emotions - to *force* us to seek some things (e.g. relaxation) and avoid other things (e.g. touching lions). Well they don't always force us to do things - we can try and suppress their influence.

I truly believe that consciousness is not a virtue that can be had by any computer, no matter how "conscious" a computer may seem.
What if a human brain was copied onto a computer, neuron by neuron? Each individual neuron would fire in exactly the same way... would the brain somehow not work? And could you tell me where your line is between consciousness and non-consciousness. (e.g. is it identical to the line between life and non-life?)

Experiencing timelessness does not mean there are certain things we do not or should not think about, it just means experiencing 'timelessness'.
Well seriously thinking about time means that you aren't experiencing timelessness, so it is a contradiction to think about time and to experience timelessness.

As for what not believing certain things too strongly being a good thing, I know what you are saying, but it is not as easily done as it is painted with words.
Well when you make it your core belief that you can't be sure of anything at all, then it becomes easier.

I am a compulsive thinker... or at least, I think a lot; not because I want to, I just do.
Habits are hard to kick, but you can reduce the voice on your head by gentley trying to quieten and slow it down (but not to be too worried if you fail because you should try to worry as little as possible about things). Try to trust that smart things will just pop into your mind (due to intuitions, not deliberate lines of thought). Then you can still reason just as well, you just aren't overwhelmed by thoughts.