crocodile deathroll

Where is the source of this information?
What make you feel so certain?

AtlanticCitySlave

James Brown

seebs

Have you ever seen a taffy-pulling machine? Like that, only ethereal.

Which is to say, I have no idea. I think God makes 'em, but that hardly answers any questions at all.

Whatup?

What is a soul? Where is the evidence for a "soul"? You've got a brain. Why is it not good enough of an explanation for your experience of being? Why is a more complicated unevidenced explanation preferable? Ever heard of Occam's razor? The soul sounds like unscientific mythology to me.

Amos

That may be true but it is precisely that we have a soul that we are discussing its existence or we would have no knowledge thereof.

crocodile deathroll

I do not like using the "s" word all that much, but I just loosely define it as "subjective reality". The sensation that you feel you are in the center of your own private universe with all its sensations that surround you, and it is switched on an off with your circadian rhythms ever 24 yours or so.
I think that pretty well puts it in a nutshell.

Adrian Selby

I do not think there is a soul. It is just brains that are, in virtue of their complexity able to form languages and decipher experience sufficiently well for us to be debating this at all.

You say the universe is self aware, how do you come to that conclusion. What about it is self aware that is distinct from the set of conscious brains? You say consciousness is less specific about its location in the universe than 'soul' so you're not using the words entirely interchangeably it appears to me. Also, you talk about consciousness like an 'it' whereas common experience suggests a 'them', and they do appear to have specific locations in the universe, to wit, one, all gathered on earth, as far as we know.

Finally, you talk of a 'default consciousness' in the universe that has an unspecific time and location in the universe, what does this mean? Being someone who thinks that the brain is capable of consciousness while functioning as an entity, I would think that consciousness was not present where brains weren't (using 'brain' as a synonym for sufficiently complex neural net or other parallel processing structure).

I guess I identify consciousness with terms like 'self aware' and as such I would have thought that insofar as we are conscious and part of the universe, this does not entail the universe itself is conscious.

What is this world timeline you speak of?

crocodile deathroll

Yes and the brain stands at the pinacle of complexity, and there is a critical phase in the brain's morphology when consciousness kicks in. This is a common genetic trait that would be common to all brains and not just the one.

<strong> The universe is self aware alright. If evolution did not evolve to the state where intelligent consciousness did not emerge then. Then there would be no intelligent being to observe it and the universe would be totally ignorant of itself.
Brains are made of the most common form of matter in the universe. There is no exotic matter in your brain that is unique to you is just universal matter like common quarks and leptons.
and since that matter is universal then it is through that material in a complex configuration universe that is aware of itself
<strong> Well before you were conceived you just existed in a multitude of possibilities as all matter at it most reduced level emulate the same physical processes.
You do agree that it is "matter" that is conscious
<strong> By default consciousness I mean the least amount of complex matter before it ceases to be conscious. That critical phase between complex organic matter that is not conscious because it is sub critical and organic matter that has achieved that critical threshold.
Like organic matter can be reduced down to a single carbon atom in isolation but no further and when it is reduced down to that level it has no molecular diversity. It is all the same pattern.
Same as default consciousness again all the same pattern it does not have any real diversity and it is not until language or specific memories are acquired that diversity of consciousness emerges.

<strong> Your brain is made of the universe's matter and it is conscious.
If the universe had only one conscious being in it, it would be conscious. If only one animal on earth mutated and became conscious before an asteroid hit the earth and annihilate it then alas the universe would be conscious
It is through you the universe is conscious, but is did not in itself create the universe it is nothing more than an emergent property of it like carbon in an emergent property of it but it did not create it.
The timeline I speak of is the <a href="http://www.drphysics.com/syllabus/world/world.html" target="_blank"> world-line </a>
Don't get me wrong I do believe the entire universe that is conscious but just spatiotemporal districts in which these observeration effect finds itself along these world-lines. You and the universe is only aware of the conscious world-lines not the unconscious ones no matter how long they are.

You are only aware of any interval of time when you are conscious for example there is estimated to be 14 billion years between the big bang event and the time you were born and did that seem like 14 billion years to you?

CD

[ December 24, 2002: Message edited by: crocodile deathroll ]</p>

excreationist

This is when toddlers learn to describe events using language... and because of their strong desire to make sense of things they also apply this habit of analysing things inward.
They learn to say things out loud like "I'm hungry" or "I think so", etc. They come to believe that the "I" doing the analysing and the "I" who exists in the world and talks is the same thing. They would at first just identify with their physical body, but later they'd believe that their personality is them... or their immortal soul (assuming they believe in things like that).
As far as self-awareness goes - I think it is like this... it is like awareness - and I think awareness involves a system that learns and responds - except that the thoughts become aware of themselves. I think this is possible because of language... if you have a "voice" in your head or at least some kind of internal representation system - like pictures - then while you are analysing something, you can be aware that you are analysing. I think the words that can sometimes be heard in your head are triggered automatically - I think they are "commentating" your reasoning processes that would have a much more complex neural basis. Then the commentary can become an input to the system, like the external senses are. So there is a "feedback loop"? And you [your brain] could analyse yourself [your brain] analysing yourself [your brain] analysing something externally. Or in order words, your brain could think about itself thinking about itself thinking about something (in general or thinking about a specific thing).

This is some stuff I've written before about awareness and consciousness. Note that my definitions of awareness and consciousness might be different from other people's.

I'd say that consciousness/self-awareness emerges when the toddler asks lots and lots of questions about how things work and can show that they can remember things throughout long periods of time. (e.g. they count down the days to Christmas, etc) I think there are more sophisticated/abstract types of consciousness - like a philosopher-type, who questions whether what their senses tell them is reality, etc.

Amos

Sounds OK with me and when we known and rationally understand what these subjective sensations mean, what they represent or try to tell us, we will understand our soul. Our soul is certainly part of our brain and maybe is best described as the unknown element of our mind (the 80 or so procent we use less, in which we 'see' our future, and from where we anticipate illumination).