Is Consciousness Quantum? Options

[Abgrund]

By that logic part of your awareness ought to remain even if the brain is removed in its entirety. Do you subscribe to that idea?

On the contrary, I have been saying that consciousness is not divisible; it is a manifestation or attribute of a system. Remove one part, and the system may not work at all. Its remaining components might or might not have some kind of awareness of their own, but unless they had access to the same memories there couldn't be any continuity.

[iblis.raeb]

Um... I'm just speaking for myself here but my thought processes are in my brain, that's where my minds eye is, thats where my conciousness manifests.

That Bastard Abgrund - how can you possibly say that consciousness could be in your eyes, even as a possibility? and I am plenty aware of my brain especially when I get a headache.

[Abgrund]

What makes you assume that consciousness has a definite physical location, like last night's dinner or your ex boyfriend?

FYI: The eyes are so intimately connected with the brain that some scientists think they should be considered a part of it. Also, the pain from a headache is due to pressure on the inside of your skull - there are no sensory nerve endings inside the brain itself.

[dex]

On the contrary, I have been saying that consciousness is not divisible; it is a manifestation or attribute of a system. Remove one part, and the system may not work at all. Its remaining components might or might not have some kind of awareness of their own, but unless they had access to the same memories there couldn't be any continuity.

I agree that it is a manifestation of a system, the question is only how extensive and "which" system. You take it, as far as I can tell arbitrarily, to conveniently include your physical bounds and some area beyond. How is that any more substantiated than limiting it to the brain, or perhaps the entire nervous system?

This post has been edited by IH: Oct 31 2006, 09:54 PM

[DivisionbyZer0]

Um... I'm just speaking for myself here but my thought processes are in my brain, that's where my minds eye is, thats where my conciousness manifests.

That Bastard Abgrund - how can you possibly say that consciousness could be in your eyes, even as a possibility? and I am plenty aware of my brain especially when I get a headache.

He says that partly because the visual sensation and visual stimulation is so important in our culture and to our civilization: even truth and knowledge in western society (not limited to western civ, but any culture with advanced symbolic expression like written languages, logical systems, visual methods of counting, etc) are often cast in terms of visual metaphors: "that was very illuminating", "it was made clear", "I see what you are saying", "I reached enlightenment". If you read Descartes --- just to take one example --- you'll see that he's chock full of this useage of visual metaphors in his epistemology. One can imagine other possibilities-- if I'm not mistaken some cultures locate consciousness in the heart or in the belly and so forth. I don't think that we can say they are wrong-- remove your heart and your mind's awareness will change just as much as if we drive a stake through your brain!


This post has been edited by DivisionbyZer0: Oct 31 2006, 10:15 PM

[iblis.raeb]

What makes you assume that consciousness has a definite physical location, like last night's dinner or your ex boyfriend?

We are not talking existentialism here - my senses lead me to assume that my consciousness is in my brain.

He says that partly because the visual sensation and visual stimulation is so important in our culture and to our civilization: even truth and knowledge in western society (not limited to western civ, but any culture with advanced symbolic expression like written languages, logical systems, visual methods of counting, etc) are often cast in terms of visual metaphors: "that was very illuminating", "it was made clear", "I see what you are saying", "I reached enlightenment". If you read Descartes --- just to take one example --- you'll see that he's chock full of this useage of visual metaphors in his epistemology. One can imagine other possibilities-- if I'm not mistaken some cultures locate consciousness in the heart or in the belly and so forth. I don't think that we can say they are wrong-- remove your heart and your mind's awareness will change just as much as if we drive a stake through your brain!

Off coarse history is filled with many people great and small expressing insight (no pun intended) using optical references, but I argue that these expressions do not reflect the whereabouts of consciousness but instead reverberate what is arguably the strongest and highly processed sensory method.

EDIT: I am a man!!

This post has been edited by bubblegum.anarchy: Nov 1 2006, 12:29 AM

[Abgrund]

EDIT: I am a man!!

But you have such a pretty mouth.

[Abgrund]

I agree that it is a manifestation of a system, the question is only how extensive and "which" system. You take it, as far as I can tell arbitrarily, to conveniently include your physical bounds and some area beyond. How is that any more substantiated than limiting it to the brain, or perhaps the entire nervous system?

It's not any more substantiated; we simply don't know. It would be very difficult to prove that the conscious state never depends on anything but neurological states, the reverse might be easier to prove. However, it's entirely plausible that (at present) consciousness is entirely a function of neurology. If there are exceptions, they are probably weak and intermittent. If the basis of consciousness is the processing of information, and not some magical property of nerve cells, then the amount of processing going on within the human nervous system is very large compared to the flow of information between it and the environment.

Within the nervous system itself, the picture is probably much more complicated, because at any one time only part of the nervous system is directly influencing the conscious state, and this part varies. I think it would be hard to say which parts of the nervous system and brain are conscious at any one moment, and difficult to draw firm lines between, say, the cerebral cortex, the limbic system, the hippocampus, the amygdala, the cerebellum, the brainstem, the spinal cord, the eyes, etc., and say "these parts are conscious, these parts are not". My guess is that the brain hosts multiple consciouses at different levels, and the one that is "you" (has access to your memories, perceptions, and reason) varies, having apparent continuity only because your memories are fairly persistent.

All this is speculation, and in itself perhaps meaningless, but in the fairly near future we may be able to increase the data rate between the brain and external appliances quite substantially, by connecting IC chips directly to nerves or even the brain itself. When we do, we may have some answers about consciousness, and we may find that we have created a new kind thereof.

This post has been edited by That Bastard Abgrund: Nov 1 2006, 03:03 PM

[DivisionbyZer0]

I agree that it is a manifestation of a system, the question is only how extensive and "which" system. You take it, as far as I can tell arbitrarily, to conveniently include your physical bounds and some area beyond. How is that any more substantiated than limiting it to the brain, or perhaps the entire nervous system?

This is actually a non-trivial problem, not only in consciousness, but also in quantum theory: that is, where does the "observer" end and where does "what she observes" begin. What constitutes the observer making a measurement on the environment and how is this distinguished from those times when no measurements are being made? To a degree it seems that the split is a matter of practical or operational convenience, but the "actual boundaries" are vague at best.


This post has been edited by DivisionbyZer0: Nov 1 2006, 08:59 PM

[iblis.raeb]

But you have such a pretty mouth.

Yes, yes I do.

My guess is that the brain hosts multiple consciouses at different levels, and the one that is "you" (has access to your memories, perceptions, and reason) varies, having apparent continuity only because your memories are fairly persistent.

A restriced consciousness on the human whole makes total sense but the positive effects of a placebo suggests that consciousness has a little more impact.

[timetogo]

Consciousness is all that you experience when you are in a waken state. That means all the perceptions your brain has received and are retained in your brain is your consiousness. How you use your consciousness depends on you. You can train it, give it instructions, let it work for you. You should not merely exist but know that your greatest ambitions or desires will come to pass by using your consciousness.

[DivisionbyZer0]

Consciousness is all that you experience when you are in a waken state. That means all the perceptions your brain has received and are retained in your brain is your consiousness. How you use your consciousness depends on you. You can train it, give it instructions, let it work for you. You should not merely exist but know that your greatest ambitions or desires will come to pass by using your consciousness.

You are implicitly trying to set up a dichotomy between "you" and "your consciousness", however I am not sure how this works out given your definition. If it is *all that you experience*, then it also include you're experience of yourself include your "deciding", "acting", "using", "awareness" and so forth which is tantamount to you. Thus, there is an apparent circularity. If we admit the dichotomy between you and your consciousness then we have the additional question: "what do you depend on?"

[iblis.raeb]

Thus, there is an apparent circularity.

I'd use the term - inwardly fading spiral.

[timetogo]

All that is in your brain is the culmination of perceptions perceived by your senses, both external and internal. External perceptions are simple to explain: they are all perceptions physically experienced, however, internal perceptions (here you can label this as you wish) are those thoughts or ideas that have not been physically experienced until this moment.
As to your question 'what do you depend on?' the answer is this: you depend on your brain through the accumulation of perceptions to guide you in the environment in which you live. For example, the strong smell of burning advises you that you could be in danger. You 'know' this because in the past you have physically smelt this perception and recognise it as a danger.
The YOU in your brain is nothing more than the accumulation of perceptions perceived. Everyone's YOU, or sometimes refered to as personality, is a mixture of one's own DNA, which is derived from one's ancesters, and the environment within which one lives.

You are implicitly trying to set up a dichotomy between "you" and "your consciousness", however I am not sure how this works out given your definition. If it is *all that you experience*, then it also include you're experience of yourself include your "deciding", "acting", "using", "awareness" and so forth which is tantamount to you. Thus, there is an apparent circularity. If we admit the dichotomy between you and your consciousness then we have the additional question: "what do you depend on?"

[iblis.raeb]

internal perceptions (here you can label this as you wish) are those thoughts or ideas that have not been physically experienced until this moment

What about all physical experiences that may come from the imagination produced from combinitations of actual physical experiences resulting in something completely new or never before physically experienced by the individual?

[timetogo]

Once you have a physical (or sensual) perception, then this is a physical perception no matter whatever the cause, be it from one's body or outside one's body.

[zunnun]

On the contrary, I have been saying that consciousness is not divisible; it is a manifestation or attribute of a system. Remove one part, and the system may not work at all. Its remaining components might or might not have some kind of awareness of their own, but unless they had access to the same memories there couldn't be any continuity.

A system comprises of sequential form of instructions, make to interact to other forms of system. What we need to distinguish between each system is the presence of emotion. Emotion is the driver of conscious and what spur it, no other, a dark presence of a larger spectrum of conscious, the unconsciousness of conscious. This unconscious realm is the product of an ongoing engagement between interacting frequencies within a system with its other interfacing entities. We are unconscious to our metabolic process within our body but as soon as we felt a stress, a frequency spike, we become conscious by it. The surrounding is also providing a continuous form of interfacing depending how much influence it has on the system as a whole.

The question we need to ask, what is emotion, a form of frequency spikes, a creation that induced other forms emotion ( other forms of frequency spike) thus creating a cause-effect chain reactions.

Realm of emotions has long been a subject of qualitative rather than quantitative, and by that we have totally separate between human emotion and machine sequential action and reaction apparatus. They are frequency of energy. Its how much reductionist we want to become.