Consciousness, thoughts anyone?

Hi all, I put this thread here because I couldn't really tie it to the debate between creationists and evolutionists, though it does share some existential links.I am a psychology student, and in my studies I have broached the question of consciousness, with little amount of insight from my texts. It baffles me, and it seems that the only way to describe it from a physical standpoint is to reduce it to being causally closed, meaning it can not affect behaviour, or to simply claim that it is an illusion. The only area I have learned anything about consciousness is the neurobiology, or how the different parts of the brain may work together to produce it, from THIS link, which belongs to a collection of papers on the topic of consciousness HEREAlthough there are many other articles out there and I have only just started to research this topic, I would be interested to start a conversation on consciousness, sparking peoples thoughts on the topic, their assertions, gut feelings, what they have learned that may shed light on HOW consciousness occurs, WHAT consciousness is, and WHY it is required.I guess those are the three questions I have to start about consciousness:1. How is consciousness produced by the various parts of the brain.
2. What consciousness is, its nature, how it can be defined.
3. Why is consciousness required by our brain, when similar outcomes could be achieved (apparently) through a non conscious process.If anyone can at least partially, if not wholly answer any one of these questions, I, and the whole of the scientific community is concerned with the mind and brain, would be very interested to read your thoughts.Thanks all, and enjoy.Edited by Dimebag, : No reason given.Edited by Dimebag, : No reason given.

Thanks Chimpanzee,No I'm not familiar with that book, but I will try to track it down now that you mentioned it.What I meant by consciousness being an illusion or being real pertains mainly to the experience itself, and I guess also to qualia, and the concept of consciousness being a stand alone phenomenon within the universe.Are our conscious experiences mere virtual reflections of the underlying neural patterns which they represent, or are they a real and quantifiable (i hesitate to use the word) substance? I guess what I would compare it to would be diffraction patterns in light, the patterns themselves are not physical entities in themselves, but are results of the interaction of light waves. Is it possible that consciousness is similar, or is it a concrete phenomenon which may be located, measured, and studied.

Hi onifre,Thanks for the reply, oh and for yours and Modulous' information, yes I am a huge Pantera fan, along with alot of metal and rock.The Orch OR quantum mechanichal theory you describe sounds interesting and I will have to give it a good read. I am also inclined to reach for a quantum mechanical theory, because with our understanding of the universe and physics, there doesn't seem to be many other places for consciousness to be hiding, or for its world to be assembled. We have not detected it (so far) on any other scale, nor have we found any particle or field which may be responsible for its effects, in the catalogue of fundamental particles and fields.I do find it interesting that consciousness can be manipulated, and lately I have been starting to think of it like the LHC (yes the large hadron collider, i know it sounds a bit whacky).I imagine conscious experience to be like the detectors of the LHC, and when a specific collision, or discharge, or whatever occurs... something is shot out, somewhere, and somehow it is detected on some kind of quantum detector screen. This minute scintillation of activity is then what makes up our conscious experience, and when all those little scintillations are somehow woven together they produce a recognizable experience.I do think that the senses play a LARGE part in how we consciously experience anything. Take vision. Our visual experience relies on our visual cortex to pick apart the raw pieces from the optic nerve and inlay information about them, such as movement, shape, colour, etc. To think that the conscious experience of vision does not rely on the mechanisms which support it would be ludicris. The experience could never exist without the visual cortex. So I think every different conscious experience we have, sight, hearing, smelling, touch, taste, movement, balance, rely wholly on the mechanisms that support them, and without those mechanisms, they simply could not exist.Sure, people who have lost their eyesight may still beable to regain it through amazing feats of technology, but people whose visual cortex has been severely damaged will most likely never have another visual experience. I would be hesitant to say that consciousness serves no purpose at all. Take for example awareness. When we become aware of something, and it becomes conscious to us, a wider realm of possibilities as far as action, thought, decisions, are opened up to that event, compared to if it had remained unconscious.The problem with this is then people say, how can consciousness have any causal affect, because if that conscious experience is completely non physical, how can something non physical affect something physical?The only way I can see around it is this. When an event becomes conscious, it is displayed on this quantum consciousness "screen", and can be broadcast to a wider selection of unconscious processors, which may attack the problem from different angles. That way, the conscious experience itself is not causing any action, but merely allowing access of that event to a wider unconscious network.There may be a flaw in my thinking there, but it only just occurred to me so I haven't had time to think it through. And again, what I say here is highly speculative, so take it with a grain of salt. Well, I've made a start, though its very rough one. As far as question 2, what is consciousness and how to define it, I don't have a complete answer, and am still forming my opinion as I read up about it.My thoughts on consciousness:(Probably describes its function rather than its nature. This also pertains mainly to consciousness as a whole, rather than only conscious experience)
I think consciousness acts as a medium through which messages, experiences, thoughts, etc. may be sent globally to entire systems of non conscious networks, without which, such messages would either be dissipated, or not be fully realized by the entire system.Basically, it allows more flexible, adaptable, and ingenious responses than would be possible without a system with such an ability.I think this is why it may have evolved, and as such, I think most creatures with senses that are developed enough would posses consciousness.I think our conscious experience is wholly separate from the brain, as far as it has no specific location within space that we can determine, though this may change with research. But, everything about it pertains to the brain, and to the world that surrounds the brain, so the experience and the existence seems anchored in space, in the brain.By the way, I hope that doesn't make me a dualist. I think that consciousness is not some unquantifiable substance that exists in a spirit realm, but that it is beyond the reach of our electron microscope to observe or detect, and that with advances in science we may some day actually pin it down.If we could get to a stage in neuroscience, when we can say, this is what causes something to be conscious, it think I would be mostly satisfied with that. To actually describe it in the realm that it exists on would be a bonus.

This is true, I think consciousness can exist without the senses, but I think the senses are what tethers it in reality, and stops it from floating off into nothingness. As sensory depravation shows us, without some kind of external stimulus, the mind goes nuts for lack of a better word.I don't think any kind of creature could ever develop consciousness through evolution without discrete senses. How would consciousness serve a creature if it had nothing to be conscious of? The senses are what keeps the rest of the mind on track, with a goal or target in mind; to have no senses is to have no goal, no target, and no reason to exist. I don't think the senses are required for consciousness to exist, but for consciousness to be useful to the system, yes I think the senses are required. I don't think the philosophical zombie is possible, atleast not using the exact same architecture used in the brain. I think consciousness and "qualia" are required to achieve brain wide broadcasting of information. I do think, however, that it may be possible to create a philosophical zombie, but that its brain circuitry would require a higher degree of complexity to achieve the same interconnection as is possible in the brain. Basically, I think consciousness is something evolution adopted because it could achieve things easier with it than without it. And it couldn't achieve the same complexity through non-conscious processes without a major fluke of engineering occurring in nature. If I'm not mistaken, nature usually takes the easier option, the path of least resistance.

Hi Parasomnium,The reason why I didn't start off with a definition of consciousness is because I wanted the discussion to get started. From most discussions I have seen that debate the definition of consciousness, they end up in an endless circular argument.I think most people are fairly clear on what consciousness is here, atleast we all know the phenomenon we are discussing is. We aren't talking about being awake as opposed to being asleep. We are talking about the very phenomenon which we all experience anything through. I do however realize that there are many facets to consciousness, and that sometimes it may be beneficial to specify a single aspect, but I also thought this would make the topic too narrow to allow free flowing ideas. Sorry for ranting, this is just my reasoning, but you make a good point.It seems that we all know what it is we are discussing, but when it comes time to actually writing a definition they are all very different. I think this problem stems from the multifaceted nature of consciousness. If it is required later, maybe we should be very clear about which aspect of consciousness we are referring to. I think this is the way forward in research of consciousness, at least for the time being. If you can get something concrete down on paper about consciousness that is verifiable then you can build upon it and a general consensus can be reached.That doesn't mean we shouldn't theorise, just that we should all recognize that that is what we are doing. I think once we know more down the track about how consciousness occurs, all these different theories will start becoming more relevant and we may be left with only a few contenders. I can only hope that this happens in our lifetimes.

Just had a read of the ORC OR theory on wikipedia.They mention oppositions to the theory, about processing time and how the amount of time required for processing is too short to be accounted for by the collapse of the wave function. What I don't understand is why processing is required on a quantum level at all. Processing already occurs on the level of individual neurons, and networks of neurons.Are they saying that in order to produce conscious experience some form of processing which is beyond normal mathematical processing is required? Or are they trying to open up the realm of consciousness to causation, effectively allowing consciousness to have causal effects on the rest of the brain states? Or are they saying that through quantum entanglement the brain can effectively become a quantum computer, allowing processing of multiple factors at once?I like the idea of the concept but it seems a little TOO complicated to be true, and it seems like they are dismissing the part that neurons play in processing.Can anyone shed some light and tell me what I am missing?

What I meant by 'substance' was not like, we could extract someone's consciousness and hold it in our hands, but rather, for consciousness to be caused by some physical system, somewhere right at the end of that causal chain there has to be a 'particle', or a 'field'
or a 'wave', or even a 'probability' (covering my quantum bases) that can be pointed at, measured or quantified, which is responsible for consciousness, or IS consciousness. Otherwise if there isn't, we are dealing with a wholly virtual and non real experience; an illusion.If you refer to consciousness as an emergent property, then it has to be composed of smaller individual parts which combine to create this emergent property, and they would be measured. I am not saying someone will find the 'consciousness particle' which is soully responsible for consciousness, but there must be some interaction between two or more 'things' to produce consciousness if it is an emergent property. Again, the shooting out or discharging was an analogy to represent how I think of consciousness forming, I doubt there is literally anything shooting anywhere. I do think language plays a huge part in communication, higher level thought, categorisation, self expression etc. but I don't think it is an essential requirement for consciousness. When you speak, are you at all conscious of how you form the individual phonemes of your words? The are formed in an unconscious network. You may have a conscious intent to express a concept, but to go from concept to understandable content it must be formed in a vast verbal network, which then sends signals to your vocal chords and tells them how to contract, as well as your lungs, tongue, lips. These are all unconscious processes.I believe thought has little to do with consciousness, and indeed alot of thought is unconscious or at a low level of consciousness, which is why philosophy is so difficult; because we are barely conscious of our own thoughts.I do think memory plays a hugely important part to consciousness, for it allows us to categorize what we see, hear, touch, and smell consciously, so that when we later encounter something similar, it is recalled, categorized, and kept in the memory, and consequently, the consciousness for longer periods of time. This is referred to as 'working memory', and allows the processing which can be used to plan, to think, to reason, and to do the multitudes of things we do every day. I think we can agree that consciousness is linked very closely to awareness, and without awareness ,both of one's surroundings, and one's self, most organism's would be at an evolutionary disadvantage. No one can say yet if awareness can be achieved without consciousness, although consciousness can be achieved without awareness.Actually I lie partially; in the case of blindsight, where the striate cortex is damaged, a subject may be not conscious of visual stimuli, but are still able to react to it. Thats not to say that if you left such a victim at a full blown traffic intersection they would be able to safely cross that road, for without conscious perception of depth, direction, speed, etc. noone can safely react to any moving object. Even in cases of blindsight, the patients swear adamantly that they are not aware of any features of the objects they are presented with, but when asked to 'guess' the features of an object, they react with more accuracy than people purely guessing. So the level of awareness is very low; one could almost say it is subconscious. Sorry about my wording there, I wasn't trying to say that consciousness is like a switch that is turned on and then everything is illuminated. I think, as someone else has said here, that it operates more on a sliding scale, starting from barely conscious to highly conscious. Im sure there is still some room on the consciousness scale above us (and those pesky dolphins) so that one would be considered more conscious than us. I believe there is a theory which states that the more connections any information system has, the more conscious it can be considered. I don't necessarily prescribe to this view COMPLETELY (i don't think the internet is conscious.... yet) but it does have a point. That is your belief, and you are entitled to that. I prefer to think that the separation of mind/brain is more conceptual, and once we look close enough, we will be able to pin down how consciousness is formed, and link it to the brain, thereby pinning it to the physical (not necessarily visible, touchable.... but present within our universe, operating under the same physical rules as all other bosonian and fermionic forces/particles. There will be no need to refer to the mind in another 'realm', and it will resolve mind/body duality. The thing is, the internet is just an expansive switching board, which wouldn't be so difficult to understand. It is the content, which is contained on the servers which would be impossibly difficult to understand without a monitor, a keyboard, or some way to decode a hard drive and convert the concepts contained within them, into actual usable facts. I get what you are saying though, but the content of the internet is not real, it is just a code, which can be displayed on a screen in a pattern which we may understand. It is that pattern which we need to discover, for our conscious experience is that pattern on that screen. Everything else just allows that pattern to get there. Lets see, lately I've been into Chimaira, Devin Townsend (Ziltoid the Omniscient!), Strapping Young Lad, Alice in Chains, Devil Driver, Fear Factory, Opeth, Black Label Society, Mnemic. But then I still love stuff like Satyricon, Necrophagist, Satriani, Steve Vai, Malmstein. Anything awesome really.EDIT:Also thought I would add something. I imagine say, a dog's conscious experience to be similar to our own when we are purely within the experience, like when you are playing a sport, driving a car, etc. It is mostly an experience of senses, unconscious reactions, not much conscious intervention. This is how I think about consciousness from a purely conceptual standpoint. There are many other levels of consciousness that have been added, built upon, but when it comes down to it, that is the root of consciousness. Atleast the root of conscious experience that we have anything in common with. Obviously there has to a small degree of conscious intervention for there to be any use to consciousness, and maybe this is how consciousness evolved. Unconscious conditioning can be seen as the precurser to conscious intervention. It is a conditioned response in reaction to a stimulus. Now if that stimulus becomes conscious atleast on a very low level, many other options are made available to an animal, whereas the previous reaction would have been fear and fleeing, they may be able to rationally determine if something is a threat, if it is useful, if it is harmless. Im not sure if dogs have this ability to discriminate on such a level, but I'm trying to explain how different degree's of consciousness could prove advantageous.Edited by Dimebag, : Poor grammar, probably still is.Edited by Dimebag, : Thought of something else.

Point taken about speed. How do we know that consciousness is not a fundamental property of the universe? In a way, speed is fundamental to the universe, being that the cosmological constant is a speed. Speed is related to energy, which is an abstract concept at best. It can't be directly observed, but can be measured in different forms. I know we will never find the "energy" particle. Energy was of course imparted due to the big bang. But it exists none the less, we know its there.What gets me with this is, how can our experiences be a property of something else? I guess its the nature of experience, and the mind that we feel our experiences are concrete, and that they belong to us, like they could almost be pointed at somewhere. That would then mean that our conscious experience is JUST the property of our brain states. But how do you go from the brain state of the colour red, to the subjective experience of the colour red? I guess the only way to know that would be to decode how red is represented within the brain as a brain state. Cracking the 'brain code' if you will. And then if you believe that conscious experiences are ONLY brain states, then I guess the philosophical zombie argument is impossible, because if consciousness is a fundamental property of brain states, then it would be impossible, atleast in our universe for a brain which could not experience conscious states.But then you have to consider unconscious processing. If it was true that consciousness was a fundamental property of any brain state, then unconscious processing would not be possible. Unless you consider that unconscious processing is actually conscious, but on such a low scale that we are not aware of it. The thing is, I don't understand how you go from neurons firing, to consciousness. There is no conceivable notion of why the discharging of potassium and sodium ions should produce consciousness. I doubt consciousness has anything to do with the release of neurotransmitters, because this is just the medium which is used to control the firing of the neurons; like a conductor conducting his orchestra, it is the orchestra which produces the music. Maybe it is those microtubules, but then you have to consider that consciousness is more than just a mind state. The reason I dislike the 'it's just a mind state' statement is because it seems like it is used to explain away consciousness, and doesn't allow people to learn anything more about it. I get what you're saying. I think communication can still exist without language though. Much of the animal kingdom communicates non verbally, through demeanor, body language, eye contact. Apes, for example, are very social creatures, living in communities, and there is a need to communicate when they live in such close quaters. The fact that they can exist as a community increases their chances of survival, and this could surely not happen without consciousness.I think of evolution as any kind of adaptive advantage which increases chances of survival. Also, I can't imagine apes getting a mate without a huge amount of conscious effort, if they are anything like our species females. No, I can't imagine humans, atleast given the direction we are heading, acquiring more consciousness. If anything, we require less consciousness in this day and age. We are more on autopilot than our ancestors, I'm sure of it. You don't need to be conscious to watch American Idol, MTV, drive to work, get through a day at work (most of the time you are wishing it was over). Our lifestyle simply doesn't demand us to be very conscious at all. All the hard problems have been solved for us (for the average joe who doesn't care about saving the world). All we need to decide is, what pizza topping to choose, what program to watch, what outfit to wear, do these jeans make my bum look big?Sure, maybe in the future we may be able to augment our brains with direct linkups to the internet, wikipedia at our neuron-tips, we may find ways of increasing the speed at which our neurons fire to allow faster thinking (thats after we have all been implanted with behaviour dampening implants), but this will only further negate the need for an increase in consciousness.I imagine a higher level of consciousness would be something like, being able to know everything about yourself, introspectively. Alot of thought that was once unconscious would now be conscious. Awareness of ourselves would be matched only by our awareness of the world around us, and other people. There would never be any miscommunications, because everyone would be completely sure of themselves. Sort of like a Vulcan or something.Getting back to what you said. I think you would be right in saying that we are the only beings capable of complex thought, introspection, abstraction. These are layers of consciousness that have been built up, and I doubt they would be there unless we needed them. Obviously most animals get along just fine with a mostly qualia driven experience, maybe a few subconscious motivations to drive them, maybe even some feelings. This could be considered a very basic conscious experience. But that is where you may uncover the truth, in that basic conscious experience. If you strip away all the additional layers, what are you left with? What is the minimum subset of functions, brain structures, whatever, required for a conscious experience. Thats what I'm interested in, and I think that may be a way forward, maybe not THE way forward, but I think it would help us understand the basics of consciousness, which is where we need to start. Okay, I get you. You can't prove that something doesn't exist. I think, if you could explain everything about consciousness, if there were no more loose ends, then we would know all that is required to understand consciousness. I don't think it would be the simplest answer, and I doubt it will be the most obvious one either. But the only way to know is to try and find out, so I see no harm in trying.I know this is another argument altogether, but how do you view the soul? Do you see it as the root of our causality, where free will (if there can be such a thing) comes from? The reason I ask is because if we subscribe to a universe that operates under set physical laws, how can such a soul exert will when not being part of that universe? You then need to find some kind of 'pineal gland' which linked the body to the soul. And how such a gland would operate, to channel "will power" from wherever the soul resides, into the body, and somehow interact with it physically to produce action is a difficult concept to accept. I hope I don't sound too critical, its just that these questions arise when you consider the soul to be causally linked to the body. I'm sure this topic has been discussed before under free will, but I think the concept of free will and consciousness are pretty closely linked.

Well ok, maybe that was a bit of a sweeping statement. I doubt you will find anyone who is willing to undergo such an experiment though. Think about people in solitary confinement. Even they get some external stimulus, sounds outside their cell, the feel of the cold wet cement, the dank smell of the air, the bland taste of their meal which slides through the delivery slot, the hose which appears every now and then along with a blinding light to wash the stink off their bodies. And worst of all, they are alone, with their own thoughts.Strictly speaking there is no such psychological term as 'going nuts' but the effects of solitary confinement are well documented:A study into the effects of solitary confinement reported: This illustrates how reliant our brains are on external stimulus. Even babies in their mother's womb require external stimulus such as their mother's voice to develop a healthy attachment, which allows them to form solid social and emotional relationships with others later on in life.This is not to mention the damaging effects of social isolation which can impact people who lack real and meaningful social contact with others; depression ensues, and they fall into a deep dark hole.Even monks, who are supposedly the masters of themselves and have shed their consumerism ties require interaction with nature, and with other people who share their views.I don't think it matters how quickly it happens, rather that would determine the speed at which a person would develop serious emotional problems.