Consciousness, thoughts anyone?

Hey Apothecus, I'm actually not a Dave hater, but this chic I'm with is a Dave LOVERRRRR. They're doing 2 shows in Palm Beach, FL in June, and, we're going to BOTH cuz she's insane that way. Gotta love that kinda passion though. He's definitely his own character on the guitar. None were better than Hendrix and Vaughn in my opinion, though.But yeah lately she's been showing me "Dave" so I can appreciate the talent in this dude, and the band. I like the old horn player who died, he was good.Dave is also a pothead, gotta love the dude for that. Mostly Yanni. Due I'm all over the place with music. Anything from Classic Rock, Metal, old school Hip Hop, to blues, spanish bolero, and classical.I can do country if I am drinking in a country bar. That's fun as shit.- Oni

She's a fan club member, isn't she? I know some like her... I hear ya. But not country. Anything but that. Have a good one.

As great as it is, and as coffee house as we are here - it'd be nice to move music tastes, gigs and the like elsewhere and try and keep this on consciousness...Thanks

Hey Oni, ???What is "spanish bolero"? My spanish friends have introduced me to Habanera and southern Spanish flemenco guitar, but not "spanish bolero"?I assume you don't mean Revell's "Bolero". (Orrrrr do you? )d

Whoops, saw your message after I posted, sorry.

I'm not so sure I agree. Would you say that speed is an illusion? There is no speed 'substance' (using your meaning), but I don't think that makes it any less real. Heh... soully... solely... nice unintended pun The interaction is neurons firing, lots of them. Those are the quantum of consciousness, me thinks. No, I got you. I was just commenting on your analogy being a little too off for my tastes Yeah, especially in the sense of consciousness being 'awareness'. A goldfish doesn't need a language to be conscious enough to flee the net that's coming for it.I'll probably tend to conflate consciousness and sentience, as I usually think of this shit in terms of humans' consciousness (which seems to be highly linked to sentience) and fail to consider the other animals who are conscious without sentience. Good point, taken.I was thinking about sitting around and contemplating and how that effects your consciousness/sentience, i.e. philosophy. That level of consciousness would almost certainly require a language. And if you think back to our evolution from previous apes, and where, before they had language, how much less conscious they would have been and how much harder it would be for a selective pressure to see it.After language develops, and much more complex thoughts can be had, you could really open up for some individuals to make leaps and bounds in their fitness. At least in offspring production and support, setting up a community, etc. I could see how that could really snowball pretty quickly and be a weird evolutionary event.It just seems that how I think of evolution normally occurring would not be the case here. Alrighty then. What do you think that would be like? I can't imagine... Know of any sci-fi authors that have attempted it? Not on this planet... yet anyways.And I think we, as humans, are off the charts. Using a scale of 1 to 100, with humans' consciousness being a 100, where would you put the next most conscious animal?I'm thinking less than 50... and depending on how we look at it, even less than, like, 10...You mentioned dolphins, elephants, primates.... Now exclude those few exceptional cases, where would you put the next group down? Like below 20 or something?It depends on how you look at it though. But considering just the discussion that you see on this forum, I don't think there's anything like that at all going on in, say, a dogs mind. Chimps may be thinking some deeper thoughts too, but without a complicated language, I doubt they're "working things out in their head" so much. And in that sense, they're nowhere near us. Well, removing the need for an explanation doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. And parsimony doesn't necessarily lead to the truth.Pinning consciousness to the brain wouldn't remove the possibility of the soul playing a part. So you've just given me this message, are you saying that the message itself is not real? Just because its reduced to being "simply code", or whatever, doesn't mean that it isn't real.I like the internet analogy of consciousness. Perhaps though, its not that consciousness is the pattern, itself, but it is that accumulation of things that has allowed for the pattern to get there. Sure. Or think of an early hominid, human ancestor, that doesn't have much of a language. What do you think would be going on in their minds? Would they be higher than just a really smart dog?Another coll thing to look into is feral children. Even modern humans without language skills are pretty different. I wonder what kind of thoughts they might have.

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Alright! Thanks. I'm always looking for more metal that I haven't heard yet

So as to not disturb Dimebag's thread on Conciousness, maybe we can move the music discussion here.EvC Forum: Who do you listen to?I'd like to read more about conciusness as well as music

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.

Yo wud up Drone,Answered you in this thread: Who do you listen to?- Oni

Perhaps you guys can help me with this.A while back I read a quote that has really stuck with me, but I can't seem to find the source or the actual quote. It goes something like this (paraphrasing heavily):"The good news is we have found the source of consciousness. The bad news is that it is just a bunch of little robots."I think the quote was made by a neurobiologist. Damasio rang a bell, but I think he may have simply repeated the quote. Any ideas?

I like to jut my 2 cents in to make it look like I know what I'm talking about when I really have no idea at all.Make of this what you will: I'm not sure you can count on this as a robust conclusion. Although I can't see a problem with using it as a practical conclusion.What I'm talking about is that the only consciousness we know of deals with external stimulus all the time. And when we remove that external stimulus, the mind goes nuts.However, this only goes to show that once the mind is heavily accostomed to a certain functionality... then removing that functionality makes the mind go nuts.Which aligns itself well with the idea of how people (who have conscious minds) are very good at becoming accostomed to a great variety of different things. As the saying goes "it's amazing what you can get used to."The point I'm trying to make is that it may certainly well be possible (and perhaps somehow beneficial?) to have a conscious mind that does not "go nuts" from sensory depravation if the mind can somehow "grow accostomed" to such an environment.Practically speaking, I have no idea how one would go about creating a "non-external stimulus" environment and develop a conscious mind therein. Maybe even some moral dilemmas would prevent such an experiment However, I just think it's a bit of a leap-of-logic to robustly conclude that minds will go nuts without external stimulus. I only think this is true of minds that heavily depend upon external stimuli in the first place.More of a "minds go nuts when quickly cut from an environtment they have grown accostomed to" sort of thing. Which is quite evident in many different experiments.

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.