Is conciousness the operating system of any living being?
- Thread starter Braznor
- Start date
If consciousness is the OS, what is unconsciousness? People can do just about as many things while unconscious as they can while conscious (think sleepwalkers).
No. A computer can't do anything when in "sleep" mode (I assume that you mean Standby or hibernation).
I think consciousness is linked directly to our [wait for the religious moment] soul. Something along the lines of a radio....you could have a radio and be able to take it apart and study all its components, but without an understanding of the EM spectrum, you'd be at a loss to explain what that coil is for; and what ultimately makes the radio work. The bible says humanity was the pinnacle of Gods creation, that we are above all other animals and fish and trees etc...because he "breathed life" into us. I think that was when humanity got souls and our consciousness. Animals don't have souls, and none of them experience the inherrent understanding of morality that we do.
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
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Consciousness is the neurons continually accepting and analyzing new data input from the senses in a delayed realtime fashion. What I mean is, the neurons analyze the data in realtime as they receive it - but there is of course a delay as the signals travel along the nerves.
When the neurons aren't processing in this fashion, we're not conscious. The senses may be operating normally, the eyes may be accepting light just fine, but it's like a CCD without a processing board. Light is hitting the CCD, and it's producing minute electrical charges, but there's nothing there to change those charges into pictures. When we're unconscious, the brain is working on a basic life-support level, but the higher brain functions aren't active - sensory inputs are not being perceived or analyzed.
In death, the neurons shut down. They are no longer able to process sensory inputs, which have also ceased, they can not analyze this sensory deficit, nor are they able to recall or form memories. Consciousness ceases, along with what we call that "person" or personality.
Consciousness itself - I don't know that it's an operating system per se. I think that the operating system is what allows the consciousness process to run. The operating system would be basic software that allows for data intake and storage. Consciousness is the process of organizing, filtering, interpreting, and applying lossy compression to all of this. Why lossy? Obviously, because if you look at a can of soda, you won't be able to remember every ingredient after one glance. You'll probably remember water and corn syrup, but that's about it. It's like compressing a JPEG at a 25 quality level. It'll look lousy, but you'll get the general idea of what it's supposed to look like. But it's filtered data too, with variable compression levels - some memories are more vivid than others.
When the neurons aren't processing in this fashion, we're not conscious. The senses may be operating normally, the eyes may be accepting light just fine, but it's like a CCD without a processing board. Light is hitting the CCD, and it's producing minute electrical charges, but there's nothing there to change those charges into pictures. When we're unconscious, the brain is working on a basic life-support level, but the higher brain functions aren't active - sensory inputs are not being perceived or analyzed.
In death, the neurons shut down. They are no longer able to process sensory inputs, which have also ceased, they can not analyze this sensory deficit, nor are they able to recall or form memories. Consciousness ceases, along with what we call that "person" or personality.
Consciousness itself - I don't know that it's an operating system per se. I think that the operating system is what allows the consciousness process to run. The operating system would be basic software that allows for data intake and storage. Consciousness is the process of organizing, filtering, interpreting, and applying lossy compression to all of this. Why lossy? Obviously, because if you look at a can of soda, you won't be able to remember every ingredient after one glance. You'll probably remember water and corn syrup, but that's about it. It's like compressing a JPEG at a 25 quality level. It'll look lousy, but you'll get the general idea of what it's supposed to look like. But it's filtered data too, with variable compression levels - some memories are more vivid than others.
Robots can get plenty done without the aid of what we call consciousness. During sleep, various areas of the brain are stimulated in what a waking mind might call a random fashion. Some order is maintained though, and some of that order can encompass the instructions required to walk. Again, a computer analogy, and a bit fictitious at that - scandisk on a fragmented hard drive. It'll access data sector-by-sector, and in a contiguous fashion, the fragmented data will generally make no sense. Say each sector has a letter of the alphabet on it. Scandisk will see this data stream: "BGIQPCILA" Totally random. But it might come across the sequence "RESTART" and suddenly restart the computer because it chanced upon some order in the fragmented chaos, and went with it.
I have to disagree with this statement. First off, there is no real way to know what understanding of morality animals have. However, if you study some animals, it appears that they do know when they do something wrong. I know after I scold my dog for doing something wrong a few times, as soon as I see him doing it again I don't even have to say or do anything and he immediately cowers and runs away... seems he knows he is doing something wrong. Thus, animals appear to have the ability to learn right from wrong just as people do. I don't think people are born with a sense or morality, it is something we are taught.
If conciousness were an OS, it would have to be windows. My conciousness crashes everyday at 10 pm.
No, dogs and animals only do that because they don't want you to get mad at them. It's simple logic, really - a machine's logic: "If I do this, the guy who feeds me yells at me. If I don't do this, he's happy and feeds me. Therefore, I won't do this or I won't let him see me do it."
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