What exactly is consciousness?

[BigToque]

I was thinking about it today and I struggle with this idea (and apparently a few textbooks do as well).

Many animals have an advanced nervous system that form a "brain". All this nervous system is, is just electrical signals running everywhich way in our brains. We can say that different areas of our brain process different kinds of information, but I think that is kinda pointless. I want to know how a bunch of electircal signals can become 'aware' of itself. How the hell does that happen? It just doesn't make sense.

 

[AFB]

ATOT

 

[hjo3]

Read The Feeling of What Happens. Had to take a college psych class in 2002 that was pretty much solely about consciousness.

 

[datalink7]

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him, the universe knows nothing of this. All our dignity then, consists in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endavour then, to think well; this is the principle of morality." ?Blaise Pascal

 

[TitanDiddly]

Don't attempt to comprehend the human brain. It can't be done. It's like trying to lick your ear- there's always going to be an amount of division; we might be able to understand the brains of simple animals, a mouse for instance, but not much more. That's the division.

Yet another reason I think evolution is a crock of- .... beef ...stew.

 

[Kipper]

Philosophers have been tussling with this for centuries - don't worry about it if you can't figure it out.

 

[BigToque]

Originally posted by: PhasmatisNox
Don't attempt to comprehend the human brain. It can't be done. It's like trying to lick your ear- ....

Ever see that guy with really streatchy ears? Maybe he can tell me what the deal is

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Originally posted by: PhasmatisNox
Don't attempt to comprehend the human brain. It can't be done. It's like trying to lick your ear- there's always going to be an amount of division; we might be able to understand the brains of simple animals, a mouse for instance, but not much more. That's the division.

Yet another reason I think evolution is a crock of- .... beef ...stew.

Ok, so explain to me in detail how the brain of a mouse works. It's awfully similar to that of humans, but on much smaller scale. We are still looking into that, and learning more every day. And with that, we also learn more about the human brain every day.

Just cause you're too much of a reli-freak to understand basically anything does not mean intelligent, civilized human beings won't learn to understand more about the human brain.

 

[hans007]

i once argued that the Compsci AI theory by some famous Cal professor (forgot his name) the "chinese room" was a load of crap because it all depended on a very subjective touchy feely definition of conciousness. he defined conciousness as being able to think, instead of just follow a series of instructions and commands like a computer. of course what does "thiinking" mean, well who knows, its very vague and a stupid theory IMHO.


i spent a good 40 minutes of my final review talking to the prof about this and well the class probably hated me since we didnt have the review. needless to say he said i had some good ideas, though odd ones, since i said no one actually thinks we are just some permutation of a giant state machine.


anyhow, i passed out studying and was late to the final and got a D- in the class. i guess i am not an AI person.

 

[BigToque]

i said no one actually thinks we are just some permutation of a giant state machine.

Interesting.

So you think that each choice we make is just random, and it's just luck of the draw?

 

[gururu]

increasingly higher levels of neuron organization lead to higher levels of sensory perception leading to higher levels of consciousness. Behaviors are either instinctual or learned. Higher capacities to learn enable higher forms of consciousness. We have the highest capacity to learn, and therefore the highest capacity to consider that which we are learning, in essence making us aware of contradictory possibilities. That is all consciousness is, being able to discern and flexible enough to react to unpredictability.

 

[Czesia]

Originally posted by: gururu
increasingly higher levels of neuron organization lead to higher levels of sensory perception leading to higher levels of consciousness. Behaviors are either instinctual or learned. Higher capacities to learn enable higher forms of consciousness. We have the highest capacity to learn, and therefore the highest capacity to consider that which we are learning, in essence making us aware of contradictory possibilities. That is all consciousness is, being able to discern and flexible enough to react to unpredictability.

Well put. However, I think part of the question is, how does it all come together? What makes it work?

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: Stefan

i said no one actually thinks we are just some permutation of a giant state machine.

Interesting.

So you think that each choice we make is just random, and it's just luck of the draw?

actually i proposed that its like this.


for every choice every person makes there is an alternate "state" that that the universe goes into.

i guess you have to think about it in an infinite sense. say i wear blue pants, or red pants. so like all of existance based on that choice, breaks up into 2 paths, both of which continue to run. so this state machine has infinite states that govern everything, and that my concious self is just one instance, of these many existances.


think like infinite numbers of parallel universes. i mean people say that stupid, becasu you are thinking in infinity, but there are no rules as to existance and conciousness so think its a valid argument.

so there are other mes, existing in some place, not a physical place, who are even typing this differently, or scratching themselves, or using a mac, etc.

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: gururu
increasingly higher levels of neuron organization lead to higher levels of sensory perception leading to higher levels of consciousness. Behaviors are either instinctual or learned. Higher capacities to learn enable higher forms of consciousness. We have the highest capacity to learn, and therefore the highest capacity to consider that which we are learning, in essence making us aware of contradictory possibilities. That is all consciousness is, being able to discern and flexible enough to react to unpredictability.

i think the thing with me is this. if you have ever studied neural networks, its about potassium ion gradients firing and pushing neurotransmitters around in a chain type deal.


so my AI prof, was saying that ameobas react to light and their neuron fires and tehy move. and thats how it is with all neural networks .

so why i argued there really was no conciousness, is because how can you say that there is some point where our neural networks get so much larger that they turn from a bunch of reflex based chains into "conciousness". i suppose if you just use conciousness as the ability to percieve very well, then i suppose that makes say a tank with infrared sensors and a mass spectrometor concious of its surroundings. but it is not, or we are just an evolved tank with many more sensors more closely tied together with our complex state based machine.


i mean in our heads, an idea we have, will fire smoe neurons, which excites some other ones depending on weights that we have developed over the years on just how much neurotransmitters it will take to fire the next neuron in the net.

some fire some dont. its a statemachine pure and simple, just a very very large one since we probably have a billiojn or something neurons and with those many many neurons and their combinations we could probably define many many many states.


think of a neuron as ilke a guy with 6 arms who can touch another person with 6 arms in some random fashion. based on who this guy touches, the chain of events driven by say a billion 6 armed interconnected people is some huge number, all of which could be defined as states. supposedly the brain's neurons actuayl fire slowly only being able to fire so fast per second. i think i remember reading that the brain is like... a giant SMP beowulf cluster with like a million or a billion CPUs all running at like 800 hz or some small frequency


yes i got a D- in AI class. i felt that was unwarranted sicne i actually understood this crap.

 

[RadBrad]

What exactly is consciousness?


This is my version.

Being aware that I am.

Being aware that I am, someday, going to die.

Being aware that ,death, really sucks!

 

[Kadarin]

Originally posted by: PhasmatisNox
Don't attempt to comprehend the human brain. It can't be done. It's like trying to lick your ear- there's always going to be an amount of division; we might be able to understand the brains of simple animals, a mouse for instance, but not much more. That's the division.

Yet another reason I think evolution is a crock of- .... beef ...stew.

You are assuming (for religious reasons?) that because we do not know something, that this particular something is not knowable. This is not necessarily a good assumption.

 

[Wallydraigle]

Two possibilities. Either consciousness doesn't exist at all, and what we believe to be consciousness is just a highly complex algorithm responding to various stimuli, or not.

If consciousness is a sham, then everything we do, think, or feel is governed by circumstances beyond our control that have been unfolding since the Big Bang ( or before?). If this is the case then it doesn't matter what we do, because we are at the mercy of circumstances out of our control, and are powerless to change them.

If not then consciousness is something truly unique in all the universe. In order for consciousness to be otherwise it would have to be able to manipulate quantum randomness. Consciousness could directly affect the universe. Particles appear and vanish randomly all the time. Consciousness would have to be able to control this kind of randomness.

If nothing we do is random, then we are truly just carrying on down the path that we were set on like a train on its tracks. If we do something, then everything that ever happened in all the universe was just one of the events leading up to our act.

But if consciousness itself is the source of randomness, then we are in the truest sense the masters of the universe, and we have a lot of responsibility because of this.

I don't know which scenario I think is more likely.

 

[db]

This illusion you seek, which some call "life" or "consciousness", is simply a time-lapsed flash from one of God's lit farts during a poker game with the boys.

 

[Xionide]

Gravity confuses me more then the brain.
Existence is also a confusing thing.