Consciousness: a discussion topic. Do you think we are special?

Poll

Do you think our minds are "special?"

Nope. Our brains only process information. I am an organic automaton.
Maybe. There might be some things I don't know.
Yes, I think it's definitely possible, but I simply don't know how.
Absolutely. I've experienced something modern science cannot explain.

Author Topic: Consciousness: a discussion topic. Do you think we are special?  (Read 865 times)

Consciousness. It's the one thing everyone on the planet is (for the most part) pretty familiar with, yet after thousands upon thousands of years, we haven't gotten much closer to truly explaining and understanding what this phenomenon is.

DISCLAIMER: I do not claim any authority in this subject, so of course, take what I say with a grain of salt and please correct me if I get anything wrong. I'm an astrophysics student, not a neurologist. I'm merely fascinated with this topic of discussion and ask for your own thoughts and opinions and look forward to seeing what you all have to add. Beliefs on this topic will differ from person to person and belief system to belief system. Please remain civil and let's discuss this like humans. :)

Before we begin, I'd like to talk about the nature of this subject and its current social and cultural significance. Nobody here should doubt the existence of consciousness. If you're reading this right now, I'm willing to bet you're conscious and fully awake. You're forming your own personal opinion of both me and this thread as you process what I've written down. However, while we may all agree that consciousness is very real and can be easily tested among any awake individual, the origins and nature of this ability will be debated wherever it's brought up. Dismissing consciousness as simply "a part of the brain" and "that's just the way it is" is no longer a good enough explanation by the scientific community.

Unfortunately, things like "consciousness" and "intuition" are not always viewed in the same light as terms such as "synapses" or "neurons" in our society. This is largely because (especially in the case of intuition) we threw away most of these ideas as simple superstition when our society made the tremendous leap from explaining the world through religion and philosophy to modern science. This may have been an erroneous move: we are still unsure how consciousness and other mental phenomena work and where they come from. For a long time, we have simply grouped this under the assumption that consciousness and therefore our own personal subjective experiences (such as thoughts, imagination, feelings, et cetera) are the result of different hormones and chemicals that trigger specific impulses in our brain.

This model worked for a while, but we're learning more about our brains now than we ever have before. One of my personal favorite findings touches the field of quantum mechanics. Researchers were actually troubled to find how prevalent the mind and consciousness made itself when working with quantum physics. Check out the "double-slit experiment" for an example of what I'm talking about.

Some physicists are suggesting we humans may have quantum brains. That's a pretty bittersweet revelation. On one hand, quantum physics is the new up-and-coming science fiction field of science, but on the other hand, it's confusing as all hell and we still have no idea how the forget it works.

The "problems" of consciousness

When discussing consciousness and where it arises from, there are two kinds of "problems" scientists face: the "easy" problems and the "hard" problem of consciousness. The easy problems are certain behaviors we exhibit and can be answered with our current understanding of how the brain works. These include topics such as mental discrimination and categorization, the focus of attention, deliberate control of behavior, the difference between wakefulness and sleep, and so on. All that is needed to explain these are simple mechanisms that act to process these functions.

The hard problem of consciousness is a bit more... well, hard. This describes how sensations we experience can take on certain characteristics, such as smell and taste, and how these qualia differ from individual to individual. These aspects of consciousness are what build our entire perception of reality-- I'm not talking about sight and sound, but rather how your brain processes sight and sound. Have you ever actually stopped and thought about how weird it was that you could see light? What if you had another way of sensing light that didn't utilize eyes? What would that feel like? Can you imagine a color that you've never seen before? What if you could see radio waves, how would your brain process that information? Why aren't we just philosophical zombies? forget, can you even describe what the color red looks like? Is my red the same as yours?

When we think and feel, our brain processes a stuffload of information. However, at the same time, you are leading a truly subjective and personal experience.

The entire idea of a "hard problem" of consciousness is hotly debated. What do you think? Do you think we have it all figured out, or is there still a lot we have left to learn?

Intuition and panpsychism

Okay... this might be where some of your bullstuff detectors will start going off, but that's fine--I'm not expecting you to believe in anything I am talking about, nor am I discounting your own personal beliefs. Because of this, I'll spend less time on these topics.

Intuition, shamelessly ripping off the Wikipedia description, is the ability to acquire knowledge without proof, evidence, or conscious reading, or without understanding how the knowledge was required. Ever see someone and there's nothing about them that would give you a reason to not like them, but you can't help but mistrust them? Or have you ever had a gut feeling to move out of the way only for something to fly by right where you were standing? Some people call that "intuition," and they believe it's real. Some scientists rely on it to help them understand what they're studying, but it's never been scientifically proven as a real, tangible phenomenon.

There's also the idea of panpsychism. I'm sure plenty of you have heard this one before. There's reason to believe that humanity has some sort of "collective unconsciousness" that connects us as a species-- but again, this idea was tossed out of the "makes sense in the materialistic sense" bin into the "superstitious hoopla" bin. Even so, some people are beginning to think even the universe itself is conscious, and it's been hinted at throughout human history.

Anyway, here's some food for thought and some fuel for discussion. I've been interested in different existentialistic topics such as these and love hearing what other people have to say. So, what do you think of consciousness? It's only everything you've known and will know, after all.
« Last Edit: July 25, 2017, 05:46:31 PM by Remurr »

my brain only thinks it works but it doesnt really

panpsychism reminds me of something i used to be quite interested called morphic field, where basically if a person on one island learns how to create fire, instinct would tell a person on another completely separate island how to do the same thing

panpsychism reminds me of something i used to be quite interested called morphic field, where basically if a person on one island learns how to create fire, instinct would tell a person on another completely separate island how to do the same thing
oh wow, very interesting. i've heard of this phenomenon a lot, but usually under different names (like the 100th monkey effect or formative causation). We're still unsure if this is a real effect or not, right?

we're probably the only animal to believe in gods. that definitely makes us special

panpsychism reminds me of something i used to be quite interested called morphic field, where basically if a person on one island learns how to create fire, instinct would tell a person on another completely separate island how to do the same thing
the need for fire was probably really important. there might've been plenty of other peoples on different islands that never learned how to use fire. they probably didn't last long, which is why we only see the ones that did use fire
« Last Edit: July 25, 2017, 05:50:34 PM by PhantOS »

the need for fire was probably really important. there might've been plenty of other peoples on different islands that never learned how to use fire. they probably didn't last long, which is why we only see the ones that did use fire
i just used fire as an easy example, although why is it that numerous different great civilizations worship or believed the same things at once, in a situation where there is no physically possible way in which they could have contacted each other? dragons appear in ancient chinese, native american, and european artwork, when there's also no physically possible way that dragons could exist? we would've found some sort of non-human evidence by now if that were true
i want to avoid this but it applies perfectly, why is it that without contact every civilization immediately started worshiping a god of some sort?

not every civilization did. only major ones, which is why they became major. all animals have instinct which forces them to adopt unexplainable patterns en masse. dragons are probably a hidden instinct of fear, which all animals have to a certain degree. thoughts of scary creatures like bulls or giant lizards and other things are natural thoughts that go through the mind of prey and probably stay subconsciously

the neolithic revolution, another simultaneous development in the human race, is still being investigated. they say the most probable explanation was a major climate change combined with social heirarchy forming. either way, it didn't happen instantly, it was a process that took thousands of years of observing and eventually testing to fully understand. that's all most of these major breakthroughs are - global experimentation that some discover faster than others. the ones that do discover it the fastest build the largest empire first, therefore being overrepresented as an example for the neolithic revolution

religion might be a social thing. freud probably explains it by some instinct of leadership and submissiveness, as people require some entity to be completely subservient to or some other stuff.
« Last Edit: July 25, 2017, 06:05:18 PM by PhantOS »

What do you think? Do you think we have it all figured out, or is there still a lot we have left to learn?

kinda too tired to make paragraphs, sorry if i post weird and all but long story short i think we have learned a lot so far, but there are billions and trillions of things we can and/or will learn if we have more tools and keys to access to them, which has been happening looooong ago and the rate of that increases more and more.

i kind of  think of it like stars or the universe for example, we can see the things and what's happening outside but with the tools such as ability to make rockets and spacecraft we have the possibility to go there. of course, obviously enough, it will take time. kind of my basic thinking.

who says that any of you dorks have consciousnesses besides one individual

who says that any of you dorks have consciousnesses besides one individual
Most of us have only experienced one other "conscious perspective." Dreaming--you're perceiving some form of reality from a perspective that isn't your actual body. But from our current understanding, dreams still happen within our brains. People who have had OBEs/claim they can practice remote viewing would be more difficult to convince that consciousness is restricted to your body or brain. However, I cannot personally comment on this because I've never experienced anything like that. My mother has though

Robert Lanza, a well respected scientist, claims his theory of biocentrism shows that death may not be the end.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2503370/Quantum-physics-proves-IS-afterlife-claims-scientist.html