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If There Were No Consciousness What Would Be The Point Of Material Existence?

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posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 11:49 AM
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originally posted by: ignorant_ape
a reply to: MissSmartypants

i have a better question- if the material world did not exist - what would be the point of conciousness ?
And that's probably exactly what God was thinking when He came up with the idea of creating the physical universe.



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 06:09 PM
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ignorant_ape:

...if the material world did not exist - what would be the point of conciousness?


Or, an even more succinct question...how could consciousness emerge if there is no material structure in which it could do so?

MissSmartypants:

There are those who believe the mind exists outside the human body and the brain is a receiver which we use to access our mind...with the mind probably being constructed of quantum energy and perhaps quantum entanglement keeps our mind quanta connected.to each other after our physical death. And we may from time to time access data from previous lives or perhaps from a general mind pool.


I have a different perspective on mind, and believe it to be distinct from consciousness. The best way I can state this perspective is that we do not have a mind that is conscious, but a conscious state we perceive as mind. All our thoughts and thinking have to be looped back into the brain as stimulations in order for us to perceive them...how else could we be self-aware?

I cannot accept a disembodied consciousness, because I believe consciousness to be an emergent phenomenon, and can only arise within a structure of some kind in which it can emerge. Mind is not a structure, it is (imho) a quale of perceiving being conscious. Neither mind or consciousness are containers of anything. The former is a mental mirage, whereas the latter is entirely comprised of the emergent resonance I wrote about in an earlier post. That resonance is a real energy, carrying full information about the interaction that brought it into being...energy level, wavelength, and frequency, everything a system capable of being stimulated needs to give both a visual and aural experience.

Consciousness has to be thought of in gestalt terms. The body's senses are distinct from one another, but all come together, energetically and informationally, within the ordering system of the brain. The physical body has more than the known five senses, seventeen I believe at the last count, most of them deal with internal stimulations relaying information about the body, which is where we get our sense of body image from, The five well-known senses relate us to our external environment, so the brain has to process informational energy from the outside and also from within our bodies to provide us with the ordered experience of being alive, and it all comes from the capture of quanta. Consciousness is the wave field of all the quanta that stimulated us, switching 'on' and 'off' many times a second. Quanta, of course, carry and relay all the information of the natural world.

The most most profound puzzle we can work out is how all that quanta is transposed by the brain into the familiar qualia-rich experience of being alive? Once we answer that question, we will cognize our true origins...and God will not be in the equation.
edit on 1/1/15 by elysiumfire because: (no reason given)



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 06:58 PM
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a reply to: MissSmartypants

Ask that question to a grain of sand it would answer that millions of years of tides an surf have reduced it from a rock to a pebble to eventualy a grain of silicate.
Or ask a blade of grass or tree whom would reply that for billion years they have laboured to produce food an produce oxegen for life to breathe,

We share the same dna with sea weed with all organicss on this planet .
We are all made of the same componets of atoms an subatomic forces all thease gurus and spiritual types tell you to experience the now to clear your mind of everything and simply be.

Well a rock does that as standard operating proceadure .
There Is a meaning to life and sentient or allegedly sentient creatures play a part in for sure .
But a very minor part

If humans just disappeared of the face of the planet in an instant the planet would be ok better than ok it would thrive.
Insects were to suddenly disappear of the face of Mother EARTH .
then

All animal an plant life would be gone in decades .
Being Sentinent is over rated all it is the illusion of knowlage and self importance because we assume we are superior to non sentinet stuff.

And we could be an probably are very wrong .
WE Are traped by the limitations of our brains so called self awareness we have no other way to experience this environment.
What would it be like if we could be aware off all instead of just self?
And Im not using semantics the universe exsisted long before any self aware life forms came in to play.

It will exsist long after any type life self aware or not has been extinct for googleplex years.
If we could just but live for a millisecond with in an electron an understand its purpose its reason for being .
THEN WE would know more than all the philosphers poets gurus that have lived or will ever live.

So I can answer your question exsistence exsists because it wants to unlike us it knows the point it knows the reason .
The more self aware a species Is the more self centered its actions.



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 08:05 PM
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a reply to: Blarneystoner



And the struggle of humanity is the consciousness trying to corral the animal it lives within.


If consciousness exist outside the animal, what's the point of the animal?

Then the animal must have a consciousness to struggle with this consciousness outside itself it struggles against.

edit on 083131p://bThursday2015 by Stormdancer777 because: (no reason given)



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 08:18 PM
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a reply to: MissSmartypants



I don't know


exactly



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 08:30 PM
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a reply to: ImaFungi

Interesting, that the most important thing in the universe is being conscious of the universe.

The very thing that some wish to eliminate.



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 08:34 PM
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originally posted by: MissSmartypants
a reply to: elysiumfireOf course the physical universe would still exist even if no consciousness had ever developed....but...if nothing, absolutely nothing was aware of it, does it really exist? Or could the interaction of the wave forms and the resulting reactions be a type of proto awareness?



consciousness existed first, and will exist when all else disappears



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 08:44 PM
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originally posted by: Stormdancer777
a reply to: ImaFungi

Interesting, that the most important thing in the universe is being conscious of the universe.

The very thing that some wish to eliminate.

And I believe we are still a part of that original consciousness, a sort of fractal.



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 08:57 PM
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originally posted by: MissSmartypants

originally posted by: Blarneystoner
a reply to: Aphorism

Ok... all of those definitions require an ear to hear.... if there is no ear to hear... there is no sound... only vibrations (interference patterns)
Again in quantum physics the observer or ear in this case doesn't have to be human or animal. Anything that the sound waves have an effect on, air for example, "hears" the sound.


It's true that the observer doesn't have to be human or animal. It's not true that any'thing' which interacts with it is the observer. An observer can be mechanical, like a camera. But some sort of structure has to be imposed onto the waves. Observation is imposed structure. You can't speak at all of sound-waves affecting 'different objects' without imposed structure. Somehow, something has to capture it from a specific, structured vantage point. That is the observation. Not merely interaction.



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 09:07 PM
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originally posted by: TheJourney

originally posted by: MissSmartypants

originally posted by: Blarneystoner
a reply to: Aphorism

Ok... all of those definitions require an ear to hear.... if there is no ear to hear... there is no sound... only vibrations (interference patterns)
Again in quantum physics the observer or ear in this case doesn't have to be human or animal. Anything that the sound waves have an effect on, air for example, "hears" the sound.


It's true that the observer doesn't have to be human or animal. It's not true that any'thing' which interacts with it is the observer. An observer can be mechanical, like a camera. But some sort of structure has to be imposed onto the waves. Observation is imposed structure. You can't speak at all of sound-waves affecting 'different objects' without imposed structure. Somehow, something has to capture it from a specific, structured vantage point. That is the observation. Not merely interaction.
So if sound waves break a glass does that count as observation?



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 09:09 PM
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originally posted by: MissSmartypants

originally posted by: TheJourney

originally posted by: MissSmartypants

originally posted by: Blarneystoner
a reply to: Aphorism

Ok... all of those definitions require an ear to hear.... if there is no ear to hear... there is no sound... only vibrations (interference patterns)
Again in quantum physics the observer or ear in this case doesn't have to be human or animal. Anything that the sound waves have an effect on, air for example, "hears" the sound.


It's true that the observer doesn't have to be human or animal. It's not true that any'thing' which interacts with it is the observer. An observer can be mechanical, like a camera. But some sort of structure has to be imposed onto the waves. Observation is imposed structure. You can't speak at all of sound-waves affecting 'different objects' without imposed structure. Somehow, something has to capture it from a specific, structured vantage point. That is the observation. Not merely interaction.
So if sound waves break a glass does that count as observation?


Not unless it is somehow specifically measured in an ordered way. Nothing exists independently without a vantage point.
edit on 1-1-2015 by TheJourney because: (no reason given)



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 09:13 PM
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I'll be doing some reading and pondering tonight. Thanks for your input.



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 09:17 PM
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originally posted by: elysiumfire
ignorant_ape:

...if the material world did not exist - what would be the point of conciousness?


Or, an even more succinct question...how could consciousness emerge if there is no material structure in which it could do so?

MissSmartypants:

There are those who believe the mind exists outside the human body and the brain is a receiver which we use to access our mind...with the mind probably being constructed of quantum energy and perhaps quantum entanglement keeps our mind quanta connected.to each other after our physical death. And we may from time to time access data from previous lives or perhaps from a general mind pool.


I have a different perspective on mind, and believe it to be distinct from consciousness. The best way I can state this perspective is that we do not have a mind that is conscious, but a conscious state we perceive as mind. All our thoughts and thinking have to be looped back into the brain as stimulations in order for us to perceive them...how else could we be self-aware?

I cannot accept a disembodied consciousness, because I believe consciousness to be an emergent phenomenon, and can only arise within a structure of some kind in which it can emerge. Mind is not a structure, it is (imho) a quale of perceiving being conscious. Neither mind or consciousness are containers of anything. The former is a mental mirage, whereas the latter is entirely comprised of the emergent resonance I wrote about in an earlier post. That resonance is a real energy, carrying full information about the interaction that brought it into being...energy level, wavelength, and frequency, everything a system capable of being stimulated needs to give both a visual and aural experience.

Consciousness has to be thought of in gestalt terms. The body's senses are distinct from one another, but all come together, energetically and informationally, within the ordering system of the brain. The physical body has more than the known five senses, seventeen I believe at the last count, most of them deal with internal stimulations relaying information about the body, which is where we get our sense of body image from, The five well-known senses relate us to our external environment, so the brain has to process informational energy from the outside and also from within our bodies to provide us with the ordered experience of being alive, and it all comes from the capture of quanta. Consciousness is the wave field of all the quanta that stimulated us, switching 'on' and 'off' many times a second. Quanta, of course, carry and relay all the information of the natural world.

The most most profound puzzle we can work out is how all that quanta is transposed by the brain into the familiar qualia-rich experience of being alive? Once we answer that question, we will cognize our true origins...and God will not be in the equation.
;Would Roger Penrose's microtubules be that mechanism?



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 09:29 PM
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originally posted by: MissSmartypants

originally posted by: Stormdancer777
a reply to: ImaFungi

Interesting, that the most important thing in the universe is being conscious of the universe.

The very thing that some wish to eliminate.

And I believe we are still a part of that original consciousness, a sort of fractal.


absolutely



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 09:43 PM
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originally posted by: MissSmartypants
I'll be doing some reading and pondering tonight. Thanks for your input.


don't ponder too much, let it go, just observe and be aware of your place in the universe



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 10:30 PM
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a reply to: MissSmartypants

The question that has been plaguing humanity for thousands of years. Well, I look at this way, we were a positive accident. We came into existence like winning the lotto. As a physician and an agnostic, I can tell you that while we are being formed in the womb, our neurons migrate and eventually form our central nervous system. During my years in medical school, I had this question myself, but I remember when I was studying embryology, I did not find anywhere where the human soul would be implanted. Our consciousness is a byproduct of the complex neuronal firing and interactions with one another. If we get a bullet in our head, its game over. Our consciousness is confined to our brain. If the brain goes, we go. We are a product of our five senses. We have been lucky to evolve into what we are today.



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 10:36 PM
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originally posted by: Blarneystoner
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

I think the answer is "no".




If no one is around to hear it?

Then, my friend let me ask; then who is there to even perceive that the tree is falling? The senses are linked together, if the perception of sight beholds a tree falling, then the same someone is to be around to hear the falling, so if the falling is witnessed... then someone is around, it does indeed make a sound to that person, if... the person isn't deaf, or existing elsewhere in consciousness, and does not hear it... due to; internal distraction. If no one is there to witness a falling tree, then does the forest even exist? Out of sight... out of mind, out of mind... out of conscious existence.

The nice side to this is; if you sit quietly in a forest long enough, the self falls... and no one is around to hear it, except; Joshu's dog.



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 11:00 PM
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a reply to: DoctorTruth




We have been lucky to evolve into what we are today.


Really? Why is that?



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 11:09 PM
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Awareness, as a function of consciousness, is an interesting property of matter. I find myself falling into the rabbit hole when I think about it..

What is awareness exactly? And being self aware? Is there a point to it?

Existence, in some part, requires conscious confirmation, doesn't it? We have the benefit of existence (hindsight) to be able to assert that all matter exists independently of consciousness.

However, if consciousness was never created in the first place then how can such a statement be made?

Or

If you were the only conscious thing in all of the universe and no other matter existed, then how do you confirm your existence?
edit on 1-1-2015 by PhotonEffect because: (no reason given)



posted on Jan, 1 2015 @ 11:16 PM
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a reply to: PhotonEffect

Existence precedes consciousness and is independent from it. When we pass away, the world around us will continue to exist despite our five senses being lost. We are a byproduct of the complex interactions of the neurological pathways of our bodies. Nature has selected our consciousness as a survival trait. The question we can ask is, how does all of these complex neuronal firings and hormones translate into emotion and opinion? That is the million dollar question.




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