Human consciousness is much more than mere brain activity, page 8

posted on Jun, 20 2011 @ 09:12 PM

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although i would agree with the article, there is more to the human mind than just neurons firing, i actually CAN feel different parts of my brain working. selective parts when a specific task or stimuli of sufficient magnitude is introduced. for instance, i can feel where the music center of my brain is, and i can also feel different parts along the top sides turn on and off with music.

Evanzsayz

posted on Jun, 20 2011 @ 09:12 PM

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reply to post by solid007

You can prove me wrong?

dontlaughthink

posted on Jun, 20 2011 @ 09:24 PM

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Conscious means in possession of one's senses, or awake.
This dose not mean you know everything while you are conscious! if you did its probable you would go mad.

However you can access your unconscious mind, but be warned you might not like what you realize.

If you are interested all you have to do is ask your unconscious mind a question and tell it to give you the answer in ten minutes ,1 hour or the next day.
But you must get the question out of your mind after asking or you will not get an answer.
Now you know why people say you are going mad if you talk to yourself, it could be that they don't want you to know this secret.
Just remember you are responsible for your actions.
If you are happy with your life, leave this alone.

EthanT

posted on Jun, 20 2011 @ 09:28 PM

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Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
It's time for everybody to admit that if human behavior is entirely deterministic, with decision-making entirely reducible to deterministic physics within the brain, then there is no room for experience.

None, whatsoever.

This is due to the fact that the very discussion of the concept of experience takes place through a physical medium; therefore the qualia themselves must necessarily have an impact on the physical environment. If discussions of qualia are meaningful, then the brain is not fully deterministic. If the brain is fully deterministic, then qualia (experience) do not exist.

If you're not a p-zed then you know that qualia do exist.

Therefore your brain is not fully deterministic. QED.

I studied computational neuroscience and built neural networks in grad school. I see through ya'all's attempts to distract from this fundamental problem through the use of big words.

edit on 20-6-2011 by NewlyAwakened because: (no reason given)

And, no room for free will either ... if the Universe was fully deterministic, that is.

Quantum Mechanics has pretty much shown us that the Universe is non-deterministic on a fundamental level. (Some interpretations, such as Many Worlds Interpretation, can offer a way out of the non-determinism, but those views seem unlikely, at best, imho) It's very possible that consciousness operates on a physical scale small enough to where quantum properties become important.

Also, Roger Penrose has made very good arguments that consciousness is also non-computational, which means it cannot be reduced to an algorithm.

EthanT

posted on Jun, 20 2011 @ 09:40 PM

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Originally posted by 11118
When you dream, and you are in your dream it feels so real. Do you ever remember how you got to that point in your dream? You may know how it ended as you wake up, but you never remembered how it started. If you did remember would it feel realistic? No, but if you did not remember how you got there would that mean you didn't exist before that point? You wake up from the dream and you know you existed before that dream even though you hadn't thought so whilst in the dream - but if you existed how could you forget in the first place. Think about this concept.

Interesting post 11118. Especially this part, which reminded me of a thought I had a ways back.

Another thing about dreams is that, while you're dreaming they can seem very real. Until you wake up that is. At which point, they don't seem quite as real as the experience of waking consciousness.

Being awake is a higher state of consciousness than dreaming, and hence feels more real. Hold that thought.

The most common description you hear from folks who had an NDE is that the experience is "realer than real"

I beleive this is the case because, during the NDE, they experience a heightened sense of awareness, or a higher state of consciounsess, which feels more real than our typical state of consciousness while awake in normal life and in our bodies.

Thus, the NDE feels more real than daily physical life, just as being awake feels more real than dreaming.

It's the greater awareness that makes an experience feel real. (Ever been through a life-threatening situation where all your senses and brain are operating on overload. Feels VERY real.)

The question then becomes how can a flat-lined brain provide an experience, such as an NDE, that is a far richer experience than anything else we can have?

edit on 20-6-2011 by EthanT because: (no reason given)

laymanskeptic

posted on Jun, 20 2011 @ 09:52 PM

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Originally posted by unityemissions
reply to post by laymanskeptic

You just spouted out a whole lot of jargon that lead to nowhere, LOL!

Was that a logic loop?!

If so, count me out...

No problem kid.

That's the same impression I got when I first read Langan's CTMU, I thought it was a whole lot of b*llcr*p. Then I took a second look, then a third... it turns out it made sense and contained some really brilliant insights, and all I had to do was decipher a bunch of his made-up words, then figure out the meaning from context.

But a substantial amount of the context was also made up of made-up words, so they only have meaning mostly in relation to each other, and the problem you have when you entered into reading it is probably the only thing external.

But then you realize that the external and the internal are the same thing. The reader is the theory. And the CTMU is the mirror.

It is so rich in insight both explicit and implicit.

Again, the structure of the "explanation" is itself the thing "explained". Hard to swallow that logical pill eh?

Ah... consciousness/qualia... a beautiful problem.

What will it take for people to appreciate the solution?

I chanced upon 2 more authors (you will chance upon them too if you really seek the answer)... which sealed the deal. The theory that explains consciousness/qualia is complete. I finally understood what it is and why it happens. It's all structural - there is no content, nothing. All this experience, "somethingness", emerged from nothing. The structure of this ex-nihilo, zero-sum origin becomes the content of its very own structure.

Then I made some comparison to an ancient hidden tradition.

So we're talking about 3 critical authors here (and several few more for background into the problem), then 1 really ancient system, all pointing to this really simple thing, but then the final insight comes from you - since qualia can only be "understood" internally after understanding these sources.

What you get is something beautiful.

Divine even.

edit on 6/20/2011 by laymanskeptic because: (no reason given)

Jezus

posted on Jun, 20 2011 @ 10:05 PM

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Originally posted by EthanT

Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
It's time for everybody to admit that if human behavior is entirely deterministic, with decision-making entirely reducible to deterministic physics within the brain, then there is no room for experience.

None, whatsoever.

This is due to the fact that the very discussion of the concept of experience takes place through a physical medium; therefore the qualia themselves must necessarily have an impact on the physical environment. If discussions of qualia are meaningful, then the brain is not fully deterministic. If the brain is fully deterministic, then qualia (experience) do not exist.

If you're not a p-zed then you know that qualia do exist.

Therefore your brain is not fully deterministic. QED.

I studied computational neuroscience and built neural networks in grad school. I see through ya'all's attempts to distract from this fundamental problem through the use of big words.

edit on 20-6-2011 by NewlyAwakened because: (no reason given)

And, no room for free will either ... if the Universe was fully deterministic, that is.

True.

Fundamentally experience, consciousness, free will, and abstract concepts are the same.

AlphaZero

posted on Jun, 20 2011 @ 11:03 PM

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Originally posted by NewlyAwakened
It's time for everybody to admit that if human behavior is entirely deterministic, with decision-making entirely reducible to deterministic physics within the brain, then there is no room for experience.

None, whatsoever.

This is due to the fact that the very discussion of the concept of experience takes place through a physical medium; therefore the qualia themselves must necessarily have an impact on the physical environment. If discussions of qualia are meaningful, then the brain is not fully deterministic. If the brain is fully deterministic, then qualia (experience) do not exist.

If you're not a p-zed then you know that qualia do exist.

Therefore your brain is not fully deterministic. QED.

I studied computational neuroscience and built neural networks in grad school. I see through ya'all's attempts to distract from this fundamental problem through the use of big words.

edit on 20-6-2011 by NewlyAwakened because: (no reason given)

Couldn't have said it better. It is bewildering to me how so many materialists can't seem to grasp this simple fact, accessible by a little bit of logic and a simple reality check.

Deaf Alien

posted on Jun, 20 2011 @ 11:17 PM

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Qualia (play /ˈkwɑːliə/ or /ˈkweɪliə/), singular "quale" (Latin pronunciation: [ˈkwaːle]), from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind," is a term used in philosophy to describe subjective conscious experiences. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, the experience of taking a recreational drug, or the perceived redness of an evening sky. Daniel Dennett writes that qualia is "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us."[1] Erwin Schrödinger, the famous physicist, had this counter-materialist take: "The sensation of colour cannot be accounted for by the physicist's objective picture of light-waves. Could the physiologist account for it, if he had fuller knowledge than he has of the processes in the retina and the nervous processes set up by them in the optical nerve bundles and in the brain? I do not think so." [2]

The importance of qualia in philosophy of mind comes largely from the fact that they are seen as posing a fundamental problem for materialist explanations of the mind-body problem. Much of the debate over their importance hinges on the definition of the term that is used, as various philosophers emphasize or deny the existence of certain features of qualia.

Qualia

I had a thread related to this. If you had an opportunity to be beamed up or down, would you take it. Why or why not?

Deaf Alien

posted on Jun, 20 2011 @ 11:20 PM

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reply to post by TupacShakur

Human consciousness is nothing more than mere brain activity. Everything we do can be explained by a certain part of the brain having a different function than the next one, which in combination makes us the people we are, who think what we think, do what we do, say what we say, see what we see, etc.

So I guess you have no problem being beamed up? (ala star trek transportation)

Deaf Alien

posted on Jun, 20 2011 @ 11:27 PM

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reply to post by Kandinsky

Brain damage alters our consciousness and so do the imbalances that generate clinical depression. Experiments have taken place whereby lobotomised patients have had needles inserted into their brains. The results have caused laughing, embarrassment and tears. Split-brain patients (the corpus collossum being severed) have been exposed to picture cards that generate blushing on one side of the face and nothing on the other.

And yet you are still the same person, no?

As I always tell people... you see what you see.

Deaf Alien

posted on Jun, 20 2011 @ 11:31 PM

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reply to post by MaxNormal

If we are more than just brains, then why do our memories fail us.

This is not about the memories. It is about YOU.

If you had a complete memory loss, would you still be you?

General.Lee

posted on Jun, 20 2011 @ 11:54 PM

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reply to post by Raelsatu

I'm not sure what kind of reply you are looking for. I have my own beliefs. I have read the works of Dr. David Hawkins, studied A Course in Miracles and read Jung. I believe our physical being IS our limitation and WE are much more than our physical and biological being. I believe we are all a part of a larger, infinite, collective consciousness.

A very limited example of this is ESP. ESP and remote viewing do in fact exist. The only thing that can explain that is acceptance that we are NOT just our mind an our brain. If we were all just monolithic beings, then such things wouldn't be possible. Even college level psychology is elementary in the big picture. College level psychology doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of who we are and how the mind works. It's less than the equivalent of a kindergarten student learning to write.

11118

posted on Jun, 21 2011 @ 12:17 AM

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reply to post by EthanT

I am simply trying to expand upon the broader picture. I cannot just blatantly say it but I can hint to dreaming and the realness of illusion.

What is life? What is before life? What is after life? What is the point?

Is it so hard to believe that the vast majority of humanity has forgotten something?

Sure you can say that you haven't, but how do you know if you do not ever dig deeper?

edit on 21-6-2011 by 11118 because: (no reason given)

EthanT

posted on Jun, 21 2011 @ 12:29 AM

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Originally posted by 11118
Is it so hard to believe that the vast majority of humanity has forgotten something?

Most folks can't remember being born ... that's not so hard to believe. And, it's a lot closer to home than say what came before being born ... the spiritual world ... past lives ...?

Originally posted by 11118
Sure you can say that you haven't, but how do you know if you do not ever dig deeper?
edit on 21-6-2011

My sentiments exactly ;-) extra DIV

trailertrash

posted on Jun, 21 2011 @ 12:34 AM

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reply to post by EthanT

Why are we Europeans always the last to find out that there is more to mind than meat? Everyone in India knows better and all the aboriginal peoples of the world are aware of something kin to this as well.

There are two areas of mind that we have and use. First is that which is the result of the brain. It is our personality and is little different from some animals. The other part is that which allows abstract thought and visualization of ideas. It is that which allows us to see years ahead and to contemplate. The higher mind is not of the brain but is only connected to the brain via glandular centers in the brain. This high, intuitional mind is of our souls which are not in our bodies as so many think but are only attached to them while we live.

This is the source of advanced behavior by some kids who write music for instance or who are math whizzes. Prodigal kids we call them. For some reason they are connected to a brilliant mind at the soul level.

No biggie. So this guy who writes and speaks? Well good for him but he is certainly not the first in the world to finally realize the reality of "mind". Sure the academic community will have lots of problems with it because they don't know how to deal with but that is of no consequence. It's real.

skywalker_

posted on Jun, 21 2011 @ 01:36 AM

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reply to post by unityemissions

please know that you can prove yourself wrong by doing some research on NDEs, OBEs, and reincarnation.. you are simply wrong about consciousness not being able to exist outside of the body. If even one case appears to be correct, verify the information yourself, and then you can prove yourself wrong again..

skywalker_

posted on Jun, 21 2011 @ 01:53 AM

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reply to post by Leemo

please do some reading outside of your textbooks .. some books on NDE, OBE's would fill the gap the present day universities are afraid to fill up

skywalker_

posted on Jun, 21 2011 @ 03:13 AM

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reply to post by EthanT

This is a topic that greatly interests me

And perhaps this would be the only thread in ATS that I would write a detailed analysis , and list my thoughts in the best coherent manner as would be possible

Have been watching and reading too many interesting articles on consciousness, interesing videos, and have deep experiences while meditating, and have also met very interesting people whose consciousness if investigated with the modern day tools, then would definitely raise serious questions arising from the experiences they have encountered.

Consciousness is definitely more than just brain activity. The school of thought that would reduce themselves to materialists and the world that is perceived by the senses would think of consciousness being just brain activity.

I do think that consciousness is the next frontier in science. And it would open up dimensions that has been denied by the present day science paradigm, but has been acknowledged in the ancient traditions. The only way to rediscover this is to directly experience it ourselves, IMHO. However for the science that is fixated on the notion that the observer who is asking the question is real, is denying the awareness that acts as the backdrop for the questions to arise. When will science look inwards ? How can science, something that tries to find answers in the external world come down to look at the internal worlds ?

One of the most intelligent arguments which came in one of the posts was that of emergent behaviour of complex systems. But to reduce immensely mysterious experiences such as intuition or abstraction to just a possible pattern coming up from complex systems interacting with each other assumes that we know the dimensions within which the laws of the universe, and that the laws of the universe is fully correct, and this experience which arise due to these interactions is nothing more than another "logical" framework, that would totally ignore the wisdom traditions, the gist of which has to be experienced at a deep individual level.

If consciousness can exist outside of the body, and if the brain should function just as a computer handling the body, then there should be humans who claim to be consciousness out there whose brains should be interesting to study. I am talking about the so called " enlightened masters" . There are individuals who have experienced deep and profound awakening experiences. These individuals after going through this experience, come out with a radical sense of identity with "nothingness" or simply "awareness" . They claim that the moving mind of thoughts or the sense of identity enshrined within our ego has no reality compared to the consciousness that acts as the medium for the movement to occur. They are able to function in this world without "thinking" and from the point of pure intuition alone What would such a person's brain look like ? would he be using the brain as we normally would ? These are definitely interesting questions for me.

If this is truly the case, ( you can find such individuals even in the internet ) , then the possibility that we are not who we "think" we are is very very strong. Implying that we are not the body, or the thoughts that are running through us, that gives rise to the sense of identity we have, and possibly we are simply conditioned to believe we are restricted to the localized and limited form of consciousness such as the body consciousness. The potential for such a situation, simply considering all the ancient tradition is simply astounding. Something that the TPTB wouldn't want us to know for sure. Quite surely, the world can be changed within a single day, if all the humans were in the right consciousness .

If consciousness was indeed the ultimate dimension, then what would the dimension of thought be

interesing question for sure ...

outerlimits

posted on Jun, 21 2011 @ 03:36 AM

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Originally posted by traditionaldrummer

Originally posted by outerlimits
reply to post by renegadeloser

I note it seems no one has mentioned out of body experiences yet and near death, how does normal science answer this? And by the way, it has nothing to do with oxygen starvation. Why, I spent years researching this area along with telepathy working with one of the world’s leading researchers within this area.

You spent years researching NDE's and you don't know how science accounts for them?

Do you still not know?

I am fully aware of most of the answers science conjures up to attempt to answer them, but they don’t wash. They seem to continuously go around a merry-go-round offering the same old answers they have always done, but they have all been shot down. Evidence does not mean you have to produce something of a physical nature for it to be evidence and truth.