The problem of consciousness solved!

You hear debate after debate about the nature of consciousness and there's 2 main reasons for this confusion.

1. Materialism. When you start with the priori that YOU MUST HAVE a material explanation for consciousness, you're left with a convoluted fantasy.

2. Semantics. When you use the word consciousness and also include awareness and the awareness of consciousness, then you will always have a hard problem because consciousness and awareness are two separate things that work together to give us our experience. Then you can study them both within their domains to see how they work together. You can study consciousness (the brain) and awareness(non physical) that interacts with the brain.

You no longer have a problem and there would be so much progress made as Tesla said:

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” ― Nikola Tesla

I believe you could discover a fundamental field of awareness and more.

Sadly, 99.9% of the money in this field goes towards looking at convoluted explanations as to how the "material" brain can be aware of itself which is nonsense.

How can anything material have awareness of qualia or awareness of itself?

Consciousness is something the brain can do, awareness of consciousness is something it can't do and is non physical.

Consciousness is how much information a brain can process about it's environment. It's also intelligence. Which is how a brain can make correlations in the data which we quantify in a way with I.Q. Test.

Awareness is non physical and it's aware of itself and it can navigate and operate information processed by the brain. Here's an example:

If you buy a new door for your house, your dog may be conscious that the color is different and there's not a hole in the door for him to go through.

A human may be concious of the color of the door, how the color was made, what type of glass is in the door, what type of lock is on the door, who delivered the door, how much the door cost and more.

So, you can begin to quantify consciousness based on how much information the brain can process in it's environment. Integrated Information Theory might be good for this but awareness of experience has nothing to do with materialism.

Awareness of qualia is not only being aware you bought a new door but you know why and the why can't be quantified. You may have bought the new door because 2 months ago you were depressed and you bought a new car. You then decided you wanted a new door that matches the color of your car. You can't quantify what made you depressed and why or why they connected depression to buying the new car and then connected the color of the car to a new door. I will give you another example.

Let's say a guy has two girlfiends and they don't know about each other. He's deciding to Marry one of them. We can't quantify why he chose one girl over the other. One girl may be faithful and the other girl cheated on him but he chose to Marry the one who cheated on him.

How does the material brain initiate memory recall? How does the material brain tell the material brain which memory it wants the material brain to recall and why? Awareness can connect an experience from Junior High, that you had in the Army that cause you to make a decision and you can't quantify why you connected these experiences to the decision you made or if you're telling the truth.

So awareness of qualia should be researched as non physical but real and it interacts with the "physical" brain which is researched as "physical" and "real."

The problems with consciousness goes away when you stop starting with the priori that consciousness includes awareness of qualia and it must emerge from some convoluted material process. You have to separate consciousness from awareness of experience and the awareness of self.

Science of the mind will never have the answer until they admit that the soul exists.

Without the Soul, the brain dies.

P

a reply to: neoholographic

I like your threads on consciousness neoholographic.

Problem seems to be how does one study non physical phenomena?

Would that not fall under the category of philosophy or theology?

Im probably stuck at the first hurdle all the same, that being attempting to have a material explanation for consciousness.

Im thinking if consciousness, or what we assume we experience as consciousness, exists anywhere but in our own head its down there amongst the quantum foam, or at least that's where the important answers lie.

a reply to: pheonix358

Simple creatures like flies have brains, they even found the likes of such in a ragworm despite it being only the width of a human hair.

Do they have souls?

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: pheonix358

Simple creatures like flies have brains, they even found the likes of such in a ragworm despite it being only the width of a human hair.

Do they have souls?

According to Buddhism they do.

Your beliefs may vary as they should.

P

a reply to: neoholographic
I lke the idea that some buddhists and Hindis share-That consciousness is sort of seperate from us,yet resides within us and all living things-maybe even in non living things also.
Its a "divine energy"(shakti iirc)which is kind of running through the fabric of the universe-or is the universe and everything in it.

And us living things can sort of percieve it as our consciousness.
Its something more than just knowledge,experience,the ability to make sense of our surroundings-yet it facilitates all of that and more.

Our physical brains are the complex machine needed for us to be able to percieve and experience what we call consciousness-but our brains may not be responsible for "generating" consciousness-rather they act as a sort of reciever.

I am not saying that idea is 100% correct-but it is an idea that i like for some reason.




Oh BTW-If you get a chance watch "fantastic fungi" on netflix-that is facinating,and talks about how fungi sort of behaves as though it is conscious in many ways,and fits with the idea that maybe,consciousness runs through all life even plants.
Worth a watch.

a reply to: pheonix358

Cheers for the response.

My belief is on the fence pheonix358.

As far as i can determine existence, just like perspective, is a very personal experience.

Buddhists as i understand, believe we are in control of our fate with the problem being most of us are ignorant of this hence the suffering we experience in this verse. If flies have souls what happens when a fly gets flattened, was that Karma or just simple chance?

Somehow i imagine the reality we think we experience to be rather a more complex affair that we will ever fully realise if im honest.

Fact of the matter is we simply don't have all the pieces to the puzzle, and further study is most definitely required.

a reply to: neoholographic

It is my belief that the brain is a machine which records consciousness & creates a non-physical energetic imprint of all conscious & unconscious experience, including body senses, which an entity experiences during its lifetime as a material being in a material universe. In sentient beings, this consciousness imprint persists beyond death in a number of possible ways, according to the will of God.

When we die, the psychic imprint of all our collected experiences is transferred to the 'mainframe' of the universal consciousness field (an aspect of God Himself, "in whom we live, move & have our being") and we continue to exist as a subtle energetic being, a 'subtle material/energy' construct which is programmed with all of the information from our experience of life in the material world - our body senses, our emotions, our spiritual impulse & our mind - the imprint then continues to develop accordingly based on the qualia of our non-material experience of life as it continues to persist in the alternative material world, which is just as tangible as the current world, indeed it is richer & more profound.

Basically, our experience of life as a material being continues after death, we are just shifted into living at a slightly different frequency of 'material'. As an example I can relate part of my testimony:

When I became a Christian twenty years ago, I was a lost kid who didn't have a clue about any of this. I had been an atheist since the age of seven or eight, when I was sat in Sunday school & reasoned that all the people on Earth couldn't have arisen from just two individuals, Adam & Eve. I reasoned that because that clearly wasn't true, then it was likely that the rest of the Bible wasn't true either. I became a dedicated atheist/hedonist from shortly thereafter.

But the night after I became a Christian I had a powerful dream, in which I died (I experienced being shot three times by high calibre rounds from an Apache helicopter). I fell backwards into soft darkness, like being snuggled in a blanket of pure comfort, all stresses, worries & concerns evaporated completely. It was a sort of sleep which was the most fully restful, deeply relaxing experience I've ever had.

I then experienced being picked up by the hands of a being I could not see, before 'waking up' on the floor of a woodland glade at the 'magic hour' of late afternoon/twilight sunlight filtering through the trees, a beautiful place, definitely tangible material which I could see, smell & feel just as you would an ordinary place in the world.

I saw several symbolic items a little way off, on the ground - including a golden signet ring, which held the official 'seal of the King', hence the metaphor was acceptance & authority, I had been approved by the King, Jesus Christ. I saw two birds - Magpies - which, if you are familiar with the children's nursery rhyme, are taken to be a symbol for joy ('one for sorrow, two for joy; three for a girl, four for a boy; five for silver, six for gold; seven for a secret, never been told'). Then, an angelic being floated through the trees & came to my side, and he said "You'll never be persecuted again", at which point I broke down, because I have experienced severe persecution in my life, even back then.

The whole process of death & dying was tangible, material, something which could be seen & felt & experienced by all of the senses. This is why I believe that the psychic imprint of our physical brain & body processes, is translated in perfect synchrony to a different phase of material reality - a carbon copy of us is produced, which is vivified by the spiritual power which God imbues us with - and we then continue to exist in that different material phase, yet crucially, without the fallen nature which our body, brain & consciousness in this current world is affected by, as much as a shackle which binds us to sin, making us incapable of escaping its infleunce while we are here in this world.

In the world I was translated into, there was a glow & an aura to it which made it clear that it was a holy place, and nothing unholy could be there, hence my fallen sin nature had been excised at the point of death, and only the 'purified' version of my material & conscious self existed in that Greater Reality, which was more sensorily fulfilling than the shades of the world we presently occupy.

As a final 'aside', I would like to sincerely recommend that everyone read a couple of books which will explain & refute the most common objections to the Messianic directive & salvation plan which is made available through the nation of Israel, and more specifically through relationship with the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Two of the books which answer the most common objections to the notion that God put a nation aside for His purposes, dealt with the enemies of Humanity, and sent His son to Earth as Christ, to die once for all time, to redeem Mankind, include:

The Genesis 6 Conspiracy - author, Gary Wayne.

Is God a Moral Monster? - author, Paul Copan.

You can find both books on Scribd.com, which in my opinion is the best e-book subscription service on the internet. For a low monthly flat fee of around $12/£9, you get access to millions of otherwise hard to find or expensive books, on all manner of subjects, to read at leisure.

Both books are exceptionally good, exhaustive in their answers to those common objections to the Christian faith. Of course there are hundreds of thousands of worthwhile books regarding the faith, but those two are especially worthwhile for those who simply MUST have the answers to the most thorny of Biblical 'problems' which can become stumbling blocks to belief, if not properly understood.

I hope this post has been helpful to someone. It morphed from a very simple response into a much deeper response, so hopefully it proves useful to some.

Keep up the good work Neoholographic!

“I think, therefore I am”…

a reply to: pheonix358
Where are you getting your info on Buddhism?

Buddhists don't believe animals have souls......they don't believe humans have souls either.

Just found this:

According to the historical Buddha, there is no "soul" or "self" in the sense of a permanent, intrinsic, autonomous "I" inhabiting our bodies. What we imagine to be "I" is an effect created by our brains and senses that is re-created anew every moment. "Enlightenment" might loosely be defined as the falling away of the illusion of "I."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/20/buddhism-animals-souls-religion

a reply to: neoholographic

I think what we are doing, what everything in existence is, is us translating our will -- I think the only thing that exists is translators translating will into form.

I think all quanta and qualia, all images or forms of any kind, are aware[ness] bodily and conscious images are living-souls.

To put that another way, I think the difference between consciousness and awareness is that consciousness is awareness of awareness and awareness is measurement (conception or translation) of will (spirit or force). If it helps, I would say that it is awareness which quantizes quanta and it is consciousness which conceives qualia.

And if all forms (all quanta and qualia) are images of translations of will (underlined is the Trinity: body, soul, spirit), then where there is form, there is measurement / awareness (but not necessarily conscious awareness, God notwithstanding) and the reverse is true as well: where there is awareness there is form, always.

Point being, I think the three are inseparable on a fundamental level. I don't think you can separate awareness from form and still have either of the other two nor do I think you can separate will from awareness and still have the others not fall to some more fundamental level of conception.

Everything is in the mind of God, some living thoughts, and some not, but all are thoughts.

originally posted by: Silcone Synapse
a reply to: neoholographic
I lke the idea that some buddhists and Hindis share-That consciousness is sort of seperate from us,yet resides within us and all living things-maybe even in non living things also.
Its a "divine energy"(shakti iirc)which is kind of running through the fabric of the universe-or is the universe and everything in it.

And us living things can sort of percieve it as our consciousness.
Its something more than just knowledge,experience,the ability to make sense of our surroundings-yet it facilitates all of that and more.

Our physical brains are the complex machine needed for us to be able to percieve and experience what we call consciousness-but our brains may not be responsible for "generating" consciousness-rather they act as a sort of reciever.

I am not saying that idea is 100% correct-but it is an idea that i like for some reason.

Oh BTW-If you get a chance watch "fantastic fungi" on netflix-that is facinating,and talks about how fungi sort of behaves as though it is conscious in many ways,and fits with the idea that maybe,consciousness runs through all life even plants.
Worth a watch.

originally posted by: Itisnowagain
a reply to: pheonix358
Where are you getting your info on Buddhism?

Buddhists don't believe animals have souls......they don't believe humans have souls either.

Perhaps you could find a source for that ... other than any Western source ... and especially not a damn newspaper!

Have you ever studied comparative theology ... no. Well start studying.

P

I consider it as follows and your view will vary, we are talking about beliefs and they vary for each and every one of us.

Your short term memory is in the brain. Your long term memory is contained within your soul. We do not remember everything obviously.

When we die, short term memory dies as well since it is a function of our physical form.

At death our soul separates from our body and our long term memory, our experiences, go with us to the next lane of existence.

P

Greed can be a good thing, or a powerful ally, muhaha, so long as no ones takes the precious. Semantics, Buddha hated semantics, so much he had to ignore it through meditation. Not really, just KIS it was more of that their is no try, only do, and not being a show off.

All Dogs should go to Heaven, Cats maybe if they are good kitties. Wonder by the time we reach interstellar travel, that the planet will be run by Apes an Psychic Dolphins, with giant Cockroaches an Worms, being eaten giant reptile bird and the Humans will call it Hell.

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: neoholographic

I like your threads on consciousness neoholographic.

Problem seems to be how does one study non physical phenomena?

Would that not fall under the category of philosophy or theology?

Im probably stuck at the first hurdle all the same, that being attempting to have a material explanation for consciousness.

Im thinking if consciousness, or what we assume we experience as consciousness, exists anywhere but in our own head its down there amongst the quantum foam, or at least that's where the important answers lie.

Thanks and you can study the non physical by the way it interacts with what we call physical. Here's a paper about the wave function.

The wave-function is real but nonphysical: A view from counterfactual quantum cryptography

Counterfactual quantum cryptography (CQC) is used here as a tool to assess the status of the quantum state: Is it real/ontic (an objective state of Nature) or epistemic (a state of the observer's knowledge)? In contrast to recent approaches to wave function ontology, that are based on realist models of quantum theory, here we recast the question as a problem of communication between a sender (Bob), who uses interaction-free measurements, and a receiver (Alice), who observes an interference pattern in a Mach-Zehnder set-up. An advantage of our approach is that it allows us to define the concept of "physical", apart from "real". In instances of counterfactual quantum communication, reality is ascribed to the interaction-freely measured wave function (ψ) because Alice deterministically infers Bob's measurement. On the other hand, ψ does not correspond to the physical transmission of a particle because it produced no detection on Bob's apparatus. We therefore conclude that the wave function in this case (and by extension, generally) is real, but not physical. Characteristically for classical phenomena, the reality and physicality of objects are equivalent, whereas for quantum phenomena, the former is strictly weaker. As a concrete application of this idea, the nonphysical reality of the wavefunction is shown to be the basic nonclassical phenomenon that underlies the security of CQC.

arxiv.org...

So, if we were to sparate physical apart from being real, we could study the non physical with more research dollars. You study how the physical interacts and influenced by the non physical. Sadly, this will never happen because materialist have a stranglehold on the scientific establishment. You couldn't get many young, innovated voices because they're to scared if they explore many of these topics in this way they will be shunned by the scientific community.

a reply to: FlyInTheOintment

Thanks and what you said makes sense:

It is my belief that the brain is a machine which records consciousness & creates a non-physical energetic imprint of all conscious & unconscious experience, including body senses, which an entity experiences during its lifetime as a material being in a material universe. In sentient beings, this consciousness imprint persists beyond death in a number of possible ways, according to the will of God.

When we die, the psychic imprint of all our collected experiences is transferred to the 'mainframe' of the universal consciousness field (an aspect of God Himself, "in whom we live, move & have our being") and we continue to exist as a subtle energetic being, a 'subtle material/energy' construct which is programmed with all of the information from our experience of life in the material world - our body senses, our emotions, our spiritual impulse & our mind - the imprint then continues to develop accordingly based on the qualia of our non-material experience of life as it continues to persist in the alternative material world, which is just as tangible as the current world, indeed it is richer & more profound.

originally posted by: pheonix358

originally posted by: Itisnowagain
a reply to: pheonix358
Where are you getting your info on Buddhism?

Buddhists don't believe animals have souls......they don't believe humans have souls either.

Perhaps you could find a source for that ... other than any Western source ... and especially not a damn newspaper!

Have you ever studied comparative theology ... no. Well start studying.

P

This is Peter Bolland......he compares religions.......

"The Buddhist Sense of Self"

You appear to be very confident in your assertion.......please post a link where you get your info.

Here is a short (4 mins) vid for those with short attention spans.
"Do Buddhists believe in a soul?"

a reply to: neoholographic
It would be more clear if you called "the mind" what you call consciousness. For me, awareness and consciousness are the same, they are synonyms. The mind appears in consciousness: the thoughts, memories, feelings, pain etc..

I am a non-dualist, which means that I don't think there is the physical on one side and the non-physical or the mental on the other. I think this multiplicity of things is just an appearance. I will go further and say that I think that everything is consciousness, everything is a mental process. The more we pursue the study of matter, the more elusive it becomes.

There is what is called "the hard problem of consciousness", which states that compared to all problems in science, trying to explain how matter gives rise to the mental is the hardest problem. How can we go from the realm of quantities to the realm of qualities? How can we explain the redness of the red color in terms of quantities of matter or interactions between bits of matter?

But in truth, the hardest problem seems to be: "the hard problem of matter". How can we prove the existence of matter outside of consciousness? In a way, consciousness is much easier to explain than matter. We all have consciousness, we know how it feels to be the thing in itself, we know what it is to have a conscious experience everyday of our life. In the other hand, matter stays elusive, the more we dig the more we are baffled. It seems that matter is only a support for conscious experience and that it has no existence outside of that role. What is matter without a consciousness to experience it? It becomes just abstract numbers. All the qualities that we attribute to matter just disappear. If you touch a piece of stone: you will feel its hardness, its texture, its weight etc., it's all happening in consciousness. Without consciousness, matter has no qualities, it's just numbers.

So it seems to me that everything is consciousness, and that matter is just a category of our perception. It's much easier and it makes much more sense to think that consciousness gives rise to matter rather than to think that matter gives rise to consciousness.