Support NeoGAF

[Khalifa Jayy]

Or consciousness, for that matter. The fact that we "exist" in a body and can control it is so amazing. But what trips me out the most is consciousness (or being, or the "soul" as some might put it). We seem to agree that consciousness/being exists in the brain, yet it is impossible to find exactly where we... well... exist in our heads. You got your various parts of the brain such as the Frontal Lobe, Cerebellum, etc. but you can't pinpoint where our consciousness resides. When we sleep do we... die? for a while? What about when someone undergoes brain surgery? If the surgeon's knife slips he/she may cease to exist altogether even if he/she can still perform tasks. Not to mention the fact that our thoughts translate into actions before we can even think of thinking it. How does THAT work?!

Man, I'm just tripping outtt.

 

[JdFoX187]

There are random times when I'm walking and I get fascinated by the fact I can control my body and do normal stuff. Weird. And then I go on with my life.

 

[Khalifa Jayy]

There are random times when I'm walking and I get fascinated by the fact I can control my body and do normal stuff. Weird. And then I go on with my life.

Not only that, but think of all the processes that occur inside your body. You don't have to think about digesting... it just happens. I was playing with a pen between my fingers earlier and began to wonder what, exactly, prompted me to do so. I really couldn't find an explanation for it. I just did it.

 

[Bloodbeard]

I fell asleep on my couch this afternoon and as I was waking up I stared at the fibers of the couch and imagined entire universes in between each fiber and questioned how I fit in with it all.

 

[DiscoJer]

Sort of.

What really fascinates me though is dreams. Somehow, your memories are different during them. Somehow your brain can create completely believable (mostly) worlds, complete with fake memories and such.

 

[Shanadeus]

Existence is fine and dandy until you're faced with the prospect of non-existence.

Then you just want more life.

 

[Orayn]

Consciousness is pretty neat. "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself," and all that fun business.

 

[SoulPlaya]

I think about it all the time. All the time.

 

[FairyD]

I demand an answer to the mind-body question.

 

[Agent Cooper]

scares the shit out of me.

 

[Khalifa Jayy]

I demand an answer to the mind-body question.

I just the read the wiki on it, and I'm not sure I quite understand what the problem is. Can you elaborate a bit?

EDIT: Also, if you were to lose an arm would you still be "you" ? How much of your body would you have to lose to cease being yourself? If brain transplants ever became possible, how would they work? Would your thoughts, stream of consciousness, etc. be transferred to a different body?

Man, existence is just insane.

 

[loosus]

I used to think about stuff like this, but once you start getting busy, stuff like this seems so unimportant, anymore.

 

[Orayn]

I demand an answer to the mind-body question.

What question, specifically? Is it that hard to believe that consciousness and memories are phenomena created by the processes of the brain?

 

[Bloodbeard]

I used to think about stuff like this, but once you start getting busy, stuff like this seems so unimportant, anymore.

Then when you're old and your body broken and your mind gone, everything will seem unimportant.

What question, specifically? Is it that hard to believe that consciousness and memories are phenomena created by the processes of the brain?

Yes, it would because if our consciousness and actions can be explained causally, then how can there be free will? Our entire civilization is founded on the premise that we act freely; we've got a lot invested in that belief.

 

[dinazimmerman]

I lol'ed when I saw this.

 

[DonMigs85]

I always wonder how we got to this point and whether we would have existed at all if the dinosaurs weren't wiped out.

 

[FairyD]

What question, specifically? Is it that hard to believe that consciousness and memories are phenomena created by the processes of the brain?

Well it's more of the question of how can consciousness (the non physical) control the physical (the body).

 

[Khalifa Jayy]

BTW, I'm reading Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology, so that's why all this is in my head (lol) at the moment. Life feels so meaningless and meaningful at the same time. We are nothing but specs in the universe, yet we have huge impacts on our loved ones, for the most part. We exist in our heads, and as bodies, and we use names to identify who we are and what we are doing. "RJ is running over there." If you saw me in the street and recognized my body, you would say hi. You don't recognize my consciousness, you recognize my body. In the same way, if I saw a photo of myself I would say "hey that's me" or "there I am," yet my consciousness would obviously not be present. So what am I? A soul? A system of bones, meat, and nerves?

 

[blame space]

p existential thread

 

[Tom Penny]

Lay off this shit

 

[dinazimmerman]

eXistenZ is a good movie.

 

[umop_3pisdn]

The only thing that we can say exists with any certainty is phenomenon. Basically "I think, therefore I am". Everything else can be called into question and not simply for the sake of it.

I demand an answer to the mind-body question.

What mind-body question? I think phenomenology addresses all of the questions that matter.

edit:

Yes, it would because if our consciousness and actions can be explained causally, then how can there be free will? Our entire civilization is founded on the premise that we act freely; we've got a lot invested in that belief.

Agency is compatible with determinism, but I don't think either determinism (nor the alternative) is a meaningful line of inquiry in terms of addressing what 'is', for aforementioned reasons. Note that I'm biased towards determinism if anything.

 

[Orayn]

Yes, it would because if our consciousness and actions can be explained causally, then how can there be free will? Our entire civilization is founded on the premise that we act freely; we've got a lot invested in that belief.

We act freely... Kind of. We still have agency, meaning we weight options, judge what might happen, and make decisions. It's just that they're just not derived from some outside force that defies causality.

Believe me, it's not nearly as big of a problem as some people make it out to be. If anything, it's an incentive to create a penal system focused more on rehabilitation than punishing some metaphysical evil that doesn't exist for all we know. I do realize that rehabilitating people sounds AWFUL to some conservative thinkers.

Well it's more of the question of how can consciousness (the non physical) control the physical (the body).

Who says it's non-physical? It's a complex, emergent phenomenon, sure, but we can see bits and pieces of it working through various methods of imaging the brain.

 

[meadowrag]

Yes, it would because if our consciousness and actions can be explained causally, then how can there be free will? Our entire civilization is founded on the premise that we act freely; we've got a lot invested in that belief.

There are numerous subsets of civilization that reject the notion of free will, either in recognition of the divine authority of God, or of a hyer-materialist universe where everything is causally interlinked.
One of the only personal tenets I've come to develop is that the concept of free will, of being in any position where control is exerted by an isolated sense of self awareness, is a total fabrication of a mind which as of yet remains ignorant to the fundamental code of existence.
To me it seems impossible.

 

[Sutton Dagger]

Well it's more of the question of how can consciousness (the non physical) control the physical (the body).

Why are you determining consciousness as a non-physical phenomenon? Everything we know about that brain indicates it works through a complex system of chemical interactions in the 'physical' universe.

 

[Carlisle]

I wonder about this sometimes because of the way our language treats it. You can say my body and my mind, so, by that definition, you are not your body or your mind... they are merely possessions or extensions of your "existence." But you can also say my consciousness and my soul. So what part of you do these extensions belong to?

Kinda weirds me out if I think too much about it.

 

[wenis]

all the time


smokeaweedeverday

 

[umop_3pisdn]

I wonder about this sometimes because of the way our language treats it. You can say my body and my mind, so, by that definition, you are not your body or your mind... they are merely possessions or extensions of your "existence." But you can also say my consciousness and my soul. So what part of you do these extensions belong to?

Kinda weirds me out if I think too much about it.

I think it's only for the sake of specificity, and trying to derive more meaning from it is conceptual elaboration. Perhaps "this body" would be more accurate, I think "my" just reflects a bias for ownership and one that isn't reflected by reality. When we observe our bodies it's simply a material configuration that's no different from any external material configuration, the only difference is that it is subject to voluntary control, but it is similarly devoid of "self" as any inanimate object is.

 

[Air]

Yes, and I would hope it is the same for every person.

 

[DarkKyo]

all the time


smokeaweedeverday

Lol this...

When I think about all the simultaneous conciousnesses going on at one time on the earth it creeps me out. The fact that a random universe with no rhyme or reason happens to spawn increasingly complex chemical reactions that end up as thinking, feeling beings.... it is fucking amazing. It's beautiful and tragic at the same time. Just think of the sentience all over the universe outside of humanity. So many minds spawning and acquiring some basic understanding of an existence from mysterious origins and without purpose.

 

[nomis]

Excision & Downlink - Existence (VIP Remix)

 

[meadowrag]

Why are you determining consciousness as a non-physical phenomenon? Everything we know about that brain indicates it works through a complex system of chemical interactions in the 'physical' universe.

I don't want to speak for him but I think he means how chemical interactions in the physical universe can apparently produce something incorporeal.
You can't touch consciousness in the way you can touch a brain. You can influence consciousness by exerting influence on the brain, but there is a distinction to be made.
Science is a wonderful toolset for explaining phenomena that are confined to the physical realm of our existence, however it is incapable of addressing issues that have no physical manifestation.
Can science measure the degree of an individual's suffering? How about the capacity for creative ingenuity? Or the presence of love? We may be able to isolate relative regions of the brain matter that we suspect to be integral to these feelings, but there is a component of the actual experience of consciousness that cannot be measured or quantified.

 

[ToxicAdam]

Consciousness is just your interpretation of a series of still images you've attached tags to. Much of it false or uninformed.

 

[Zaptruder]

The consciousness is a fascinating thing.

But people should realise something about it - it's not a thing to find. There's no consciousness center of the brain; rather it's a process that emerges from the collective massively parallel iterative function of many smaller parts. Your brain isn't controlled by consciousness - consciousness is the perception that emerges from the function of the brain.

Like... what do you think would happen if you get a complex system like the brain; have some parts of it detect light, sound, vision, other parts of it processing for memories, others still figuring out spaces, words, faces...

have them all link up with each other, intermingling the information within, operating at a speed that is faster than can be properly percieved by a human (each neuron can fire around 200 times per second), and then jam it into a small enclosed box that can't monitor what's inside the box itself?

You'd get the perception of consciousness is what.

To elaborate a little more - consciousness occurs with cross communication of information - consciousness is comprised of not just words and thoughts, but also sights, sounds, smells, memories, skills, etc... as well as activation - your brain does many different things at once; but when much of it is working one task, then that's what you become conscious of (i.e. thinking about naked ladies, or thinking about the name of that face you're looking at).

To put it another way - what do you think it would feel like if your brain was firing off about 10-20 different things at once, evenly split between each thing. You'd probably feel pretty confused right? In this manner, the ability of the brain to encode and decode information as well as its ability to detect a signal from the electrical noise impacts directly on the manner in which we percieve things.

Still, recognizing the nature of consciousness as the counter intuitive thing that it is doesn't change the experience of consciousness. It'll still feel the same - but understanding it will help to better explain why things feel the way that they do.


If one is to consider the function of small cells with relatively basic functions into something as complex and vibrant as a human mind as problematic, then we should also consider the formation of small electronic on and offs building up into something as powerful and incredible as the internet as problematic as well.

 

[MIMIC]

There are random times when I'm walking and I get fascinated by the fact I can control my body and do normal stuff. Weird. And then I go on with my life.

This.

 

[cooljeanius]

I used to be fascinated with existence until I tried to read some Heidegger... Then I just became confused about it.

Existence is fine and dandy until you're faced with the prospect of non-existence.

Then you just want more life.

Also, this.

 

[rdrr gnr]

I used to think about stuff like this, but once you start getting busy, stuff like this seems so unimportant, anymore.

I hope this isn't the case for me a few years down the line. Not being able to ponder such things is scarier proposition than absolute nonexistence itself.

 

[Sutton Dagger]

I don't want to speak for him but I think he means how chemical interactions in the physical universe can apparently produce something incorporeal.
You can't touch consciousness in the way you can touch a brain. You can influence consciousness by exerting influence on the brain, but there is a distinction to be made.
Science is a wonderful toolset for explaining phenomena that are confined to the physical realm of our existence, however it is incapable of addressing issues that have no physical manifestation.
Can science measure the degree of an individual's suffering? How about the capacity for creative ingenuity? Or the presence of love? We may be able to isolate relative regions of the brain matter that we suspect to be integral to these feelings, but there is a component of the actual experience of consciousness that cannot be measured or quantified.

You can utterly change someones 'consciousness' or identity by influencing certain chemical reactions in the brain (psychotic drugs/brain damage in certain regions), I'm still not seeing consciousness as a manifestation of something non-physical.

"Can science measure the degree of an individual's suffering?"

Scientists are currently working on and have shown interesting results in their work to determine physiological suffering (pain) that manifests as changes in brain activity. Link

Gaps in our current understanding do not need to be filled with non-physical phenomenon, Occam's razor indicates that physical causation is the likely process, and science is slowly proving this to be a fact.

 

[DarthWoo]

Is the Minbari religion from Babylon 5 based on any real world one? It basically held that sapience was the universe trying to understand itself. There were souls, and I guess they were passed from body to body as one died and another was born. I guess it was sort of like reincarnation from Hinduism but without the part about striving for Nirvana.

 

[meadowrag]

You can utterly change someones 'consciousness' or identity by influencing certain chemical reactions in the brain (psychotic drugs/brain damage in certain regions), I'm still not seeing consciousness as a manifestation of something non-physical.

"Can science measure the degree of an individual's suffering?"

Scientists are currently working on and have shown interesting results in their work to determine physiological suffering (pain) that manifests as changes in brain activity. Link

Gaps in our current understanding do not need to be filled with non-physical phenomenon, Occam's razor indicates that physical causation is the likely process, and science is slowly proving this to be a fact.

When you can produce a symphony of the calibre that Mozart did by "influencing certain chemical reactions in the brain", then I will firmly be on your side.

 

[Trent Strong]

We act freely... Kind of. We still have agency, meaning we weight options, judge what might happen, and make decisions. It's just that they're just not derived from some outside force that defies causality.

Believe me, it's not nearly as big of a problem as some people make it out to be. If anything, it's an incentive to create a penal system focused more on rehabilitation than punishing some metaphysical evil that doesn't exist for all we know. I do realize that rehabilitating people sounds AWFUL to some conservative thinkers.

Who says it's non-physical? It's a complex, emergent phenomenon, sure, but we can see bits and pieces of it working through various methods of imaging the brain.

I don't believe in the existence of a metaphysical evil, or in anything supernatural. I'm a materialist and atheist, and I think that consciousness is the result of the physical operations of our brains. But I still think that rehabiliation does or would fail probably 95% of the time.

 

[Zaptruder]

I don't want to speak for him but I think he means how chemical interactions in the physical universe can apparently produce something incorporeal.
You can't touch consciousness in the way you can touch a brain. You can influence consciousness by exerting influence on the brain, but there is a distinction to be made.
Science is a wonderful toolset for explaining phenomena that are confined to the physical realm of our existence, however it is incapable of addressing issues that have no physical manifestation.
Can science measure the degree of an individual's suffering? How about the capacity for creative ingenuity? Or the presence of love? We may be able to isolate relative regions of the brain matter that we suspect to be integral to these feelings, but there is a component of the actual experience of consciousness that cannot be measured or quantified.

Consciousness is non-physical similar to the way that language, maths or many other abstract concepts are non-physical.

Their existence is utterly dependent and reliant on the physical material domain - but they can exist within their own conceptual bubbles, paring down much of the 'noise of reality' (all the matter/energy interactions that occur in the material universe that bear no meaning towards the function of those abstract concepts).

 

[Orayn]

When you can produce a symphony of the calibre that Mozart did by "influencing certain chemical reactions in the brain", then I will firmly be on your side.

Why is this a requirement?

 

[rdrr gnr]

When you can produce a symphony of the calibre that Mozart did by "influencing certain chemical reactions in the brain", then I will firmly be on your side.

And unless you yourself are a published neuroscientist, you cannot so effortlessly dismiss it. I couldn't link you to scientific journals, but I could recommend to you numerous books published in the last few years that would defend his position.

 

[Zaptruder]

When you can produce a symphony of the calibre that Mozart did by "influencing certain chemical reactions in the brain", then I will firmly be on your side.

... do you know how many musicians in our modern era were 'inspired' with the use of drugs?

Of all the arguments and emotional appeals against the physical nature of the mind/brain, this is among the poorer ones.

 

[Sutton Dagger]

When you can produce a symphony of the calibre that Mozart did by "influencing certain chemical reactions in the brain", then I will firmly be on your side.

I assume you know what a logical fallacy is, your argument consists of using fallacious rationalisations and is therefor invalid.

 

[jadedm17]

The whole "Chicken and Egg" thing blows my mind.

If everything comes from something, whered it start? How did "God" or the Big Bang happen? We exist simply because we do?

Should we spend our time just living or trying to find out why we "live"?

 

[Trent Strong]

The consciousness is a fascinating thing.

But people should realise something about it - it's not a thing to find. There's no consciousness center of the brain; rather it's a process that emerges from the collective massively parallel iterative function of many smaller parts. Your brain isn't controlled by consciousness - consciousness is the perception that emerges from the function of the brain.

Like... what do you think would happen if you get a complex system like the brain; have some parts of it detect light, sound, vision, other parts of it processing for memories, others still figuring out spaces, words, faces...

have them all link up with each other, intermingling the information within, operating at a speed that is faster than can be properly percieved by a human (each neuron can fire around 200 times per second), and then jam it into a small enclosed box that can't monitor what's inside the box itself?

You'd get the perception of consciousness is what.

To elaborate a little more - consciousness occurs with cross communication of information - consciousness is comprised of not just words and thoughts, but also sights, sounds, smells, memories, skills, etc... as well as activation - your brain does many different things at once; but when much of it is working one task, then that's what you become conscious of (i.e. thinking about naked ladies, or thinking about the name of that face you're looking at).

To put it another way - what do you think it would feel like if your brain was firing off about 10-20 different things at once, evenly split between each thing. You'd probably feel pretty confused right? In this manner, the ability of the brain to encode and decode information as well as its ability to detect a signal from the electrical noise impacts directly on the manner in which we percieve things.

Still, recognizing the nature of consciousness as the counter intuitive thing that it is doesn't change the experience of consciousness. It'll still feel the same - but understanding it will help to better explain why things feel the way that they do.


If one is to consider the function of small cells with relatively basic functions into something as complex and vibrant as a human mind as problematic, then we should also consider the formation of small electronic on and offs building up into something as powerful and incredible as the internet as problematic as well.

Yep. This. The fact that people still think of consciousness as non-physical or as being like a spirit or soul in this day and age with all that science has shown us about the brain is kind of depressing.

 

[LCGeek]

And unless you yourself are a published neuroscientist, you cannot so effortlessly dismiss it. I couldn't link you to scientific journals, but I could recommend to you numerous books published in the last few years that would defend his position.

Actually one can be dimissive without such a requirement and people in the topic have already done such a thing. I don't agree with position considering how many artist talk about various forms of drug usage but we all have our own experiences and interpretations forming our opinions.

Yep. This. The fact that people still think of consciousness as non-physical or as being like a spirit or soul in this day and age with all that science has shown us about the brain is kind of depressing.

I think of it as both. Sorry I don't believe in only physicality I understand the various states an object can be in existence but also other facets. I have no reason to limit myself and have no such evidence especially being in the bubble of human experience to do so.

The brain despite it's awesome abilities comes from a source like many other things in existence we don't fully or even partially really understand.

I find it more depressing on subjects like these science is used to oppress others values in a condescending way. What you said is quite true but science as a whole is locked away through ignorance, opportunity, and well being able to understand it. Knowing is one thing understanding and being able to make something of it another.

 

[Brazil]

I lol'ed when I saw this.

Nice, haha.