Consciousness is a Biological Problem

english isn't his first language, you misread his words, just give it a rest

as I suspected he did not mean to say that there was a metaphysical aspect of life



could he have meant something like homeostasis



well a bacterium is alive but apparently not conscious, at least not to any significant degree



bawwwww

Thanks. Would then this be your working definition for consciousness:?

The link force between the sense organ and the sense object that bridges the sense organ to the sense object.

Rich

---------- Post added 08-25-2009 at 08:21 AM ----------



Thanks Pathfinder,

I think it is going to be difficult to get away from THAT which is the difference between being alive and being dead. So let's just say as a possibility:

Consciousness is THAT which is the difference between being dead and being alive.

Rich

loss of consciousness can occur in a living person

I tend to lose consciousness between the late morning and early evening personally

paramecia are alive yet few would call them conscious

I have enjoyed reading the above posts; they were much more flowing too. There are some good points (as far as I can see) put out, and some I'd have to think about a little more too. I'm a little short time-wise at the moment, so have to be kind of brief.

Let's see, richrf. I'll take your word on that then, and see if I can also help some, as all those above on this page. If I were to put consciousness, as more generally understood, and thus defined/described in neurological circles (and kind of in summary of the general I had given earlier), I'd say that what consciousness is, is a state of experiencing of the body (including brain) as a body, and cognitively knowing that experience has occurred, and to a large degree remembering that it did, and its content. But that's really loose . . . but the best I can do at this sitting in such a constriction as a couple of sentences. What you have given is also part of experience, but they do not always get consciousness-level attention.

To touch briefly on your concern, BrightNoon. It is not intuitive to consider that an older person has a greater degree of consciousness than a younger person. In that everyday activity accumulates in experience, in the form of memory, it could be misleading to word it as 'consciousness is everyday activity,' because that may cause some to consider consciousness to be an accumulating degree of state which is not seen.

Also, as far as participating in every day activity in an environment, all life forms to that too; and yet we are not yet ready to give possession of the state of outright consciousness to any much lower than a couple of primates, or so--to the degree (and because of) the requirement of self-awareness--yet all animals have every day activities. Therefore some misconception might occur there too. (now if we were to remove that general requirement, then all animals would have consciousness just like us H. sapiens)

But most of all, in looking over what paulhanke has kindly provided for our help, we notice an emphasis on 'being aware.' If a body has no degree of awareness, it is not going to really be able to execute every day activity--one needs that consciousness state firstly (although awareness happens at levels below that which is consciousness, but brain control rarely allows the body to work on such in an 'very-day-activites' way). This might be because of what we usually think of when we think of 'everyday activites.' The 3 month old infant will, actually, carry on with everyday activities, but we don't usually think of those as every day activities.

However, it is true that we hear of the content of consciousness (as in autobiographical awareness, and so on), and this is basically referring to memory access (thus this 'access consciousness' thing). That said, there have been cases where people lose self-awareness, and end up with a dis-connected autobiography (though the memory traces appear to not be lost, per se) but we can still say they have a state of consciousness, but just that it is a lower degree of brain activity, thus not consciousness at the normal brain build/state level. You might want to check point d., under section 5 of the Neuroscience Core Concepts publication. All the evidence says that if there is no brain, there is no consciousness built to, and if that level is not reached, to that degree, there is less to no everyday activity.

Oh boy, running out of time, and in 'review post' clicks, see that some other new posts have come in. I'll have to get to that probably tomorrow. Sorry. Let me just touch with the observation of xris. Yes, xris, that is very much the case, as I have pointed out to before, and which is why some have noticed enough to do papers on it, that one problem comes from an effort by some philosophers to cling to older understandings which have been very much over come already. . .perhaps as I go, more will be made clear . . . but we simply don't need to be so fancy about this state of consciousness, because every single one of us loses it when we fall in to deep sleep.

I'm tired, and gotta run... catch you all tomorrow...and thanks for helping out with keeping the thread on better track !! :a-ok:

I have my own personal definition for consciousness, but for the sake of the discussion and simplification, I would say,

Consciousness is THAT aspect of the human being that receives, transmits, and stores information in memory, and creates new information processes to share with other conscious beings. In addition:

Now this is the kicker:

Conscious memory transcends a single physical life, and manifests as innate skills and inherited characteristics which differ from one conscious being to another.

Based upon this definition, consciousness cannot biological (physical). It must be either energetic, or supra-energetic.

This would be my definition and rationale.

Rich

---------- Post added 08-25-2009 at 08:37 AM ----------



Thanks. This does sound basically like being aware of the physical body and remembering this experience of being aware.

Rich

I await my answer and eagerly hope to discuss this further.

Rich, I am extremely interested in your views of the transference of consciousness and hope to hear what neuroscience has to say to that.

But I am really not expecting to hear Kj or anyone else besides Oden respond because I believe they simply cannot answer the questions we corner them on.

There is more to the brain,mind, consciousness arena of debate besides the material physiology and KJ the resident neuroscientists has made that as clear as I and Rich have.

Would you biologists like to discuss that or continue to evade the obvious questions of those who differ from your viewpoints?

---------- Post added 08-25-2009 at 08:48 AM ----------

Kaseijin,

please respond to post 540 when you have time.

no you're putting words in his mouth

KaseiJin would you attribute a large part of consciousness to neural recurrence as in the pathways from the thalamus to the neocortex and back again? I think this is an interesting theory

I don't think we have even arrived at a definition of consciousness so how can be attribute it to anything yet. It would be easy to observe something and proclaim: That is consciousness! But I think this would be putting the cart before the horse. I think we must first define what we mean by consciousness and then try to locate where it might be and determine whether it is solely biological.

Do you have a working definition of consciousness?

Rich

having an internal representation of the external world with a high degree of fidelity to that external world

Just got a PM from Kaseijin expressing his desire that I not continue this line of questioning regarding consciousness.

So I will refrain from pushing that matter any further out of respect for him.

However whether I ask it or not, the questions does still remain. I will simply observe what others have to say on the matter and learn.

What are we not questioning any longer?

Rich

I know WHAT you want me to type here Rich lol

but I aint gonna do it.

Lets just say that I dont want to push anyone into corners here just for the sake of winning argumenst, thats not why I am here. I tried my best to stay on a particular point that I believed was pertinent to this discussion and it seems that pusjhing it any further would just not be a friendly way to discuss this.

I will let the thread continue without pushing that particular point any further and inject my thoughts and opinions when I feel I am not belttling anyone in the process. I am here to learn and debate things of interest and curisoity, not to win arguments.

he probably just doesn't like your trolling

OK. We'll move on. To summarize my findings;

There is no consensus on what consciousness is so there can be no way to determine whether it is a biological problem.

Rich

---------- Post added 08-25-2009 at 09:43 AM ----------



Given the selectivity of the admonition, I would more characterize it as circling the wagons. But whatever, it is not that important and time to move on to a new philosophical discussion. I never felt there was much critical thinking within scientific circles, and this is just further evidence for me.

Rich

well rich I agree the hard problem of consciousness exists and will continue to exist for the foreseeable future but I don't think we should just make up stuff to fill in gaps in our knowledge

"whereof one cannot speak, thereof must one be silent"

I agree. Which is why science needs to do some real critical thinking about itself.

I clearly state that my opinions are my opinions and how I arrived them. I don't pretend that they are facts.

In this thread, we started off trying to declare that something was biological without even knowing what that something is. I am glad that we cleared that up.

Rich

I just gave you a working definition of consciousness, something that can be tested through observation

"In this thread, we started off trying to declare that something was biological without even know what that something is. I am glad that we cleared that up."

Well spoken Rich!

Yes, and we can discuss each definition, probably for some time. I did not notice even a consensus scientific definition. Since, we never arrived at a consensus on what is consciousness, it is impossible for me to discuss whether it is biological.

I would just like to note, that as far as I can tell, no one presented a consensus scientific definition. I even googled it, and there was no definition to be found.

I can discuss philosophical definitions, I can discuss the Bohm definition (which I find a fascinating quantum metaphysical concept), I can discuss my definition, I can discuss yours. What I cannot do, is answer the question whether consciousness is biological until there is a consensus definition of what consciousness is.

Using my definition, I believe consciousness is not biological for the reasons given. You can make a case for your definition if you would like. But everyone is talking about something different, so I don't know what there is to discuss, other than a statement of how someone feels.

Rich

---------- Post added 08-25-2009 at 10:17 AM ----------



Hi Pathfinder,

And for the same reason, I think the thread on Evolution will reach the same conclusion. It appears to me that there is no clear definition of what is being discussed.

I enjoy reading about the history of quantum physics in the 1930s, because of the precision that they attempted to bring to their ideas, and then the utter failure of achieving it. It left all of the physicists literally ill trying to think about the problem of what they are talking about. That was real critical thinking.

More recently, some physicists such as Wheeler, Bohm, Feymann, and Bell (especially Bell) have tried to further our understanding, but it is no where near as exciting as it was when the originators of the theory were really going at it with some marvelous critiques of each other's thoughts. If you need some excitement in your life, this is a great area for reading.

Rich

ok-it's not scientific, it's just linguistic, but how about this for a definition?

consciousness is perception (as interpreted by the senses available to the organism perceiving) of anything ( including its own form).
[actually i want to use a different word for organism that would include inanimate objects, but i cant think of one.]

consciousness-is not self awareness: that would be ego, which to my knowledge only human beings have, thought it may be developing even as we speak in other animals, namely primates and domesticated dogs and cats.
self awareness is a belief in the concept that there is a self separate from others. that has to develop even in human beings, infants are not born with it.

consciousness is perception and memory is remembering-they are two different activities, processes or functions. thought is another process-the question is, what is performing these processes? I like the word psyche-that includes all the functions and means the entire self. then we have to ask what is the self-and it turns out to be all of the above, and we are stuck in a circle again.

sorry, i am not trying to be funny, but it really is getting funny, isnt it?