Does consciousness arise out of having a language?

@boagie,

boagie wrote:

hue-man:)

The genes live on, individuals die. If you think of a consciousness as a great chandelier with many many light bulbs when one of the light bulbs burns out the janitor comes around and remove the bulb to replace it with another, but even with the bulb burned out the chandelier continues to give off light, so, it comes down to, do you identify with the body the blub or do you identify with consciousness the light. It is very possiable that the cosmos is simply bulging with life, with consciousness, it may indeed be infinite and immortal, genes have relative immortality, you were programed to procreate, thus supplying another vehicle for their protection and transportation. "Richard Dawkins and the selfish gene."

Ah, but what if our species becomes extinct, which it most certainly will one day? The genes will be gone.

1 Reply

@hue-man,

hue-man:)

Not all genes would be gone, just one form of their manifestation, it is true species is only relatively immortal compared to the individual. We can only speculate about the possiabilities of some form, of some thing, being immortal, while we do not even know if the cosoms itself is immortal.

1 Reply

@boagie,

boagie wrote:

hue-man:)

Not all genes would be gone, just one form of their manifestation, it is true species is only relatively immortal compared to the individual. We can only speculate about the possiabilities of some form, of some thing, being immortal, while we do not even know if the cosoms itself is immortal.

We pretty much know that the universe is not infinite. It is entropic, and it will come to an end in the far future, and our solar system will end way before that. Every form of those earthly genes will come to an end one day.

1 Reply

@hue-man,

hue-man wrote:

We pretty much know that the universe is not infinite. It is entropic, and it will come to an end in the far future, and our solar system will end way before that. Every form of those earthly genes will come to an end one day.

hue-man,

We only know we have no neighbours within the range of said instruments, I suspect life is bountiful through out the cosmos, but, it is anyones guess.

1 Reply

@boagie,

what interests me is the fact that the evolution of a brain doesn't have an end goal, or a point in which it stops. nor do humans need to wait for biology to do evolve us, we can take matters into our own hands via transhumanism. perhaps sometime down the line our descendants will look back on the level of consciousness we have now and think it to be quite primitive.

perceptions were also brought up a little earlier. i always have to wonder if the five senses are the only things that can be perceived in this reality. i'm not talking about spirituality in a metaphysical sense, but perhaps what we call supernatural is simply something completely natural that we haven't yet evolved a way of perceiving it.

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@Kreist,

Hi Kreist, Smile

Yes, I think the time has come for humanity to take control of its own destiny is some ways, though the resistence to such thinking is still most powerful in those that think their fairy godfather is running the show. Well the fives senses are no poor thing, there are individuals whom are capable of the most extraordinary functions. The senses are in these cases kind of compounded so that one can visualize numbers, hear them, and even in some cases taste them, It is all in the wiring of the brain [ simplistic analogy] neurology will profoundly enlighten us, it shall almost take over the function of philosophy in explaining things that have been thus far beyond our reach, and it will largely rewrite the science of psychology. Interesting times, dooms day scenarios side by side with the most profound steps in human knowledge.

1 Reply

@hue-man,

I agree that plants would not be considered conscious, but I also think that the brain is simply an organ designed to function as any other organ.

let me ask you this Zeth,

What makes you conclude that the brain is somehow different than any other organ of the body? Why do you assume it has some higher function?

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@Kreist,

Kreist,

what exactly do you mean when you say supernatural and natural?

You deny spirituality, and yet acknowledge the supernatural. Or at least the fact that what may seem to be supernatural might be natural.

I guess my question to you would be who decides what gets to be labeled as natural and/ or at what point does that which appears supernatural become natural.

Your thoughts seem to suggest that something is supernatural until you decide that it no longer is. So along those same lines of thinking why can't spirituality be considered natural. What woulkd ti take for you to conclude that spirituality is natural?

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@boagie,

Boagie,

isn't it just a matter of semantics?

What you call rewiring of the brain is what I call enlightenment. When one begins to use thought processes differently than they have been conditioned, the thinking becomes different, the intelligence rises, and the brain is rewired to process differntly.

So why cant one conclude that this rewiring is actually evolving the inner self as well?

1 Reply

@boagie,

Much of this discussion seems to involve different ideas of the meaning of 'consciousness'. Some definitions would be helpful, in order to focus the points of disagreement.

1 Reply

@Pathfinder,

Pathfinder, Smile

Voltaire once said, if you wish to debate with me I would ask you to define your terms. These individuals that I spoke of having their senses compounded, are without a doubt, mutations, and as we all know in nature most mutations are deadly, these cases could be a breakthrough to a higher humanity, higher functioning at any rate. This inner self is often thrown around quiet freely, please define, do you not see the inner self as consciousness itself, or those elemental genes that produced you?

1 Reply

@ACB,

the defining of consciousness is exactly what this thread is discussing.

1 Reply

@jknilinux,

Pathfinder,

I agree with your posts, how can we speak for other life forms, Who knows maybe the Earth is an enormous living entity and the universe looks very much like a colossal brain, Stars =atoms, Galaxies = neurons, Gas clouds = Neuron transmitters, Dark matter = axioms etc etc.

Why not brave thought

People who have had profound near death or even death events, which no heart or brain activity, have perplexed scientists by being able to describe exactly what the doctors where doing while for all purposes they were clinically death

There is this lady who had a massive brain aneurysm that could only be operated on it her heart was stopped and put on the heart lung machine and cooled down to a point where she appeared more dead than some corpse in the morgue.

I will go to the link and post this interesting story

The mind is a quantum field around the physical head and brain and the brain is more like a colossal flash memory that the mind boots into constantly. When we sleep the mind carries out some file cleansing , like we defragmentate our hard drives etc etc

The great scientist Laplace Said the universe looks like a great thought and he was not an ignoramious

I really like your thinking!!

2 Replies

@Alan McDougall,

[CENTER]People Have NDEs While Brain Dead[/CENTER]

http://www.near-death.com/images/people/researchers/nde/michael_sabom.jpg

Dr. Michael Sabom is a cardiologist whose latest book, Light and Death, includes a detailed medical and scientific analysis of an amazing near-death experience of a woman named Pam Reynolds. She underwent a rare operation to remove a giant basilar artery aneurysm in her brain that threatened her life. The size and location of the aneurysm, however, precluded its safe removal using the standard neuro-surgical techniques. She was referred to a doctor who had pioneered a daring surgical procedure known as hypothermic cardiac arrest. It allowed Pam's aneurysm to be excised with a reasonable chance of success. This operation, nicknamed "standstill" by the doctors who perform it, required that Pam's body temperature be lowered to 60 degrees, her heartbeat and breathing stopped, her brain waves flattened, and the blood drained from her head. In everyday terms, she was put to death. After removing the aneurysm, she was restored to life. During the time that Pam was in standstill, she experienced a NDE. Her
remarkably detailed veridical out-of-body observations during her surgery were later verified to be very accurate. This case is considered to be one of the strongest cases of veridical evidence in NDE research because of her ability to describe the unique surgical instruments and procedures used and her ability to describe in detail these events while she was clinically and brain dead.

http://www.near-death.com/images/graphics/hospital/equipment/midas_rex.jpg

When all of Pam's vital signs were stopped, the doctor turned on a surgical saw and began to cut through Pam's skull. While this was going on, Pam reported that she felt herself "pop" outside her body and hover above the operating table. Then she watched the doctors working on her lifeless body for awhile. From her out-of-body position, she observed the doctor sawing into her skull with what looked to her like an electric toothbrush. Pam heard and reported later what the nurses in the operating room had said and exactly what was happening during the operation. At this time, every monitor attached to Pam's body registered "no life" whatsoever. At some point, Pam's consciousness floated out of the operating room and traveled down a tunnel which had a light at the end of it where her deceased relatives and friends were waiting including her long-dead grandmother. Pam's NDE ended when her deceased uncle led her back to her body for her to reentered it. Pam compared the feeling of reentering her dead body to "plunging into a pool of ice." The following is Pam Reynolds' account of her NDE in her own words.
Pam Reynolds' NDE

http://www.near-death.com/images/people/experiencers/pam_reynolds.jpg

The next thing I recall was the sound: It was a Natural "D." As I listened to the sound, I felt it was pulling me out of the top of my head. The further out of my body I got, the more clear the tone became. I had the impression it was like a road, a frequency that you go on ... I remember seeing several things in the operating room when I was looking down. It was the most aware that I think that I have ever been in my entire life ...I was metaphorically sitting on [the doctor's] shoulder. It was not like normal vision. It was brighter and more focused and clearer than normal vision ... There was so much in the operating room that I didn't recognize, and so many people.
I thought the way they had my head shaved was very peculiar. I expected them to take all of the hair, but they did not ...

http://www.near-death.com/images/graphics/hospital/equipment/surgery_tools2.jpg

The saw-thing that I hated the sound of looked like an electric toothbrush and it had a dent in it, a groove at the top where the saw appeared to go into the handle, but it didn't ... And the saw had interchangeable blades, too, but these blades were in what looked like a socket wrench case ... I heard the saw crank up. I didn't see them use it on my head, but I think I heard it being used on something. It was humming at a relatively high pitch and then all of a sudden it went Brrrrrrrrr! like that.
Someone said something about my veins and arteries being very small. I believe it was a female voice and that it was Dr. Murray, but I'm not sure. She was the cardiologist. I remember thinking that I should have told her about that ... I remember the heart-lung machine. I didn't like the respirator ... I remember a lot of tools and instruments that I did not readily recognize.
There was a sensation like being pulled, but not against your will. I was going on my own accord because I wanted to go. I have different metaphors to try to explain this. It was like the Wizard of Oz - being taken up in a tornado vortex, only you're not spinning around like you've got vertigo. You're very focused and you have a place to go. The feeling was like going up in an elevator real fast. And there was a sensation, but it wasn't a bodily, physical sensation. It was like a tunnel but it wasn't a tunnel.
At some point very early in the tunnel vortex I became aware of my grandmother calling me. But I didn't hear her call me with my ears ... It was a clearer hearing than with my ears. I trust that sense more than I trust my own ears.
The feeling was that she wanted me to come to her, so I continued with no fear down the shaft. It's a dark shaft that I went through, and at the very end there was this very little tiny pinpoint of light that kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
The light was incredibly bright, like sitting in the middle of a light bulb. It was so bright that I put my hands in front of my face fully expecting to see them and I could not. But I knew they were there. Not from a sense of touch. Again, it's terribly hard to explain, but I knew they were there ...
I noticed that as I began to discern different figures in the light - and they were all covered with light, they were light, and had light permeating all around them - they began to form shapes I could recognize and understand. I could see that one of them was my grandmother. I don't know if it was reality or a projection, but I would know my grandmother, the sound of her, anytime, anywhere.
Everyone I saw, looking back on it, fit perfectly into my understanding of what that person looked like at their best during their lives.
I recognized a lot of people. My uncle Gene was there. So was my great-great-Aunt Maggie, who was really a cousin. On Papa's side of the family, my grandfather was there ... They were specifically taking care of me, looking after me.
They would not permit me to go further ... It was communicated to me - that's the best way I know how to say it, because they didn't speak like I'm speaking - that if I went all the way into the light something would happen to me physically. They would be unable to put this me back into the body me, like I had gone too far and they couldn't reconnect. So they wouldn't let me go anywhere or do anything.
I wanted to go into the light, but I also wanted to come back. I had children to be reared. It was like watching a movie on fast-forward on your VCR: You get the general idea, but the individual freeze-frames are not slow enough to get detail.
Then they [deceased relatives] were feeding me. They were not doing this through my mouth, like with food, but they were nourishing me with something. The only way I know how to put it is something sparkly. Sparkles is the image that I get. I definitely recall the sensation of being nurtured and being fed and being made strong. I know it sounds funny, because obviously it wasn't a physical thing, but inside the experience I felt physically strong, ready for whatever.

http://www.near-death.com/images/graphics/diagrams/angiogram_pam_reynolds.jpg

My grandmother didn't take me back through the tunnel, or even send me back or ask me to go. She just looked up at me. I expected to go with her, but it was communicated to me that she just didn't think she would do that. My uncle said he would do it. He's the one who took me back through the end of the tunnel. Everything was fine. I did want to go.
But then I got to the end of it and saw the thing, my body. I didn't want to get into it ... It looked terrible, like a train wreck. It looked like what it was: dead. I believe it was covered. It scared me and I didn't want to look at it.
It was communicated to me that it was like jumping into a swimming pool. No problem, just jump right into the swimming pool. I didn't want to, but I guess I was late or something because he [the uncle] pushed me. I felt a definite repelling and at the same time a pulling from the body. The body was pulling and the tunnel was pushing ... It was like diving into a pool of ice water ... It hurt!
When I came back, they were playing Hotel California and the line was "You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." I mentioned [later] to Dr. Brown that that was incredibly insensitive and he told me that I needed to sleep more. [laughter] When I regained consciousness, I was still on the respirator.
For practical purposes outside the world of academic debate, three clinical tests commonly determine brain death. First, a standard electroencephalogram, or EEG, measures brain-wave activity. A "flat" EEG denotes non-function of the cerebral cortex - the outer shell of the cerebrum. Second, auditory evoked potentials, similar to those [clicks] elicited by the ear speakers in Pam's surgery, measure brain-stem viability. Absence of these potentials indicates non-function of the brain stem. And third, documentation of no blood flow to the brain is a marker for a generalized absence of brain function.
But during "standstill", Pam's brain was found "dead" by all three clinical tests - her electroencephalogram was silent, her brain-stem response was absent, and no blood flowed through her brain. Interestingly, while in this state, she encountered the "deepest" NDE of all Atlanta Study participants.
Some scientists theorize that NDEs are produced by brain chemistry. But, Dr. Peter Fenwick, a neuropsychiatrist and the leading authority in Britain concerning NDEs, believes that these theories fall far short of the facts. In the documentary, "Into the Unknown: Strange But True," Dr. Fenwick describes the state of the brain during a NDE:
[CENTER]"The brain isn't functioning. It's not there. It's destroyed. It's abnormal. But, yet, it can produce these very clear experiences ... an unconscious state is when the brain ceases to function. For example, if you faint, you fall to the floor, you don't know what's happening and the brain isn't working. The memory systems are particularly sensitive to unconsciousness. So, you won't remember anything. But, yet, after one of these experiences [a NDE], you come out with clear, lucid memories ... This is a real puzzle for science. I have not yet seen any good scientific explanation which can explain that fact."
[/CENTER]
"The modern tradition of equating death with an ensuing nothingness can be abandoned. For there is no reason to believe that human death severs the quality of the oneness in the universe." - Larry Dossey, MD
[CENTER][URL="javascript:;"]

http://www.near-death.com/images/webmaster/buttons/email.gif

[/URL][/CENTER]
[CENTER]| Evidence index | Next |[/CENTER]

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@Pathfinder,

Pathfinder wrote:

the defining of consciousness is exactly what this thread is discussing.

Pathfinder, Smile

My question was what is your definaton of the inner self. Consciousness or something of a different nature?

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@jknilinux,

Hey Alan,

Have you seen the new technologies using the patients thoughts to actually physically manipiulate external items using controls hooked up to a computer?

It is amazing and clearly reveals that there is more than simple electronic surges twitching muscles ointo action.

By actaully thinking parapalegics are able to cause their plugin to inetract with controls hooked up to a computer that is connected to their brain. But they must think to actually make use of the system.

By thought alone they are able to interface with a computer and through mechanics connected to the computer interact with the mechanics.

they are also able to interact with software on the cpomputer and cause actions likfe typing and mouse control by mere thought alone.

if that does not show the clear separation of thought and brain cannot come up with another.

Sincerely,
Pathfinder
http://naturalogic.blogspot.com/

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@boagie,

Boagie,

I am not sure what you are looking for from me.

I see the "inner self" as being the spiritual consciousness of a human that is separate from, though codependent on, the physical aspects of the body.

But I see the spirit as using the body as a tool to communicate with the physical world. I see the spirit of a person being their true identity which continues from one incarnation to another. the bodies that it uses when accessing the physical creation are all tools of interaction and function.

I believe that if this present body has been endowed with that life force from some unknown place, than it can also happen again in another body in the furture, and has probably also happened in another body in the past. It is logical to assume that what has happened once can certainly happen again and has happened before.

I recognize that there is some unknown force that spontaneously springs upon the vcell that brings it to life. No matter what point of the rpocess one personally considers it life, the fact is that what was one second before not alive, is suddenly brought to life.

It is that mystery, that life-force that I recognize as the spirit within a man that I call inner self. Once spawned it continues to develop and learn and evolve, using the bodies it incarnates as tools of interaction.

Sincerely,
Pathfinder
http://naturalogic.blogspot.com/

1 Reply

@Pathfinder,

Pathfinder, Smile

How do you then interpret Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene". It does sound a great deal like your spirit, that spark of life which is past on through the generations never losing its vitality. In Dawkins description the body is said to be the construct of these genes, the body is as a vehicle for the protection and mobility of said genes. Both your interpretations infer a more elemental essence to the human being, and by elemental I in no way mean lesser. I have often thought that wonder was a major aspect of spirituality, both these interpretations lend out marvelous connotations of wonder--do you see the parallel between the two interpretations? I think possiably they could intersect or perhaps do.

2 Replies

@boagie,

I think I'm just going to stop now, because I see that this debate is crossing over into mysticism, and I really have low patience for mysticism.

0 Replies

@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall wrote:

Pathfinder,

I agree with your posts, how can we speak for other life forms, Who knows maybe the Earth is an enormous living entity and the universe looks very much like a colossal brain, Stars =atoms, Galaxies = neurons, Gas clouds = Neuron transmitters, Dark matter = axioms etc etc.

Why not brave thought

People who have had profound near death or even death events, which no heart or brain activity, have perplexed scientists by being able to describe exactly what the doctors where doing while for all purposes they were clinically death

There is this lady who had a massive brain aneurysm that could only be operated on it her heart was stopped and put on the heart lung machine and cooled down to a point where she appeared more dead than some corpse in the morgue.

I will go to the link and post this interesting story

The mind is a quantum field around the physical head and brain and the brain is more like a colossal flash memory that the mind boots into constantly. When we sleep the mind carries out some file cleansing , like we defragmentate our hard drives etc etc

The great scientist Laplace Said the universe looks like a great thought and he was not an ignoramious

I really like your thinking!!

The idea that consciousness continues after death is continuing to be tested to this day and all of the results thus far conclude that consciousness does not leave your body. I have been unconscious during surgery and I can tell you that it is nothingness. It's non-existence, like a very, very deep sleep.

Near death experiences are understood to be a result of brain activity at the point of death. Most people, however, do not have near death experiences. The vast majority of people report death or unconsciousness to be exactly what you think it would be - nothing. Also, the people who report to have NDE don't actually die. These brain activities happen before you die.

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Does consciousness arise out of having a language?

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