Consciousness

Hmm..IMO, consciousness is the ability to perceive information about your environment through one or more of the senses, and act upon that information.

Re: Consciousness
I think of consciousness as that which allows/motivates us to find out what it is. Am sure there are other ways of looking at it.[/quote]

I like that thought. Do you mean that consciousness can be defined as the cause of itself somehow?

I like to think of consciousness as one great spiritual world, to wich all that perceive it bring their share of chaos, food for evolution. And we do evolve. Many say that we are heading for the cliff with our careless and evil ways, and that all the suffering in the world is final proof of our own demise. What is often forgotten is the fact that it is evolution, and evolution is never pleasant. We create our mistakes, and we create our solutions, just like nature has always created its freaks and its wonders. Then the strong survived. Communism was defeated by capitalism just as any animal species would be wiped out by one more able to adapt. A good argument crumbles when countered by a better one.
I think what we call consciousness really is evolution turned spiritual. It is our way of perceiving all around us, but it is also the sum of everything we experience, and from this we do new actions to change the future.

Phoenix:

Perceiving information about the environment and acting based on that information is something a robot with the appropriate sensors and programming ought to be able to do. Would such a hypothetical robot be referred to as having conciousness ?

Cyracuz:

Well I dont know exactly what consciousness is. Since I have no way of defining/parametrizing it, I can only see what it leads to. I am not sure I want to say it is the cause of itself. But I could say it is something that gives me the ability to question what it itself is. It could be the cause, observations and questions are the effect. The observations/questions help make me 'aware' and awareness/questions/associated actions allow one to learn/evolve. With that learning/evolution come more questions and increase in awareness ( a feedback loop ?) , which in turn allows one to better appreciate that one is consciousness.

truth
It amazes me to realize that out of the muck, so to speak, chemical processes led to the formation of organisms that eventually evolved the most astounding and philosophically mysterious phenomenon: conscious awareness. The physical universe has developed the ability to be aware of itself.

JL:

Indeed, that is a fascinating transformation/evolution of matter. One can only wonder how and what exactly it took for this consciousness to appear, and where this awareness will take living beings.

Oh how many interesting questions and comments. thought process is a spiritual cytogenesis, and so this is evolution right here and now. Like JL nobody says: "The universe has developed the ability to be aware of itself." fascinating thought. But has it really? I would say that once the universe has become fully aware of itself as an entity it has evolved once more into God. I have this fantasy that I like to think about: (I call it a fantasy because I have no proof of any of it) I imagine that there was God in the beginning, and that God didn't know exactly how he came into existence. So the material evolution was started, like an experiment to see if it could over time generate beings such as himself. So evolution is God waking up... (?)

This is of course explained over a timeline, but the timeline is not there. All this is happening now and always..

Wasn't that Hegel's Zeitgeist theory ?

truth
Thallon, I do think Hegel had such a notion.
Cyracuz, let me play further with your fantasy. What if your God simply wanted to "see" himself, what if he needed a "mirror." The development of Consciousness would be one way. But which, of all the experiences and perspectives of all the evolving generations of sentient forms on all the planets would reflect the "right" the "correct" the "objective" view of him? That of a snail, of a racist bigot about to lynch a black man, of an Indian saint experiencing Moksha, of a mother holding her baby, of an eagle diving for a fish, etc, at infinitum? My guess would be ALL of them, even that of the bigot. God's nature, as Ultimate Reality, would be all-encompassing and beyond our standards of good and evil, beautiful and ugly, painful and pleasureable. Thanks for an interesting and provocative conjecture.

What is consciousness? Wow what a question! Ever try to examine the construction of a particular microscope using the same instrument in the analysis?


Consciousness: the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself.

Seems a good definition, but what is our capacity for "knowing" what is going on inside us, or outside us for that matter? Is "awareness" a good barometer for such judgments? If so, how conscious are we of our actions that allow us to drive a car while talking to a friend in the passenger seat? Are we really conscious of every little muscle action or "decision" needed for a successful auto trip or do we outsource somewhat?

Are we conscious when we are asleep? If not how do we explain our dreams?

Are we really conscious of making all our decisions?
There are studies that intimate that a lot of our decisions freely made are reached "somewhere" else, somewhere outside what we might consider our "self". This seems to speak less towards free will and more to merely a short time that we are allowed to cast an executive veto against a decision to "act" made elsewhere, more "Free Won't" than "Free Will".

Then we have the concept of a "stream of consciousness". We can only be so aware if an event or act reaches a certain priority level and is successfully injected into said stream. This implies linearity or some sort of queue or process that performs some neurophysiologic triage that determines what actually gets our "attention" and is inserted into the stream of consciousness. But where is this triage being performed? As Dan Dennett says: "If you make yourself small enough you can externalize everything!" We must then decide how "large" to make our "self" but this endangers our concept of the Cartesian Theater where we can pinpoint, within "ourselves", what we can morally lay claim to and take concurrent responsibility for our conscious decisions.

Then we have those who would claim that all we experience via our consciousness is not necessarily true but at best highly subjective "tainted" information. I personally feel that the scientific method coupled with analytical techniques can provide the means to clarify such hazy data transmission but they do have a valid point, after all, what, or more to the point, who makes the final analysis?

JM

Gonna have to go with Descartes (cogito ergo sum.) If I'm thinking, I'm conscious. I can't tell if someone else is thinking or if it/they are just acting in a way that appears intelligent/conscious. However, we assume that there are other conscious beings other than ourselves. I set my standard of what is "conscious" as only that which is conscious of its own existance. A plant might "think" and keep itself alive and reproduce, but its not conscious of its own "plantness."

I think consciousness is the electrical activity of our brains perceiving itself, at root.

Although, it is presumably perceiving itself perceiving that which is NOT self, in order to perceive itself...

truth
You folks know, of course, that this topic of consciousness has been treated elsewhere in one of these threads. I hope Fresco or Twyvel get involved here. They may recall where the writings of David Chalmers, the University of Arizona student of Consciousness can be found. (he has a website somewhere).
As for myself, my conception of (my) consciousness (at least I didn't say "my consciousness of consciousness) is vague but personally satisfying. It includes all the out-of-awareness stuff that my EGO cannot claim to have under control or in "ownership." As I see it, everything in consciousness is (1) either "external" (the ego being absolutely small/non-existent) or (2) "internal" (the Ego--Hindu Atman--being absolutely large/existent and being the same as Brahman, the spiritual and physical Cosmos/Totality. Either way it's the same--or should be the same--to me. There's a principle in Hindu philosophy (from the Upanishads), and assimilated into Buddhism: Be either unattached to anything, and if you cannot accomplish that be attached to everything. But do not discriminate. These options correlate roughly, as I see it, with perspectives (1) and (2) above.

JLNobody:

I wasnt aware there was a pre-existing thread on consciousness. Would be great if someone could post a link to that.