[Greg Boyles]

questionposter, on 19 October 2011 - 12:31 PM, said:

The only way there would be a loss of consciousness in this situation is if there were a loss of cells, your assumptions makes no sense. Your individual cells can have consciousness regardless of whether or not your awake, just like I don't lose my own total consciousness just because I fall asleep. How do individual cells even sleep?

Also, don't atoms process whether or not they are perceived or whether or not they are reacting? There's random atoms reacting in chemicals right now and I don't know at all what's going on with them, yet there's still all of this happening. Does reality disappear when I go to sleep? Well, doesn't seem like it, and that's because I'm not the only consciousness to occupy the universe. And then when you perceive atoms, they somehow know whether or not your looking at them.

If you don't believe that you loose consciousness when you fall asleep then clearly you are not using the accepted definition of consciousness.


Consciousness is the ability to respond to the outside world and others. Clearly you are not capable of responding to anything when you are asleep, short of violent jolt or loud noise, so therefore you are not conscious.



I might add that the auditory system does not become inactive when you sleep but rather responds reflexively to noises, hence you can be woken by a loud noise.


When you turn the power off on your tv it remains where it is, but the image that is normally displayed on the screen certainly does cease to 'be'.

Consciousness is not a physical reality than can be touched like the tv - it is more like the image on the tv screen that only exists while the power is on.

[PhDwannabe]

Quote

Consciousness is the ability to respond to the outside world and others.

Clearly you are not using the accepted definition of consciousness.

[Mystery111]

Ok.... back in my youth (I'm still young but I feel old enough) I studied the fringe theory topics of consciousness and explored many idea's.

The sum of consciousness can be achieved if one is willing to take in the idea that the location of consciousness can never be pin-pointed to any where in the human mind. It seems to be an emergent property of a collection of particles, atoms, cells and molecules (the human brain consists on average 10^30 particles [1]) all working in a coherent fashion as to send information into the ''holograph'' of the three-dimensional phenomenon of perception.

The reason why it is a phenomenon, is because scientists (physicists included) cannot provide a reasonable explanation as to how the brain takes a two-dimensional image from a photon hitting the retina and reconfigure it into the three-dimensional phenomenon of visual perception. The world we see, is not really the world at large. No human on planet earth has ever seen the ''real world''. Our sight is really a hologram of perception which is generated by the particles in our brain, working in the harmony of coherence... which is a quantum mechanical property itself.

So all these particle are consciousness, but there is no location in the human body which we can pin-point and say ''this is the origin of consciousness.''


(1) - A Brief History of Time, Steven Hawking

Greg Boyles, on 19 October 2011 - 02:32 PM, said:

Consciousness is not a physical reality than can be touched like the tv - it is more like the image on the tv screen that only exists while the power is on.

I don't know what else you said, but I saw this comment and needed to say something. I try not to make theories on consciousness any more, I find theories outside this realm much more pleasing nowadays.

Consciousness is certainly not a physical reality. However touching a tv is not a physical reality either. The reality you sense is still a by-product of electrical signals. Albeit to say, they hold classically enough information to state you are a valid observer of this property of matter which you may come to touch, but it is still a ''recreation of it's corporeal physicality'' inside the brain (which again, manifests as a holographic representation of the world outside). I agree though that

''it is more like the image on the tv screen that only exists while the power is on.''

The power in the sense I hope you mean it is that the energy exists to keep the brain functioning as we percieve it, and the image is what it produces.

This post has been edited by Mystery111: 19 October 2011 - 04:15 PM

[questionposter]

Mystery111, on 19 October 2011 - 04:23 PM, said:

Ok.... back in my youth (I'm still young but I feel old enough) I studied the fringe theory topics of consciousness and explored many idea's.

The sum of consciousness can be achieved if one is willing to take in the idea that the location of consciousness can never be pin-pointed to any where in the human mind. It seems to be an emergent property of a collection of particles, atoms, cells and molecules (the human brain consists on average 10^30 particles [1]) all working in a coherent fashion as to send information into the ''holograph'' of the three-dimensional phenomenon of perception.

The reason why it is a phenomenon, is because scientists (physicists included) cannot provide a reasonable explanation as to how the brain takes a two-dimensional image from a photon hitting the retina and reconfigure it into the three-dimensional phenomenon of visual perception. The world we see, is not really the world at large. No human on planet earth has ever seen the ''real world''. Our sight is really a hologram of perception which is generated by the particles in our brain, working in the harmony of coherence... which is a quantum mechanical property itself.

So all these particle are consciousness, but there is no location in the human body which we can pin-point and say ''this is the origin of consciousness.''


(1) - A Brief History of Time, Steven Hawking



I don't know what else you said, but I saw this comment and needed to say something. I try not to make theories on consciousness any more, I find theories outside this realm much more pleasing nowadays.

Consciousness is certainly not a physical reality. However touching a tv is not a physical reality either. The reality you sense is still a by-product of electrical signals. Albeit to say, they hold classically enough information to state you are a valid observer of this property of matter which you may come to touch, but it is still a ''recreation of it's corporeal physicality'' inside the brain (which again, manifests as a holographic representation of the world outside). I agree though that

''it is more like the image on the tv screen that only exists while the power is on.''

The power in the sense I hope you mean it is that the energy exists to keep the brain functioning as we percieve it, and the image is what it produces.

So consciousness is not a physical thing, I never said it was, I said it was a phenomena at least, and I can't even say for sure it's that. Honestly I didn't even know individual cells had the possibility of being conscious in the eyes of the scientific community before a few years ago, but a lot of this consciousness thing seems almost like fractals of quantum mechanical concepts. Atoms knowing you look at them? Wtf? Not being able to pinpoint a location of consciousness? Wtf that's like the uncertainty principal. Waves of information existing yet not being physical entities? That's another "wtf?".

Oh, and when your asleep, what about when your dreaming? Because many times I found myself making free-will decisions when I dream and I somehow even managed to wake myself up because I remembered that in reality I forgot to turn my alarm on.

This post has been edited by questionposter: 19 October 2011 - 10:44 PM

[Greg Boyles]

PhDwannabe, on 19 October 2011 - 04:02 PM, said:

Clearly you are not using the accepted definition of consciousness.

Funny you should mention that because the doco also detailed how such a person is still capable of responding to instructions, e.g. imagine playing a game of tennis in which case the medical staff can pick see the activation of parts of the motor cortex in an MRI scanner.


But obviously this would not happen to a person who is asleep.


So the definition of consciousness stands not withstanding those who suffer from ocked in syndrome.

Mystery111, on 19 October 2011 - 04:23 PM, said:

However touching a tv is not a physical reality either. The reality you sense is still a by-product of electrical signals. Albeit to say, they hold classically enough information to state you are a valid observer of this property of matter which you may come to touch, but it is still a ''recreation of it's corporeal physicality'' inside the brain (which again, manifests as a holographic representation of the world outside). I agree though that

Let's think of a way of measuring the reality of a tv set in a way more impartial than touching it then.

Hitting it with sick will make a noise and damage the tv set.

Firing some radio waves from a radar will produce a reflection.

If a human or other animal walks into it then the tv set will hal their progress.

A tv set is 'real' however you want to measure it.

However the image on the screen of a tv set cannot be detected by any of these means, other than us 'seeing' it and our brain processing the image.

questionposter, on 19 October 2011 - 10:41 PM, said:

Atoms knowing you look at them? Wtf?

The act of 'observation' does not only involve a human observer. I can also involve some other particle or photon interacting with a particle whose state is uncertain up until the point of interaction. That is generally how humans observe the sub atomic world anyway, but particle interactions happen with or without the presence of humans.

questionposter, on 19 October 2011 - 10:41 PM, said:

Not being able to pinpoint a location of consciousness? Wtf that's like the uncertainty principal. Waves of information existing yet not being physical entities? That's another "wtf?".

Not really! All it means is that consciousness is no generated by a single specific region of the brain but rather by the interactions between a number of key areas of the brain.

With the tv analogy.....which part of the tv generates the image? Answer.......basically all of the electronic components! Remove any one of those electronic components and the image on the screen will cease to exist.

questionposter, on 19 October 2011 - 10:41 PM, said:

Oh, and when your asleep, what about when your dreaming? Because many times I found myself making free-will decisions when I dream and I somehow even managed to wake myself up because I remembered that in reality I forgot to turn my alarm on.

Your are not conscious when you dream. You merely remember, or not, dreams when you wake up. That does not mean you were consciously experiencing the dream. It means that, like the auditory system, other parts of the brain remain active while you sleep thus allowing images etc to be formed and sometimes laid down in short term memory.

[questionposter]

Greg Boyles, on 19 October 2011 - 11:27 PM, said:

Your are not conscious when you dream. You merely remember, or not, dreams when you wake up. That does not mean you were consciously experiencing the dream. It means that, like the auditory system, other parts of the brain remain active while you sleep thus allowing images etc to be formed and sometimes laid down in short term memory.

That doesn't add up, because I can sense my own existence within a dream and at times make free-will decisions using the same thought processes as though I were conscious.

I think your suggesting that consciousness is the process of data itself being processed, and therefore when you go to sleep, you are not conscious because some parts of your brain that generate consciousness are not processing information, but either that 's wrong or consciousness is something else.

[Greg Boyles]

questionposter, on 19 October 2011 - 11:44 PM, said:

That doesn't add up, because I can sense my own existence within a dream and at times make free-will decisions using the same thought processes as though I were conscious.

I think your suggesting that consciousness is the process of data itself being processed, and therefore when you go to sleep, you are not conscious because some parts of your brain that generate consciousness are not processing information, but either that 's wrong or consciousness is something else.

You can sense your own existence while you are remebering the dream in a waking state. You are simply confused about this questionposter.

If you can truly sense your own existence while dreaming then logically you would be able to direct your dream and choose where you want go in it......as you can do in the real world in a waking state.

I challenge you to direct your next dream by choosing to dream about a specific place or thing before you go to sleep.

[questionposter]

Greg Boyles, on 20 October 2011 - 12:24 AM, said:

You can sense your own existence while you are remebering the dream in a waking state. You are simply confused about this questionposter.

If you can truly sense your own existence while dreaming then logically you would be able to direct your dream and choose where you want go in it......as you can do in the real world in a waking state.

I challenge you to direct your next dream by choosing to dream about a specific place or thing before you go to sleep.

Well, while I"m in my dream I can choose where it goes sometimes if I focus hard, but I don't know about planning it before I sleep, because when you begin the sleeping process and also during it, there's several hormones that are released, including one that's hallucinogenic and causes dreaming in the first place. In fact, I think there's even an illegal version of that chemical that causes dreaming that you can take while your awake.
But definitely when I'm in my dream there's the potential to chose where it goes, I've done it several times before. I mean there's always some random things that pop up or there's always some random paths, but I can chose the general direction they take with all those random things happening and once or twice I even somehow forced myself to wake up, not because the dream ended, but because I remembered that I forgot to turn my alarm on in reality.

This post has been edited by questionposter: 20 October 2011 - 12:35 AM

[Greg Boyles]

questionposter, on 20 October 2011 - 12:30 AM, said:

Well, while I"m in my dream I can choose where it goes sometimes if I focus hard, but I don't know about before I sleep, because when you begin the sleeping process and also during it, there's several hormones that are released, in including one that hallucinogenic and causes dreaming in the first place. In fact, I think there's even an illegal version of that chemical that causes dreaming that you can take while your awake.

I put it to you that your perceived ability to direct a dream while dreaming is an illusion that you have created while remembering your dreams later in a waking state.

Your notion sounds to much like a hollywood fantasy, along the lines of 'A Nightmare on Elm Street', to be remotely credible to me.

This post has been edited by Greg Boyles: 20 October 2011 - 12:34 AM

[questionposter]

Greg Boyles, on 20 October 2011 - 12:32 AM, said:

I put it to you that your perceived ability to direct a dream while dreaming is an illusion that you have created while remembering your dreams later in a waking state.

Your notion sounds to much like a hollywood fantasy, along the lines of 'A Nightmare on Elm Street', to be remotely credible to me.

But but it's not that I'm remembering them when I wake up, it's that I conscious of what I'm thinking while I'm dreaming, that's why I can remember my thoughts during the dream. If it was just a "waking up" thing, then I wouldn't have any thoughts during the dream. So either I can remain conscious while dreaming because dreams are just an hallucinogenic compund effecting the visual perception centers of your brain along with one or two other things that make it harder to move and focus and nothing more, or the government is planting memories in me.

You said you wanted me to see if I could control my actions in a dream, and I said yes which would have defeated some of your previous arguments, and now your saying I"m wrong without even shred of evidence to support I'm wrong, and yet you have the audacity to say I'm making up a hollywood fantasy?

Besides, whether or not individual cells have consciousness can't be proven or disproved right now, which was the original discussion, and science doesn't have a concrete definition of consciousness. I will tend to lean towards that consciousness isn't what your describing because the way you describe consciousness can't be substituted into every scenario, and you can lean towards whichever side you want, this discussion is meaningless now.

This post has been edited by questionposter: 20 October 2011 - 12:50 AM

[Greg Boyles]

questionposter, on 20 October 2011 - 12:38 AM, said:

But but it's not that I'm remembering them when I wake up, it's that I conscious of what I'm thinking while I'm dreaming, that's why I can remember my thoughts during the dream. If it was just a "waking up" thing, then I wouldn't have any thoughts during the dream. So either I can remain conscious while dreaming because dreams are just an hallucinogenic compund effecting the visual perception centers of your brain along with one or two other things that make it harder to move and focus and nothing more, or the government is planting memories in me.

Incorrect!

Usually you only remember a dream imediately prior to waking up. Because some images and sounds, stored in long term memory, have been deposited unconsciously in your short term memory. Unless you immediately write down the detail of your dream, and thus transfer them to long term meory, the details of that dream nearly always fade rapidly and you are no longer able to recall them.

Your notion that your ability to re-call a dream is evidence that you are conscious during your dreams is simply false logic and not consient with current brain science.

From Wikipedia:

Quote

Biologically, short-term memory is a temporary potentiation of neural connections that can become long-term memory through the process of rehearsal and meaningful association.

So association and rehearsal result in transfer of short term memory to long term memory, and association and rehearsal are conscious acts carried out in a waking state. That would indicate that short term memory can and does operate regardless of whether you are asleep or awake.

questionposter, on 20 October 2011 - 12:38 AM, said:

You said you wanted me to see if I could control my actions in a dream, and I said yes which would have defeated some of your previous arguments, and now your saying I"m wrong without even shred of evidence to support I'm wrong, and yet you have the audacity to say I'm making up a hollywood fantasy?

You have not defeated any of my arguments, merely demonstrated that your logic is flawed.

I have provided plenty of evidence that you can verify for yourself in any current physiology text book.

So far the logic you have followed in coming to you pet conclusions is not consistent with the current brain science.

questionposter, on 20 October 2011 - 12:38 AM, said:

Besides, whether or not individual cells have consciousness can't be proven or disproved right now, which was the original discussion, and science doesn't have a concrete definition of consciousness. I will tend to lean towards that consciousness isn't what your describing because the way you describe consciousness can't be substituted into every scenario, and you can lean towards whichever side you want, this discussion is meaningless now.

Well the current science establishes that individual neurones are not conscious and until some scientist proves otherwise then it stands. That is how science works. If you don't accept it then you are a theologist or anything else but a student of science.

This post has been edited by Greg Boyles: 20 October 2011 - 01:42 AM

[questionposter]

Greg Boyles, on 20 October 2011 - 01:33 AM, said:

Incorrect!

Usually you only remember a dream imediately prior to waking up. Because some images and sounds, stored in long term memory, have been deposited unconsciously in your short term memory. Unless you immediately write down the detail of your dream, and thus transfer them to long term meory, the details of that dream nearly always fade rapidly and you are no longer able to recall them.

Your notion that your ability to re-call a dream is evidence that you are conscious during your dreams is simply false logic and not consient with current brain science.

From Wikipedia:



So association and rehearsal result in transfer of short term memory to long term memory, and association and rehearsal are conscious acts carried out in a waking state. That would indicate that short term memory can and does operate regardless of whether you are asleep or awake.




You have not defeated any of my arguments, merely demonstrated that your logic is flawed.

I have provided plenty of evidence that you can verify for yourself in any current physiology text book.

So far the logic you have followed in coming to you pet conclusions is not consistent with the current brain science.




Well the current science establishes that individual neurones are not conscious and until some scientist proves otherwise then it stands. That is how science works. If you don't accept it then you are a theologist or anything else but a student of science.

I thought I made it clear I don't wish to discuss this with you any more. Try to not waste the space on this thread.

[Greg Boyles]

questionposter, on 20 October 2011 - 01:49 AM, said:

I thought I made it clear I don't wish to discuss this with you any more. Try to not waste the space on this thread.

Then stop posting in this thread.

As long as you continue posting comments on the subject of consciousnes that fly in the face of the current science on the subject I will continue to refute them.


Nothing personal but I am just as determined as you!