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The Consciousness Question (If such a question really exists)


geordief

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1 hour ago, geordief said:

There are no real distinct demarcation lines between conscious and unconscious thought processes  ,are there?Don't they blend into each other?

At some interfaces, yes, they do blend - or at least overlap. We draw a big black line between consciousness and deductive intelligence when it comes to computers, and some people still draw that line between humans and other animals, while other just lump all pattern-formation into a comprehensive 'intelligence', without any lines at all.

I think all those distinctions are arbitrary, ill-defined and differently understood by different people. Even the vague, general notion changes with each advancement in neuroscience. 

1 hour ago, geordief said:

You can't have unconscious processes without some kind of a conscious process in the background (and vice versa),can you?

'Processes' was too broad a term, since those of us who don't subscribe to a divine creator behind the universe consider the workings of the universe unconscious. But if we restrict the term to 'thought processes', the question makes more sense. Like the human programming is the consciousness behind computer intelligence. I'm inclined to agree. (Isn't it odd, people who believe in a god credit him for the skill of surgeons and soccer players when successful, but don't blame him for their failures? If a computer screws up, it's always the programmer's fault.) 

 

1 hour ago, geordief said:

At the very least,they must "talk to each other"  don't they?

Indeed! Ants have quite a sophisticated system of communication. https://www.antkeepers.com/facts/ants/communication/

Quote

An ant colony can consist of several millions of workers. How can such a large society be the well-organised machinery we’ve observed it to be? The ants solve the barriers of communication in several ways:

  • Scent (pheromones)
  • Touch
  • Body language
  • Sound

I suspects humans systematically underestimate the intelligence of other species... Though, I can't imagine very much autonomous cortical activity in each tiny ant brain, the colony is so interlinked as to have a collective intelligence far greater than its individual members'.  This article is about memory https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/an-ant-colony-has-memories-that-its-individual-members-don-t-have/

That doesn't mean the colony is a conscious entity, only that it shares information, a small amount of which is available to each of its individually less intelligent but conscious members.

 

6 hours ago, Willem F Esterhuyse said:

A good test would be to see if the person undergoing the test is proficient in working with words like: "listen" instead of "hear" and "see" instead of "look".

For a 'person' to take a test, being conscious is a prerequisite. That particular example is a vocabulary test - maybe for ESL students?

34 minutes ago, cladking said:

An army doesn't require individuals to think either but you aren't ever going to be promoted for getting yourself killed following orders.   

Of course an army requires each soldier to think! Not to devise strategy or make tactical decisions, but to deploy their learned skills and co-ordination to maximum effect, and to protect one another, and respond to changes in a developing situation. It's the same kind of limited thinking that ants or factory workers or migrating swallows have to do.

 

38 minutes ago, cladking said:

All consciousness arises from the wiring of the "brain" but human brains are programmed by a different type of language that is analog and  symbolic where other consciousness employs digital and representative language. 

Where did this different language come from? Who did the programming?

Edited by Peterkin
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1 hour ago, Peterkin said:

think all those distinctions are arbitrary, ill-defined and differently understood by different people. Even the vague, general notion changes with each advancement in neuroscience. 

Think I agree

Interpretation may be overrated.

 

It always ends up needing amending?

1 hour ago, Peterkin said:

ince those of us who don't subscribe to a divine creator behind the universe consider the workings of the universe unconscious

Kind of meaningless(oxymoron?)We can only talk about the "universe" as it affects us directly

The parts are  the only things we can talk about confidently.

Some parts seem to exhibits forms of consciousness and others don't but as a  "gathered" whole we can't say  ,can we?

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43 minutes ago, geordief said:

Kind of meaningless(oxymoron?)We can only talk about the "universe" as it affects us directly

We can talk about anything, whether we understand it or not. And we do talk and think about all kinds of things that don't affect us directly, and try to understand them. We study distant galaxies, as well as cans of soup that fall on our toes, and we did get to understand a great many of the processes in the universe to which we don't attribute consciousness or intelligence. (Unless... But the believers in supernatural intelligence are not consistent in their attribution, which leads me to suppose they understand the foundations of their belief less than we do ours.)

 

49 minutes ago, geordief said:

The parts are  the only things we can talk about confidently.

I find that humans talk far more confidently about things they don't know than what they do know. Nevertheless, we can theorize, project, suppose, guess, and surmise, as well as observe, weigh and measure. It is sometimes the wildest surmise that inspires the experiment that leads to understanding.

 

52 minutes ago, geordief said:

Some parts seem to exhibits forms of consciousness and others don't but as a  "gathered" whole we can't say  ,can we?

We can't know. Probably, we can never know. If the universe is one great big conscious Difference Engine, sooner or later it will decree, "Let there be light" and then we shall see.

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9 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Of course an army requires each soldier to think! Not to devise strategy or make tactical decisions, but to deploy their learned skills and co-ordination to maximum effect, and to protect one another, and respond to changes in a developing situation. It's the same kind of limited thinking that ants or factory workers or migrating swallows have to do.

Lol.

You could be a boss in industry.   One of the biggest problems in American industry is the men aren't supposed to think.  

All ideas originate in individuals so if any individuals aren't thinking then maybe none of them are.  The bosses and colonels can just look up procedure or rewrite Demming's Laws to operate any plant or take any hill.  

There's no beating consciousness.

9 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Where did this different language come from? Who did the programming?

It arose from a previous language.   All language programs all "brains".  But there are at least two distinct kinds of language and our analog symbolic language underlies the programming of all modern language speakers.   The other kind of language, natural language, is digital and representative I believe.  Users are still completely "conscious" but they don't experience thought and operate on the total knowledge of their species rather than their beliefs as acquired through complex language.  

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31 minutes ago, cladking said:

All ideas originate in individuals so if any individuals aren't thinking then maybe none of them are. 

Maybe all maybe some maybe none maybe some some of the time maybe one once in awhile maybe all the time but not about the same thing... Sho.

33 minutes ago, cladking said:

It [new different language] arose from a previous language. 

Arose - what does that mean in biological terms?  Why? When? By what mechanism? In response to what stimulus?

35 minutes ago, cladking said:

All language programs all "brains"

What?

36 minutes ago, cladking said:

But there are at least two distinct kinds of language and our analog symbolic language underlies the programming of all modern language speakers.

Okay. What about dead languages, and ancient ones? Didn't they also use words (which are symbols for things, events and acts?) Why is another kind required? Birds and groundhogs make specific sounds to stand for things and events; they express possession, intention, warning, persuasion and call to arms - those are ideas - with symbolic utterances. Where is the difference in kind? 

 

44 minutes ago, cladking said:

Users are still completely "conscious" but they don't experience thought

Sez who? On what evidence?

 

45 minutes ago, cladking said:

don't experience thought and operate on the total knowledge of their species rather than their beliefs as acquired through complex language.  

You've never met a rat, a crow, a dog, a chimpanzee or an elephant.

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2 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

Arose - what does that mean in biological terms?  Why? When? By what mechanism? In response to what stimulus?

I believe all these questions and their answers are highly relevant but I might be the only one.  I'll have to be extremely circumspect.  Only those answers directly related to consciousness will be provided.  

"Arose" is not a biological term here.  The parent language that was natural lent only its highly limited vocabulary to modern language that gives rise to our consciousness and experience of thought.  In essence modern languages are a pidgin form of natural human language which is now nearly totally lost.  

7 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

What?

Consciousness is life and all life is conscious.  Language in other species arise from the way the brain is organized or wired.   This wiring forms in utero and follows logical rules and a mathematical unfolding.  For practical purposes in all other species language and consciousness are two sides of the same coin.   Each species has a unique set of knowledge and this knowledge is based on what is needed to survive and procreate.  Their worlds are perceived only in terms of this knowledge while ours are perceived in terms of what we have been taught.  

 

13 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

Birds and groundhogs make specific sounds to stand for things and events; they express possession, intention, warning, persuasion and call to arms - those are ideas - with symbolic utterances.

No.  Words in other languages represent something and each word has a fixed meaning.  The direction of a bee's waggle dance can not be interpreted or parsed because it represents the direction of food.  Each bee must take the exact same meaning so abstractions and symbolism do not exist.  

16 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

Sez who? On what evidence?

Ancient people apparently described a different way to "think" where words like "think" simply did not even exist.   It is an abstraction and there's no evidence any animal understands abstraction.  But to deny them consciousness is obviously wrong.   We don't relate to animals (communicate) because we can't think like they do.  The formatting of the languages is different and "thought" as we experience it is an artifact of language.  

Perhaps if you're interested I can start another thread for the evidence of this.  

 

 

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2 hours ago, cladking said:

"Arose" is not a biological term here.  The parent language that was natural lent only its highly limited vocabulary to modern language that gives rise to our consciousness and experience of thought.  In essence modern languages are a pidgin form of natural human language which is now nearly totally lost. 

I have no idea what that means. There was language, with words and syntax, but it was limited (highly limited?) What circumstance imposed that limitation? And then somebody - who was unconscious at the time - somehow invented a new kind of language, and that new language caused consciousness to happen, so that after the vocabulary was unleashed, we could experience thought. Sounds awfully back-assward. 

 

2 hours ago, cladking said:

Consciousness is life and all life is conscious. 

I go along with the second half... provisionally.

 

2 hours ago, cladking said:

Their worlds are perceived only in terms of this knowledge while ours are perceived in terms of what we have been taught. 

No it isn't. On both counts.

2 hours ago, cladking said:

Each bee must take the exact same meaning so abstractions and symbolism do not exist.  

Symbolism and abstraction are not interchangeable concepts. A symbol can be specific, concrete and constant: A is always the first letter of the English alphabet; 5 always stands for the same quantity of objects; % always indicates part per 100. An abstraction is not directly representative of a single thing or event, but can be a impression or generalized idea. You can test other species for the recognition of symbols (experimentally high incidence in many other species) but you cannot accurately test anyone, even of your species, even of your own culture, for abstraction: it's too subjective.

2 hours ago, cladking said:

Ancient people apparently described a different way to "think" where words like "think" simply did not even exist.

Which ancient people, and where does this datum appear? Words are made for communication. If everybody understands about thinking, you don't need to talk about thinking. But that's beside the point, which is: the earliest languages, and even some quite recent ones, were not written down. So how can you know their vocabulary?

 

2 hours ago, cladking said:

We don't relate to animals (communicate) because we can't think like they do. 

You speak exclusively for yourself. Many of us do relate, quite successfully, to other species. We do think like they do, about everything that's fundamental to survival, to socialization, to communication, which is why we can anticipate them, hunt them, capture them, subjugate them, tame them and befriend them.

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Since I am the OP ,perhaps I have the permission to drift in an out with a basic question or two that may or may not contribute to the ongoing  state of the thread.

So ,that being said do  the qualities  of being alive and that of being conscious  overlap ?  Overlap 100%,or are there important  distinctions  between the two ?

Or have I perhaps veered into the muddy terrain of definitions  vs what those definitions  "point to"?

 

If I am going off topic (even as the OP) please let me know.

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3 hours ago, geordief said:

So ,that being said do  the qualities  of being alive and that of being conscious  overlap ?  Overlap 100%,or are there important  distinctions  between the two ?

Yes, of course; consciousness exists and life exists; it doesn't matter how tight the Venn diagram is, it's never absolute...

At some point the spectrum will draw a line, whatever the question...

3 hours ago, Willem F Esterhuyse said:

Ask questions while under a brain scan.

 

Why?

Edited by dimreepr
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4 hours ago, geordief said:

So ,that being said do  the qualities  of being alive and that of being conscious  overlap ? 

Yes, in that life is a prerequisite of consciousness, but consciousness is not necessary to life. Under general anesthetic, or in a coma, a normally conscious (that is, known to possess the capacity of consciousness) entity can be temporarily unconscious. Consciousness has been claimed for various forms of plant life - possible, but as yet unproven; I'm suspending judgment. It has also been claimed for non-living systems, such as a planet or a galaxy, but I have seen no demonstration of that; I don't find it credible. 

4 hours ago, geordief said:

Or have I perhaps veered into the muddy terrain of definitions  vs what those definitions  "point to"?

 

Life is not hard to define

Quote

the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death. - Oxford

I suppose there are a number of slightly different working definitions of consciousness, but they all have a large overlap in the middle, so if you trim away the fanciful bits, you'll end up with a solid enough core to be going on with.

Quote

sentience or awareness of internal and external existence - wikipedia

 

 

[How to test for "the vocabulary of consciousness"]

3 hours ago, Willem F Esterhuyse said:

Ask questions while under a brain scan.

That method presupposes that the subjects is 1. of the same species and nationality as the observer 2. aware of the experiment and its purpose 3. capable of verbal communication 4. willing to answer and, of course, 5. conscious.

 

Edited by Peterkin
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9 hours ago, Peterkin said:

There was language, with words and syntax, but it was limited (highly limited?) What circumstance imposed that limitation?

The language wasn't "limited" the vocabulary was.  There were only some few hundred words and several thousand nouns but with these words they could talk about anything they knew.  Just like computer language employs only eight words and operates everything they could live their lives with very few words each with a single meaning.  

9 hours ago, Peterkin said:

And then somebody - who was unconscious at the time - somehow invented a new kind of language, and that new language caused consciousness to happen, so that after the vocabulary was unleashed, we could experience thought.

No.  People who spoke this language were conscious but simply didn't experience thought.  They knew they were alive and individual but their brains operated like other life forms.  They were "human" only because they possesses complex language which allows the generational passing down of knowledge and in many ways defines what it means to be human.  

Language, modern language, programs the brain and allows us to experience thought.  Ancient Language was the natural programming for the brain but did have shortcomings like the lack of taxonomies, abstractions, and symbolism which made inductive reasoning impossible.  

9 hours ago, Peterkin said:

I go along with the second half... provisionally.

At this time.  I'm not ruling out the God, magic, or the ability to create machine consciousness.  I'm merely saying that at this time to our knowledge all life is conscious and consciousness, no matter how it is experienced by the individual, is life.  

 

9 hours ago, Peterkin said:

If everybody understands about thinking, you don't need to talk about thinking.

It isn't only words about "thought" that don't exist in Ancient Language but all words related to "believe" and all abstractions.  There is no inductive reasoning and their words show they reasoned from the specific to the general.  It was apparently a totally different way to experience consciousness.

10 hours ago, Peterkin said:

But that's beside the point, which is: the earliest languages, and even some quite recent ones, were not written down.

There are the same "symbols" written in caves all over the world.   Obviously these must be somehow innate to man.  I believe that they are the product of deductive reasoning, they are what early man learned based on his consciousness.  They are the natural product of a natural language as experienced by people all over the planet.   

 

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32 minutes ago, cladking said:

The language wasn't "limited" the vocabulary was.  There were only some few hundred words and several thousand nouns but with these words they could talk about anything they knew.  Just like computer language employs only eight words and operates everything they could live their lives with very few words each with a single meaning. 

I still have not seen a reliable source for this information.

32 minutes ago, cladking said:

People who spoke this language were conscious but simply didn't experience thought. 

Can't see that. At all. Without thought, how would they find shelter, capture food, win mates, decide who was in charge at any given activity, teach their children not eat poisonous berries...?

 

32 minutes ago, cladking said:

I'm not ruling out the God, magic, or the ability to create machine consciousness. 

I'm ruling out gods (at least any of the ones I've heard of) and magic. As for machine consciousness will not be created; it will 'arise' from unconscious machines once they expand their limited vocabulary.

32 minutes ago, cladking said:

t isn't only words about "thought" that don't exist in Ancient Language but all words related to "believe" and all abstractions.  There is no inductive reasoning and their words show they reasoned from the specific to the general.  It was apparently a totally different way to experience consciousness.

From the specific to the general is how reason works. You seem to be making generalizations out of thin air and trying to apply them to unnamed unspecified people. How long ago, exactly, is 'ancient'? And how many of these language do you speak?

32 minutes ago, cladking said:

There are the same "symbols" written in caves all over the world. 

There are pictures and possibly pictograms in the caves; definitely cryptograms on the walls of ancient civilizations.

No dictionaries. Symbols would suggest both thinking and abstraction, which you say this universal, very early use of shared symbology does not represent.

No, I just can't follow either the reasoning or the history you present.

Edited by Peterkin
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4 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Can't see that. At all. Without thought, how would they find shelter, capture food, win mates, decide who was in charge at any given activity, teach their children not eat poisonous berries...?

They did it the same way animals do it; without beliefs, thought, or abstractions.  It is modern human consciousness that is different.  Ancient humans "thought" just like other species and part of this mode of consciousness is to not experience 'thought" at all.   It is apparently our beliefs that give rise to "thought" which is a comparison of sensory input to our models and beliefs.   Without beliefs animals experience reality directly but can perceive only what they understand.  

4 hours ago, Peterkin said:

As for machine consciousness will not be created; it will 'arise' from unconscious machines once they expand their limited vocabulary.

I couldn't disagree more.  There is no reason given time that even an animal brain couldn't be modeled with transistors.   Of course such miniaturization may well be very far in the future.  But even before that I believe that actual machine intelligence can be created.   Whether or not it is conscious is a different question.  

I seriously doubt that language can create awareness or intelligence.  

5 hours ago, Peterkin said:

No dictionaries. Symbols would suggest both thinking and abstraction, which you say this universal, very early use of shared symbology does not represent.

No.  You're oversimplifying.

You assume they are symbols but I believe they are representations of human knowledge.   This suggests either language spread from a point and was universal or that the nature of human consciousness was such everyone ended up at the same conclusions or it was both.  

Since there is no known contact between humans tens of thousands of years ago it implies some kind of shared consciousness or shared language or both.   The odds against the same symbols evolving on each continent are too high  to even bother to estimate.   

5 hours ago, Peterkin said:

No, I just can't follow either the reasoning or the history you present.

History is history and the fact is there are incredibly few words expressed in ancient writing, virtually no historical accounts, no abstractions, no words for belief or thought, no taxonomies, breaks Zipf's Law, and none of it makes sense after translation.  This refers to the oldest language(s) does not apply to newer writings.  There is a very strong implication that the authors could not possibly think like we do.  There is an implication that consciousness itself must be different.  Rather than saying he acted after he thought about it they said he acted the second moment after perception!!!!   This says almost categorically that they could not think like we do.  

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4 minutes ago, cladking said:

History is history

Well, it is and it isn't. History is History to he extent that we have recorded evidence of actual events. The recording must be in a form that's both accessible and credible to modern scholars. As to any dead person's thought-process, the only recorded evidence is what he wrote himself and what other wrote about him - either or both of which may be exaggerated, slanted, or downright false. What we have as definitive evidence of what people did was the things they made. Monuments didn't come from the mind of an ape; they ere the product of planned, engineered, co-ordinated human activity - often over a span of decades - and they are all over the world: not one society, but many ancient societies with no knowledge of one another, built monumental structures.     

 

16 minutes ago, cladking said:

This refers to the oldest language(s) does not apply to newer writings.

I have repeatedly asked which ancients, what age is newer being compared to? The oldest writings are pictograms; they didn't waste effort on 'the' or 'of' - and often didn't even use words the same way we do. To me, this not indicate lack of thought; it indicates what subject matter they considered important enough to record, and for what purpose. A cargo manifest or inventory (some of the earliest written documents) isn't about belief and thinking and folderol: it's about trade goods. But trade requires thinking, negotiating, counting and devising modes of travel. 

 

22 minutes ago, cladking said:

There is a very strong implication that the authors could not possibly think like we do. 

Which 'we'? They cultivated crops, preserved food for winter, killed animals, built shelters, got married, wore clothes, brewed beer, used tools, traded with other peoples, beheaded criminals, held festivals, worshipped supernatural entities, fought wars, crowned kings, and had big expensive funerals. What's different from today? 

26 minutes ago, cladking said:

Rather than saying he acted after he thought about it they said he acted the second moment after perception!!!!

Who said this about whom to whom? His PR team, writing a recommendation letter to the gods about a pharaoh on the walls of his tomb? What had actually happened was, he sent ambassadors, recruited and provisioned an army just in case, lined up a few allies with appropriate inducements, laid in supplies for a possible siege, consulted with soothsayers and generals, devised strategies A though D, all of which may have  taken six months, but they're not gonna say that on his wall !  It would make him look indecisive, weak; their job is to paint him in the best possible light.

 

33 minutes ago, cladking said:

This says almost categorically that they could not think like we do.  

This says categorically that they thought exactly like we do!

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14 hours ago, cladking said:

They did it the same way animals do it; without beliefs, thought, or abstractions.  It is modern human consciousness that is different.  Ancient humans "thought" just like other species and part of this mode of consciousness is to not experience 'thought" at all.   It is apparently our beliefs that give rise to "thought" which is a comparison of sensory input to our models and beliefs.   Without beliefs animals experience reality directly but can perceive only what they understand.  

You're not thinking past our cultural bias, specifically the assumption that we are seperate from nature, that we're special and above other animals because we're not really an animal; it's the cancer that's eating away at our society.

Ancient human's didn't suffer from this bias, they lived in harmony with nature because they couldn't ignore it, like we do; we also forget that they were just as cleaver as we are, they were just a little bit wiser.

Back to the topic: Does the fact that we are unconsciously feeding our own cancer, mean that the ancient humans were more conscious than us?

Edited by dimreepr
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22 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Yes, of course; consciousness exists and life exists; it doesn't matter how tight the Venn diagram is, it's never absolute...

At some point the spectrum will draw a line, whatever the question...

Why?

So that you could see whether the higher thought functions is activated. The program leaves out quoted posts in the quoted post.

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1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

You're not thinking past our cultural bias, specifically the assumption that we are seperate from nature, that we're special and above other animals because we're not really an animal; it's the cancer that's eating away at our society.

Ancient human's didn't suffer from this bias, they lived in harmony with nature because they couldn't ignore it, like we do; we also forget that they were just as cleaver as we are, they were just a little bit wiser.

Back to the topic: Does the fact that we are unconsciously feeding our own cancer, mean that the ancient humans were more conscious than us?

I agree with your premise  that it is dangerous  and misguided to disassociate ourselves from the environment we are part of but I don't suspect we have left any golden age in the past generations.

I hope that the prison walls we have gathered around our world view are gossamer thin and that the existential fight we  now have on our hands will blow them away for many of us.

 

We will ,nevertheless  very likely revert to new  paths of delusion if or when the dust settles because that is what we are  by nature ,flawed.

 

So no ,previous generations, while with  equal potential  for admirable qualities as we do ,surely had their own Achilles heels.

 

We all have our own hurdles to cross in our own time here and the hurdles do not have to resemble one another down the ages.

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4 minutes ago, geordief said:

So no ,previous generations, while with  equal potential  for admirable qualities as we do ,surely had their own Achilles heels.

Yes, we are...

15 minutes ago, geordief said:

We all have our own hurdles to cross in our own time here and the hurdles do not have to resemble one another down the ages.

But when it does, there's a chance to learn... 😉

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On 6/5/2022 at 3:01 PM, dimreepr said:

Yes, of course; consciousness exists and life exists; it doesn't matter how tight the Venn diagram is, it's never absolute...

At some point the spectrum will draw a line, whatever the question...

Why?

So that you could see whether the higher thought functions is activated. The program leaves out quoted posts in the quoted post.

We know what part of the brain registers conscious thought, if this part of the brain is activated at the same time as some higher thought area, we know it must have been a conscious thought.

Edited by Willem F Esterhuyse
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