Will science ever explain consciousness?

Don't really know... on speculation I would assert it's the relationship of information within the structure of the universe.

 

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"What is energy? "

Thats a damn good question actually. It is everything I guess. Maybe vibrations from other dimensions or something? Ultimately, it may just be. Like I said earlier, energy is energy.

 

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That's not all consciousness is. Plants are obviously not as conscious as animals. But they still have some consciousness. For instance, they can find food and digest it. Matter, like rocks, react to things. Try merging two stones, they won't merge because of mental resistance.

So you don't know? Consciousness is all that exists. Ether. Consciousness is separation between the self/existence and the 'universe'.

 

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That doesn't mesh with any existing definitions of consciousness in the English language.

 

A single word usually has several meanings.

 

And the exact meaning is derived by the context of how it's used. The thread starter's context is quite clear and even if we force a different context, none of the English language definitions fit:


con·scious·ness ( P ) Pronunciation Key (knshs-ns)
n.
The state or condition of being conscious.
A sense of one's personal or collective identity, including the attitudes, beliefs, and sensitivities held by or considered characteristic of an individual or group: Love of freedom runs deep in the national consciousness.

Special awareness or sensitivity: class consciousness; race consciousness.
Alertness to or concern for a particular issue or situation: a movement aimed at raising the general public's consciousness of social injustice.
In psychoanalysis, the conscious.

 

as decartes famous saying goes I think therefore I am

that should answer the question

 

Here's a pretty interesting article on "Strange Loops and Distributed Consciousness"

http://www.psybertron.org/?p=1260

 

i am not a scientist

you are saying that atoms are not conscious.

so you must know they are not

how do you know they are not? has it been provent?

 

that is an awful definition

 

meh, dictionary.com. Take any hard cover dictionary's definition set and there is still no correspondence to c7ityi_'s concept. It's fantasy being pawned as truth. I could dig up hundreds... possibly thousands of c7ityi_'s assertions to support the claim that this is a normal occurance for him.

 

you have to admit that consciousness is something more than what that definition has it down as.

look at what humanity has achieved, i just paused to think how can i express how significant consiousness is and how insignificant it is made to appear.

i paused and looked up to my wall of floor to ceiling bookshelf filled with marvelous books of literature, art, mythology, psychology etc etc all spawned by conscious application of intellect.

but consciousness is more than just the content of a collection of articles in the minds of men.

i like spidergoats quote of omnidirectional potential that adds more to the definition,

and still there seems to be more not yet expressed, even not yet realised.

 

And I freely admit that. I am merely refuting that a rock is conscious.

 

Philosophy will have alot more to say about consiousness before science has anything useful to add. I already know a heck of a lot more than probably any pscyhologist alive today.

However this type of knowledge of our consiousness only goes so far. IE I can tell you exactly how our mind works, why we do anything that we do, why things make us feel a certain way etc. But I am not familiar with physical aspects of the way the mind works (if you think such things are relevant) or what causes the raw feel of consiousness seperated from what we are feeling in response to.

But I think that in order to accurately understand and experiment with these physical aspects, scientists will need the knowledge that philosophy can provide first. I think it has gotten to the point where the information on ourselves is so little that we have to resort to careful logical analysis of what little information we have in order to come up with more hypotheses to test, but the abandonment of philosophy with the goal of trying to force people to accept scientific results has done little for scientists' ability to do this.

 

I think so, but theres plenty of scope for wild goose chasing, i.e. assuming
that consciousness is a product of complexly collected matter such as a mammalian brain. Thats not consciousness thats just a form of consciousness thats more readily recognisable to us.
Basic matter IS conscious and there is hard scientific evidence that this is the case, and you can verify this by reading up on probably the most famous quantum experiment of all; the double slit experiment.
The idea that particles and basic matter cannot be aware or have consciousness is decades out of date. Im not sure what it is that compells people to boldly state that 'non living' matter cannot be conscious when there is clear evidence pointing in the other direction..oh well.

 

I wouldn't state that, only out of ignorance of one way or the other though. Yeah our brain might realize our ability to store memories etc but might not explain how absorbed light rays get translated into what we see. The chemicals in our brains might be correlated with our emotions, but there may be no explanation of why our emotions feel the way they do.

But the thing that bothers me about your type of thinking is this. Without memories, perception or emotion, what is consiousness? Doesn't there have to be something to be aware of in order to be aware? What type of input does a rock have?

I often find myself in sugar coma after eating the wrong types of foods. This state sometimes includes the complete loss of all motivation to do anything including remember things or thinking in general, ultimately resulting in hours going by in what seemed like minutes of me staring at the ceiling drueling. Of course any thing I can remember about it is me not being COMPLETELY in that state but even looking at a state of extreme apathy right before and after I wonder how one could call this empty consiousness consiousness at all. MAYBE I am aware during those hours that sneak away, but without any memories to make me realize it after the fact. But I don't think such a state is what people mean when they say consiousness.

 

Excellent! Please post the references.

Ok, one photon goes through two slits simultaneosly. How is that related?

I would speculate it's because nobody has seen that evidence.

 

checkout: Integrative Science: The Death Knell of Scientific Materialism
http://www.designeduniverse.com/bb/integrativescience/

'scientific materialism's base assumption isthat consciousness,mind are epiphenomena (outcomes) of the electro-chemical activity of the physical brain, and are thus reducible to the "random" activity of physcial mater as consrained by deterministic physical laws. This consciousness is not real" in its own right: here is no mind, there is only brain function..........
'according to Kafatos and Draganescu et al) consciousness is "the last great frontier of science"---they write: The non-locality of quantum process in the universe is a strong argument for an underlying deep reality out of space and time....Quantum theory and its implication open therefore, th door for the thesis that the universe itself may be conscious (although this statement cannot be proven by theusual scientific method which separates object from subject or the observed from the observer)" meaningonly direct experience can relate this experience of aliveness'

you see. if we really look at science which has grownout from thelineage of patriarchal mythology and religion and ten secula humanism. IF this 'dead' mindset could USE direct experience for war and profit it would. don't know if you see what i mean?.....what i mean is is that you cant but this experince on themrket. there has to come a sense of being that cannot grasp itself!

 

That article was a mixed bag of nuts. The message ultimately boiled down as there are so many aspects of reality out of our grasp right now; therefore, consciousness is not a bio-electrical effect.

Or more succinctly, its true that there is alot we don't know and this gives us explicit knowledge of what consciousness is not.

It's non-sequitor.

 

Id suggest reading as much as you can about the double slit experiment, there are in fact many variations of this experiment and numerous papers on it so its hard to pick just one. Heres a very interesting recent(ish) one
http://grad.physics.sunysb.edu/~amarch/
This experiment seem to suggest that not only is light aware of its observation but is also aware of abstract information relating to it. Nothing less than mind blowing.

The 'pattern' the photons create soley depends on whether or not they are being observed or not. Light has awareness. I.e. basic matter has been experimentaly shown to be self-aware/conscious.

Or maybe you just havent seen it or understood its full implications? Which is actually the case in this instance.