Human consciousness is much more than mere brain activity

Human consciousness is much more than mere brain activity

www.guardian.co.uk

How does the animated meat inside our heads produce the rich life of the mind? Why is it that when we reflect or meditate we have all manner of sensations and thoughts but never feel neurons firing? It's called the "hard problem", and it's a problem the physician, philosopher and author Raymond Tallis believes we have lost sight of – with potentially disastrous results.

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This seems to be coming more and more common of a theme. I hear it more and more often, and occasionally by scientists working in the field.

What is astonishing about this rampant reductionism is that it is based on a conceptual muddle that is readily unpicked. Sure, you need a brain to be alive, but to be human is not to be a brain. Think of it this way: you need legs to walk, but you'd never say that your legs are walking.

So, what do you all think? Is consciousness more than the brain? OR, are we just programs running some sort of execution set?

So why can't consciousness be thought of as just the way we experience brain activity, Dunbar continued? Because that's dishonest, Tallis retorted. Inside that innocent-sounding sentence, you have smuggled those two little words "we experience". And that's the entire problem: how do we experience?

www.guardian.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Human consciousness is nothing more than mere brain activity. Everything we do can be explained by a certain part of the brain having a different function than the next one, which in combination makes us the people we are, who think what we think, do what we do, say what we say, see what we see, etc.

How do we experience, few things...
Number one: Pain

Pain is probably the greatest reminder of an experience. I burned my hand on the stove, will I learn from it? Yes!
This is also associated with memory as well..

Freewill is an experience as well.

The ability to change your life from every second. Are you going swimming or jogging? What is your choice. Freewill is freedom and the closes country we have to freedom (although tampered) is the united states, canada, Parts of europe.

So, using your memory to do good during a test may help you pass, but if you failed at a test that pain swells inside you and it is your "FREEWILL" to chose to become a better or worse person.

reply to post by EthanT


I'd like to add this to your thread... Russian Scientist Unlocking the Mysteries of the Human Aura: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Maybe I'll mix things up a bit by adding a video I just watched too.

It's about the Global Consciousness Project. Basically, the project has random event generators all over the place that have very statistically significant "reactions" to world events, such as 9/11. Often, the devices start to respond hours before the event.



www.skeptiko.com...

These results would be rather hard to explain if consciousness is restricted to our skulls

At the same time, it seems it would a bit "dishonest" to just summarily dismiss the results.

Conciousness is existent even without a physical body, or brain there of, through which it can express it self. My concept of consciousness is that it is our "awareness" of being. During states of unconsciousness we are "not aware", however in becoming no longer "aware" of the physical world, that is when our consciousness becomes "aware" of the dream dimensions often refered to as "spirit world" or the "after life" or realms of the "subconsciousness". So it is my scientifically arrived at opinion the it is only when we are asleep that we are truely awake, and only when we are dead that we are truely alive. The physical corporeal body and its environment is in fact blinding us to the existence of the real world only to be found when we go to sleep or die. I recommend that you try to get a copy of THE HOLOGRAPHIC UNIVERSE by Micheal Talbot.


באוווסטזיין איז עגזיסטאַנט אפילו אָן אַ פיזיש גוף, אָדער מאַרך עס פון, דורך וועלכן עס קענען אויסדריקן עס זיך. מיין באַגריף פון באוווסטזיין איז אַז עס איז אונדזער "וויסיקייַט" פון זייַענדיק. בעשאַס שטאַטן פון אַנקאַנשאַסניס מיר זענען "נישט אַווער", אָבער אין פּאַסיק ניט מער "אַווער" פון די גשמיות וועלט, אַז איז ווען אונדזער באוווסטזיין ווערט "אַווער" פון דער חלום דימענשאַנז אָפט ריפערד צו ווי "רוח וועלט" אָדער דער "נאָך לעבן "אָדער רעלמז פון די" סובקאָנססיאָוסנעסס ". אַזוי עס איז מיין סייאַנטיפיקלי אנגעקומען בייַ מיינונג דעם עס איז בלויז ווען מיר זענען שלאָפנדיק אַז מיר זענען באמת וואך, און נאָר ווען מיר זענען טויט אַז מיר זענען באמת גאַנץ. די גשמיות זאַכלעך גוף און זייַן סביבה איז אין פאַקט בליינדינג אונדז צו דער עקזיסטענץ פון דער עמעס וועלט בלויז צו ווערן געפונען ווען מיר גיין צו שלאָפן אָדער שטאַרבן. איך רעקאָמענדירן אַז איר פּרובירן צו באַקומען אַ קאָפּיע פון ​​דעם בוך "דער כאַלאַגראַפיק אַלוועלט דורך מיכאל טאַלבאָט".

AVE RAEGINA CAELINA LA DEUS NOSTRA CAELI LA VERA DEUS

Originally posted by Jordan River
How do we experience, few things...
Number one: Pain

Freewill is an experience as well.

The ability to change your life from every second. Are you going swimming or jogging? What is your choice. Freewill is freedom and the closes country we have to freedom (although tampered) is the united states, canada, Parts of europe.

OK, good point. Our professed knowledge doesn't have to be experienced or factual, we can be delusional also.

It would be nice to see more replies, but I can already predict the types of responses. Most will be similar to the one above (Tupac), and they'll say that human consciousness, although incredible and unique; does not constitute for anything above [or beyond] its biological constraints. I can see the reasoning behind this, because it is true that if you damage a part of the brain, it will impair you subject to the affected area. People that are paralyzed or blind have no control over controlling these [auto]motorary responses. On the other end of the spectrum, there are many phenomena that cannot be explained by science as we know, and would suggest the notion that consciousness and physicality are not one in the same.

Personally I'm a very open-minded, adventurous individual and believe there is something inherent in our species that completely separates us. We are animals, yet we are not. We are instinctual, but we are free-willing. Primal to artistic. Shaped by culture, experiences, adapting to every new thought and evolving into unknown realms with snowballing momentum. The core of our existence alludes finite and invites philosophy. So nature created me, then perhaps I am the expression of greater design; of an observation that lacked the observer. For a religious person it's easy to accept saying we are spiritual creatures. For many an atheist, they enjoy to mock spirituality. But to be a child of science and say that us as conscious observers are not an enigmatic wonder--- from whichever perspective you view--- seems like an insult to the facets of your ideology. If you really think about it, you'll realize we're different. You'll understand that science and spirituality have the ability to speak through different mediums of the same universal code.

Originally posted by Erongaricuaro


OK, good point. Our professed knowledge doesn't have to be experienced or factual, we can be delusional also.

It is impossible to think of the cosmic level as a human. I might as well speak of conciousness as a learning process than some cosmic duration that swivels in and out of the universe and into other dimensions. Why? Because we are here, I cannot slip into a greater potential without the assistances of some turmoil or pain. Enlightenment comes from pain, pain comes from negative/sin/bad luck/etc etc. It is not a negative if we learn from it. So that is why we should fear no evil. Know when to spot the apple!

---knowledge is power

My Atheist friends, you need to open your eyes. The brain is too perfect to be created by blind random chance. Look what it does. Look at the world around you, with eyes that are part of your brain. The sensations you feel, the sounds you hear, the things you see. can you honestly look around you and tell me that that "chunk of meat" in your head was created randomly? That we are just another part of the world that was accidentally created? I don't think you can. Look into yourself. You have been given a gift. it's a little something called Consciousness. Use it.

You need to find God, my friends.
"There's no such thing as an Atheist in a foxhole."

Originally posted by TupacShakur
Human consciousness is nothing more than mere brain activity. Everything we do can be explained by a certain part of the brain having a different function than the next one, which in combination makes us the people we are, who think what we think, do what we do, say what we say, see what we see, etc.

You and your AI body suit are not the same, one is the driver, the other the vehicle. And no....not only can nothing be satisfactorily explained, or rather a very poor stab at explaining, ie. their dmt studies. A subject has hallucinations that they themselves feel are distortions, elongated limbs, and pychadelic heavens, compared to the clear, very aware consciousness of an NDE, where even those born blind can describe seeing. They're not the same.

In fact, what is controlled or leaKed is just the gatekeepers info/disinfo. For they've conducted intense studies on consciousness and can transfer consciousness from one container to another in black op "science".

Consciousness in the view I ascribe to is an interface with the "dimension" of information. DNA itself determines the "code" which is the expression of "consciousness" unique to the organism and the perception of "reality" experienced. Hence our reality is in fact different from a dog or jelly fish by how we interpret our interface with information.
Tarthang Tulku and Amit Goswami are leaders in this "Quantum" view

www.amitgoswami.org...

www.tska.info...

seed

More theories on consciousness for discussion.

This one comes from Sir Roger Penrose (physicist and mathmetician) and Stuart Hammeroff (MD, anisthesiologist). It's called the Orch-R model and can be extended to an idea that consciousness can exist outside the brain, as Hammeroff likes to do while appealing to quantum mechanics.

en.wikipedia.org...

Orch-OR (Orchestrated Objective Reduction) is a theory of consciousness, which is the joint work of theoretical physicist Sir Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff. Mainstream theories assume that consciousness emerges from the brain, and focus particularly on complex computation at synapses that allow communication between neurons. Orch-OR combines approaches to the problem of consciousness from the radically different angles of mathematics, physics and anesthesia.

Penrose and Hameroff initially developed their ideas quite separately from one another, and it was only in the 1990s that they cooperated to produce the Orch-OR theory. Penrose came to the problem from the view point of mathematics and in particular Gödel's theorem, while Hameroff approached it from a career in cancer research and anesthesia that gave him an interest in brain structures.

Another published experiment that would seem to imply there is more to consiousness than we realize. It deals with retrocausal influences.

Daryl Bem - Feeling the Future

Two variants of psi are precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) and premonition
(affective apprehension) of a future event that could not otherwise be anticipated
through any known inferential process. Precognition and premonition are themselves
special cases of a more general phenomenon: the anomalous retroactive influence of
some future event on an individual’s current responses, whether those responses are
conscious or nonconscious, cognitive or affective. This article reports 9 experiments,
involving more than 1,000 participants, that test for retroactive influence by “timereversing”
well-established psychological effects so that the individual’s responses are
obtained before the putatively causal stimulus events occur. Data are presented for 4
time-reversed effects: precognitive approach to erotic stimuli and precognitive
avoidance of negative stimuli; retroactive priming; retroactive habituation; and
retroactive facilitation of recall. All but one of the experiments yielded statistically
significant results

And here is a rather silly introduction to the experiment, courtesy of the Colbert Report, on which Daryl Bem was interviewed. It's great for a good laugh, at the very least ;-)

Dayl Bem on the Colbert Report

Consciousness is your soul, mental state and body tied in a liquid stream. Consciousness is simple, mostly the problem with it is figuring out where the hell to start

"Consciousness" is rather limited, is it not? Mostly our consciousness is made up of what we perceive through our regular senses, then colored by our experiences and our knowledges in whatever manner we have them categorized. That does not mean we are perceiving all that is happening as there are encoded messages with their intelligences modulated at specific frequencies beyond our ability to sense them unaided (radio, TV), and other intelligences occurring in other spectrums that we neither sense (infrared devices like remote controls, etc.).

I am unsure, uncertain of the nature or existence of spirituality. There are things beyond what we can see, feel, and hear and only some of those we understand. what is outside our understanding we ascribe to those mystical sensations. God's Will is how we referred to those things beyond our comprehension of the mechanics of and of things seemingly beyond our control or influence. We have redefined many things that were previously included in that category as we gained knowledge of them.

In a large sense our minds do seem to function like a computer, each of us with our own software preferrence settings. Our knowledge of computer systems has grown and will continue to do so as long as we are interested in developing it. Who knows if to some extent we are not linked to a mental "internet", whether or not we are conscious of it? Unexplained memories, abilities, and other phenomenon could be ascribed to this link. In some people (Edgar Casey??) this ability or link is more pronounced than in others and it may just be an innate ability yet undeveloped in most all of us, perhaps one that would only come into play for most of us in rare moments of distress if at all.

The more I examine the question, and over time as technology advances, almost all mental or conscious process can fall within the realm of mechanical processes in the normal world. I am still not absolutely convinced that that is all there is to it. But then I am not entirely convinced there is more than that either.

Agreed consciousness is much more then just brain activity. Brain activity is the result of consciousness acting on the brain. One proof of consciousness surviving death and being perpetual is reincarnation. The same consciousness takes on several lives and personalities. Some do not believe in reincarnation however it has been scientifically proven through the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson: reluctant-messenger.com...

If consciousness survives the death of the body and brain to take on a new body then it obviously is not just brain activity... the Brain is a computer and the Consciousness or Soul is the operator. So yes we do run programs but we are not the programs we run or the emotions we feel or the brain just as you are not the computer your are typing on and running programs on. This is how we can have many different personalities over many lifetimes.

If consciousness is the soul, then what is a soul? What is it made of? Why is it we can't seem to ever have evidence of the soul after a person has passed? I'm not saying it's not there...it could be tha we are so limited in our abilities and our awareness that we may not even know how to approach this.