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Consciousness is a phenomenon least understood or explained in all of human knowledge. To be conscious is to sense being alive and thats what we are, but we still don't know how to explain ourselves and our existence in this universe with any sort of satisfactory answer.
Part of the problem is that the brain is made of billions of cells. so where exactly is this consciousness nested within it. We experience ourselves as a unified being, but are unable to find a physical base for it within our body, apart from the signals fired within our neurons.
My own journey towards seeking answers to this question began when I started writing a book. The novel had its story based in the 10th Millennium of mankind and thus by then they would have had a better understanding of this subject than we do in our times today. Besides this point, consciousness as a phenomenon also had much to do with the plot itself so I had to get a reasonable satisfactory answer to explain to the reader of my book.
So this is the definition of consciousness in my book. Remember it has several concepts which need clarification which I shall do here. The simple definition:
Consciousness is the self gravitation of the information resonance mechanism possessed by every system.
In this definition there are three concepts which I shall explain in detail. 'Self gravitation', 'Information resonance mechanism or modal' and the word 'system.'
First lets deal with words, IRM and system. I would define a system as a structure organized internally by discrete parts connected together into a greater whole that can convert information at various levels. A system will possess a functional structure that enables to define its greater identity by itself in terms of its environment in a wide variety of ways. One thing which should be borne in mind is that when this identity ceases to exist, we can claim that the system in question has stopped being one and has now being reduced to its individual parts minus the greater identity that had been lost.
According to my book, if we analyze almost anything in question, we will find it is a system by nature. Galaxies are made of stars, solar systems of asteriods, planets and the sun, the planet is made of interactions between tectonic plates, magnetic field, climate etc. We are made of cells, our cells of organized atoms and molecules, the atoms are themselves made of protons, electrons, neutrons and the subatomic particles of quarks, bosons etc. So almost everything is a system and then the question arises, what is NOT a system?
Lets take an example of a rock. A rock is by most accounts a lump of atoms of molecules bonded together into general asymmetric proportions . It possess mass, it possess a shape, it occupies volume and has weight, all of these together give it the group of atoms and molecules the personality of rock. But lets consider this rock internally. Do the atoms and molecules within it are bonded to behave any specialized manner apart from their own nature as an atom or molecule. The answer is No. I'll explain it more.
Lets take an example of a car. The car as the rock above is again made of atoms and molecules, everything from its body to its engine to its fuel are again atoms and molecules. The key difference is that they are organized in a different manner. The engine is so designed that its turns cogs when fuel within it is compressed and exploded, the wheels are so designed to turn forward and backward as the driver commands, in both of these examples the point is that when something performs an organized action, it acquires a particular kind of special property which rises over and above its own physical body i.e the greater whole. Sure, the atoms and molecules of the engine, the car, the wheels etc are behaving the same as the atoms and molecules of the rock would, but the action of the atoms and molecules within the car are so designed that they are imparted with an additional meaning than those of the atoms and molecules of a rock.
The rock's atoms are system by their own individual selves, but the rock as a whole is less of a system than most other systems in this universe. Form and shape are the only things which can be considered as a system in it. Here are some simple rules which determine what system is greater compared to the others.
1. Independence: How free is a system from its surroundings? The more dependent a system is on its surroundings, then it very likely that it a part of a greater system. The object under question may have an entire system internally, but it is still part of a higher system. Our objective is to gauge its behavior at the level where its independence diverges from the environment.
2. Internal complexity: Basically this is asking how many layers of objects and their interactions compromises the internal structure of the system in question. Take for instance our own body, it is made of many systems organized together internally what we call our being. You can distinct identify various aspects of organs inside our body by how they form their own structural functions thus letting us live. Now take for instance a car. A car has two distinct layers underlying it. The human driver who is a biological system and the physical structure i.e. the engine, the wheels, the brakes and so on.
3. Internal freedom: The basic rule of the thumb here is that the more freedom the internal subsystems possess, the stronger are those system’s fundamentals. Certain systems curtail internal freedom to preserve their own functional state, as in the case of the bodies of living beings. Certain systems like democracies can also stand the test of this maxim in the opposite sense i.e. the greater the freedom the better society in the first place.
4. Information Input and Output: This point asks the questions of the rationale for the very existence of the system. For what does the system exist for? Various systems have varied goals. Some could be just self preservation, like animals and plants. Some systems could have functional roles in human societies eg. Countries, companies etc. (.......continued in next post.)
(.....contd)
4. Information Input and Output: This point asks the questions of the rationale for the very existence of the system. For what does the system exist for? Various systems have varied goals. Some could be just self preservation, like animals and plants. Some systems could have functional roles in human societies eg. Countries, companies etc. Some systems could exist just for processing higher ordered information eg. the human brain and computers. The goals could be many, but whats important is that how the system accomplishes it. This is point we call Information Resonance Modal.
Information Resonance Modal:
If we notice closely, almost everything in this universe can be classified in two precise terms input and output. The environment provides information to a system and the system reconfigures itself as output as response to that information. This is true of anything in our life too as input-output is the casualty factor governing the universe. Cause is the Input and Change is the Output in this context.
Different classes of systems may have different types of input or output. Both Input and Output will depend on the environment that system operates and exists in. Lets take an example of ourselves. Our inputs are food, oxygen, sight, sound, smell, taste, sensation, knowledge etc. Our output are directed/involuntary actions, words, body excretions etc.
A key factor to the relationship between the inputs and outputs of our body is the efficiency and purity of conversion of these inputs and outputs. Anytime there is lack of efficiency, our bodies and ourselves suffer from damage.
If our bodies suffer from physical inefficiency, we get diseases like diabetes etc. If the kidney is inefficient at the same in terms of other poison, it will lead to body poisoning. If our lungs are inefficient at exchanging oxygen, it will be lead to respiratory failure and so on it will go.
This is not just restricted to physical processes, but also cognitive (this is more relevant to our topic at hand.) If my brain is not efficient at computing information and finding solutions to it, I can be called mentally retarded and this will affect my entire function as a human being. If it cannot do it at all, I will be called functionally brain dead.
So this conversion of input into relevant output is very important, the mechanism responsible for the same can be many. Our bodies possess several, but the most relevant at hand in our discussion is the brain, the seat of our direct consciousness. This is our informational resonance modal as our reference here. This particular organ of ours helps to resonate higher ordered information received through means of our eyes (sight in terms of recognizable shapes and designs), ears (sounds in terms of words, sentences, rhythm), sense in terms of limbs and external organs, and memories (past experiences encoded in a neurological sense into our brains) by means of processing (how the above received information) in terms of instinct and innate capability of association (again gained by past experience and learning i.e adaptation) into directable actions. This further changes in the brain (again adaptability) and reinforcement of associative pathways which will further help future processing recognizing and learning and so one this cycle continues in our lives. Consciousness is not an output, but instead is the very meaning to this entire processing taking place
This information (output of neural processing) is converted i.e. is done so at the entire level of the system, therefore the word resonance. When your brain crunches data, it does not do it thinking of itself as a collection of cells, it does it as your level in terms of a person. This information resonance modal is possessed by every system in the universe whether it be a quark, an atom or a living being. In terms of non living objects like atoms or quarks, the IRM ensures that the information received by the object in question is converted into a 100% reaction. In living beings, it is less so and therefore the entire history of living systems has been one of a game of which species was more efficient than the other in terms of physical (evolution, body efficiency) and mental (intellect.)With this we can come to the last concept : self gravitation.
This process of self gravitation or more accurately temporal gravitation is the one actually responsible for the process behind consciousness. If you realize something, our bodies are chemically consistent. All our internal processes can be explained chemically, but what connects one to another? What is that makes the activities of Neuron A, B, or Neuron 100000000000th come together into an absolute frame of our cognition experience? How does light from retinal cell A join together with light from retinal cell B along with similar discrete information from other (....continued below)
With this we can come to the last concept : self gravitation.
This process of self gravitation or more accurately temporal gravitation is the one actually responsible for the process behind consciousness. If you realize something, our bodies are chemically consistent. All our internal processes can be explained chemically, but what connects one to another? What is that makes the activities of Neuron A, B, or Neuron 100000000000th come together into an absolute frame of our cognition experience? How does light from retinal cell A join together with light from retinal cell B along with similar discrete information from other neural processes join together into something we call our very selves i,e the feeling of 'I' within us. I call it self gravitation or temporal gravity here. Here is how I define it.
"Self Gravitation is the functional structural truth of the system bound by its relevance, unbound by space and time.'
A great problem in the unified experience of consciousness is the factor of time becoming irrelevant as a side effect of our cognitive experience. Lets go the examples I gave earlier.
What is that makes the activities of Neuron A, B, or Neuron 100000000000th come together into a frame of our cognition experience? How does light from retinal cell A join together with light from retinal cell B along with similar discrete information from other neural processes join together into something we call our very selves i,e the feeling of 'I' within us. It is something I call temporal gravitation.
Spatial gravity binds objects in terms of space. Temporal gravity binds events in terms of time. The discrete processes of many IRMs will be running concurrently. They may be automated, reflexive, implusions, logic, bias and so on. These processes are discrete, but temporal gravity imparting an epicenter, a singularity which is you, the feeling of “I’ within connecting the essence, the resonance, i.e. information at the level of the system itself i.e. you. This singularity is the one which ensures your brain processes information at your level rather than its level i.e a collection of cells. The singularity is also an aspect of the structure of our brains and designs of systems.
The above can be a bit exaggeration too, our consciousness actually consists of those IRMS only which process higher ordered information giving rise to the experience of self. Some people say it is result of something called strong AI. Penrose says it is the result of quantum processing a solution Objective reduction. I’m skeptical because as the biggest faults of the that quantum entanglement or objective reduction collapse is the requirement of temps close to absolute zer0 to achieve us effects. I believe temporal gravitation collapse of the significance of events happening inside your head causes us to experience that information being changed or processed in the head in a sort of continuum of feelings. Consciousness is a continuum because as time progress, the transition between the events and your epicenter will be a continuous process, it shall go on through multiple cells, all joining and rejoining at different times to what I call is the Cognitive Spectrum Frame. So consciousness can also be said to be the unbound structural truth as our brain computes i.e resonates higher ordered information.
When the truth within your head clicks together, the solution, it is us. We are just observers, I do not think mental effects have any physical effects. When we are we are, we are what our brain processes with information essentially for survival and higher goals.
So in my opinion, consciousness is defined as follows.
“A (temporal) gravitational truth (solution) in the information resonance modal possessed system, leading to an unified experience (cognition) frame as covering a continuum of discrete partner events inside the brain unbound by time.“
Please ask me more questions and see if this works and tell me your feelings. PM me once you made your mind and we will take about God. You can google anywhere, nothing has ever been explained this way. Please do not share this outside apart from here, it might bring you great harm too.