|  fidaner | Sep 10, 2006 1:34pm | | Can consciousness be located in the brain? Are there certain neuron paths that maintain the person's awareness? |
|
| 
Sponsor |  KingBoy | Sep 10, 2006 1:55pm | It's still something of an open question. Neural processes certainly seem to give rise to consciousness; the latter seems concentrated in the brain. Thoughts and schemas may arise from the simultaneous firing of dynamic clusters of neurons (perhaps of the order of tens of millions); such nets form and morph constantly but only those large enough will enter consciousness.
However, to decide that consciousness is limited to the brain is premature and almost certainly false. Not only is the entire nervous system involved, but the e.g. hormonal and immune systems also inform what passes for consciousness. And there are many esoteric indications that consciousness is non-local, but that's another matter, i.e. whether it's an emergent property of neural complexity or a more fundamental property of matter.
Suffice it to say that whatever the neural underpinnings of consciousness, our present understanding falls short of explaining its phenomenology. |
|
| 
| |
|  |  1732033 | Oct 7, 2006 7:31am | | Wow, that is really TOO much. Have you read them all? Which papers should definitely be read? |
|
| 
|  e1anator | Nov 10, 2006 11:50am | | Hmmm. I would have thought consciousness is the product of all the cumulative or cohesion of all the neural information in the brain? Like how Artificial Intelligence in fiction has been described as forming out of the mass of information in the Internet. The amount of information is like a network in itself. Am I making sense? o.o |
|
| | | 137864 | Nov 18, 2006 5:17am | I'm interested in consciousness,
the people we see around us every day,
it it possible for this to be true?:
1. Some of them are conscious, they experience their sensory input and then act on it.
2. Some of them are biological machines, with no outward difference from conscious human beings. They hear your voice, their atomic specifics dictate what they say to you, it's automatic and they don't experience it.
I believe
(after thinking about it, I could be very wrong, though if I was it's bad news for all of us)
that consciousness has an element to it that doesn't depend on the physical brain,
for this reason:
We actually 'experience' sound, taste, colour, thought, touch etc
If our mind was merely the result of our atoms, responding to sensory input automatically (our thoughts would be a reaction) then we wouldn't exist.
There wouldn't be a 'we' or an 'I' to experience the sensory input.
-Something- must be 'experiencing' reality, is it any single atom in our body that does this?
a group?
how could atoms 'experience' input?
they can react, as they've been proven to do, but not 'experience'.
If we can take away -any- atom in our body, and remain conscious,
then it could be said that atoms do not create consciousness.
(however true or untrue)
What else is there,
(besides atoms) that could be 'experiencing'?
There seems to be a flaw in the idea,
that the brain creates consciousness.
'allows consciosness to exist' possibly.
Yet physical things affect our consciousness,
drugs are physical as far as we can tell, and they can change our mood, level of clear thinking, judgement etc
The 'mind/consciousness'
seems to be inconsistent,
it can't be purely physical because we 'experience',
but yet it's affected by the physical world we currently study (the only one we know about so far) in a way that would suggest that it's entirely physical.
It took a lot of text for me to say all of this,
I have no official science training, but like all of you I 'experience' sound, light and colour.
How sound has my reasoning been,
in terms of 'experience' proving anything?
I'd love to discuss this in depth. |
|
| | | DockGreen | Nov 18, 2006 9:43am | There's also a difference between intelligence and consciousness. I'm thinking of increasingly complex and powerful artificial intelligences, that can do all sorts of clever things that people do in their heads.
But these AIs are not necessarily conscious.
It may be that one way to create consciousness is to create very very complicated things that can react to the environment they are in and/or move around, recognise objects, yadda yadda yadda.
But we don't know (yet).
We don't even know that anyone/thing else is conscious either, for that matter....
6: One thing to think about is, if there was no connection between a physical 'brain' and a conscious experience, what would the "conscious-experience" part be for? |
|
| 
Sponsor | | Vortexfugue | Nov 18, 2006 9:57am | 6. If we can take away -any- atom in our body, and remain conscious,
then it could be said that atoms do not create consciousness.
"If we can take away -any- atom in our body, and still have arms, then it could be said that atoms do not create arms."
Individual atoms do not create consciousness, but when the atoms which make up the neurons in the brain, and each of those neurons connect to thousands of others in a highly complex structure, then that structure appears to create consciousness. An individual atom does not a fence post make, but trillions of them do. But your argument fails primarily because the brain is not static. Taking away individual atoms says nothing. Start taking away individual neurons, though, and I'm pretty sure you're going to start becoming less conscious. |
|
| | | DockGreen | Nov 18, 2006 2:52pm | 8 - is that not more like saying "trillions of atoms (in the brain) make a brain"?
Whether we are thinking about one cell/neuron/atom or the whole brain or anywhere inbetween, we are still supposing that these physical things are what 'makes' consciousness.
I agree that they are probably connected, but who knows if you have to use neurons to get the same result?
Or - just remembered this from short story - if parts of our brains were replaced with mechanical devices that performed the same operations and were even made up of corresponding mechanical neurons and pathways etc., would we be just as conscious?
Mechanically conscious?
More conscious? |
|
|
Sponsor | | Vortexfugue | Nov 18, 2006 3:28pm | 9. would we be just as conscious? Mechanically conscious? More conscious?
I'm thinking it doesn't matter by what method consciousness is created. Evolution used a carbon-based mechanism. There's no reason to think it cannot also be attained via a silicon-based mechanism. Both are natural. |
| |
| |
Cognitive Science → Discussion