Where does your conciousness reside? - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

BentNotTwisted · 06-12-2003, 08:30 PM

I wanted to get a discussion going similar to ART's about the location of the soul, but not related to that doctor. <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10754" target="_blank">link</a>

IMO consciousness is beyond the physical. Physically it seems like my consciousness in my head, but that's just an illusion. The illusion is due to the location of the brain. All your sensory input feeds to that spot. If my brain were in my butt, which it often feels like, then I would think that was the location of my soul. No matter the location consciousness transcends the physical. It is more than a series of electrical impulses. My consciousness just uses my body as a means of dealing with this physical reality. I think my consciousness actually resides in a dimension separate from the 4 dimensions I perceive as reality. I don't know why, it just feels that way.

What do you think?

(edit)
gotta figure out links

MSD · 06-12-2003, 08:50 PM

I feel my consciousness existing on another plane, apart from physical existence. At times, during meditation or deep alpha.light beta sleep, I can distinguish between astral body and physical body. Near out of body experiences in which I was able to shift my consciousness severl inches away from my physical form are enough to convince me of what I've said.

Thraeryn · 06-12-2003, 10:28 PM

Hmmm. I'm not sure where my consciousness lives. I can project my awareness to different places in and out of my body, but I'm not sure it's the same thing you're thinking of.

openthought · 06-13-2003, 04:00 AM

BentNotTwisted - Your partially right about why you feel like your consciousness resides in your head, but your also partially wrong. The brain itself doesn't have it's own sensory unit so the illusion that thinking and consciousness goes on in your head is due not to the location of the brain but notably the location of the eyes, ears nose, mouth, etc. Things are preceived from this point on the body (head) and in all reality the input nerves could be traveling to, as the Ancient Greeks thought, your thorax (near the stomach).

As to my views on consciousness, I would say that it is an action, a process if you will. So asking "Where does consciousness live?" is like asking "Where does sound or (more general) movement exist?" It exists in whatever medium the action can occur, and because consciousness is in my opinion a very elaborate system or electrochemical impulses, it requires a medium that does this, i.e. brain.

Now I've meditated many times before, but I still don't prescribe to the belief that consciousness exists in another dimension. Rather, I would say that the process of meditation shut's certain parts of the brain off, allowing others to become much more active. I strongly reccimmend "Zen and the Brain" by Austin as a great read on the subject of neuroscience and zen buddhism. The neuroscientist that wrote it is also a Zen Buddhist, so he resolves a lot of conflict of interest.

ARTelevision · 06-13-2003, 05:46 AM

I see consciousness as a basic component of the universe. As such it exists in every piece of the universe - rocks, plants, etc.
Degrees of consciousness arise due to the (neural) organization of the aggregate consciousness in all things.

Why do I see consciousness as innate in the universe? Because it is clearly evident when matter is highly structured as in animals and self-evident in humans. As it is present in the universe, it must be a component of the universe. It's everywhere present but only obvious when highly organized and structured.

BentNotTwisted · 06-13-2003, 09:26 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by openthought
The brain itself doesn't have it's own sensory unit so the illusion that thinking and consciousness goes on in your head is due not to the location of the brain but notably the location of the eyes, ears nose, mouth, etc.

open, I was trying to express what you said. Fortunately, you were able to say it more clearly than I. Thanks. Do you have any opinions regarding out of body experiences? There are many people who claim to be able to meditate and have their consciousness leave their body, including MrSelfDestruct. Your believe would indicate this is not possible. I'm not saying your beliefs aren't as valid as anyone else's, I'd just like to hear your thoughts on this.

MacGnG · 06-13-2003, 05:08 PM

i agree with the idea that conciousness resides some place separate from this "physical world"

where it actually is, i dunno, but we'll find out eventually...

ARTelevision · 06-13-2003, 06:18 PM

this idea = known as dualism, is elementary.
one if its big proponents was descartes:

rather than get upset about the implications of mind/body dualism - here's a link to some things you should know about descartes

http://www.vegans.org.uk/descartes.html

yeah its a vegan link
that's not the point.
the point is what kind of person or whatever this guy descartes was and the implications of his absurd ideas

of course he didnt invent dualism - it's Platonic

openthought · 06-14-2003, 05:12 AM

Bentnottwisted- I thought that may have been what you were trying to say. I would say that out of body experiences are made possible by the unique hardware of the brain. The hardware I'm refering to is the ability for people to think in 3 dimensions, rotate objects mentally, etc. If you were to picture a pepsi can you could easily rotate the picture of the pepsi can in any manner. This is possible because our brain is able to syntheisze experiences and perceptions into new pictures, very much like how dreams are made. Most out of body experiences I think are analogous to waking dreams. Your mind has taken a lifetime's worth of experience and is able to synthesize into new experiences that due to the powers of rotation and visual thinking can cause what appears to be an out of body experience. Right now I can close my eyes and imagine hovering above my body and a little to the back. I see my tangled dirty hair because I haven't showered yet, I notice all these things about the back of me and I notice the unique features of my offic from this vantage point. The rotation part is easy to understand, but the picking out of details on my back is something slightly different. The process involves taking little bits of data, like the skin on my chest, which I see, extrapolating it onto my back, etc. ,etc. Never doubt your powers of imagination, and the mind's want to fill in details. This is why so many visual testimonies can be vivid but ocassionally incorrect, the mind is able to guess what is a plausible detail of say the color of a car, etc.

Now on to other things:
I vehemently reject dualism. Rene Descartes was a smart man but he often contradicted the logical conclusion of his own arguements just so that they wouldn't seem that extreme.

ARTelevision- I am probably misunderstanding what you mean by "basic component." Is it supposed to be a subatomic particle, a field of dimension that pervades the universe?
Although you may be right, and a lot of theorists hold a similar opinion to yours, I think saying that consciousness is a "basic component" of the universe is a little far fetched, and what's worse unneccesary for explaining consciousness. Before I introduce my view, I'll need to hear some feedback.

ARTelevision · 06-14-2003, 09:07 AM

actually it's totally necessary - unless one is comfortable positing something called "mind" which is not part of the material universe but sort of floats around in some medieval ether.

conversequietus · 06-14-2003, 10:25 AM

IM<i>very humble</i>O - I think that consciousness is a crude word to describe the chemical reactions that go on in the human brain that create individual sentience. Consciousness is completely subjective to the individual experiencing it, therefore, we'll all have our own interpretation of what it means to us.

...or something.

Mad_Gecko · 06-14-2003, 12:24 PM

EZ 4 me...

I am very simple.....

I can quantify everything in the following sentance: I am!

I am who I am and what I am..... I am me.
If you want something deeper, your looking in the wrong place.

Never look farther than your own nose, cause otherwise you might find something you ain't lookin' for.

EDIT: I cannot spell everything

John Henry · 07-07-2003, 01:56 PM

I keep mine in the fridge...

...Oh no, sorry, that's my underpants.

Mine feels like it's smeared across my nervous system.

CSflim · 07-11-2003, 12:18 PM

Out of body experiences have been proven time and time again to be fake. Whether or not the people that claim to have them are purposely out to deceive or that they are convinced that what is happening is real isn't really important.
One particular guy claimed to be able to "remote-read", and would wow people with his amazing psychic powers. But like all mysticism it failed to work in a controlled environment under scientifically rigorous conditions.

I absolutely hate the idea of mind/body dualism. Its just downright dismissive. We have an incredibly beautiful, complex organ, which is proving us with an absolutely wonderful and exciting challenge to try to understand it. And what do people do? Trivialise it, by passing it off as magic!

Don't take me the wrong way. I am as amazed at the wonder of the human brain as any of the rest of you, but I firmly believe that it follows physical laws for matter, just like everything else in this universe. I mean why wouldn't it?

Take for instance a computer running a very complex program. You know nothing about how computers work, and are intrigued by what it is doing. You decide to break it open (causing it to stop working) and start examining the complex arrangement of silicon, plastic and metal. You can't figure out how it works, and therefore conclude that it is actually a magic box, which cannot be explained rationally.

Anyway, as for the original question, WHERE does consciousness exist, I would answer thus:
Where does a countries economic climate exist? Where does a piece of music exist?
They are, like consciousness, intangible, but none-the-less very real.
I wouldn't try to place consciousness physically. It is a real phenomena that exists because of the actions of the brain, but I wouldn't say that consciousness itself is IN the brain.

Just have a few questions, mainly to people who have a mystical view of consciousness. They aren't questions to "catch you out" and prove me right, just curious on your take about certain issues:

1.Take an Alzheimer’s patient. To start out they are most definitely conscious. As the disease develops however they start to become less and less aware. They lose their faculties for reason, communication, movement etc. It is a very slow process, but essentially they end up as a breathing vegetable that has to be fed by a drip. I have seen this first hand, as my grandmother is like that. She is now, essentially, dead, I guess, only technically alive, in that she is breathing, and presumably has at least some mental activity. But is she conscious?

My take on it is that consciousness is not a black and white issue. There are different levels of it. A dog is certainly conscious, but not as much as say, a human. And rabbit would also be conscious, but less so than the dog. As so on down to very simple creature which are probably not conscious. (Exactly where consciousness stops is impossible to say...is an ant conscious?).
Similarly I would say that victims of Alzheimer’s, and similar debilitating diseases, slowly lose their consciousness, going from highly conscious like a normal human, through medium levels of conscious, like say that of a dog, down to being barely conscious, if at all, in the final stage of the disease.

What would your opinion be? Has the patients consciousness actually been affected by the disease, or are they still fully conscious, but lack the motor skills to display it?

2. Would you attribute literally multiple consciousnesses to a schizophrenic patient, or would you see it as a purely psychological disorder? Obviously for me, it is the latter.

3. It has been shown that physical damage to the brain can have very profound effects on consciousness. Take for instance a railroad worker, who in an unfortunate accidental explosion had a metal spike driven through his skull, right through his brain, and out the other side of his head. The doctors managed to successfully remove it, and amazing the man survived. What is incredible is the way his personality changed. (presumably personality is related to consciousness?). His friends and family found him to be an incredibly different person. To them, the man they had known and loved was dead!
This is I suppose the same question as number one. Did the spike physically case damage to his mystical consciousness, or was he simply unable to allow his REAL consciousness to manifest itself in the damaged body?

Neuroactive · 07-27-2003, 12:47 AM

Clarke's Third Law - "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magick."

The brain exists in a transdimensional state of time, space, and ever-extending adaptation to the environment; internal and external.

Reason can be viewed as Clarke's mention of "advanced technology"...as adaptation on such a high level of precision and responsiveness that it comes across as a "technology". This "technology" has twisted humans around to look and themselves as these heads filled with a "magic box" that allows them conscious thought and reasoning existence.

I do not have firm views on what consciousness truly is, but I do believe that its boundaries are infinite, although the advance of which it reaches the infinite (or perhaps its own subconscious Jungian singularity) is sufficiently slow enough to allow for vast leaps in adaptation...that which we have theorized to be higher intellect or a new superhuman intelligence (Prometheus Rising).

Consciousness gives the most ironic and truest form of existence - one in which the only possibility for its existence is the fact that it exists in the first place. One cannot question this consciousness without it being there in the first place, and the endless cycle of such is always entertaining and everlastingly hilarious.

Reality is a really funny, yet subtle joke.

Pennington · 07-27-2003, 04:11 AM

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=consciousness

This has some very good discussion on the issue.

Personally, I believe in the materialism view of conscieness, as an illusion created by evolution. All it is, is the always changing state of chemicals in the mind. Your personality is a combination of two things:genetics, which makes sense - if your parents had personalities to get them laid, than its obviously better to imprint them onto any offspring, and environment. It's all cause and effect. If something happens in your childhood and you see a bad result, than your personality will reflect that. As it is all in neverending electro-chemical signals, it exists in your mind as that is the place where memory is stored and thinking occurs.

06-12-2003, 08:30 PM	#1 (permalink)
BentNotTwisted Optimistic Skeptic Location: Midway between a Beehive and Centennial	Where does your conciousness reside? I wanted to get a discussion going similar to ART's about the location of the soul, but not related to that doctor. <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10754" target="_blank">link</a> IMO consciousness is beyond the physical. Physically it seems like my consciousness in my head, but that's just an illusion. The illusion is due to the location of the brain. All your sensory input feeds to that spot. If my brain were in my butt, which it often feels like, then I would think that was the location of my soul. No matter the location consciousness transcends the physical. It is more than a series of electrical impulses. My consciousness just uses my body as a means of dealing with this physical reality. I think my consciousness actually resides in a dimension separate from the 4 dimensions I perceive as reality. I don't know why, it just feels that way. What do you think? (edit) gotta figure out links __________________ IS THAT IT ???!!! Do you even know what 'it' is? When the last man dies for just words that he said... We Shall Be Free Last edited by BentNotTwisted; 06-12-2003 at 08:40 PM..

06-13-2003, 05:46 AM	#5 (permalink)
ARTelevision I change Location: USA	I see consciousness as a basic component of the universe. As such it exists in every piece of the universe - rocks, plants, etc. Degrees of consciousness arise due to the (neural) organization of the aggregate consciousness in all things. Why do I see consciousness as innate in the universe? Because it is clearly evident when matter is highly structured as in animals and self-evident in humans. As it is present in the universe, it must be a component of the universe. It's everywhere present but only obvious when highly organized and structured. __________________ create evolution

06-13-2003, 06:18 PM	#8 (permalink)
ARTelevision I change Location: USA	this idea = known as dualism, is elementary. one if its big proponents was descartes: rather than get upset about the implications of mind/body dualism - here's a link to some things you should know about descartes http://www.vegans.org.uk/descartes.html yeah its a vegan link that's not the point. the point is what kind of person or whatever this guy descartes was and the implications of his absurd ideas of course he didnt invent dualism - it's Platonic __________________ create evolution Last edited by ARTelevision; 06-14-2003 at 05:34 PM..

06-14-2003, 09:07 AM	#10 (permalink)
ARTelevision I change Location: USA	actually it's totally necessary - unless one is comfortable positing something called "mind" which is not part of the material universe but sort of floats around in some medieval ether. __________________ create evolution

06-14-2003, 12:24 PM	#12 (permalink)
Mad_Gecko Pro Libertate Location: City Gecko	EZ 4 me... I am very simple..... I can quantify everything in the following sentance: I am! I am who I am and what I am..... I am me. If you want something deeper, your looking in the wrong place. Never look farther than your own nose, cause otherwise you might find something you ain't lookin' for. EDIT: I cannot spell everything __________________ [color=bright blue]W[/color]e Stick To Glass "If three of us travel together, I shall find two teachers." Confucious Last edited by Mad_Gecko; 06-14-2003 at 12:26 PM..

06-12-2003, 08:50 PM	#2 (permalink)
MSD The sky calls to us ... Super Moderator Location: CT	I feel my consciousness existing on another plane, apart from physical existence. At times, during meditation or deep alpha.light beta sleep, I can distinguish between astral body and physical body. Near out of body experiences in which I was able to shift my consciousness severl inches away from my physical form are enough to convince me of what I've said.

06-12-2003, 10:28 PM	#3 (permalink)
Thraeryn Loser	Hmmm. I'm not sure where my consciousness lives. I can project my awareness to different places in and out of my body, but I'm not sure it's the same thing you're thinking of.

06-13-2003, 04:00 AM	#4 (permalink)
openthought Upright	BentNotTwisted - Your partially right about why you feel like your consciousness resides in your head, but your also partially wrong. The brain itself doesn't have it's own sensory unit so the illusion that thinking and consciousness goes on in your head is due not to the location of the brain but notably the location of the eyes, ears nose, mouth, etc. Things are preceived from this point on the body (head) and in all reality the input nerves could be traveling to, as the Ancient Greeks thought, your thorax (near the stomach). As to my views on consciousness, I would say that it is an action, a process if you will. So asking "Where does consciousness live?" is like asking "Where does sound or (more general) movement exist?" It exists in whatever medium the action can occur, and because consciousness is in my opinion a very elaborate system or electrochemical impulses, it requires a medium that does this, i.e. brain. Now I've meditated many times before, but I still don't prescribe to the belief that consciousness exists in another dimension. Rather, I would say that the process of meditation shut's certain parts of the brain off, allowing others to become much more active. I strongly reccimmend "Zen and the Brain" by Austin as a great read on the subject of neuroscience and zen buddhism. The neuroscientist that wrote it is also a Zen Buddhist, so he resolves a lot of conflict of interest.

06-13-2003, 05:08 PM	#7 (permalink)
MacGnG Know Where!	i agree with the idea that conciousness resides some place separate from this "physical world" where it actually is, i dunno, but we'll find out eventually...

06-14-2003, 05:12 AM	#9 (permalink)
openthought Upright	Bentnottwisted- I thought that may have been what you were trying to say. I would say that out of body experiences are made possible by the unique hardware of the brain. The hardware I'm refering to is the ability for people to think in 3 dimensions, rotate objects mentally, etc. If you were to picture a pepsi can you could easily rotate the picture of the pepsi can in any manner. This is possible because our brain is able to syntheisze experiences and perceptions into new pictures, very much like how dreams are made. Most out of body experiences I think are analogous to waking dreams. Your mind has taken a lifetime's worth of experience and is able to synthesize into new experiences that due to the powers of rotation and visual thinking can cause what appears to be an out of body experience. Right now I can close my eyes and imagine hovering above my body and a little to the back. I see my tangled dirty hair because I haven't showered yet, I notice all these things about the back of me and I notice the unique features of my offic from this vantage point. The rotation part is easy to understand, but the picking out of details on my back is something slightly different. The process involves taking little bits of data, like the skin on my chest, which I see, extrapolating it onto my back, etc. ,etc. Never doubt your powers of imagination, and the mind's want to fill in details. This is why so many visual testimonies can be vivid but ocassionally incorrect, the mind is able to guess what is a plausible detail of say the color of a car, etc. Now on to other things: I vehemently reject dualism. Rene Descartes was a smart man but he often contradicted the logical conclusion of his own arguements just so that they wouldn't seem that extreme. ARTelevision- I am probably misunderstanding what you mean by "basic component." Is it supposed to be a subatomic particle, a field of dimension that pervades the universe? Although you may be right, and a lot of theorists hold a similar opinion to yours, I think saying that consciousness is a "basic component" of the universe is a little far fetched, and what's worse unneccesary for explaining consciousness. Before I introduce my view, I'll need to hear some feedback.

06-14-2003, 10:25 AM	#11 (permalink)
conversequietus Insane	IM<i>very humble</i>O - I think that consciousness is a crude word to describe the chemical reactions that go on in the human brain that create individual sentience. Consciousness is completely subjective to the individual experiencing it, therefore, we'll all have our own interpretation of what it means to us. ...or something.

07-07-2003, 01:56 PM	#13 (permalink)
John Henry Addict Location: Grey Britain	I keep mine in the fridge... ...Oh no, sorry, that's my underpants. Mine feels like it's smeared across my nervous system. __________________ "No one was behaving from very Buddhist motives. Then, thought Pigsy, he was hardly a Buddha, nor was he a monkey. Presently, he was a pig spirit changed into a little girl pretending to be a little boy to be offered to a water monster. It was all very simple to a pig spirit."

07-11-2003, 12:18 PM	#14 (permalink)
CSflim Sky Piercer Location: Ireland	Out of body experiences have been proven time and time again to be fake. Whether or not the people that claim to have them are purposely out to deceive or that they are convinced that what is happening is real isn't really important. One particular guy claimed to be able to "remote-read", and would wow people with his amazing psychic powers. But like all mysticism it failed to work in a controlled environment under scientifically rigorous conditions. I absolutely hate the idea of mind/body dualism. Its just downright dismissive. We have an incredibly beautiful, complex organ, which is proving us with an absolutely wonderful and exciting challenge to try to understand it. And what do people do? Trivialise it, by passing it off as magic! Don't take me the wrong way. I am as amazed at the wonder of the human brain as any of the rest of you, but I firmly believe that it follows physical laws for matter, just like everything else in this universe. I mean why wouldn't it? Take for instance a computer running a very complex program. You know nothing about how computers work, and are intrigued by what it is doing. You decide to break it open (causing it to stop working) and start examining the complex arrangement of silicon, plastic and metal. You can't figure out how it works, and therefore conclude that it is actually a magic box, which cannot be explained rationally. Anyway, as for the original question, WHERE does consciousness exist, I would answer thus: Where does a countries economic climate exist? Where does a piece of music exist? They are, like consciousness, intangible, but none-the-less very real. I wouldn't try to place consciousness physically. It is a real phenomena that exists because of the actions of the brain, but I wouldn't say that consciousness itself is IN the brain. Just have a few questions, mainly to people who have a mystical view of consciousness. They aren't questions to "catch you out" and prove me right, just curious on your take about certain issues: 1.Take an Alzheimer’s patient. To start out they are most definitely conscious. As the disease develops however they start to become less and less aware. They lose their faculties for reason, communication, movement etc. It is a very slow process, but essentially they end up as a breathing vegetable that has to be fed by a drip. I have seen this first hand, as my grandmother is like that. She is now, essentially, dead, I guess, only technically alive, in that she is breathing, and presumably has at least some mental activity. But is she conscious? My take on it is that consciousness is not a black and white issue. There are different levels of it. A dog is certainly conscious, but not as much as say, a human. And rabbit would also be conscious, but less so than the dog. As so on down to very simple creature which are probably not conscious. (Exactly where consciousness stops is impossible to say...is an ant conscious?). Similarly I would say that victims of Alzheimer’s, and similar debilitating diseases, slowly lose their consciousness, going from highly conscious like a normal human, through medium levels of conscious, like say that of a dog, down to being barely conscious, if at all, in the final stage of the disease. What would your opinion be? Has the patients consciousness actually been affected by the disease, or are they still fully conscious, but lack the motor skills to display it? 2. Would you attribute literally multiple consciousnesses to a schizophrenic patient, or would you see it as a purely psychological disorder? Obviously for me, it is the latter. 3. It has been shown that physical damage to the brain can have very profound effects on consciousness. Take for instance a railroad worker, who in an unfortunate accidental explosion had a metal spike driven through his skull, right through his brain, and out the other side of his head. The doctors managed to successfully remove it, and amazing the man survived. What is incredible is the way his personality changed. (presumably personality is related to consciousness?). His friends and family found him to be an incredibly different person. To them, the man they had known and loved was dead! This is I suppose the same question as number one. Did the spike physically case damage to his mystical consciousness, or was he simply unable to allow his REAL consciousness to manifest itself in the damaged body? __________________ Last edited by CSflim; 07-11-2003 at 12:23 PM..

07-27-2003, 12:47 AM	#15 (permalink)
Neuroactive Upright Location: Oregon	Clarke's Third Law - "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magick." The brain exists in a transdimensional state of time, space, and ever-extending adaptation to the environment; internal and external. Reason can be viewed as Clarke's mention of "advanced technology"...as adaptation on such a high level of precision and responsiveness that it comes across as a "technology". This "technology" has twisted humans around to look and themselves as these heads filled with a "magic box" that allows them conscious thought and reasoning existence. I do not have firm views on what consciousness truly is, but I do believe that its boundaries are infinite, although the advance of which it reaches the infinite (or perhaps its own subconscious Jungian singularity) is sufficiently slow enough to allow for vast leaps in adaptation...that which we have theorized to be higher intellect or a new superhuman intelligence (Prometheus Rising). Consciousness gives the most ironic and truest form of existence - one in which the only possibility for its existence is the fact that it exists in the first place. One cannot question this consciousness without it being there in the first place, and the endless cycle of such is always entertaining and everlastingly hilarious. Reality is a really funny, yet subtle joke. __________________ I'm not crazy, I'm confident.

07-27-2003, 04:11 AM	#16 (permalink)
Pennington Banned Location: Autonomous Zone	http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=consciousness This has some very good discussion on the issue. Personally, I believe in the materialism view of conscieness, as an illusion created by evolution. All it is, is the always changing state of chemicals in the mind. Your personality is a combination of two things:genetics, which makes sense - if your parents had personalities to get them laid, than its obviously better to imprint them onto any offspring, and environment. It's all cause and effect. If something happens in your childhood and you see a bad result, than your personality will reflect that. As it is all in neverending electro-chemical signals, it exists in your mind as that is the place where memory is stored and thinking occurs.