What creates consciousness?

[Melchior]

So, like the title asks: what creates consciousness? (other things that you may like to answer are: what is consciousness exactly, how does it operate, i.e. the underlying mechanisms if you believe that to be the case, and other things you wish to comment on). This is, of course, following an objective view of reality, please, because I don't think a subjective world view would really be that helpful in answering this question, but if you wish to discuss such issues, just bring it up under the context of an objective reality or start a new topic and link it. Also, if anyone remembers older topics on this subject and can find them, feel free to link them too.

Pretty much, I'm looking to gather thoughts (lol, brainstorming session ) on not only any type of what may be considered 'consciousness' in an objective world, but if you can chip in on what you think a more complex system such as ourselves operate, that would be most helpful. With that I mean that if you think that everything has a bit of consciousness inherently in it, then just say that as one of the definitions in what you think is accurate of the objective world, hopefully going on to describe how what's considered the consciousness of human beings fit into the picture as that is what I hope the focus of this topic will be, but less complex systems of consciousness may just as well be explored, such as what the differences are. Perhaps too, what you think of computers, such as the differences between organic and inorganic matter in what may be in the makeup of consciousness, how continuity in space-time ties into anything, anything that may be considered more spiritual in nature can be put into the mix as well, etc.

Also, if you think that this is complete nonsense, then please at least express your reasons why you think that, otherwise I won't be able to learn from it. If you don't know, then just say you don't know and give your educated guesses at what would be probable considering your understanding of reality. For instance, I don't really know what creates the consciousness that is evident of human beings (nor other lifeforms for that matter), but I think it has something to do with a complex system of interacting components (abstracted from the level of the human body, organs, cells, molecules, to individual particles) in a certain way (perhaps through the patterns of movement of a signal) that have evolved overtime due to factors related to replication of certain input/output associations starting at a basic level, perhaps even fundamental level. How the specific mechanics of this system works, I'm not sure, and I'm even less sure of how consciousness emerges out of it the way a supposedly conscious individual such as myself experiences/possesses it. Heh, as if that weren't vague enough.

As limiting of a set of guidelines as that all sounds, it really isn't. I'm just putting it there in hopes that people will explain what they're saying and why. Ask questions, lots of questions, collaborate to find an answer that is suitable for the time being, it may not be correct, but it'll be closer than nothing I'm betting, then keep fine tuning with more questions. I'm going to hope that it will be like the rule on wikipedia: ignore all rules. I don't want silly guidelines getting in the way of progress.

Now then, tell me what you think.
(or perhaps question what I think )

EDIT: Also, material and input of a more technical nature is welcome, just try to provide some sort of documentation and explain it so that we can understand it and work with it. Technical material being what things you've perhaps researched in the laboratory, scientific papers and articles, equations describing the behavior of how consciousness works, etc. Use your judgment to discern what amount of referencing is appropriate (this goes for other stuff too, btw...). Thanks. ^_^

And if it helps for some people, pretend that this is all hypothetical, so you don't get disappointed if it goes against your core beliefs or something silly like that. Also, if you take offense to something such as this being discussed, pretend you never saw it, and feel free not to read it either.

[Michael Chui]

My favorite definition and perspective on consciousness is "the hum of the machinery". I stole it out of Daniel Levitin's "This Is Your Brain On Music", but he didn't really explain it in there, so the rest of this is mostly mine. I.e., don't blame him for my ideas.

To start off this essay-in-response, let's look at personal assumptions.

I prefer a mundane worldview. I try not to add anything to my Official conception of reality unless I can see it in evidence. I have no problem with whimsy, as long as it's understood as such, nor fictional metaphors, as long as it's understood as such. So I don't use ideas like God or Self or Source: I see people, blood and bones and brains, and I don't see anything more. I consider a term like "the mind" to be an abstraction, as much as "harmony" is for music (harmony is not a Thing; it's an artifact of a set of related vibrations being processed in your brain).

So, objective view of reality? Check. So, we start with music, and with harmony.

Harmony. Melody. Balance. Justice. Ma'at. Peace. Equality. Flattening. Stagnancy. Heat Death of the Universe. Oops, wrong direction.

Harmony. Melody. Synergy. Complexity. Richness. Layering. Deep Hierarchies. Boundaries. Limits. Divisions. Opportunities. Symbiosis. Harmony. Mel-- wait, been here already.

(Disclaimer: Keep in mind I'm not an expert by any means regarding any of the mechanics I'm about to describe.)

How does a musical instrument work? Any. Instruments are specific and carefully crafted ways to produce vibrations in a fluid (usually air), which is what sound is. The simplest of instruments is a single string or sheet, stretched to tautness, and plucked or struck. Slightly more complex are the ones that depend on modulating air flow: the vibrations come from the inevitable, but tiny, turbulence in the air being forced into different, yet predictable patterns.

Of course, most instruments are more interesting. The instrumentalis humanis has several vocal chords, a tongue, a gateway controlled by teeth, and a pair of lips. A guitar has several strings and a resonator, plus thorough control over the tautness of each string and exactly how it vibrates in response to strumming. But you get harmony before this.

Harmony starts with individual strings creating a myriad of vibrations that happen to work together as harmonics. Then you get several strings and those sets of vibrations both work together. Then you get lots and lots of different sets of vibrations and you have an orchestra. That's harmony. Let's move on to the brain.

The brain works on the same principle. And I mean the exact same principle. Just as an orchestra can be divided into first and second woodwinds, the percussion section, the brass, so can the brain be divided most simply into regions like somatosensory, visual cortex, and so on. And just as each orchestral section is made up of individual performers playing individual instruments, these regions can be subdivided so further. And as the orchestra is led by the conductor, and each section is led by a principal, so are these subregions grouped into a hierarchy of functions, inside layers and columns.

Sensory input is electrical. That's pretty common knowledge; sensory input, converted into electricity (ethernet works the same way), flows up and down the layers and columns discarding information and fitting the remnant to established patterns. Every column is inhibited by surrounding cells, and the subregion ends up acknowledging only a subset of the processed information from its columns. That information gets relayed up to the entire regional area in the same way. Your sensory regions fire off against other regions that drive your motor functions and so on, including all that stuff in your vaunted frontal lobe.

That's how awareness works. It comes in the same way music happens from an orchestra, with only one real difference. The orchestra is synonymous only with the sensory regions; the other regions are like sound engineers who can remix the instruments into completely new stuff for their own purposes. The idea of a conductor should be replaced with the older idea of a concertmaster: just yet another one of the musicians who just happens to be considered leader, in the same way humans emphasize and defer to sight over every other sense.

And beyond that, I find it plausible that these metaphorical sound engineers continue to play with the information they got from the senses, reconfiguring and repatterning them into new shapes and forms. Someone with frequent brain activity is likely continuing to play with old ideas to discover news ones.

I don't see any reason, here, to assume that consciousness is thus the sole domain of humans. Nor is there any particular reason to assume that the method by which human beings and other brain-enabled animals is the only method by which consciousness can be achieved: that's just the way we're familiar with, and we're familiar with how the brain does its cloud lightning thing.

A rock doesn't have a brain. Most of them aren't very good about conducting electricity, or reshaping themselves as a response to electricity, the way neurons and brain cells do. But that doesn't mean it's not conscious: it just means that, assuming it is, we have no idea how. And if it is, then it probably has no idea how we're conscious, either.

I don't think there is any reason for computers to be unable to achieve self-awareness or consciousness. In modeling it after ourselves, we've already granted it most of the important stuff: fuel, a processor, storage, stimuli, and a way for all of that to interact. All it really needs is a way to describe itself to itself, and a way to manipulate that fast enough to impress us. Output would be a nice addition, if we're going to interact. I find it egotistical and defensive to dislike the notion that computers can't be conscious simply because they're not human and not made out of carbon.

I also don't find explainability to be any stop to wonder. I'm just as pretentious and full of myself knowing all of this; if I want to throw a spiritual spin on the thing, I will, but I find it pretty cool. I mean, just look at XKCD 505 or 676. That's cool. If someone figures out exactly how to electrically manipulate my brain to think a certain way, I would be fascinated. I'd punch him in the face if he tried it on me, but it's still awesome: think of all the forensics we could do in figuring out why some people are hostile or defensive or angry. We could stop making idle speculations about childhood trauma or emotionally charged past events and actually figure it out with a degree of actual certainty. But that's way, way in the future. Probably a good century of solid science, at least.

Hrm. I think that pretty much covers as much as I can. The music stuff was from memory, some Levitin's book, some physics class, some Wikipedia. The brain stuff is a hacked-up summary of Jeff Hawkins' "On Intelligence" book. (I.e., from memory plus skimming the book really fast to refresh and ignoring any remote attempt at detail.) Jeff Hawkins being this guy. He signed my copy of his book. *fanbois*

Okay, I'm done. Whoo! Under the character count limit!

Oh wait! If I have space,

YouTube - Twin Musical Tesla Coils playing Mario Bros

[Melchior]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

My favorite definition and perspective on consciousness is "the hum of the machinery".

That's quite lovely. ^_^

I consider a term like "the mind" to be an abstraction, as much as "harmony" is for music (harmony is not a Thing; it's an artifact of a set of related vibrations being processed in your brain).

As is this, and the what's conscious may very well be as such. ...now to figure out how or why... >.>

(Disclaimer: Keep in mind I'm not an expert by any means regarding any of the mechanics I'm about to describe.)

No worries, neither am I, although, I hope to be, someday.

How does a musical instrument work? Any. Instruments are specific and carefully crafted ways to produce vibrations in a fluid (usually air), which is what sound is. The simplest of instruments is a single string or sheet, stretched to tautness, and plucked or struck. Slightly more complex are the ones that depend on modulating air flow: the vibrations come from the inevitable, but tiny, turbulence in the air being forced into different, yet predictable patterns.

Of course, most instruments are more interesting. The instrumentalis humanis has several vocal chords, a tongue, a gateway controlled by teeth, and a pair of lips. A guitar has several strings and a resonator, plus thorough control over the tautness of each string and exactly how it vibrates in response to strumming. But you get harmony before this.

Harmony starts with individual strings creating a myriad of vibrations that happen to work together as harmonics. Then you get several strings and those sets of vibrations both work together. Then you get lots and lots of different sets of vibrations and you have an orchestra. That's harmony. Let's move on to the brain.

Heh, it looks as though a study of music would do me well...

The brain works on the same principle. And I mean the exact same principle. Just as an orchestra can be divided into first and second woodwinds, the percussion section, the brass, so can the brain be divided most simply into regions like somatosensory, visual cortex, and so on. And just as each orchestral section is made up of individual performers playing individual instruments, these regions can be subdivided so further. And as the orchestra is led by the conductor, and each section is led by a principal, so are these subregions grouped into a hierarchy of functions, inside layers and columns.

This is an analogy that I've rarely come across for the mind, and it's rather informative. I was going to ask what would constitute as the conductor of the orchestra, but then I read your next part. So then, would it be that the artifact of consciousness is like the players performing something of an impromptu?

Sensory input is electrical. That's pretty common knowledge; sensory input, converted into electricity (ethernet works the same way), flows up and down the layers and columns discarding information and fitting the remnant to established patterns. Every column is inhibited by surrounding cells, and the subregion ends up acknowledging only a subset of the processed information from its columns. That information gets relayed up to the entire regional area in the same way. Your sensory regions fire off against other regions that drive your motor functions and so on, including all that stuff in your vaunted frontal lobe.

That's how awareness works. It comes in the same way music happens from an orchestra, with only one real difference. The orchestra is synonymous only with the sensory regions; the other regions are like sound engineers who can remix the instruments into completely new stuff for their own purposes. The idea of a conductor should be replaced with the older idea of a concertmaster: just yet another one of the musicians who just happens to be considered leader, in the same way humans emphasize and defer to sight over every other sense.

I see you've introduced brain plasticity here, allowing the orchestra to adapt and play better music as the piece progresses. Although, I'm kinda confused as to why you've connected the orchestra only with the sensory regions, wouldn't it be more of both an input/output kind of thing, with the remixing happening to change how this association behaves? Or is there something else that would describe the motor regions you've noted? Maybe explain this part again?

And beyond that, I find it plausible that these metaphorical sound engineers continue to play with the information they got from the senses, reconfiguring and repatterning them into new shapes and forms. Someone with frequent brain activity is likely continuing to play with old ideas to discover news ones.

I wonder how this connects to the behavior of strengthening the connection at a synapse as that connection is used more often, and how this playing of a pattern occurs in the absence of external stimuli. Because, if it's an internal thing, there's some sort of loopback involved too, as tricky as that would have to get for it to remain 'stable' if you would, to improve the sound engineers job, but perhaps that is fixed due to it being only certain chemical reactions in the brain rather than a region of neurons as well, not sure of this.

I don't see any reason, here, to assume that consciousness is thus the sole domain of humans. Nor is there any particular reason to assume that the method by which human beings and other brain-enabled animals is the only method by which consciousness can be achieved: that's just the way we're familiar with, and we're familiar with how the brain does its cloud lightning thing.

A rock doesn't have a brain. Most of them aren't very good about conducting electricity, or reshaping themselves as a response to electricity, the way neurons and brain cells do. But that doesn't mean it's not conscious: it just means that, assuming it is, we have no idea how. And if it is, then it probably has no idea how we're conscious, either.

I don't think there is any reason for computers to be unable to achieve self-awareness or consciousness. In modeling it after ourselves, we've already granted it most of the important stuff: fuel, a processor, storage, stimuli, and a way for all of that to interact. All it really needs is a way to describe itself to itself, and a way to manipulate that fast enough to impress us. Output would be a nice addition, if we're going to interact. I find it egotistical and defensive to dislike the notion that computers can't be conscious simply because they're not human and not made out of carbon.

Well, if you reduce it to the harmony of associating input and output of a system, then the rock probably does, but the functions are also quite simple in comparison. The computer on the other hand, has the potential to be quite a bit more complex, that along with an upgrade to each individual player. Also, I'd be wary of anthropomorphizing a rock.

I also don't find explainability to be any stop to wonder. I'm just as pretentious and full of myself knowing all of this; if I want to throw a spiritual spin on the thing, I will, but I find it pretty cool. I mean, just look at XKCD 505 or 676. That's cool. If someone figures out exactly how to electrically manipulate my brain to think a certain way, I would be fascinated. I'd punch him in the face if he tried it on me, but it's still awesome: think of all the forensics we could do in figuring out why some people are hostile or defensive or angry. We could stop making idle speculations about childhood trauma or emotionally charged past events and actually figure it out with a degree of actual certainty. But that's way, way in the future. Probably a good century of solid science, at least.

Interestingly enough, I linked 676 not too long ago in the context of another thread. But anyway, yes, this would all be cool, there are probably moral issues involved, but that'll have to be for another thread. I hope it doesn't actually take a century, I'd like to see a conscious computer before I die.

Hrm. I think that pretty much covers as much as I can. The music stuff was from memory, some Levitin's book, some physics class, some Wikipedia. The brain stuff is a hacked-up summary of Jeff Hawkins' "On Intelligence" book. (I.e., from memory plus skimming the book really fast to refresh and ignoring any remote attempt at detail.) Jeff Hawkins being this guy. He signed my copy of his book. *fanbois*

Thanks for the link, I briefly glanced over his memory prediction framework and it seemed quite nice, at least making sense with the idea of finding and using patterns as well as the abstraction layers involved. Although, I did find the description "a learning hierarchy of feed forward stochastic state machines" much more helpful to me, but that's probably because I haven't read too much on him as of yet, looks like I'll have to check out his book.

YouTube - Twin Musical Tesla Coils playing Mario Bros

EDIT: found this while tag searching for consciousness. I'm hoping this topic doesn't die out as it did... You know, it's interesting that on a spirituality, consciousness, & awareness forum that such questions are simply ignored...

[Anagogy]

What creates consciousness?

In my opinion, consciousness is synonymous with energy. Meaning, if there is energy, there is consciousness, though not to necessarily imply that it is consciousness that is self aware, only that there is awareness of movement of some sort occurring.

So I think to ask "what created it?" is something of a misnomer, because I think energy has been around forever. Time itself, is yet another manifestation of this energy and so it has no reality above and beyond it as an energy expression.

When we ask "what created it" that kinda presumes a temporal/linear string of events leading to its existence. I just don't see it that way. Rather, I think everything is occurring simultaneously and has been for eternity.

[Melchior]

Originally Posted by Anagogy

In my opinion, consciousness is synonymous with energy. Meaning, if there is energy, there is consciousness, though not to necessarily imply that it is consciousness that is self aware, only that there is awareness of movement of some sort occurring.

Ok, so then how does that energy come to the form that we're used to? How does that energy become self aware?

So I think to ask "what created it?" is something of a misnomer, because I think energy has been around forever. Time itself, is yet another manifestation of this energy and so it has no reality above and beyond it as an energy expression.

When we ask "what created it" that kinda presumes a temporal/linear string of events leading to its existence. I just don't see it that way. Rather, I think everything is occurring simultaneously and has been for eternity.

That's fine, I don't care about the grammar and semantics all that much, as long as I know where you're coming from is all right. If you want to say that there is no reality beyond an energy expression, feel free to do so. What I want to know is that if this is indeed the case for reality as you claim, then what are the conditions that are necessary for the thing we label as consciousness (for this discussion, the seemingly complex nature of the consciousness of what has been labeled human beings for ease of communication). How does the energy expression for consciousness look like? What do you think the behavior is like? What are the implications for consciousness as we (or perhaps I) know it based off of this understanding of reality? Is it useful? Etc.

EDIT: How would you have the question read then, and how would you answer it?
Also, how does thinking everything is occurring simultaneously for all eternity help me here?
Oh, and one more thing, in the original post, asked why you thought a certain way, so I could learn. So then I ask another question: What are your reasons for thinking this way? (linking old stuff is fine if you don't want to type it all out ) Thanks for your patience.

EDIT2: Strike that last question, I believe we've discussed this before.

[spacedout]

Consciousness is a concept in the mind - nothing more, nothing less. We can have opinions, ideas, beliefs, hypotheses, theories, viewpoints, debates, etc., but the bottom line is still, "consciousness" is a manifestation of the mind. Because of that, it is a subjective entity and therefore an enigma to the mind. To study consciousness objectively would require the absence of thought and hence, the absence of the mind. The only way to study consciousness objectively is to view it in a void, free from all thinking. Wipe the slate clean, so to speak, and live in it. That is the only way to understand consciousness. As soon as you start thinking about it, talking about it and writing about it, it immediately becomes subjective.

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Melchior

This is an analogy that I've rarely come across for the mind, and it's rather informative. I was going to ask what would constitute as the conductor of the orchestra, but then I read your next part. So then, would it be that the artifact of consciousness is like the players performing something of an impromptu?

I would say it's more like the sensory input--patterns of light splashing across the retina, vibrations in the colchea, nerve firings in the nose, tongue, and skin--is the sheet music being generated spontaneously. That is, it's not random: it's entirely informed by sensory information.

Originally Posted by Melchior

Although, I'm kinda confused as to why you've connected the orchestra only with the sensory regions, wouldn't it be more of both an input/output kind of thing, with the remixing happening to change how this association behaves? Or is there something else that would describe the motor regions you've noted? Maybe explain this part again?

I only touched on the sensory regions because consciousness is about sense. It's reception and processing what got received. I imagine introspection and reflection is something like parts of the brain dumping out remixes and other parts receiving and "sensing" it: that's the simplest and most plausible explanation I've heard.

Originally Posted by Melchior

I wonder how this connects to the behavior of strengthening the connection at a synapse as that connection is used more often, and how this playing of a pattern occurs in the absence of external stimuli. Because, if it's an internal thing, there's some sort of loopback involved too, as tricky as that would have to get for it to remain 'stable' if you would, to improve the sound engineers job, but perhaps that is fixed due to it being only certain chemical reactions in the brain rather than a region of neurons as well, not sure of this.

Yeah. I don't know whether or not research is being done on this topic (probably), but I'm not really aware of any of it.

Assuming it's correct, though, it provides an explanation for several things. Most trauma-based insanities, for instance, are a cancer-like echoing of past incidences. And a creator who locks himself up and doesn't allow external things to influence his originality tends to fail to create anything, arguably because the feedback loops don't have any novelty to work with and die out.

Originally Posted by Melchior

Well, if you reduce it to the harmony of associating input and output of a system, then the rock probably does, but the functions are also quite simple in comparison.

Or simply much slower. The difference between a rock and a computer is simply that a computer is made up of rocks that we've carefully designed to do precise actions really fast.

Oh, btw. The "rock as conscious thing" comes from Andromeda Strain, I think. There's a scene where one of the scientists puts down three objects, and one is a watch, and points out why each of them could be considered a lifeform.

Originally Posted by Melchior

I hope it doesn't actually take a century, I'd like to see a conscious computer before I die.

Oh, we already have conscious computers. What we don't have are self-conscious computers. I was saying it'd take at least a century to figure out how to do actual mind control. Or memory forensics.

Originally Posted by Melchior

Thanks for the link, I briefly glanced over his memory prediction framework and it seemed quite nice, at least making sense with the idea of finding and using patterns as well as the abstraction layers involved. Although, I did find the description "a learning hierarchy of feed forward stochastic state machines" much more helpful to me, but that's probably because I haven't read too much on him as of yet, looks like I'll have to check out his book.

The book is made for laymen, as my math professor complained when I showed him. You might be able to learn more if you poke around with Numenta products; I know my knowledge isn't up to snuff for understanding what they're doing. I barely understand neural networks.

For motivation, there is a section at the end where he talks about consciousness, qualia, and robots taking over the world. It's nice.

Originally Posted by Melchior

I'm hoping this topic doesn't die out as it did... You know, it's interesting that on a spirituality, consciousness, & awareness forum that such questions are simply ignored...

tbqh, challenging questions that can't be answered pithily tend to be too slow-moving to stick around the first page. I would know, having been in like... half of them. Which is fine, technically, since any worthwhile question is going to demand thoughtful reflection in between posts. But they tend to lose popularity contests; Christianity-bashing is much more fun and exciting.

Hrm. I can't remember the last time I saw a thoughtful thread on religion.

[Melchior]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

I would say it's more like the sensory input--patterns of light splashing across the retina, vibrations in the colchea, nerve firings in the nose, tongue, and skin--is the sheet music being generated spontaneously. That is, it's not random: it's entirely informed by sensory information.

Ah, so it's back to a network of associations, just specialized parts for different stimuli patterns and such.

I only touched on the sensory regions because consciousness is about sense. It's reception and processing what got received. I imagine introspection and reflection is something like parts of the brain dumping out remixes and other parts receiving and "sensing" it: that's the simplest and most plausible explanation I've heard.

Well, I'm thinking that because a lot of what is taken in through the senses is essentially disregarded in the process, not really making it to what is generally considered 'conscious thought', or did you mean that the disregarded data is something like white noise, aware of it, but just not important enough to the overall 'melody'? Hmm... reflection and introspection: record, remix, rework, replay, repeat, it's a never ending loop with a constant input feed.

Yeah. I don't know whether or not research is being done on this topic (probably), but I'm not really aware of any of it.

Assuming it's correct, though, it provides an explanation for several things. Most trauma-based insanities, for instance, are a cancer-like echoing of past incidences. And a creator who locks himself up and doesn't allow external things to influence his originality tends to fail to create anything, arguably because the feedback loops don't have any novelty to work with and die out.

I remember some of my friends talking about how some of their AI programs work better with some constants than others, even if the overall algorithm is the same. But yeah, there's most probably research being done somewhere, I should really browse more journals, in everything, sigh.

Oh, we already have conscious computers. What we don't have are self-conscious computers. I was saying it'd take at least a century to figure out how to do actual mind control. Or memory forensics.

Ah, I see. I think mind control would likely require a (self-aware) consciousness at least a magnitude of hierarchy level (based on that memory-prediction framework) greater than ours for it to work. If not in the case of this framework, then still at some greater value, marking a milestone or sorts, such as the jump to self-awareness from simple awareness. (I wonder if there'll be an analogous mirror stage to go with it )

The book is made for laymen, as my math professor complained when I showed him. You might be able to learn more if you poke around with Numenta products; I know my knowledge isn't up to snuff for understanding what they're doing. I barely understand neural networks.

For motivation, there is a section at the end where he talks about consciousness, qualia, and robots taking over the world. It's nice.

That's good, I don't necessarily enjoy reading math all that much, even though I seem to have been doing a lot more of that recently, luckily it's just calculus... >.< lol, we're all zombies.

tbqh, challenging questions that can't be answered pithily tend to be too slow-moving to stick around the first page. I would know, having been in like... half of them. Which is fine, technically, since any worthwhile question is going to demand thoughtful reflection in between posts. But they tend to lose popularity contests; Christianity-bashing is much more fun and exciting.

Hrm. I can't remember the last time I saw a thoughtful thread on religion.

that is quite saddening, old threads getting lost and neglected because they're more worthwhile. As one of my friends commented when he visited these forums, a lot of the stuff he saw was rather mindless, granted, a bit less mindless than other forums, but mindless nonetheless. Ah well, let's hope I don't get too caught up in the Christianity-bashing to lose focus of what I feel is more important.

[Anagogy]

Originally Posted by Melchior

Ok, so then how does that energy come to the form that we're used to? How does that energy become self aware?

Well, again, I don't think it became self aware, it already was.

But if you are asking how it APPEARS to become self aware within the domain of linear events we know as "time", I would say it is a slow and arduous process of energy, which as I said is consciousness, starting out as extremely simple, and slowly becoming more and more complex as natural and random or chaotic energy interactions occur, forming connections with other simple quanta of energy expressions, eventually forming a more complex structure that is capable of "turning in on itself", in effect, becoming self aware.

My ideas of this process are heavily influenced by the Ra channelings which I feel are spiritually inspired. They depict the evolution of consciousness through what Ra terms the seven "densities" of existence.

Here are some links to different quotations regarding the temporal evolution of consciousness:

1st Density

2nd Density

3rd Density

3rd density is the level where self-awareness comes into being, according to Ra.

[Melchior]

Originally Posted by spacedout

Consciousness is a concept in the mind - nothing more, nothing less. We can have opinions, ideas, beliefs, hypotheses, theories, viewpoints, debates, etc., but the bottom line is still, "consciousness" is a manifestation of the mind. Because of that, it is a subjective entity and therefore an enigma to the mind. To study consciousness objectively would require the absence of thought and hence, the absence of the mind. The only way to study consciousness objectively is to view it in a void, free from all thinking. Wipe the slate clean, so to speak, and live in it. That is the only way to understand consciousness. As soon as you start thinking about it, talking about it and writing about it, it immediately becomes subjective.

What is the mind and how did you come to this conclusion/assumption that consciousness is a manifestation of it?

You know, one of the things I pointed out in the first post was specifically that we were going to use an objective world view for the purposes of discussion. I see you've introduced a subjective one, but I don't understand where or how this is being introduced. Also, there are a lot of claims here that require reasoning behind them (even if it's a simple that's just what I believe reality to be would suffice for some, although from what I'm reading this isn't the case) before I can really start to further discuss your ideas. Presently, these ideas cannot help me: e.g. with the statement of studying consciousness objectively by viewing it from the void, essentially apart from consciousness, while it seems like an interesting concept, I cannot apply it because application would necessitate its negation. in other words, creating consciousness is theoretically impossible as consciousness under these terms, even though the terms allow for its existence (and creation outside of it). I'm also sensing some inconsistencies within these statements, but won't expound upon these until I get a better understanding of where you're coming from, which may clear things up.

[Annemieke]

I love this kind of discussions. But I think it is often difficult to discuss, if those who attend have a completely different world view.

My own thinking is mainly based on the views of Carl Jung and his idea that there is a collective unconscious.

So in order to discuss this, others have to more or less accept something like a collective unconscious. Not because there is, but my thinking is mainly based on that although I have no way of proving that there is something like that.

For me at this point it makes sense, especially because of this other concept of Jung, individuation.

As I understand it, that is the process of transforming the personal and collective unconscious into consciousness.

I have more thoughts about that, but would first be curious to know what you think of Jung and his thoughts about collective consciousness.

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Melchior

Well, I'm thinking that because a lot of what is taken in through the senses is essentially disregarded in the process, not really making it to what is generally considered 'conscious thought', or did you mean that the disregarded data is something like white noise, aware of it, but just not important enough to the overall 'melody'?

Well, keep in mind (not that I remembered to tell you) that Hawkins' work is focused on the neocortex and has less to say about the rest of the brain.

But really. If we're discarding so much as a part of our daily lives, think of how much more interesting the world would be if we could stop doing that. Or, considering the advent of the information age with new ills like information overload and attention fragmentation, maybe that's a bad thing.

I do know that a lot of the issue is that we simply aren't sensitive enough. We don't taste the air the way snakes do; we can't smell anything on the order of magnitude that dogs handle the world.

Originally Posted by Melchior

I remember some of my friends talking about how some of their AI programs work better with some constants than others, even if the overall algorithm is the same.

Yup. If you start up the Game of Life program with everything dead, nothing grows. AI is written in order to solve problems, and those problems are generally not "how do I model a human mind?", but instead more like "what is the optimal solution to this multivariate problem?"

This does not lend itself to developing self-awareness; we would develop self-aware AI mostly out of laziness: so that the program could maintain itself for us. And despite the stereotypes, most geeks and hackers aren't interested in that. I mean, if I know enough of the principles to start thinking about how I'd program a self-aware program capable of modifying itself, I have no doubt someone smarter and better than I has figured out details.

I've read two useful books on the subject so far: AI Application Programming, and Swarm Intelligence, both textbooks.

Originally Posted by Melchior

But yeah, there's most probably research being done somewhere, I should really browse more journals, in everything, sigh.

I feel like that all the time. My trick at learning about lots of different fields at once is to (1) be reading all the time and (2) make a lot of friends and contacts who are deeply interested in other fields, and then let them know I find X, Y, and Z to be really cool subjects. As a result, I've got lots of research minions telling me about interesting things.

Originally Posted by Melchior

That's good, I don't necessarily enjoy reading math all that much, even though I seem to have been doing a lot more of that recently, luckily it's just calculus... >.< lol, we're all zombies.

My math professor apparently used to work in neuroscience. I didn't know it at the time; I just knew he was interested in questions of infinity and consciousness. I was kinda shell-shocked by his disappointment.

Originally Posted by Melchior

that is quite saddening, old threads getting lost and neglected because they're more worthwhile. As one of my friends commented when he visited these forums, a lot of the stuff he saw was rather mindless, granted, a bit less mindless than other forums, but mindless nonetheless. Ah well, let's hope I don't get too caught up in the Christianity-bashing to lose focus of what I feel is more important.

I suspect myself of golden age syndrome, but it was better in the old days. Proportions of signal to noise are less meaningful when the actual quantity is low. Eh. At least you can do searches and resurrect very old threads. Which people do regularly.

[Reverend Keith]

I'm a fan of panpsychism, which holds that consciousness, or at least some sort of AWARENESS is present in the material world down to the smallest level.

In brief, the reason for this is that I believe, intuitively, logically and by personal experience, that consciousness is not something that emerges from the physical world as a by-product - but is something intrinsic to it.

Philosopher David Chalmers (an advocate of panpsychism) has assembled an enormous and extreemly comprehensive list of online papers on the problems of consciousness here: Online papers on consciousness which I would highly recommend. Be warned you may end up reading for days

[Melchior]

Originally Posted by Anagogy

Well, again, I don't think it became self aware, it already was.

But if you are asking how it APPEARS to become self aware within the domain of linear events we know as "time", I would say it is a slow and arduous process of energy, which as I said is consciousness, starting out as extremely simple, and slowly becoming more and more complex as natural and random or chaotic energy interactions occur, forming connections with other simple quanta of energy expressions, eventually forming a more complex structure that is capable of "turning in on itself", in effect, becoming self aware.

In other words, I can't really 'create' anything new, only mold what is already there? Heh, sounds like conservation of energy. Do you know of any ways to catalyze this process then? And also direct this process in a way so things turn out as they 'should', as that is what I would probably be trying to accomplish given these circumstances.

My ideas of this process are heavily influenced by the Ra channelings which I feel are spiritually inspired. They depict the evolution of consciousness through what Ra terms the seven "densities" of existence.

I read the links and my thoughts on it's credibility were diminished by the unnecessary inclusion of "I am Ra" at the beginning of each quote. Granted, these spirits may take enjoyment by toying with us this way. I actually found what was mentioned (some personality aspect called Seth) in another thread much more reasonable if it were to be coming from a higher state of being, but then again, who am I to delve into the mind of a higher being. Also by the fact that the questioner asked confirmation questions and was always answered with 'correct' or something of that variety.

Originally Posted by Annemieke

I love this kind of discussions. But I think it is often difficult to discuss, if those who attend have a completely different world view.

My own thinking is mainly based on the views of Carl Jung and his idea that there is a collective unconscious.

So in order to discuss this, others have to more or less accept something like a collective unconscious. Not because there is, but my thinking is mainly based on that although I have no way of proving that there is something like that.

I like these discussions too, which is why I put in the condition at the beginning to explain what any different world views were and how conclusions on the topic were reached based on these views so that we could learn from it even if it wasn't necessarily the worldview that we hold ourselves. It's still tricky though because doing this requires the swapping in and out of different world views for discussion of each separate train of thought. >.>

For me at this point it makes sense, especially because of this other concept of Jung, individuation.

As I understand it, that is the process of transforming the personal and collective unconscious into consciousness.

I have more thoughts about that, but would first be curious to know what you think of Jung and his thoughts about collective consciousness.

I'm only a little bit familiar with Jungian theory, but I can say that I have more respect for his ideas that that of notable thinkers in the field, i.e. Freud. Going with what I know of the gist of the collective unconscious and personal conscious and such, I would suggest that it is a description of how that which is not 'as conscious' such as a rock eventually becomes a more complex system such as ourselves. Interestingly, this is similar to what Anagogy has linked on the various densities, albeit from a psychological standpoint, the collective unconscious imprinted into our personal conscious through the of preservation of of certain records from what was before us as we evolved. Does that make any sense to what you understand of the theory? So, what I'm after would essentially be recreating (and controlling) the individuation process, to form a 'synthetic' ego. Your thoughts then?

[spacedout]

Originally Posted by Melchior

What is the mind and how did you come to this conclusion/assumption that consciousness is a manifestation of it?

Everything is a manifestation (expression) of each person's mind. What I perceive and think may be different from what you perceive and think. We may even perceive the same way but it's very doubtful that we think the same way. This is true for physical matter as well as for preternatural phenomena. For example, if I perceive a glass half empty you may perceive it half full. If I perceive consciousness as strictly subjective you may perceive it as objective. This is what makes the world go around - diversity. However, if several people with different perceptions and views come to a new conclusion and consensus, a paradigm is conceived for that particular perception. That doesn't necessarily make the perception true or a fact however.

You know, one of the things I pointed out in the first post was specifically that we were going to use an objective world view for the purposes of discussion. I see you've introduced a subjective one, but I don't understand where or how this is being introduced.

I'm sorry, I didn't know that you said "specifically." I will try to explain where I'm coming from further down this discussion.

Presently, these ideas cannot help me: e.g. with the statement of studying consciousness objectively by viewing it from the void, essentially apart from consciousness, while it seems like an interesting concept, I cannot apply it because application would necessitate its negation. in other words, creating consciousness is theoretically impossible as consciousness under these terms, even though the terms allow for its existence (and creation outside of it).

There is a way to study subjective phenomena objectively. It is not used by science very much because, for the most part, scientists like to distance themselves from the subject being investigated. Scientists try not to influence the investigation with their biases, that's why they use the double-blind and triple-blind studies as much as possible. So when it comes to things like emotions, the mind, and consciousness scientists shy away from them because they do not lend themselves to objective studies. That is where the experiential method comes in. This method has not been used very much because it is relatively new. The method was first introduced into the scientific community in 1990 by James J. Barrell. However, some scientists are now beginning to use it for understanding emotional and psychological problems.

The experiential method could be used for understanding consiousness. Here is one way it could be used in this case. Take several people, maybe twenty, who are accomplished meditators who can go into a "void" and perceive conscousness for several minutes. I just happened to pick "void" because that's where I perceive consciousness to exist. It may not have to be a void. Maybe it could be some other way. Anyway, once the meditators experienced consciousness they would share their results with one another and attempt to reach consensus about consciousness. Once a consensus is reached a "picture" of how the experience is generally created, across individuals, emerges. The experiences that are agreed upon are called "common elements." You can learn more about this method of inquiry by reading Barrell's book The Experiential Method, exploring the human experiences, 1990. He along with Don Price are having a new book on the subject coming out in 2010 published by MIT Press.

I'm also sensing some inconsistencies within these statements, but won't expound upon these until I get a better understanding of where you're coming from, which may clear things up.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if it didn't.

[Melchior]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

Well, keep in mind (not that I remembered to tell you) that Hawkins' work is focused on the neocortex and has less to say about the rest of the brain.

But really. If we're discarding so much as a part of our daily lives, think of how much more interesting the world would be if we could stop doing that. Or, considering the advent of the information age with new ills like information overload and attention fragmentation, maybe that's a bad thing.

I do know that a lot of the issue is that we simply aren't sensitive enough. We don't taste the air the way snakes do; we can't smell anything on the order of magnitude that dogs handle the world.

Well, the neocortex is where a lot of what we consider intelligent thought to originate from. With sensitivity, do you mean that the greater complexity and accuracy of the patterns that we are able to detect and work with makes it so that we actually think more? Going back to the orchestral analogy, that would be equivalent to upping the level of performance capabilities of the individual performers so they could read more complicated music, or just getting more performers in general so that they can split up the load much easier. This is similar to the differences in sequential and parallel computing, although I think the network of our neurons in our brain are a tad bit more complicated than either model on it's own, certainly not sequential (i.e. we don't have one neuron doing everything). I'm not sure, but it is likely that a different hardware architecture will need to be made for anything like this to be modeled efficiently (maybe something like MIMD, if you're familiar with that terminology). And with what you mentioned of Hawkins, this seems to be the case.

Game of Life

Heh, gliders.

This does not lend itself to developing self-awareness; we would develop self-aware AI mostly out of laziness: so that the program could maintain itself for us. And despite the stereotypes, most geeks and hackers aren't interested in that. I mean, if I know enough of the principles to start thinking about how I'd program a self-aware program capable of modifying itself, I have no doubt someone smarter and better than I has figured out details.

In other words, letting it go to those people at CSAIL or something more specialized like the mind machine project. This article about it is actually a bit easier to read, and kinda details what it is that I want to happen. Speaking of which Minsky is on that team, tried reading some of his stuff once (you get what I mean), will probably try again when I've got a better grasp of things... Thanks for the book links.

I feel like that all the time. My trick at learning about lots of different fields at once is to (1) be reading all the time and (2) make a lot of friends and contacts who are deeply interested in other fields, and then let them know I find X, Y, and Z to be really cool subjects. As a result, I've got lots of research minions telling me about interesting things.

Speaking of which, the above article was shown to me by a friend, just yesterday at that. Say, what fields are you interested in?

I suspect myself of golden age syndrome, but it was better in the old days. Proportions of signal to noise are less meaningful when the actual quantity is low. Eh. At least you can do searches and resurrect very old threads. Which people do regularly.

Duly noted.

[Melchior]

Originally Posted by Reverend Keith

I'm a fan of panpsychism, which holds that consciousness, or at least some sort of AWARENESS is present in the material world down to the smallest level.

In brief, the reason for this is that I believe, intuitively, logically and by personal experience, that consciousness is not something that emerges from the physical world as a by-product - but is something intrinsic to it.

Philosopher David Chalmers (an advocate of panpsychism) has assembled an enormous and extreemly comprehensive list of online papers on the problems of consciousness here: Online papers on consciousness which I would highly recommend. Be warned you may end up reading for days

This idea of panpsychism is rather similar to some of the other thoughts floating around this thread, and is also something that I have at one point semi-intuited while thinking about things at their fundamental level, albeit it was under different terminology (i.e. fundamental interactions). Thanks for the link; I think it definitely will take some time to sift through that collection. I'll probably only pick and chose what seems particularly interesting to read though...

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Melchior

This is similar to the differences in sequential and parallel computing, although I think the network of our neurons in our brain are a tad bit more complicated than either model on it's own, certainly not sequential (i.e. we don't have one neuron doing everything). I'm not sure, but it is likely that a different hardware architecture will need to be made for anything like this to be modeled efficiently (maybe something like MIMD, if you're familiar with that terminology). And with what you mentioned of Hawkins, this seems to be the case.

Yeah. The way Hawkins describes it, the information flows up and down a hierarchy, altering the cells in a Heisenburgesque way, so while you can arrange them neatly in terms of role, that role isn't temporal except for the "first" pass.

I'm not familiar with MIMD, but my first thought when you mentioned sequential or parallel was to think "distributed" instead. I dunno. Taking an Information object and tossing it randomly from one column to another. Kinda like pathing, except there are lots of agents and they're competing.

Originally Posted by Melchior

In other words, letting it go to those people at CSAIL or something more specialized like the mind machine project. This article about it is actually a bit easier to read, and kinda details what it is that I want to happen. Speaking of which Minsky is on that team, tried reading some of his stuff once (you get what I mean), will probably try again when I've got a better grasp of things... Thanks for the book links.

Letting it go, or becoming one of them. Specialization is good.

Originally Posted by Melchior

Speaking of which, the above article was shown to me by a friend, just yesterday at that. Say, what fields are you interested in?

Heh.

Virtual worlds, political theory, systems of magic, theology, small-scale social dynamics, character, education. Off the top off my head.

Newspapers tend to be boring.

[Anagogy]

Originally Posted by Melchior

In other words, I can't really 'create' anything new, only mold what is already there? Heh, sounds like conservation of energy. Do you know of any ways to catalyze this process then? And also direct this process in a way so things turn out as they 'should', as that is what I would probably be trying to accomplish given these circumstances.

What "new" thing are you trying to create? There is no "should". Anything you could possibly cognize could be a mode of development. I suppose it would really all depend on what limits you, personally, are placing on your concept of this "objective" energy. I don't see energy as necessarily involving any inherent restrictions on how it "behaves". I think because it is conscious, it can learn to "condition" itself to behave any way it wants to. Thus, the possibilities would be endless. From my perspective, the energy of consciousness is only limited by its own creativity.

Originally Posted by Melchior

I read the links and my thoughts on it's credibility were diminished by the unnecessary inclusion of "I am Ra" at the beginning of each quote. Granted, these spirits may take enjoyment by toying with us this way. I actually found what was mentioned (some personality aspect called Seth) in another thread much more reasonable if it were to be coming from a higher state of being, but then again, who am I to delve into the mind of a higher being. Also by the fact that the questioner asked confirmation questions and was always answered with 'correct' or something of that variety.

I think using a repeated preface at the beginning of a channeled entities dictation to discount the material is a poor method for ascertaining quality, personally. I have read reams and reams of channeled material, and I can tell you that few live up to the depth and complexity of the Ra material (just my 2 cents). But each to their own, I suppose. Its actually not uncommon for channeled entities to repeat some phrase, even if only at the beginning of the channeling, and often at the end. I think the affirmation of identity aids in the honing in on their vibrational frequency as opposed to another entity, with a wholly different message, but who knows.

Anyhow, carry on...

[Melchior]

Originally Posted by spacedout

Everything is a manifestation (expression) of each person's mind. What I perceive and think may be different from what you perceive and think. We may even perceive the same way but it's very doubtful that we think the same way. This is true for physical matter as well as for preternatural phenomena. For example, if I perceive a glass half empty you may perceive it half full. If I perceive consciousness as strictly subjective you may perceive it as objective. This is what makes the world go around - diversity. However, if several people with different perceptions and views come to a new conclusion and consensus, a paradigm is conceived for that particular perception. That doesn't necessarily make the perception true or a fact however.

Ok, so the mind (whatever it is) is a fundamental aspect of reality, correct? I can go with that.

I'm sorry, I didn't know that you said "specifically." I will try to explain where I'm coming from further down this discussion.

No worries. While I didn't exactly say "specifically", I thought the implications of the guideline it was good enough. And Thanks.

There is a way to study subjective phenomena objectively. It is not used by science very much because, for the most part, scientists like to distance themselves from the subject being investigated. Scientists try not to influence the investigation with their biases, that's why they use the double-blind and triple-blind studies as much as possible. So when it comes to things like emotions, the mind, and consciousness scientists shy away from them because they do not lend themselves to objective studies. That is where the experiential method comes in. This method has not been used very much because it is relatively new. The method was first introduced into the scientific community in 1990 by James J. Barrell. However, some scientists are now beginning to use it for understanding emotional and psychological problems.

I tried to search around a bit on the experiential method and couldn't really find much on it (is it similar to experiential learning? Searching for the book on amazon led me to believe that this is not very well known, is it?)

The experiential method could be used for understanding consiousness. Here is one way it could be used in this case. Take several people, maybe twenty, who are accomplished meditators who can go into a "void" and perceive conscousness for several minutes. I just happened to pick "void" because that's where I perceive consciousness to exist. It may not have to be a void. Maybe it could be some other way. Anyway, once the meditators experienced consciousness they would share their results with one another and attempt to reach consensus about consciousness. Once a consensus is reached a "picture" of how the experience is generally created, across individuals, emerges. The experiences that are agreed upon are called "common elements." You can learn more about this method of inquiry by reading Barrell's book The Experiential Method, exploring the human experiences, 1990. He along with Don Price are having a new book on the subject coming out in 2010 published by MIT Press.

Yeah, all right then. I've gathered that this is a method of determining what creates consciousness (or rather, what the process of it's manifestation from the mind is like). Presently however, I don't have the urge to properly test this out for myself. I will try to keep a look out for the book though for when it gets published, but more likely than not, I will have to revisit these pages to remind myself.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if it didn't.

I think it has.

Some questions that you might have guesses about: does the complexity of manifestation for human consciousness come from the same complexity of mind? There seem to be multiple minds in this world view, how are these distinguished from one another?

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Melchior

I tried to search around a bit on the experiential method and couldn't really find much on it (is it similar to experiential learning? Searching for the book on amazon led me to believe that this is not very well known, is it?)

I think he's talking about something similar to this: Phenomenology (science) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Melchior]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

Yeah. The way Hawkins describes it, the information flows up and down a hierarchy, altering the cells in a Heisenburgesque way, so while you can arrange them neatly in terms of role, that role isn't temporal except for the "first" pass.

I'll have to keep that in mind as well, taking several passes though the information, that is, both as a refining method and as a heuristic of sorts.

I'm not familiar with MIMD, but my first thought when you mentioned sequential or parallel was to think "distributed" instead. I dunno. Taking an Information object and tossing it randomly from one column to another. Kinda like pathing, except there are lots of agents and they're competing.

Yeah, I was just spouting some processor architecture terminology, but yes, networking methods would probably have an effect on the overall efficiency of the algorithm, if not alter it entirely.

Letting it go, or becoming one of them. Specialization is good.

Well, it's probably specialization for me, albeit the field is quite vast in and of itself, so I'm not sure it counts as much. Well, I'll do what I can anyway.

Originally Posted by Anagogy

What "new" thing are you trying to create? There is no "should". Anything you could possibly cognize could be a mode of development. I suppose it would really all depend on what limits you are placing on your concept of this "objective" energy.

Consciousness, of course. What I mean by 'should' is that the end result turns out favorable according to standards that are generally sought to be an overall 'good' situation, i.e. 'friendly' AI.

I think using a repeated preface at the beginning of a channeled entities dictation to discount the material is a poor method for ascertaining quality, personally. I have read reams and reams of channeled material, and I can tell you that few live up to the depth and complexity of the Ra material (just my 2 cents). But each to their own, I suppose. Its actually not uncommon for channeled entities to repeat some phrase, even if only at the beginning of the channeling, and often at the end. I think the affirmation of identity aids in the honing in on their vibrational frequency as opposed to another entity, with a wholly different message, but who knows.

Yeah, it is, but that's just how it is. I also doubt that most of the channeled material reaches the depth and complexity of what's in a university's third year physics textbook. If we've already shown that we can comprehend to that level, why dumb it down so much. I'm not saying that this discredits the source of information completely, as there may likely be other influencing factors, but it certainly detracts from it more so than other sources of information. Moreover, if these channeled messages differ from one another, the medium of information becomes unreliable.

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

I think he's talking about something similar to this: Phenomenology (science) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oh, if it's just that, then it's no big deal. Phenomenology has been around for ages though. >.>

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Melchior

Oh, if it's just that, then it's no big deal. Phenomenology has been around for ages though. >.>

I did some more googling (this time with Scholar) and found these:

A self-directed approach for a science of human experience.
ScienceDirect - Consciousness and Cognition : Integrating experiential&#x2013;phenomenological methods and neuroscience to study neural mechanisms of pain and consciousness

So it sounds like he's talking about a specific type of phenomenology.

[Melchior]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

I did some more googling (this time with Scholar) and found these:

A self-directed approach for a science of human experience.
ScienceDirect - Consciousness and Cognition : Integrating experiential&#x2013;phenomenological methods and neuroscience to study neural mechanisms of pain and consciousness

So it sounds like he's talking about a specific type of phenomenology.

Scholar, I see.... Oh man, I love having access to university journal databases.

EDIT: upon skimming the latter of these two articles, I am quite pleased at how the researchers tackle the tricky part of subjective feeling of a person in an otherwise objective world, using both first person and third person data to attempt to reach conclusions. Worth mentioning here is how the stimuli is associated with other things subjectively that cannot be easily tested for objectively. Also, that it makes at least some sense.

[Annemieke]

Originally Posted by Melchior

It's still tricky though because doing this requires the swapping in and out of different world views for discussion of each separate train of thought.

Yes, I totally agree that it is tricky, so I will try to explain as good as possible where it comes from. My thinking is based on that of Jung, but above that on something I read years ago.

It is something I read about the thinking process of a French philosopher Jean Carteret. As far as I know, Carteret did not put anything on paper (I think there are only tapes) but a Dutch writer, George Bode, wrote a book about his life. And somewhere in that book there is a part that I found extremely interesting.

It is a piece where Carteret elaborates on something Jung talked about. Jung wrote somewhere that matter and psyche are two aspects of the same phenomenon.

But although Carteret agreed with that, he then asked himself where that would leave energy. Because energy and matter are also two aspects of the same phenomenon. So where does that leave the psyche.

For the following I used my own words and my own understanding because it is an English translation of a Dutch book of a French thought process. And the only way to make it understandable, is by using the words that seem the best in my understanding.

He formulated something like: the energy inside the matter is an ‘active potential’, while matter itself is a ‘passive structure’.

But besides this couple of energy/matter there is also the psyche. And his reasoning was that there should also be a fourth concept that is to the psyche what energy is to matter.

And his conclusion was that that fourth concept was language. Language that shares with energy that it is also active, but shares with matter that it is a structure.

So besides the couple energy/matter (active potential/passive structure) there is also the couple psyche/language (passive potential/active structure).

Or two that have structure (matter and language) and two that have no structure (energy and psyche).

Or two that are active (energy and language) and two that are passive (matter and psyche).

Now I could also use consiousness and unconsious. But that would mean that I could not just translate language into consiousness and psyche into unconsious.

The reason for that is that there is also a language that is not so conscious (bodylanguage for example or how animals communicate). And the psyche is something that can be seen as unconsious, but the word psyche is usually meant as a personal unconscious.

So to differentiate I use three phases of unconsious. First there is a sort of collective unconscious that evolves in some way. It is what comes to us in dreams and might be something that is picked up by people who are sensitive to that.

The second is a personal unconscious, that what we experience as a child and shapes our worldview, our emotions and feelings. Not just our own, but also those of our parents and our whole cultural background. Not something that is really seperate.

But I think there is a third unconscious, one that is different from the other two. It is what is called the shadow in terms of Jung.

Of course those three are closely connected and maybe Jung sees them as one. But I think it has to be differentiated to also be able to see three types of consiousness.

And the first type of consciousness is what I would call language as we all know it. How we communicate, what we learn at schools and what we read in books.

But besides that there is also something like a consiousness that comes from being an independant individual. Communicate in a language that tries to explain personal experiences and views. There might not be words for it and a possible way would be poetry or art.

And a sharing of this individual experiences and development. Kind of what is happening now with the internet. Not the sharing of what we have learned from books, but what we experienced and discovered ourselves and made into a language.

Well, to finally come to your question ‘What creates consiousness’ my answer would be ‘personal development’ or ‘individuation’. Because that is what the individual has to create himself, combining personal and collective knowledge along with conscious and unconsious knowledge.

But deep down to the very essence I see there are two forces, energy and what I would call unconscious. Well actually it is only one force (energy) where the other (unconsious) just IS. But as soon as the unconsious becomes conscious (created by the individual) it also becomes an active force.

Well, just my views at this moment.

[spacedout]

Originally Posted by Melchior

Scholar, I see.... Oh man, I love having access to university journal databases.

EDIT: upon skimming the latter of these two articles, I am quite pleased at how the researchers tackle the tricky part of subjective feeling of a person in an otherwise objective world, using both first person and third person data to attempt to reach conclusions. Worth mentioning here is how the stimuli is associated with other things subjectively that cannot be easily tested for objectively. Also, that it makes at least some sense.

These are two of Don Price's and Jim Barrell's earlier works. Barrell's book The Experiential Method: Exploring the Human Experience must be out of print. I went to Amazon.com and found one copy for sale for over $100. I have a copy if anybody would like to borrow it. Price and Barrell new book coming out in 2010 by MIT Press is entitled Science and Consciousness.

[bluedragon]

I believe Consciousness itself is above knowledge and therefore one cannot understand it using reason. I don't know if anything created it, and if it did, this kind of creation would be way beyond our ability to comprehend. I believe everything in the world is a manifestation of Consciousness, and therefore, included in it, so it would be impossible to understand it unless your mind is liberated and it remembers it is Source.

What I believe to be the most accurate (even if challenging) perspective that of the Advaita Vedanta philosophy.

The idea (in short) is that there is consciousness (the Soul, Brahman) which is eternal. The universe does not simply possess consciousness, it is consciousness, and this consciousness is Brahman. This consciousness manifests itself as the life we see - out of playfulness. Life is a play, a miracle, but humans mistakenly identify themselves with their psiho-mental processes (the ego...) and confuse their ego with the Self, which is none other than Source. Through meditation, and with the help of a master, one is able to understand, like a scientist, which his own authority, who he is (the answer to the supreme question, who am I? ), and become one with Source. Once the mind is liberated by that realization, life is no longer Samsara (a nuissance, a win and loose game), but becomes a play. Source wants to know itself through us, and there is no reason for it. You know why once you are liberated, because you are Source, but you cannot understand it if by "you" you mean your human body and mind - the intellect cannot comprehend that - it can only be known.

I'm writing a paper on Yoga for a University course, so if you like, I can write about that view as well.

[Melchior]

Originally Posted by Annemieke

It is a piece where Carteret elaborates on something Jung talked about. Jung wrote somewhere that matter and psyche are two aspects of the same phenomenon.

Sounds reasonable from what I've thought of myself, and this bit may even solve my problem of figuring out what the 'difference' between what is considered material and what is considered spiritual, or at least where the spiritual comes from in relation to the material. Now to find the equations if this is indeed the case, and I wonder what type of logic will be used here. A new branch of mathematics perhaps or perhaps the mathematics is already there, ready to be applied as it is with a lot of the theories in physics in recent years.

He formulated something like: the energy inside the matter is an ‘active potential’, while matter itself is a ‘passive structure’.

But besides this couple of energy/matter there is also the psyche. And his reasoning was that there should also be a fourth concept that is to the psyche what energy is to matter.

And his conclusion was that that fourth concept was language. Language that shares with energy that it is also active, but shares with matter that it is a structure.

I like the descriptors of active/passive and potential/structure, although I think there's probably some other terminology, particularly that of the potential/structure pairing, that would describe it better, just don't know what it is yet. However, I don't really think language is the fourth concept primarily because it is not general enough. I do agree that it probably has something to do with the interaction among/within the psyche though, but perhaps that was lost in translation. communication, signalling, perhaps. but because energy and matter are just forms of the same thing, I still wonder about that. I'm reminded of, and this is likely due to my personal bias towards physics, the fundamental interactions between subatomic particles and such. It would be like the matter portion is represented by fermions and the psyche portion is represented by bosons. Well, not really, because what I've described is structure only, even that the bosons are considered active where the fermions are passive, moving according to the bosons. So for me, that would leave me with the question of what the 'passive potential' of the language is, essentially what exactly is the psyche. Something like energy, but currently I have not read enough to know how it's measured and so on, or what it would represent at a fundamental level. Although, according to these descriptions, if they are accurate, I'm sure there is and either I can't think of it right now (even if it might be right under my nose) or we don't know it yet (and it is still right under our noses... ). This is due to symmetry, of course.

The reason for that is that there is also a language that is not so conscious (bodylanguage for example or how animals communicate). And the psyche is something that can be seen as unconsious, but the word psyche is usually meant as a personal unconscious.

I wonder if the associated statistics with the two types of fundamental particles has anything to do with the potential stuffs. I should really have read through to here before commenting on how language wasn't general enough as it seems it was just a definitional issue.

So to differentiate I use three phases of unconsious. First there is a sort of collective unconscious that evolves in some way. It is what comes to us in dreams and might be something that is picked up by people who are sensitive to that.

The second is a personal unconscious, that what we experience as a child and shapes our worldview, our emotions and feelings. Not just our own, but also those of our parents and our whole cultural background. Not something that is really seperate.

But I think there is a third unconscious, one that is different from the other two. It is what is called the shadow in terms of Jung.

Hmm, and what would the 'shadow' represent?

EDIT: screw it, I'll just read your blog.

Of course those three are closely connected and maybe Jung sees them as one. But I think it has to be differentiated to also be able to see three types of consiousness.

Yeah, differentiation is certainly useful when it comes to communicating what you mean.

But besides that there is also something like a consiousness that comes from being an independant individual. Communicate in a language that tries to explain personal experiences and views. There might not be words for it and a possible way would be poetry or art.

And a sharing of this individual experiences and development. Kind of what is happening now with the internet. Not the sharing of what we have learned from books, but what we experienced and discovered ourselves and made into a language.

It is also similar to what spacedout has shared about the experiential method in how the individual (subjective) experience cannot be exactly known for someone other than you except perhaps by way of sharing what it feels like through language and attempting to come to a consensus on the parts that share similar objective characteristics. And so language (as we regularly communicate with words, anyway) would be some sort of high level interaction.

Well, to finally come to your question ‘What creates consiousness’ my answer would be ‘personal development’ or ‘individuation’. Because that is what the individual has to create himself, combining personal and collective knowledge along with conscious and unconsious knowledge.

Of course, I ask about the transition phase between moving from something entirely unconscious to something that begins to have that hint of consciousness. But anyway, this is a good answer if I can apply it to the idea that unconscious development gives way to consciousness. This is also similar to what Anagogy has posted with his stuff about Ra, albeit that terminology has something to do with densities and such which makes the thing a bit more confusing than it actually should. Although, I'm sure it makes sense to those who know it, right Anagogy?

But deep down to the very essence I see there are two forces, energy and what I would call unconscious. Well actually it is only one force (energy) where the other (unconsious) just IS. But as soon as the unconsious becomes conscious (created by the individual) it also becomes an active force.

Well, because chaos is always on my mind, I couldn't help but relate this unconscious to chaotic activity, random processes, that create the patterns necessary for consciousness to occur. But it's not completely random stuff, I don't think so anyway, but a bit more directed, although perhaps the initial conditions, just as in what Michael brought up in the Game of Life are what caused for such evolving patterns to occur, or perhaps the evolution of chaos is simply due to another property of our universe, although I'm not so sure what yet, maybe entropy or something.

Well, just my views at this moment.

Well, thank you for sharing them, and hopefully my responses have given you a bit more to think about as well.

EDIT 2: So, you know what I was talking about earlier on figuring out what the the 'psyche' could be (in terms that I could understand)? Well, as I was reading a few articles on your blog, it dawned on me that it most closely resembles what we consider "information". Let's see: passive, check, potential, check, mediated by an active structure such as language, check, etc., I think it fits the criteria for psyche quite well. Now then, what to do with it..... >.>

[Melchior]

Originally Posted by spacedout

These are two of Don Price's and Jim Barrell's earlier works. Barrell's book The Experiential Method: Exploring the Human Experience must be out of print. I went to Amazon.com and found one copy for sale for over $100. I have a copy if anybody would like to borrow it. Price and Barrell new book coming out in 2010 by MIT Press is entitled Science and Consciousness.

Heh, too much money for me. I'll keep a lookout for the newer book though, thanks.

Originally Posted by bluedragon

I believe Consciousness itself is above knowledge and therefore one cannot understand it using reason. I don't know if anything created it, and if it did, this kind of creation would be way beyond our ability to comprehend. I believe everything in the world is a manifestation of Consciousness, and therefore, included in it, so it would be impossible to understand it unless your mind is liberated and it remembers it is Source.

That reminds me of something said once about how the solution to a problem must be at a level of at least one greater than that of the problem, otherwise, the only way to know for sure is to test and see what happens. If I recall correctly, this was something that I heard from a talk that Wolfram gave about his book: A New Kind of Science. (also talks about cellular atomata, i.e. the Game of Life is a variation)

What I believe to be the most accurate (even if challenging) perspective that of the Advaita Vedanta philosophy.

Challenging does not matter, as long as it's correct (and there's nothing less challenging that explains the same thing while also being accurate and correct ).

The idea (in short) is that there is consciousness (the Soul, Brahman) which is eternal. The universe does not simply possess consciousness, it is consciousness, and this consciousness is Brahman. This consciousness manifests itself as the life we see - out of playfulness. Life is a play, a miracle, but humans mistakenly identify themselves with their psiho-mental processes (the ego...) and confuse their ego with the Self, which is none other than Source. Through meditation, and with the help of a master, one is able to understand, like a scientist, which his own authority, who he is (the answer to the supreme question, who am I? ), and become one with Source. Once the mind is liberated by that realization, life is no longer Samsara (a nuissance, a win and loose game), but becomes a play. Source wants to know itself through us, and there is no reason for it. You know why once you are liberated, because you are Source, but you cannot understand it if by "you" you mean your human body and mind - the intellect cannot comprehend that - it can only be known.

There's no need to become one with the Source if you are already one with the Source, as you've mentioned. The only thing left being getting rid of the barriers that are keeping you oblivious to your true nature. This almost sounds like self-awareness or actualization if you ask me, the universe coming full circle so that a part of itself realizes what itself is. But that is also the end for consciousness as it knows itself because it realizes that it came from unconsciousness and that they are actually the same. I don't know if you'll believe me when I say this, but this fundamental connection with what you term as the Source is something that I came across a couple months ago, if I remember correctly, leading me to come to an understanding of what, as an umbrella term, is called nondualism, which looking at the wiki page on Advaita Vedanta, it's quite similar, and even has non-duality in its description. However, either my 'ego' decided to save itself from dying completely by some means of a mental defense mechanism or if this pattern here, called myself, simply had the correct conditions to continue moving and 'living' after realizing what I have thought must be the fundamental and true nature of reality in a meaningful way according to myself, choosing to continue on as though I had a choice in the matter at all, continuing with 'duality', but understanding 'nonduality'. But anyway, this is for another thread, the theory that is, the application of it would be useful for creating consciousness. Although, it would seem that my use of the term consciousness is misplaced given your beliefs. The proper question would probably be: how to replicate patterns of consciousness such as ourselves at or above the complexity of ourselves (I'm sure we're not at the upper limit ).

I'm writing a paper on Yoga for a University course, so if you like, I can write about that view as well.

Sure thing, but if you could, could you also point out how you think it's related and would help answer the question (modified above in your case due to definitional discrepancies)?

[Annemieke]

Originally Posted by Melchior

hopefully my responses have given you a bit more to think about

I think your responses where really very interesting. And it kept me thinking whole weekend. But it caused a major problem to reply to all that. At first I tried to respond to parts each time, but that all became far to cluttered.

So I started with your last addition, ‘information’ as the word that could be used for the psyche.

Well, actually I think that could fit very well. It would be information that we all pick up all the time because we are sensitive to it in some way.

It is indeed passive and potential. And can be activated by some structure like language or concepts. That way it can be used and exchanged with others.

Your other remarks about how it would fit bosons and fermions is way over my head, although I have been looking at that a lot a while ago because I think that is all very interesting.

But I have also been reading about phenomenons like black matter, black energy and black holes. Not that that is not way over my head, but somehow the characteristics of those black phenomenons seemed to fit what I was looking for.

Some sort of consciousness that is not measurable but influences the visable matter. I do not recall exactly what where the characteristics of each, but maybe something like black matter sharing the characteristics of the onconscious (or psyche or information) and black energy charing the characteristics of consciousness (or language or concepts).

Not that eg black matter would be the same as the psyche, but it could be something like the electromagnetic spectrum. Both are somewhere on the frequenty line.