/sci/ - Science & Math

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test

The Mirror test defines if an animal is Self Aware. Turns out you become self aware around the age of 3. That is your earliest memory.

Most animals live their entire lives without self awareness, you can call them machines.

>>7451158
conciousness is a demonstration of the reflective qualities found in your immediate surrounding and converted through single cell interface on a large scale, the brain, to give you the means to coordinate a motive towards it, your surrounding; on the note of motive: Depression is a real disease

>>7451168
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test
This is a shitty test.

>>7451175
Behold why you are depressed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network
Meditation(breath awareness) and Work fixes you. Stop thinking.

>>7451175
But how am "I" experiencing the thoughts of "my" brain, and not yours or another person's?

What was "your" state before you were born?

>>7451180

>>7451186
As mentioned, cells have sentient capabilities- BUT! They lack the power source to fuel them, hence your brain, body (nervous system), and even Soul (imo an 1st, 4th, and egoless enterprise, hellooooo M-Theory) go hand in hand in generating a unified sense of self, now this goes further as to say that when you're not experiencing your own self you are channeling a duality, which I'm not going to get into atm, please ask again etc, that can cause natural rhythms in independent cells to become more... toxic to your body, if you're not aware of what you're doing.

Back on point, the egg and sperm that spawned you are very complex things, its like a white blood cell accepting a red blood cell to breed more transporting self sustaining cells, to put it metaphorically.
In my oppinion everything that exist right down to independant particles/waves have a variety of sentience, but ultimately political systems get involved and it turns into how can we harness it?

My state before I was born was experiencing all time in all places, as was yours. That's physics... /math.

>>7451186

Different person. The universe has a bunch of brains in it with egos, there's no particular boundary between you and another person. Your separation is an illusion. Everyone refers to themselves as "I" don't they? Brains experience locality and therefore a point of view.

>>7451206
Kill yourself.

>>7451218
Seconded.

>>7451202
Fuck you too.

>>7451158
>>7451158
>Is consciousness located in the brain?
No.
The brain is in the conciousness

>>7451213
I've thought about this too. In the end, it's easy to dismiss the question the way you did due to the ambiguous nature of the concept "I", but it really doesn't change anything at all. "We" are still experiencing "our" brains subjectively.

Put solipsists as an example. They say that *they* are the only conscious beings, and that everything else is part of their imagination. You could say the same thing, I could say the same thing. We all behave equally in that sense. Does that prove that solipsism is false? No. That's why we can't just dismiss the question of why we are who we are, and not somebody else.

>>7451168
This seems like a naive test. As far as we know there are organisms that have some degree of self awareness but are not smart enough to understand how mirrors work. The test assumes that being cognizant enough to be self aware entails being smart enough to recognize that a mirror reflects one's own actions rather than being a thing with another creature inside of it that's copying you, or something. As far as I know that is an assumption that is taken for granted but not demonstrated. It probably cannot be demonstrated anyway, because I don't think we currently have the capability to objectively determine based on brain chemistry or whatnot whether an organism is experiencing self-awareness. And, additionally, it seems like a logical possibility that there might be organisms that are quite complex and intelligent but lack a self-concept as we tend to think of it. Though maybe such creatures tend to be ruled out by natural selection since in a hostile environment, the ability to distinguish ones self from the environment and preserve ones self is probably pretty important.

The only acceptable answer is "We do not know"

>>7451249
Heh. If only it was that simple. I concluded with the same answer some time ago. But are we really unable to know?

Think about it. We are experiencing, we can't deny that. We associate experience to consciousness. Therefore, why should we be unable to come to conclusions about it? Why do we assume that everything related to the discussion about consciousness is an opinion? Why do we assume that we can't know anything about it?

After all, we're part of the universe as we call it. If we know we're experiencing, we should be able to get to other conclusions as well

>>7451244

>That's why we can't just dismiss the question of why we are who we are, and not somebody else.

I don't think this question is as profound as it sounds. Where the conditions are right, conscious beings arise. Individually they might consider "why am I me right here and now???" but consider this:

Imagine a hole in the ground. It rains and the hole fills with water. Assume that in this world the chemistry is fantastic enough that puddles of water in the dirt routinely happen to become self-aware. (The fact that this is improbable is irrelevant to the thought experiment.) The puddle might then ask the same question, "Why am I this puddle here right now, and not another? What are the odds!?" From the puddle's subjective perspective this seems like a conundrum, a mystery. From the outside, the answer is obvious: The conditions were right for the arising of a puddle, and so one appeared. There was a hole and rain, and so a puddle appeared at that time. Nothing profound about it.

In the same way I don't think there's anything deep about the fact that a particular person is who they are. When the conditions are right (that is, reproduction proceeds successfully) conscious beings arise. They appear when and where they do because the conditions are such at that place and time that such a being can exist. Since we are the perceptual center of our own subjective universe it all seems much more mysterious but I think the mysteriousness evaporates when we consider the bigger picture like this.

>>7451246
The mirror test is the best way we can check if an animal know what its doing. Criticizing it is very easy because of how simple it is. 4 years old are self aware but do not know how mirrors work. You are being naive and arrogant like every retard who talks shit on this simple test.

>>7451246

>>7451269
Nah, he's right.

>>7451268

Rather than say "how mirrors work" I probably should have said "what mirrors do". Obviously it is possible for a creature to come to understand what a mirror DOES (reflect images) without having an understanding of how exactly it does that.

I might be naive but I'm not trying to be arrogant, just thinking about the test. I don't think there's any harm in criticizing a test or method even if it's the best we have available. Sorry if that triggers you.

>>7451269
>Animals that are considered to be able to recognise themselves in a mirror typically progress through four stages of behavior when facing a mirror:

>(a) social responses
>(b) physical inspection (e.g., looking behind the mirror)

Clearly mirror-test passing species understand mirrors, otherwise they wouldn't attempt to look behind it. They can, imo, tell that the geography of the image in the mirror doesn't match up with the surroundings, and so test their belief by looking behind it. Then probably they look around and realise that it's the space in front of the object which can be seen in it, then realise that they themselves are in the mirror and not another animal.

>>7451280
>They can, imo, tell that the geography of the image in the mirror doesn't match up with the surroundings, and so test their belief by looking behind it.
This, I should add, is more a test of spacial reasoning than self-concept or self-awareness.

>>7451283
Then again...
>Ants (Myrmica sabuleti, Myrmica rubra and Myrmica ruginodis). One study found that some ants seem able to recognize themselves in a mirror, since they displayed self-cleaning behavior after seeing themselves with a dot painted on their clypeus, but not when the dot was not visible.

>>7451283
>Spatial reasoning
Spatial reasoning is a male trait. Then the males should be great at it, and the females should go apeshit. That is not what happens.

>>7451290
Yeah it also doesn't explain why ants pass.
On the other hand neither does the self-awareness explanation.

>>7451158
>Is consciousness located in the brain?
Your consciousness is focused on your brain's perception of your senses. And is what interprets these perceptions. But that doesn't really say whether it's in or out.
>Is it the brain itself?
I don't think so. I've read reports of people having vivid out of body experiences with absolutely zero brain activity.
>What is consciousness, exactly?
feedback, it can be subconscious or conscious but it's your system relating to a stimuli.
>If it's in the brain / is the brain, then why, or how are you experiencing this brain specifically, and not another brain?
If it's like that I'd assume it's the luck of the draw. You'd perceive "your" brain and "your" thoughts because it would be in that brain specifically.
>How did you came into existence?
Physically? My dad cream pied my mom. And I was born approx. 9 months later.
Temporally I found a suitable space/time coordinate for whatever it is I I feel compelled to do for the experience I'm after and guided the appropriate events to create this vessel for said exp.
>What is existence, anyway?
Consciousness.

>>7451293
>ants
That is very hard to believe, nigger. Ants eyes cant do this.

>>7451304
It is hard to believe.

It suggests that either the mirror test is a piece of shit, results are fake and gay, or that self awareness is in fact not a very complex phenomena. [at least, our pride at having it would surely be rattled if it were also achieved by ants, I should think]

The brain gets too much attention. Your entire body contributes to Consciousness. Yes, the mirror test tests for self-awareness, but that is not a prerequisite for consciousness. Consciousness is the ability to abstractly reflect or knowingly react to your environment, as such it might be better to consider everything around you as 'possessing' consciousness, while your neural system merely reflects it. As such, your sense of self is simply a point of view from which the surrounding environment is concentrated, and the brain is a growth of memories - reflections of a reflection. When people look at each other, its like two parallel opposing mirrors. it's possible for different brains to share consciousness(especially if aided by love/drugs) just as a single brain can house multiple consciousnesses. I'm not sure it's possible, though, for consciousness to be 'projected' without a body. Your personality can always change, you can always elect to be a different person, and take an active role in programming the way in which your and others consciousness functions. As such, notions such as i, thou, ego, and id are all temporary afflictions. Strictly speaking, you are a stomach with attachments. If you think you are somehow something more because you claim to possess any level of intelligence or self-awareness, than your brain is simply lying to itself. If you still think 'you' are 'you' I think I've failed to adequately explain yourself.

>>7451313
>hippie shit
>>>/out/

>>7451293
Probably the smell of the paint, or just a simple tactile feeling, considering ants function on these two senses, can trigger self cleaning. Ants have small compound eyes, they are able to even look themselves in the mirror.

>>7451321
*unable

>>7451321
>Probably the smell of the paint, or just a simple tactile feeling, considering ants function on these two senses, can trigger self cleaning. Ants have small compound eyes, they are able to even look themselves in the mirror.
Nah it says they didn't clean when they couldn't see themselves in the mirror.
>>Ants (Myrmica sabuleti, Myrmica rubra and Myrmica ruginodis). One study found that some ants seem able to recognize themselves in a mirror, since they displayed self-cleaning behavior after seeing themselves with a dot painted on their clypeus, but not when the dot was not visible.

>>7451158
Cognition happens in the brain.

The problem of first person experience, aka qualia, is impossible to answer. Deal with it.

>>7451441
>The problem of first person experience
What problem, mate?

Why do people refuse to abandon the "soul" model when so many problems have been demonstrated with it?

>>7451495
Seems to be a continuation of an understanding required for normal functioning.

>>7451480
holy fuck you are dumb

>>7451500
Hey, have some manners, faggot
I cannot read your apeshit paradox seeking mind, stop being fucking lazy
kek

>>7451499
Are you saying people can't function without that belief? Because I've only ever seen that belief cause problems; there is no advantage at all to it.

Do I dare read this thread or get sucked into yet another one of these "omg guys how does life even"

animals have instinct, humans have consciousness. yet we aren't aware that we are as much animals as a horse and that consciousness is our instinct. most of us don't even eat right, let alone think right.

>>7451516
Define "consciousness."

>>7451495
>Why do people refuse to abandon the "soul"
Because Gödel's incompleteness theorems implies our brain is not the classical computer. On Penrose's words:

"1. It is impossible for a Turing machine to enumerate all possible Godel sentences. Such a program will always have a Godel sentence derivable from its program which it can never discover

2. Humans have no problem discovering these sentences and seeing the truth of them."

Penrose said the brain Must have some quantum input, which was confirmed recently:

"In January 2014 Hameroff and Penrose announced that a discovery of quantum vibrations in microtubules by Anirban Bandyopadhyay of the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan[23] confirms the hypothesis of Orch-OR theory."

Soul is not a dellusion, and the word faith was used as "reason", not "blind belief".

>>7451505
Problems? Of what sort?

>>7451523
I'm not seeing how that has any connection to a "soul" concept.

>>7451518
i know that i know

>>7451524
People trying to bring down the world with themselves because they think of themselves as having universal importance.

>>7451525
>Anima mundi is the concept of a "world soul" connecting all living organisms on the planet.

>>7451530
you poor poor child

>>7451523
Even if QM played a role in brain activity why would that imply a soul? That's fucking retarded.

>>7451531
That's silly. The origin is a constant field that encompasses the entire universe. It has no special relation to life, except in the sense that some life utilizes it.

>>7451537
He asked Why do people refuse to abandon the "soul". You are fucking retarded.

>>7451544
Yes and I don't see how quantum vibrations are relevant to that. In fact I can pretty emphatically say that it's totally unrelated.

>>7451543
It still fits the description of anima mundi. Far from silly.
>>7451546
This is hilarious.

Wait, I thought this was really simple? Consciousness is a direct result of chemical reactions which all living things have, more so depending on complexity.

The likes of single cells/flora can sense and react, and then it gets more and more complex until humans who merely reached a point where they are more conscious.

Non-biological things cannot achieve consciousness because they don't use the fundamental chemical reactions that makes biology work. If they did then we'd be able to create life out of tins and cans too, which I'm certain we will eventually.

>>7451557
Define "consciousness".

>>7451557

>>7451183

True dat.
My depression caused me an intense headache for some reason.
I stopped thinking too much about my future and it all went away.

>>7451266
Then what do you think the deep question is? Or is there one?

>>7451654
He is wrong, anon. He is implying the whole Universe is just a hole, and there are infinite holes. He believes in Universes with Goblins,
Dragons, some Fucked up magic, you might say he believes in Hell and Heaven as separate Universes and even in Zeus, Thor and Goku. The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. It seems you either believe in a simple, all knowing creator or you believe in Harry Potter, Black Zeus, Loli Heaven, talking dogs and everything else. He just came up with something to stop thinking or going to church.

>>7451678
What the fuck are you on about?

>>7451696
I am saying we can't dismiss the question Why we are who we are, and not somebody(something) else. Are you trying to be rhetoric?

>>7451557
>If they did then we'd be able to create life out of tins and cans too

You've been watching too much adventure time

It's in your entire body, not just your brain. The idea that the brain and the body are separate is untrue.

>>7451158
>Is Microsoft Windows located in the computer? Is it the computer itself? What is Microsoft Windows?

This is how retarded you sound.

>>7452077
If these questions sound retarded to you, that means you know their answers. Why don't you share them, anon? Show us your superior intellect.

>>7451158
>What is consciousness, exactly?
The ability to take input, through hearing, seeing, smelling, sensing, and use that input to make a decision.

> If it's in the brain / is the brain, then why, or how are you experiencing this brain specifically, and not another brain?
How could you be a different brain? You are the brain you are... Simply you are just a brain that is taking input from the world, and your brain processes things based on that to make decisions. I think it's arguable to say that your life is just a movie, you're just watching things. There is no "you" in a deeper sense.

>How did you came into existence? What is existence, anyway?
Well that is a lot of biology and astronomy... I don't think we know how life came to.

>>7451654

>Then what do you think the deep question is? Or is there one?

Probably the "hard problem of consciousness", the fact that we seem to have an internal world of subjective experience, qualia, whatever, that other people cannot objectively verify. That is, we can infer through observation that other beings have an internal subjective perspective as we do (ignoring the philosophical zombie concept) but we can't probe into someone's brain and poke them in the qualia. We know of objective things like brain structure and chemistry that correlate with particular kinds of subjective experience, but as far as I know there is a gap in establishing a clear causal link between neurochemistry and subjective experience. Our internal states correlate with certain objectively observable brain states but it is more mysterious how the two relate more fundamentally.

But I emphasize that I don't think the capacity for subjective internal experience is something profound and transcendental. There's a lot we don't understand about it, and so people make grand mystical claims about it, but in my opinion when we don't know about something all we can honestly say is "We in fact don't know, here's some possible hypotheses." I do think that in any case, it seems quite grounded in the physical. Drugs affect subjective states, as do injuries, when you go into dreamless sleep your subjective experience shuts off and there is nothing. When someone knocks you out and shorts out your brain, experience stops. Seems pretty causally grounded in the mundane and physical.

So in short while I don't think there's any deep mystery as to why one individual is one individual and not another, understanding how conscious beings with internal experiences relate to the world is fuzzier, but I think not fantastical.

>>7451678
You're either being ridiculous on purpose or interpreted what I meant to convey in a completely outlandish way for some reason.

You're everything inside your skin, everything acts as one by making thousands of choices every minute, each one of them influenced by your memory.

My "self" is just this heavy piece of meat surrounding my organs.

There is no "ego" but memory, ability to retain things that will help us the next day, like a lot of other animals.

>>7451266

Shut up Douglas.

>>7452092
Why is the concept of hardware vs software so difficult for people to understand? Think about it this way: One of the most basic physical objects, the atom. Does't actually exist physically. But that's absurd! No anon, you just grew up thinking the world consisted of physical object because that's how you experience the world. The atom is the sum total of countless force fields interacting with each other. Each of those fields can be somewhat localised in time and space, but they have no real physical essence. They are just localised forces. What we observe from that we, invent this idea of an atom, but's a model, at times usefull at other times not.

Your consciousness is the same way. It doesn't have any physical existence. It is just the sum total of countless interactions between cells in your head, which have happened to evolve to compute and store information about the outside world. That's all.

The truth of the matter is, to think of anything having a physical "existence" is a mistake. There is no such thing.

>>7452238
>Your consciousness is the same way. It doesn't have any physical existence. It is just the sum total of countless interactions between cells in your head, which have happened to evolve to compute and store information about the outside world. That's all.

trivializing the problem. why does interaction or information processing lead to subjective experience?

>>7452280
Because if it didn't you wouldn't be there to ask the question. What would existence be without a consciousness to experience it?

>>7452295
That's true, but that doesn't answer the question why we still have no clue how consciousness comes into being.

>>7452300
Because apparently if feels like something to process information. There doesn't have to be a deeper why.

You know, these threads turn into passionate shitposting contests so often I'm beginning to wonder if there really IS something utterly strange and undefinable about consciousness that the butthurt "scientists" on this board are subconsciously trying to repress

Consciousness is the perception of time. When people talk about "losing consciousness", they mean losing sense of time.

As to what being able to perceive time actually does, that's another question entirely.

>>7452328
But a lot of people are not satisfied with simple answers like this. They want to understand on a more fundamental level.

Were we ever satisfied with something like "Because apparently shit falls down when you drop it. There doesn't have to be a deeper why." No we were not. We discovered the law of gravity and refined it.

>>7452300

Someone once made a great point about how it's all about pattern recognition.
Like, consciousness is a side effect of our brain trying to do pattern recognition on everything we sense.

We become self aware because we look at other beings and see patterns in them.
This is also how we understand things and learn.

When we start to ask the why's of things is when we start looking for patterns within our thoughts.

>>7452352
We don't actually have a law of gravity. We just have the inverse square law. Which applies to a lot of things. Because it's just a "law" of spheres.

>>7452364
But why should we have any conscious experience of our own thoughts at all?

>>7452400

Because we evolved that way.
Just like fish evolved limbs.

If you don't have conscious experience of your own thoughts then you can't think.
If you can't think you can't make tools.
You don't make tools then you die.

Consciousness is a side effect of all that evolutionary phenomenon.
We learn through pattern recognition and we contemplate existence through pattern recognition.

>>7451338
I'm gona guess this is just a reflex for ants and it might trigger on seeing other ants with paint as well.

>>7452411
>If you don't have conscious experience of your own thoughts then you can't think.
source?

>>7452532

Aprendizaje y Memoria, del Cerebro al Comportamiento - McGrawHill

>>7451701
Still don't understanding you. Why can't we dismiss the question? And what even is 'the question'? That's what I originally asked. What is this supposedly meaningful question about consciousness that bugs everyone?

I think people in this thread are using different definitions of consciousness.

OP was probably talking about the first person experience, or the subjective experience, not simply awareness.

>>7451186
The I is inseparable from the brain, You aren't experiencing your brain, this is just what being what you are feels like.

>>7452280
Maybe there is no such thing as subjective experience? Or maybe there's some other problem with the term 'subjective experience'. I mean it's like asking 'Why can't stand in both boxes at the same time?' or 'Why can't I experience nothing?'
Your consciousness is located where your body/brain is, but if you were to wire your nervous system to a spot on the wall, that would become part of your consciousness. There are people who have had strokes that don't see the right side of people's faces - like they literally aren't conscious of it at all, or that they are this way. If you were to hook your brain up to another person's you'd share your consciousness, possibly becoming one. All this seems to suggest that subjective experience is an emergent property within the universe where the conditions are right rather than it being an essence.
If this doesn't qualm your titties, can you be more specific with your question? In fact everyone should do this in these consciousness threads. Good questions are meaningful, aren't loaded, and can be answered.

>>7452344
I lost a sense of time on acid, but I was fully aware of my existance and my surroundings to the 100% extreme maximum edition.

>What is this supposedly meaningful question about consciousness that bugs everyone?

Are you even alive? Have you ever wondered how the way your senses, feelings, thoughts and emotions reduce to electrical activity to your brain?

>>7453065
It's hard to find the right semantics in discussions about consciousness, because almost everyone has a different undestanding of the concepts involved. Your definition of "I" may be different from mine. That's why it's almost impossible to make this topic productive: it only leads to more confusion.

Nonetheless, the question remains intact: why, or how, am "I" this brain and not another brain, regardless of if another person can say the same thing about him / herself?

>>7451168
machines that feel pain

>>7453100
Yes I have! A very interesting thing indeed. And I always look to neurobiology, mind brain correlations, psychology. Sure, I sympathize that when I think about consciousness, a question resembling 'Why do I have first person experience in the first place?' I momentarily resort to magical thinking. Then I immediately dismiss it and think about all the other possibilities: brain, other, none. Looking towards the brain has been the only thing that has provided answers regarding the consciousness so far so that seems like a good place to continue looking. I've head of no 'other' source that provides answers. The only other option is that there is no other possible satisfying answer other than the brain because the question itself is broken somehow and there actually is no problem. Or spot being a dick and realise 'subjective experience' isn't a divine seat only you have.

Lastly: semantics and frameworks. Nobody on this board has the exact same framework of understanding of life, or the meaning behind language. People should do as much research as possible, properly look up the words your using, etc, if you want to have meaningful discussion.

>Yes I have! A very interesting thing indeed. And I always look to neurobiology, mind brain correlations, psychology. Sure, I sympathize that when I think about consciousness, a question resembling 'Why do I have first person experience in the first place?' I momentarily resort to magical thinking. Then I immediately dismiss it and think about all the other possibilities: brain, other, none. Looking towards the brain has been the only thing that has provided answers regarding the consciousness so far so that seems like a good place to continue looking.

Yes, I'd completely agree. I'm not saying that there's magic and other bullshit involved. But it's horribly puzzling because it's hard to talk about, nearly impossible to test, and involves "translating" physical phenomena to seemingly non-physical events. (I'm not claiming, by the way, that consciousness is multi-dimensional, a god-given gift, or that there's a non-physical realm where consciousness comes from.)

>>7453147
nobody is saying that it doesn't arise from the brain, the question is how/why

it's strange, science is an enterprise fuelled by mysteries and yet so many people who profess to be scientifically-minded are very eager to sweep this one under the rug

>>7452352
Shit falls down for everything else to work, the same way purpose of man is to spread to space and end the universe trough his experiments. ( KEK )
^ that was a joke, in case some are slow :).
Serious question: traveling back in time might be impossible from what I've read, but seeing back in time, observing events of the past could that be possible?

>>7451249
And we have a winner...

>>7451158
Instead of trying to hopelessly analyze consciousness, your time would be better spent developing a meditation practice for a few years and experientially understand it.

>>7453168
How? neurobiology.
Why? Well there's nobody willing it into existance with their magic wand. Sir Consciousness didn't just someday go "Hmm I think I'll exist now." I don't really understand what the 'why' question is. The 'how' question seems like the only good one so far.

>>7453206
Do you suggest any particular practices? Are there a variety?

>>7453215
I'm not that guy but first of all you're not wasting any time as he implies
Secondly you should understand what meditation is.. it's nothing spiritual.
Start here I'm not even joking this guy is great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsqWkJ8fNWE

>>7453098
No, acid just deludes you into thinking you're more aware.

>>7453215
Insight meditation as taught in the Theravada school of Buddhism might be a good place to start.

>>7453223
Nnnnnnnoo...Nope. I was definitely more aware of my surroundings.
Besides, the main point of that post was that I had lost consciousness of time yet still had awareness of other things.

>>7453206
Your statement assumes that a subjective experiential based understanding of consciousness has much bearing on how it fits in with the objective world. I don't think it does, but that may not be your goal in any case, which is fine. Understanding how our minds work from the inside is valuable.

>>7453215
There is a tremendous amount of meditation practices, some are more "spiritual" and some are not, meditation exists in many different contexts in the service of various goals and don't let anyone tell you it's simpler than that because if they do, they're making uninformed generalizations. As another poster mentioned Theravada "insight meditation" may be a good place to look because there are a lot of places doing instruction in that method which are very practical and secular. Theravada is a relatively down-to-earth branch of Buddhism as well (though there are a number of flavors of it depending on various people's favored source material and assumptions).

When it comes down to it, if your model of consciousness isn't pragmatic, you should shove it up your ass. Thinking any other way will lead to a bunch of dead ends.

>>7452344
>Consciousness is the perception of time. When people talk about "losing consciousness", they mean losing sense of time.

Since when? I have never heard anyone use it in this sense, ever. People generally seem to use it (somewhat imprecisely) to refer to awareness of surroundings, capability for subjective experience, thought, intention, will, self-awareness, and so on. NEVER have I heard anyone speak of it in terms of the sense of time and I think you pulled that out of nowhere. (Or at best some context of conversations that I'm totally unfamiliar with)

LOL this is probably a popular thread because everyone can't even the mystery of the brain or life or anything really.

there's really nothing else to talk about besides sex, death, and consciousness. and art. technological advancement, and progress, and revolutions, and the past, and the future, but especially consciousness because its been around all this time lurking in the background and just now the world is starting to turn its gaze inward, suspicious of the illuminating beam of the unseen

>>7453265
I think perception of time is part of human consciousness rather than the generating factor.

>>7453273
how can U B SO SURE

>>7453250
And your statement assumes that a subjective experiential based understanding of consciousness does NOT have much bearing on how it fits in with the objective world. I disagree. My experiential understanding of consciousness is based on a couple of thousand hours spent on the meditation cushion. Are you really qualified to comment on the experiential understanding of consciousness?

>>7453284
Without the notion of time as seconds, calendars and aging I would not care about it, I would experience the present as time did not even exist, I would just observe the motion of everything, and eventually I would die as if aging was a disease.

>>7453290
yea except you do age genius. time has effect

>>7453296
Thinking profoundly about this, the perception of time is something that could've influenced soooo many things that made us sentient.
We use this perception to simulate physical scenarios inside our brain, and we use this perception to make decisions as when to act based on the simple will to act, not some chemical impulse we get as predators get in nature when it's moment to attack their pray.

>>7453288

I believe so, but I also believe that people who aren't me can come conclusions that are contrary to my own but are rational conclusions within the context of their own minds, because people are different, have different experiences and conditioning and will therefore come to potentially different conclusions.

But I also value empirical evidence and replicability when trying to develop models of the "objective" world, and this kind of data is as far as I know not something you provide from subjective experiences on the meditation cushion. At best we could discuss individual anecdotal subjective conclusions. I don't think that kind of discussion is completely worthless but it is also rather tentative and dubious a lot of the time.

>>7453301
you don't have a choice to use it or not lol

>>7453288
>>7453302

Though to clarify, at a more fundamental level I am agnostic about whether subjective (meditative or contemplative) conclusions can have a useful bearing on understanding consciousness etc in the context of our larger scientific understanding of the world. I don't currently think it has a ton to add but I don't hold that position steadfastly. I DO think that such insight is valuable for understanding ourselves, how our mind works, how to live contently, and in general live an examined and aware life. But not necessarily science.

>>7453308
Fair enough. Personally, as a scientist and a meditation practitioner, I believe my contemplative practice has vastly increased both my understanding and appreciation of the universe. I believe the two practices are complementary.

yeah it's located in the prefrontal area

>>7453132
Your computer reacts to you beating it as well, does that mean it's alive?

>>7453350
Alive in the mechanical sense yes.
Else you tell me if in the future computers will gain sentience they will consider pre-santient machines as dead?
Do we consider fly's dead or alive?

>>7451302
>I don't think so. I've read reports of people having vivid out of body experiences with absolutely zero brain activity.
With all due respect, that's just bullshite. I do believe you read it, but I'm sure those reports are false.

People in this thread, and every single thread philosophize on the subject instead of using scientific data and scientific tools to research it.
Don't get me wrong but ever since we pop-ed into existence as humans we've done that, we observed ourselves our experience and we wrote it down, history, poetry, art w/e.
We haven't found any answer or any true understanding to the subject of consciousness.
Maybe it's time for science to find the answer, science found the answer to lots of things and offered us comfort in many ways, maybe once we understand scientifically the subject of consciousness we will increase our well-being just as it happened after the industrial revolution.

>>7453397
>We haven't found any answer or any true understanding to the subject of consciousness.
Agh for fucks sake, just get out, you retarded faggot

>>7453397
Well, instead of bitching about everyone else, why don't you dedicate your life to the study of the topic and educate the rest of us. I'll be eagerly awaiting your published results. But I won't be holding my breath.

>>7451158
Many questions that we don't know the answer to and may never know the answer.

I have always wondered what would happen if you were to make an exact copy of your brain, atom for atom, in another body. Would you come into existence there too or is it just another copy? Again, shit we will never be able to answer but it's fun to wonder.

>>7451158
>What is consciousness, exactly
It's a buzzword without objective explanations except >>7451168

>>7451158
>Body needs to move around, perform certain actions in order to survive
>Like talking, eating, pissing, walking, hunting, fighting and so on
>Need some way to know what's around - to do the right action on the right objects
>Thus, consciousness

Btw I think it makes more sense if you can put it out of your head that what you're aware of is the 'actual world out there'. Everything you experience is a mental construct. Nobody has ever actually seen the real world :(

>>7454390
Poppycock. I'm seeing the real world right now. If the real world is not what I'm seeing, then what is it?

How is the belief that everything is a mental construct useful in anyway? What does it predict? Nothing. I think it's a matter of intuition that there is such thing as a real world and we are directly linked to it through our senses. 'physical constructs' and 'mental constructs' are just ways of describing/formulating the real world in a predictive manner.

>>7454423

that anon is exaggerating, just because we integrate the universe through the frame of mental constructs doesn't mean what we're interpreting isn't real.

I've finally made a conclusion about this topic. Not about consciousness itself, but how it's being analyzed.

The problem about this discussion is that we use too many concepts that either we have no clue how to clearly define, or our understanding of them differs of the understanding of others, thus making discussions useless because muh semantics.

Semantical language was created by humans during the course of time to be able to organizate themselves better. How did they create it? Through direct, languageless observation. What are words in essence, anyway? Symbols and sounds that we make sense of. They relate directly to our senses.

That's why, instead of worrying about semantics, I analyze this topic without using words. It is completely possible to think without using language, and is in fact much more useful in this case, because instead of using concepts that offer rigid meanings and ideas, you're making a direct observation, allowing for more flexibility in terms of thought, thus getting to understand more.

Use your senses, anons.

>>7454423
>I think it's a matter of intuition that there is such thing as a real world and we are directly linked to it through our senses.
The thing is it's not a direct link. If you've ever tried hallucinogens, what do you figure is changing about the world outside as your sight morphs and changes constantly? What of psychosis? What we witness is a constructed image.

>>7454487
Has that method actually given you any insight on the topic though?

>>7454489
Ah, thought of a better example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_limb

>>7454487
Yes, you can't adequately describe the subjective experience with language alone. Try describing the color red to a blind person--you can't.

This is what makes it inherently difficult to discuss. That's why there's such a focus on semantics.

>>7454495
Yeah, it does help. Since you aren't delving into semantics anymore, you get a clearer understanding of this topic. The downside is that any insights you get are hard to communicate to other people, as you'd be using words.

This is how language progressed, anyway. Even today, new concepts are being added to dictionaries when we find stuff that need to be related to them.

>>7454489
Yes, your perception is dependent on the functioning of your brain, and so is liable to change. That doesn't mean that what your brain is normally perceiving isn't reality itself, even if our brain subconsciously processes all of our input. If you've tried hallucinogens, you'd realise that your mental states are constantly changing with respect to your previous orsubconscious mental states AND your surroundings. It's like saying that my tv is faulty its display is sometimes a bit off, therefore the input to the television doesn't exist. Maybe you're simply pointing out that perception is a reflection of our surroundings and of ourselves, which is pretty obvious. In which case, it should be noted that we are a part of our surroundings. So where is the distinction between our real surroundings and imaginary surroundings? Why is it that everything inside of us is real, but everything outside isn't? This doesn't sound like a pragmatic, intuitive, or realistic argument.

In other words, we all have the same data: our sensory organs. We all start out being aware of everything outside and inside us. Our thoughts and our surroundings. Later on, some stubborn numpties were like "What if only my mind exists?" seemingly forgetting that they started out already being aware of everything without meaninglessly judging it as existing/non-existing, outside/inside.

>>7454550
Nobody is asserting that the world is imaginary. But the world as it truly exists is epistemologically inaccessible.

>>7454557
But clearly we're accessing it all the time...
What exactly do you mean by the true world being inaccessible? What about it is inaccessible? I feel like I kind of know what you're talking about, but then upon further thought it seems extremely paradoxical, untraversable, and question begging.

The idea that true reality is inaccessible seems to me like you must first agree that reality is this separate thing - which I find hard to agree with. It's - at best - an untestable, meaningless hypothesis. It's basically likened to magical thinking.
I concede, however, that we only get to experience some of it at a time, yet the boundaries there are still thin. We are still effected by everything everywhere.

>>7454557
>Nobody is asserting that the world is imaginary. But the world as it truly exists is epistemologically inaccessible.
This.

I think a lot of the confusion surrounding this topic stems from the fact that by the time anyone really is old enough to consider it insightfully, we've been forced, by our intuition and the necessity of social interaction, to make practical assumptions about it in order to function.

>>7454597
No. What I'm saying is that it is impossible to access reality without your senses and the subjective experience. Therefore it is epistemologically inaccessible (i.e., you cannot observe the universe as it actually exists, only as it is perceived).

This is not to say the universe doesn't exist or is completely unknown; that would be absurd.

>>7454557
It's like saying weed puts you to sleep because it's a sleep-inducing drug. You're starting out by arbitrarily defining true reality as unconnected to perceived reality, and then you're using that definition to re-state the same conclusion. This is a trap. I could just as easily say that eyes don't actually see the beach, the just see the light waves coming from the beach. But isn't that what seeing the beach entails?

>>7454616
He's not saying it's unconnected, he's saying it's not a 1:1.

Obviously our perceptions are formed from information gleaned from the actual world; else it wouldn't be useful in keeping us alive. But our perceptions are 'interpretations' of this information.

Take this image for instance. You're probably familiar with it or ones like it. If we had a direct knowledge of the image it would appear stationary, as it factually is. But what we see is an interpretation of the image - one that in this case is false.

>>7454609
Okay these definitions are fucking everyone up.
>You cannot observe the universe as it actually exists, only as it is perceived
>You can only observe observation
>You cannot paint a painting as it actually exists, only as it is painted.
You can only observe real things.

>>7454616
>You're starting out by arbitrarily defining true reality as unconnected to perceived reality

I said nothing of the sort. They are obviously connected.

Imagine that you're Skyping with someone on the other side of the planet. Are you looking at them, or a representation of them generated by your display? It's certainly the latter.

What you see, feel, taste, etc. are all representations of the real world that are constructed by your brain in real time. The representations are accurate (we wouldn't have survived otherwise), but that's all they are--representations.

Therefore the world as it truly exists (not the collage of sensory information being created in your head), is impossible to get to.

The observer needs a lens through which to see the world. We have no possible way of knowing for sure that our lens (the brain) provides a one to one representation of what happens around us (though it probably does).

>>7454609
Our interpretations are part of the universe, so they are real. If someone sees a dog and another guy sees a cat, both the cat and dog exist in their respective minds.

We live in a common ground where all our "subjective worlds" behave in a very similar way.

>>7454652
While obviously everything that happens, ever, is an actual event taking place within the universe, in this context of discussion people often speak of the "real, reality" as meaning the "objective" as opposed to the subjective limited perceptions of conscious beings. But yes if we take "real" literally of course the phenomena of subjective perception is a subset of "real events that are occurring in reality".

>>7454628
Yeah, we learn to process things in more optimal ways to survive. Optical illusions challenge our perception of reality. Reality, defined in this way, is something we can only perceive. When I think of the term 'reality,' though, it doesn't strike me as something I'm always having to reach out to in order to gain knowledge about it, rather I'm already immersed in it.

>>7454671
>When I think of the term 'reality,' though, it doesn't strike me as something I'm always having to reach out to in order to gain knowledge about it, rather I'm already immersed in it.
Well let me just ask you to try to pay attention to something other than one of your perceptions. Your reality is the only one you have access to, but simple optical illusions like the one I posted show that it is only a passingly accurate rendition.

>>7454662
Thank you very much for this distinction in different uses of 'reality.' Clears a lot up in this argument. The false interpretations of optical illusions aren't objectively real, but are literally real. Experience is, by definition, subjective reality, however your subjective reality is constantly immersed in and processing objectively real data, and moreover, is part of literal reality.

>>7454684
Sure. The crossover between your subjective reality and objective reality is your sense organs and brain. And the brain isn't a perfect processor, it's developed for specific things. I think we're in agreement actually. subjective reality is seeded in objective reality, but due to the way it works, doesn't always perfectly reflect it.

>>7454715
It's also occurred to me over the course of this thread that such problems we've discussed only arrise when the concepts behind them are tackled with. If you loosened your attachment to these problems and concepts and stopped defining everything into existance, maybe your brain would actually reflect objective reality more clearly?

>>7454715
Yeah more or less.
It's pretty pedantic but people are wrong when they think they're perceiving, for instance, light.
You're actually 'reading' from some kind of memory register that's constantly being updated by electrochemical signals - signals which are usually prompted by light, admittedly. I mean you can stimulate the brain directly with electricity and have the experience of seeing light. Clearly this doesn't entail any actual light though, so it's incorrect to say we perceive the 'actual' or objective world.

>>7454691
That I think is exactly right. A big difficulty in these discussions can come down to stupid misunderstandings of terminology and intentions behind words. And unfortunately some people use words extremely imprecisely, which you see instantiated in people who constantly confuse words like "conscious/conscience/consciousness".

>>7454722
You seem to have the idea that concepts are inherently flawed, or something. And even if you cease conceptual thinking, our perception is as limited as ever due to the inherent restrictions of humans. We only process a certain range of light, a certain range of smells, only register things of a certain scale, are only sensitive to a certain limited degree of gradual change, only have more or less 5 physical senses in the first place. Our picture of the "objective" is always incomplete.

At best, relinquishing conceptual thinking would help you be aware of the bare unfiltered nature of your subjective experience, without segmenting and labeling and analyzing it. This might be informative in regard to understanding the bare behavior of your own qualia, but I don't think this can help you get any closer to the "objective".

>>7454739
And furthermore it occurs to me that I don't think we can never know that we've hit the "objective". We never know what obfuscations or filters on our perception there are, until we notice them. We might dig down to the truest bit of experience we can but we never know that there is not some further obfuscation that we have yet to find due to the simple fact that, as in science generally, we never can know whether we have solved all problems. We don't know what we don't know, until we notice that there is an unknown thing remaining to be solved. Before noticing an unsolved thing we aren't even aware that there is a problem to be solved, and there is no way for us to evaluate whether there are or are not unknown problems out there. We can never know "this is the end, there are no more unknown problems over the horizon".

>>7451168

i dont like that image, it makes me sad

>>7454715
How can we talk about brains, if our observations are merely interpretations? After all, we study our "brain" through our very own "brain", so we can't say how it looks or works "objectively". Imagine you put your brain in front of you in a jar, but it's still connected to your body and you can see it floating. We study our bodies through our own bodies.

Here is what I do not understand. I do not understand how scientists can actually progress in their quest for truth and understanding when the world is being so corrupted to the point that even scientists are starting to buy into the propaganda.

We have homosexuals treated as a natural order of life instead of a mental illness. What evolutionary reason could there be for a homosexual? None. We have trannies coming out of the fucking woodwork claiming they are natural and normal when really they have a neurological defect that makes them inferior and would die out in natural selection.

Why do scientists not spend time proving these deluded individuals wrong before we progress toward a better tomorrow?

>>7454427
Well you're right but it's more fucked up than we think right now.
American natives perceived the huge ships of European explorers as small fishing one because of the distance, and lots of things are distorted until we train ourselves to perceive it right.

>>7455062
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLb9EIiSyG8
Basically cats perceive us as cats.

Materialists are so fucking dumb when it comes to this topic, it's unreal.

I have a dualistic view, actually. Consciousness is something that can be neither created, nor destroyed. It is NOT memory, intelligence, emotions, reasoning, anything that happens in the brain - all this things are materialistic and a philosophical zombie can have any of them - and he will pass a mirror test. There would be absolutely no way for an observer to tell apart a normal human and a philosophical zombie. On the other hand, consciousness can probably be "attached" to something "inanimate" or even be completely unrelated to anything with "space\time" properties.

Another important question is memory. If it is not remembered does not mean It has not been ever experienced. Consider retrograde amnesia for an easiest example.