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/sci/ - Science & Math

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4403169 No.4403169 [Reply] [Original]

Sup /sci/,

Dr Giulio Tononi has an interesting new theory about consciousness:

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/338663/title/Enriched_with_Information

A very, VERY brief tl;dr states that consciousness, due to its instanced, moment capturing nature may not necessarily have a central 'spark' located somewhere in the brain. Rather, consciousness is an overall effect achieved as a result of interlinked data sets.

Effectively, consciousness could potentially be a side-effect of the neural networking that exists in the brain.

This has rather profound implications as it potentially weighs consciousness as an inherent function of large quantities of sensory input data being used to perform a task - in the case of biological life, the task is simply surviving or whatever attributes you can attach to that.

Consciousness as a side-effect which arises as a result of processing data.

Ugh...


(Note that consciousness does not necessarily infer 'reasoning', 'self determination', or 'sentience', but rather a simple, possibly scale-able level of 'awareness'.)

>> No.4403181

>>4403169

That's really not new. Hell, it's basic reasoning; no single neuron or synapse defines me and can be killed without affecting my consciousness (we know this because people lose them all the time and even suffer traumatic brain injuries and can still, at least from an outside observer's point of view, retain their same "awareness").

I won't say that about the article, necessarily, I've not had a chance to take a look juuuust yet, but either you're explaining it wrong or he's a bit behind the curve.

>> No.4403189

>>4403181
It's quite possible that I'm not explaining it correctly. But the basic just was: Consciousness as a result of the string of individual instances or 'moments' of time that you relatively experience and it being the sum of all sensory inputs. And that consciousness is an inherent 'feature' of the network which is laid on top of it.

>> No.4403195

I read this the other day. Mite b cool.

Implies very, ugh, 'dangerous' (?) things for what 'consciousness' may be applicable too.