mikhail

Well it seems possible to alter someone consciousness people in severe car accidents often are seen as having completly different personalities afterwards.Once we have fully mapped the brain we maybe able to run a computer model that is or at least has all the characteristics of what we would call consciousness.I dont really believe in the ghost in the machine but we may find out in time for sure.

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The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

Reverend_Hellh0und

Maybe but is that "person" still seeing throught the same "eyes"?

I.e still awarness of self in the same self?


If there where no "ghost in the machine" then I refer you to my initial question and follow up with is this an illusion?

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كافر
Never forget those who died.
Never forget those who killed them.

Mach

To start with, we aren't disticnt.
We are all the universe/reality. Literally, the same "thing".

Some Eastern philsopophies (and religions) teach this as a core fundamental.
Western philosophy usually skips this fundamental fact, and this leaves a void in the average westerners understanding of their place in the universe. That void is often filled by all sorts of religious explanations that take advantage of the confusion.

We differentiate out of usefulness. Not only do we intentionally differentiate, but our minds apparently are hard-wired to differntiate. After all, how would we eat if we couldn't quickly consider food different from our hand? That's why teaching the one-ness of the universe usually requries repetition and meditation, it's hard to break through the natural instinct to consider A and not A, as real things.

On a side note - sensory deprivation is said to be a great stimulus for thinking on that subject. Why does being deprived of input change the brain so drastically? It's becasuse the brain, while convenient to consider distinct, is tied into the environment as much as everything in the universe is. No drugs or hippy stuff, simply isolation.

Though short periods of sensory deprivation can be relaxing, extended deprivation can result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, depression, and antisocial behavior.

Creation of consciousness is a frontier humans are hammering at.
It arises from the human mind, and what that minds experience with the environment, including the rest of the body. It is dependant both on the physiology of the brain, and the environment. Deficiencies in either can result in stunted consciousness or complete lack of consciousness. Stroke victims who have damaged brains, often can be rehabilitated, but may in some cases, entirely lose their "former" selves. Are they now a different person? It seems they are, despite sharing the same wiring and chemicals and environment.

The determination is a result of being two different minds. You may ask your parents how they determined to bring you into the world. Although be prepared because their answer may be anticlimactic, or even shocking.

Someone on this forum I think posted a crazy theory about consciouness actually not being the electrical impulses and the cells of the brain, but the EM field that it generates. That was the most far-out theory I've heard, all still grounded in physics mind you, but bizarre.

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Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is an illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and I am content.- Conan

Reverend_Hellh0und

This is the closest to my feelings on the subject. Thanks!

A_Wise_Fool

An interesting perspective:

If you found out you were a robot and not a human, would it be possible to fully understand how your consciousness works? I think simulating the consciousness as we perceive it would be possible, if we can unfold proteins by computer simulation I don't see any reason why we couldn't emulate an entire human brain, some day... thus same brain, same type of consciousness right?

Eventually it would all boil down to Binary 1's and 0's. So how about it? Describing pain or pleasure in 1's and 0's?

I don't think it could work.


I don't think consciousness can merely be explained by physics either.


Its like describing color to a blind person. It just can't be done.

independent_thinker2002

I'm smart and you aren't?

(Sorry, I couldn't pass up the opportunity.)

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==]:{o

1069

Perhaps there are some deeper philosophical implications to this question that I'm not getting.
It seems to me that most of us lay this "Why am I me and you're not me?" business to rest before we start kindergarten.

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"I do love this idea that one can scream and scream and scream, with that utopia just one more scream away."
~ Scucca

Reverend_Hellh0und

so you would see through your clones eyes as you see through yours? are you saying a clone is actually you as in what makes you realize yourself as you?

Reverend_Hellh0und

interesting, but one question, are you suggesting you could program a robot hypothetically to have your conciousness or its own?

nkgupta80

no hes suggesting that the sense of experience cannot be explained completely from all these fields. I believe its something that emerges, but we'll never be able to breakdown into a synthesis of purely physical and biological concepts (as defined by us humans).