Consciousness Definition and 224 Threads

An admittedly sloppily expressed question to get a discussion going which comes at the problem of consciousness from a more epistemilogical angle. Goedel’s incompleteness theorems show that for any and every formal and systematic explanation of everything (in all possible universes) there...

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20040324-9999-news_lz1c24zombie.html

What gives rise to what we call consiousness? As I can't think of a better definition of consciousness than subjective experience (emotion, feeling), we can use that unless someone comes up with something better. What functions and structures of brains yield or are associated with...

The state of being conscious has been defined as "a state in which it is 'like something' to be you". IOW, if it's like something to be you, you're conscious. However, this definition has recently presented itself to me as both fundamentally flawed, and extremely misleading in the attempt to...

Consciousness? is our consciousness an attribute of self or is it a better definition of our being?? this week, for whatever reason(s), i got the suspicion that 'consciousness' is our ability to focus our attention within a given experience. it is a part of me, not me. please opine...

Does consciousness essentially embody structure, process, entity, logic or other physico-mathematical properties?

If the standard for "consciousness" were -- for the purposes of this discussion -- reduced down to an "exchange of information", might then all things within the Universe have a "level of consciousness" based on the COMPLEXITY of the information being exchanged...

Anyone ever stop to think that the only thing that makes sense out of anything at all is consciousness? Hmm ... Perhaps our brains and bodies are merely receptacles, linked to this thing called Universal Consciousness? Think about it. How else could we ever possibly agree that 1 + 1 = 2? If...

Several of the members here have mentioned some of the problems that stand in the way of a scientific theory of consciousness. I've been thinking about them quite a bit, but it seems that some of these problems can be gotten rid of simply by understanding what a scientific theory does and does...

Are there some particular types of neurons, distributed over the visual neocortex, whose firing directly symbolizes the content of visual awareness? One very simplistic hypothesis is that the activities in the upper layers of the cortex are largely unconscious ones, whereas the activities in the...

"At the end of the day, the same criticism applies to any purely physical account of consciousness. For any physical process we specify there will be an unanswered question: Why should this process give rise to experience? Given any such process, it is conceptually coherent that it could be...

this is as provable that there is a matrix as depicted in the movie. i was trying to visualize how we might actually all might be a part of the same consciousness. i don't know if this is what some call the christ-consciousness grid. suppose that hawkins is right and consciousness can...

I have just finished reading the ghost in the atom by P Davis and was intrigued by John Wheeler's interpretation of quantum theory where the wave function collapses when it enters the conciousness of an observer. I was wondering if since the book was published any progress has been made on this...

i would like to begin a discussion on consciousness. some important questions about it are: 1)what is consciousness? 2)is it unique in humans or do other animals have it? if they do, upto what degree? 3)how and why did it arise? 4)how are humans(and other conscious animals)different from...

this is a very nice forum, though I'm slightly disappointed that there's no neuroscience or philosophy of mind board, given the central role of consciousness underlying all theories of physics.

This is something I've been struggling with. You see, in the materialistic framework (which I've gone through great pains to explain in previous threads) there is no real "narrative" of consciousness, merely the different processings and re-processings that occur in different parts of the brain...

While reading an article on time travel I came across a section titled 'Is Time an Illusion?'. Immediately I was drawn to a conversation I shared with a good friend of mine a few months prior. We had been talking all night about different subjects that are unexplained but interested us to look...

I didn't make this into a poll, because I don't want to limit your options. I want everyone to post what they believe consciousness is. There will probably be a lot of debate on the different ideas, but that's what's supposed to happen (may the best theory win ). This will help in a number...

Just some excerpts from Zero's thread, about the nature of consciousness and what constitutes proof. For example, without consciousness, how can we establish the nature of anything, let alone the fact that we exist? Or how else would it be possible to establish this thing called science then...

Hi science folks. As conversed from the previous topic "WHAT IF there is no God..", and due to 'insistent demand' ,here is my postulation. It occurred during a candid discussion we once had about 2 years ago at a physics chatroom when someone inquired what gravity is, but then I noticed that...

From the thread, https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2079&perpage=15&pagenumber=4" ... Where does purpose originate? Does the universe have purpose? If not, then why is man endowed with a sense of purpose? How could that be? That would be tantamount to saying the Universe...

From the thread, https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1649&perpage=15&pagenumber=3" ... So wherein do you think our seat of consciousness lies? Or, through what faculty is it best perceived?

What it's like to vanish--QM and the nature of consciousness I’ve recently been thinking about the familiar Schrödinger’s Cat thought-experiment. Uncertainty at the quantum level essentially dictates that the rhetorical cat considered in the experiment ‘exists’ in a superposition of states. The...

On pf 2.0, (i believe it was Lurch) posted a thread on biophotons. He just wanted to know what they were, but I would like to know your thoughts on how biophotons are of any importance to us. IOW, how it is that they can be incorporated with consciousness, and basically our neural network. [/b]