Awareness is a biological function

[baywax]

Awareness is fundamental to any science, civilization or pretty well any undertaking life has to offer. One would think awareness is one of the most examined of conditions and, in part, it is. When I look at awareness I see physical and chemical states interacting with more physical and chemical states which produces electromagnetic, cognitive responses that we like to think of as thought, "mind" and or brain activity.

In philosophy, there are often claims that there exists a "metaphysical" condition which is readily available to everyone that becomes "aware" of it.

How can a condition that is not physical, stimulate a response in a physiological system of cognitive awareness?

Is there an intermediate condition between the physical and metaphysical conditions where information about each state can be exchanged?

Can a "condition" be anything other than physical?

 

[mosassam]

=baywax;1281211

Awareness is fundamental to any science, civilization or pretty well any undertaking life has to offer. One would think awareness is one of the most examined of conditions and, in part, it is. When I look at awareness I see physical and chemical states interacting with more physical and chemical states which produces electromagnetic, cognitive responses that we like to think of as thought, "mind" and or brain activity.

As long as you have a materialistic outlook you must accept that you can never really grasp something nonphysical, such as Awareness, Thought, Consciousness, Life etc. As a materialist you view all nonphysical phenomena "spring forth" from physical phenomena. The notion that it may be the other way round cannot be broached as it would require a radical paradigm shift.
Think about this "thought experiment":
A few billion molecules can go to make something with life and a few billion of the same molecules can go to make something without life. What is the difference between these two situations? Is it to do with the relationships that exist between the molecules?

 

[mosassam]

How can a condition that is not physical, stimulate a response in a physiological system of cognitive awareness?

You're sat at home chilling out. You get a phonecall saying you're having a drug test tomorrow. You realize (thought-nonphysical) that you're going to fail. As a result, you get stressed out (nonphysical). As a result of the stress you get a weird rash all over your face (physical). This is not as trite as it seems.

 

[baywax]

You're sat at home chilling out. You get a phonecall saying you're having a drug test tomorrow. You realize (thought-nonphysical) that you're going to fail. As a result, you get stressed out (nonphysical). As a result of the stress you get a weird rash all over your face (physical). This is not as trite as it seems.

Mosassam, how is a chemoelectromagnetic response (thoughts of realization) to a phone call "non-physical"?

What component of a thought is non-physical?

As far as I know there is no component of a thought that is not physical.

And "stressing out", that is purely physical. Its hormonal -chemoelectromagnetic.

As for the difference between a billion molecules that compose a non-living thing and a billion molecules that compose a living thing.

1. the type of molecules makes the difference.

1a. the structure that the molecules create makes the difference.

1b. the evolution (history) behind the structure the molecules create is what makes one group of molecules different from the other group.

For example: a group of H2O molecules is very different when compared to the mixed groups of molecules that make up a fish.

The properties of the H2O molecules alone don't allow for it to live.

The mixed groups of molecules that make up a structure such as a fish, through a long history of evolution, are alive (as a fish).

You have to figure in "time" and "evolution" when you look at each molecular structure. Some structures have collected molecules over time that changed the dynamic of the molecular structure. Sometimes that means the molecular structure becomes a "living" molecular structure. Other molecular structures don't live.

 

[baywax]

As long as you have a materialistic outlook you must accept that you can never really grasp something nonphysical, such as Awareness, Thought, Consciousness, Life etc. As a materialist you view all nonphysical phenomena "spring forth" from physical phenomena. The notion that it may be the other way round cannot be broached as it would require a radical paradigm shift.

The difference between the materialistic and the non-materialistic approach to understanding awareness is that the materialistic approach has examples and evidence in the form of working, physical systems that explain the existence of awareness.

A non-materialistic approach to understanding awareness has no material evidence to back any such claim of the metaphysical causation of thought, ideas, awareness or conscious awareness.

There are a lot of books and lectures that lay out complete theories on the workings of the metaphysical and how everything we experience is somehow caused by metaphysical interactions with the physical. In actuality there are many explanations and they all vary from one another according to who is explaining the workings of metaphysics.

There is the possibility that the seemingly erroneous accounts of metaphysicists concerning the nature of the universe, awareness etc. are intuitive accounts of the quantum state.

Whether the quantum state can be considered physical or not is better answered by one of the respected resident physicists on PF.

 

[aspect]

The difference between the materialistic and the non-materialistic approach to understanding awareness is that the materialistic approach has examples and evidence in the form of working, physical systems that explain the existence of awareness.

What evidence are you referring to? What you're doing is using words like "chemoelectromagnetic" and pretending you've explained something.

 

[baywax]

What evidence are you referring to? What you're doing is using words like "chemoelectromagnetic" and pretending you've explained something.

An understanding of the physiology of a neuron might help to show why I used the hybrid term "chemo-electro-magnetic". It was to show that, so far, we only know that "consciousness" and "awareness" are the results of neurons interacting and responding with each other and with the environment.

Here's some of what we know so far about Neurons & the Nervous System.

http://www.people.eku.edu/ritchisong/301notes2.htm

You'll note that the chemicals in a neuron and how they interact with each other create an electrical charge which creates a disturbance in the surrounding electromagnetic field. This chemical interaction and the results are what I've termed a "chemoelectromagnetic" response.

 

[baywax]

That having been said, I'm surprised that no one has brought this idea to this thread.

Electromagnetic theory of Consciousness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness

This theory was initially proposed by scientists such as Johnjoe McFadden, Susan Pockett and E. Roy John (For the recent account see Andrew and Alexander Fingelkurts). It is a tentative hypothesis as are all current hypotheses about consciousness and is an example of protoscience rather than pseudoscience.
The starting point for the theory is the fact that every time a neuron fires to generate an action potential it also generates a disturbance to the surrounding electromagnetic(EM) field. Information coded in neuron firing patterns is therefore reflected into the brain's EM field. Locating consciousness in the brain's EM field, rather than the neurons, has the advantage of neatly accounting for how information located in millions of neurons scattered throughout the brain can be unified into a single conscious experience (sometimes called the binding problem): the information is unified in the EM field. In this way EM field consciousness can be considered to be 'joined-up information'.

Proving this idea may provide a challenge.

 

[-I-]

aware

To be aware you have to have -I-

 

[baywax]

An, in-depth look at the idea of "Electromagnetic Consciousness" from

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/05/52674

Consciousness Based on Wireless?
Jeffrey Benner 05.21.02 | 2:00 AM
Human consciousness is actually wireless communication between the cells of your brain, according to a professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surrey in Great Britain.

Pulling together research from neuroscience, psychology, physics and biology, Johnjoe McFadden has proposed a radical answer to questions that have vexed philosophers and scientists since Plato's time and, more recently, those on a quest for artificial intelligence: What is consciousness?

How does the brain create intelligent thoughts? Do we have free will?
If proven correct, McFadden's theory could turn philosophy on its head, revolutionize neuroscience, and bring us a step closer to creating lifelike artificial intelligence.

"It gives a physical theory of consciousness that can be tested," he said. "If we can understand it, we can improve it, change it, and even create artificial consciousness."

McFadden, author of Quantum Evolution, argues that human consciousness is actually the brain's electromagnetic field interacting with its circuitry.
Nerve cells firing simultaneously create powerful waves in the field, which in turn cause other neurons to spark. In this way, the electromagnetic field works as a sort of wireless processor, combining the most important information from the hard wiring of the brain into a wireless signal, which is then transmitted back to the brain as conscious thought.

This "field effect," he said, is the piece of the puzzle artificial intelligence experts have missed. "Some have been saying that if computers are powerful enough, they'll become conscious, but it hasn't happened," McFadden said. "It's time they realize there's something missing. You have to design an artificial brain using field effects."

Any related comments on Johnjoe's idea?

 

[King Arthur]

Baywax
Darwin states we evolved, you appear to agree with this.

Awareness started in a life when that life developed, through time and natural selection, some sort of sensor and a recptor to recognise the signal.
So first there was life without awareness, this seems to be what you suggest.

Just one question- Do living things have an identity, before they have awareness?

 

[baywax]

Baywax
Darwin states we evolved, you appear to agree with this.

Awareness started in a life when that life developed, through time and natural selection, some sort of sensor and a recptor to recognise the signal.
So first there was life without awareness, this seems to be what you suggest.

Are you that guy that does the Burger King commercial?

Actually, I didn't say that life was at one time without awareness. I might be tempted to say that photosensitive chemicals don't have a form of awareness but, I am biased in that opinion. Some might think of a photosensitive chemical as having an element of awareness in that it acts in response to a stimulus.

Just one question- Do living things have an identity, before they have awareness?

I think you need to study what the professionals define identity as.

Let me just say one thing about it.

You can't identify identity without awareness.

 

[corra]

if you close your eyes and hear someone behind you, you are aware of them.
(Hearing)

if you put a drop of lemon on your tongue you are aware that it is sour and wet.
(Taste)

if you slap your thigh you are aware of where it hit even if you close your eyes.
(feeling)

if you look around you are aware of the layout of your surroundings and the distances to the diffrent things near you.
(sight)

if you smell smoke you are aware that something is burning.
(smell)

if you slap a cat and see it run away, you are aware that if you hit the cat it will run away.
(prediction and memory)

if someone shouts rape in an alley around a corner from you. you are aware that someone wants attention. your mind remembers the word and you decide whether to run and aid the person who shouted, or run and call for help or ignore the situation.
(sound, language, memory, decision, action)

the more complex the situation the more senses and brain functions you use to become aware of what is going on.

what i am trying to say is that awareness is the brain interpreting the signals your surroundings send you through senses and formulates a response.
awareness is you.

 

[baywax]

Unawares

Of course the other half of awareness is unawareness.

There is much we are unaware of. There may be an unconscious awareness of all stimulus in the universe but our waking selves are unable to process the full gamut of this information.

Does this have to do with the suggestion that most people use only 10% of their brain?

What's the other 90% of the brain doing?

 

[jackle]

If you believe in an afterlife, a definition of awareness beyond biology seems essential. If we declare that only biological life can be aware, we seem to be declaring that there is no afterlife. I'm not at all convinced that machines can be conscious, or that everything is conscious in some sense, but these ideas also challenge the notion that biology is essential to consciousness. Many religions of course, believe in spiritual beings that are conscious, and perhaps a God or gods. The point is that if you have a religous world view, you are likely to assume that consciousness is not limited to biology, and if you assume that religions are generally wrong, it is easy to assume that biology is essential to consciousness. You pretty well conclude whatever you assume from the beginnng.

 

[baywax]

If you believe in an afterlife, a definition of awareness beyond biology seems essential. If we declare that only biological life can be aware, we seem to be declaring that there is no afterlife. I'm not at all convinced that machines can be conscious, or that everything is conscious in some sense, but these ideas also challenge the notion that biology is essential to consciousness. Many religions of course, believe in spiritual beings that are conscious, and perhaps a God or gods. The point is that if you have a religous world view, you are likely to assume that consciousness is not limited to biology, and if you assume that religions are generally wrong, it is easy to assume that biology is essential to consciousness. You pretty well conclude whatever you assume from the beginnng.

Yes. It is opinion that decides what to believe for each individual. But what is the truth? What is the "absolute" truth when it comes to awareness (or conscious awareness)?

I've already pointed out that it is highly probable that because of photosensitivity in chemicals, the first slime molds and protozoa were able to react to the stimulus of light and dark. This can be viewed as an infant form of awareness. From there the senses took shape in each more evolved and complex biological organism.

Do I decide that photosensitivity is awarness? Or, is it a precursor to awareness?

Do we have to have a collection of components to be able to assign awareness to an "event" or to a "collection of molecules" such as an organsim?

Is a Virus aware? Is it considered alive? Viruses show much of the features of living things, reproduction, provision for offspring, sensitivity light and sound

I will now describe and illustrate how the Rife frequency instrument can destroy a virus. I will illustrate how a specific virus can be destroyed by a specific frequency of ultra sound. This ultra sound is generated by the Rife frequency instrument. Note that light carries linear momentum and that when the pulse of light from the Rife frequency instrument is absorbed by the patient's skin layer that skin layer must recoil in the direction of light flow to conserve linear momentum. When the light pulse has ended, the skin relaxes back toward its non light pulse exposure position. In other words, periodic light pulses generate periodic pressure pulses in the patient's skin layer which travel into the patient's body. The Rife frequency instrument converts the patient's entire exposed skin surface into an ultra sound transducer for the generation of ultra sound. Even though the efficiency of ultra sound production is exceedingly low by this method, it is still adequate to kill microbes. As a practical example, Rife would treat his cancer patients using his frequency instrument for three minutes of exposure once every three days. Usually his "terminally" ill cancer patients would be cancer free in about thirty such treatments or less, as was verified in the 1934, 1935, and 1937 test clinical trials carried out by the U.S.C. Medical School Special Medical Research Committee.3 That same committee then suppressed the research results.

http://users.navi.net/~rsc/wade1.htm

and heat etc.

I suggest that we draw the line in the sand that we can see! In other words, there are a few components to awareness, as we know it, that make it "concsious awareness". These are "memory" (and I'm still looking for the article by a neuroscientist who is researching the physiology of memory), there are the "senses" (whether 5 or 6 or 7 or 600 of them) and there is the ability to communicate/observe the effects of awareness.

All the claims of an non-biological "conscsiousness" are based on previously written passages, scriptures, wacko websites and so on. What I must point out is that every thing written and experienced about them has been done so by a biological organism...namely a person with a biological conscious-awareness.

 

[baywax]

Suppliment on memory:

Memory (disambiguation).
In the science of psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and subsequently recall information. Traditional studies of memory began in the realms of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing the memory. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century put memory within the paradigms of cognitive psychology. In recent decades, it has become one of the principal pillars of a new branch of science called cognitive neuroscience, a marriage between cognitive psychology and neuroscience.
There are several ways to classify memories, based on duration, nature and retrieval of information. From an information processing perspective there are three main stages in the formation and retrieval of memory:

• Encoding or registration (processing and combining of received information)
• Storage (creation of a permanent record of the encoded information)
• Retrieval or recall (calling back the stored information in response to some cue for use in a process or activity)

continued... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory

 

[baywax]

And I think another question is going to be "what is awareness of memory?"

Memories are stored yet only a few of them are retrievable. This is constantly "proven" when we see hypnotherapists dragging hidden memories out of unconscious or "hypnotized" patients. When the patient is made aware of the memories that were recently hidden in their subconsciousthey become a little more aware of the mechanisms that make them react to certain stimuli in their environment. What then are these memories that, before hypnosis, were unattainable to the awakened awareness? Are they stored as little chemical packettes? Are they genetically encoded? Or are they chemoelectrical behaviors that only need the correct stimulus to be re-activated? Furthermore, what makes us aware of the a memory? Perhaps we've forgotten the answers to these questions

 

[Werg22]

My thoughts: humans are the only creatures capable of awareness, because we are, until proven wrong, the only creatures capable of communicating with "ourselves"; that is, we are capable to ask ourselves questions and attempt to answer them all with our minds.

 

[baywax]

Memory awareness

"Memory awareness" is the proper term for this sort of study.

There are a lot of articles about memory awareness concerning dementia, mad cow disease and other conditions normally associated with ageing.

There was one article about the apparent evidence of memory awareness in the rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta).

Spontaneous behavior of a rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta) during memory tests suggests memory awareness

Robert R. Hampton, and Benjamin M. Hampstead1
Section on Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, Laboratory of Neuropsychology, Building 49, Room 1B-80, NIMH-NIH, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
Received 6 December 2005; accepted 10 January 2006. Available online 7 February 2006.

Abstract

Humans can predict with some accuracy whether or not they know the correct answer to a question before responding. In some cases the capacity to make such predictions depends on memory awareness, the ability to introspectively discriminate between knowing and not knowing. In this unplanned retrospective analysis of video taped behavior we asked whether a rhesus monkey's apparent frustration predicted his accuracy in a matching-to-sample task on a trial-by-trial basis. The monkey was likely to aggressively strike the computer touchscreen when committing errors, whereas he generally touched the screen more gently when selecting the correct stimulus. This difference in behavior, which occurred before the monkey received feedback on the accuracy of his choice, suggests that he knew whether or not he remembered the correct response.

Judging from the relatively recent date on this research it appears that "memory awareness" is a fledgling study.

The studies about the "dance" behaviors of bees and the fact that the dance diseminates information about the location of food source, weather info, wind speed and who knows what else, to the bees present at the dance suggests that there is a "memory awareness" inherent in bees as well. Otherwise, they wouldn't find the food source etc. after having absorbed the information from the "dancing" bee.