Can You Find Consciousness In The Brain?
Posted by MindScape at 14:27, 25 Feb 2010MOST neuroscientists, philosophers of the mind and science journalists feel the time is near when we will be able to explain the mystery of human consciousness in terms of the activity of the brain. There is, however, a vocal minority of neurosceptics who contest this orthodoxy. Among them are those who focus on claims neuroscience makes about the preciseness of correlations between indirectly observed neural activity and different mental functions, states or experiences.
This was well captured in a 2009 article in Perspectives on Psychological Science by Harold Pashler from the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues, that argued: “…these correlations are higher than should be expected given the (evidently limited) reliability of both fMRI and personality measures. The high correlations are all the more puzzling because method sections rarely contain much detail about how the correlations were obtained.”
Read the full article at http://www.brainwaving.com/2010/02/23/ca...
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22 November 2004
2 weeks 12 hours
I predict that this debate, whether human consciousness is located entirely in the brain, will not end any time soon.
Let's assume for the moment that someone builds an artificial, non-biologic brain that exhibits all the signs of consciousness. And that the people who build this know exactly how this artificial consciousness works, which is not the same things as building it.
That would still not end the debate about the human brain.
I don't think neuroscientists are anywhere close to explaining consciousness. Showing activity in certain areas when the brain does certain things is a far cry from understanding how it does them.
So I don't know where the introductory statement in your post comes from (there is that sentiment in the public press, yes), but I don't think we are anywhere close.
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We are the cat.
21 February 2009
1 day 3 hours
MOST neuroscientists, philosophers of the mind and science journalists feel the time is near
Perhaps a little overoptimistic, then again if they do maybe they know more than we do. I would guess though that it depends on who finds the answer satisfying.
The point about high correlation’s is very interesting.
Does anyone think there might be a big problem between objective and subjective understanding? Pick any object you care to that you feel you understand, can you understand it subjectively? If not is the subjective standard different, too high, or just not even real?
With the main article:
I find myself wondering, if researchers do find correlation between brain activity and consciousness, even if unable to describe perfectly what is occurring, wouldn't this still count as evidence towards a materialistic theory, it surely couldn't hurt it. Shouldn't the opposite be true though, if consciousness is not occurring in the brain then shouldn't they fail to find a connection? And what about the brain as a receptor, wouldn't we see consciousness occurring in it anyway?
The rest of the article makes some quite silly claims. Almost like the author cannot tell the difference between a thing existing and the word for the thing existing, or the experience of the thing existing.
Mount Everest exists in 3 different ways. My perception of it, a Sherpa's, and the mountain itself. It exists outside of my perception and experience. As it did when Hillary and co climbed it in 1953 before i was born. The Himalayas are some 25-70 million years old depending on which bit you pick. It exists outside of human consciousness. Our conscious experience of it no more matters to it than that of the early mammals climbing it when it was just a hill.
The author is on the verge of claiming that consciousness is a prerequisite of any thing, including understanding of it, so we cannot understand consciousness because consciousness is a pre-requisite of the understanding, such as the H2O example. Perhaps OK if everything is consciousness, but problematical if otherwise.
insuperable problem of explaining how intracranial nerve impulses, which are material events, could “reach out” to extracranial objects in order to be “of” or “about” them. Straightforward physical causation explains how light from an object brings about events in the occipital cortex. No such explanation is available as to how those
neural events are “about” the physical object. Biophysical science explains how the light gets in but not how the gaze looks out.
Insuperable?! Really! That is the whole problem anyway, so to say it is insuperable because we don't yet have an answer is silly. You need an answer that says it is insuperable.
But when I “remember”, I explicitly reach out of the present to something that is explicitly past. A synapse, being a physical structure, does not have anything other than its present state. It does not, as you and I do, reach temporally upstream
I think this is the craziest thing i have read all day. How does a computer 'remember'? Or a video-camera storing information on a magnetic film, or a camera. We have not built time machines reaching temporally upstream to acquire data. Neurones don't need to either. They would just have to store data and retrieve it somehow. How is the question, if they cannot, and we should not expect them to if the brain is a soul-receiver then so be it, but we don't need to say that theories of consciousness must be false since neurones can't travel through time.
16 August 2007
1 year 10 weeks
Is nothing but an infinitely indexed collective of knowledge the neural network subjectively operates on a temporal state where the very sophistication sustaining reality, builds upon itself.
A quantum projection from the occult.
1 May 2004
2 days 5 hours
when they are capable of measuring thought then they can measure the timelapse between the thought and the brain activity. This, ofcorse would be so minute that the equipment would have to be extremely sensitive.
If the thought comes first then the problem is solved.
"Life can be whatever you want it to be, as long as you do what your told."
LRF.
22 November 2004
2 weeks 12 hours
Indeed, that would be sufficient evidence that the thought comes from outside.
If it comes later, we still don't know - the preceding brain activity could still be just antenna stuff.
And while we are proposing tricky measurements, something I'm not sure of:
when talking about transfer of thoughts in things like telepathy, or global consciousness , or group conciousness, it is typically assumed that this transfer is extremely fast. Often it is assumed that it is instantaneous, no delay at all.
Why is that? Why can't it be slow?
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We are the cat.
1 May 2004
2 days 5 hours
and one I have pondered for a long time. If we look at stuff like "the secrete" and channelings like Abraham and Seth, then our thoughts exist everywhere at the same time. In other words, there does not exist time space in that realm.
Our thoughts that drive our actions in this 3 dimensional time space existence are outside this very existence.
A bit hard to get your head around this concept.
We measure most things in time, one way or the other, so if time did not exist, could we measure anything?
"Life can be whatever you want it to be, as long as you do what your told."
LRF.
21 February 2009
1 day 3 hours
I really like these ideas at the moment. They seem a more sensible way of incorporating the material world science explorers and the spiritual one stereotyped by most peoples interpretation of it.
I especially like the idea that consciousness underlies everything, even to the point where matter becomes some sort of energy extension/interface/eruption of consciousness. This would explain much of the spiritual/paranormal in relation to the material.
Personally i also enjoy the material notion of self in the brain. If the brain is building our notion of self and our intuitive dimensionalisation of space and time then it is entirely free to do what it wants, perhaps up to the limit of survival and evolution.
Interestingly this still wouldn't affect the universal consciousness idea too much as our simulated selfs 'float' as simulations in the matter born from underlying consciousness. Perhaps when we die the simulations of our brains end and energy of underlying consciousness returns carrying with it some part of the simulation of self. As if brain imparted pattern on underlying universal structure.
If this was the case then i think the concept of consciousness could do with a little expansion as it would surely be quite different than anything we have so far come up with.
1 May 2004
2 days 5 hours
well, matter is energy. Science has defined the "atom" but not what gives it form or holds it in shape. It's fine to explain quarks, nutrons, electrons and define nucleus and orbiting electrons but what is creating this form. There has to be a form of energy at play here. This energy may be the answer to our conciousness. What defines the smallest and the lagest objects we know of could be the very energy that defines us as separate but connected to all that is, was and maybe.
Some lines of thought say that even an atom displays a sought of consiousness. Cells have now been identified as having a choice, or an oportunity not to do what is expected of them. This could mean a consiousness of some degree.
If our thoughts are the very stuff that underlies matter in the universe then we could very well create what we experience simply by thinking of it a certain way.
I think a comment in another thread here mentions the "soup" of conciousness as in the global mix. If time is not a boundery then the soup can only get denser as we evolve which in turn would give more inspiration to minds tuned into it. The Akashic records or similar would be ever expanding as we move forward as a species. This could explain why we are not chipping flint anymore for survival.
A species "inteligents" as it were, ever expanding and gaining momuntum as we learn more of our surroundings.
This could allow the theory of a global and even a universal conciousness as in "god"(for the want of a better word)that is in play with all matter on every level. We then are made in the form of "god" because we, as a higher conciousness than an atom we have the ability to manipulate matter with our thoughts. Create our own reality in conjunction with all others we share this time with.
This then would put our conciousness outside of the induvidual, material self but induvidual in the mix.
This also could explain NDE's and other paranormal experiences. This would also explain reincarnation and many other unexplained phonomina like Edgar Cayce.
But our interpretation through our 3 dimensional mind is how we know and see ourselves and others now and here.
I don't think science will catch up to this idea for a very long time. But a breakthrough could be just around the corner.
Great subject matter for many dicussions.
"Life can be whatever you want it to be, as long as you do what your told."
LRF.
22 November 2004
2 weeks 12 hours
The current thinking in physics is pretty much that, matter is energy.
I'm still not sure about the speed of consciousness though. I understand all these constructions with external dimensions and such things, and the that the concept of time does not (necessarily) apply in those cases.
But that only means that consciousness could manifest itself as having a speed which is not related to distance in the usual way we observe here. It doesn't mean that it has to manifest itself as being particularly fast.
It might appear to go backwards in time, meaning that the effects of a thought happen before the thought.
It also might appear to be very slow, such that a thought about some physical arrangement of objects in our universe happen long after all those objects are gone.
Or it might be that the thought appears persistent, when the objects and their arrangement is not. Which is where an eternal come, or the appearance of one.
Or it might be that the external dimensions don't map consistently to our universe, that the relationship is chaotic. Which would explain why the observations of the universal consciousness are unreliable.
We could construct these things any way we want of course. My question was why is there a tendency to assume that the speed of thought appears fast in our universe.
I can feel the concept of a science fiction story approaching :)
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We are the cat.