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The Brain Does NOT Create Consciousness


You did? Did I blink and miss it?

Maybe you can for once clearly state your position?

Yep, you sure did. Must a been that Scotch. My position is this. Reality is uncertain at this point. You claimed it was not. I gave you a glaring scientific example of that fact according to theoretical QP/QM that makes it abundantly clear that is not the case in the least. Go back a couple pages and listen to Zeilinger as he hands you your reality's ass on a platter. Start at the 8 minute mark I believe it was.
 
Yep, you sure did. Must a been that Scotch. My position is this. Reality is uncertain at this point. You claimed it was not. I gave you a glaring scientific example of that fact according to theoretical QP/QM that makes it abundantly clear that is not the case in the least. Go back a couple pages and listen to Zeilinger as he hands you your reality's ass on a platter. Start at the 8 minute mark I believe it was.
This is what Zeilinger has said on the matter:

"What this tells us also in a deeper way is that there are situations where what we observe in experiment is not some reality which was there before," Zeilinger explained in his talk at Quantum to Cosmos. "Our experiment creates reality in a sense. What is then reality, really? What are we describing now with physical theories?"
I have little dispute with this statement and I applaud his thrust at trying to understand reality -- his point is what you measure can impact the outcome, and if so, what is real when you're not looking? This is a fantastic question.

What I am saying is:

#1 this doesn't mean "anything is possible"
#2 this doesn't mean reality goes away when you stop looking at it (in fact this is a fundamental problem)
#3 the measurement does not require a sentient observer
 
This is what Zeilinger has said on the matter:

"What this tells us also in a deeper way is that there are situations where what we observe in experiment is not some reality which was there before," Zeilinger explained in his talk at Quantum to Cosmos. "Our experiment creates reality in a sense. What is then reality, really? What are we describing now with physical theories?"
I have little dispute with this statement and I applaud his thrust at trying to understand reality -- his point is what you measure can impact the outcome, and if so, what is real when you're not looking? This is a fantastic question.

What I am saying is:

#1 this doesn't mean "anything is possible"
#2 this doesn't mean reality goes away when you stop looking at it (in fact this is a fundamental problem)
#3 the measurement does not require a sentient observer
This is what Zeilinger has said on the matter:

"What this tells us also in a deeper way is that there are situations where what we observe in experiment is not some reality which was there before," Zeilinger explained in his talk at Quantum to Cosmos. "Our experiment creates reality in a sense. What is then reality, really? What are we describing now with physical theories?"
I have little dispute with this statement and I applaud his thrust at trying to understand reality -- his point is what you measure can impact the outcome, and if so, what is real when you're not looking? This is a fantastic question.

What I am saying is:

#1 this doesn't mean "anything is possible"
#2 this doesn't mean reality goes away when you stop looking at it (in fact this is a fundamental problem)
#3 the measurement does not require a sentient observer


My friend, we *have* arrived.:) This is my only point with respect to reality, when I stated that it was up for grabs. Not certainly in some cartoonish outland wherein one can do or be anything one's blessed little new age heart can handle, albeit a little Gnosticism is something that IMO we could all profit by.

My greatest curiosity lies is the nature of that which never deviates from a natural unity. Something has to be seamless to be comprehensible. A solid platform on which we can build a progressively effected, working technical understanding, of the multiplicity that our specie's relationship to consciousness represents.

I mentioned Jaynes earlier, a truly great mind from the past, but let me introduce you to who *will* change the face of of contemporary consciousness research and the relationship that psychical process represents to it. Within his amazing new book he provides the groundwork for just such aforementioned platform. I don't doubt for a second that you already know who I am going to recommend Marduk, it's just that I'm really excited about this man's life work, and I am sure there will be much more to come.

James C. Carpenter | First Sight
 
I just spent an hour reading sections of this book available at amazon and it is indeed a major contribution to psychology, parapsychology, and consciousness studies. It's on my wish list for now in the hope that it's available soon in paperback. I'm glad you called attention to the book here.
 
Requiring specific examples and citations to show that consciousness is an emergent property of a functioning brain is ludicrous because it's blatantly self-evident.

So when you wrote above that

"consciousness may not be material, but there's little reason to presume it's not physical, and virtually all the evidence suggests that it is an emergent property of brain function"

you were talking about all the 'virtual' evidence that exists self-evidently rather than about actual scientific evidence supporting the claim that consciousness is produced by brain function. Just want to get that straight.


The Brain Does NOT Create Consciousness | The Paracast Community Forums

 
This is what Zeilinger has said on the matter:

"What this tells us also in a deeper way is that there are situations where what we observe in experiment is not some reality which was there before," Zeilinger explained in his talk at Quantum to Cosmos. "Our experiment creates reality in a sense. What is then reality, really? What are we describing now with physical theories?"
I have little dispute with this statement and I applaud his thrust at trying to understand reality -- his point is what you measure can impact the outcome, and if so, what is real when you're not looking? This is a fantastic question.

What I am saying is:

#1 this doesn't mean "anything is possible"
#2 this doesn't mean reality goes away when you stop looking at it (in fact this is a fundamental problem)
#3 the measurement does not require a sentient observer

Marduk, do you have a link to the source of your quotation from Zeilinger or to a podcast of the lecture (or perhaps a paper) in which he said it? Thanks.
 
So ... you were talking about all the 'virtual' evidence that exists self-evidently rather than about actual scientific evidence supporting the claim that consciousness is produced by brain function. Just want to get that straight.

Unfortunately, you haven't got it straight. The use of the word "virtually" was used synonymously with, "in effect even if not in fact", or to elaborate, despite the fact that for the reasons I stated, the evidence is blatantly obvious ( self-evident ), there may be some other evidence ( perhaps not so self-evident ), that I am not aware of that contradicts my position, which is why I asked you to produce such evidence. Until such evidence is made available, there's insufficient reason to change my position. And just a reminder that I've looked at a lot of claims and papers and videos involving NDEs, mystical beliefs, supernatural beliefs, religious beliefs, and so on, including the dozens alluded to or linked to here on the forum, and none of them contain such evidence.

So where does this leave us with respect to the question of consciousness? While it seems that invoking emergence is the most reasonable avenue to pursue, it doesn't really explain in detail how it happens. We can almost substitute the word emergence for "magic" and we'd be about as far ahead as we were before. This doesn't mean we're no longer reasonably sure the brain is responsible. But we still have a long ways to go before we can call emergence a substantial explanation. That is why I'm not prepared to assume that an AI based on current CPU wafer technology will produce consciousness.
 
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[Q
I googled Zeilinger and the name of the conference and found it here:


This is what Zeilinger has said on the matter:

"What this tells us also in a deeper way is that there are situations where what we observe in experiment is not some reality which was there before," Zeilinger explained in his talk at Quantum to Cosmos. "Our experiment creates reality in a sense. What is then reality, really? What are we describing now with physical theories?"
I have little dispute with this statement and I applaud his thrust at trying to understand reality -- his point is what you measure can impact the outcome, and if so, what is real when you're not looking? This is a fantastic question.

What I am saying is:

#1 this doesn't mean "anything is possible"
#2 this doesn't mean reality goes away when you stop looking at it (in fact this is a fundamental problem)
#3 the measurement does not require a sentient observer

Love this stuff! :)

Love what is said about science, too. (In the video clip).
 
i mean the implications of what this neuroscientist says are amazing, particularly if we apply this to sensory" illusionary effects" of hypnotic states, linguistic programming and drugs where independently each of the effects offers you a certain level of self awareness of the effects of the "note playing" which normally would not be there as described in the cases in the vid. it makes me consider a bio feed back loop and a witness's reaction to these in paranormal type cases. It makes me think of an external agency(a machine, a natural magnetic anomaly, heightened human functions etc..) effecting electrical brain patterns to create repeatable hallucinations or "experiences". maybe a phantom or a ghostly black image is a ghost in the brain that manifests itself through this kind of "sensory application", wether it exists as a state that we created or is an external agency maybe neither here nor there as our reaction to it would be the same if not conscious of it or in other words "a choice of belief", which draws on the bicameralism of the Ancient Civilisations ideas, of religion, stone circles, directed frequency machines, unintentional side effects of technology and pharmaceuticals, color blindness, speaking to ones Id, realtime awake dream state interaction or a switching of dream interaction, blah blah blah... So instead of an internalised event what if it was localised geographically? So now my thing is an external source that effects the brain that brings into being shared illusionary states that could possibly be interacted with and what if this source effected everyone, in effect we all walked around the world communicating with these phantom brain creations, all sharing the same illusions. what if ancient civilisation in all continents shared a common physical "node/power switch transmitter" that effected the population in that area offering this hallucinatory communication... ok I've gone of into some weird shit.. I'm not making much sense, just dashing it out.. sorry.
 
Unfortunately, you haven't got it straight. The use of the word "virtually" was used synonymously with, "in effect even if not in fact", or to elaborate, despite the fact that for the reasons I stated, the evidence is blatantly obvious ( self-evident ), there may be some other evidence ( perhaps not so self-evident ), that I am not aware of that contradicts my position, which is why I asked you to produce such evidence. Until such evidence is made available, there's insufficient reason to change my position. And just a reminder that I've looked at a lot of claims and papers and videos involving NDEs, mystical beliefs, supernatural beliefs, religious beliefs, and so on, including the dozens alluded to or linked to here on the forum, and none of them contain such evidence.

So where does this leave us with respect to the question of consciousness? While it seems that invoking emergence is the most reasonable avenue to pursue, it doesn't really explain in detail how it happens. We can almost substitute the word emergence for "magic" and we'd be about as far ahead as we were before. This doesn't mean we're no longer reasonably sure the brain is responsible. But we still have a long ways to go before we can call emergence a substantial explanation. That is why I'm not prepared to assume that an AI based on current CPU wafer technology will produce consciousness.

"emergence " is really no explanation at all, however, this is a very strong start IMO. It makes explainable and demonstrates the connection or emergence of consciousness based on our indigenous relationship to it as a species. Our cognitive facility of the brain provides a natural parapsychological orientation in which we "attract" consciousness and become temporally adjusted to as much environmentally. IMO, this is the observer effect. James C. Carpenter | First Sight

We are a LONG way off from AI, let alone AC. IMO. The responsible technology for what are UFOs *is* AC, with the occupants being cellular AI. Consciousness is the ordering agent that holds the fabricate of space time together according to our cognitive relationship to it. It is the reason we as a species experience natural relativity within the universe as we do.
 
Yep, you sure did. Must a been that Scotch. My position is this. Reality is uncertain at this point. You claimed it was not. I gave you a glaring scientific example of that fact according to theoretical QP/QM that makes it abundantly clear that is not the case in the least. Go back a couple pages and listen to Zeilinger as he hands you your reality's ass on a platter. Start at the 8 minute mark I believe it was.
Yeah, I'm with Marduk. I can't find it either.
 
Yeah, I'm with Marduk. I can't find it either.

What part don't you understand about the question he suggestively asks: "So we can ask the questions, What is reality?"

Reality = That which is presently in the process of being understood and defined. We do not at this time have that understanding. Apart from our neural reaction to it and our cognitive ability to determine (decode) our own sentient experience, reality is uncertain. What is uncertain about this uncertainty?
 
What part don't you understand about the question he suggestively asks: "So we can ask the questions, What is reality?"

Reality = That which is presently in the process of being understood and defined. We do not at this time have that understanding. Apart from our neural reaction to it and our cognitive ability to determine (decode) our own sentient experience, reality is uncertain. What is uncertain about this uncertainty?

Well, I don't know. Just because the quantum mechanical description of nature gets a little counter intuitive, it doesn't mean all bets are off. There has been lots of abuse of quantum mechanics and its various interpretations over the years by people who mistakenly believe that it somehow supports their woo woo belief systems. Not at all true, in fact. We wouldn't even know about this if we didn't have a good working definition reality that allows us to do careful science. The fact that we can verify our calculations to many decimal places is strong evidence that what we call reality is about as real as it gets.
 
Well, I don't know. Just because the quantum mechanical description of nature gets a little counter intuitive, it doesn't mean all bets are off. 1) There has been lots of abuse of quantum mechanics and its various interpretations over the years by people who mistakenly believe that it somehow supports their woo woo belief systems. Not at all true, in fact. We wouldn't even know about this if we didn't have a good working definition reality that allows us to do careful science. 2) The fact that we can verify our calculations to many decimal places is strong evidence that what we call reality is about as real as it gets.

1) That may be common place, however there has been NO such "woo woo" here that I am aware of. We are simply observing the very real and scientific understanding that theoretical QM/QP has thus far afforded some of it's best known researchers.

2) Wrong IMO. We do not have a solid or "working" understanding of what is reality, however, we are getting there. What we have is a very solid working definition of materialism, or what is the material universe. That means a great deal because it affords us complete accuracy with which to measure and calculate the material universe and all it contains. However, this is not reality. This is what the aforementioned studies in theoretical QM/QP has clearly shown.
 
"emergence " is really no explanation at all, however, this is a very strong start IMO. It makes explainable and demonstrates the connection or emergence of consciousness based on our indigenous relationship to it as a species. Our cognitive facility of the brain provides a natural parapsychological orientation in which we "attract" consciousness and become temporally adjusted to as much environmentally. IMO, this is the observer effect. James C. Carpenter | First Sight
http://firstsightbook.com/wp/?tag=james-carpenter

For clarification, is the underscored your own statement or a paraphrase of a statement made by Carpenter? (it doesn't seem that the whole paragraph is a direct quote) If it's your statement, Jeff, would you clarify what you mean by "we 'attract' consciousness"? Do you mean 'consciousness' there as a general property of the environment or that we and other conscious beings are attracted to one another in the exchange of information between us?

We are a LONG way off from AI, let alone AC. IMO. The responsible technology for what are UFOs *is* AC, with the occupants being cellular AI. Consciousness is the ordering agent that holds the fabricate of space time together according to our cognitive relationship to it. It is the reason we as a species experience natural relativity within the universe as we do.

What does 'AC' refer to? Thanks.
 
i mean the implications of what this neuroscientist says are amazing, particularly if we apply this to sensory" illusionary effects" of hypnotic states, linguistic programming and drugs where independently each of the effects offers you a certain level of self awareness of the effects of the "note playing" which normally would not be there as described in the cases in the vid. it makes me consider a bio feed back loop and a witness's reaction to these in paranormal type cases. It makes me think of an external agency(a machine, a natural magnetic anomaly, heightened human functions etc..) effecting electrical brain patterns to create repeatable hallucinations or "experiences". maybe a phantom or a ghostly black image is a ghost in the brain that manifests itself through this kind of "sensory application", wether it exists as a state that we created or is an external agency maybe neither here nor there as our reaction to it would be the same if not conscious of it or in other words "a choice of belief", which draws on the bicameralism of the Ancient Civilisations ideas, of religion, stone circles, directed frequency machines, unintentional side effects of technology and pharmaceuticals, color blindness, speaking to ones Id, realtime awake dream state interaction or a switching of dream interaction, blah blah blah... So instead of an internalised event what if it was localised geographically? So now my thing is an external source that effects the brain that brings into being shared illusionary states that could possibly be interacted with and what if this source effected everyone, in effect we all walked around the world communicating with these phantom brain creations, all sharing the same illusions. what if ancient civilisation in all continents shared a common physical "node/power switch transmitter" that effected the population in that area offering this hallucinatory communication... ok I've gone of into some weird shit.. I'm not making much sense, just dashing it out.. sorry.

A very interesting post, nameless. Re the underscored portion, I gather you mean intentional interference with/manipulation of our species by some outside agency (outside nature as we have evolved in it) that seeks for some reason to confuse our normal perceptions through illusions broadcast to our brains (as receptors of information). Is that an accurate summary?
 
For clarification, is the underscored your own statement or a paraphrase of a statement made by Carpenter? (it doesn't seem that the whole paragraph is a direct quote) If it's your statement, Jeff, would you clarify what you mean by "we 'attract' consciousness"? Do you mean 'consciousness' there as a general property of the environment or that we and other conscious beings are attracted to one another in the exchange of information between us?

It is my own statement. What I am referring to is an attraction process much like would be the case with particle charge interactions. This has NOTHING, and I thoroughly and completely repeat, NOTHING, to do with "the law of attraction" which is total BS. This process or system are in no way definitively understood at this time. The parapsychological aspect of the consideration is a great model primer. It serves to render intuition and foresight as being the cognitive part of us that anticipates consciousness and orientates consciousness experience temporally. This is a fun article by whom I feel to be a rather balanced individual in this area of interest we call the paranormal. It will introduce you to several VERY key theoretical ideas and studies. It is only meant as a surface scratcher. Consciousness and the Zero Point Field: Are Akashic Records Real? | PARANORMAL PEOPLE



What does 'AC' refer to? Thanks.

Artificial Consciousness.
 
Let's use modern computers as a metaphor. Not that I'm positing that we're Turing machines (or that we're not).

The brain would be the hardware. The processors, wires, links to the power supply.

The codified rules such has how you see, language, instinct, etc would be the software. The wrinkle would be that the software can modify itself -- think a computer that can write new subroutines to improve it's abilities, learn new things, pattern match the environment,etc. There would be two kinds of software -- hardcoded (keeping your heart breathing, etc) and softcoded (modifiable at run time).

Neither of these are conscious on their own.

What I'm positing is the act of the mental software while being executed in the hardware is consciousness. The process itself.

This is why consciousness goes away when you turn off the brain, and why it may never come back the same even if you turn it back on.

You've described very clearly the essentials of a widely held contemporary hypothesis about what consciousness is. What you refer to as "the act of the mental software" seems to me, however, to be "the act of the mind in finding what will suffice" (in the words of Wallace Stevens, from the poem copied below) -- and mind operates at the level of higher-order thought as demonstrated in philosophy, science, and other disciplines. In my own experience, thinking (even about complex philosophical issues) continues even in dreaming, a state in which the subconscious is generally hypothesized to produce the content (imagery, narrative, feeling, etc). James Carpenter, in First Sight: ESP and Parapsychology in Everyday Life (called to our attention yesterday by Jeff) sees the subconscious as also capable of thinking.

If so, consciousness is a complex of activity operating at various levels, including the personal subconscious, the collective unconscious, and the 'waking' state we (generally) inhabit in ordinary daytime awareness of our embodied existence. My point is that consciousness is not a simple 'on or off' phenomenon but includes a wider, more global, and deeper connection with the world in which we find ourselves existing, a connection on many levels with 'information' received by us on many levels and in distinctive ways.

For example, what the collective unconscious gathers and endows us with is information that has been received and retained from far back in our own evolution (some of which has been made comprehensible by Jung). So consciousness, both active and latent or subliminal, seems to me to function on the basis of innumerable and various acts of engagement with something beyond itself -- with the actual, palpable natural world (and in time the cultural worlds) in which we have evolved. This is a phenomenological perspective on human experience in a real world in which consciousness has entered the scene relatively recently, evolving from protoconscious exchanges of information in physical systems beginning at the quantum level (or perhaps at a still lower substrate), evolving to the level of higher-order thought -- mind -- in which we ask increasingly complex questions about the nature of what-is and, as a collective working on the same philosophical and scientific problems, develop increasingly refined understandings of the nature of reality. We think "new thoughts" as you observed in your post quoted above, and we think them on the basis of deeper and deeper knowledge of the world (and about ourselves) reached through our questions {M-P would say our 'interrogations'} of nature and 'reality'.

None of that could have happened {and been retained in memory at various levels of 'consciousness') if we did not experience the world directly. It is out of that direct contact, that embeddedness in nature contemplated by embodied minds, that we ask the questions that yield answers on the basis of which we claim knowledge about the world, and about ourselves (though we are less advanced at this point in understanding what we are).

Sorry for that lengthy response from the stream of my own consciousness. You also stated at the end of your post that

This is why consciousness goes away when you turn off the brain, and why it may never come back the same even if you turn it back on.

The marvel is that it usually does 'come back the same', as in recovery from anesthesia and coma and 'brain death' in some medical crises. We are almost instantly restored to the memories that are vivid and coherent traces of our own experiences in the world to date, many of which are not our 'own' memories but those of past lives we recall in hypnotic states, and of the collective struggle to make sense of the world recorded in our collective unconscious. Hegel referred to consciousness as 'spirit' (in The Phenomenology of Spirit [Geist]). Wallace Stevens concludes in one of his phenomenological poems that "the spirit comes from the body of the world." In phenomenological philosophy, consciousness and mind are filled with the world. In recent thinking in science and consciousness studies, consciousness and mind might express nature's deep interactive informational structure, which we alike embody and express as a result of our entanglement in the information that constitutes the world. Thus theories that consciousness is nothing more than software in the brain seem to me to be incommensureable with the world as we experience it and think it at many levels of 'consciousness'.
 
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