Team Effort

[scameter]

I have been thinking about consciousness a little lately. And, I have come to an unusual speculation: what if consciousness isn't a specific, single entity within our without our brains. What if it is the collective whole working machine of the various parts of our brain? What if, through all the mechanisms in our mind, such as emotion, volition, knowledge, memory, so forth, combined, we are able to have things such as realization, free will, morality, imagination, and many other things usually attributed to consciousness? If this is true, questions still of course remain; how are we the only ones that our collective brain parts accumulate to form consciousness, whereas no other animal's does? How can our collective parts deterministically form things such as free will and imagination, specifcially? But, that is the joy of philosophy, and discussion. :)

[Kether]

About the subtitle of this thread, 'consciousness is the sum of its parts', do you mean this in the context of 'the whole is more than the sum of its parts' - are you saying that consciousness is not more than the sum of its parts? If you are, then that would be a very uncharacteristic statement.
I have come to an unusual speculation: what if consciousness isn't a specific, single entity within our without our brains. What if it is the collective whole working machine of the various parts of our brain?
That's not such an unusual speculation; I would go so far as to say it was orthodox among neuroscientists, though my knowledge on the subject is scant.

Something I would like to add to the discussion: most areas of the brain perform at least some operations that are outside the control of consciousness, like the beating of our hearts; much, indeed most, of the brain is unconscious. However, the product of many of these operations is a part of conscious experience. For instance, the visual cortex adds colour to images unconsciously - we do not consciously experience this process taking place - but the output of this process is conscious. This is an example of how the result of an unconscious process results in an 'input' to Mind, the ghost in the machine; an example of an 'output' of it that takes the same form is muscular control - we are not aware of the complex fine motor control involved in grasping, but we still control the process as a whole, and experience it as a mental sense-datum.

[TruthSeeker]

What if it is the collective whole working machine of the various parts of our brain?
You may be reminded that you actually have memories...
Some of which may be forgotten...

So... imagine you don't remember some memory. Somthing that you see suddenly triggers your memory and you get it back.

What was your consciousness before the memory? What was it before?

What about how many things you can think of at the same time? Can you think about everything at the same time? Where is your consciousness when you focus on a single thought? Does it move when you change your throught into something else- specially completely unrelated?

What is the relationship between consciousness and awareness?

I think this is enough questioning for now.... :D

[scameter]

About the subtitle of this thread, 'consciousness is the sum of its parts', do you mean this in the context of 'the whole is more than the sum of its parts' - are you saying that consciousness is not more than the sum of its parts? If you are, then that would be a very uncharacteristic statement.

Not at all. I mean to say that consciousness is the sum of it's parts, the whole collection of it's within aspects; although I do think the whole, consciousness, is greater than any of it's parts singularly, I think it requires it's parts to be whole and indeed to be consciousness.

Something I would like to add to the discussion: most areas of the brain perform at least some operations that are outside the control of consciousness, like the beating of our hearts; much, indeed most, of the brain is unconscious. However, the product of many of these operations is a part of conscious experience.

Ah yes, I forgot about that. Thank you for bringing that into the conversation. On the subject, I would say that indeed much of the brain is unconscious; but look at the word it's self, 'unconscious'; it is consciousness, but we are simply not conscious/aware of it. I think that consicousness encompasses more than just what we are aware of; I think it is the conscious, unconsicous, and subconscious; all functions and aspects of our brain compiled into consciousness to create mind. And, as you exemplified about the colour, I think much of our unconscious aspect is in supplementation to our consciousness; colour isn't necessary, for it isn't in all animals, yet our unconscious makes it, I believe simply because it is advanced enough to, and our conscious experiences it.

What was your consciousness before the memory? What was it before?

<_< I'm sorry, I don't really see what you mean. If a memory can be triggered and reactivated, it was never lost; it simply was no longer in regular focus. If it is apart of the brain, it is apart of consciousness.

What about how many things you can think of at the same time? Can you think about everything at the same time?

No, I believe you can only focus consciously on one thing at a time. Consciously.

What is the relationship between consciousness and awareness?

Consciousness receives awareness from the senses, and from insight.

[TruthSeeker]

I'm sorry, I don't really see what you mean. If a memory can be triggered and reactivated, it was never lost; it simply was no longer in regular focus. If it is apart of the brain, it is apart of consciousness.
What was your perception?

No, I believe you can only focus consciously on one thing at a time. Consciously.
So... would your consciousness change as you go? Would you be a different person when yoyu think of something else?

Consciousness receives awareness from the senses, and from insight.
Is there consciousness without awareness?
Is there awareness without consciousness?

[scameter]

What was your perception?

Of what?

So... would your consciousness change as you go? Would you be a different person when yoyu think of something else?

No, because your consciousness wouldn't really change besides gaining memory; your focus would only redirect.

Is there consciousness without awareness?
Is there awareness without consciousness?

No, with either. Although, I do think that everything with a brain has consciousness; it's just that most things don't have awareness with consciousness. So I suppose actually, it is possible to only have one, but with awareness you must have consciousness, and humans always have both.

[buzzlightyear1982]

It is my personal belief that if you can't get a grip on a subject than you simple look at it from another perspective. The conscious mind is an difficult topic to get a good grasp of so consider the following if you will. These are examples of some roots of consciousness within the wrld. Simple put folklore etc...because befor you can come to any conclusion you first must understand the way other people thinkB)

Other Worlds
"Scholars, such as F. W. H. Myers (author of Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death), who have attempted to catalog the range of psychic experiences, maintain that there is a continuous spectrum of experiences leading from common dream states to heightened creativity to ostensibly spiritualistic and supernatural manifestations of a bizarre nature. Such a spectrum inevitably suggests a relationship between ostensible psychic contact with higher forms of intelligence and ostensible contact with intelligences from other planets or other dimensions of time and space. Much of this exploration will be seen to overlap with the field of UFOlogy -- the controversial study of unidentified flying objects -- and SETI the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In fact, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine if any of the purported contactee claims in these areas are anything other than folklore. Even in those rare cases which seem to produce some independent physical suggestion of extraterrestrial visitations via spacecraft the mythological and archetypal process is also very active. For example, the Swedish seer, Emmanual Swedenborg, whose descriptions of angels have been previously quoted, also claimed to have engaged in extensive psychic communication with inhabitants of other planets. His descriptions certainly imply some sort of direct experience: The inhabitants of the Moon are small, like children of six or seven years old; at the same time, they have the strength of men like ourselves. Their voices roll like thunder, and the sound proceeds from the belly, because the Moon is in quite a different atmosphere from the other planets. The role of imagination in producing such descriptions cannot be denied. Swedenborg himself was a very convincing individual -- and a great scientist in his own day. In spite of its obvious inconsistencies with known physical facts (i.e., the moon has no atmosphere), I sometimes find myself wanting to believe in the validity, on some level, of claims such as these. Self-discipline demands that such yearnings be subjected to and augmented by rational analysis. And I am not alone. It is a human dilemma -- caught as we are between the alienation of existential separation and the promise of spiritual unity. "

The Fatima Appearances
"The 1917 appearances of "the Virgin Mary" at Fatima, Portugal, seems to bear characteristics of a psychically triggered UFO manifestation. Three young children, Lucia dos Santos, Francisco Marto and his sister Jacinta, figure in this series of extraordinary events. According to their testimony, they were first visited by an angel who asked them to pray. In May, 1917, they were visited by the figure of a lady who spoke to them and told them to return to the same field on the thirteenth of each month for more messages. Each month more and more people gathered with them to behold the appearances. Many witnesses noted strange lights and sounds, but only the children reported actual contact with the radiant Lady. The children claimed to receive much information that was passed on to Roman Catholic Church officials, with instructions it be released to the public in 1960. In October, so many people were aware of the phenomena that over 50,000 had gathered at the Cova da Iria to witness the event. Much to the delight of freethinking skeptics, it was raining that day. The sky was completely overcast. Some spectators saw a column of blue smoke in the vicinity of the children that appeared and disappeared three times. Then suddenly the rain ceased and through the clouds was seen a radiant disk, not the sun, spinning, and throwing off fantastic streamers of light-a constantly changing montage of red, violet, blue, yellow, and white. This continued for about four minutes. Then the disk advanced toward the earth until it was just over the crowd. The heat was enormous and many were terrified the end of the world had come. When it finally retreated into the sky, the shaken masses realized that their clothes and the ground were completely dry--although they had been soaked to the skin a few minutes before. On October 1930, after eight years of investigation, the Catholic Church announced that the apparitions seen had been genuine visitations of the Virgin Mary. However, for its own reasons, the Church has decided not to publish the prophecies given to the children. More recently, in 1968, a series of apparitions, seemingly of the Virgin Mary, appeared above the roof of a Coptic Orthodox Church in Zeitoun, Egypt, a suburb north of Cairo. For a period of several months, thousands of people observed and photographed these images. To this day, no rational explanations have been offered for the phenomena. Hundreds of spontaneous healings were reported at the site which were investigated by a commission of medical doctors headed by Dr. Shafik Abd El Malik of Ain Shams University. The apparitions ceased to appear only after the Egyptian government cordoned off the area and began selling tickets to the throngs who had come to observe the phenomena. "

The Strange Case of Dr. X
"Oddly enough, many reported UFO sightings and contacts involve incidences of what could be called paraconceptual healing. A prime example is "The Strange Case of Dr. X" which was reported by the French scientist Aime Michel in Flying Saucer Review in 1969. "Dr. X," is the pseudonym for a well-known and respected physician who holds an important official position in southeast France. Early one morning in November 1968, the doctor was awakened by the cries of his fourteen month old son. He got up painfully, due to an injury he had received a few days earlier while chopping wood, and found the baby pointing toward light flashes coming in through the shuttered window. Opening a large window, Dr. X observed two horizontal, disk-shaped objects that were silvery white on top and bright red underneath. The flashes were caused by a sudden burst of light between the two disks with a periodicity close to one second. As the doctor watched these disks they approached him and actually seemed to merge so there was only one disk from which emanated a single beam of white light. Then the disk began to flip from a horizontal to a vertical position, so it was seen as a circle standing on its edge. The beam of light came to illuminate the front of Dr. X's house and shone directly into his face. At that moment a loud sound was heard and the object vanished. The doctor immediately woke up his wife to tell her what had occurred. It was then she observed the swelling and wound on his leg had disappeared. Furthermore Dr. X had suffered from a partial paralysis of his right side from a war wound received ten years previously in Algeria. In the days following the sighting, these symptoms also disappeared. There are many unusual aspects of this case which are still being investigated by a competent team of researchers. One study, reported several years after the original sighting, noted that an odd red pigmentation has periodically appeared in a triangle shape around the naval of both Dr. X and his young child. It would stay visible for two or three days at a time. This had happened even when the child was staying with his grandmother who knew nothing of the UFO sighting. Other phenomena of a psychokinetic nature have been noted such as levitation and poltergeist-type phenomena. The sighting seems to have been a landmark event in Dr. X's life as he now faces life with a rather mystical acceptance, showing no fear of death or tragedy. This new attitude has been recognized by friends and relatives who also knew nothing of Dr. X's experience."

If you interested you can find more of these cases at www.williamjames.com/Folklore/WORLDS.htm. All I ask is you look at their conscious states of mind and consider the fact that they believed what they conscious mind was telling them was real B)

[scameter]

If that is true, what is them? My point in this topic is to say that the self is the consciousness, both the conscious and unconscious, as well as the dreaming subconscious. That it doesn't tell them things and they simply comply without choice; but rather that they realizationally choose their actions, unless externally forced, or internally retarded/paralyzed. Their intuition may tell them things, but as you yourself said, they choicefully believed in what they intuitively we told; that wasn't automatic, or forced.

[scameter]

I believe I have discovered a new version of this, quite different and new from my original post proposal in this topic. I no longer believe consciousness is the sum of the parts of the brain. I have come to this conclusion, because our selves are capable of objectively activating and using various parts and aspects of our brain, such as memory, imagination, thought, and so on, but it is not the type of activation present in my original theory; it is not the part of the brain accessing by it's self, or being activated by another part of the brain; it is more objective than that. It is a seperate self that uses the brain, as it uses the body; except that it uses the body through the brain. Essentially, this is why I developed my original theory here, because I believed our body is the house and tool of our mind, which has not changed, but that belief led me to think that it is our brain that is the operator it's self, not anything seperate; but, I now do not believe this. I think this is why neurologists are capable of seeing which parts of the brain are activated when certain environmental stimulus are applied, and yet are not capable of finding a physical brain part that is consciousness; because they see how the brain is used in response to the environment, but can't see the operator it's self. I know many scientists have hypotheses to what consciousness is, but hardly any of them believe consciousness to be an individual part of our brain; they either believe it to be something different from our brain, or to be the brain in it's entirety. Now, I take the former option.

[buzzlightyear1982]

"It is a seperate self that uses the brain, as it uses the body; except that it uses the body through the brain. Essentially, this is why I developed my original theory here, because I believed our body is the house and tool of our mind, which has not changed, but that belief led me to think that it is our brain that is the operator it's self"

I believe you had something with your other theory, in this theory you believe that the brain is the main operator of all actions, am I correct? Well, I disagree, I was more agreeable with your other theory. For correct me if I'm wrong but the brain has to recieve an electronic palse/signal from another part of the body before anything registers. So logically would the the major operator be the body itself? So that would make the brain the messanger B)

[scameter]

I'm not really sure of which theory it is you agree with. But, even though the brain receives sensory electrical pulses from the senses and through the spine, that is not what activates the brain, nor can the brain not work on it's own without specific sensory experience. For is only sensory information caused the brain to work, imagination, speculation, thought experiments, prediction and the operation of the body by the brain could not be possible. The body does not move and activity because of sensory signals; it does so by the brain.

[buzzlightyear1982]

So if I'm understanding you correctly the brain is the one who sends out the sensory signals and recieves them B) Can you clearify for me a little more?

[scameter]

Well, I'm not a neurologist my friend, but what I said is essentially are there is to it; our brain receives sensory impulses from the senses coming into contact with the environment, but the brain also sends out electrical neural orders to the body for it's operation.

[buzzlightyear1982]

I see now B)

[Squish]

Hey Scam,

OK, I'll start out by saying "Nice Topic!!"

Next,

how are we the only ones that our collective brain parts accumulate to form consciousness, whereas no other animal's does?

Do you really think we are the ONLY species on this planet with consciousness? Do the apes/chimps that hunt as a family/pack (sometimes with tools), or the dolphin that willingly risks it's life to save a human's not have a consciousness? In either case isn't there some sort of will of their own being put into place? Wouldn't that will be spawned by SOME sort of consciousness? Certainly not by ours...

Do you think that our consciousness (or an animal's) is unique to each individual, or is a universal consciousness that we all tap into?

One other question. Do you really think our brains are really connected to our consciousness, or is it just a tool that the consciousness uses to enact it's will (kinda like the brain runs the body)?

[scameter]

To answer the first, I definitely think that other animals definitely have aspects of consciousness, but I do not think that they have a conscious mind. They are unable to realize; they go entirely on instinct, thinking only of survival. This is why in many horror films related to animals, they are erroneous in acting as if animals are capable of desiring revenge or that they specifically wish to kill one person or one group of people; they kill to live, and live to live. No more.

For the second, I think that we all have similar aspects to our consciousness (as humans), specifically that which is inherent and unconscious; but I think that through the existence of learned knowledge and imaginative thought, we all possess individual consciousnesses, and thus individuality.

For the third, the second option; I believe that our consciousness is seperate and unphysical, but uses our brain to enact bodily functions, as well as mental functions.

Thanks for the compliment. :)