What is Consciousness
What is Consciousness?
I just finished reading most of Susan Blackmore’s book; “Consciousness an Introduction” and it got me thinking. It’s amazing to consider our consciousness and how it arises. Is it purely a feature of organized matter in the brain or is there something more, a spiritual soul or some quantum connection?
She presents many theories but of course, no conclusions. The field is considered the most difficult to understand by scientific means. The biggest mystery to me which she doesn’t directly cover, is why am I me? Each one of us has a conscious mind, but, why am I me and not anyone else? I think this something we will never figure out.
My own thinking on consciousness is closest to that of N. Humphrey as described by Blackmore. I think consciousness arose by an evolutionary mechanism to allow animals to survive in the world. In our own highly developed brains, it is basically memories of memories. Our brain has nerve cells that instead of reacting to the senses, react instead to other cells that hold memories of sense experience to recreate the feelings. The interactions create a model of the world in the brain.
I think I learned more from PBS series on the brain a few years ago. Scanning techniques showed almost flame like waves continuously flowing randomly within the brain. The brains of multiple personality patients showed different patterns for each personality. The waves are signals flowing through the neurons between the memory cells to recreate feelings of past experiences and form a model of the world. Even dogs showed the same waves but to a lesser degree than humans. We are conscious of the world to a greater degree and I am sure some people are more conscious than others depending on their education and intelligence. It’s amazing to ponder that the universe is ordered to be understandable, and we may have a little copy, to the degree we are capable, in our brains. Carrying this thinking a step further, I wonder if the universe is in some way conscious?
The evolution of consciousness may have proceeded as follows. First there were single cell organisms, then cells developed that could react to the environment to enhance survival by detecting heat, cold, light, touch and sound. Multicelled animals formed with specialized cells. Nerve cells detected environmental stimuli and muscle cells produced movement to avoid threats. Nerve cells evolved further becoming memory cells to store sensory experience. Memory cells collected to form the brain. Sensory and muscle cells formed in the limbs. This allowed a fish or animal to find food or avoid predation by use of past experience.
As brains evolved, those with more and more memory cells developed models of the world to enhance survival through planning . Animals could find food, by migration and avoid predation. As brains size increased, more of the cells were free to engage in cross talk, creating consciousness .
The sense of self may also have survival value in the sense of self preservation. This is seen even in the lowly bugs and spiders running for their lives to preserve themselves from the swatter. If they didn’t experience themselves to at least some degree, would they care? Similarly for all the higher animals and humans, the fight for self preservation is our strongest instinct. If we didn’t have a sense of self, we wouldn’t care.
My next book to read is by Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee “ On Intelligence” . The description seems roughly along the lines I have described, but for the purpose of creating computers that are truly intelligent and conscious. Blackmore devotes a lot of consideration to whether this is possible and how we would ever know if a computer were really conscious. Perhaps if we could see the same flame like waves, in a machine, and if we could know why they create consciousness, we would know. I do suspect however that without sensory memory, the feeling of consciousness cannot exist.
I just finished reading most of Susan Blackmore’s book; “Consciousness an Introduction” and it got me thinking. It’s amazing to consider our consciousness and how it arises. Is it purely a feature of organized matter in the brain or is there something more, a spiritual soul or some quantum connection?
She presents many theories but of course, no conclusions. The field is considered the most difficult to understand by scientific means. The biggest mystery to me which she doesn’t directly cover, is why am I me? Each one of us has a conscious mind, but, why am I me and not anyone else? I think this something we will never figure out.
My own thinking on consciousness is closest to that of N. Humphrey as described by Blackmore. I think consciousness arose by an evolutionary mechanism to allow animals to survive in the world. In our own highly developed brains, it is basically memories of memories. Our brain has nerve cells that instead of reacting to the senses, react instead to other cells that hold memories of sense experience to recreate the feelings. The interactions create a model of the world in the brain.
I think I learned more from PBS series on the brain a few years ago. Scanning techniques showed almost flame like waves continuously flowing randomly within the brain. The brains of multiple personality patients showed different patterns for each personality. The waves are signals flowing through the neurons between the memory cells to recreate feelings of past experiences and form a model of the world. Even dogs showed the same waves but to a lesser degree than humans. We are conscious of the world to a greater degree and I am sure some people are more conscious than others depending on their education and intelligence. It’s amazing to ponder that the universe is ordered to be understandable, and we may have a little copy, to the degree we are capable, in our brains. Carrying this thinking a step further, I wonder if the universe is in some way conscious?
The evolution of consciousness may have proceeded as follows. First there were single cell organisms, then cells developed that could react to the environment to enhance survival by detecting heat, cold, light, touch and sound. Multicelled animals formed with specialized cells. Nerve cells detected environmental stimuli and muscle cells produced movement to avoid threats. Nerve cells evolved further becoming memory cells to store sensory experience. Memory cells collected to form the brain. Sensory and muscle cells formed in the limbs. This allowed a fish or animal to find food or avoid predation by use of past experience.
As brains evolved, those with more and more memory cells developed models of the world to enhance survival through planning . Animals could find food, by migration and avoid predation. As brains size increased, more of the cells were free to engage in cross talk, creating consciousness .
The sense of self may also have survival value in the sense of self preservation. This is seen even in the lowly bugs and spiders running for their lives to preserve themselves from the swatter. If they didn’t experience themselves to at least some degree, would they care? Similarly for all the higher animals and humans, the fight for self preservation is our strongest instinct. If we didn’t have a sense of self, we wouldn’t care.
My next book to read is by Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee “ On Intelligence” . The description seems roughly along the lines I have described, but for the purpose of creating computers that are truly intelligent and conscious. Blackmore devotes a lot of consideration to whether this is possible and how we would ever know if a computer were really conscious. Perhaps if we could see the same flame like waves, in a machine, and if we could know why they create consciousness, we would know. I do suspect however that without sensory memory, the feeling of consciousness cannot exist.
posted by PCD at 7:07 AM
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