What is consciousness?

[DEATH IS FREEDOM]

Consciousness is awareness of internal and external existence, according to Wikipedia. Soul is described as the mental faculties of a living being: reason, character, feeling, consciousness, memory, perception and thinking. But no one really knows what consciousness is and does man really have a soul? If man has a soul, when in the evolution has this occured - if the parents had no soul, surely the offspring can´t have one. Man may have misunderstood what consciousness and soul are. Consciousness may in fact just be electrical activity in the brain.

People who have had near-death-experiences (been close to death or declared dead and resuscitated) claim that death is not the end of existence. Death is experienced more intensely than life: bright light, out-of-body-experience, life is passing by and meeting dead relatives.

There are doctors and scientists who claim that the brain can function several hours after death which can explain why people have perceived what have happened when they have been declared dead. Others argue the opposite and that scientific explanations such as lack of oxygen in the brain causes near-death-experiences are incorrect - consciousness is not physically connected to the brain and the body and has no end.

There may be an afterlife - a spirit world that we can´t see - a world of consciousness. Is consciousness separated from the brain and the body? Is consciousness immortal and infinite? Does consciousness continue to exist after death? Only the dead know the truth. What are your thoughts about consciousness?

 

[DarkRange55]

Calling @Pluto @SexyIncél @SmallKoy @sserafim
Please take the stand!

 

[Andro_USYD]

Take a look at this video by philosopher J.P.Moreland:



I'm also a student studying philosophy (and CS) where we're at this very topic right now and I'm doing an essay on whether a theoretical teleportation device would be an instant death trap creating a duplicate of you whom has Ur same memories but is not "you". Or if it would in fact work (philosophy of mind advanced).

 

[Pluto]

I commend you on a well-written post. Not dismissive of any viewpoints. After 25 years of pondering the topic, this is my take:

Asking about consciousness is a one-of-a-kind question because it sends the questioner in a radically different direction to any other query. That is, direct experiential insight rather than another intellectual excursion of sifting through thoughts and ideas. It ideally unfolds like this:

1) A person asks about consciousness.
2) Consciousness is seen not as an object of study, but the one asking the question.
3) Next, consciousness is even aware of the apparent person with the question, thus exists vastly beyond it.
4) (What happens next is beyond words.)

​

Self-Inquiry
Ramana Maharshi was famed for encouraging atma vichara, or self-inquiry. This is a non-intellectual exploration of the question, "Who am I?" This question is a spiritual silver bullet because it takes the suffering personal self's desire to do something to feel better, then directs that energy by orienting towards the true Self (consciousness) where a profound insight, experience or even a full awakening can occur. Often, Ramana would respond to questions with, "Who is asking this question?"

​

One of the blessings of modern times is that people of all backgrounds have been through this process and offer guidance in their own way. I can recommend the work of Angelo Dilullo since he is a doctor from Colorado and can 'demystify' the process for a scientifically-minded Western audience.

​

 

[DarkRange55]

Take a look at this video by philosopher J.P.Moreland:



I'm also a student studying philosophy (and CS) where we're at this very topic right now and I'm doing an essay on whether a theoretical teleportation device would be an instant death trap creating a duplicate of you whom has Ur same memories but is not "you". Or if it would in fact work (philosophy of mind advanced).

Thats something I've read about and discussed with some of my career physicist friends.

 

[Andro_USYD]

Yes, I have been working on essays working on dualism, we're doing philosophy of mind and the lecturer is more or a physicalist yet presents the cases for dualism as well as the case for monism. I think I'm going to get high marks because I've been looking at this stuff in depth. About 50% 50% in the philosophy class are dualists/Monists.

Edit: psyciat or physicalist?

 

[Forever Sleep]

One of the main issues I have with this idea of consciousness being separate to the body and reincarnation etc. is that I don't believe we are born fully conscious.

We're sentient- sure. But- when you look at what we think about when we think about the soul/ self awarenes- it hinges on the things you described: reason, character, feeling, consciousness, memory, perception and thinking. Just how many of those things do new born babies seem capable of? I'd say maybe: perception, feeling and very basic thinking- maybe. But, the rest of those attributes I don't think we get until our brains develop. Plus- sadly, if someone receives damage to the brain- some of those attributes start to become lost or distorted. So- surely, that means they must be linked?

It's not to say it's impossible. I don't know but I think most likely, our idea of 'us'- our soul/ self awareness wouldn't be the thing that remains intact. Maybe soul is energy rather than experience. The battery to a computer, rather than the hard drive. That's my best guess.

 

[Andro_USYD]

Well I go for a form of dualism-interactionism because it's always been known that if the brain is damaged it can cause cognitive impairments, one might argue that the development of cognitive abilities in humans (such as reason, memory, and self-awareness) is not necessarily evidence against the soul being separate from the physical body. Instead, it can be seen as the soul's capacity to express itself through the physical apparatus at its disposal, which matures and develops over time. Just as a musician's ability to play complex music grows with practice and the improvement of their instrument, so too does the soul's capacity to manifest its innate qualities through the body as it develops.

Regarding the impact of brain damage on cognitive functions and personality, one might argue that this does not refute the existence of a soul separate from the physical brain but rather illustrates the interdependence between the soul and its physical medium. The brain could be viewed as a sort of "interface" or "receiver" for the soul's expression in the physical world. When the brain is damaged, the soul's ability to express itself is compromised, similar to how a damaged musical instrument might limit a musician's ability to perform. This does not mean the musician's skill or the music itself has vanished; rather, the means of expression is impaired.

To address your analogy of the soul as energy rather than experience, a dualist might agree in part but also expand on it. They might suggest that the soul encompasses both energy and the potential for experience, serving as the foundation for consciousness that transcends individual lifetimes. The analogy of the battery and the computer is insightful; however, a dualist might argue that the soul is more akin to both the power source and the unique software that guides the operations of the computer, rather than being merely the energy source.

I made another post yesterday about Wilder Penfield's observations where he attaches electrodes to one hemisphere of the brain and causes the person to vocalise yet despite causing the movement the person invariably replied "I didn't do tha"t, and "the surgeon made me do that" rather than "I did that" which suggests the 'will' doesn't exist in the brain which to me is a really interesting discovery and Penfield wasn't a nobody he was a Standford trained neuroscientist.

Lastly is the problem of intentionality, the brain is a physical glob of tissue which isn't "about" or "of" anything. It has properties like a certain mass and location. When you have a thought about a summer vacation or something it's very difficult to see how intentionality can arrive and while it's undoubtedly correlated it wouldn't make any sense to say "where is that thought", e.g. maybe when you're thinking something a c-fibre firing goes off in the brain but that thought isn't identical to the c-fibre firing. U couldn't ask "how big does the thought weigh" but Ur right in thinking it's definitely correlated. It's just the majority of people that take this view would agree but think it's more like a pilot flying a plane or a pianist playing piano.

A good book is "Mysteries of Mind' by Wilder Penfield to give you more insight into mainstream views about these topics in the modern world. Because their are different types of dualism as well as different types of physicalism as well.

 

[Tears in Rain]

There may be an afterlife - a spirit world that we can´t see - a world of consciousness. Is consciousness separated from the brain and the body? Is consciousness immortal and infinite? Does consciousness continue to exist after death? Only the dead know the truth. What are your thoughts about consciousness?

Some religions like Hinduism see consciousness as the reality that underlies
every form of existence. They see infinite consciousness as the truth of you, me and everyone else. And everything else.

Inside you is a consciousness-modifying mechanism, that makes you feel separate to everyone and everything else. That is ego/Maya.

In maths, a set A is a subset of set B if all elements of A are also elements of B. B is then a superset of A.
Science sees consciousness as a subset of the Universe. The Universe is the superset.
Mystics of the past, on the other hand, saw the Universe, time, space, energy, etc as subsets of Consciousness. Consciousness is the superset.



To the mystics, life is a dream/simulation/virtual reality. Dreamed up by Consciousness, possibly to relieve boredom. Which means you are a fictional puppet, with Consciousness' hand up your ass.

Taoism refers to Consciousness as the Tao:

"There was something undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before Heaven and Earth. Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It operates everywhere and is free from danger. It may be considered the mother of the universe. I do not know its name; I call it Tao."
Tao Te Ching, ch. 25

 

[SexyIncél]

All I know about consciousness: it's the only thing we know. Galen Strawson points out that "Consciousness Isn't a Mystery. It's Matter." I see consciousness like a room. I'm clear about things inside it. But outside the door is an increasingly big buzzing confusion, in comparison

Matter's the mystery. Quantum physicists often conclude that we don't know what a particle is:

"What are the fundamental building blocks of the universe on its most fundamental scales?" — a more sophisticated phrasing of my question, "What is a particle?"

In the meantime, Engelhardt said, "'We don't know' is the short answer."

Spoiler: Related questions on consciousness

Then we might ask some questions: how does it interact with an unconscious? How can I extend the bounds of my consciousness? Here's my thoughts on them

Or how might consciousness emerge from dead matter?

Philosophers of science, faced with the puzzle of how life might emerge from dead matter or how conscious beings might evolve from microbes, have developed two types of explanations.

The first consists of what's called emergentism. The argument here is that once a certain level of complexity is reached, there is a kind of qualitative leap where completely new sorts of physical laws can "emerge"—ones that are premised on, but cannot be reduced to, what came before. In this way, the laws of chemistry can be said to be emergent from physics: the laws of chemistry presuppose the laws of physics, but can't simply be reduced to them. In the same way, the laws of biology emerge from chemistry: one obviously needs to understand the chemical components of a fish to understand how it swims, but chemical components will never provide a full explanation. In the same way, the human mind can be said to be emergent from the cells that make it up.

Those who hold the second position, usually called panpsychism or panexperientialism, agree that all this may be true but argue that emergence is not enough. As British philosopher Galen Strawson recently put it, to imagine that one can travel from insensate matter to a being capable of discussing the existence of insensate matter in a mere two jumps is simply to make emergence do too much work. Something has to be there already, on every level of material existence, even that of subatomic particles—something, however minimal and embryonic, that does some of the things we are used to thinking of life (and even mind) as doing—in order for that something to be organized on more and more complex levels to eventually produce self-conscious beings. That "something" might be very minimal indeed: some very rudimentary sense of responsiveness to one's environment, something like anticipation, something like memory. However rudimentary, it would have to exist for self-organizing systems like atoms or molecules to self-organize in the first place.

— David Graeber, "What's the Point If We Can't Have Fun?"

How about spirituality? As I understand, it's about links to something greater — where do I end & you begin? Am I not the universe curved in on itself, to perceive itself? A local bubble of self-perception?

Well, here's the opposite concept — alienation:

The notion of alienation is a very unusual one because it is at once an attempt to explain a widespread feeling—a very subjective, somewhat indefinable feeling—and a critique of the nature of any society that regularly produces it.

This was not always so. The feeling that one is not at home in the world, the sense of estrangement from one's surrounding, oneself, and other people, appears to be as old as history; for most world religions (Buddhism, most strains of Christianity and Daoism, Sufi strands in Islam) this feeling was seen mainly as reflecting a profound insight into the truth of the human condition. Hermits, monks, and meditators often actively valued or cultivated feelings of alienation as a way to something higher. Calvinism came closer to the modern conception in seeing feelings of isolation and emptiness as a sign of humanity's fall from grace, but it was really only in the nineteenth century that the modern understanding of the term came into being. This conception was closely tied to the experience of living in a vast, impersonal, industrial city. Feelings of alienation were particularly prone to strike those who in earlier generations might have been considered likely victims of melancholia: intellectuals, artists, and youth. The effects were much the same: depression, anxiety, hopelessness, suicide.

— David Graeber, "Alienation"

 

[Abandoned Character]

In maths, a set A is a subset of set B if all elements of A are also elements of B. B is then a superset of A.
Science sees consciousness as a subset of the Universe. The Universe is the superset.
Mystics of the past, on the other hand, saw the Universe, time, space, energy, etc as subsets of Consciousness. Consciousness is the superset.

I have not heard it put that way before but that is a clever way to differentiate the opposing ideas!

 

[Pluto]

the soul/ self awarenes- it hinges on the things you described: reason, character, feeling, consciousness, memory, perception and thinking. Just how many of those things do new born babies seem capable of?

How many of those things do you have each night in deep sleep?

 

[Forever Sleep]

How many of those things do you have each night in deep sleep?

Very good point! So- do you believe our consciousness goes anywhere during that time, or is it capable of lying dormant for periods of time- so long as the brain is intact? Are there some states in which consciousness never returns in this life? Vegetive states. In which case- does it stay dormant with that person until they die and then floats off somewhere or, does it depart earlier?

A horrible subject to discuss but, let's say there is an afterlife, a heaven or even reincarnation. If a baby dies within the first few hours of being born, does it depart for heaven as a fully developed soul, with memories (what memories?) And a fully developed personality? If so- then, are our personalities already part of our blueprint? Is everything predetermined?

I think people do think of a whole person when they think of the soul- they like or fear the idea they will be themselves in the next life. But- what about babies? We can't deny them a soul- surely? Are they in a kind of demo mode when they transition? Who they had the potential to be maybe? Or, are they still that reincarnated soul with less of an overwrite of the next person?

What if a person is in a comma from a very young age and wakes up many years later. Do they wake with a fully developed character? Or, isn't what we think of as 'ourselves' dependent on what we have developed into in conscious, waking life? I guess it does depend on what we think the soul is.

I do agree with you that it's odd. Sleep is so odd. The fact that people have similar dreams seems odd to me and might suggest some shared connection.

Still- I don't exactly see it as proof that consciousness exists outside of the brain. I can't see when I close my eyes. My eyelids need to be open for me to see. I suppose I do 'see' in dreams and even weirder- supposedly, people who are blind from birth can have visual dreams. Still, I'm not sure this suggests anything other than that our bodies are capable of doing certain things in certain states. I'm not sure it means they are reliant on a outside source to work. Although- it does truly puzzle me as to how a blind person could visualise.

So- my brain may also need to be set on a certain function in order to work in a conscious mode. I don't think it necessarily means there's anything magical or spiritual about it.

But then, I don't know for sure. I'm willing to keep an open mind. I suppose I just struggle with things being held up as 'proof' either way really. That's what's so frustrating! I just end up going with things that make the most sense to me.

I guess my main worry with the human brain is- it in itself is fallible. It seems to me like personal experience would be the thing to clinche it for many of us. Yet, on occassion, I've had visual hallucinations between sleeping and waking. My brain has literally turned shadows and objects in my room into things. I don't believe those things were there on any plain of existence. I think it was my brain in not quite conscious mode desperately trying to make sense of what it just registered.

I'm willing to accept that we also struggle to imagine a reality that is so different to this one and sure- maybe such things do exist but, I suppose I think they could just as easily not. I think our brains readily buy into fantasy. We know they do- look at all the amazing fiction we as a species have created. Plus, I think so many people do fear total non existence- for themselves and their loved ones. So, it's also an idea I think people are primed to want to believe in.

 

[DEATH IS FREEDOM]

For us living, death is the unknown. Has man a consciousness can be outside the body? Can science explain everything? People have probably always had different opinions about the same things. Man can´t explain everything - we are all in the cave of Plato. To me, consciousness feels like electrical impulses in the brain - nothing more. However, I have never had a near-death-experience. It feels both liberating and frightening to consciously venturing into death. I can´t do anything about whether there is an afterlife or not. I think the most likely is that death will be like before birth - nothing. Afterlife has its origins in religion.

 

[Pluto]

Very good point! So- do you believe our consciousness goes anywhere during that time, or is it capable of lying dormant for periods of time- so long as the brain is intact? Are there some states in which consciousness never returns in this life? Vegetive states. In which case- does it stay dormant with that person until they die and then floats off somewhere or, does it depart earlier?

I've been meaning to reply. As usual, my answers are a mixture of Advaita Vedanta, NDE studies and the theologian Neale Donald Walsch.

According to Advaita, pure consciousness is the ultimate reality. It does not go anywhere in the same way that a television doesn't go anywhere even when showing moving footage, or a dreamer doesn't go anywhere when asleep. I'm not sure about vegetative or comatose states; hopefully it is more like sleep than an endless night terror.

The human is trichotomous. There's the physical body, the subtle body, and the causal body. These correspond with body/mind/spirit in New Age, or the states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep.

A horrible subject to discuss but, let's say there is an afterlife, a heaven or even reincarnation. If a baby dies within the first few hours of being born, does it depart for heaven as a fully developed soul, with memories (what memories?) And a fully developed personality? If so- then, are our personalities already part of our blueprint? Is everything predetermined?

According to Neale Donald Walsch, these events are predetermined and a spirit has 'volunteered' to be the short-lived baby in service to the other involved parties. (NDE studies would likely agree.) Children who die have full awareness and are capable of making any decisions that they may face.

On a personal note, the vibes I get from terminally ill children are quite angelic. They have come straight from the other side and are going straight back without developing the corrupted ego structures that most of us adults have. They're probably some of the most enlightened people for this reason.

Although- it does truly puzzle me as to how a blind person could visualise.

NDE studies show blind people gain full sight when out of the body. People commonly report 360-degree vision, being able to see many other colours and being able to look at the light (vastly brighter than the sun) without discomfort. All disabilities or ailments, physical or mental, seem to be gone also.

I guess my main worry with the human brain is- it in itself is fallible. It seems to me like personal experience would be the thing to clinche it for many of us. Yet, on occassion, I've had visual hallucinations between sleeping and waking. My brain has literally turned shadows and objects in my room into things. I don't believe those things were there on any plain of existence. I think it was my brain in not quite conscious mode desperately trying to make sense of what it just registered.

The brain does this constantly. The rule of thumb seems to be that the visual system adds/interprets things that are not there, while the auditory system removes needless noise like tinnitus.

According to Advaita Vedanta, every experience - waking, dreaming or deep sleep - are all outright hallucinations of the mind. Ramana Maharshi said the following:

There is only one state, that of consciousness or awareness or existence. The three states of waking, dream and sleep cannot be real. They simply come and go. The real will always exist. The 'I' or existence that alone persists in all the three states is real. The other three are not real and so it is not possible to say they have such and such a degree of reality.