If you lose specific aspects of observing physical reality, like vision for example, doesn't mean you lose parts of consciousness, you're still 100% conscious and aware of what is going on including the fact that your vision is now dissipated and you need to do something about it like learning to replace it with touch or hearing. Vision is a tool (among others) to understand the properties of physical reality, it's not part of consciousness itself.
He would certainly argue that's because the neurons which give rise to the function of being aware of the fact and evaluating what you gotta do etc. still work. If you lose that corresponding neuronal system, you lose thise abilities too, which you regard as essential to consciousness.
@@ratbullkan Big issue is that people have no associative function to those neurons. How do you use an informational system without information?There are people born blind, yet conscious...
@@ThaneGreenMate Well because it isn't without information ever. Even if you are blind, deaf, have no sense of touch, taste or smell, no pain, no sense of balance, no sense of the body parts or muscles, don't feel hungry, if you strip all of that off, there is still a LOT left. Examples I can think of is self-evaluating circular circuitry, awareness watching itself, information stored in our genetics, like forms of spiders, snakes and hawks, information about our metabolism, all kinds of emotions, drives and urges, ability to think, ability to remember etc. etc. etc. ...
@@ratbullkan Yeah, but it's not vision input through the neural path then. Proves to the contrary he said, it is a conjunction of all senses and previous factors you exposed. But seems Mr. Koch don't believe the same.
I suspect there is a group of neurons that does the calculations for consciousness. All areas like sight, smell, touch, heartbeat, breathing etc feeds into that group of neurons. When your vision system is damaged the other areas are still processed and become more dominant.
If people were more educated, they would seek ways to help others in any situation. Remember, they are going through a tough time. It's time to assist them and, at the same time, learn from the process so that the situation doesn't repeat itself. Don't you think life would be more beautiful? Sincerely, Hector
Todays education is based upon getting ahead, no God, and more money, nothing concerning compassion. By the way what we are all supposed to be doing is seeking the Divine and to get back home to heaven as soon as possible. Your responsibility is to you, not others, they have their own. This planet is punishment, we dropped here from Heaven. I hope this info helps, so many have been misled into believing that the more mud we own the happier we will be, not true........Falun Dafa is a great teaching.
I’ve increasingly become more drawn to the idea that consciousness isn’t emergent. Everything we know about brains and how they relate to perception we only know through consciousness. It seems more likely to me that it’s more fundamental than physical reality.
I agree it's NOT emergent, that is occurring unexpectedly, it's EVOLED! The only people who believe it's more fundamental than reality are those who's imagination have created a religious narrative to cope with their inability for the finality of their actual REAL destiny!! i.e You live then you die!!
That's a difficult idea to conceptualize. We only know or aware we have consciousness once we can communicate it, whether with ourselves or others. So then how do we know we have consciousness at younger ages? Especially as an infant or as a fetus? So at what point do we acquire consciousness?
@@thisisme5487 I don’t think you can say we don’t have consciousness as infants. if consciousness isn’t emergent it would just mean that brains direct and influence experience but that the phenomenon of experience itself is more fundamental. By analogy, you could imagine this concept if you were in a perfectly realistic VR video game where you’re living a life. It would appear to you in that game that because changes to perception were directly linked to your brain activity, that the brain was producing consciousness. However, in that example, the brain, your experience of having that brain is all just simulated being produced by consciousness outside of that experience which is therefore more fundamental.
@@hoagied3783 I'm not saying we do or don't, I'm asking how could we say whether we do or don't unless we're able to conceptualize and communicate it. Which obviously we can't as infants.
The video did not explain consciousness, because the people who participated in the video don't know what consciousness actually is. They assume it is something produced by the brain, when it is not.
@@JaseboMonkeyRex Consciousness is not an idea. Ideas stem from the mind. The mind stems from Consciousness Itself. For one to 'Know' Consciousness one has to become 'familiar' with Consciousness Itself Directly. You can't do that through the mind. When you learn how to 'get' 'allow' the mind out of the way - Then you can start to learn what Consciousness is Directly. That process takes time because you are accustomed to viewing the world through the mind primarily.
There are people who, despite having lost most of their brain, are still the same person they were when it was complete. People with no frontal cortex, people with very little cerebral cortex. I once met a guy I knew after a horrific motorcycle accident took away an entire hemisphere of his brain. We had a good chat and he remembered everything from the times we'd met before his accident. In fact, his recall was better than mine! However, that part of the brain behind the thickened skull at the back - where visual and auditory processing is done - lose that and you're gone. Gone for good. The rest of the brain may be in perfect working order but you ain't ever coming back. The part of our brain that gives us awareness, that is actually "us" appears to occupy part of this small region right at the back (possibly a tiny part). All that fancy stuff... that's doing work we're not conscious of. We just get fed part of the results of its labor. We're really not that smart, the part of the brain that isn't us is. I remember many of my dreams very clearly. My experience during my dreams feels just as real as when I'm awake, despite the many glaring temporal inconsistencies, despite the often wildly illogical scenarios, I don't have the intelligence to question any of it - I accept it all as real. So, my IQ is so low it would barely register yet my experience is equal to that of being fully awake. This is how I come to the conclusion that it's not the part of the brain that is "us" that makes us smart - it's all the rest of it, that we have no awareness of. Realizing this, I often wonder how many other animals share our experience of sentience. Maybe monkeys, dogs, crows, parrots, cats, horses, etc? We might never know the answer to that one but not knowing leads me to treat other animals with a great deal of respect - just in case.
After like a million episodes of this series, this episode finally settled it. Robert can stop making more episodes that ask this particular question if consciousness is fundamental or if consciousness is a product of specific brain circuit activity. Christof koch answers to conclusively in the last half of those interview, his statement is indisputable. It was worth sitting though a million rubbish speculative interviews to finally get a gem. And a conclusive answer .The real deal. RIP pan psychics
Despite what you say, nothing was settled in this interview regarding the source or origination of consciousness. I found the interview as engaging as you did and have enormous respect for Mr. Koch and his wide ranging intellect but his answers have far more to do with cognition and the brains amazing ability to process and correlate the enormous stream of perception generated data. It would have been interesting to hear Mr. Koch give an answer or an opinion to one question. That being; is consciousness (not cognition because they are two different things) generated by the brain? We know the brain allows us to "experience" consciousness, but experiencing consciousness is a thing removed from the intrinsic essence of consciousness. One might say that using a phrase like "the intrinsic essence of consciousness" is unwarranted because it ascribes a metaphysical quality to consciousness and thereby renders it beyond the scope of rational inquiry and is essentially a theological statement. This is a valid point and can never be answered to the satisfaction of empirical science, not because the statement is false but because it's an assertion that can never be proved or disproved. If I say consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, it's tantamount to saying that consciousness must have a source and the only plausible source is a transcendent agent, in other words a supreme being. The riddle of consciousness can never be solved by any mechanistic understanding of brain chemistry or physiology. The neural substrates that produce a coherent picture of the world are unfathomably complex and while it;s true that neuroscientists like Mr Koch are learning more and more detail about how the brain processes, stores, and correlates vast amounts of information, these activities have more to do with cognition in general and specifically memory, perception, and sensation. Cognition (brain activity) however, takes place within a much wider realm of consciousness. Consciousness is something that holds, circumscribes and qualifies cognition and therefore must precede cognition. A rough analogy might be. if cognition in the form of lucid self awareness can be compared with light streaming across the universe, "consciousness" can be understood as the space that acts as an invisible medium through which that light energy passes.
@@michaelmckinney7240 A different rough analogy might be... The difference between brain function and being conscious is very like the difference between the appearance of this sentence and its meaning.
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL Thank you for your thoughtful reply. In my opinion it's impossible to separate "brain function" from the state of being "conscious" because being "conscious" is totally dependent on and impossible without a functioning human brain. Consciousness is something very different and is not a medium dependent phenomenon. Our brains give us only the capacity to personally "experience" consciousness and this consciousness exists prior to the human brains evolutionary emergence. To be "conscious" is to have an active brain fully participating in those mental operations like thought, perception, and memory. Consciousness is something separate and apart from being "conscious." I use this analogy. Consciousness can be likened to the moments in a theater when it gets dark and the auditorium goes silent. In that moment a palpable sense of expectation and psychological readiness to be mentally engaged with a new experience, whether it's comical, musical or dramatic hangs in the air. It's highly anticipatory as the runner waiting for the sound of the pistol shot to begin a race. Have you ever heard a parent hushing a child in this situation? I have. The psychological receptivity of waiting for a new experience is in the air and something else is in that room, a deeper and more enhanced participation into the realm of universal consciousness. Consciousness is the overarching and supervening reality within which all conscious activity is realized.
When we describe something as unconscious, we’re really saying that we don’t know how it happens. Another thing we don’t know is where consciousness comes from. Notice that this whole conversation is about neural correlates of consciousness. We have absolutely no idea how a brain process could produce subjective experiences like the colour red or the taste of chocolate.
@@canislupuscanus Well, that’s great news. So you’re saying that the hard problem of consciousness has finally been solved? Please send me a link to the work. As for the woo-woo tag, I’m a sceptic. You’re clearly either unaware of your own assumptions or happy to believe them.
The question was flawed from the start. Why does consciousness require sensory input? Just get in a float tank and you’ll find out pretty quick that you’re still conscious and feel even more connected to reality than before. It’s wonderful.
LOVED the explanation. Also, I'm pretty sure the 19th definition of beauty refers to the proverb that reads: "The beauty is in the eye of the beholder". This person is a pleasure to hear!
The student jest on the subject is about the only valid quantification of a quality I know of, namely that if 1 Helen floats a thousand ships and burns the topless towers of Ilium, then a micro-helen gives a drunken matelot an unforgettable encounter in the backstreets of Marseilles.
I temporarily (during a street fight) had the strobe effect where my world became a series of photos instead of a video. I was 18yo at the time, and had just been kicked in the head while on the ground. I was also intoxicated at the time too. The effect only lasted for an hour or less. On a different topic - I often dream while still half awake, and can surprise myself in dreams - which means some unconscious part of my brain is surprising my conscious self, or something. I have sung new song with original lyrics and melody while dreaming, but can barely remember any of it after waking - it fades fast. The brain and the immune system, both amazingly complex.
My father reported similar experiences during the late stages of his Parkinson's disease. He said that reality sometimes presented itself as static images, and sometimes it would freeze, but then suddenly 'speed up' to catch up with reality a bit like a surreal fast forward effect. I was about to say ti was as though some bizarre post processing effect had bee applied, but I think it's more likely that it was the result of pre-processing activity that didn't get applied.
I often create entire plays or musical scores whilst asleep and on waking barely hold onto a fragment but there is an awareness of something, but the woken brain acts fast to eliminate it, so am I consciously unconscious?
Our brain is just the antenna that tunes into the conscious field. Your T.V. doesn't contain the signal it just broadcasts it. This also means that when the television dies the signal isn't gone, and nothing is lost.
The best that scientists can do is to find the part of the brain that enables two way communication with consciousness. Then what? Will non-believers finally 'GET IT' and become believers. I am blessed because I don't need Faith nor believing. I have KNOWING. NOBODY can tell me that there is no God - NOBODY. My experiences tell me that God is very real. I have no choice. Bless you 🙏❤️
This is fascinating. It left me wondering what other animals actually experience. A dolphin, for example, has a huge brain devoted to interpreting sound as it hears echolocation in the water. Or a dog has a huge part of the brain devoted to its sense of small. What are they thinking about in their different sensory worlds?
I watch my cat have dreams, he twitches and meows. Sometimes I think he is having dreams about fighting by the way he moves and the sounds. He understands about a dozen words and responds appropriately. He is about the same level of consciousness as a small child (2-4 years) I would think. He has self awareness, the ability to understand the implications of his and others actions. I think many animals brains work very similar, we all are pretty closely evolutionary related.
@@AORD72this morning I saw a video that talked about free will. That we don't have it because reductionism should be true. Exactly like saying "we know how cars function, so we are cars". But it's not true because we don't even know what are matter/energy/time/space, we don't have a theory! And with animals happens the same! "They don't think, they don't remember, they don't communicate in complicated ways because WE ONLY DO THAT." For me it's a stupidity. I mean, if you look at the Roger Penrose work he says "elephants have complex death rituals, they go around brother's bones, in circles, touch them and have particular behaviors in those rituals. Science (evolutionary) cannot explain that". They can understand WHY my cat, Steven, went out the house to stay alone, because he knew he was ill? I studied, a lot.... And what is written is only the representation of our infinite ego. This is science.
I see that as using the same visual system in the brain, but instead of the sensory stimuli coming from the eye, they come from the memory or imaginative system. A bit like switching from a live TV signal to replaying a recorded movie, or playing a computer game on your computer. The same conscious processes but a different source.
Consciousness is not created by the brain, consciousness is a fundamental part of universe and the brain merely is just a radio receiver for it. That's why it's so hard for people to try to "discover" where it comes from.
I quite agree. Consciousness is not to be found in any particular part of the brain. The brain is just the front-end processer which stores and retrieves information which is kept in a kind of aethereal internet. Difficult to accept, at first, but if you come to think that, it explains a whole lot of other things.
There are NDE studies that point quite clearly to that fact that consciousness is not created by, nor a concrete PART of the brain. Brains have even been cut in half and almost no difference in the person's behavior, personality occurs. If you watch a television show but then smash the screen with a hammer, the picture will be fuzzy or flickering or garbled or even blank. Or just power it off or even unplug it from the wall outlet and the television (body/brain) no longer has anything available to project or display, no visual pictures, no audio. That does not mean however that the signal ( consciousness ) is gone, annihilated, no. It is still 100% whole and active and intact. It is everywhere and complete. NDE's show that consciousness continues after clinical death. 15 to 30 seconds after the heart stops, the cerebral cortex is offline. At that point, a human cannot think, remember, dream, hallucinate, have a delusion or trip etc., etc. No thoughts are capable at all. And yet after moments or more of being clinically dead, people get resuscitated and have information they give which includes their veridical perception of events that occurred in the hospital emergency room, or even other rooms, other locations in other towns, cities, countries etc. at a time when their brain was offline and their eyes were closed and even taped shut. If consciousness is only a product of the brain, these things would not be possible. There are hundreds and hundreds of Near Death Studies, peer reviewed studies, going back 30 + years. The University of Virginia, The University of North Texas, University studies in England and all over Europe, Japan , Canada, Australia etc., etc. have all done studies which underline these occurrences and have data which is impossible for any thinking person to ignore. We are more than our brains. Look up interviews, lectures, presentations online with Dr. Bruce Greyson MD, Dr. Penny Sartori RN/PhD., Dr. Sam Parnia MD/PhD., Dr. Pim Van Lommel MD., Dr. Jeff Long MD., and a hundred other researchers, for starters.
@@philosopher0076 We are Divine souls trapped in a human body, like those white mice in that maze, no way out. God planned that we would seek the Divine but we chose to play in the mud. Thank heaven that He has come to save us.............Falun Dafa.
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL Because my biology is a perceptual vehicle. It tastes, touches, smells, hears, speaks. The consciousness having the experience is not produced by the biology. The consciousness has created the body for the sake of experience.
"Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations, to have affective consciousness, subjective states that have a positive or negative valence (Chandroo et al., 2004). From: Neuroscience, 2022." In other words, sentience means being conscious of feelings and sensations. Thus sentience refers to a subset of what may manifest in a conscious field.
"Thus sentience refers to a subset of what may manifest in a conscious field." To be more precise: A 'conscious field' is a feature of a self. In order to meet the new and challenging control requirements of a civilization growing ever more complex, cultural evolution eventually added the notion of the self to language. Linguistic thoughts often referencing the notion of the self quickly spawned the self concept in the member's mind. The self concept eventually became the self as we know it, the thing that is conscious, that enables selfishness, lying, love, hate, greed and all the other aspects that exiled us from the garden of Eden. Consider an organism that fits perfectly into its ecosystem, instincts perfectly evolved for it to long survive and reproduce abundantly, sensory inputs automatically processed into appropriate control signal emissions. Surely it's clear that such an organism has no need to maintain a self that is conscious? Civilization has been the ecosystem of human beings for about ten millennia. Seven millennia was long enough to transform the first few unconscious seed planters into fifty million of the bicameral minded. Three millennia later and we now exceed eight billion conscious people.
They cannot discuss consciousness because it is ‘the hard problem’ and they do not know what it is. So all they can discuss is what it does through the mind which is to be aware of inner states and information transmitted by the sense mind of five senses that reports on the external environment.
It's not really all that hard to think about what we call consciousness. Is that your brain acts like a computer? And the sense that you have a lot of subroutines running passively so it's more than just what we see. Feel taste, touch. Your brain is processing a lot of information. It's attacking things that you wouldn't consciously detect, but in a subconscious level, your other sensors that you don't actively control, they're picking up an indicators. That's why you can have a dream about something as a warning is because your brain is processed certain dangers or certain things that you're not thinking about constantly because it logs activities around you. We don't use actively 80% of our brain. It's all passive
Your body has two souls, you, the primordial immortal soul and the secondary soul, the assistant soul. You, the primordial soul are reading this right now. Interesting, no?
3rd person syndrome- when mountaineers that face trouble start to hear a voice that helps and guilds them to safety in the situations or even afterwards. Touching the void(a film about a mountaineer nearly faced death) started hearing a guiding voice over an over.. Just wanted to share . Conscience kicking in or the voice of the holy spirit ✝️ .. its very interesting x
Your DNA is storage feed the mind, if you study hard enough you feed your subconscious (though mind should be abstract).Also Higher Altitudes can triggers Paneal Gland activation via (Piezoelectric) down to rapid breathing due to lack of oxygen. The mountaineers subjectively guided themselves to safety, they knew the info(the subjectivity of human perception). Neural correlates also called the Crown of Thorn, not the nonsense the Catholics call the Holy Spirit. You are the divine, according to Catholism the Earth is 6000yrs old 😂😂😂. Use to irk when pondering a question, they say it is Demonic, not scientific.
@@dgphi: I have no idea. It's like they're so desperate to pretend like we already have all the answers that they won't even take some time to think about what the actual problem is, or even the distinction between the easy and hard problems of consciousness.
The moment a particle is a wave; it has to be a conscious wave! Gravity is the conscious attraction among waves to create the illusion of particles, and our experience-able Universe. Max Planck states: "Consciousness is fundamental and matter is derived from Consciousness". Life is the Infinite Consciousness, experiencing the Infinite Possibilities, Infinitely. We are "It", experiencing our infinite possibilities in our finite moment. Our job is to make it interesting!
A segment from 'Saved by the Light of the Buddha Within'... My new understandings of what many call 'God -The Holy Spirit' - resulting from some of the extraordinary ongoing after-effects relating to my NDE... Myoho-Renge-Kyo represents the identity of what some scientists are now referring to as the unified field of consciousnesses. In other words, it’s the essence of all existence and non-existence - the ultimate creative force behind planets, stars, nebulae, people, animals, trees, fish, birds, and all phenomena, manifest or latent. All matter and intelligence are simply waves or ripples manifesting to and from this core source. Consciousness (enlightenment) is itself the actual creator of everything that exists now, ever existed in the past, or will exist in the future - right down to the minutest particles of dust - each being an individual ripple or wave. The big difference between chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo and most other conventional prayers is that instead of depending on a ‘middleman’ to connect us to our state of inner enlightenment, we’re able to do it ourselves. That’s because chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo allows us to tap directly into our enlightened state by way of this self-produced sound vibration. ‘Who or What Is God?’ If we compare the concept of God being a separate entity that is forever watching down on us, to the teachings of Nichiren, it makes more sense to me that the true omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence of what most people perceive to be God, is the fantastic state of enlightenment that exists within each of us. Some say that God is an entity that’s beyond physical matter - I think that the vast amount of information continuously being conveyed via electromagnetic waves in today’s world gives us proof of how an invisible state of God could indeed exist. For example, it’s now widely known that specific data relayed by way of electromagnetic waves has the potential to help bring about extraordinary and powerful effects - including an instant global awareness of something or a mass emotional reaction. It’s also common knowledge that these invisible waves can easily be used to detonate a bomb or to enable NASA to control the movements of a robot as far away as the Moon or Mars - none of which is possible without a receiver to decode the information that’s being transmitted. Without the receiver, the data would remain impotent. In a very similar way, we need to have our own ‘receiver’ switched on so that we can activate a clear and precise understanding of our own life, all other life and what everything else in existence is. Chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo each day helps us to achieve this because it allows us to reach the core of our enlightenment and keep it switched on. That’s because Myoho-Renge-Kyo represents the identity of what scientists now refer to as the unified field of consciousnesses. To break it down - Myoho represents the Law of manifestation and latency (Nature) and consists of two alternating states. For example, the state of Myo is where everything in life that’s not obvious to us exists - including our stored memories when we’re not thinking about them - our hidden potential and inner emotions whenever they’re dormant - our desires, our fears, our wisdom, happiness, karma - and more importantly, our enlightenment. The other state, ho, is where everything in Life exists whenever it becomes evident to us, such as when a thought pops up from within our memory - whenever we experience or express our emotions - or whenever a good or bad cause manifests as an effect from our karma. When anything becomes apparent, it merely means that it’s come out of the state of Myo (dormancy/latency) and into a state of ho (manifestation). It’s the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness, being awake or asleep, or knowing and not knowing. The second law - Renge - Ren meaning cause and ge meaning effect, governs and controls the functions of Myoho - these two laws of Myoho and Renge, not only function together simultaneously but also underlies all spiritual and physical existence. The final and third part of the tri-combination - Kyo, is the Law that allows Myoho to integrate with Renge - or vice versa. It’s the great, invisible thread of energy that fuses and connects all Life and matter - as well as the past, present and future. It’s also sometimes termed the Universal Law of Communication - perhaps it could even be compared with the string theory that many scientists now suspect exists. Just as the cells in our body, our thoughts, feelings and everything else is continually fluctuating within us - all that exists in the world around us and beyond is also in a constant state of flux - constantly controlled by these three fundamental laws. In fact, more things are going back and forth between the two states of Myo and ho in a single moment than it would ever be possible to calculate or describe. And it doesn’t matter how big or small, famous or trivial anything or anyone may appear to be, everything that’s ever existed in the past, exists now or will exist in the future, exists only because of the workings of the Laws ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’ - the basis of the four fundamental forces, and if they didn’t function, neither we nor anything else could go on existing. That’s because all forms of existence, including the seasons, day, night, birth, death and so on, are moving forward in an ongoing flow of continuation - rhythmically reverting back and forth between the two fundamental states of Myo and ho in absolute accordance with Renge - and by way of Kyo. Even stars are dying and being reborn under the workings of what the combination ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’ represents. Nam, or Namu - which mean the same thing, are vibrational passwords or keys that allow us to reach deep into our life and fuse with or become one with ‘Myoho-Renge-Kyo’. On a more personal level, nothing ever happens by chance or coincidence, it’s the causes that we’ve made in our past, or are presently making, that determine how these laws function uniquely in each of our lives - as well as the environment from moment to moment. By facing east, in harmony with the direction that the Earth is spinning, and chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo for a minimum of, let’s say, ten minutes daily to start with, any of us can experience actual proof of its positive effects in our lives - even if it only makes us feel good on the inside, there will be a definite positive effect. That’s because we’re able to pierce through the thickest layers of our karma and activate our inherent Buddha Nature (our enlightened state). By so doing, we’re then able to bring forth the wisdom and good fortune that we need to challenge, overcome and change our adverse circumstances - turn them into positive ones - or manifest and gain even greater fulfilment in our daily lives from our accumulated good karma. This also allows us to bring forth the wisdom that can free us from the ignorance and stupidity that’s preventing us from accepting and being proud of the person that we indeed are - regardless of our race, colour, gender or sexuality. We’re also able to see and understand our circumstances and the environment far more clearly, as well as attract and connect with any needed external beneficial forces and situations. As I’ve already mentioned, everything is subject to the law of Cause and Effect - the ‘actual-proof-strength’ resulting from chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo always depends on our determination, sincerity and dedication. For example, the levels of difference could be compared to making a sound on a piano, creating a melody, producing a great song, and so on. Something else that’s very important to always respect and acknowledge is that the Law (or if you prefer God) is in everyone and everything. NB: There are frightening and disturbing sounds, and there are tranquil and relaxing sounds. It’s the emotional result of any noise or sound that can trigger off a mood or even instantly change one. When chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo each day, we are producing a sound vibration that’s the password to our true inner-self - this soon becomes apparent when you start reassessing your views on various things - such as your fears and desires etc. The best way to get the desired result when chanting is not to view things conventionally - rather than reaching out to an external source, we need to reach into our own lives and bring our needs and desires to fruition from within - including the good fortune and strength to achieve any help that we may need. Chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo also reaches out externally and draws us towards, or draws towards us, what we need to make us happy from our environment. For example, it helps us to be in the right place at the right time - to make better choices and decisions and so forth. We need to think of it as a seed within us that we’re watering and bringing sunshine to for it to grow, blossom and bring forth fruit or flowers. It’s also important to understand that everything we need in life, including the answer to every question and the potential to achieve every dream, already exists within us.
Are Near Death Experience (NDE) Real? No. They are the product of a hallucinating brain. The brain builds our mental reality from chemicals and sensory inputs. During the process of dying the brain try to compensate for the loss of input by rewiring and releasing chemicals; those changes influence the experience of the dying person. For someone that die to be able to appear and talk to some relatives would entail that it is able to preserve memories, is capable of processing them, visualize, and have some level of reasoning. Those activities require the preservation of the same intact brain. The brain is not capable of any activity if it loses all its sensory inputs. Our fear of dying and the comfort of believing that we will get to see our loved one once again make us not to want to believe that NDE are hallucinations. Enjoy this life, it is the only one you will have.
I'm surprised why Swami Sarvapriyananda is not invited to this show. He's an expert in the subject of consciousness from an Indian philosophical perspective.
So where is consciousness? My best guesses: (1) PFC (place where inputs are mapped to outputs [decisions]) (2) Thalamo-cortical resonant circuit (allows any part of cortex to be included in conscious focus at each moment) (3) Entorhinal cortex/hippocampus (all that we are aware of we try to save to memory; consciousness might be a mechanism of categorization and memory for better future performance).
Really could speed things up by experimenting on humans (like prisoners). Remove sections of brains until consciousness disappears. I remember a person that lost awareness which I assume was damage to the circuitry controlling consciousness.
@@AORD72 Not ethical to test against ppl's will. But, there are already volunteers in medical system that are tested. Most of the problem is ppl aren't paying attention to figuring it out. Nobody is trying to see how the brain maps to voxels of perceptual space and of bank store of isometric shape.
@@BradCaldwellAuburn You're probably to kind. It is not ethical for people to murder other people but it happens (eye for a eye I say). Isn't ethical is what we make it? Eventually I think we will put a human brain in a computer and run it to understand consciousness. *Have you seen the worm brain mapped and simulated in a computer?* "OpenWorm is an international open science project for the purpose of simulating the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans at the cellular level.[1][2][3] Although the long-term goal is to model all 959 cells of the C. elegans, the first stage is to model the worm's locomotion by simulating the 302 neurons and 95 muscle cells. This bottom up simulation is being pursued by the OpenWorm community." *Or the fly brain:* "The reconstruction of the larval fly’s brain includes 3,016 neurons and 548,000 connections, or synapses, between neurons."
Hello Brad. What evidence is there that consciousness is to be found in the brain? It is like looking for the voices of the radio in the radio. Wouldn't we have found it by now? Is it your actual experience that your brain creates consciousness? For me, consciousness is, and the rest follows.
@@canislupuscanus well, for hydranencephaly, they are blind/deaf and might also be zombies (autonomous system). If they did still have awareness, it would have to be generated elsewhere such as in brainstem etc.
Thel question is, was the brain created to perceive the created reality. If so it can be trusted. We build huge structures that work. If our perceptions cant be trusted, how is that possible?
I've been a materialist all my life but lately I'm starting to think that Bernardo Kastrup is right about his analytic idealism - the brain doesn't CAUSE consciousness, it's just the image of a conscious process. It's similar to a flame - it's not causing combustion, it's the image of how combustion looks like. So we will never find "how the brain does it" because the brain is just the image of our subjectivity - it's not causing anything. It's the extrinsic appearance of subjectivity - the image of the brain is how my inner subjectivity looks like when viewed from outside. You can also say that the laws of physics are the interface between our subjectivities - but the metaphysical grounding that allows for all of this to happen is completely mental - what we call the "physical world" is also mental, it's just that it's interpersonal - it's also mind but it's not self-aware, it's not meta-cognitive - we are. So the brain is not causing consciousness to happen - it's just correlated with it, just like a flame is correlated with combustion. To think that you could analyse the brain and extract from there the actual subjectivity is like me looking at the pixels on my screen where Christof and Robert are talking, analyse these pixels and remain flabbergasted that I can't find their subjectivity in those pixels. Of course I can't, those pixels are just images, they don't carry the information of their inner lives. It's the same with the brain, albeit it's better correlated with that person's subjectivity.
Arguments like this, that consciousness is somehow fundamental, don’t seem to be consistent with our experience of it as temporary and ephemeral. We experience deep sleep in which we have no conscious experience every night. I’ve been anaesthetised and it really is like switching off a light. Even during the day, when tired you can lose significant periods of time in a fugue state in which everything was on automatic for a while with no actual awareness going on. None of this seems consistent with a fundamental property. It seems much more likely that it’s an activity, it’s something we sometimes do, and sometimes we don’t do it, or do it to more or less degree.
@@simonhibbs887 I disagree. Just because you don't remember having an experience doesn't mean you didn't have one. A dreamless night is that - you don't remember having an experience, but that doesn't mean you didn't have one. Same with anesthesia. A potential explanation is that meta-cognition/memory (knowing that you know) is diminished in these circumstances. Not only that, but psychoactive drugs work by reducing the electrical activity of the brain, yet the conscious experience is richer.
@@Raptorel I prefer to work from evidence. The evidence of our experience is that consciousness is temporary, ephemeral, inconsistent and highly susceptible to manipulation. Maybe this, maybe that arguments from no evidence can lead you anywhere, into believing anything. It’s not a path to reliable conclusions. On psychoactive drugs reducing brain activity, I’ve seen that argument circulating recently so I looked into it. Depressants do reduce brain function, but their effects are to dull sensation and even induce sleep. Many drugs mimic the action of neurotransmitters that, as the name suggests, stimulate neural activity. This includes hallucinogenics. Opioids mimic dopamine, which makes you feel good. That doesn’t directly affect the quality of experience, but it often prompts activities that do. So this is just a garbled internet meme.
Say for consciousness, the brain takes input and relates/compares it to previous experiences in real time to produce outputs to ensure survival (due to evolution). So in that scenario the brain does cause consciousness because it does a calculation based on experience (memories). Consciousness could perhaps be described as our thoughts and inputs in respect to current time which allows us to react/output in real time. Unconscious you are not reacting to the world.
vision physiology is more or less well known and explained. But the stimulus (to vision and all other senses as a matter of fact) is always electromagnetic radiation coming from the outside. Not defined objects or coherent smells just EM radiation .The brain takes that EM radiation and constructs images, smells, sounds etc. To my opinion this is a topic that needs exploring. Maybe the subjectivity of these procedures reveal the illusion of existence
@@jeffforsythe9514 This is not a very sound argument. Other animals also perform these complex cognitive tasks without having souls. According to your scriptures only Adam and Eve had souls. But the the animal kingdom is filled with a variety of complex cognitive abilities too and the holy books do not say that they are imbued with souls.
Those are cerebral mechanics associated with the vision. I cant see were it leads to anything but forcing some kind of explanation. Your are concious of what some parts of your brain inform you, and this you is still to be found.
Your guest does an excellent job of explaining his ideas. I would add that just because what we think of ourselves isn’t necessarily conscious of what goes on in the visual cortex (and similar neuron-rich areas) doesn’t mean that a separate consciousness cannot arise as an epiphenomenon or through interaction with the world ideas, a separate consciousness in “our” brain that “we” have no knowledge of.
Sounds horrific. It seems like such a phenomenon would need up be very complex and be very specific in its organisational structure. Our conscious awareness seems to be a transient activity we shut down when we don’t need it, or suspend into ‘daydream mode’ and the neural correlates of it take a lot of neuron activity and energy. It seems like such an activity would only be sustained by an organism if it was very beneficial, otherwise it would be selected out as an unnecessary inefficiency.
@@simonhibbs887 I completely agree that IF consciousness is something that requires an effort of will on "our" part to achieve, such a cobbled together Frankenstein monster of multiple, independent consciousnesses would be wasteful, and thus unlikely to have survived natural selection. I'm just not convinced that consciousness is a product of will, or that will is even real. Pass the brownies ...
@@karlyohe6379 I’m not sure about an effort of will. It seems like we would need to be conscious first in order to be able to make a choice, or exercise will at all.
@@KeithCooper-Albuquerque First, he does not define consciousness, or awareness, or conscious, or many of the other essential terms he uses, and so right then the topic becomes unintelligible because many have their own ideas of what these terms mean. Just a minute, I need to listen again to review what he said. Ok. He's all over the place, confused, he has no understanding of what we are as sentient beings, no understanding of what the difference between sentience and biology/chemistry is, no understanding of what functions of our being belong to biology/chemistry and which do not. He's just throwing a stew of various ideas and perceptions he has at us, and it doesn't increase anyone's understanding on the topic. All scientists will be total failures on this topic unless they are accomplished in other ways. That's a start, I can say more and often do, but not unless there is serious interest. The critical failure with this guest is he confuses our being with biology/chemistry because he neither sees nor knows the difference, and he shares his views and observations with these critical differences all mashed up and mashed together. Our presence, sentience, being, awareness, conscience, intentions, life, has absolutely nothing at all to do with biology/chemistry. Atoms are mechanical units. The electron, tau, muon, and their antiparticles are fundamental units of matter. We can create electric fields, magnetic fields, and electricity because they are fundamental units of matter. But we cannot create anything that we are. Nothing we are has anything to do with matter. And a scientist having scientific knowledge alone can never even come to contemplate that, let alone understand it or know it via direct knowledge. You can't make what you are out of Legos, and for the same reason, you can't do it with atoms either.
@@KeithCooper-Albuquerque Bodies are just chemical reactions in the DNA class of reactions that begin with a sperm and egg. They arise and decay. That's all they are. Chemical reactions. Like mixing baking soda and vinegar. They fizz and after some time, they die, the process terminates. No sentient creature could survive beyond birth without binding a spirit. Atoms, mechanical units, are not capable of intent, nor conscience, nor awareness. Consciousness is a bidirectional field of the nervous system wherein sensory input is radiated. And the awareness of a spirit reads this, filters with conscience, and optionally writes back via intent to initiate thought or muscular movement or other actions in a dream. You can't understand anything without understanding spirituality. You can only get garbage from a scientist when trying to understand these topics that concern sentient beings.
@@KeithCooper-Albuquerque You cannot get intentions from atoms, mechanical units. I don't know why people are so blind to this fact. You cannot get conscience from atoms. You cannot get awareness from atoms. It's logically, scientifically, impossible. When people do not have the intelligence to understand that, what more can be said? Sometimes people are just too dumb to understand things I guess. Mechanical units can only create predefined outcomes. They are predictable. Chemistry is predictable. All of nature, all the interactions of elements and matter are mechanical, predictable. Sentient creatures are not. Because they have a spirit bound to them which is zero dimensional and outside of spacetime. So, no scientist will ever find it or study it.
I think the signal is everywhere and the receiver is the brain and the cases he speaks of , lost a couple of tv stations with those Neurological disorders.
This reality, is best when seldom seen, much rather wander lost through dream. And what, that looming dawn does take, an awaken mind incredibly fails to replicate.
Christof argues that because certain disabilities make us lose some type of perception (loss of specific neurons that mediate a particular perception), that this proves that consciousness is not holistic. I don't see how the fact of a disability, in any way refutes the essential oneness of consciousness. Consciousness as a definition, is still consciousness, an integral sense of awareness that, in itself, is unitary. Consciousness is experienced not necessarily as a perception of this or that object in consciousness. That is 'perception of'. That is perception of the objects of consciousness. That is not what consciousness is, in and of itself. Consciousness is essentially unitary and self-referential and refers to the self, the consciousness of Self, a center of consciousness from which all other objects of consciousness are perceived or derived.
Imagination - Process of Pure Creation The process of creation starts with thought - an idea, conception, visualization. Everything you see was once someone's idea. Nothing exists in your world that did not first exist as pure thought. This is true of the universe as well. Thought is the first level of creation. Next comes the word. Everything you say is a thought expressed. It is creative and sends forth creative energy into the universe. Words are more dynamic (thus, some might say more creative) than thought, because words are a different level of vibration from thought. They disrupt (change, alter, affect) the universe with greater impact. Words are the second level of creation. Next comes action. Actions are words moving. Words are thoughts expressed. Thoughts are ideas formed. Ideas are energies come together. Energies are forces released. Forces are elements existent. Elements are particles of God, portions of ALL, the stuff of everything. The beginning is God. The end is action. Action is God creating - or God experienced. Conversation With God - The Holy Trinity You are a tree-fold being. You consist of body, mind, and spirit. You could also call these the physical, the non-physical, and the meta-physical. This is the Holy Trinity, and it has been called by many names. That which you are, I am. I am manifested as Three-In-One. Some of your theologians have called this Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Your psychiatrists have recognized the triumvirate and called it conscious, subconscious, and super-conscious. Your philosophers have called it the id, the ego, and the super ego. Science calls this energy, matter, and antimatter. Poets speak of mind, heart, and soul. New Age thinkers refer to body, mind, and spirit. Your time is divided into past, present, and future. Could this not be the same as subconscious, conscious, and superconscious? Space is likewise divided into three: here, there, and the space between. It is defining and describing this "space between" that becomes difficult, elusive. The moment you begin defining or describing, the space you describe becomes "here" or "there." Yet we know this "space between" exists. It is what holds "here" and "there" in place - just as the eternal now holds "before" and "after" in place. These three aspects of you are actually three energies. You might call them Thought, Word, and Action. All three put together produce a result - which in your language and understanding is called a feeling, or experience. Your soul (subconscious, id, spirit, past, etc.) is the sum total of every feeling you've ever had (created). Your awareness of some of these is called your memory. When you have a memory, you are said to re-member. That is, to put back together. To reassemble the parts. When you reassemble all the parts of you, you will have re-membered Who You Really Are. GOD THE FATHER is knowing - the parent of all understanding, the begetter of all experience, for you cannot experience that which you do not know. GOD THE SON is experiencing - the embodiment, the acting out, of all that the Father knows of Itself, for you cannot be that which you have not experienced. GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT is being - the disembodiment of all that the Son has experienced of Itself; the simple, exquisite is-ness possible only through the memory of knowing and experiencing. This simple being is bliss. It is God-state, after knowing and experiencing Itself. It is that for which God yearned in the beginning. Of course, you are well past the point where you must have it explained to you that the father-son descriptions of God have nothing to do with gender. I use here the picturesque speech of your most recent scriptures. Much earlier holy writings placed this metaphor in a mother-daughter context. Neither is correct. Your mind can best hold the relationship as: parent-offspring. Or: that-which-gives-rise-to, and that-which-is-risen. Adding the third part of the Trinity produces this relationship: That which gives rise to / That which is risen / That which is. This Triune Reality is God's signature. It is the divine pattern. The three-in-one is everywhere found in the realms of the sublime. You cannot escape it in matters dealing with time and space, God and consciousness, or any of the subtle relationships. On the other hand, you will not find the Triune Truth in any of life's gross relationships. The Triune Truth is recognized in life's subtle relationships by everyone dealing with such relationships. Some of your religions have described the Triune Truth as Father, Son. and Holy Ghost. Some of your psychiatrists use the term super-conscious, conscious, and subconscious. Some of your spiritualists say mind, body, and spirit. Some of your philosophers say a thing is not true for you until it is true in thought, word, and deed. When discussing time, you speak of three times only: past, present, future. Similarly, there are three moments in your perception - before, now, and after. In terms of spatial relationships, whether considering the points in the universe, or various points in your own room, you recognize here, there, and the space in between. In matters of gross relationships, you recognize no "in-between." That is because gross relationships are always dyads, whereas relationships of the higher realm are invariably triads. Hence, there is left-right, up-down, big-small, fast-slow, hot-cold, and the greatest dyad ever created: Male-Female. There are no in-between in these dyads. A thing is either one thing or the other, or some greater or lesser version in relationship to one of these polarities. Within the realm of gross relationships, nothing conceptualized can exist without a conceptualization of its opposite. Most of your day-to-day experience is foundationed in this reality. Within the realm of sublime relationships nothing which exists has an opposite. All is One, and everything progresses from one to the other in a never-ending circle. Time is such a sublime realm, in which what you call past, present, and future exists inter-relationally. That is, they are not opposites, but rather parts of the same whole; progressions of the same idea; cycles of the same energy; aspects of the same immutable Truth. If you conclude from this that past, present, and future exist at one and the same "time," you are right. (Yet now is not the moment to discuss that. We can get into this in much greater detail when we explore the whole concept of time - which we will do late.) The world is the way it is because it could not be any other way and still exist in the gross realm of physicality. Earthquakes and hurricanes, floods and tornadoes, and events that you call natural disasters are but movements of the elements from one polarity to the other. The whole birth-death cycle is part of this movement. These are the rhythms of life, and everything in gross reality is subject to them, because life itself is a rhythm. It is a wave, a vibration, a pulsation at the very heart of the All That Is.
THE CREATION OF SELF DEFINITION. All of life is a process of deciding Who You Are, and then experiencing that. As you keep expanding your vision, you make up new rules to cover that! As you keep enlarging your idea about your Self, you create new do's and don'ts, yeses and nos to encircle that. These are the boundaries that "hold in" something which cannot be held in. You cannot hold in "you," because you are as boundless as the Universe. Yet you can create a concept about your boundless Self by Imagining, and then accepting, boundaries. In a sense, this is the only way you can know yourself as anything in particular. That which is boundless is boundless. That which is limitless is limitless. It cannot exist anywhere because it is everywhere. If it is everywhere, it is nowhere in particular. God is everywhere. Therefore, God is nowhere in particular, because to be somewhere in particular, God would have to not be somewhere else - which is not possible for God. There is only one thing that is "not possible" for God, and that is for God to not be God. God cannot "not be." Nor can God not be like Itself. God cannot "un-God" Itself. I am everywhere, and that's all there is to it. And since I am everywhere, I am nowhere. And if I am NOWHERE I Am NOW HERE Everything in the universe is consciousness. Space and time in all planes of reality are only projections within universal consciousness. There really is no here or there for everything is at one place where Mind is. Mind does not move at all. Mind simply is (Not to be confused with the brain). Mind is everywhere yet nowhere. Mind is nowhere but Here, Now. We are all existing together as a singularity in one place and time. Everything is one, Here and Now. Your soul is the reflection of all souls. You are the Other. Without the other, you would not exist. You are defined by your relationships with others. You would need to describe the whole universe in order to define a single person. Therefore every single person is the whole universe. Your soul is both personal and universal at the same time. Everyone is a reflection of yourself. You are in a hall of mirrors where every reflection of yourself appears different. Others you admire reflect the qualities you most cherish in yourself. Others you detest reflect the qualities you most deny in yourself. Each person you see is a different version of you. The outer world is a mirror of yourself at any place and time. If you want to know the state of your personal consciousness, just look around and see what is happening to you. If you want to know the state of the collective consciousness, just look around at what is happening in the world. Your personal reality is synchronistically orchestrated by your sense of Self at all times. If a critical mass of people expressed their higher selves, they would cause a transformation in collective consciousness and the world reality. Every time a person rises in personal consciousness, he moves the state of the world towards a higher one than before. TRANSCENDENT WORLD: You are comfortable here when you can experience all possibilities. Your awareness is open. You are connected to the source. Your consciousness is merged with the mind of God. SUBTLE WORLD: You are comfortable here when you can hold on to your vision. You trust yourself to follow where the mind goes. You aren't bound up in resistance, objections, skepticism, and rigid beliefs. Inspiration occurs as a normal part of your existence. MATERIAL WORLD: You are comfortable with your personal reality. You take responsibility for it. You read the world as a reflection of who you are and what is happening "in here." As the reflection shifts and changes, you track the changes occurring inside yourself. If a white man was created by God, And if a black man was created by God, Black and white men are equal before God. If God is reality, And if reality is consciousness, Then God is consciousness The Need to Create, Discover, and Explore. God becomes a creative source. He gave us our birthright of curiosity. He remains unknowable, but he unfolds one secret after another in creation. At the far edge of the universe, the unknown is a challenge and a source of wonder. God wants us not to worship but to evolve. Our role is to discover and explore. Nature exists to provide endless mysteries that challenge our intelligence - there is always more to discover. This is your God if you live to explore and be creative, if you feel happiest confronting the unknown, if you have total confidence that nature can be unraveled, including human nature, as long as we keep questioning and never settle for fixed, preordained truth. God becomes pure wonder. After reason has reached the limits of understanding, the mystery remains. Sages, saints, and the divinely inspired have penetrated it. They have felt a divine presence that transcends everyday life. Materialism is an illusion. Creation was fashioned in two layers, the visible and the invisible. Miracles become real when everything is a miracle. To reach God, one must accept the reality of invisible things. Nature is a mask for the divine. This is your God if you are a spiritual seeker. You want to know what lies behind the mask of materialism, to find the source of healing, to experience peace, and to be in direct contact with a divine presence. Unity, the State Beyond All Needs. God becomes One. There is complete fulfillment because you have reached the goal of seeking. You experience the divine everywhere. The last hint of separation has vanished. You have no need to divide saint from sinner, because God imbues everything. In this state, you don't know the truth; you become it. The universe and every event in it are expressions of a single underlying Being, which is pure awareness, pure intelligence, and pure creativity. Nature is the outward form that consciousness takes as it unfolds in time and space. This is your God if you feel totally connected to your soul and your source. Your consciousness has expanded to embrace a cosmic perspective. You see everything happening in the mind of God. The ecstasy of great mystics, who seem especially gifted or chosen, now becomes available to you, because you have fully matured spiritually. The God that brings the scheme to an end, God as One, is different from the others. He isn't a projection. He signifies a state of total certainty and wonder, and if you reach that state, you are no longer projecting. Every need has been fulfilled; the path has ended with reality itself.
Consciousness is not just electric current in the brain, because then that current would generate consciousness, and that is contrary to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Thoughts are patterns, system and order, the 2nd law of thermodynamics says that if the brain is a closed system (in other words; generating its own consciousness) then the brain will only increase in disorder and electrical chaos with time, and never be able to converge to systematic and orderly thoughts and ideas; so therefore consciousness with ordered structures in the form of thoughts and ideas must come from outside, and from the outside thoughts and ideas induce the ordered electrical impulses that take place in the brain.
Wonderful.. this is what the buddha said about consciousness: process of being conscious of eye object, process of being conscious of nose object, process of being conscious of skin object, ....process of being conscious of mind object. These processes individually arising and passing away and creating the river of consciousness.
Buddha said that spiritual enlightenment is just two things, suffering and enlightenment, never mind about your nose. Who knows? And eye get it. And do you here me? All kidding aside, we all need a great teacher and Falun Dafa is it.
@@jeffforsythe9514 I can prove that brain thinks. You can't prove one thing about souls. I respect your point of view, and I do like your romantic idea, but it is demonstrably baseless. Follow evidences and facts if you want the truth and disregard all that is wishful thinking based on gut feelings or cultural indoctrination.
If a small animal with a small brain can be caucious, it shows that either consciousness doesn’t require a lot to create or it's created somewhere else. The rest is for perception and understanding.
We don't experience our own nervous systems, nor do we experience the external world. Nor do we experience the raw interface between the two. The world we see is an unconsciously *processed* version of what's happening at the interface between our nervous system and the world outside. In other words, it's an interpretation of what's happening where photons from "out there" are hitting photoreceptors on our retinas. It's a story about the world optimized for fitness (to eliminate unnecessary distractions, noise, etc.), and allow us to go about the business of survival as if we actually knew what was happening in the external world.
@@canislupuscanus, I hope I understand part of the truth. I used to assume the physical world had to exist "out there" more or less as we perceived it, or else different people would have a hard time agreeing on the physical properties of objects. However, after listening to several Donald Hoffman interviews, and insights from physicists such as Nobel laureate Anton Zeilinger, I'm not so sure that there's really a 3D physical world. There's some kind of objective reality, but we may not be able to perceive it or understand it on its own terms.
I would say the brain is not conscious at all, so is the heart, as a matter of fact the entire body is not conscious. The Mind is conscious and uses the brain as it's seat, it comes and goes and this happening is not physical. When I'm conscious of the world the world is, when not, it doesn't exist. The body is in the mind and not the other way. To prove this to ourselves all we need to do is say "This is my body", therefore we're conscious of our bodies meaning we're that Consciousness and not the bodies. Some talk of "out of body experience" the real trick would be how to get in the body experience. Why you can't be found anywhere in the body? You Are NOT IN IT. It's all within our Consciousness.
the strangest thing - photons turn into electric signals and then it's processed at the back of the skull, in closure where it's black - BUT we can see light, Sun, colours, etc
Yea, all that stuff - (perceptual) light, Sun, colors, even your (perceptual) body - is action potentials or some other brain mechanism. So how does the brain map to the voxels of perceptual space to draw the stuff??
I don't know. Consciousness is the weirdest thing left to figure out. Is it possible there's a consciousness field? Like an undetected field that gives consciousness to all matter, creating panpsychism? I feel like this is possible and even has some evidence. The standard scientific explanations are bad, so we might have to look to other more creative ideas.
What makes you think matter is actually “out there” like it’s conceived to be? There’s no evidence that there is a material reality outside of consciousness. It’s less of an assumption and a stretch to say matter doesn’t have awareness but instead awareness has matter seeing as the entire conception of matter came from awareness, so to say matter is primary is no different than saying “God created us because I said so”. Why does reality always have to be seen as duel? You can say it’s mind or matter but either way you’re falling for the most simple trick that afflicts most minds, and that’s that the label, the conception, is not the reality it’s based on. The Hindus had a better and more elegant conception when they said all is Brahman, because Brahman is a concept that anchors itself before all concept, it refers to all being of one substance yet different manifestations like gold can take the form of rings and necklaces yet the reality of it is gold, the rings and necklaces are made up, creations. Such is mind and matter.
@@ProjectMoff Actually I don't think matter is real. Maybe a better way to put it was a consciousness field that gives awareness to other fields (that we call matter).
@@ProjectMoff I think the world as we experience it is a mental model created by our brains. This is why it can fail to correspond to actual reality, such as with optical illusions or hallucinations, or deceptive stage magic. However there must be a source of the sensory stimuli we use to populate that model of the world. We can test the consistency of that source of stimuli through action. That's what allows us to escape from the paradox of solipsism. So we can test the consistency and persistence of the physical world through repeated action and multiple corroborating investigations to confirm that reality is primary over our unreliable perceptions. If you have ever failed to notice an object thrown at you, you know that when there is a disagreement between what you perceive and what is actually happening in the world, reality always wins.
It definitely is possible. Still so much we don't know. There's a paper out there that posits a subjective consciousness field that interacts with complex information systems such as the brain. I can link it if you're interested
Interesting. But something regulates and interprets the inputs to the various and specialized neurons. Right? The master CPU. Capabilities are dependent on the species involved.
It's nice when the interviewee on the subject of consciousness has some idea what they're talking about from a neuroscientific perspective, referring to specific cases, brain anatomy and functional variations. Tired of hearing people speak authoritatively from intuition as if that means they have any idea what's actually going on.
@@canislupuscanusthe hard problem has absolutely not been solved. So many consciousness researchers are now leaning toward consciousness not being emergent because that traditional view has been fruitless for so long
Can't see why we won't eventually be superseded by machines/computers that we engineer. Already supercomputers are probably powerful enough to run consciousness. Humanity is just another step in evolution.
Consciousness is simply an intelligent systems being actively aware of something. Our pilot self-aware conscious minds, which we normally think of as our whole selves, is in fact a subset of our whole mind. All those other subconscious to our pilot selves are in fact conscious intelligent systems, just they are not the pilot self-aware consciousness. This does not make us less than we are. In fact it should amaze us with the wonderful complexity and tremendously advanced intelligence which is intrinsically part of us.
@@jeffforsythe9514 given your thesis, then second of all, computers do not think, they are cockpit of an airplane and the soul is the pilot, thus they already have souls.
@@MusingsFromTheJohn00 If you look through a microscope you will see that even a rock is alive, billions of molecules and atoms moving around. Every living thing has a soul.........falun dafa
@@jeffforsythe9514 I am glad you understand that, even if I doubt you understand why. You, me, the rock, and everything else in the Observable Universe is made up of "Elementary Particles" obeying the "Laws of Nature" which we work hard at trying to understand nd predict through our developing "Laws of Physics". Going back as far as we can make reasonable logical rational predictions of how the Observable Universe was in the past, we have elementary particles following the laws of nature but not even an atom formed. The elementary particles "Learned" new ways of interacting to do new things never done before, remembered what was done, and built up upon that. That is the core base of intelligence. So systems of elementary particles are alive and intelligent. As the entire Observable Universe is a system of elementary particles, it is alive and intelligent. That doesn't mean all parts of the Observable Universe have the same complexity of intelligence. There is a progressive evolution of intelligence over the past 13.8+ billion years where some systems of elementary particles have learned how to become vastly move intelligent. In our local region of space, life on Earth is a focal point of elementary particles learning to be a higher more complex form of intelligence. On Earth, human civilization is the focal point of systems of elementary particles becoming the most advanced complex intelligence on Earth. Assuming we do not kill ourselves first, humanity is on the edge of evolving into the infantile newborn stage of an advanced technological race of pure minds which will begin spreading outwards with a rate of at least 50% the speed of light, colonizing every planet and moon around every star as we expand, bring them all into flourishing vibrant super intelligent life, probably close to the life on Pandora in Avatar than what we normally think of as technology. This evolution is taking place throughout the Observable Universe and thus within probably the next few hundred thousand years the entire Observable Universe is going to blossom with super intelligent life around every star, which will connect to other stars, and thus the Observable Universe will begin to truly become a vast cosmic super intelligent being. Mind you, if humanity destroys itself, other races evolving races won't and the end result will be the same, just without humanity being part of it.
I expected more from Jesus. If Jesus was God incarnated, he would have had all the wisdom of the infinite universe so I would expect of Jesus to impart some extraordinary wisdom upon mankind, but he did not. Jesus did not say anything that surpassed the wisdom/writing of earlier philosophers. Jesus did not leave any writing, was he illiterate? Could not get the resources to write? Did not care that his message would get corrupted until the time it gets written? Here are some things that he could have said that would give him more credibility: 1. Those people that you are accusing of being possessed by evils are just having what would be called an epileptic attack, it is a disorder of the brain; do not kill them, help them by… 2. Slavery is wrong in all forms, don’t allow it. Don’t follow the Mosaic Laws, they are wrong. 3. I won’t be coming back for thousands of years so to avoid wars and have prosperity between all nations until I come back, implement this type of government, these international treaties, and this type of constitution. 4. Many illnesses are cause by tiny organisms that would be called virus and bacteria's and these are things you can do… 5. Burning wood is very bad for your health and the environment, here is a better way to create energy… The “miracles” that are attributed to Jesus can’t be verified; we would dismiss someone today that claim to have resuscitated a verified dead person without proof of it, why no dismiss a claim made thousands of years ago by a mysterious writer? To proclaim to have faith in Jesus is to proclaim that you trust 100th percent those writers that have given us those controversial/contradictory writings about Jesus. I expected that Jesus would have acted more like a God than a televangelist.
I believe consciousness is a connection to an eternal field of information all around us. The random decay of cells, which then produces a current of electrons in the brain is most likely what connects living cells to the conscious energy field all around us. When the decay of brain cells is slowed by consuming too much alcohol or certain drugs the connection to the field is hindered. So, memories during a drunken rage are less likely to be recalled.
Consciousness is simply a soul when it is awake, nothing more complicated. Now let's move on to the real question, what have we been placed on this planet for, what is God's Plan, I know, and so can you......................Falun Dafa
@@Redskies453 We all have one source of energy called our essence. Masturbating dips into that essence to produce an orgasm, too much dipping can leave us tired, grouchy, cynical and unhappy. Maybe a little less dipping might be a good thing for you know who.
Why do I seem to be a specific, individualized consciousness associated with a specific body while you seem to be a different specific, individualized consciousness associated with another body? Why am I, I and you, you? There were billions of bodies around before this one showed up so what changed that I should find myself to be looking out of the eyeballs of this particular body and no other? When it comes to understanding consciousness this is the most important question that must be asked and answered but it is rarely even acknowledged. When the ontologies purporting to explain consciousness are examined critically it becomes obvious that all materialist/reductionist strategies fail completely in attempting to address this question. What is the principled explanation for why: A brain over here would generate my specific consciousness and a brain over there would generate your specific consciousness? Integrated information over here would generate my specific consciousness and integrated information over there would generate your specific consciousness? Global workspace over here would generate my specific consciousness and global workspace there would generate your specific consciousness? Orchestrated quantum collapse in microtubules over here would generate my specific consciousness and orchestrated quantum collapse in microtubules over there would generate your specific consciousness? A clump of conscious atoms over here (panpsychicism) would generate my specific consciousness and a clump of conscious over there would generate your specific consciousness? Materialism already fails since it cannot find a transfer function between microvolt level sparks in the brain and any experience or qualia. In addition it’s not possible for materialistic ontologies to address this question of individuality since no measurement can be made that could verify my consciousness vs your consciousness and therefore no materialist ontology could even make any coherent statements about the subject.
We talk about electrical signals and the brain, where exactly is this subjective experience that I'm having right now occurring. The brain is the computer . The screen is where the computer presents its work Whose watching this presentation?
Modern research on Near Death Experience by Raymond moody, reincarnation memories by Ian Stevenson/Jim trucker and past lives regression by Brian Weiss all independently but coincidentally show that our consciousness survive death, we live many lives and our thoughts and actions matter in the hereafter. So be kind and helpful to others, be virtuous, meditate and cultivate ourselves to higher spiritual levels. Cheers.
The question from the title is left unanswered. And Christof Koch says a lot about details of contents of (meta)consciousness and practically nothing about the consciousness itself. I like him and I find his work valuable, but when it comes to consciousness, he's just scratching the surface.
I disagree with the fundamental premise here. Consciousness is not the sum of the resulting input and computation of the five senses. The most basic element of consciousness is that which is left when you remove all sensory processing. Consciousness is enhanced by the five senses, but to experience self, no sensory experience is required.
The Mind is Conscious and lives on after the Brain dies, if you don't understand this basis then you're wasting time figuring out what makes the Brain tic.
The best that scientists can do is to find and map the part of the physical brain that allows communication with Mind(consciousness) - a biological transceiver
No one has a slightest idea. Scientists are solving "easy problem" of consciousness - trying to figure out how the brain is wired. Great. But it doesn't take us any closer to a "hard problem" - why consciousness exists? How bunch of molecules can have first-person experience? There's no even a tool to even start answering this question. It's entirely still in the field of philosophy. There's simply no science yet that could solve it.
A cup can hold water, but it does not create space. It creates an opportunity for the already existent all-pervasive space to be utilized to hold water. Similarly with the brain, it creates an opportunity for the already existent all-pervasive Consciousness to be utilized for sentience, thinking, and memory, etc.
@@JoeBudd-D there no evidence to unsupport the claim that a teapot is orbiting Jupiter either . The burden of proof is on the person making the claim .
Trees are not conscious, but the hominid we evolved from certainly was. It was not with our level of consciousness, but every animal in the kingdom which has a brain has to be conscious to secure energy and avoid being the source of energy for a larger animal. The fight or flight response is instinctual, and animals are stupid, a fully grown grizzy bear will start a charge at full speed and come to a abrupt stop if you stand your ground and use your higher level of consciousness to survive the encounter. What many people are curious about when speaking of consciousness is intelligence, and it is true that we are rare with intelligence on this world, we are able to fashion an array of many types of stone axes, and we can improve over time and do things like master the universe, but we share consciousness with every animal with a brain because just as our consciouness still is the reason why we survive, consciouness is a aspect of reality which is necessitated by the fact that the universe is real and life always in jeopardy. We will have difficulty convincing ourselves and even greater difficulty creating consciousness in a non-living thing. It's to do with things being real or artificial. The universe has taken 13 billion years to create intelligence, maybe before we try and create an intelligent conscious robot, we start by something small, but I can't imagine a consciouness which does not use its consciousness to survive.
I feel like it’s not the brain that’s conscious I feel like the brain is merely a tool to tune into your individual consciousness, there’s no way consciousness comes from the body. it acts like a radio tuning into the right channel
Koch and other neuroscientists have a long way to go -- collecting a lot moredata about brain organization & brain activity and cataloguing many more correlations between brain states & reports of conscious experiences -- before they would be able to actually answer the question in the video's title: how does a brain produce conscious qualia?
Before they can produce a complete account for sure, but would you say that perceiving a face as a face is a qualia experience? If so, it sound like they have identified the part of the brain associated with that, and brain areas responsible for many other specific, identifiable experiences of perception. Neuroscience has advanced hugely in the last few decades.
@@ioioiotu "They're still working on the easy problem." - That's fair, this talk was mostly about the easy problem. We'll get there. At least we have some roadmaps to explore.
@@simonhibbs887 : The answer to your question depends on what you mean by "perceiving." Although a computer can be programmed or trained to identify faces, we have no reason to believe the computer has conscious experience of the faces. Determining which brain activities correlate with which conscious experiences falls short of explaining how any conscious experiences are produced (the hard problem).
🤔……fascinating - excellent interview. But I’m wondering if Kristoff is actually talking about awareness rather than consciousness? And is there a difference between “awareness” and “consciousness”? It seems to me that awareness of our surroundings, through sounds, smells, and what we can see and touch is on the same level of most (if not all) animals. But consciousness seems to be on an entirely different level, and as far as we know the human species is the only life form on earth that can even have a discussion or debate about the subject of consciousness. The human species seems to be the only earth life form that can design and build things, create art/music, musical instruments, space telescopes, study and cure many diseases, and wage war. Perhaps evolution can eventually produce additional species on earth other than humans, with similar abilities that presently seem exclusive to the human species. It just seems to me that there’s more than meets the eye here….. perhaps there is a dimension within us, or around us, that we cannot see (yet), but is the source of our consciousness.
Apparently a bat's ears lead to its visual cortex - but I believe they have a similar visual experience as other animals, rather than an unimaginable one. There is more than 1 tool available for the job of sight, and some are better than others. This contrasts with Donald Hoffman's Interface Theory (which I love) but I have come to think that there actually is an absolute reality that we just access in different ways with different instruments - but ultimately there is still an objective measurable reality. Where it gets weird is: Reality might be objective, but it isn't absolute. When you consider a concept like "order of events": Imagine 2 stars, Star A & Star B - they both burn out at the same exact time. Well, if you're very near Star A and very far from Star B, then Star A burned out first. If you're nearer to Star B, then Star B burned out first. The very basic notion of the passage of time and order of events is not absolute. Apply that concept to anything in time - so even the 700nm wave emission that we see as "red" is not absolutely 700nm! Nor is it headed in any absolute direction. But when it is, it is, it's just not always red.
Are you batty? Americans were taught not to think, just love America and get rich. 99% fast asleep. People now hate to think, anything but. Smart phones, tv, booze, drugs, shopping, porno, sex, sports and let's not forget eating, the American Weigh. So how do we change that? By finding a great teacher..............Falun Dafa
@@jeffforsythe9514 Even if you believe in a soul, clearly the brain "thinks". It does something different than a kidney. If I believed in a soul, I would still believe that the brain was doing computation and language, and that the "pilot" was a deeper, in some ways more basic "experiencer" of that computation and language.
@@bennyskim The soul is you, the you that is reading this. When the body falls away, you are still alive and thinking, why do you want to argue about every thing, boring.
@@jeffforsythe9514 It feels like "me" to you too. Everyone is "I", to themselves. If I believed in a divine spirit, I would attribute it to that shared feeling of "I" - not to my personal ego and memories my attachments and so-on, which will all go away at the end of this life. That part is an animal that has learned a lot of things, who worries about the future, and remembers the past. That's short-lived, not real. What I would consider a mysterious, even divine-like entity worthy of calling a soul, would be the deeper shared experience that we all have - the one who never dies, because there is always someone here on earth to feel like "me".
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We still need good grammar. Good grammar is a requirement of school. A teacher cannot tell a student, "Hey, I really like you! Your bad grammar is awesome! I will give you a pass!" That would be foul education with corruption of society.
This discussion always points to the realization that consciousness does not depend on the senses, but that it depends on feelings. If you are blind, deaf, numb, etc., you are still conscious, because you still have feelings.
There is an irony that creationists often pick the eye as being too complex to evolve. The eye is rather simple compared to what it takes to process that stream of data from the eye into the world that we see.
@@jeffforsythe9514 I have two eyes, not three. I do not know anyone with three eyes. Do you? Show me a picture. I can see and touch pilots. Explain to me what a soul is and how it can be detected. Pilots can go from one cockpit to another. Can souls do this? Demonstration?
@@matthewalan59 Mankind has discarded all sense of the Divine. You, the consciousness that is reading this are a soul, immortal, the body is just flesh. Falun Dafa
@@matthewalan59 Souls leave the dead body and reincarnate, From one cockpit to another, you and the rest of us have been doing that for many million years. Just google third eye, billions are aware of its existence. North Americans know so very little concerning the Divine but everything about the Alamo and football.
@@jeffforsythe9514 You have made some unsubstantiated claims. As far as I know these claims are completely contrary to the observations made by those who study neuroscience. Can you provide me with any evidence for your claims that would cause me to take them seriously?
Part cannot be whole. Man is conscious by integrity of whole body. The building block of consciousness is senso-motor combination mutually connected by memory.
742 comments --- 1) First and foremost you should define what "conscience" {"consciouss"} means. 2) At the same time you ought know what is "MIND", if it is or not related and how to "conscience" - If "mind" and "brain" are or not "the same thing", and particularyties of their relationship. ---- UNFORTUNATELY in this video i could not find where the subject is referred, "treated", "how are brains consciouss" is absent. A lot of words going to no where.
