Consciousness or Awareness of surroundings?

[everymansmedium]

Hello Friends:
I have been giving the concept of consciousness quite a bit of thought over the past week or so and have come up with a few very interesting comparisons of the attributes of mankind.

WE tend to think that it is our level of consciousness that puts us as the dominant species of animal on this planet. (TOP PREDITOR) That may be so but then again it may not be so. First we must define just what consciousness is.

Is awareness of surroundings the same as consciousness? ……………….. I do not think so.
We can learn to do a task. After we learn to do this task we can quite frequently function more efficiently at a subconscious level. This indicates to me that the attention that is paid toward self may subtract from the attention that is paid to the task. Though the attention that is paid to self may be helpful to the initial learning process of a task by observation of the results of our efforts, it might also tend to be a burden to the resources of mind in the case of normal activities. In any case I feel that it is quite possible to simulate either of these functions. One by sufficient monitoring of I/O and the appropriate software to interpret the input. (awareness of environment)
The other might be the result of monitoring self to determine the probable results of an effort.

To the top predator it is more important to be aware of the surroundings than to be aware of self.

I think the consciousness might be the product of a learning machine function.

If it turns out that what we are is not so SPECIAL, then the next question is, do we live in a steady state existence medium? If we do then all things that are possible have already happened.

If we live in an existence medium that has a beginning, has enough time passed us already to indicate that this is likely to have already happened.

The thought that we are not so special brings with it many thoughts, some are not very good thoughts, but in my final analysis of this idea, it occurs to me that we can then become immortal. It would then be possible to eventually put the character of a man into a machine where it could live in a completely controlled body/environment. We could simulate any and all pleasures and eliminate all pain. We could give our body whatever appearance that we decided was most appealing. We could eventually completely control this universe. We would become as Gods. But has this already been done elsewhere?
Just thinking!
John

[mkirkpatrick]

Thanks John for a most interesting post,defining consciousness is no easy task!It might help if we knew what consciousness is not-then we could move onto what we think it is?


regards michael