Consciousness defined

[WizShaw]

The conscious was obviously created after the unconscious.

And therefore requires a new set of environment variables for it to dynamically develop around.

Those variables started when humans started living in organized groups for safety, instinctual drive fell and the amount of information went up because of the interaction that started taking place. As the size of the groups expanded so did the rules of society as we know it. Rules were formed and consciousness took off.

We know this when we start to examine various disorders dealing with consciousness. Schizophrenia is the breaking down of the conscious in introverted individuals, the conscious becomes self destructive and cyclical, since the unconscious still controls the balance of the body and meets those needs through everyday interaction. A release occurs and the emotional content gets released without the conscious repressing the memories, the same emotional ideas that were cycling around in the conscious all the while slowly breaking it down.

PTS really only affects people who value security over ambition in life. And generally came from a good home, or people who have security issues. The conscious basically has trouble accepting a memory or an idea about something possibly rooted in the childhood or some other event.

And that is only a couple of examples off the top of my head.

Emotion is really at the core of consciousness, language and memory. The increased security allowed the brain to start responding to the social activity created by the security and became more interconnected. Emotion in the form of vibration stimulus started coming to the surface furthering the evolutionary process creating consciousness.

[mkirkpatrick]

Thanks WS,how does one define that which is basic and fundamental to all existence?You mentioned schizophrenics,I have worked with patients with this illness for many years as
a nurse in hospital,so I am well acquainted with the problem,and have had long discussions throughout many a night about the ideas and paranoia that arise within the mind.

Consciousness to me is the "field" in which we are all immersed within.And that being so,it is the sum total of all existence.



regards michael.

[WizShaw]

Thanks WS,how does one define that which is basic and fundamental to all existence?You mentioned schizophrenics,I have worked with patients with this illness for many years as
a nurse in hospital,so I am well acquainted with the problem,and have had long discussions throughout many a night about the ideas and paranoia that arise within the mind.

Consciousness to me is the "field" in which we are all immersed within.And that being so,it is the sum total of all existence.



regards michael.

Well you have to start with somewhat of a formula, a formula that develops from a pure mind set. Jung would have called it a thinking type but I define it as one of two types of thought. Patterns which the unconscious is based on, and linear, which the conscious is based on. When you develop your thinking patterns from one side of the pond, you naturally work towards to the other side. Now I am speaking in the most general sense when I define only two types of thought as when you start including the variables that society introduces, the thought becomes skewed into variations of the two but that is another write up. Anyways in today’s society, the rules that we created teach people to learn things in a linear sense since emotion is tied into every facet of society which pushes the developing conscious along. However this introduces a conflict, the conscious begins to endure the harsh reality of society and causes the body to act aggressively, or what is known as an unconscious defence mechanism. Evolution automatically compensates in the face of adversity and we see this at the cellular level when cells try and mutate to avoid death, it’s the exact same in humans, when you suppress something it naturally fights back. And as a result when the mother who is carrying a child is stressed, her thoughts change the chemical composition in the womb flooding the womb with testosterone created by the body to overcome the adversity from the conscious, in general when something is faced with a challenge, natures attempt to overcome it through stimulation and hence tries to get bigger, this superficially expands the brain and the cells during the fundamental creating a less connected brain that relies on patterns, or a mind that is geared towards instinct and survival, exact what animals do to survive. Or what is known as a brain that doesn’t have much connection to emotion. This type of brain is less empathetic and as a result begins to connect the world in cyclical thoughts that revolve around patterns. It’s also why people like Einstein, Freud, and even Newton started speaking really late in their life time while other children started to speak much earlier. They learned to pick up patterns and break the world down into a set of fundamental variables that are universal to all. They basically processed information differently then much of the rest of the world. But they also seeked to learn as much linear information as they could and by combining the two, they did great things. Linear thinkers tend to use what is known and try and draw conclusions from what they see without understanding the patterns involved in such things like philosophy and life, just the society that we live in. One in general works toward the other. That’s basically what it takes to really define how the universe works, really close observations of movement and a lot of thinking about that movement. When using common knowledge one must always try to pick out the universal aspects that apply to all, and the thinking based on patterns begins to connect ideas which open up other information beyond what you can see. Autistics have an extreme case of this, only there empathetic connection is totally cut off and so is much of their learning, as learning is based on emotion and memory. Or what I call an extreme male brain.

When it comes to schizophrenia, schizophrenics are basically walking dreamers; they are releasing ideas and emotional content built up in the mind. If you look at all three types, one deal with paranoia, one deals with disorganization and one is completely catatonic. The common factor is in fact emotion but it’s expressed in dif ways yet it is released in the same way, when the conscious breaks down. I would go into this but it’s a long write up so ill leave it for now.

Now if you compare this directly to dreams, dreams are performing the same function. The unconscious stays active while you sleep, and the conscious shuts down. It’s not the content of the dream that is important but the emotion associated with the dream. For the body is performing a spring cleaning to keep the mind balanced and in tip top shape. Society has introduced all kinds of different things and we only remember what we need to and what creates a spike of emotional content. When we dream about things that we feel strongly about, we create fun dreams. When we dream about something that we are insecure about, it becomes a nightmare. However in both cases the mind is performing a release, a release to bring it back to an optimal state. In schizophrenics, they usually are of the introverted type or had a lot on their mind to bring about the breakdown of the conscious. And therefore the unconscious steps in to do the cleaning. It’s nothing but a balancing effect to rid themselves of society’s problems. But both perform the same function, to provide something that the body needs.

The only time a dream that has direction is what Freud called fulfilling a wish, in which the unconscious needs something to balance out the needs of the body. I firmly believe that nothing is random in nature and our development. It’s just stuff that we haven’t uncovered yet.

As a species we get caught up in trying to put meaning on everything, yet to really understand the true meaning, sometimes we have to reverse engineer everything back to its roots and define the conflicts taking place, or try and uncover what it was used for before other variables were introduced changing the outcome.

And yeah your right, it is the center of our existence, for it is the source of our ability to question and draw conclusions from that questioning. The basis of creation is the introduction of new information and without the development of the conscious then it would not be possible to define it, even though it is taking place all around us.

I have a good mind to think that the big bang is cyclical in itself. And believe this has probably happened a million times over. I really dont know how many times. Maybe forever. Thats one question that I constantly think about.

I like to think big about things, because philosophically speaking, when your world gets smaller, so does your overall perception and your IQ follows.

[Profpat]

Hi Wizshaw;

I think you are right regarding the cyclic universe. I believe it Perpetually Moves from expansion to contraction an Infinite number of times throughout Eternity.

Best,

Pat

[mkirkpatrick]

Hi Wizshaw;

I think you are right regarding the cyclic universe. I believe it Perpetually Moves from expansion to contraction an Infinite number of times throughout Eternity.

Best,

Pat

I am with you on this one too Pat.

enjoy your day as though it is your last!



regards michael.

[Profpat]

Hi Michael;

I enjoy my day as if it were the First Day of my life.

Best,

Pat

[mkirkpatrick]

Hi Michael;

I enjoy my day as if it were the First Day of my life.

Best,

Pat

It is first and last then Pat.

Enjoy your day posting here!


regards michael.

[Profpat]

Well I hope it's not my last day Michael, though maybe it is. But it's always the first day of the remainder of my life. I hope you and I have many more first days.

Best,

Pat

[Mikal]

WizShaw, just wanted to comment on your statements about Schizophrenia. The psychiatrist Thomas Szasz would be wired for sound if he read that because he warned in the 1960's that the medical field and psychiatrists would take all human problems, attach them to neural circuitry, medicalize them and label them. He is a world renowned psychiatrist and author well respected for his critique of his own field. He did state and continues to state today that Schizophrenia is a label. I have extensively studied his work and quite admire the man for his courage to step to the fringe of his own field. I personally feel that Schizophrenia is a thread of consciousness rather bequeathed to us from our own ancient forefathers who called themselves Shamans and were renowned in their ancient societies. When experiencing the integration of my own consciousness I had to undergo many symptoms classified as Schizophrenia...they were passing states until the process was complete and I would definitely say they were not destructive states but more intense mental states I had to cope with until they more evened out. Thomas Szasz would tell you that "mental illness is a myth."

[GodofReason]

Consciousness! Weighty subject indeed. This is my first post, so I'll try to be circumspect as possible, but I'm a lot like Wiz in that I have my own answer for virtually everything. So, first off, Hey Wiz! I think your perspective is obviously something you've spent a great deal of time developing, so I am reluctant to begin to question it in specific terms until I read more carefully what you have to say, and get a broader idea of your comprehensive world-view. But generally speaking, I think how you define consciousness is more properly "human consciousness". That is, I think there are a lot states of self awareness that are less "information" based and more purely perceptive as evidenced in most mammals and higher life forms. I think a dog knows that it's alive and separate from its environment. This may seem to be purely a matter of semantics, but isn't everything?

Secondly, I think that consciousness is a lot more involved in the maintenance of the physical world than we realize. With Heisenberg's uncertainty issues and observer-dependent realities in relativity beginning to surface in the practice of hard science, I think that we will soon begin to suspect that our perceptive world and what we call the objective physical world are more interdependent than we imagine.

Nothing is extant in our individual or collective understanding but that it is not first perceived. That we perceive very common objective sensory arrangements of the world does not necessarily mean that the world is independent of mechanism of perception, only that the perception is common. What if the process of perception is far more complicated than the structure it perceives? We'd have no way of knowing. It would be more than just a virtual world. The universe could be a perceptive construct of infinite resolution within which, locally introspective or recursive perception self-organizes (life evolves).

As a possible structural scenario, I might suggest that the "real world" could be semantically characterized as an enormously rigid and ruthlessly unforgiving "dream" (you only wake up once). With science being seen as the study of the specific rules of the dream, it would change nothing in the overall structure of human knowledge other than offering a perspective of why it is so monumentally difficult for us to define "consciousness."

That we are developing virtual worlds in the digital intricacies of silicon circuitry should not necessarily be seen as a source for our psychological misconception that the so called "real world" may itself virtual, but as a normal emergence in our evolution. Digital virtualiity may be a structural indication of how essential perception is in the whole process.