[mkirkpatrick]

I suppose there are many similarities between the mind, and a computer, both seem to run programs, and solve problems, although I feel that the computer is better at it than me. To be conscious, is to be aware, and I am aware of many things, there seems to be many levels of consciousness, some that can only be accessed by a mental discipline, such as meditation, or yoga, my conscience when active, reminds me of the need for good manners, decent behavior, thoughtfulness and to consider others, we all have a right to exist, so to speak. When I observe nature, as I keenly do, I am amazed at how aware and conscious living thing are, even plants, I have many times observed a vine move towards a support, and if you move that support, the vine will follow it, amazing. there is a saying in the east that even the stones are conscious, and alive, at first many years ago when I first heard this, I laughed, and thought, how stupid, how could anyone believe that nonsense, well I have to say that today I do. My conscious mind tells me that all things are alive, that death is an illusion, and another word for change. And the challenge is to allow my conscience to be my guide.
Kind regards, Michael.
control to counteract disturbances to it.

[mkirkpatrick]

Originally Posted by Eldar

The bottom line of what conscious is, is just your will. You the conscious observer, you are an observer with the ablitiy to have an opinion about what you observe. You collapse the wave.

absolutly that is an
affirmitive.

kind regards michael.

[harmonygirl]

Michael, I think that you expressed that sentiment very poetically.

[mkirkpatrick]

Originally Posted by harmonygirl

Michael, I think that you expressed that sentiment very poetically.

Thankyou for those kind words,they are uplifting and
make the day somewhat brighter.

kindest regards michael.

[waterford]

Daniel Wegner wrote a book entitled, The Illusion of Conscious Will, about 2002, in which the thesis was that most human activity is conducted by the subconscious and that the conscious mind acts largely as an interpreter. The interpreter puts the best spin on whatever happened. Experimental data from Damasio and others was provided. It seems that the conscious mind has a thruput of 77bps whereas the overall human system requires about 11Mbps to operate. Doesn't say much for the value of consciousness, does it? The book was reviewed in the NYTimes a couple of years ago. Wegner is a psychology professor at Harvard.

[mkirkpatrick]

Originally Posted by Eldar

The bottom line of what conscious is, is just your will. You the conscious observer, you are an observer with the ablitiy to have an opinion about what you observe. You collapse the wave.

What do you think
would happen then If one was ,say an adept surfer and rode that wave,?What
then!.


kind regardsmichael.

[baudrunner]

That's interesting. I don't know how those 77 bps were isolated from the body's overall metabolism but it seems to me that they are actually representative of all of the 11Mbps of transparent parallel processing that produces the synthesis of conscious self.

The human nervous system consists of about a hundred billion neurons and supporting glial cells. They constitute the entire human brain, distributed throughout the body. Those mere 77 bps suggest plenty of bps's left over for another brain. In fact, Michael D. Gershon of Columbia University has written an article which describes the enteric nervous system as just that, a brain in its own right.

That would explain the voices occasionally communicating to me from my gut.

[hanzoganz]

Originally Posted by Nebulous Neura

Like the keeper of this forum, my background is working with computers and I read about physics, neuroscience, cosmology, complex adaptive systems, chaos theory, and other related books in my spare time. As many of you, I am here because I am curious and have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. I do not feel that my thoughts and inquiries are null simply because I do not hold a Ph.D. I hope that most of you agree.

Now to the purpose of this post in this forum... As I continue to read about recent discoveries in neurophysiology, I am even more intrigued about the physics of consciousness. I would like to discuss ideas and theories about the physical characteristics exhibited in a conscious mind and how resulting behaviours can possibly be emulated within non-organic structures.

One book that I found particularly interesting is "Going Inside - A tour round a single moment of consciousness" by John McCrone. If anyone else here has read that book, I would like to compare notes. I believe consciousness CAN be explained mathematically and would enjoy intellectual conversation with others that share an interest in pursuit of this elusive formula. Binary based silicon processors may or may not be an acceptable platform for consciousness. In the realm of mathematics, one does not have to implement the solution, but merely prove that an implementation is possible. The human brain and nervous system is proof that one implementation of consciousness is possible, but is it the only configuration of matter that can be self-aware? There must be others, and if there are, then it should be possible to prove mathematically.

I don´t think there is a mathematical formula that explains consciousness. I wouldn´t like to find of one, either.

Why I don´t thinks there is one: Gödel proved that given a system there are certain statements that can´t be proved true of false, that are undecidible. If counsciously we think about counsciousness the system proves to be incomplete.

Why I don´t want it to be one: because I´m a graduate student of math, of stability of complex dynamical systems, or chaos, as is best known. Math for me is the way I make my life, at least the scholarship pays the bill. So I wouldn´t like to find out that my job defines the inidvidual that I am. I like to think that after 5 pm, when I leave the university campus, I can forget about math and use my counscience with out any other help.

Why do we have to try to find formulas for everything? Are there any?

[mkirkpatrick]

Originally Posted by Marketa

I agree that there can be other conscious "things" (another great book about this is Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter) but I don't think we'll ever have a mathematical proof. How do you want to prove e.g. (the simplest case) YOURSELF mathematically? It's impossible, because mathematics is only a system made by man which power is in connecting and finding relations between various things but which can't prove, I mean REALLY prove, anything - it can't even prove itself.

You
have made a very valid point there.

kind regards michael.

[baudrunner]

I have read every post in this thread and there are some extraordinary thoughts being presented here. Good thing too, no inanity thus far.

The fundamental proposal posed by the thread seems to be the matter of mathematics possibly describing the existence of consciousness. Perhaps the closest that mathematics can come to emulating evolution is through the Mandelbrot math - ie. fractals. It becomes obvious then that a search for the mathematical solution to the problem is doomed to a slow death, for life, or consciousness, actually represents some kind of antithesis to the Mandelbrot progressions in that life grows larger and longer and matures until it is affected by some external force that aborts the physiology which harbours it. Mathematics would find itself hard pressed to come up with an equation to describe life. Mandlebrot math can only be a repetitious simulation that has no real comparison to the generation of life.

The analogy to computers is more on the mark, because ultimately someone will create the Turin machine, by way of sophisticated hardware and extensive software programming that can fool any living person into believing that they are talking to a living human being. The hypothalamus then represents the error-trapping algorithm that redirects the software toward accommodating behaviours as it refreshes the paths that took it there. In that computers can be programmed to be human, then just how much of our lives and conscious selves are so completely independent of programming? One might even say none of it at all. The body is very much like a machine, in fact, it is a machine.

Which brings us back to the problem of consciousness. Granted that the body is a machine and that all the physical requirements for maintaining that machine are built-in, it can be reasonably concluded then that this machine exists solely for the purpose of harbouring the consciousness that defines the unique individual which it represents. Which brings us back to square one. Forget math. We need an important link to all the components of a TOE which incorporates as its main objective the establishment that consciousness is the reason for the existence of reality. It is predetermined, and not a random chance occurrence. The question of what predetermines it can in turn only be described by the reason for the spark that initiated the creation process in the first place. This Universe is anthropocentric in nature and we simply cannot escape that fact.