The young women had survived the car crash, after a fashion. In the five months since parts of her brain had been crushed, she could open her eyes but didn't respond to sights, sounds or jabs. In the jargon of neurology, she was judged to be in a persistent vegetative state. In crueler everyday language, she was a vegetable

So picture the astonishment of British and Belgian scientists as they scanned her brain using a kind of MRI that detects blood flow to active parts of the brain. When they recited sentences, the parts involved in language lit up. When they asked her to imagine visiting the rooms of her house, the parts involved in navigating space and recognizing places ramped up. And when they asked her to imagine playing tennis, the regions that trigger motion joined in. Indeed, her scans were barely different from those of healthy volunteers. The woman, it appears, had glimmerings of consciousness.

Try to comprehend what it is like to be that woman. Do you appreciate the words and caresses of your distraught family while racked with frustration at your inability to reassure them that they are getting through? Or do you drift in a haze, springing to life with a concrete thought when a voice prods you, only to slip back into blankness? If we could experience this existence, would we prefer it to death? And if these questions have answers, would they change our policies toward unresponsive patients--making the Terri Schiavo case look like child's play?

The report of this unusual case last September was just the latest shock from a bracing new field, the science of consciousness. Questions once confined to theological speculations and late-night dorm-room bull sessions are now at the forefront of cognitive neuroscience. With some problems, a modicum of consensus has taken shape. With others, the puzzlement is so deep that they may never be resolved. Some of our deepest convictions about what it means to be human have been shaken.

It shouldn't be surprising that research on consciousness is alternately exhilarating and disturbing. No other topic is like it. As René Descartes noted, our own consciousness is the most indubitable thing there is. The major religions locate it in a soul that survives the body's death to receive its just deserts or to meld into a global mind. For each of us, consciousness is life itself, the reason Woody Allen said, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying." And the conviction that other people can suffer and flourish as each of us does is the essence of empathy and the foundation of morality.

To make scientific headway in a topic as tangled as consciousness, it helps to clear away some red herrings. Consciousness surely does not depend on language. Babies, many animals and patients robbed of speech by brain damage are not insensate robots; they have reactions like ours that indicate that someone's home. Nor can consciousness be equated with self-awareness. At times we have all lost ourselves in music, exercise or sensual pleasure, but that is different from being knocked out cold.



The Mystery of Consciousness by Steven Pinker
Time Magazine Jan 29th 2007


Entire article at:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...1580394,00.html (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394,00.html)

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<!-- Begin Content Main --> <!-- Begin Consumer Marketing --> <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript1.1"> adSetTarget('_blank'); htmlAdWH('93224390', '728', '90'); adSetType(''); </script><script language=\"JavaScript\" src="http://ar.atwola.com/html/93224390/78772586/aol?SNM=HIBVDF&width=728&height=90&target=_blank&tile=1&TZ=480&CT=J&hw=docw"></script>It's not to big so I decided to post the whole article.




Friday, Jan. 19, 2007
The Mystery of Consciousness

By Steven Pinker


The young women had survived the car crash, after a fashion. In the five months since parts of her brain had been crushed, she could open her eyes but didn't respond to sights, sounds or jabs. In the jargon of neurology, she was judged to be in a persistent vegetative state. In crueler everyday language, she was a vegetable.

So picture the astonishment of British and Belgian scientists as they scanned her brain using a kind of MRI that detects blood flow to active parts of the brain. When they recited sentences, the parts involved in language lit up. When they asked her to imagine visiting the rooms of her house, the parts involved in navigating space and recognizing places ramped up. And when they asked her to imagine playing tennis, the regions that trigger motion joined in. Indeed, her scans were barely different from those of healthy volunteers. The woman, it appears, had glimmerings of consciousness.

Try to comprehend what it is like to be that woman. Do you appreciate the words and caresses of your distraught family while racked with frustration at your inability to reassure them that they are getting through? Or do you drift in a haze, springing to life with a concrete thought when a voice prods you, only to slip back into blankness? If we could experience this existence, would we prefer it to death? And if these questions have answers, would they change our policies toward unresponsive patients--making the Terri Schiavo case look like child's play?

The report of this unusual case last September was just the latest shock from a bracing new field, the science of consciousness. Questions once confined to theological speculations and late-night dorm-room bull sessions are now at the forefront of cognitive neuroscience. With some problems, a modicum of consensus has taken shape. With others, the puzzlement is so deep that they may never be resolved. Some of our deepest convictions about what it means to be human have been shaken.

It shouldn't be surprising that research on consciousness is alternately exhilarating and disturbing. No other topic is like it. As René Descartes noted, our own consciousness is the most indubitable thing there is. The major religions locate it in a soul that survives the body's death to receive its just deserts or to meld into a global mind. For each of us, consciousness is life itself, the reason Woody Allen said, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying." And the conviction that other people can suffer and flourish as each of us does is the essence of empathy and the foundation of morality.

To make scientific headway in a topic as tangled as consciousness, it helps to clear away some red herrings. Consciousness surely does not depend on language. Babies, many animals and patients robbed of speech by brain damage are not insensate robots; they have reactions like ours that indicate that someone's home. Nor can consciousness be equated with self-awareness. At times we have all lost ourselves in music, exercise or sensual pleasure, but that is different from being knocked out cold.

THE "EASY" AND "HARD" PROBLEMS

<!--pagebreak--> WHAT REMAINS IS NOT ONE PROBLEM ABOUT CONSCIOUSNESS BUT two, which the philosopher David Chalmers has dubbed the Easy Problem and the Hard Problem. Calling the first one easy is an in-joke: it is easy in the sense that curing cancer or sending someone to Mars is easy. That is, scientists more or less know what to look for, and with enough brainpower and funding, they would probably crack it in this century.

What exactly is the Easy Problem? It's the one that Freud made famous, the difference between conscious and unconscious thoughts. Some kinds of information in the brain--such as the surfaces in front of you, your daydreams, your plans for the day, your pleasures and peeves--are conscious. You can ponder them, discuss them and let them guide your behavior. Other kinds, like the control of your heart rate, the rules that order the words as you speak and the sequence of muscle contractions that allow you to hold a pencil, are unconscious. They must be in the brain somewhere because you couldn't walk and talk and see without them, but they are sealed off from your planning and reasoning circuits, and you can't say a thing about them.

The Easy Problem, then, is to distinguish conscious from unconscious mental computation, identify its correlates in the brain and explain why it evolved.

The Hard Problem, on the other hand, is why it feels like something to have a conscious process going on in one's head--why there is first-person, subjective experience. Not only does a green thing look different from a red thing, remind us of other green things and inspire us to say, "That's green" (the Easy Problem), but it also actually looks green: it produces an experience of sheer greenness that isn't reducible to anything else. As Louis Armstrong said in response to a request to define jazz, "When you got to ask what it is, you never get to know."

The Hard Problem is explaining how subjective experience arises from neural computation. The problem is hard because no one knows what a solution might look like or even whether it is a genuine scientific problem in the first place. And not surprisingly, everyone agrees that the hard problem (if it is a problem) remains a mystery.

Although neither problem has been solved, neuroscientists agree on many features of both of them, and the feature they find least controversial is the one that many people outside the field find the most shocking. Francis Crick called it "the astonishing hypothesis"--the idea that our thoughts, sensations, joys and aches consist entirely of physiological activity in the tissues of the brain. Consciousness does not reside in an ethereal soul that uses the brain like a PDA; consciousness is the activity of the brain.

THE BRAIN AS MACHINE

SCIENTISTS HAVE EXORCISED THE GHOST FROM THE MACHINE NOT because they are mechanistic killjoys but because they have amassed evidence that every aspect of consciousness can be tied to the brain. Using functional MRI, cognitive neuroscientists can almost read people's thoughts from the blood flow in their brains. They can tell, for instance, whether a person is thinking about a face or a place or whether a picture the person is looking at is of a bottle or a shoe.

<!--pagebreak--> And consciousness can be pushed around by physical manipulations. Electrical stimulation of the brain during surgery can cause a person to have hallucinations that are indistinguishable from reality, such as a song playing in the room or a childhood birthday party. Chemicals that affect the brain, from caffeine and alcohol to Prozac and LSD, can profoundly alter how people think, feel and see. Surgery that severs the corpus callosum, separating the two hemispheres (a treatment for epilepsy), spawns two consciousnesses within the same skull, as if the soul could be cleaved in two with a knife.

And when the physiological activity of the brain ceases, as far as anyone can tell the person's consciousness goes out of existence. Attempts to contact the souls of the dead (a pursuit of serious scientists a century ago) turned up only cheap magic tricks, and near death experiences are not the eyewitness reports of a soul parting company from the body but symptoms of oxygen starvation in the eyes and brain. In September, a team of Swiss neuroscientists reported that they could turn out-of-body experiences on and off by stimulating the part of the brain in which vision and bodily sensations converge.

THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL

ANOTHER STARTLING CONCLUSION FROM the science of consciousness is that the intuitive feeling we have that there's an executive "I" that sits in a control room of our brain, scanning the screens of the senses and pushing the buttons of the muscles, is an illusion. Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along.

Take the famous cognitive-dissonance experiments. When an experimenter got people to endure electric shocks in a sham experiment on learning, those who were given a good rationale ("It will help scientists understand learning") rated the shocks as more painful than the ones given a feeble rationale ("We're curious.") Presumably, it's because the second group would have felt foolish to have suffered for no good reason. Yet when these people were asked why they agreed to be shocked, they offered bogus reasons of their own in all sincerity, like "I used to mess around with radios and got used to electric shocks."

It's not only decisions in sketchy circumstances that get rationalized but also the texture of our immediate experience. We all feel we are conscious of a rich and detailed world in front of our eyes. Yet outside the dead center of our gaze, vision is amazingly coarse. Just try holding your hand a few inches from your line of sight and counting your fingers. And if someone removed and reinserted an object every time you blinked (which experimenters can simulate by flashing two pictures in rapid sequence), you would be hard pressed to notice the change. Ordinarily, our eyes flit from place to place, alighting on whichever object needs our attention on a need-to-know basis. This fools us into thinking that wall-to-wall detail was there all along--an example of how we overestimate the scope and power of our own consciousness.

<!--pagebreak--> Our authorship of voluntary actions can also be an illusion, the result of noticing a correlation between what we decide and how our bodies move. The psychologist Dan Wegner studied the party game in which a subject is seated in front of a mirror while someone behind him extends his arms under the subject's armpits and moves his arms around, making it look as if the subject is moving his own arms. If the subject hears a tape telling the person behind him how to move (wave, touch the subject's nose and so on), he feels as if he is actually in command of the arms.

The brain's spin doctoring is displayed even more dramatically in neurological conditions in which the healthy parts of the brain explain away the foibles of the damaged parts (which are invisible to the self because they are part of the self). A patient who fails to experience a visceral click of recognition when he sees his wife but who acknowledges that she looks and acts just like her deduces that she is an amazingly well-trained impostor. A patient who believes he is at home and is shown the hospital elevator says without missing a beat, "You wouldn't believe what it cost us to have that installed."

Why does consciousness exist at all, at least in the Easy Problem sense in which some kinds of information are accessible and others hidden? One reason is information overload. Just as a person can be overwhelmed today by the gusher of data coming in from electronic media, decision circuits inside the brain would be swamped if every curlicue and muscle twitch that was registered somewhere in the brain were constantly being delivered to them. Instead, our working memory and spotlight of attention receive executive summaries of the events and states that are most relevant to updating an understanding of the world and figuring out what to do next. The cognitive psychologist Bernard Baars likens consciousness to a global blackboard on which brain processes post their results and monitor the results of the others.

BELIEVING OUR OWN LIES

A SECOND REASON THAT INFORMATION MAY BE SEALED OFF FROM consciousness is strategic. Evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers has noted that people have a motive to sell themselves as beneficent, rational, competent agents. The best propagandist is the one who believes his own lies, ensuring that he can't leak his deceit through nervous twitches or self-contradictions. So the brain might have been shaped to keep compromising data away from the conscious processes that govern our interaction with other people. At the same time, it keeps the data around in unconscious processes to prevent the person from getting too far out of touch with reality.

What about the brain itself? You might wonder how scientists could even begin to find the seat of awareness in the cacophony of a hundred billion jabbering neurons. The trick is to see what parts of the brain change when a person's consciousness flips from one experience to another. In one technique, called binocular rivalry, vertical stripes are presented to the left eye, horizontal stripes to the right. The eyes compete for consciousness, and the person sees vertical stripes for a few seconds, then horizontal stripes, and so on.

<!--pagebreak--> A low-tech way to experience the effect yourself is to look through a paper tube at a white wall with your right eye and hold your left hand in front of your left eye. After a few seconds, a white hole in your hand should appear, then disappear, then reappear.

Monkeys experience binocular rivalry. They can learn to press a button every time their perception flips, while their brains are impaled with electrodes that record any change in activity. Neuroscientist Nikos Logothetis found that the earliest way stations for visual input in the back of the brain barely budged as the monkeys' consciousness flipped from one state to another. Instead, it was a region that sits further down the information stream and that registers coherent shapes and objects that tracks the monkeys' awareness. Now this doesn't mean that this place on the underside of the brain is the TV screen of consciousness. What it means, according to a theory by Crick and his collaborator Christof Koch, is that consciousness resides only in the "higher" parts of the brain that are connected to circuits for emotion and decision making, just what one would expect from the blackboard metaphor.

WAVES OF BRAIN

CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BRAIN CAN BE TRACKED NOT JUST IN SPACE but also in time. Neuroscientists have long known that consciousness depends on certain frequencies of oscillation in the electroencephalograph (EEG). These brain waves consist of loops of activation between the cortex (the wrinkled surface of the brain) and the thalamus (the cluster of hubs at the center that serve as input-output relay stations). Large, slow, regular waves signal a coma, anesthesia or a dreamless sleep; smaller, faster, spikier ones correspond to being awake and alert. These waves are not like the useless hum from a noisy appliance but may allow consciousness to do its job in the brain. They may bind the activity in far-flung regions (one for color, another for shape, a third for motion) into a coherent conscious experience, a bit like radio transmitters and receivers tuned to the same frequency. Sure enough, when two patterns compete for awareness in a binocular-rivalry display, the neurons representing the eye that is "winning" the competition oscillate in synchrony, while the ones representing the eye that is suppressed fall out of synch.

So neuroscientists are well on the way to identifying the neural correlates of consciousness, a part of the Easy Problem. But what about explaining how these events actually cause consciousness in the sense of inner experience--the Hard Problem?

TACKLING THE HARD PROBLEM

TO APPRECIATE THE HARDNESS OF THE HARD PROBLEM, CONSIDER how you could ever know whether you see colors the same way that I do. Sure, you and I both call grass green, but perhaps you see grass as having the color that I would describe, if I were in your shoes, as purple. Or ponder whether there could be a true zombie--a being who acts just like you or me but in whom there is no self actually feeling anything. This was the crux of a Star Trek plot in which officials wanted to reverse-engineer Lieut. Commander Data, and a furious debate erupted as to whether this was merely dismantling a machine or snuffing out a sentient life.

<!--pagebreak--> No one knows what to do with the Hard Problem. Some people may see it as an opening to sneak the soul back in, but this just relabels the mystery of "consciousness" as the mystery of "the soul"--a word game that provides no insight.

Many philosophers, like Daniel Dennett, deny that the Hard Problem exists at all. Speculating about zombies and inverted colors is a waste of time, they say, because nothing could ever settle the issue one way or another. Anything you could do to understand consciousness--like finding out what wavelengths make people see green or how similar they say it is to blue, or what emotions they associate with it--boils down to information processing in the brain and thus gets sucked back into the Easy Problem, leaving nothing else to explain. Most people react to this argument with incredulity because it seems to deny the ultimate undeniable fact: our own experience.

The most popular attitude to the Hard Problem among neuroscientists is that it remains unsolved for now but will eventually succumb to research that chips away at the Easy Problem. Others are skeptical about this cheery optimism because none of the inroads into the Easy Problem brings a solution to the Hard Problem even a bit closer. Identifying awareness with brain physiology, they say, is a kind of "meat chauvinism" that would dogmatically deny consciousness to Lieut. Commander Data just because he doesn't have the soft tissue of a human brain. Identifying it with information processing would go too far in the other direction and grant a simple consciousness to thermostats and calculators--a leap that most people find hard to stomach. Some mavericks, like the mathematician Roger Penrose, suggest the answer might someday be found in quantum mechanics. But to my ear, this amounts to the feeling that quantum mechanics sure is weird, and consciousness sure is weird, so maybe quantum mechanics can explain consciousness.

And then there is the theory put forward by philosopher Colin McGinn that our vertigo when pondering the Hard Problem is itself a quirk of our brains. The brain is a product of evolution, and just as animal brains have their limitations, we have ours. Our brains can't hold a hundred numbers in memory, can't visualize seven-dimensional space and perhaps can't intuitively grasp why neural information processing observed from the outside should give rise to subjective experience on the inside. This is where I place my bet, though I admit that the theory could be demolished when an unborn genius--a Darwin or Einstein of consciousness--comes up with a flabbergasting new idea that suddenly makes it all clear to us.

Whatever the solutions to the Easy and Hard problems turn out to be, few scientists doubt that they will locate consciousness in the activity of the brain. For many nonscientists, this is a terrifying prospect. Not only does it strangle the hope that we might survive the death of our bodies, but it also seems to undermine the notion that we are free agents responsible for our choices--not just in this lifetime but also in a life to come. In his millennial essay "Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died," Tom Wolfe worried that when science has killed the soul, "the lurid carnival that will ensue may make the phrase 'the total eclipse of all values' seem tame."

TOWARD A NEW MORALITY

<!--pagebreak--> MY OWN VIEW IS THAT THIS IS backward: the biology of consciousness offers a sounder basis for morality than the unprovable dogma of an immortal soul. It's not just that an understanding of the physiology of consciousness will reduce human suffering through new treatments for pain and depression. That understanding can also force us to recognize the interests of other beings--the core of morality.

As every student in Philosophy 101 learns, nothing can force me to believe that anyone except me is conscious. This power to deny that other people have feelings is not just an academic exercise but an all-too-common vice, as we see in the long history of human cruelty. Yet once we realize that our own consciousness is a product of our brains and that other people have brains like ours, a denial of other people's sentience becomes ludicrous. "Hath not a Jew eyes?" asked Shylock. Today the question is more pointed: Hath not a Jew--or an Arab, or an African, or a baby, or a dog--a cerebral cortex and a thalamus? The undeniable fact that we are all made of the same neural flesh makes it impossible to deny our common capacity to suffer.

And when you think about it, the doctrine of a life-to-come is not such an uplifting idea after all because it necessarily devalues life on earth. Just remember the most famous people in recent memory who acted in expectation of a reward in the hereafter: the conspirators who hijacked the airliners on 9/11.

Think, too, about why we sometimes remind ourselves that "life is short." It is an impetus to extend a gesture of affection to a loved one, to bury the hatchet in a pointless dispute, to use time productively rather than squander it. I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.

Steven Pinker is Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard and the author of The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate


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Great 'find', Zach ! (0:

I have a couple of Steve P's books...from days o' yore.
His style of writing has 'changed' with *time*.
I, personally, have always related to him as a philosopher, more than a 'psychologist'.

He's a good author..but like I say...get 'info' from as many variable sources, as possible. (0;


The only 'material' I don't have anymore are Froid's 'blitherings'.
Gave them all away.
Prolly would've made good 'kindling'....on an outdoor bonfire.

Man you are both more philosophical than I am my only thought was. . . .when I cant wiggle it is time to die.

Sorry I think I short circulated some thing in my brain earlier, or maybe my mind went AWOL it does that sometimes.

zach man
great find
I've annotated the article
- forgotten to post it and lost mi'post

poop!

cut down version :-)
{incoming}

memories of Tesla :-)

Froid
...on an outdoor bonfire darn stuff won't light ... :-)

cold
froid,-e / frais ,fraîche / fraîcheur

cold / indifferent
froid,-e / froideur / refroidissement / fraîcheur

This was the point I made previously, on another thread, about the differences between the concepts of consciousness and conscious.

Nor can consciousness be equated with self-awareness. At times we have all lost ourselves in music, exercise or sensual pleasure, but that is different from being knocked out cold.

Zach - what do you think ADD is?
:-)

3 letters

an abbreviation for three (1 2 3) w o r d s , A D D as opposed to ADD


Attention Deficit Dis-order
/\ /\ /\

It 'could' be a set of relationships individuals have with each other as opposed to the population at large

ADD is an agreement, I suppose

An agreement which is not entirely agreed upon

So I suppose it is sometimes a disagreement

or A model of relative happenings?

ADD is what you make it and what you don't make it

a card or set of cards that is 'supposedly' dealt by an invisible hand.

Or maybe the universe attempting to understand its self?



http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/DrawingHands.jpg/250px-DrawingHands.jpg

In truth I don't have the power to DEFINE anything outside of my tiny reality but I’ll give it a Personal Summary:

ADD is a great wealth of life experiences for any individual who chooses this variable as a method to express them.

So ADD is redefined by all of us on the fly: Play with it, just don't make it boring or I won't pay any attention to it.

It's not to big so I decided to post the whole article.

LOL..I'd like to see your *big*...good post BTW..the bit I read :-)

Or maybe the universe attempting to understand its self?
consciousness,quantum consciousness, Krishna consciousness.
I believe that there's a pattern - and that 3, 6 and *9* layers above any given layer - we can see a reprise.
ADDer consciousness as reprise on quantum consciousness.
... the Universe attempting to understand itself.

ADD is a great wealth of life experiences for any individual who chooses this variable as a method to express them.
So ADD is redefined by all of us on the fly: Play with it, just don't make it boring or I won't pay any attention to it.great.
yes.
ADD offers us a life more real.
... taking the more variable route - shaking off pointless protocol or dogma - becomes easier (less avoidable) - the more ADD one becomes.
The more ADD - the more the mind develops a mind of its own (from Tammy).
It's cool - all of this - bottom line though - we've an internal reality to build - and -it- *is* for building.
Our mind's mind pursues this internal complete reality - we can't get in its way.
It produced mind - as such
... consciousness ....
... best to just hand over the reigns and enjoy the ride.

good calls!!!

hey Zach, here's the problem - we're only blessed with the perspective outta' our own heads.
We don't know what's going on in the nonADDer head - but if we could - allz we'd see is a weaker reality (rrreality strength measured on closeness of fit to RRReality) - for completely counterintuitive reasons though - the closer the fit - the more neurotransmission our mind can elicit ... [rrreality is a collection of logical models in a shape (- the metamodel web (in the ADDer))
->- in the nonADDer the models don't fuse and so suffer tremendous potential for internal inconsistency]
->- ->- ->-
It's ok to kill animals on a tuesday - but not on a thursday.
Killing animals on a Thursday is immoral.

That's it + the multi-threading of ADDer thought (the freaky nonlinear daydreams we excel in)
... yupsy - that's it ~really~
- and why do I expect that you know (intuitively) - all that's described here ... well ... call it effortless metaphor as his cynical grin had about it ... in and of itself ... the grin of death; he grinned like a triumphant skull
- the skull's brain's mind's mind knew a trick or two ... and has just recently {ADD} decided {ADD} to 'let on' {ADD}

In September, a team of Swiss neuroscientists reported that they could turn out-of-body experiences on and off by stimulating the part of the brain in which vision and bodily sensations converge. Tammy mentioned a similar idea - imagine the line between the mid-point between our eyes and the back of the head - and - the line between our two ears.

... in which visual and {aural} sensations converge.

Or maybe the universe attempting to understand its self?==

Some mavericks, like the mathematician Roger Penrose, suggest the answer might someday be found in quantum mechanics.
... you're in great company there, Zach
- 'cept - you're closer to the truth.

hmmm...

TOWARD A NEW MORALITY
MY OWN VIEW IS THAT THIS IS backward: the biology of consciousness offers a sounder basis for morality than the unprovable dogma of an immortal soul.... nice - but
MY OWN VIEW IS THAT THIS IS backwards.
... meant in the nicest possible way.

[[[Morality -is- acting in a tightly constrained internally consistent logical fashion.
Morality is a by-product of evolution of mind.]]]
->- better ->-
'increased' morality is linked to increased complexity {evolution} of mind.

The mind is becoming a more complex logical structure.
->- ADD
The tight logical consistency which placement of reality into a single structure (metamodel web) details
(packing of more of reality into the mind is performed by increasing the efficiency of data storage
- data is stored
- in the ADDer
- in a structure called the metamodel web)

... is the basis for our tendency
TOWARDs A NEW MORALITY

... we're at a point - way!!! past current thinkers thinking on this kinda' 'stuff' - we do have the advantage though - that of our freedom to explore without fear of rejection by our peer group.
In a sense - the expert may be the least reliable source to believe.
The expert has a 'by defintion' vested interest - which compromises yet further that notional quality of 'objectivity'
- compromise 'objectivity' and there *will* be consequences
... *none* good.

When's the last time that a genetics of XYZ expert published an epidemiological paper on XYZ *stating* that the genetic effect was 'minor'
No funding in that argument.

When's the last time that a neuro- pharmaco- mental disease research guy - stated and re-stated the importance of environment (environmental context) in onset of neuro- mental disease.
Hmmm... cure an environmental context - with a drug hmmm...

... just examples of the intrinsic bias of an 'expert' position.
Often - nothing to worry about
... occasionally the *complete* mischaracterization of a domain.

The domain of mental disease has been woefully mischaracterized.

Just take a look at Executive Function (EF) - and you'll see the bias in operation.
EF is kinda' the talking cartoon animal on children's tv.

LOL..I'd like to see your *big*...good post BTW..the bit I read :-)
This is my idea of a big post (http://www.addforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=180666&postcount=11)

:D

:-) ... Ahhh!!! the memories ...

In an abstract world of malformed analogy.
Perspective is everything.
~link (http://www.addforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=180666&postcount=11)~
In a way, you can think of the metamodel web as a process, rather than a discrete abstraction such as a layer.

I use the term abstraction layer (in your Pinker thread) to define the physiology possible on account of some newly evolved thing [emergent property].
So the abstraction layer of mind
{->- emergent property == product of instantiation of the Universal Theory of Evolution}
involves
'thinky stuff'
{an instantiation of the Universal Theory of Physiology}
{an instantiation of the Universal Theory of Evolution generates a geometric structure
->- we can do 'stuff' {'thinky stuff'} because of the newly emerged property
->- the stuff represents a particular instantiation of the Universal Theory of Physiology
->- though it is set by the combination of emergent property in environmental context (that is, that although all important - its genesis is subservient to emergence in context).
->- these are complex chicken-egg, noun-verb, node-connection arguments to express
->- physiological process is subservient to emergence of property - though drives emergence of that property ... :-) ... oi vey!!!
Oh my! I am becoming verbose. Leave out all of the words around 'Universal' - they interfere with an understanding of the basic idea - but please know that Universal means applies -> *regardless* of whether you're a gluon chilling in the veggie sausage nebula or a veggie sausage chilling in the gluon cooled (erm...) refigerata ... {I know ... freon ... I know ... but help me out here ... gluon ain't much to work with}.
hello!
I am a dalek.

ooo look - I have the capacity to increase the number of words in a Stabile post by 2 orders of magnitude.

...hmmm...

But in an abstract world of analogy - because I am not adding any new ideas into that basic sentence - we see the peculiar dysjunction between 'word count' and 'size of post'.

To me - the post above is not bigger than a post featuring the single Stabile sentence.

Words.

A 'big idea' is the only meaningful definition of a 'big post'.
A 'big idea' is independent of word count.

Many important ideas were expressed simply.

If we are just born and die, then I don't personally see why I should be nice to people. Worms eat their brains eventually so why is their brain so special :DDD

I don't see life so simple as just living and dying, I believe that dying is the biggest part of living, since it happens to us all eventually, and usually has the most significant impact on the people we know.

But I am curious on what others think the "purpose" of life is, set aside seeing it end.
I believe it has multiple definitions, from having kids and creating life to live on past one's own, to making a difference in the world, and of course many more.

'purpose of life'Dorm nailed that guy :-)


[ADDF source (http://www.addforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=397734&postcount=354)]
....AS I ALLWAYS SAY EACH OFVE US IS A NEW HUMAN RACE.....WE ARE THE END AN THE BEINGING ....
Put another way - we're onions.
Onions have layers.
The more layers - the more evolved.

Since EACH OFVE US IS A NEW HUMAN RACE
and evolution is unidirectional ->- if we all try very very hard ->-
->- one day our journey will culminate in the Universe becoming 1 onion (once more).

Geeze ... enough to make you cry, ain't it ...?...

...:-)...

I know - a happy ending
... but the mother of all onions - one can only wonder what happened when the big guy dropped that onion on the floor - way back around the time of the 'Big Bang' ...

... geeze - sounds like a 'wtf fry !' moment to me.

Hmmm ... fried onions.

lovely (hee hee)

...If we don't bag the gains - we're destined to suffer the indignity of waiting for another to step into the fray->- (if indeed they can ... there's no guarantee of a free run (think dinosaurs) ... ->-to step into the fray of adding another layer onto our species - on a journey - on *our* journey - which I guess some might describe as

'long haul'

:-) (not getting there any time soon)

... but heck, don't worry -
because it's ~nice~ out ...

... yes the journey.

However - there are bonuses - because with each layer - we experience a little of the pleasure - the pleasure of being ...

ermmm...

... a part of that big onion in the original (and yes - the best) (best ->- definition based on Energy) garden.

:-)

Back to the garden.

Are we alone?

Everything we know is in our mind.
A friend is rrreality encoded - all we know is the less granular rrreality friend - relative to the notional RRReality friend.
Regardless of granularity though - both forms are encoded by the same basic structure - webs of differing levels of information content - with our rrreality encoding being of (one would think) - less complexity than the RRReal friend.
rrreality friend is a logical web based structure.
RRReality friend is a physical web based structure.

Essentially then - the notional Q of 'does RRReality exist?' fades
... since both rrreality and RRReality occupy the same space ->-
'energy space' within the sealed Universe of finite energy.

Our Universe is a sealed box - energetically - that is has a maximum
~or~
onion of defined number of layers as present - forming that pre- Big Bang structure
- and so whether or not all we know is within our mind
- does not mean that anything within our mind is any less real
-> that is -> that rrreality is RRReal
- and so although the rrreality and RRReality of our friend are different -> this shouldn't be taken as a need to escape mind -
*mind* is just a part of it
- a part of it -
... just like RRReality friend is a part of it.

An electron and a dog are part of RRReality.
rrreality too.
rrr is part of RRR
so ... escaping rrr which is part of RRR - leaves us where exactly ...
... outside of RRR is currently not out space - kinda' a bubble in that space - we are ...
... but restricting ourself to the apparent known Universe - escaping our mind into a rrreality more RRReal would appear parochial
to the max
dude
since rrr is part of RRR ... or otherwise put
'chill'

... we need to ponderify upon that which lies outside of the puniverse - coz it's puny - we can catch the Uni now ...

given energetic evolution theories dancing with spherical eversions - driven ever harder to form structures of one continuous line - into that shape which most efficiently represents all of that energy - gathered together ...

but like ...

old news ... what's outside the box?

what's in the box? (we know)
what's outside the box?

We need some outside the box stinkers :-) ... ... ...

rrreality friend
RRReality friend
Just 2 different webs starting and finishing on different layers of abstraction.

rrreality friend is of less information (energy) content than RRReality friend.

If E = mc^2 and m emerges after E - in some ways - wouldn't the natural pattern be to crystallize friend in
E(nergy)
space and away from
m(***)
space

... towards logical representation? away from physical representation?

hmmm...


So think 1 line - with multiple different onions - of different layers scattered along that line.

Some are huge - some not so.

A largish onion somewhere encodes RRReality friend - and a little further down that line - another small local pocket of order can be found - that of the small onion - the structure of rrreality friend ->-
2 onions in the same line.
(line's all over the place though ... wiggly waggling like a bored Tammy)
:-)

Structure amongst the disorder - aascendancy of some onions - will assist in returning the basically disordered energetic representation with pockets of small local structure - into 1 structured onion - with multiple layers to that onion - the layers - each a representation of energy placed nicely ... neatly ... carefully stably back into the cupboard.

We shouldn't worry about that cupboard ever filling though - because should it happen - there will surely be a 'wtf-fry'ing pan
... just around the corner.
to 'belt' it over the head.

~btw~
An important idea which we should mention - is that each layer feels better than the previous (is more fun) - so

hey! hey! hey!

let's get those layers laid ... (hmmm I'm not too sure I'd have used 'laid'
:-)

Ain't it the way (girlfriends) -?-

that girls

just


wanna'



have




~ fun ~

(men, however - appear to just wanna' compare tools ...)
Thank Heavens then - that the drive to align tools
is shortly to be replaced by a better World
in which diversity of tool is accepted
and small tools and big tools
can stand head -to- head,
proudly glancing out
at one another ... ...
whispering sweet
nothings into
the other's
?eye :-)
hmmm
:-)
!

LOL !

Few of us are circles.
With no beginning and no ending.



Put another way - we're onions.
Onions have layers.
The more layers - the more evolved.

Hmmm ... fried onions.

lovely (hee hee)

I would like to think that afte we die, we live on in some form on consciousness. But that seems unlikely, and that's a downer for me :(.
As I tend to think, it's a struggle ahead to go down and down to death. My contribution to evolution means very little to me as an individual and I don't want to suffer life for nothing.
I guess I can't change it, I just wish evolution didn't have me hoping for significance if there was no significance to me as an individual afte I die.

I just noticed why did I leave out "r" in afteR twice lol :p

:-)
-
light ->- consciousness ->- light (the wave of energy which circulates ...
--
the Universe is an emergent structure - kinda' light around its energetic core
... kinda bright light around dark light ->-

bright light->{.........{{.........{<-dark light->}.........}}.........}<-bright light
---
evolution is motion ->- core
bright light->{.........{{.........{<-dark light->}.........}}.........}
--- -
the Universe seeking to know itself
the hippy heart to know darkness
'heart of darkness'
--- --
Since
bright light->{1.........{{.........{4<-dark light->}.........}}.........}

1 and 4 are on the same plane - think a bit of sugar on the outside of a doughnut - and another - on the outside of the doughnut - but also within the outside bit which forms the hole
->-
->1((4<- ))
--- ---
so one may either evolve back to axiom (1) - or evolve ever higher into the very core of the doughnut (4)
--- --- -
... to return 'back to the garden'
--- --- --
:-) and so there it is
--- --- ---
burrowing ever deeper within the play ground of mind - only to turn around and realise - that the play ground is a part of

:-) the biggest playground imaginable.

I smell.

Mr Universe taps himself upon the shoulder and says
'hey!'

... 'don't I know you?' ...

-------------------
Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 2,900
-------------------
111
113
113
113113113
1131131131
13+13+3 ->- 29 oo lovely

p#2900

{{}} -<- universe

{{{{}}}} ie {{{{}}}} -<-
so the Universe says 'where am I?'

'duh!!! you are inside me ha ha ha !'
says {{}} ... and continues on ... (he was rather a bore) ...
'I am the global overlord' {{{{{{}}}}}}

... but just then a caterpillar in mid-eversion - happened upon global overlord dude ... flit flit flit ... and gobbled him up.
Yum ... a tasty morcel ... and then flittered fluttered up ... into the sky ...
{{{{{{{{}}}}}}}}

accidentally into the mouth of a chappy
... dreamily walking by
(not really paying attention) ...
wondering out loud
... about ...
'why?'

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils ;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in the never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay :
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced ; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee :
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company :
I gazed-and gazed-but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought :

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude ;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

And lost in the majesty of it all
A passing white rabbit (who couldn't help but overhear)
happened to remark
'Why what ...?...'
'why?'
'Why what ...?...'
'why what
*exactly*'

The drive to know 'why?' is a Universal property of reality.
[Of rrreality.
Of RRReality.
Of global overlord RRRRRReality.
And his poppa 'Big poppaR{R.R}']

It's the force which propels ...

... the emergent form (man) with unique experiential perspective on the process, has the gift conferred upon him to describe this {drive,property} in her own words.

And the words which describe this perspective
... of the feelings experienced by an emergent individual suspended within the alluring attraction ever onwards (of emergent energetic evolution)

... are simply ... described as the urges ...

'to understand why? ...
'to understand our context ...
'to divine meaning ...
'to know what it is we're meant to do (here) ...

...and the answer is '42' where the question is simply - list every question with solution 42 ...

... oh my!



(haven't we been here before ...?...

:-)

~ADD~

In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude ;

Hmmm...



google #1 on norBinaltorphimine

->-
The countdown has begun. ... norbinaltorphimine.com

->-
http://www.aapsj.org/articles/aapsj0703/aapsj070371/aapsj070371_figure45.jpg

A rather familiar butterfly shape 6-5-6
or
A kappa opioid receptor antagonist
or
Similar behaviour to the active ingredient within Salvia Divinorum
or
The emergent structure which seals emergence of mind - with the
experiences of Salvia representing dissociation of mind and body.

The mind can be dissociated from the rest - kinda'
{{{{}}}}{{{{}}}} ->- {}{} {{{}}}{{{}}}

and in line with previous ideas - this should lead to anti-depressant behaviour - as the logical structure of mind is allowed to regenerate internal consistency - without 'bindings'

->-
The mystery of consciousness

:-)
- a glimpse into the sensations a mind would feel when released from body - sufficiently powerful to free float away.

Interesting observations - geometric figures visible when under the influence of Salvia Divinorum ...
... a RRReality of geometric form ...
... but that was always going to be the case, with pi, e, Fibonacci, fractals and all of those repetitive patterns which surround us.

So ... yes ... the mind - an emergent structure - occupying a place within the human onion - delivered as an emergent property ... with the chimaeric structure formed above - representing the key to the shift to a mind capable of significant levels of abstraction ...

... emergence of modern man - man with mind.

hmmm...

... funny how the guys who have been rejected from society, who live under the rocks, who don't get on - were the ones to pull the greatest mysteries out of the hat - for one and all.
In truth - the left of centre can't function in an inflexible society - we can't - we're not capable of bending to illogical pointlessness.

And before you know it - we're the weirdos who'll never amount to anything.

Good job then - that definitive proof can be delivered to all of those suit wearing conformists lining up to collect their gold watch and pension ...

... definitive proof that all that they know is a side-effect of another process.
That the reality which they're beating about in - is a side-effect of something bigger.

That everything from 'quantum' to what lies outside of the known Universe - conforms to rules - rules which feed forwards and backwards - in both directions and applying to all things ...

... Universally.

And the next time that one of these legacy minds taps you on the shoulder - and seeks to sermonise - please ...

... please ... show him or her the video of the 20th century - the wars, killing and animal behaviour which can thrive under a system of mind which has no constraint.

Yes - 'morally enforced consistency' - but much much more - awaiting the full on ADDer ... most notably happiness through embracing one's own mortality - a kinda' depth of feeling - that perhaps we do belong here - after all.

And anywhere we're seeking to get to - can wait ...

... because it's

[b]




nice
out
:-)

Presumably

->
-> external signals to mind
->

mind as an evolutionary adaptation which sits on top of the rest of the brain - exerting its effects by receiving input through afferent lines - and achieving its effects by harnessing the emotional centres ...

... animals feel anxiety, fear, happiness ...

... man can feel these emotions based around 'thoughts' (also)

the thoughts have as their purpose ->- the prime directive of the neurone ->- to fire.

... they do not have the organism's best interest at heart.

Model RRReality only because it's the best method of achieving its primer directive ->- to fire.
The better the model of RRReality ->- the happier the subcomponents of rrreality are (the neurones) - because they're firing.

As rrreality diverges from RRReality - thing's slow down within the mind ->- and that's the kinda' excuse - which the mind needs to launch the organism into mentally induced pain.

... rrreality can model RRReality - becuase they share common roots - by that I mean that we can build a perfect scaled-down house - if we use perfect scaled-down bricks.

The mind evolves to handle greater information upload and storage - to feed the prime directive.
An increase in the number of lines of conscious awareness and the metamodel web (our evolved data structure) - are the consequences of the neuronally encoded desire to fly high on activity.

This neural prime directive - naturally is governed by energetic concerns - and the model by which evolution occurs - is the energetic transition into stuctures which represent - in effect *stronger* magnets - to re-characterize ...

... that energy ->- drives evolution ->- of x towards x becoming a more stable repository, a more energetic repository of information ->- and thereby as a larger magnet - with poles N and S - 2 opposites - with the most bizarre black hole which separates the two.

The Earth's magnetic lines are useful as a vizualization - from which the pattern can be superimposed onto man - and the central position of man - the more evolved magnet - the black hole - our solar plexus - our centre - the Chakra - the very centre of our being - as bipolar organisms.

Cool .... huh ...?...

:-)

I believe that I've just seen kappa opioid innervation of our solar plexus - also mentioned - and since we evolved up from essentially - a worm - one long 'eating machine' - an inflexible nervous system - the most important first requirement for our first nervous system - so does evolution by exaptation and the bizarre flutterings of anxiety and beatings of satisfaction - which we feel here --- a feedback from the role of kappa opioid receptor action within the CNS --- bleeding back through to the centre ...


... where the ascent began.

{} + {} ->- {}{}

{} + {} ==EMERGENT STRUCTURE

eg
{BLACK HOLE}{SUN}

black hole sun
too funny ...
too (http://www.addforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=317056&highlight=black+hole+sun#post317056) too too darned funny ...

'black hole sun'
Soundgarten

{B}{l}{a}{c}{k}{}{H}{o}{l}{e}
http://www.scs.gmu.edu/%7Etle/Images/schwarzschild_3d_black_hole2.gif
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}


{}{}{}{}{S}{u}{n}{}{}{}{}
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/9906/sunmodes2_gong_big.jpg
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}


Spherical eversions leading to a complex onion like emergent structure as the energy from a black hole is ejected into a limited space - and the structure of RRReality - is forced into a rapid cyclical string of energetic emergent events - recursive evolution by sphere eversion - producing a structure - similar to the scheme directly above (for sun).

[Sources are under Image Properties]

Importantly - we see light to be an emergent structure emerging from sound (GONG model) - in line with the idea of (a little higher up the train of evolutionary events) ->- white light forming from underlying components of the Trinity of:
red
blue and
-green-
->-
(infra-)red green forests (ultra-)blue


The Sun and Black Hole as a an emergent structure as ... {}{}

Oi vey!!! At *last* - you big doh! nut :-)

m_a_s_s == mass

a_s_s == ***

I lost my mass a little higher up in this thread.
I lost time in another thread.
I think we even lost our head in the Salvia thread.

geeze - ADDers ...eh...?...

ADDers ...

they'd lose their erm...

darn !

space and away from
m(***)
spaceHow does it know?

Ahhh!!!

Don't bracket your mass *** - expose it where everyone can see it.

:-)

Salvia:
and intense concentration share commonalities.

Both lead to a separation from sensory input (I have described this as switching off optical channels) - and recently the description of the effects of Salvia as 'aural flanging' ... I have experienced

- to the point of checking stereos for defects.

Listening to music underwater gets us part of the way.

Odd distortion - a kinda' audio equivalent of the House of Mirrors - which alter your own perception of yourself - as tall or small ... as if

... holding hands with Alice.

If we are just born and die, then I don't personally see why I should be nice to people. Worms eat their brains eventually so why is their brain so special :DDD
…and that’s it, exactly. The specific answer is easiest to understand when it’s put in precisely these terms, a kind of general question of morality, or its justification.

The answer is this:

Consider the possible alternatives; in the one case, you’re all alone, the master of your own universe and Universe, while in the other, you co-exist with others like yourself, individuals that can’t quite prove they’re not alone.

By definition there isn’t any way to determine which is the truth of the situation. But it is possible to unambiguously choose one alternative over the other, simply by running a thought experiment that considers the consequences in an arbitrary hypothetical scenario.

Suppose you’re walking through a mall carrying a fully functional AK-47 knockoff. If you’re that master of your fate and all that you see, alone in an incomprehensibly illusory Universe, there is no penalty for simply mowing down the next ten or twenty people you believe you see. You literally make reality, and it can take any form you desire.

But if you’re wrong, the consequences will be swift and significant, changing your life permanently for the worse as people react to control your circumstance and prevent you from doing further harm. Actions have consequences for other people, because you aren’t alone even if nobody can prove that. And those consequences in turn are visited on you, the ultimate practical expression of “what goes ‘round, comes ‘round”.

In neither case can you interpret the results of your actions as proof one way or the other of the existence of a real external Universe which others like yourself also inhabit. But proof isn’t what we’re after here; spaceboy’s original point was a question of morality, more accurately cast as this:


Is there any way to determine what’s right (i.e., how to act correctly) in any particular situation?
If we’re willing to consider our dilemma and keep track of the underlying problem (i.e., we can’t know that we’re not alone) it’s possible to choose an unequivocal moral course. It arises strictly from self-interest, a purely internal and verifiably correct impulse.

Your self-interest in the case that we all share a Real Physical Universe isn’t directly obvious; you need to recognize your own impulse to react to what others do and transpose it in your mind, to gauge how others might be expected to react to your actions.

Once you account for the reactions of others to your own acts, the self-interest equation tilts towards acting in ways that prevent reactions that might limit your future possibilities. Note that there’s no element of this reasoning that suggests this view actually reflects external Reality, or is the correct or even preferred choice. It’s correct only if others exist, but says nothing about the truth of that idea.

Self-interest in the case that you’re alone and in total control of reality seems fairly obvious: any self-imposed limitation limits your potential reward, and should be avoided. But here there is a way to factor in some bit of external Reality, the only bit we know: the fact that we don’t know if it (or others) exists.

How we work that in isn’t too subtle. If others exist, arbitrary acts might result in them limiting your further options. If they don’t, no limitation is necessary; in fact, Reality and reality are the same thing, absolutely arbitrary. You can choose any form you like.

And given the uncertainty of which underlying situation exists, there is only one form that maximizes your self-interest, the single unique form for which it doesn’t matter which alternative is true.

If (and only if) you choose to accept the alternative in which you are the master of all, you can then freely choose to create reality in exactly the form it would be if you chose incorrectly, and others really do exist.

What we’ve done here is note that considering only your own self-interest, there is only one unambiguous choice that is maximally correct in any situation. It happens to be the one in which you choose arbitrarily to treat others in a benevolent and considerate way, regardless of the fact that their brains are sure to be worm food eventually. (grins)

It’s important to understand this isn’t only a logical proof of a reason to act morally. It’s the resolution of the original problem faced by Descartes, whether it can be proven that others exist in an external Physical Reality.

Translated into those terms, our result shows the answer exists as an absolute limit of what we can know, one that isn’t nearly as extreme as it seems on the surface. There is much we can know, as it turns out, certainly enough to find our way to the next level.

And there, we may be able to answer a bit more of the question. Someday, maybe we’ll find a way to answer it all. At least, that seems to be what’s driving us, as SB’s shown many times…


As René Descartes noted, our own consciousness is the most indubitable thing there is. The major religions locate it in a soul that survives the body's death to receive its just deserts or to meld into a global mind. For each of us, consciousness is life itself…
I’ve been slowly gathering notes for an email to Pinker about his contribution to that article, and maybe I’ll get around to sending it off someday Real Soon.

He misstates Descartes’ point; Descartes proved logically that our conscious awareness (i.e., the experience of conscious being) is the only indubitable thing there is. He tried to extend that indubitability to other assumed aspects of that experience of being, but was unable to do so.

So: according to Descartes, there is only one thing indubitable, and Pinker is showing his bias in assuming it sits atop a heap of other, less indubitable aspects of being. He goes on to let that bias confuse his understanding of consciousness, conscious awareness, self-awareness, and awareness of self, all subtly different aspects of being.

Major religions don’t all presume a conscious experience after death identical to the one we enjoy in life. In fact, it’s an important point in many religions that the experience will be much different. (And if we’ve been good, much better. Improved understanding of the meaning of life is a particular perk.)

Perhaps most significantly, when it comes to the crunch few of us associate consciousness (as Pinker clearly means it, i.e., our experience of being in a conscious context) with life itself. Awareness of self commonly persists far past loss of ordinary conscious experience, even past the point in which conscious awareness ceases.

It’s awareness of self that carries the mystical qualities of being which religions address. From what we know of the way the brain and mind work, we’re certain that it’s not possible to define the point at which the atomic self no longer exists. We can chase it out of the conscious centers, deep into the more primitive parts of the brain, and there’s no place at which we can say, “Here, it goes away.”

Interesting, eh? (grins)

I would like to think that afte we die, we live on in some form on consciousness. But that seems unlikely, and that's a downer for me .
As I tend to think, it's a struggle ahead to go down and down to death. My contribution to evolution means very little to me as an individual and I don't want to suffer life for nothing.
I guess I can't change it, I just wish evolution didn't have me hoping for significance if there was no significance to me as an individual afte I die.


Why does living on in some form of consciousness seem unlikely. When you think of the likeliness of birth and being born as you that too would seem unlikely. From the time a woman begins her menses till the time is reaches metapause she is capable of reproducing. She drops one egg per month times about 40 years. For the male aspect consider that less then 7 -8 million sperm is considered sterile, so you were formed by the meeting of one sperm out of the millions that could have been meeting one egg out of the apx 500 and some thing egg possibilities that could have been Lets not forget the pregnancy and birth process which doesn’t guarantee 100% of babies will live through the process then maybe you can appreciate exactly what the chances of you being born you actually were. Rather mind boggling is it not so to say dieing is the beginning of a new consciousness is not likely. I see that being born here on earth as being me to be just as an unlikely possibility making entering into another form of consciousness after leaving this one not so unlikely after all.




You can change your perspective any time you so choose.Maybe some math in probability will help this process.

:-)
there is no normal distribution without an atomic component

(+ -)

RA Fisher (statistician,1918)
(described elsewhere on ADDF)

(+ -)n ->- scattered and sampled ->- normal distribution

+
-

->- the two perspectives - which we may switch between.

Speaking of Consciousness, has anyone here ever heard of the CEMI theory?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness
http://unisci.com/stories/20022/0516026.htm

I'm not a big Science buff, I don't know much about all of those complex equations posted, but I can say that it would make more sense for our consciousness to be the Electromagnetic Field and the Brain a device to affect the world. But that's just personal bias there.

cool theories
... how about the idea of 2 cogs - which rotate one another.
The 2 cogs as north and south pole of a magnet.
The faster the cogs move - the more positive +, and more negative the - pole ...
now imagine a huge great + pole of a huge great magnet on our right - and the - pole of a different (but otherwise similar magnet) - on our left.

evolution - the drive to be suspended equidistant between the large negative and large positive poles of the two huge magnets in the sky ...

SN SN SN

... and then ... throw in the polarity shift every so often - the larger magnets flip - if we were in between the two - we would naturally flip also.

NS SN NS
NS NS NS

em
quantum
... theories of consciousness

:-)