I've heard a lot of people try to localize consciousness to the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and thalamus, but does this really answer the question of consciousness? Should we really expect consciousness to be localized to particular brain structures or is it a general distributive property? How do you go about analyzing and talking about distributed properties?
I read a book entitiled Evolution Of Consciousness.
In this book it talked about each brain area has its
own function and that they switch off from one to
another. That different parts of the brain "think"
at different times.
The author asked that we become conscious of this
fact in the way we think; to identify which "simpleton"
is thinking at any given moment. A "simplton" is
what he called the elementary function of any brain
part.
I know some people go as far as to try to determine
whether they are in there left or right brain hemispheres
to determine things like what they should study or whether
they will do good on a particular test that requires the
use of a particular brain side.
Controlling individual brain areas or the "simpletons" seems
even more interesting.
Also I have seen the infomercial for Mega Memory by Kevin Trudeau. He describes filing different memory types into their appropriate places.
I think that by selectively using different parts of the brain
we are intergrating the whole. This is at least one way our
consiousness could evolve as I see it. And we know that
originally it happened naturally to man. But I think that the
key is awareness.
Mitch
Last edited by Nick on Wed Sep 07, 2005 2:04 am; edited 1 time in total
I've heard a lot of people try to localize consciousness to the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and thalamus, but does this really answer the question of consciousness? Should we really expect consciousness to be localized to particular brain structures or is it a general distributive property? How do you go about analyzing and talking about distributed properties?
The answer to your question is, neither. I happen to have a long history on / with / about the subject of consciousness and the Quantum Mind. You can find my contributions by a simple search.
I joined discussions as a biochemistry expert with molecular quantum mechanics and molecular biology strong backgrounds.
Firstly, many cases of post-lobotomy demonstrate consciousness, and by careful examination of those cases one must conclude that neither a specific brain tissue nor something distributed constitutes consciousness.
My debates were based on strong reason that consciousness is an emergent abstract rather than a quantum entity.
Recall that we lose and gain consciousness on daily basis with cycles of sleep and awakening. Then we have rather symptoms of being conscious, accompanied by ATP conversion to ADP, indicating consumption of chemical energy and oxygen too for the oxidation of glucose. Patients of coma do not demonstrate consciousness symptoms even though their biological systems are practically functioning. There is also great brain activity during REM phase of sleeping but that too is not a phase of consciousness. Those who tie it to vision are argued that blind people demonstrate very normal consciousness and the same goes to the deaf. So we may confidently generalise the conclusion that the issue is not about senses either and not even about motor cortical control.
However, one thing only must be common with any of the non critical functions to make the emergent consciousness manifest as a function, memory. While no specific sense is required for consciousness, at least one sense is required to feed memory with information, and the awareness of such information is the first order on which consciousness emerge as a second order awareness. That is being subconsciously aware of being aware.
Then the diffused qualia or sensation of being aware of something or anything is the foundation of the emergent consciousness. As this might seem to be very odd, if someone lost feelings completely, they may behave as conscious but they may not be aware that they are. There are psychopathological cases recorded of as such.
In even more rare cases, some patients may not know if they were awake or dreaming (all the time). To sum it up, consciousness is immaterial in essence. Many things are equally immaterial, such as the qualia of colour, because redness or greenness is immaterial. Now the question is not whether we can make a robot think or not but if we can make it feel or not. _________________ Hemetis
This is indeed a very interesting discussion, with so many interesting issues involved like AI, Singularity, among other; too bad the more we know, the far away we get from concluding something.
If we speculate further enough, where science ends and mysticism begins, one could say this could very well be the revelation of the existence of some spiritual force that’s bigger than life, or in other words, our Soul! But, science is going there also, this could simple exist beyond or three dimensional world, or be a misinterpretation of our awareness of time itself. What do you think?
Also, if as Hemetis very well puts it, consciousness is immaterial in essence, do think this makes a better case for the validity of the Gaia theory and the existence of a global consciousness?
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