where does our conscious experience come from?

[hiyymer]

My first new topic on rationalia. Hmmm. I thought the answer to this question was obvious, but there seem to be many people who disagree with the obvious.

For example a post from another chat:

I would challenge your concept that my experience is pure brain function as you suggest. We humans do share brain functions that are the same without physical limitation­s. But we preceive, learn and experience the waking state, sub-consci­ous and super-cons­cious differentl­y. In fact, each of us can change our preception­, knowledge and experience­s. This can be done by education, study and contemplat­ion and will power. What I think cannot be changed is an instinct and conscience within that makes us unique to ourselves. I call that our SOUL. Yet we all have a soul, none is without one. Becoming more aware may change our perception of ourselves reflecting our true nature which may have been distorted from our lack of perception­.

[charlou]

External stimuli, neurology, brain, language, motor skills.

[Mr P]

External stimuli, neurology, brain, language, motor skills.

Plus information feedback.

[Rum]

I think the question in the OP is very ambiguous mainly because 'conscious experience' is a tricky and slippery thing. To some extent it appears that it is a bit like vision, in that you can be very aware of the thing you are looking directly at but not s much at the periphery of your sight. Consciousness seems to be variable too. Then there is the difference between conscious verbalised thought (pretty well unique to humans in all probability), conceptual thought and direct apprehension of the phenomena of the world around us with little or no conscious registration.

The issue is complex - much more than your friend suggests in his quote.

[hiyymer]

External stimuli, neurology, brain, language, motor skills.

Plus information feedback.

If something is in your conscious experience isn't it being created by your brain (all of it).

[charlou]

External stimuli, neurology, brain, language, motor skills.

Plus information feedback.

If something is in your conscious experience isn't it being created by your brain (all of it).

I think it's brain experiencing stimuli and reacting ... The state of the brain at any given moment bearing upon the reaction to experience.

[Mr P]

External stimuli, neurology, brain, language, motor skills.

Plus information feedback.

If something is in your conscious experience isn't it being created by your brain (all of it).

Dan Dennet soundbites it to thinking about thinking, you could also look up Douglas Hofstadters work regarding "strange loops".

[PsychoSerenity]

you could also look up Douglas Hofstadters work regarding "strange loops".

Reading that now. Might take me a while to get through though.

[camoguard]

Computers think. We think. To the extent that we are thinking we are aware, that sensation is just the processing of sensors and actuating motors. We have fuzzy logic to dictate what choices we should make at what frequencies. And we have morality because we learn via our communication channels with other humans that our needs and wants come into conflict with other needs and wants.

The feeling of being alive and the sense of fairness or justice or morality are often related to the idea that we transcend the physical. But the physical world is the world that doesn't need a justification because we can see it. The transcendental worlds need justification. Looking inward is just system diagnostic software at work.

[hiyymer]

I never would have expected. From a group of hard-bitten atheists. So you believe that you could have a thought if your brain wasn't creating it? Wow.

[Tero]

What is this thought? I believe it is information, stored in molecules.

[hiyymer]

What is this thought? I believe it is information, stored in molecules.

neurons firing

[charlou]

I never would have expected. From a group of hard-bitten atheists. So you believe that you could have a thought if your brain wasn't creating it? Wow.

Who said that?



Do you believe thoughts arise spontaneously in the brain, without any form of stimulus?

[hiyymer]

I never would have expected. From a group of hard-bitten atheists. So you believe that you could have a thought if your brain wasn't creating it? Wow.

Who said that?



Do you believe thoughts arise spontaneously in the brain, without any form of stimulus?

http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/r ... /4/509.pdf

It's quite surprising but we know that if a certain specific part of the subconscious limbic system is damaged that there is no motivation, either motor or cognitive (no thoughts at all), even thought motor and cognition are both functional and can be pressed into action by external stimulation (at which point the patient testifies to the lack of thought). In other words, it is an illusion that we are animated by our thoughts. A bacterium has no thoughts at all, no brain, no nervous system, yet it "behaves" in complex ways to maintain homeostasis in response to changes in its environment. In that case, motivation could only arise out of the physical mechanism of the form itself. The life form is motivated to stay alive and replicate because that's what it is and not what it "thinks". That is the "stimulus". There is as yet no evidence that consciousness is anything but an evolved tool of the mechanism. There is "will", but no "will-er".

[charlou]

I never would have expected. From a group of hard-bitten atheists. So you believe that you could have a thought if your brain wasn't creating it? Wow.

Who said that?



Do you believe thoughts arise spontaneously in the brain, without any form of stimulus?

http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/r ... /4/509.pdf

It's quite surprising but we know that if a certain specific part of the subconscious limbic system is damaged that there is no motivation, either motor or cognitive (no thoughts at all), even thought motor and cognition are both functional and can be pressed into action by external stimulation (at which point the patient testifies to the lack of thought). In other words, it is an illusion that we are animated by our thoughts. A bacterium has no thoughts at all, no brain, no nervous system, yet it "behaves" in complex ways to maintain homeostasis in response to changes in its environment. In that case, motivation could only arise out of the physical mechanism of the form itself. The life form is motivated to stay alive and replicate because that's what it is and not what it "thinks". That is the "stimulus". There is as yet no evidence that consciousness is anything but an evolved tool of the mechanism. There is "will", but no "will-er".

I see ... you're shifting the discussion from consciousness and thinking, to simpler motor activity.