Is consciousness fluid?

Is consciousness fluid?

I wont go into all the usual ramblings about mixing &/or cutting up brains, transplanting neural matrixes etc, am I just wondering if minds are fluid?

Given that mind is not material ~ I know that’s a big question, but lets take it as a basis for this thought experiment; when all that singularises it has vanished e.g. in death of if we could contain many minds in one vessel, would all minds simply return to the fluid state?

Would that stateless mind-mass be the true nature of mind?

If the individualising elements are gone does it make any difference to mind?

For those interested in divinity;

If we can arrive at total fluidity of mind [or statelessness] is that god? Would it be able to do anything, and if god is separate where is his mind ~ considering that we already have the universal version? Have we already arrived at ‘divinity’ without the need or place for god?

I oft speculate over Jung’s theory of mind, that the soul or mind is superfluous / analog as opposed to concrete / digital. (liquid vs solid as metaphore). Atheists are still in debate as to whether reality is evidently a true randomness or true predictive mechanism. I like to provoke my theory with the following parable.

Suppose an omnipotent being (digital), called X. X can do anything, which includes even creating another omnipotent being (Y) . . . except that omnipotence in itself immediately arrives at a paradox: The power of Omnipotent X to create Omnipotent Y means that omnipotent X cannot control omnipotent Y . . . as that would negate Y from being truly omnipotent. And X being logically not able to control Y, renders at least one thing which X does not control, meaning X is not truly omnipotent either.

So true omnipotence is logically impossible. There are things that even an omnipotent being logically can NOT do! So far as I see, the only logical possibility for omnipotence would be something similar (call it pseudo-omnipotence) . . . the power to create and command all things . . . except of course to command other omnipotent beings.

If we then take this logical definition as a fractal . . . a pattern which repeats itself ad infinitum . . .

we come to the conclusion of an infinite possible number of souls, as pseudo-omnipotent beings, all of them capable of anything . . . except the full control of another soul. Each of them taking the shape of a universe as they see fit. Each of them, creating any number of consensual universes between a number of souls, by which the universe operates under the rules only as the souls have consented to together.

If such a case is at all possible . . . (This “IF” dominates the rest of the post)

then each and everyone of us . . . as “souls” whatever that may be and whatever control that harnesses . . . is always at true command of our own destiny . . . yet forced to obey the laws of the universe that we have consented to.

And a soulless-but-one universe, predictable entirely by your command . . . sounds pretty boring. So I think for the most part we’d like to be the subject of consentual universes. And yes . . . perhaps some souls take greater authority . . . as we agree to in its genesis.

Is there a god of this universe? (in this case, lower case (g)od, lower case (u)niverse) . . . are there hierarchies and specialties of gods which universal laws obey? Are there sciences which simply imitate greater beings?

Is any of this “IF” true? Only time will tell. As a seculiar humanist I let Atheists take the reigns . . . for now. Ultimately they may be wrong.

Define fluid.

Gaiaguerrilla

Depends on the definition of omnipotence [nice argument btw], if it occurs once and infinitely or universally prior to all other existences [necessarily so one would think], then in that expression it is all, there is nothing else. Hence it’s all about context, if it were iron [metaphor] and extended infinity you could not then do the same thing again, as everything would be iron. You could say that it had the potential to create another version of itself but in practice?

Wow what! Great idea but a fractal is not infinite just a seemingly endless amount of finite transient change ~ eventual repetition. Its like the monkeys and typewriters thing, you don’t need an infinite amount, just a very, very large amount of text to arrive at Shakespeare’s plays.

I really like that idea. Alt/ we could say that omnipotence creates but thereafter causality controls what has been created. E.g. god creates a pool table but once the game plays everything, the way the balls move around the table etc are causal/determined of their own volition.

I think we are all wrong. I enjoyed your take on it though, so I will consider it further, thanks!

victorel21

Good question.

Interchangeable, transmigratory, amorphous, right up to the point that such terms become irrelevant and you just have one thing infinitely changeable. statelessness ~ ultimate nature of fluidity?.

Eeep. Too many flaws. Must run away . . .

It sounds kind of like Joyce’s prose style in Ulysses. Everybody likes to say the book is written in stream of consciousness style, but who consciousness is it? At times it seems as if you are clearly getting a particular character’s “inner” thoughts, but then someone else’s thoughts seem to jump in and overlap. Sometimes the idea seems to be that everyone in a given room having a conversation is thinking the same things, making the same associations.

Marshall McLuhan likes to riff on James Joyce. He has an essay called “the Agenbite of Outwit”, which is a pun on this recurring phrase in Ulysses, “agenbite of inwit”. “Ayenbite of Inwyt” is a latin phrase meaning “prick of conscience”. Joyce changes it to “inwit” to evoke the idea that the pang of guilt being felt (usually by Stephen Dedalus) is associated with his inner consciousness. McLuhan uses this inner/outer question to explain his idea that digital technologies moves our minds outside ourselves. He thinks technology moves our minds outside of ourselves: more and more we wear our minds outside our skin. McLuhan is not arguing against Joyce’s psychology, rather he is unpacking a “fluidity” of consciousness that is already manifest in Ulysses’ narrative style.

Minor point - it’s Old/Middle English. Ayenbite is again-bite, gnawing (remorse itself comes from the Latin to re-bite), and inwyt is literally in-wit: inner knowledge. The gnawing of conscience. I like “againbite”.

I need to learn more about McLuhan, what I’ve seen of his work has been thought-provoking.

I’ve read recently about technological mind-expansion, an author saying that as technology becomes increasingly integrated with our nervous/sensory systems, so our minds become integrated with technology. A basic example being a cochlear implant, say. Without digressing too much, is that in line with what he’s saying?

since mind itself is basically a way of talking about a type of physical activity, and since each individual mind is already an abstraction, i think describing the motions of consciousness as fluid makes sense - same way one might describe the motions of crowds, or air.

^^interesting upf. Even if there is more to mind than the physical, the very lack of hard divisions creates a fluidity. It may only be the physical which gives it any distinction whatsoever ~ is part of where I am going with this. The minds natural state may be stateless.

Sean

Interesting post!

Sometimes I make the same thread on many forums and it is as if one mind is speaking with many voices. I cant explain it further but I think certain personalities [like me] lack individualised identity and kind of let others flow through them, or mirror them ~ to a degree. We often say ‘we’ where most would say ‘I’ or you, as an analogy I’d say; ‘we are borg‘.

From what does the pang of guilt derive, and what’s the general context here? Sorry I haven’t read Ulysses.

This is an excerpt from a section we spend for the most part in Stephen’s head. It should show how Joyce moves the narrator-consciousness in and out of Stephen’s head. It works especially well because there are multiple people thinking about Shakespeare as a person and as a body of work, the distinction not being clearly maintained. Stephen is talking (sort of: there’s no quotation marks so we slip in and out of speech and thought) at the start here. The hyphen starting a paragraph usually indicates someone is saying something in Ulysses, usually interjection. You also need to know that Stephen is mourning the death of his mother.

Sorry that was longish but you need a hefty chunk to get the rhythm of the narrative. McLuhan would get down with this passage because Stephen’s consciousness is extended out into this textual universe (here, of Shakespeare). It is not that Stephen thinks about things that happen in plays by Shakespeare, and finds meaning in them by relating the play to his own mother’s death, or that Stephen thinks about his mother’s death by relating it to Shakespeare. This is a representational way of thinking. Representational thinking assumes Shakespeare’s plays have meaning because we relate them to some kind of sense/emotion-memory. Rather, Stephen is using Shakespeare to think. Stephen’s brain is outside his skull. So now McLuhan:

As long as you are searching for the condition of consciousness or mind and its meaning, you will remain wandering around restlessly. And that’s far from statelessness.

As soon as you recognize ‘mind‘, you are recognizing the fact that you have knowledge of a thing (mind). That knowledge then resides in thought, and once you have thought it is imbedded in you. So, there can be no state of statelessness in you, unless, of course, you try to create a thought induced state of statelessness which is not true statelessness because you are creating an artificial condition. It’s the knowledge you have of mind that gives you mind. If you were to be somehow freed from the knowledge then for you there would be no mind and there would be no talking about mind being stateless or not.

You can however say that the natural state of life is a state of not knowing where a distinction is made between the physical life of the body and the intellect. Knowledge plays the major part in intellectualism without which there would be nothing to use to incorporate with the ability to think and understand. Whereas there is a flow of life, a pulse of life which is the energy quality of life of which the intellect, being static in its condition, can never capture. Life wants to break out of the encasing nature of thought and intellect. Whenever a crack appears in the encasement, thought comes in and patches it up preventing the life from freely flowing out.

Another word for ‘stateless’ being 'stillness"?
Ah - perhaps you mean no ‘natural’ state?
Does what is ‘natural’ to the mind depend on ‘mind’ itself or on the individual having access to that mind?
It’s a relationship of sorts, isn’t it? And as such, are interdependent on the other.

I would compare true consciousness to a body of water. Water is fluid…water flows.
It has ripples, streams, waves, tsunamis.
And even when it appears to be still, it still flows, it still has those undercurrents.
Even when it is subdued and tranquil, it still flows and speaks through dreams and intuition.
Consciousness is akin to energy flowing through different states.
These are just my musings.

Sean

I think I understand this, though I couldn’t possibly explain how. It’s kind of like we remove all physicality ~ all the skulls, and see a mss of consciousnesses, then the mind becomes un-located or moves between locations/consciousnesses. Equally it moves between their product such as the works of Shakespeare, perhaps as if they have their own eidos. So we have consciousness as like an ocean thence located and having its own eidos in terms of the self in its skull, finally we transmigrate all the features in the equation [kind of like out of body experience, which moves into another body then outside of all bodies and their eidos ~ personalities and works].

Interesting! Yes its difficult to explain things like what I said above, as its mostly metaphor. Yet here on the net we see consciousness floating around in a way that would be difficult to describe if it were not right there before our eyes.

finishedman

^^ I really liked that last part, well put! Not sure if I can add anything to it. Is recognition a kind of encapsulating and hence incarceration? Though it is a primary function/ability of what the mind is. When the mind uses any of its abilities [or the brains abilities] it localises itself to that.

arcturus rising

I wouldn’t like to use stillness as it sounds frozen rather than Omni-fluidic. It simply has yet to take state. Natural here I assumed to be the universal and fundamental version, the mind prior to being localised in ones skull. Yet I take your point, the mind may consider its natural state to be one of its expression! I.e. when the mind is a life it is expressed and fully itself, or at least there is a journey in that expressing [evolution even].

I’d say so too. In one way it wants to be calm [though it would then become stagnant] and in another it wants to be exhilarated [though it would then be exhausted and eventually destroyed].

The incarceration is created by the thought, and that is the reason why it is trying to get out of that trap it has created by itself. There is this simile: a dog picks up a bone, a dry bone, there is nothing there, and then it bites, and the bone hurts the gums, and the blood comes out of it. And the dog believes – imagines, experiences, feels, whatever word you want to use – that the blood which is coming out of its own gums is from the bone. So that is the kind of trap in which the whole structure of thinking is caught up, and tries all the time to get out of that, the trap it has created. That’s the predicament.

to everyone…

What are the implications of fluidic consciousness;

Can we see it in fields e.g. religion, cults, politics, philosophic field, football teams etc?

Can we see it in culture, in empires [how they expand and contract]?

In love, how individuals take on a commonality ~ a unionised consciousness?

In events; there was once a ‘miracle’ when the franks were in battle which was even but appeared to be turning against them, then their leader converted to Christianity [I cant remember if it was via a vision or someone near to him] and the battle turned in their favour. Could it be that by joining with a consciousness [like we would say ‘Krishna consciousness‘, but here being Christ consciousness] and one which was on the rise - expanding, as against the opposition which was contracting, the very act of changing to a different conscious ‘body’ made the difference? I don’t think the ingredients matter so much btw ~ religion, empire, culture etc.

Are conscious fields capable of deification, perhaps as like they do in us to create the personality?

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Is Consciousness Fluid?

I think that there is a very subtle thread that is often overlooked when we attempt to grasp the air (indescribable, attribute-less) with our hands (mind). If we dissect the question: “Is consciousness fluid?” we have to go where a person whom already posted, went. We have to ask: “what do you mean by 'fluid?” For fluid to me presupposes a pattern, a continuous flow, descriptions that elicit mental formations, concepts. The miracle and limitation of the mind is its ability to conceptualize. It creates mental representations, symbols. Yet that is as far as it can reach! So the “idea” of fluidity is itself a non-fluid pattern. Ideas, concepts, are form patterns, subtle, yet patterns nonetheless. They have to be, or else they could not be processed as perception, there would be no coherency in mental interpretation.

I think that the inner navigators in the east have us beat on this one. I think that they had enough time, because of the nature of their surrounding, their environment, they had more time to follow their curiosity with regards to consciousness. In utter fascination, they looked for themselves, took questions just as this one, very seriously. The amazing thing is that they all seemed to ultimately arrive at the very same place-less place! They described consciousness as that which is not perceivable or conceivable. I love how Ken Wilber describes the quest to describe consciousness–how it is much like the eye attempting to see itself, the nose attempting to smell itself, the finger attempting to touch itself, the ear attempting to hear itself.

It is the one common fallacy that we sentient beings often seem to fall for. Like the quantum physicist, we fail to include “ourselves” in the experiment. We forget that the very elemental composition that we are peering into is tethered to the very fabric of our own expression, speaking of the still relative realm or level that is still subject to observation, to a certain extent.

In simple terms, the very consciousness that gives birth to the form expression that is the question posed (is consciousness fluid?), can only deal with reflections. Much like the shadows in Plato’s famous cave. Fluidity, oceanic essence, emptiness, void, oneness, whatever descriptive words we choose to use, all are simply shadow effects at very best. It is all they can possibly be! The proverbial “mental” maps of the territory, but not at all the “actual” direct territory. The mind, in other words, can only create mental maps of what consciousness may be, representations, symbolic metaphors–yet the direct opening reveals what can only be echoed in a famous Sage’s words “it is what cannot be perceived or conceived.” It is a torture to the mind and at the very same time an almost unbearably fun game! It is like a dog chasing its own tail with a machete! It cuts itself to pieces to realize that he was never such shadow dance! She remains even when the shadows are gone!

Just wanted to add my two cents to this topic! I love philosophy!!!

The brain, being as a container, does not change. The knowledge put into it changes and the knowledge comes from outside as something not known before acquired from a previous source that was never accessed.

Then there is a choice to utilize whatever knowledge you have contained in the limitations of memory. Whatever knowledge you choose to employ from what was given to you is usually a matter of what knowledge provides the most excellent service for some period of time. This period of time, which is created by thought, is what gives a sense of movement (fluidity?).

On this note …
They described consciousness as that which is not perceivable or conceivable. (oneness)

…… this I agree with in that a complete state of consciousness cannot be understood.

We are what we are because of all the things that thinking has produced for us as individuals, and that have cost us much time and effort. Therefore, there is the assumption that every result achieved by means of thinking necessarily requires time. And it is this principle that shifts the whole business away from us and says: ‘this situation is hopeless, we need time’, because time has helped to reach results in all the previous situations.

All we can do is interpret what is given. That’s unavoidable because that’s all one can do by means of thinking. And, we have no other instrument. It is that same instrument that discovered the ‘phenomenon’ of intuition, and ‘understanding intuitively’ and whatsoever other lofty things that you can name.

So, the only thing that can be done is understand things at the level of thinking. There is no other level of understanding, and in spite of the fact that all attempts to understand consciousness have generally not helped, there is still the hope that this instrument will be of some use in understanding things in the future (that is constantly moved forward). Thus, this is not the instrument for the understanding.

When this penetrates you, it dawns on you that thinking is not the instrument. Without even worrying about another instrument. ‘This is not the instrument’, that is enough. And if this is really the situation in which you find yourself, is there anything else to understand?

Oneness hi

Hmm interesting, sure consciousness can only mentally map that which is not of its own ilk, yet surely it can perfectly map what is?

Given the correct info I would add that, consciousness may understand in varying degrees what other consciousnesses are and may act like. As like Krishna consciousness, if you come into contact with it there becomes a path to wit one may become one with what that is. Indeed if one is already on the same or similar level then perhaps it may be attained immediately.

finishedman

The brain does change, its matrixes form and reforms as needs be. …but we are missing the point here, consciousness [as inferred in my last post] is not the brain, and it seams to have the ability to immediately recognise other consciousnesses e.g. when you meet someone and immediately fall in love. In such a case the brain is not so involved, it processes things relevant to the case yet there is an all consuming presence beyond that, which we often hopelessly fall for. it’s a similar thing with religion, Krishna consciousness may be connected to in much the same way, I’d expect any religious conversion to be much the same too.

The complete conscious field can be attained immediately, albeit in its gross format, one only has to look to events in ones own life to know when this has occurred.

Its not all in the brain! especially when we consider consciousnesses beyond the individual.