A simplistic physical explanation for consciousness…

A simplistic physical explanation for consciousness…

If particles have the peculiar property and ability of observation, then the brain as a collection of billions of particles all being directed into a single observation e.g. as with sight, would equal billions of observations as one.
At the same time there are many clusters of particles making different observations contained within that, one or some clusters maybe looking at the main group observing and hence are observing the observer ~ create the ability of self reference. Other clusters are observing symbols within that observation e.g. writing, yet more are observing holisms > objects within that observation set too.

My first contention concerns the big ‘if’; do particles observe or do they simply behave in a given manner with respect to one another is a situation?
What otherwise is the ability to observe contained in every particle in the universe?

If they do have this peculiar ‘ability’ does that mean the universe is conscious, or does it not observe itself? If so then would the universe observing itself be the objective to our subjective observation? I.e. the world ‘is’ out there!

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On PhilosophyForums I got banned after I think maybe 3 threads.

One of them threads was about how energy transformed into conscious thought.

(The other threads were about Lucid Dreaming, Tao Buddhism and “The Forbidden Experiment”)

They said it was pseudophilosophy… It’s a shame.

I hope I’m more welcome here.

Welcome t_d! =D> I don’t think there are any rules against ‘pseudophilosophy’ at this site, I’m not even sure there is even a pseudophilosophy definition around here. There are people who’ll call you on things you may say–usually because of erroneous logic or lack of definitions–otherwise, the rules are there for everyone to read and follow. The mod for the Philosophy threads is Only-Humean, and he’s an articulate, and very polite ‘white hat.’

Again, welcome-- :banana-dance:

Quetz, That’s an interesting, science-fictiony sort of theory, but I’m not sure I go along with it completely. What we ‘see’ isn’t the entirety of an object because we don’t see at a molecular level, so I have no problem with that. Those of us with a sense of sight ‘see’ the ‘reflection’ of an object which is then passed to parts of our brain via our optic nerves. This is kind of an Aristotelian definition of how sight works, but it’s seems to hold true today–at least as true as any theory.

But are our brains made of of “particles” each of which has a ‘specialization?’ That’s where I start to deviate from your theory, but I’m not sure–sight is the most complicated of our five senses and, I hate to say it, science has yet to define it, completely. Even if it could ‘define’ sight, wouldn’t that definition be more of a description of how, rather than an explanation of why?

Going beyond that, does each individual neuronic impulse have awareness? I really don’t think so. IOW, I don’t think the individual cells or atoms have any ‘consciousness’ any more than any chemical does.

For example, do the individual chemicals that make up baking soda know that, when they’re combined with H2O, they’re supposed to fizz, expand and pour out of the science project ‘volcano?’ I don’t think so–but that chemical reaction sure makes for good baking soda biscuits.

Hello
I think the above notion is fantastical. I like simplicity also, and I also believe that mystery has a place in a theory of consciousness.

I believe that consciousness is clear thought. Clear thoughr is made when multiple similar thoughts confirm each other, simultaneously.
Consciousness happens when similar or identical thoughts from different parts of the brain confirm and reinforce each other, at the same time, thus making instant focus.

Our brain is a vast store of partially organized and disorganized information. Disorganized information slows us down, confuses and disables us. It is stressful. So we seek relief from that stress. Organized thought provides relief. So when we manufacture organized thought we manufacture relief.
Relief from the stress is manufactured by the instant organization of clear thought.

When unorganized thoughts in different parts of the brain are found to be the same as each and can be conceived as one thought; what was unorganized and stressful, becomes ( at least for a moment ) more organized and useful.
Clear thought is like an oasis in the desert. It provides relief from stress and the opportunity to advance and take organization further.

Although this is a incomplete account, this aproach, in my opinion, does protect consciousness from scientific reduction. I can not conceive technology being able to replicate the above system because it requires parallel processing to a degree that is even beyond imagination at present. At the moment we do not even know how many proteins there are in the brain.

Hello all, I am new to these forums as well. I like the looks of them so far!

Anyway, I have been toying with thoughts pretty often in dealing with quantum mechanics and consciousness. There do seem to be some very peculiar phenomena on the quantum level. I refer mainly to the double slit experiment, explained well in this video:

youtu.be/DfPeprQ7oGc

As we can see here, there seems to be an effect on quantum material, caused by the action of our observation. It seems to help further the idea of Schrödinger’s cat – in that the cat in the box is BOTH alive & dead, until one of the wave function collapses (by the action of our observing) in one of the possibilities.

Now, if we look at an organization called the GCP (Global Consciousness Project) http://noosphere.princeton.edu/ , they have stumbled upon some very interesting results. Experimenters work with computers titled ‘eggs’ which flip a coin 200 times a second, and have been performing this operation 365 days a year, 24/7 since the experiment began. As they have worked with the eggs, they have noticed that for the most part, the coin flips are random – as is expected.

However, they have begun to notice that something strange happens when events occur on a global level. The flips cease being random, and in fact become significantly unrandom. What does this mean then??

To think of some questions: What is ‘reality’ then? Is it that which we all see and ‘agree’ to be real? If we could all focus ourselves upon one thing as truth, and with complete undoubt – then does it somehow ‘become reality’??

To take a Peircean stance, would things then be ‘true’ in that the collection of our whole (i.e. the community, our peers) sees them as truth?? Pragmaticism definitely seems to bleed through in this approach.

There are other things I have come into my own quandaries. How does evolution work? If it is truly working in a way that is ‘against’ nature – in that an organism evolves in a manner that ensures their survival by somehow combating nature? If organisms DO work around nature – then one could consider that consciousness may be an evolved way in which we can ‘foresee quantum possibilities’??

Particles don’t “observe” anything; you’re taking a misunderstood knowledge of physics and trying to make philosophical conclusions out of it.

You’re probably thinking of the phenomenon of wave-function collapse, there is a bunch of pop-physics videos on the Internet that depict wave function collapse occurring as a result of the particle/photon/whatever being “observed” – this does not mean particles are observing each other, it means that the act of being observed uses energy (although a minuscule amount, but still enough to be significant on a quantum level), the particle being observed would have to exchange photons with the observer, and therefore interrupt the wave-function.

But what am I talking about? I’ve tried discussing legitamite physics on this forum before, but each and every time, people here have proved that they are utterly incapable of understanding hard science.

To react to and to observe are the same thing.
The only distinction being to what degree and manner one reacts.

They are not the same thing. An “observer” in quantum physics refers to a measurement apparatus; some pseudo-physicists have since confused the term “observer” with conscious observers, and then laymen have further confused the concept by thinking that all particles in general are observers.

I certainly can’t argue with that. :confused:

The “wave-function” that collapses is a probability function that is dependent upon the information given it. Observations change the information with which it determines the wave, thus the wave “collapses” because it has different information with which to calculate probability. Nothing at all changes in the physical. It is merely a mathematical probability function that yields a wave of probability, not a wave of actual physical phenomena.

The act of obtaining that information, the observing, generally requires interference with what is being observed (until they began using entanglement and a little thinking). Thus when they “observe”, they change what physically takes place as well as changing the information with which to calculate the wave. It is just a mind game, nothing more.

Nothing can observe anything if it doesn’t sense what it is observing. Sensing cannot occur unless a reaction to the stimulus occurs. Thus any and all observations, by machine or human, requires reaction on the physical level. What the person does with that initial sensed reaction determines if he is only observing and not overtly reacting. There can be no observation without mutual affect.

Physicists used the word “observer” simply because it was the best word for what they were trying to describe, they didn’t mean for it to have any philosophical or psychological implications.

The rest of your post is just rambling

I think some of you are in need of a crash course on the fundamental problems in sub-atomic physics before you start making your own conclusions.

The best place to start would be with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which states that the precise location of a particle can not be known with arbitrary precision - because the simple act of measuring the particle’s position would change its position. And even if measurement itself didn’t change the particle’s position, the particle’s position would likely change during the time the measurement was taking place (since the information of the measurement can only travel as fast as the speed of light, it would take a small amount of time for the information to travel from the particle to the measuring device, and during that time the particle most likely will have moved elsewhere).

This is why physicists represent electrons in “orbitals”, or regions of their probable location (as opposed to sharply defined orbits around the atomic nucleus)

Entanglement defeated Uncertainty.
With Entanglement one doesn’t need to touch the particle, but rather merely observe its entangled partner then deduce the spin and location of the one of interest from what you found. - Might want to update.

Last I checked, entanglement doesn’t actually exist and is just imaginative wishful theorizing

*Entanglements exists and has been tested untold times. How did you ‘check’?

I am not a physicist but I am pretty sure this is incorrect. The principle is NOT referring to some causal interference of one quality when measuring the other.

You are absolutely correct…but I also would argue then that this does not equal an endpoint in the debate.

Humans have had a massive amount of experience in defeating obstacles, however, there is only way in which to overcome a problem such as an ‘uncertainty principle’. If we assume this is the endpoint – there is no need to carry on the conversation, as well as implying no more questions are necessary.

Something such as entanglement may very well not be a complete answer – but let me quote this from wikipedia under the article ‘quantum entanglement’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement:

I agree that there may be questions to be asked, but I cannot concede that something such as the ‘uncertainty principle’ will end the discussion of the quantum mechanics that we so necessarily require a crash course on. A lot of people ‘understand’ to some degree what is being spoken of – they only require a way in which enables them personally to reach that conclusion. We may also be observing a phenomena (correctly or as incorrectly as it may lie), which we are making some sort of an attempt at adding to the discussion.

If one decided to readily believe that the universe revolved around the Earth, being at the center of it all, then we would require no further debate – not one individual would have anything to add to the debate. Would something such as this, with complete trust & doubt non-existent, then be to considered as ‘what is truth’? Which is the question I brought up earlier…if we all agree to it (without doubt) – then isn’t it true?

Really, well show me some references. Or better yet, show me some data from experiments. There aren’t any, and any results that do actually exist don’t refute the heisenberg uncertainty principle

Considering that I read the hand written notes from the UTA team that did the experiment, I would have to dismiss your skepticism. Some 6 months later,suddenly online, there were hundreds of thousands of references concerning entanglement burying the original and the only thing I could find was a claim from a California crew, but they didn’t show any of their actual work. It was obviously a media piece. But the logic of the experiment is just too obvious to dismiss the reality of it. The concept of entanglement in a metaphysical sense is in everything Man does. And that is all despite the immediate thought that I had the very first time I ever heard the Uncertainty Principle, " ‘Cannot’? Did you say CAN NOT?? - Are you serious?"

Would leads to alignments of focus of these individual entities, and how is it that a group would lend to further alignment and control of alignment and what would prevent total alignment of all things?

i would think the universe (in so far as you mean the everything) Is conscious…
Although it would seem that alignment might be a matter of perspective… Perhaps some nature of all things in the universe are aligned such as to form a consciousness on the greatest scale…