consciousness

I didn't exist long before I was born and similarly I will not exist after I die. At least that's what many people on this forum think. If so, does it mean that the nonexistence before I was born (let's name it nonexistence 1) the same thing as the nonexistence after my death (let's name it...

I'm sorry if this thread already exist. So consciousness? what is it? Is it a problem? Is it a hard problem? Did anyone actually come close to explain it? Does it need explanation?

Many of you reading this thread will have heard of the “hard problem of consciousness“; WP is as good an intro as any. In this thread, I’d like to discuss a somewhat orthogonal question: is consciousness, of the “hard problem” kind, binary? It’s a question I’ve not seen discussed; if you know...

Outside of quoting myself :D Do you like it, love it, thoughts?

A person appears to be something more in reality than physical brain processes, since it has a soul. The soul appears to be a real, nonmaterial phenomena distinct from the brain and the world's physical elements. Since the soul is immaterial, to know it directly might be possible only...

This thread was split from Is your atheism predominately a science success or a theism fail?. It may be that some posts were moved which should not have been, and/or that some posts which should have been moved remain in the original thread. Please report any posts that fall into either...

Part A - Artificial Intelligence and human-kind, in 2 sentences. Artificial Intelligence is unavoidably exceeding humans in cognitive tasks, and some projections observe human level brain power in artificial machines/software by at least 2020 (Wikipedia exascale computing source). Artificial...

Donald Hoffmann seems to have found a useful way of dealing with problem consciousness. Like anything to do with evolutionary fitness it's not to be found in the representational world we like to call reality...Do we see reality as it is...

No explanation required. I voted No.

I wonder if anyone here has researched how man developed into a creature that believes in an afterlife, that feels it has a "soul" apart from its body. I suggest dualism came about because of a need to believe in an afterlife, which reveals a fear of the end of one's own existence. Animals have...

Does materialism spell the end for scientific method? I've been pondering this question for some time. It looks like this... * At least 99% of modern scientific research into the brain points directly to it being the sole source of consciousness. Pretty much every aspect of conscious experience...

The most basic cognitive construct that comes to mind is the Chinese Room. This idea was created to argue against Strong AI and it was mentioned by Dennett. I think we can get some more utility out of it. The basic notion was that you have a room where pieces of paper with questions are fed...

Hello All, Here are 2 articles written by Robert Lanza with the arguments that death is not the end. I would probably be skeptical, but in first article he uses scientific word "experiments": http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/do-you-only-live-once-exp_b_508440.html And in second he...

Alex Tsakiris has released a new book based on his podcasts: Taken from: http://www.amazon.com/Science-Wrong-About-Almost-Everything/dp/1938398319 Some of the positive reviews come from people who are members of skeptiko forum or were also guests in the podcast itself which I find quite...

As some of you know, I think materialism is baloney. I subscribe to the much more parsimonious and skeptical notion that reality is in a trans-personal form of consciousness, of which we are localizations -- like whirlpools in a stream. This ontology is often called monistic idealism. My books...

So, I was searching for a thread about this, on this forum, but surprisingly could not find one. Perhaps I missed it. (If I did you can point me to it.) Perhaps no one cares. Whatever. Anyway, around June 14, 2014, our favorite intellectual imposter, Deepak Chopra, issued a $1M challenge of his...

Hello old friends! I have a little too much time on my hands at the moment, so I thought I would swing by and spend some time in a thread. In this thread I would like to present a model of consciousness to discuss. First, there are three main 'usual' states of consciousness. Waking...

Hi, Just watched a bit of the debate on youtube "Dangerous Ideas - Deepak Chopra & Richard Dawkins 2013-11-09". I only watched a bit of it because I find debates with Deepak Chopra a waste of time, and often follow a similar path. However, Deepak Chopra talked about Freeman Dyson and how he...

This thread is meant to be a side-bar of the consciousness thread, which I thought should have been in R&P, but it isn't, which is why I wanted this thread to be in Science as well. If it must be moved, I may lose interest. I would like to explain the point and the process of meditation, and...

Following on from the article in 2008 in the UK Skeptic magazine, here is a book review of Dr Pim van Lommel's offering on NDEs and Consciosuness after life. Might be useful to link to when you get people coming here asking the same old, same old, same old, questions about NDEs. If you cannot...

My book review for the book by Pim van Lommel on Near Death Experiences.

Transient global amnesia is a condition in which a person temporarily loses the ability to create new memories. One of the hallmarks of the disorder is that the patient's short term memory periodically resets, frequently resulting in the patient getting stuck in a loop. Unlike Phil, Bill...

It is commonly accepted that the brain, somehow, produces the mind, at least in the JREF of course. If this is the case, where is the mind? It is located in the brain? The experience that makes you feel you, its inside your head? What do you think about it? Discuss.

The thread in Religion and Philosophy, "Explain consciousness to the layman," has degraded into a bore, so I'm starting this thread, hopefully to launch effective dialogue on the nature and computability of consciousness. Please try and avoid derailing it! From David Gamez's THE DEVELOPMENT AND...

So, the elements formed together to form the first living organism. This much I understand, but what about consciousness? This is never really explained, besides "neurons firing together in the brain" to form it, but this explanation never goes further than that when I hear it. I know this...

Through exploring my mind and friends of mine exploring their minds, the terms reality creation and conscious creation has come up frequently. Recently, I have been reading books such as Ten Thousand Whispers: A Guide to Conscious Creation, Reality Creation 101, and The Reality Creation...

After re-thinking about this quote from Bill Hicks, from Sane Man, I've been pondering consciousness: "Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration – that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing...

Is self awareness accidental or selected through evolution? Consciousness has proven to be a difficult concept for scientific analysis because it's purely subjective and not subject to objective experimentation or observation, yet most of us accept that it exists. A number of books have been...

The Kellys at the University of Virginia seem to think that a physicalist account of consciousness is dead and buried. http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psychiatry/sections/cspp/dops/Ramachandran%20EHB%20article%20FINAL.pdf ~~ Paul

For about the last 6 months I've been interested in alternate states of consciousnesses, in particular out of body experiences (OBEs). Admittedly my interest in such a strange phenomenon stems mainly from my boredom, but I do feel OBEs are a challenging meditation exercise and could be a...