consciousness

Well, are you? Okay smart-alecks, poll is up now. :p

Just curious how many P-Zombies are floating around out there. ETA: I know I misspelled conscious in the poll.

To re-iterate from another thread: I have no answer to this question. Whatever we mean by 'awareness' it seems that it must include attention. But is attention alone necessary or does awareness include other aspects? I would like to avoid dualism from the outset, so we will need to be...

There are some ideas about consciousness that seem as if they'd be very interesting to discuss, but that other consciousness thread just doesn't seem to be the place for them. Turing tests and algorithms and scary math and computers and -- :covereyes Anyway, can we just take it as a given here...

So I am trying to get some extra hours in over the weekend, and I have to pee. On my way back from the restroom, I navigate to my cubicle. Everything sounds kosher, right? Except, it was my old cubicle that I moved from over 4 months ago. When things like this happen to me, I realize just...

Max Tegmark is a professor of physics at MIT. He is best known for his theory: "All structures that exist mathematically exist also physically." There are various formal scientific papers about that theory. I think I have a more consistent version of that theory based on small changes in the...

I've been investigating Roger Penrose and I found out that he wrote a book about consciousness entitled "The Emperor's New Mind". In it, he argues that classical mechanics are insufficient to study and understand the process of human consciousness, and that quantum mechanics is closer to...

Consider a conscious robot with a brain composed of a computer running sophisticated software. Let's assume that the appropriately organized software is conscious in a sense similar to that of human brains. Would the robot be conscious if we ran the computer at a significantly reduced clock...

Premise 1) -- consciousness is a type of information processing. If you disagree with premise 1, then goodbye, this thread is not for you. Let E(t) be the pattern of information that constitutes consciousness C(t) at time t. Let R be the rules, or the language, used to describe E(t). Premise...

I've noticed in the interminable succession of threads about consciousness that there doesn't seem to be any consensus about what subjective experience is, and how accessible it is. The interesting thing is that this absence of consensus applies even within the groupings of opinion of the nature...

Hi, I invite you to discuss my physical and scientific definition of the state of consciousness, which is : Consciousness is the state in which an entity is recalling any aspect of its prior state. Note that, recalling and memorizing happen unconsciously, which means: An entity that is...

I do not believe we currently can explain the behavior of objects being affected by gravity. There are a number of qualities exhibited by such objects, such as "falling," that defy a full mathematical description. Thus I advocate the notion of a "Hard Problem of Gravity,", or "HPG," that must...

By "human-like" consciousness I mean something close enough to "human" consciousness that a typical human might enjoy interacting with it as they enjoy interacting with other humans. We can, of course, take a chinese room approach and try to mimic all important behaviors of humans. But that...

Assume that consciousness is information processing. Let D1 be the information which is being processed in consciousness C. Then we can fully encode C using another set of information D2 which is a superset of D1. That is, D2 contains not only all the information in D1 but also all the...

The picture of a genetic makeup that fluctuates by the hour and minutes seems at odds with the public perception: That genes determine everything from our physical characteristics all the way to our behaviour. Many scientists seem to think that our geners form an immutable blueprint that our...

One of the biggest mysteries in science is consciousness.....Or is it? I know we have alot of materialists here, so would like their take on this, and ofcourse the non-materialistic POV too.

I received this spam mail and it is so jaw-droppingly ridiculous, I wondered if, in an attempt to part even more cash from Gullibles, the pseudo-science rhetoric can possibly get any further from reality - or is this just a random phrase generator at work? Anyway its well worth reading just to...

I recently have a thought on consciousness. Could it just be as simple as the bio-chemical reactions in the brain? Is consciousness created when you were born and destroyed when you die? What if that is not true? Would consciousness be conserved then? Like Energy? Then, it would not be rash...

Hi I'm probably stepping into the lion's den with this one. Maybe it's been discussed here before. I would like to know what people make of the problem of subjectivity. I could have said 'consciousness', but I said 'subjectivity' to make the point that our experience of consciousness is...

A question has been bugging me lately. I am an agnostic/atheist, and don't really believe in a soul or an afterlife. But if there is no soul, I wonder why I have this subjective experience. I think the brain is probably what is having this experience, but what part of the brain? Are the atoms...

Hello people, As I explained in my "hello" posting, I am pretty much interested currently in any issues related to consciousnes, and in general love to philosophise about this subject. Just recently I started writing a short article about my current viewpoint, which I just finished. I did also...

As a hardcore atheist committed to scientific materialism, and I admit not very skeptical about it, I am on occasion reminded that my worldview may be too narrow. For instance, I cannot fathom quantum indeterminacy or action at a distance, or parallel universes, or any of that. I prefer a...

Hi, Thought I'd start off with a query to any physicists out there. I've just managed to clear Penrose's 'Road to Reality' on my second attempt. It's been a stimulating ride - I used to be a biologist so phyiscs and maths were not my strong suit, but I was aware that you could only go so far...

http://www.iands.org/research/important_studies/dr._peter_fenwick_m.d._science_and_spirituality_6.htm what do you think about this?:D l

Consciousness is a social experience A child’s symbolic action world is built from the outside in. We are sad because we cry; we do not cry because we are sad. I took a night course in acting and this is something I was taught. We were told to perform the action to induce the feeling. Only...

Sin, Punishment, and Consciousness A few days ago I saw in the newspaper a cartoon showing a distraught, anguished, and horrified Uncle Sam holding in his arms the body of a child while he looked over his shoulder at the flames of Iraq. I was raised as a Catholic; I was taught by the nuns the...

A thread in the Science section got sidetracked to the question of true free will. It was suggested that we continue that topic here. I hope Piggy will regale us with his ideas about "true" or "genuine" free will, which is called libertarian free will in the philosophy biz. ~~ Paul

This follows on from the 'The Secret' thread I started earlier, but I think it deserves a new topic. Sorry if it doesn't. Anyhoo, the woos on the business networking circuit have thrown a bunch of papers at me about 'Quantum Consciousness' which all looks like complete and utter garbage...

Hi there- I saw a show about "near-death" experiences and what not. But these weren't your a-typical stories of "I was clinically dead for twenty minutes, saw a tunnel, and observed my own body" One gentalman was hit by a car, died, was placed in a fridge for 3 days, was brought out to a table...

Hi there- I saw a show about "near-death" experiences and what not. But these weren't your a-typical stories of "I was clinically dead for twenty minutes, saw a tunnel, and observed my own body" One gentalman was hit by a car, died, was placed in a fridge for 3 days, was brought out to a table...