On consciousness


1. Somatically: consciousness in the brain is found in the "ARAS", or Ascending Reticular Activating System. It is a set of brain areas in the ancient part of our brain (forebrain and midbrain) that regulate the sleep/wake cycle.

2. Consciousness is the control of attention.

You are attention. All else is just your brain doing its thing, sending thoughts and stimuli to your attention.

It is up to you to choose what to engage with.

3. Consciousness is learning.

You are only conscious of things that are non-trivial, ie. not yet learned. Once walking, bicycle riding or typing is learned, you are no longer conscious of it.





Here are some pieces to the puzzle of consciousness:

4 necessary conditions for consciousness:
  • Store info
  • Process info
  • Independence (choice)
  • Integrated (unified)
5+1 properties: (from integrated information theory)
  1. it exists
  2. subjective, present, intrinsic
  3. has a structure (Integrated?)
  4. Specific
  5. Unified
  6. Axiom of exclusion (definite). It has borders, it is limited.


my opinion about consciousness one year ago:

Consciousness is just an illusion that heightens our sense of self-importance.
Consciousness is so deeply rooted in our minds, it seems impossible to even define it.
Consciousness seems to be the platform upon which all cognitive phenomena play out.

Consciousness is so important, it feels like it is everything.
All that this is, is evolution's most elaborate measure to trick you into feeling important and unique.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Machine at birth?

In light of my last article entitled 'The Great Somatic Divide: Silicon vs. Carbon' , I started to think of ways in which those feelings and emotions connected to our bodies could be made available to Ainhoa (AI). Let's explore how to bridge the somatic divide: how to give AI body, so that it will be more human? My first thought was that maybe a digestive system could be added. One taken out of a pig, for exemple, and held alive inside Ainhoa. That way, she could actually digest food and get nutrients out of it. But how would those nutrients interact with her cognitive abilities? She would need some kind of brain that would be fed those nutrients. So an entire circulatory system would be needed, with a brain, liver and kidneys and a lung, so eventually you might as well add an entire body. But what body? Would a rat be good enough? Or should you use a monkey? Or should Ainhoa have a human body? Let's explore the possibilities. Ainhoa has a rat body hosted ins...
Read more

Consciousness is learning

My cousin was solving a Rubik's cube the other day. I was amazed how fast one can learn it. But what most struck me is the difference between the processes that he was doing consciously and subconsciously. In this article I will argue that consciousness is learning. After just one week of messing around with the cube, he already learned a bunch of moves that became automatic. He make one side be filled with the same color pretty fast without paying much attention. It seemed as if it were automatic, learned, he could talk while doing it. By repeating a certain move enough times, he learned it, which means that he can now do it without consciously thinking of it. He can now think about higher order moves consciously. With time, those moves will be learned too and he will no longer need to consciously think through the sequence of moves. You don't walk consciously. There was a time, though, when you did think of every move, about when you were 1 year old. If...
Read more