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Great explanation, makes perfect sense to me! My own heory is pretty much the same. Just like you can experience other internal sensations in your body when ner

by rayalez 10y ago

Great explanation, makes perfect sense to me! My own heory is pretty much the same. Just like you can experience other internal sensations in your body when nerves send signals that are recognized by the brain, the brain can recognize it's own signals. I highly recommend to read Godel Escher Bach(if you dont have time - just read the introduction to get the general idea). In this book author explains how the meaning arises when things(like language, or math equations, or neurons in the brain) "mirror" things in the real world, when their structure can be "mapped" onto some other structure(so called "isomorphism"). He says that brain "mirrors" the world around it as it builds a world model. But the brain itself is a part of the world, so it builds the model of itself as well. Neurons recognizing/observing/experiencing other neurons. Just like you can see a dog you can "see" your own brain state. I've also heard a cool quote somewhere - "Consciousness is simply just what it feels like to have a brain". You can close your eyes and feel the position of your body, you can feel your stomach being full, and you can feel your brain thinking.

dghf 10y ago
> I highly recommend to read Godel Escher Bach(if you dont have time - just read the introduction to get the general idea). I don't think you'll get any real sense of what GEB is about just by reading the introduction.
- rayalez 10y ago
  Well, duh doi. What I mean is that the introduction gave me the epiphany related to the concept I'm talking about, and if you're not ready to commit a ton of time to reading the whole book, you should still read the intro, because it explains a lot of awesome things related to the OP's post. But you're right, the whole book does contain more information than it's first few pages. No shit.
rayalez 10y ago
Oh, and also, I think that having consciousness is not an on or off switch, but a sliding scale. The more complex your brain is, the more "conscious" you are. There's no reason for a brain of a dog or a mouse to not be able to observe/experience itself. It's model is probably simpler, but I bet it exists. Like before you have learned how to code, your brain dedicated only a tiny amount of neurons to represent the concept of "programming", or "building a website". But as you gain experience, the model of this stuff becomes more complex. I imagine that brains that have less neurons can still recognize their own signals("be coonscious") , but their map of their brains would have a "smaller resolution". ---- As I grow older and learn things, I notice that I get better at "meta" thinking, that is having a map/model of my own thought processes. When I'm trying to figure something out, I'm also paying attention to the mental operations my brain goes through as it tries to figure something out. The perfect example of it is writing fiction. When you begin learning to write, and are just trying to type a certain amount of words per day(to practice), you are doing it without any "self awareness", your brain generates words/ideas, and that's all there is to it, you don't know how. But as you get better, and pay attention to what your brain does as you write, you develop a neural network that represents the process of writing, the operations your brain needs to go through to craft a story. Because in the case of writing fiction this model is complex, it is really easy to notice. Like I can feel the neural network in my brain that repressnts the programming concepts that I've learned, I can also feel the neural network that represents mental operations I need to go through to generate a story. Good writers have a more complex and "correct" map of mental processes they need, so they can competently craft stories any time they want. But you can also learn to write well without "meta" thinking. Then your brain just strengthens the correct mental pathways as you practice(without "meta" thinking), so you can be good at writing without understanding how. I think that this is a really cool example, where you can directly experience a brain building a map of itself and then using it.

by rayalez 10y ago

dghf 10y ago

> I highly recommend to read Godel Escher Bach(if you dont have time - just read the introduction to get the general idea). I don't think you'll get any real sense of what GEB is about just by reading the introduction.

rayalez 10y ago
Well, duh doi. What I mean is that the introduction gave me the epiphany related to the concept I'm talking about, and if you're not ready to commit a ton of time to reading the whole book, you should still read the intro, because it explains a lot of awesome things related to the OP's post. But you're right, the whole book does contain more information than it's first few pages. No shit.

rayalez 10y ago

Oh, and also, I think that having consciousness is not an on or off switch, but a sliding scale. The more complex your brain is, the more "conscious" you are. There's no reason for a brain of a dog or a mouse to not be able to observe/experience itself. It's model is probably simpler, but I bet it exists. Like before you have learned how to code, your brain dedicated only a tiny amount of neurons to represent the concept of "programming", or "building a website". But as you gain experience, the model of this stuff becomes more complex. I imagine that brains that have less neurons can still recognize their own signals("be coonscious") , but their map of their brains would have a "smaller resolution". ---- As I grow older and learn things, I notice that I get better at "meta" thinking, that is having a map/model of my own thought processes. When I'm trying to figure something out, I'm also paying attention to the mental operations my brain goes through as it tries to figure something out. The perfect example of it is writing fiction. When you begin learning to write, and are just trying to type a certain amount of words per day(to practice), you are doing it without any "self awareness", your brain generates words/ideas, and that's all there is to it, you don't know how. But as you get better, and pay attention to what your brain does as you write, you develop a neural network that represents the process of writing, the operations your brain needs to go through to craft a story. Because in the case of writing fiction this model is complex, it is really easy to notice. Like I can feel the neural network in my brain that repressnts the programming concepts that I've learned, I can also feel the neural network that represents mental operations I need to go through to generate a story. Good writers have a more complex and "correct" map of mental processes they need, so they can competently craft stories any time they want. But you can also learn to write well without "meta" thinking. Then your brain just strengthens the correct mental pathways as you practice(without "meta" thinking), so you can be good at writing without understanding how. I think that this is a really cool example, where you can directly experience a brain building a map of itself and then using it.