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Probably because consciousness requires some kind of underlying mental processes, which take time to achieve. I can only guess that it's similar to an instance
by incompatible 7y ago
Probably because consciousness requires some kind of underlying mental processes, which take time to achieve. I can only guess that it's similar to an instance of a computer program such as a web browser, i.e., it isn't a "thing" itself but is built out of a multitude of underlying calculations on a physical computer.
This also implies to me that consciousness, not being a physical thing itself, comes and goes within the brain, with the sleep cycle or just through lack of attention. The only interaction between one instance of consciousness and the following one would then be via memories.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago= emergent ?
- incompatible 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergentism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergentism, yes it's clear that a lot has already been written about this kind of idea. A difficulty is that it may interact with questions about the nature of existence and the nature of time. Would consciousness work properly in a deterministic block universe? What would be the relationship between my consciousness now and my consciousness of 10 seconds ago, do they both exist independently? Could you have consciousness that worked in a spacial dimension instead of time, by writing out the relevant calculations on a sheet of paper?
- BlueTemplar 7y agoFunny, I thought about something very similar : could some path in the Mandelbrot set (or any other fractal) be called "conscious" ?
- yohsii 7y agoconsciousness does not require a brain. consciousness is fundamental to the universe
- CuriouslyC 7y agoIndeed. To go even farther, I suspect that there is nothing other than consciousness. There are no particles and forces, only awareness and will. The stuff of physics is emergent from statistical properties of consciousness over a large scale.
- CharlesColeman 7y ago> Indeed. To go even farther, I suspect that there is nothing other than consciousness. There are no particles and forces, only awareness and will. I believe the word for that is idealism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/
- hackinthebochs 7y agoAssertions aren't particularly helpful in this discussion. What reasons are there to think this is true?
- ci5er 7y agoThat is certainly one hypothesis that has not yet been eliminated.
- mellosouls 7y agoconsciousness requires some kind of underlying mental processes Assuming you mean cognition, this is essentially the opposite of the idea of panexperientialism, or at least not compatible.
- grabbalacious 7y agoYes. The way I think about it, to be conscious, one has to be conscious of something. The only way to do that is to have a representation of that thing in memory. When the representation matches incoming sense data we then perceive the relevant thing. Thus, a single atom cannot be conscious. It could at a stretch be regarded as a miniature body, perhaps, but could it contain a memory system? Presumably not.
- thecupisblue 7y agoIsn't it actually what panexperientalism is? The universe is one giant state machine with the memory of it's current state and it's current state deciding what to invoke next.
- grabbalacious 7y agoI don't know about panexperientialism. My understanding of panpsychism is that it means that everything in the universe is at least a little bit conscious. Which I doubt for the reasons I gave. I don't see how the universe as a whole could be conscious, either, any more than a child in the womb could be. There's not enough interaction between its body and the environment. Of course the universe as a whole lacks any environment.