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I've been trying to formulate thoughts I have on consciousness that make sense in my head, but I haven't been able to communicate it effectively. Basically, wh

I've been trying to formulate thoughts I have on consciousness that make sense in my head, but I haven't been able to communicate it effectively. Basically, why is consciousness always attached to the same physical body? Why can't I ever wake up in someone else's consciousness? How does "my" consciousness know to come back into "my" brain whenever I lose it (through sleep or injury, etc). The answer that I lean toward is that there is no such thing as you or me. There is only one consciousness and it is merely being filtered through each living (or perhaps nonliving) being in containerized modules. So, to "me", it feels like I'm experiencing my own consciousness but in reality everyone is the same "me". You are me, I am you, etc, we are simply filtering consciousness through different atomic arrangements. For example, let's say you read about a criminal who does a terrible thing and you can't imagine yourself ever doing that. But in reality, it is the same "you", only that your consciousness has been filtered through a different arragement of atoms that has caused that "module" to act that way. It is the same YOU who committed that crime, all it took was a different filtering device to make you act that way. Anyway, that's kind of what I'm thinking. I'm sure it's not an original thought, but I don't know what kind of philosophy this is called other than "one consciosness".

simonh 6y ago
Hang on, if there is only one shared consciousness, you would expect that you would be able to wake up in another person's body. It seems to like that would be an inevitable consequence of that proposition. The fact that this never happens demonstrates, to me, that we do have a persistent discrete individual identity.
xwdv 6y ago
That means when we die we just slip into someone else and never really even know it because we have all their memories and experiences up to that point in time. Perhaps this process even happens all the time as we lose consciousness and regain it. Our bodies are merely antennas for tuning into the vast universal consciousness. Madness. The takeaway from this for me is to be kind to any living thing as it could be you.
KingFelix 6y ago
So now build out an experiment, see if you can play around with this filter device and see if you can find something clever. Step 2, invent something crazy, or start a cult. Good Luck!
TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
If I recall correctly, you might like to search around for the term ever-present witness. Don't have time to elaborate right now sorry.
isaachier 6y ago
Sounds like monopsychism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsychism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsychism).
hackinthebochs 6y ago
But what work is this notion of a universal consciousness doing for you? Why not just get rid of it and say that we are all just independent processes with psychological continuity that entails our experience of individuality?
heavyset_go 6y ago
You might enjoy this[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI
- kfrzcode 6y ago
  I love to share the text: http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
lnanek2 6y ago
> Why can't I ever wake up in someone else's consciousness? How does "my" consciousness know to come back into "my" brain whenever I lose it (through sleep or injury, etc). Why doesn't the fire in your car's engine suddenly appear in the engine of a car down the street?
- prvnsmpth 6y ago
  Pretty much this. Your "consciousness" is nothing but neural activity in your own brain. By definition, it cannot appear anywhere else but your brain.
  - loopz 6y ago
    Reductionism is by definition less than a full perspective on life, humanism and depth of possibilities.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    That is speculation. We have absolutely no idea how consciousness is produced from electrical and chemical signalling between a large ball of fats. We know that it is (because we perceive our own), but we can't map from one thing to another. If consciousness is merely neural activity in a brain, then why can't we simulate really simple brains?
    - PeterisP 6y ago
      Because really simple brains don't have consciousness, they aren't sufficiently powerful enough to have the "mental machinery" needed for consciousness. We know that brains can implement things like theory of mind, self-awareness and abstract concepts; these particular things don't require a human mind but they do appear only in animal brains above some level of complexity, and don't appear in brains so simple that we'd have the power to simulate them in 2020.
      - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        We don't know that. How would we ever observe such a thing? Like the core problem of consciousness is that we experience it, but have no way of identifying it otherwise.
booleandilemma 6y ago
Consciousness is a physical phenomenon. You can't wake up in another body in the same way you can't just wake up in someone else's house.
- stan_rogers 6y ago
  I did that many, many times. That's why I don't drink anymore.
  - c22 6y ago
    I had a similar experience with LSD except it was other consciouses waking up in my body.
faeyanpiraat 6y ago
I’ve got a quite scary thought about this: what if we are not only not the same consciousness after we fade away by daily sleep, etc.., but we are constantly fading away in short cycles, like every “tick” (planck time?) happening in the physical simulation of this world? How would you be able to tell the difference?
- throwanem 6y ago
  Why would it matter?
- PeterisP 6y ago
  This seems related to the concept of Last Thursdayism - if the world was created last thursday, how would you be able to tell the difference? You have some memories of earlier times than last thursday, but there's literally nothing that prevents them from being indistinguishably fake; your consciousness could be existing in a simulation that started five seconds ago, and there's no way to disprove that. But the reasonable answer to that is if it's not possible to tell the difference, then we define that to be the same consciousness; so that the answer to the question "if we are not only not the same consciousness after we fade away by daily sleep, etc.., but we are constantly fading away in short cycles" is "it's the same consciousness, period" by definition.
root_axis 6y ago
> Basically, why is consciousness always attached to the same physical body? Why can't I ever wake up in someone else's consciousness? Maybe you do, but there wouldn't be any way to tell because the brain only has memories of itself, you couldn't remember the swap even if it occurred. Our apparent reality does not rule out solipsism.
square_usual 6y ago
You might be interested in the Hindu/Buddhist philosophy of Advaita Vedanta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta
kfrzcode 6y ago
Have you read this short story by Andy Weir? [0] To me, it's like life is a conglomeration of matter built in such a fashion that it can act as an antenna, or a lens, attenuating and focusing consciousness such that it can be experienced. [0] http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html)?
dntbnmpls 6y ago
> Basically, why is consciousness always attached to the same physical body? Why can't I ever wake up in someone else's consciousness? How does "my" consciousness know to come back into "my" brain whenever I lose it (through sleep or injury, etc). Maybe it's not attached to the brain, but rather produced/created by your brain? > The answer that I lean toward is that there is no such thing as you or me. I agree that there is no self. But that is different from consciousness.
joeyjojo 6y ago
This resonates with me as I have a similar thoughts on consciousness. The way I try to express my thoughts on this is to imagine that consciousness is a fabric that permeates the entire universe, but there exist these kind of extremely dense pockets of consciousness (ie, within us and our brains) where the fabric is tightly bound. Every kind of system that exists within the universe naturally lends itself to being conscious. The more complex the system the greater the density of consciousness it yields. Perhaps we cannot perceive consciousness in most (simpler) systems because it is minuscule compared to the density of consciousness within our brains, although we do tend to get these spooky kinds of insights and intuitions into the higher-order consciousness that emerges from many brains combined, such as collective consciousness, gaia, mass hysteria, etc.
zozbot234 6y ago
> Basically, why is consciousness always attached to the same physical body? Because conciousness (or rather, subjective perception) is a physical phenomenon after all - it's causally linked to the universe in a way that means it can't just "jump" brains absent some kind of telepathy. Identity is not really mysterious from a "hard problem of conciousness" POV; it's simply one phenomenology (one 'quale') among many, and experienced meditators can even turn it on and off at will. It's really only proto-perception and perhaps proto-cognition that probably needs to be explained.
libertine 6y ago
Because your body is the record of your experience and existence. That's why a lot of people think a human brain would never be able to be uploaded to a computer, and if you could do it, you'd not be yourself - you'd be something else. You are the sum of your experiences, a build up of scars, traumas, and so on. So according to this theory, you'd only wake up on someones else body if that person had the same sum of experiences you had, yet that's impossible because only you are you - not even twins would experience this. Maybe that's why we value this experience so much: it's so unique and so intimate to ourselves, that we hold on to it dearly. You then have hints of collective (un)consciousness. Jung explored this concept with archetypes.
- OnACoffeeBreak 6y ago
  You are never the same you from one moment to next, and the mind adapts to deal with this change. So I would think the mind would adapt when downloaded into a new body. Certainly, your point stands, in that the mind downloaded into a new body would not be the same you, but I would argue that it might be enough of you to maintain the sense of you.
  - libertine 6y ago
    My point is that the separation of body and mind doesn't make sense in the eyes of some scientists. Like some of your memories are bound to scare tissue. Some back it by the change of personality after major trauma. Moving a mind to another body is most definitely quite a trauma (maybe the ultimate trauma?), which begs to ask the question: What's the point of moving your mind to another body, if you'll cease to exist as you are? If you lose, like you said, the "sense of you".
- qwerty456127 6y ago
  > So according to this theory, you'd only wake up on someones else body if that person had the same sum of experiences you had I know that's impossible for many reasons, but which body would you wake up in if somebody would make an exact subatomic-perfect duplicate of your body. Wouldn't the copy become just a twin having identical memories and believing he's you? Wouldn't you still only see the world from the point where you've been rather than where your copy has emerged?
mathgenius 6y ago
> Why can't I ever wake up in someone else's consciousness? I've thought about this too, and my conclusion is that there's no way to know. Maybe we wake up as someone else everyday, with all the emotional/psychological baggage that entails.

simonh 6y ago

Hang on, if there is only one shared consciousness, you would expect that you would be able to wake up in another person's body. It seems to like that would be an inevitable consequence of that proposition. The fact that this never happens demonstrates, to me, that we do have a persistent discrete individual identity.

xwdv 6y ago

That means when we die we just slip into someone else and never really even know it because we have all their memories and experiences up to that point in time. Perhaps this process even happens all the time as we lose consciousness and regain it. Our bodies are merely antennas for tuning into the vast universal consciousness. Madness. The takeaway from this for me is to be kind to any living thing as it could be you.

KingFelix 6y ago

So now build out an experiment, see if you can play around with this filter device and see if you can find something clever. Step 2, invent something crazy, or start a cult. Good Luck!

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago

If I recall correctly, you might like to search around for the term ever-present witness. Don't have time to elaborate right now sorry.

isaachier 6y ago

Sounds like monopsychism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsychism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsychism).

hackinthebochs 6y ago

But what work is this notion of a universal consciousness doing for you? Why not just get rid of it and say that we are all just independent processes with psychological continuity that entails our experience of individuality?

heavyset_go 6y ago

You might enjoy this[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI

kfrzcode 6y ago
I love to share the text: http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

lnanek2 6y ago

> Why can't I ever wake up in someone else's consciousness? How does "my" consciousness know to come back into "my" brain whenever I lose it (through sleep or injury, etc). Why doesn't the fire in your car's engine suddenly appear in the engine of a car down the street?

prvnsmpth 6y ago
Pretty much this. Your "consciousness" is nothing but neural activity in your own brain. By definition, it cannot appear anywhere else but your brain.
- loopz 6y ago
  Reductionism is by definition less than a full perspective on life, humanism and depth of possibilities.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  That is speculation. We have absolutely no idea how consciousness is produced from electrical and chemical signalling between a large ball of fats. We know that it is (because we perceive our own), but we can't map from one thing to another. If consciousness is merely neural activity in a brain, then why can't we simulate really simple brains?
  - PeterisP 6y ago
    Because really simple brains don't have consciousness, they aren't sufficiently powerful enough to have the "mental machinery" needed for consciousness. We know that brains can implement things like theory of mind, self-awareness and abstract concepts; these particular things don't require a human mind but they do appear only in animal brains above some level of complexity, and don't appear in brains so simple that we'd have the power to simulate them in 2020.
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      We don't know that. How would we ever observe such a thing? Like the core problem of consciousness is that we experience it, but have no way of identifying it otherwise.

booleandilemma 6y ago

Consciousness is a physical phenomenon. You can't wake up in another body in the same way you can't just wake up in someone else's house.

stan_rogers 6y ago
I did that many, many times. That's why I don't drink anymore.
- c22 6y ago
  I had a similar experience with LSD except it was other consciouses waking up in my body.

faeyanpiraat 6y ago

I’ve got a quite scary thought about this: what if we are not only not the same consciousness after we fade away by daily sleep, etc.., but we are constantly fading away in short cycles, like every “tick” (planck time?) happening in the physical simulation of this world? How would you be able to tell the difference?

throwanem 6y ago
Why would it matter?
PeterisP 6y ago
This seems related to the concept of Last Thursdayism - if the world was created last thursday, how would you be able to tell the difference? You have some memories of earlier times than last thursday, but there's literally nothing that prevents them from being indistinguishably fake; your consciousness could be existing in a simulation that started five seconds ago, and there's no way to disprove that. But the reasonable answer to that is if it's not possible to tell the difference, then we define that to be the same consciousness; so that the answer to the question "if we are not only not the same consciousness after we fade away by daily sleep, etc.., but we are constantly fading away in short cycles" is "it's the same consciousness, period" by definition.

root_axis 6y ago

> Basically, why is consciousness always attached to the same physical body? Why can't I ever wake up in someone else's consciousness? Maybe you do, but there wouldn't be any way to tell because the brain only has memories of itself, you couldn't remember the swap even if it occurred. Our apparent reality does not rule out solipsism.

square_usual 6y ago

You might be interested in the Hindu/Buddhist philosophy of Advaita Vedanta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta

kfrzcode 6y ago

Have you read this short story by Andy Weir? [0] To me, it's like life is a conglomeration of matter built in such a fashion that it can act as an antenna, or a lens, attenuating and focusing consciousness such that it can be experienced. [0] http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html)?

dntbnmpls 6y ago

> Basically, why is consciousness always attached to the same physical body? Why can't I ever wake up in someone else's consciousness? How does "my" consciousness know to come back into "my" brain whenever I lose it (through sleep or injury, etc). Maybe it's not attached to the brain, but rather produced/created by your brain? > The answer that I lean toward is that there is no such thing as you or me. I agree that there is no self. But that is different from consciousness.

joeyjojo 6y ago

This resonates with me as I have a similar thoughts on consciousness. The way I try to express my thoughts on this is to imagine that consciousness is a fabric that permeates the entire universe, but there exist these kind of extremely dense pockets of consciousness (ie, within us and our brains) where the fabric is tightly bound. Every kind of system that exists within the universe naturally lends itself to being conscious. The more complex the system the greater the density of consciousness it yields. Perhaps we cannot perceive consciousness in most (simpler) systems because it is minuscule compared to the density of consciousness within our brains, although we do tend to get these spooky kinds of insights and intuitions into the higher-order consciousness that emerges from many brains combined, such as collective consciousness, gaia, mass hysteria, etc.

zozbot234 6y ago

> Basically, why is consciousness always attached to the same physical body? Because conciousness (or rather, subjective perception) is a physical phenomenon after all - it's causally linked to the universe in a way that means it can't just "jump" brains absent some kind of telepathy. Identity is not really mysterious from a "hard problem of conciousness" POV; it's simply one phenomenology (one 'quale') among many, and experienced meditators can even turn it on and off at will. It's really only proto-perception and perhaps proto-cognition that probably needs to be explained.

libertine 6y ago

Because your body is the record of your experience and existence. That's why a lot of people think a human brain would never be able to be uploaded to a computer, and if you could do it, you'd not be yourself - you'd be something else. You are the sum of your experiences, a build up of scars, traumas, and so on. So according to this theory, you'd only wake up on someones else body if that person had the same sum of experiences you had, yet that's impossible because only you are you - not even twins would experience this. Maybe that's why we value this experience so much: it's so unique and so intimate to ourselves, that we hold on to it dearly. You then have hints of collective (un)consciousness. Jung explored this concept with archetypes.

OnACoffeeBreak 6y ago
You are never the same you from one moment to next, and the mind adapts to deal with this change. So I would think the mind would adapt when downloaded into a new body. Certainly, your point stands, in that the mind downloaded into a new body would not be the same you, but I would argue that it might be enough of you to maintain the sense of you.
- libertine 6y ago
  My point is that the separation of body and mind doesn't make sense in the eyes of some scientists. Like some of your memories are bound to scare tissue. Some back it by the change of personality after major trauma. Moving a mind to another body is most definitely quite a trauma (maybe the ultimate trauma?), which begs to ask the question: What's the point of moving your mind to another body, if you'll cease to exist as you are? If you lose, like you said, the "sense of you".
qwerty456127 6y ago
> So according to this theory, you'd only wake up on someones else body if that person had the same sum of experiences you had I know that's impossible for many reasons, but which body would you wake up in if somebody would make an exact subatomic-perfect duplicate of your body. Wouldn't the copy become just a twin having identical memories and believing he's you? Wouldn't you still only see the world from the point where you've been rather than where your copy has emerged?

mathgenius 6y ago

> Why can't I ever wake up in someone else's consciousness? I've thought about this too, and my conclusion is that there's no way to know. Maybe we wake up as someone else everyday, with all the emotional/psychological baggage that entails.