:fire: :100: :strong:So thermodynamics is against you as much as the rest of physics. For the brain to do the work of constructing states of integrated-differentiated information, it must create even more entropic waste. There is a reason why the brain is 2% of our body weight but consumes 20% of our energy. — apokrisis
The arrangement of these words and letters. — Pop
I think you're making a good point that perhaps relates to higher levels of intentionality, but could you be more specific? Don't mean to put you on the spot necessarily, be as concise as you like, or just ignore me — Enrique
Imagine being able to draw a diagram in a textbook that represents the chemistry of qualitative perception — Enrique
"… a certain simplification which we adopt in order to master the infinitely intricate problem of nature. Without being aware of it and without being rigorously systematic about it we exclude the Subject of Cognizance from the domain of nature that we endeavour to understand. We step with our own person back into the part of an onlooker who does not belong to the world, which by this very procedure becomes an objective world. — Schrödinger, Mind and Matter
And what we can say is the brain is very concerned about shuttling ions to build up local mechanical gradients across membranes regulated by pores. — apokrisis
The arrangement of these words and letters.
— Pop
I don't know if I agree. Consider that the same sentence can be conveyed in any kind of media whatever. It doesn't matter with it's written, engraved in metal, or converted into binary code. The media is different in every case while the information remains the same. — Wayfarer
Brain waves are closely related to states of awareness, reducible to increasingly local behaviors of brain matter which produce unique signatures that blend into the emergent patterns current EEG technology observes. — Enrique
If brain waves are measurable on a macroscopic scale, you can't tell me that almost every cell body isn't saturated with electric charge, — Enrique
'If you look at something mutable, you cannot grasp it either with the bodily senses or the consideration of the mind, unless it possesses some form…If this form is removed, the mutable dissolves into nothing… Through eternal Form every temporal thing can receive its form and, in accordance with its kind, can manifest and embody number in space and time…Everything that is changeable must also be formable…Nothing can give itself form, since nothing can give itself what it does not have.' ~ Augustine. — Wayfarer
Augustine of Hippo 430AD, describing information! Wonders will never cease! — Pop
I probably should make a thread - what is information? — Pop
The word is equilibrated, not saturated. Like biochemistry in general. Every positive charge is balanced by a negative charge to the level where charge fluctuations don’t make a difference and every charge is under the cell’s regulatory thumb. — apokrisis
But the qualitative nature of consciousness, 'what it is like to feel something', is what makes the hard problem a problem. And the reason it's a hard problem is because it can't be represented in the third person, only experienced or felt or lived in the first person. — Wayfarer
Your precious EEG rhythms are an artefact of a measuring method that offers 1ms temporal resolution but 1cm spatial resolution. — apokrisis
Of course it will turn out to be more complex than only that, but research in principle might be able to model percepts as if they are objects. — Enrique
The reason I think a quantum theory of consciousness could be a leap beyond current neuroscience in solving the hard problem is because, if we consider visualizing an image in our minds or feeling a sensation, the image or sensation is no longer merely produced by action potentials or neurotransmitters as some mysterious supervenient substance, it is the quantum superposition, precisely. The resonant color of the superposition is the subjective color of the mental image, and the quantum resonance of the sensation is the feeling. — Enrique
So my point is the physical brain (either classical or quantum) has the ability to contain mental content. I think you are mistaking mental content for quantum states. — Mark Nyquist
It's been a mystery how percepts are projected and combined at all within the brain when matter has thus far been regarded as trillions of separate, quantized atoms. — Enrique
What should be clear is you will not find consciousness in an EEG or in Quantum states — prothero
What should be clear is you will not find consciousness in an EEG or in Quantum states, or any specific structure or neurotransmitter. Consciousness requires an intact, functional, unified integrated neural network other mental functions require the intactness of different brain networks and structures. — prothero
I'm not saying everything the brain does is consciously aware, and that's why my view is panprotopsychism. But I do regard consciousness as relatively fundamental. How frequently during the day are you unconscious yet functional? Probably only while in certain sleep stages, and it is a very constrained functionality. — Enrique
Do you distinguish between experience, mind, awareness and consciousness? How do you define consciousness, because definitions become important and these terms are bandied about like synonyms. Human consciousness must have its evolutionary antecedents and thus there are varying degrees of mind and experience throughout nature. All may have the same ontologic or metaphysical source which is where speculative metaphysics may come in. — prothero
Prothero, is x conscious if there is something it is like to be x?
Is x conscious if x is capable of experience?
I think neurowhatsits have a lot to say on what we experience, but nothing at all to say on how experience came to be. I just haven't heard anything remotely convincing. — bert1
We don't have a good standard yet for determining what the chemistry of percepts is, but if a quantum theory of perception supplies that, it will be possible to classify exactly how conscious many much simpler species or divergent structural forms are by comparison with humans, just as we use the presence of metabolism, membranes, reproduction etc. to decide whether a creature is living, and of course borderline cases occur. — Enrique
The following is a description of what I think is the most valid framework for modeling consciousness that currently exists. Tell me what you think!
In my opinion, the most viable current theory is a sort of diversely pluralistic monism explaining perception as conventional chemistry infused with distinctly quantum dynamics, most essentially the superpositions or blended wavelengths which bring about complex assortments of color and feeling within matter. Yet it sharply differs from the physicalism that has been so pervasive amongst science’s monist accounts of material structure, instead regarding the hallmarks of perception as taking effect at a very basic level, something more akin to panpsychism. — Enrique
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