Do Conscious Minds Actually Exist?

Ken Edwards

Do Conscious Minds Actually Exist?

Yes. Conscious Minds exist physically as material objects. You can see them. I see my conscious mind every day when I shave.

A conscious mind exists in space and time and exists in the form of arrangements or patterns of greasy brain cells inside of a human head. It is lodged in that big, wide bump just above the eyes which is called "a pre frontal lobe".

That bump is a Conscious Mind.

The conscious mind is bone encased, The conscious mind is made of human brain cells or more accurately as patterns of human brain cells.

A conscious mind can be cut out of a person's head with a scalpel and thrown into a waste basket.

It is a well known fact that there are men who are alive today that have had their conscious minds amputated and the enclosing skin pulled back and sewn together again. This surgical operation is called a "Prefrontal Lobotomy and is a last resort operation used to save the lives of people who have brain disorders like brain cancer inside the cells of their prefrontal lobes.

Afterwards these men can live happily but can no longer use words.

I am not speaking figuratively. I am speaking literally. I am stating well know facts.

But the following statements may be conjectural.

Please look at some of the words I just spoke. Look at the word "figuratively". Look at the word "am". look at the word "speaking".

Where did I find these words? I found them in a big word storage "box?" "basket" located somewhere inside of my prefrontal lobe which I call: "my vocabulary".

They were detected and stored and can be turned into sound waves or spoken words or typed words by my conscious mind. That's what my conscious mind is there for. That's its job. To work with words.

When I was born I had a "word box" but it was empty. The first word I learned and stored in that box probably was the word "Mama".

Part of my growing up was the learning of new words and numbers. Since I love reading books, usually for pleasure, and I also speak Spanish I have stored well over a thousand words in that box.

My conscious mind cannot deal with anything except words or other semantic symbols such as numbers and mathematical symbols that are in that box.

Because mathematics consists entirely of semantic, speakable symbols it can only exist inside of a conscious mind and in no other place in the known universe. Not even in the vastly more extensive sub-conscious mind.

Only humans have conscious minds. No animal has that bump.

What do conscious minds cells look like?

They look like bloody lard. The cells themselves are made largely of fat with some carbohydrates and proteans.

I have eaten such brain cells with lots of lemon and salt in Calf Brain recipes. Delicious!

Well, okay. So what have I done here? Using my Conscious Mind I
have asked my Conscious Mind to tell me what a Conscious Mind is and it did so and I am well satisfied with the answer!

Note - My satisfaction does not exist in my conscious mind. Feelings cannot exist in a conscious mind. Only words.

My feelings of satisfaction exist in my vastly more complex Subconscious Mind.

My reader may insist that both minds are parts of one single mind.

If so he would be right. What more could I say?

Conscious minds were evolved in the human race (and only in the human race) very recently, perhaps less that a half million years ago.

But that is another story. For later.

Consciousness. That is another, and far more difficult question. I tend to agree with Leteltty. Later.

SpaceDweller

Do Conscious Minds Actually Exist? — Ken Edwards

Yes

Only humans have conscious minds. No animal has that bump. — Ken Edwards

I wouldn't agree on that, my personal view is that:
1. Conscious mind is a biological phenomena
2. Animals are less conscious but never completely unaware

Ken Edwards

in answer to Space Dweller. "1. Conscious mind is a biological phenomena
2. Animals are less conscious but never completely unaware"

Correct. I thnk I said that. Or strongly implied it.

Yes. The highest animales, our close cousins, dwarf chimpanzies, have partially evolved conscious minds and can deal with many words and symbols frequently in the guise of some kinds of pictographs. But they lack finally attuned speaking mechanisms.

I did not say that words are the only way to communicate . Not by a long shot. Dogs, for example bark and also communiate incredibly well by aid of a special communication organ called: " a Dogs Tail.

Awarenes does not exist in the conscious mind but does massively exists in our subconscios minds and in all other animals such as worms and elephants.

Pantagruel

I wouldn't agree on that, my personal view is that:
1. Conscious mind is a biological phenomena
2. Animals are less conscious but never completely unaware — SpaceDweller

:up:

EnPassant

The analogy of the television has been given. The television projects sound and vision so if we did not know better we might imagine the television produces these things; it produces the music score, the script, the plot and even the actors.

See, if we damage this component the image vanishes. If we damage that component the sound goes. So the television must be the author and creator of these things right? It turns out that the script, music etc are created outside of the television and broadcast to it from a remote location. The television only reconstitutes the information into a form that is suitable for humans to understand; sound and vision. The television processes information it does not create it.

Likewise with mind and brain. The brain is a processor not a creator. The mind creates thought, not the brain.

Correlation is not always causation.

Heiko

The mind creates thought, not the brain. — EnPassant

Thought as such seems to be a reflection. The determination of the content seems to be outside the mental form.

theRiddler

What is the physical, material, and if your "conscious mind" is so feeble, how can we trust you to ascertain any of that?

EnPassant

Animals are less conscious but never completely unaware — SpaceDweller

Less intellectual but not necessarily less conscious. Consciousness goes waaay beyond the intellect.

Ken Edwards

I can, perhaps, add to EnPassan's analogy.

When I was about 5 years old my parents took me to light concert hall in Kansas City and we sat fairly close to the conductor. The conductor's arm movements and the music were so closely correlated that I automatically assumed that he was the one making the music. I was amazed and I tried to figure out how he was doing it.

As for EnPassan's words: "Likewise with mind and brain. The brain is a processor not a creator. The mind creates thought, not the brain".

I insist that the mind and the brain are one and the same thing. It seems to me that some who are participating in this discussion are saying or perhaps implying that minds and thinking processes have no material or physicalogical existence. Am I correct?

Heiko goes so far as to suggest: "The determination of the content seems to be outside the mental form."

If that were so, if they do not exist as living flesh how do they exist?

Thinking creates electrical currents in certain specific areas of the brain and the exact placement of hundreds if not thousands of these currents have been located inside of human heads and correlated with specific thoughts. Routinely. The human brain has been intensly and completly mapped.

Thoughts are patterns of neurones, ie brain cells.

Ken Edwards

I never said the conscious mind was feeble. I only said that the number of mental activities performed by the conscious mind are much, much fewer in number than those performed by the mighty subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind has many many more jobs to do. The billions of human brain cells in the subconscious mind, inside of a human skull, are responsible for receiving sensory input from the external world, such as sight, touch and hearing, for sending motor commands to all of our muscles including the heart and lung muscles and the muscles used for dancing and fighting and speaking, for eating, for digesting and for controlling the timing and quantities of glandular secretions, and for transforming and relaying the electrical signals at every step in between.

They cogitate a million times a second and include all awareness, all intuition, the intricate creation of emotions and the timing and amounts of all secretions from the glands.

Plus the control of all muscles used by the speaking muscles of the conscious mind that is new and slightly apart and is located in the prefrontal lobe.

Plus millions of other thinking activities that I know nothing about.

The one thing that they cannot do is to think with words.

Actually it is basically all one mind, the subconscious mind and the conscious mind.

I know of none of the technical details included in all of this. I am an artist not a Psychologist.

But I read a lot.

As for trusting me, I might give you some good advice: Never trust anyone."

Do Conscious Minds Actually Exist?

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