What about moment before conception, when it's sperm and egg....

Bert you seem determined to have a word serve as a magical placeholder

First it was consciousness and now it is experience... Those are just words... Life is a complex evolving chemical process...

Zygote doesn't have consciousness, and it doesn't have experience, but it's part of the continuum of life on this planet...

But even life doesn't have any clear edges as they will always be boundary conditions that are beyond any clear definition...

We get a better understanding of the world without muddying the waters the way you are by overcomplicating things...

The conversation like everything in the universe has evolved... But it still seems relevant to the original thread

Zygote, to newborn, to baby, to toddler , to kid, to adult to senior... We can see consciousness develop and change over a lifetime

We can also see it fade in and out during sleep, deep sleep, anesthesia, drugs...

Consciousness isn't a thing, it's not a quality, it's a developed biological capacity...

But magical thinking is part of human nature and we have a huge history of superstition and legends... So people will try to continue to push the idea of the sacred or the transcendent or something supernatural... And people have gravitated to consciousness because it's quite nebulous because it's the convergence of billions of cells with trillions upon trillions of connections...

we are not just neurons Bert! An organism is an organism... Smelling a rose is the total happening of an organism reacting to its environment...

Also if matter, elementary matter, is a little bit conscious, is it also a little bit intelligent, a little bit emotional, a little bit curious,...

Don't you get a much simpler and better explanation by just understanding it as matter evolving in complexity...

And specifically, as you respond to this, what evidence do you have that you're anything more than complex chemistry?

As you sit there and type on your computer give me one shred of credible evidence that you are anything more than complex chemistry?

You guys are hypnotizing yourself with pedantic nonsense!

well I studied science at the graduate level and have a good idea of what life is and what consciousness is

Like I said consciousness is a word that people use and like any word it can mean different things in different situations

What's your level of scientific study? What do you have your PhD in? Bottom line is people are imaginative inventive creatures that like to just make stuff up, like to talk, and like to just say creative stuff

But we have incredibly sophisticated body of knowledge that tells us what life is, life is complex chemistry that evolved over billions of years

Like I said, consciousness is a word and like any word it can mean different things in different contexts. But whatever it is, it is an evolved ability of certain organisms. And therefore it relies on chemical arrangements of atoms and molecules

When a person gets Alzheimer's and begins to lose their ability to be conscious, it is because their brain is deteriorating. The same thing if someone has a stroke or someone has an injury

The ability that any organism has to move around and act in the world is based on chemistry. And when the chemistry is damaged functioning is also damaged

Bottom line is if you think you have a better definition or a better understanding why don't you present it and also present some evidence to back it up. Because is kinda obvious if you deprive a brain of oxygen it will die and begin decaying and will no longer be conscious. This is what all the science says. What evidence do you have to the contrary?

I think a lot of people like to just live in fantasyland and throw out religious like mumbo jumbo because it makes them feel good and it makes them feel special and it is the history of human happenings

But there is no evidence to support any of that. Like I asked the other guy what is your definition of life? How do you explain it? How do you explain the fact that certain organisms seem to be self-aware and seem to be able to communicate in complex ways with regard to self and environment?

It is obvious that it is evolved chemistry to anyone that holds degrees in biology or neuroscience... but of course the philosophers want to go on and on and want to make a living off the gullible just like religious people want to tell their stories to the gullible...

Show me some explanations and evidence?

anyway what is your explanation for what is life? And what is consciousness? As I've said I think it's evolved complex chemistry

And I think this is the simplest explanation that fits the evidence

But what is your explanation for both?

look at it this way!

Life is an intricate and more complicated version of fire!

This is what all the evidence says... life is a complex chemical reaction!

The whole biosphere is basically an intricate feedback loop of chemical reactions!

So of course consciousness can be destroyed if the whole earth is destroyed by a giant meteor or whatever!

Again consciousness is just the ability of certain organisms!

Well actually consciousness is just a word but, it's describing certain evolved abilities!

Anyway I have tons of times where I'm between consciousness. I have all sorts of brain farts and mental noise and all that... it's not really consciousness it's just mind poop...

Anyway someone said two heads are better than one! And then someone else said that it's not that two heads are better than one it's that two heads are needed for one! Or we need social interactions to create a socially aware human being...

And really what we mean by consciousness is just the ability to be in harmony with a social project... After all language and perception and communication are largely social...

Anyway you seem to have an abstract vague notion of consciousness as being something more than material... But there is no evidence for that! And there are mountains and mountains of evidence to show that life and consciousness and every other aspect of living experience is simply chemical reactions!

If you have any evidence to the contrary I suggest you go win your Nobel prize but dead men tell no tales and words don't feed starving babies! Without oxygen and glucose none of this conversation would be happening and we are all built on chemicals and there is no evidence that ultimately we are anything more than intricate chemistry

Or if someone gets Alzheimer's and slowly loses their personality and ability to communicate then there's not always a clear line dillionating between consciousness and non-consciousness

I mean come on if someone slowly loses their mental faculties does not like a moment where they're no longer conscious but we can kind of see that their organismic abilities are slowly diminishing

It's kind of like there's not a moment of death but we can kind of see it gradually happen and can tell when a person is beginning to turn to dust that they're probably not alive anymore

Sure if you want to talk mumbo jumbo... If someone gets hit on the head and is in a hospital bed it's not always clear whether they're conscious or not

If you want to just argue the philosopher jargon you've memorized, that is the same as religious jargon then go ahead but...

Consciousness... it's a vague word because ultimately life is transient and fleeting

Of course the normal definition is that someone is conscious if they can say they are and they can back it up with continued dialogue

And we normally think other complex organisms like primates and other mammals are probably conscious because they show similar abilities without being able to use human language... Like being able to pass the mirror test and all that

But seriously consciousness is just vague because it touches on our cultural conceptions which often are shrouded in superstition and a history of magical thinking

For a long time in history we thought life was a substance or an essence that was different than immaterial objects

But now we know that life is evolved complex chemistry. So consciousness is just the ability of certain organisms and that's completely a matter of definition and how we define the term and what we entail it to mean

But again most people are naturally duelists in their thinking and they think in terms of mind and matter as separate...

All organisms are constant flow of nerve impulses a constant metabolic happening. Consciousness is ultimately a human construct like intelligence or awareness or even beauty or health.

thanks good to be here!

I was saying Penrose like Ken Wilbur like Freud, his whole philosophy is based on just vague words with vague meanings... that basically these dudes are just making stuff up!

Protoconsciousness is a vague word... Often times what people mean by consciousness can be vague because at the end of the day it's an umbrella term that is used to mean different things... Like awareness or experience or feelings or thoughts or any other umbrella word...

It's like the holy Spirit is a vague concept! Chi is a vague concept! It's obvious people are just trying to imbue magic and superstition and supernatural elements into some sort of philosophy of consciousness or existence or whatever...

Life is a complex chemical reaction... Nothing more nothing less... Consciousness is the word we give to certain features of certain organisms...

Good stuff, I agree... Basically Penrose, outside of some very specific physics which he has actually made a valuable contribution to, is just a b**********! And he surrounded by enough of other bullsh***** that they can swap this nonsense and do no better than college dorm room type philosophy...

Science is about creating models to explain reality that have real predictive power

Philosophy is for those places in our knowledge where scientific models cannot be of ultimate use,because The subject matter is simply too complicated and is not easily reducible to scientific knowledge

From a scientific perspective we know what consciousness is in the ordinary usage of the word

But that's the problem because people can throw out fuzzy words that have vague meaning and then run wild with that.... and just create their own system of thought that relies on vague words, with vague meanings...

But ultimately it gets you nowhere and you just end up with a fuzzy bunch of words.

it seems like you're redefining words and engaged more in creative writing than philosophy. Not that there's anything wrong with that... and it makes for some interesting sort of college dorm room musing. But the words you're using have accepted definitions and attempting to redefining them in your own way is not going to become the norm for society... so how does it really get us anywhere?

It's like people who redefine God as love. And then they say well then of course God exists. But obviously most people use the idea of God to mean more than just love... Anyway that's my two cents.