Concepts based on Consciousness

[atanu]

This post is in response to the following:
http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/2339497-post169.html

But please allow me to ask you whether the sort of Consciousness -- consciousness with a big "C" -- that you refer to is thought to exist apart from the brain?

Hello Sunstone

I intend this to go into detail. But I have only 4-5 days before a scheduled official assignement captures me. There is no doubt that consciousness exists, else there would not be this discussion. The problem is in capturing it. Small c consciousness to me is the manifest effect of capital C Consciousness, which is the seed but due to fundamental reasons will be ever unmanifest to the sprouted consciousness that is Mind.



Small c consciousness is defined as:

• an alert cognitive state in which you are aware of yourself and your situation; "he lost consciousness"
• awareness: having knowledge of;

Whereas the captal C Consciousness is the prajna (pra=pre and jna=knowledge and awareness). The experience of this is indirect through all awareness, beginning with self awareness. The closest experience of this is the deep sleep wherefrom the awareness of dream light body "I" or the waking gross body "I" sprout.

The Consciousness is most directly evident in cases of Samadhi when the Object/Subject distinction vanishes yet the awareness remains. To start with, the following article gives a baseline understanding.

http://www.discovervedanta.com/downloads/articles/definition-of-consciousness.pdf

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[atanu]

But please allow me to ask you whether the sort of Consciousness -- consciousness with a big "C" -- that you refer to is thought to exist apart from the brain?

Is Consciousness the Same or Different From the Mind/Brain?

If the consciousness is of Brain, then consciousness should also be a property of all other matter and/or energy, including the primordial quarks --- and thus is inherently Eternal. But then like physical properties that are measurable and add up, consciousness should be measurable and should add up like say mass or velocity?

Moreover, if consciousness was only contingent upon a material brain, then a dead body (with a physical brain) should be able to say "I wish to live". That is not known to happen ever.

Libet’s Experiment
Libet Experiments

The original discovery that an electrical potential (of just a few microvolts) is visible in the brain long before the subject flexes a finger was made by Kornhuber and Deecke (1964). They called it a readiness potential, which seemed to rise at about 550 milliseconds before the flex of the wrist. John Eccles speculated that the subject must become conscious of the intention to act before the onset of this readiness potential. Libet had the idea that he should test Eccles's prediction.

Libet's 1983 experiments measured the time when the subject became consciously aware of the decision to move the finger. Libet found that although conscious awareness of the decision preceded the subject's finger motion by only 200 milliseconds, the rise in the Type II readiness potential was clearly visible at about 550 milliseconds before the flex of the wrist. The subject showed unconscious activity to flex about 350 milliseconds before reporting conscious awareness of the decision to flex.

To me, this suggests that the individual consciousness is just a reaction or a limited reflection of the more deep Consciousness.

An individual mind is local to the brain but consciousness is non-local. When the brain dies, the local mind ceases; but consciousness, the universal field, remains.

The mind is a complex instrument of perception that includes ego, memory and rationality (in Hindu parlance, Mind is a material mirror that reflects the consciousness). Consciousness is the perceiver; the mind is the instrument of perceiving. The consciousness can know the mind but the mind cannot know consciousness.
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[atanu]

Does Consciousness Survive The Death Of The Body?

Consciousness is synonymous with existence and is hypothesized to be existent without beginning. To us consciousness appears to rise and fall with the body making many scientists to claim that consciousness is merely a property of material brain.

This is a ridiculous concept, IMO, since a dead body with its physical brain intact does not say "Do not cremate me". It is obvious that consciousness manifests itself through the medium of matter, which in final analysis can also be shown to be consciousness.

Particular consciousness vanishes as if into thin air, no doubt, but Consciousness is always the Subject. It does not die. What and which knows the death? There are however observations from Near Death Experiences of normal and also from blind.

NDE - the Proof of Extended Human Consciousness?
Near death experience - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There will be arguments about validity of Near Death studies. Variances in such studies are normal and I will not argue against or for.

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[atanu]

Knowing Consciousness

Consciousness is... so it has being; and this being-ness has its own nature. Consciousness is the fundamental ground-state of all being and knowing. It being the knower, can it be known?

Consciousness has no mass or volume, therefore cannot be sampled, measured, analyzed, dissected, or quantified. It is a field with no charge, polarity, density or effect. It is a state that cannot be observed, created or destroyed.

To science, consciousness is a mystery, "The ghost in the machine." The field of psychology is also a study of the mind than an inquiry into the nature of consciousness. Consciousness is the observer of the mind, so does not fall under the purview of psychology. Philosophy is concerned with epistemology (ways of knowing) rather than discerning the knower.

Different sciences study different kinds of phenomena, physical, chemical, biological, mental, emotional, economic, political, and so on. A 'phenomenon' may be defined as anything that is or can in principle be an object of consciousness. It is a fundamental fact of the phenomenology of our experience that consciousness is never given to us as an object. Therefore, the inescapable conclusion is that consciousness cannot, in principle, be scientifically studied, in the prevailing understanding and practice of 'scientific study'. Those who write books on objective studies of Consciousness are fooling themselves, IMO.

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[atanu]

Current Scientific View

Alfred Gierer, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Spemannstr. 35, D- 72076 T¨ubingen in "Brain, mind and limitations of a scientific theory of human consciousness" states:
There are basic reasons – not only practical but also epistemological - why the brain-mind relation may never be fully "decodable" by general finite procedures. In particular self-referential features of consciousness, such as self-representations involved in strategic thought and dispositions, may not be resolvable in all their essential aspects by brain analysis…….

http://www.eb.tuebingen.mpg.de/departments/former-departments/a-gierer/brain-mind-bioess.pdf

And another researcher:
Therefore, future research will unavoidably be bound to decide whether neurobiological accounts should take into account or reject the hard problem of understanding a subjective form of conscious experience that cannot be simply defined as conscious access.

http://www.lscp.net/persons/sidk/publi/preprint_Kouider_EncyclopConsciousness_inpress.pdf

Werner Heisenberg states:
It is the same sense, I would say, at present when we discuss reality from the point of view of quantum theory. It is very difficult to see why this should not be sufficient to explain the organism. In fact, there are many biologists who would claim, "Well, that is everything, and you can calculate the human brain finally from some kind of theoretical equation. There is nothing else but just our physical chemistry." Still, I think everyone of us has the feeling that, for instance, something like consciousness does never come out from any kind of unified field equation or whatever else. Consciousness is something of a different plane.

Oral History Transcript — W. K. Heisenberg

And a discussion among experts who conclude:

YOU are not a zombie, and you know it. What it means to be conscious directly affects what it means to be human. The strongest current theory is that consciousness is a complex, emergent property of the brain--a property not easily, or perhaps not ever, reducible to simple states of the brain. This means that consciousness "emerges" from all the complex electrical and chemical activities in our brains, something like an atomic bomb "emerges" from a critical mass of uranium or a molecule of water "emerges" from two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. So while consciousness is produced by the brain, we may never know quite how. But I can't shake the thought that consciousness may also be something else--a more fundamental description of self-aware beings like us, a special part of reality.

With philosophers and physicists disagreeing among themselves, it is good that consciousness studies is becoming a scientific field of great promise. For now, this divergence of opinion is what brings us closer to truth.

What Is Consciousness? Experts debate on Closer To Truth

There are many similar understanding that the Subject cannot ever be the object of investigation. The Knower cannot be known objectively. Mstic sages have queried "Who will know the Knower? Who will see the Seer?"

Consciousness itself being the Subject, a third party observation is never even theoretically possible. We can only examine and analyse the effects of Consciousness in subjects other than us. From such examinations there are many consistent reports about consciousness continuing after all clinical signs of life cease.

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[atanu]

Possibilities: Dualism or Materialistic Monism or Absolute Monism?

On the one hand, consciousness could be understood to be identical with the brain functions or it is produced by these functions and depends completely on them. This could be expressed by the formula: No matter no mind. On the other hand, consciousness is accepted as an additional quality or substance to the brain activities. In this case it would not completely depend on the brain, but could also exist without a working brain, with which it interacts through a certain mechanism which has to be discovered yet. In this case consciousness would remain an irreducible non-material aspect of reality but we are challenged to demonstrate how these two substances can interact.

Vedantic belief is that there is no duality between matter and non-matter. Consciousness is Absolute wherein other categories arise.
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[atanu]

Can Inert Matter Be Conscious?

Common sense would tell you that this could not be. However... What is matter and what is non matter?

One hint comes from modern quantum-physics developed in the nineteen twenties by Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger. By quantum-theory matter melts away in our hands.

As per Heisenberg, the behavior of an individual photon was always to be uncertain. Einstein disagreed because he thought there were still hidden variables to be discovered. In the 1935 Einstein (with Podolsky and Rosen) refuted Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle by a mind experiment called EPR paradox. EPR refuted the quantum theory’s standpoint that quantum events must occur locally within the space-time continuum. EPR showed that communication between two twin photons could be simultaneous, beyond the speed of light, regardless of distance. The paradigm changing word is "simultaneous"—faster than the speed of light!

In 1980s John Bell and Alain Aspect indicated that EPR could be right. In what is called the Proof of Bell's Theorem, they used two photons emitted with opposite polarities from the valence electron of a calcium ion. Using a polarization filter, Alain Aspect flipped the polarity of one of the photons and monitored the paired photon. At that same instant the paired photon spontaneously flipped its polarity to maintain coherency. How did it know to do that? And how did one photon communicate with its partner in no elapsed time? Significantly, they showed that there was no time and no space between anything in this new quantum world.

Now; can inert matter be conscious? There is no inert matter. The foundation is Consciousness.

Though I do not wish to make a long jump and take help of science to validate Veda but the suggestion is that science now hints that there was something beyond space-time that contained all time past and future and all space in the here and now. This Hindu sages had called One Consciousness.

David Bohm has also given us the phrase "Quantum Potential" as a label for this un-named something that exists behind space-time. He described the Quantum Potential’s primary quality as pure consciousness, or like an ocean of light.

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[atanu]

Dear brother Sunstone

For all this work, which no doubt involved a lot of C&P, my brain is aching. Can consciousness ache? :no:

Will I get any frubals?

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[atanu]

A source of confusion, IMO, is wrong reading of Buddha's teachings. Apparently Buddha taught that there is no eternal thing with its own nature - swadharma. But Buddha also taught that an eternal unborn is the reason why all efforts are worthwhile.

I think it is ironical that Buddha's teaching, which probably was meant to help divert the attention/clinging from the ephemeral to the unchanging unborn eternal, lead to some understanding that there is nothing else but the ephemerals.

This is my view only.
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[Sunstone]

Dear brother Sunstone

For all this work, which no doubt involved a lot of C&P, my brain is aching.

Thank you so much for this thread! There is a lot to digest here. It might take some time to figure it out, complete with my usual misunderstandings of everything. But I look forward to getting into it.

Can consciousness ache? :no:

No? Brother Atanu, you obviously have not been speaking to my ex-wife. Before she divorced me, she told me in no uncertain terms that I had made her consciousness ache even more than her heart! I was so proud of myself for having at last shared something with her.

Will I get any frubals?

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Of course! What else is the real point of any of our threads?

 

[atanu]

Of course! What else is the real point of any of our threads?

That is true, despite all my protests to the contrary.

Whenever I login, I see who has found me good and gloat if someone has done so. I become morose if no one found me good.

But I know that guy who gloats and deflates.

From Afar
Rabindranath Tagore

The 'I' that floats along the wave of time,
From a distance I watch him.
With the dust and the water,
With the fruit and the flower,
With the All he is rushing forward.
He is always on the surface,
Tossed by the waves and dancing to the rhythm
Of joy and suffering.
The least loss makes him suffer,
The least wound hurts him--
Him I see from afar.
That 'I' is not my real self;
I am still within myself,
I do not float in the stream of death.
I am free, I am desireless,
I am peace, I am illumined--
Him I see from afar. ​

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[Sunstone]

Consciousness is Absolute wherein other categories arise.
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Would you kindly elaborate on this, Atanu? I do not yet understand it.

 

[atanu]

Would you kindly elaborate on this, Atanu? I do not yet understand it.

I will try. As we have seen earlier, Hindu philosophy distinguishes between the manifest awareness (vijnana) on one hand and the unchanging base that enables that awareness --namely the knowledge faculty (prajna) of the Subject (Self), on the other.

I will request you to kindly read the last paragraph of the page that was cited earlier.

http://www.discovervedanta.com/downl...sciousness.pdf

We have three levels:

1. Self -- it is unborn and beyond three states of existence of sleep, dream, and waking .. The one who is slumberless Seer of the three states (which are also called three dream states in upanishads). In some literature, this Self is also called pure consciousness for want of a word. But it is unnameable and ungraspable, being the subject of all awareness. It is imperishable.

2. Self is manifest as dense unparted consciousness -- as in deep sleep (in mode of ignorance with zero awareness) or in object/subject distinction free awareness (in non ignorance mode of full awareness).

3. Subject/Object awareness -- as in the dream (consciousness is both the object and the subject) and in the waking period. Subject/object sprout from the dense prajna -- depending on desires hidden as seeds in sleep.

The first level, The Self is unborn, unchangeable, immutable, Absolute that is known as the revealer of unparted dense Consciousness (the second level above), which is the revealed. Self, the unborn, being unchangeable, its revealed consciousness, which forms the substratum of all awareness/experience is also a unchanging imperishable substratum.

The continous flux that the universe is will not be known as such, if not juxtaposed on something which is unchangeable.

A close metaphor is the cinema screen and a film playing on it. Cinema screen is the stable substratum of prajna and the film is the changing universe. The Seer of both the screen and the film is the Self.

For the blind beings of the subject/object differentiated world, the prajna of deep sleep is the Lord of all, but as per Vedanta, the unborn Self is the only one existing reality in all these states and in all these roles.

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[Valjean]

Fascinating thread, atanu, but it makes my head (mind?) hurt. It will take some time to sort through this.

Initial impressions and random thoughts:
Much of this strikes me as wildly speculative, as we simply don't have the technology to examine consciousness except as a weakly emergent brain function.

Consciousness appears, superficially, to be an artifact of physiology, as alterations of brain clearly affect its expression. If consciousness is some sort of supervenient, for example, how can a reductionist analysis hope to understand it?

On a more mundane level, I think it's pretty clear that waking-state awareness is a severely limited and completely abstract representation of Reality. Our sensory limitations and abstractionism can easily be exposed with common sensory illusions and the fascinating delusions arising from alterations in brain anatomy or physiology. Then there's Physics: quantum and relativity theory which describe -- and empirically support -- a Reality both incomprehensible and entirely beyond everyday perception.

But what are we to make of the 'perennial' reports of "expanded" consciousness and monism, oddly in accordance with physics' description of Reality? They seem to be artifacts of brain chemistry, in that they are, to a degree, reproducible. But there are also post hoc reports of consciousness by individuals with little of the electrochemical brain activity associated with consciousness, as revealed by concomitant EEGs or PET scans.


Things that make you go hmmmmm, eh?

 

[atanu]

Fascinating thread, atanu, but it makes my head (mind?) hurt. It will take some time to sort through this.

Initial impressions and random thoughts:
Much of this strikes me as wildly speculative, as we simply don't have the technology to examine consciousness except as a weakly emergent brain function.

Consciousness appears, superficially, to be an artifact of physiology, as alterations of brain clearly affect its expression. If consciousness is some sort of supervenient, for example, how can a reductionist analysis hope to understand it?

On a more mundane level, I think it's pretty clear that waking-state awareness is a severely limited and completely abstract representation of Reality. Our sensory limitations and abstractionism can easily be exposed with common sensory illusions and the fascinating delusions arising from alterations in brain anatomy or physiology. Then there's Physics: quantum and relativity theory which describe -- and empirically support -- a Reality both incomprehensible and entirely beyond everyday perception.

But what are we to make of the 'perennial' reports of "expanded" consciousness and monism, oddly in accordance with physics' description of Reality? They seem to be artifacts of brain chemistry, in that they are, to a degree, reproducible. But there are also post hoc reports of consciousness by individuals with little of the electrochemical brain activity associated with consciousness, as revealed by concomitant EEGs or PET scans.


Things that make you go hmmmmm, eh?

But where is my frubal? hmmmmmm eh?

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[Valjean]

But where is my frubal? hmmmmmm eh?

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Frubals!

 

[atanu]

Frubals!

I unfortunately get only one at a time, so I have a habit of calling it frubal. But to wrest one from you, I am willing. Where are my frubals?

Oh, thanks. Variety of tasty pastry.
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[Orias]

Great thread Atanu!

So do you think the saying, "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am" could apply here?

 

[atanu]

Great thread Atanu!

So do you think the saying, "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am" could apply here?

Actually I doubt that you are only 19.

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[atanu]

There is always mention of consciousness as emergent function of brain -- or electrochemical reactions thereof.

Consciousness or awareness, as commonly understood or in Buddhism is the consciousness of objects of Mind-Senses. This consciousness is called vijnana -- awareness of separated objects and this is truly dependently arisen of the factors of existence. There can be three kinds of such consciousness: of gross bodies as in waking, of subtle bodies as in dream, and of infinite darkness as in deep sleep. Three types of bodies namely a) gross as in waking, b) subtle as in dream, and c) causal as in sleep are three types of fields on which vijnana grows -- just as plants cannot grow without a field.

But the consciousness that Hinduism equates with Brahman in prajna (and not vijnana). The fact that vijnana arises is on account of prajna (which is indivisible without a second and which means that which is pre (pra) awareness (vijnana).
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