LOL Shawn. Consciousness is here and now. It has theorised of a time and a trillion degree F. And using that theory you are foolishly vanquishing the very source of that theory.
Is what we know (for example, about the start of the universe) separate from our consciousness? Can you separate any knowledge or any object from consciousness? Will there be any theorising without consciousness?
OTOH, if consciousness came up from inert materials (as you and some others aver) then you would have to agree that your intelligence and your thought process was determined by those inert stones. Then what can you understand of matter, mass, and energy through enquiry? Your understanding was determined by the inert deterministic processes.
"Consciousness is here and now"
Yes because of us and other animals with conciousness and A NERVOUS SYSTEM
The Electric Brain
- How does a three-pound mass of wet gray tissue (the brain) succeed in representing the external world so beautifully? In this interview with noted neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás of the New York University School of Medicine, find out how the rhythm of electrical oscillations in the brain gives rise to consciousness, and how failures in this rhythm can lead to a variety of brain disorders.
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WHY BRAINS ARE IMPORTANT
NOVA: Let's start by talking about why one needs a nervous system—or a brain—in the first place.
Rodolfo Llinás: That's a very intriguing issue. The nervous system is about 550 million years old, and it first came about when cells decided to make animals. Basically there are two types of animals: animals, and animals that have no brains; they are called plants. They don't need a nervous system because they don't move actively, they don't pull up their roots and run in a forest fire! Anything that moves actively requires a nervous system; otherwise it would come to a quick death.
Why would it die if it didn't have a nervous system?
Because if you move, the variety of environments that you find is very large. So if you happen to be a plant you have to worry only about the very small space you grow into. You don't have to do anything other than maybe move up and down. And you're following the sun anyhow, so there is no planned movement, and therefore there is no necessity to predict
what is going to happen if, which is what the nervous system seems to be about. It seems to be about moving in a more or less intelligent way. The more elaborate the system, the more intelligent the movement.
So you need a nervous system in order to be able to predict the future?
Yes, and in order to predict you have to have, at the very least, a simple image inside that tells you something about the purpose of the outside world. That is common to all nervous systems of all forms that we know of. Each animal has a different universe—the universe it sees, the universe it feels, the universe it tastes. Earth probably looks very different not only for all of us as individual humans, but also for different animals.
"We assume we have free will, but we don't"
How does consciousness come into this view of the brain? Is consciousness a mysterious phenomenon, in your opinion?
I don't think so. I think consciousness is the sum of perceptions, which you must put together as a single event. I seriously believe that consciousness does not belong only to humans; it belongs to probably all forms of life that have a nervous system. The issue is the
level of consciousness. Maybe in the very primitive animals, in which cells did not have a single systemic property—in which each cell was a little island, if you wish—there may not have been consciousness, just primitive sensation, or irritability, and primitive movement. But as soon as cells talked to one another there would be a consensus. This is basically what consciousness is about—putting all this relevant stuff there is outside one's head inside, making an image with it, and deciding what to do. In order to make a decision you have to have a consensus.
But it all just boils down to cells talking to one another?
Some people believe we are something beyond neurons, but of course we are not. We are just the sum total of the activity of neurons. We assume that we have free will and that we make decisions, but we don't. Neurons do. We decide that this sum total driving us is a decision we have made for ourselves. But it is not.
NOVA | The Electric Brain
This was in 2001 and they know a whole lot more and neuroscience is something I study closely.
"It has theorised of a time and a trillion degree F. And using that theory you are foolishly vanquishing the very source of that theory."
Say what? The Big Bang Theory? If that is the theory your going with here it support the BB.
Big Bang Conditions Created in Lab
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WASHINGTON – By smashing gold particles together at super-fast speeds, physicists have basically melted protons, creating a kind of "quark soup" of matter that is about 250,000 times hotter than the center of the sun and similar to conditions just after the birth of the universe.Scientists reported in 2005 that they suspected they had created this unique state of matter, but for the first time they have verified that the extreme temperatures necessary have been reached.
"This is the hottest matter ever created in the laboratory," Steven Vigdor, associate laboratory director for nuclear and particle physics at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., said Monday at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Washington, D.C. "The temperature is hot enough to melt protons and neutrons."
The gold particles used in the experiment were only the nuclei — the positively-charged part of the atom made of protons and neutrons. Two sprays of gold nuclei were accelerated in opposite directions along a circular track in an underground "atom smasher" called the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) Brookhaven.
Traveling along this 2.4-mile-long (3.9 km) circle, the gold nuclei were accelerated to near the speed of light. When two of these particles smashed into each other, their collisions produced such huge amounts of energy that the matter was heated up to about
7 trillion degrees Fahrenheit (4 trillion degrees Celsius).
Big Bang Conditions Created in Lab
"Is what we know (for example, about the start of the universe) separate from our consciousness? Can you separate any knowledge or any object from consciousness? Will there be any theorising without consciousness?"
Yes without us the universe would still exist. We only know about the start of the universe because conciseness evolved with animals with a nervous system.
"OTOH, if consciousness came up from inert materials (as you and some others aver) then you would have to agree that your intelligence and your thought process was determined by those inert stones. Then what can you understand of matter, mass, and energy through enquiry? Your understanding was determined by the inert deterministic processes"
You do know every atom in your body was made in a stellar nuclear furnace, that all the iron in your blood and heavey metals came from a process called nucleosynthesis and the Carbon that all life is from, carbon based life forms.
Whats with the "inert stones" that is in no way what is being learned, nor do I think you understand what the early Earth was like, as well as the oxygen we breath is from the evolution of bacteria developing photosynthesis and that why your breathing oxygen and not natural gas.
"OTOH, if consciousness came up from inert materials (as you and some others aver) then you would have to agree that your intelligence and your thought process was determined by those inert stones."
Completely wrong.
"Then what can you understand of matter, mass, and energy through enquiry? Your understanding was determined by the inert deterministic processes."
Completely wrong again.
