Why is there consciousness?

[Copernicus]

Consider these two different views on the nature of consciousness:

1. Consciousness exists everywhere in the universe, and individual minds are just individual units of consciousness that may or may not be part of universal consciousness.
2. Consciousness exists only in individual bodies with physical brains. It exists nowhere else.

There are other possibilities, but these reflect two very different points of view that tend to distinguish religious and non-religious points of view. Christians usually hold that God is immanent--a spiritual consciousness that pervades everything--and that human minds are also spiritual consciousnesses temporarily associated with bodies.

In my Five Reasons to Reject Belief in Gods thread, I took the position that (2) was true ("Minds depend on physical brains."). For me, this is one of the most important beliefs that underpins my personal conviction that personal gods are implausible beings. What follows is a paragraph from one of my last posts in that thread. I thought I would put it here in a separate thread to get reactions from others.

I will try to give a succinct, simple description of what drives me to believe that consciousness (self-awareness) is ephemeral and individual rather than universal. Human cognition--and very likely all animal cognition--is embodied. That is, it develops in response to the sensory inputs--the sensations--of a body. Bodies move around, so their environments change quickly and radically. The brain is the hardware mechanism that drives and guides the body. It reacts to new conditions as they happen, and it anticipates future conditions. Self-awareness is necessary for a body, because, among other things, it is what gives the body an ability to detect malfunctions in itself, replenish energy, repair itself, etc. Awareness of the environment is necessary, because that allows the body to survive rapidly changing conditions. In other words, consciousness has a functional role to play that is directly related to the nature of a moving body. There is no functional role for self-awareness beyond the needs of a moving body. Therefore, it makes no sense that consciousness would exist outside of bodies or extend beyond the life of a body.

 

[Koldo]

What do you mean by "1.Consciousness exists everywhere in the universe"?
Do you mean everywhere as in including stones, air and so on?

 

[Twilight Hue]

That's a toughie isn't it? Is consciousness inside or outside the individual? Perhaps something else entirely?

As to number two, I usually think of cells and microscopic life to which it's awareness* is not dependent upon a working functioning brain. This causes me to wonder if consciousness in that light is something akin to a "signal" or some type of "energy" of which organic life from the simplest to the most complex mysteriously latches on to, but is nevertheless something independent from cognizant thinking generated by way of the brain of which by way of function, is actually something secondary to base awareness.

*To be more specific. A base type of awareness or sense not requiring thought.

 

[sandandfoam]

Without invoking anything supernatural I think the evidence places human consciousness as both inside and outside the individual. The outside part is culture, language etc. I believe that human consciousness is inherently social.

 

[Willamena]

Why is there consciousness?

I don't know --why does the world exist?

 

[Riverwolf]

What do you mean by "1.Consciousness exists everywhere in the universe"?
Do you mean everywhere as in including stones, air and so on?

According to that viewpiont, basically.

The idea is that the smallest component of existence is consciousness (at least that's how it's described.)

 

[Skwim]

The reason there is consciousness is because early and subsequent evolving creatures found it beneficial.

 

[Copernicus]

I don't know --why does the world exist?

Hmmm. It seems like nobody (with maybe the exception of Skwim) who read the OP understood what I was trying to say, maybe nobody cared to reflect on what they did understand me to say. The responses are largely responses to the question rather than my answer to the question.

Consciousness exists because bodies that move need to be aware of their own condition and surrounding conditions in order to survive. Bodies that do not move (e.g. plants) do not need conscious awareness of their surroundings. That is why moving lifeforms (mammals, reptiles, arthropods, etc.) have brains and, consequently, minds. No brain, no consciousness. Minds are "embodied" things. They exist only because moving bodies can make use of them.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Considering plants have their own form of thought, emotions, and communications, I am very hesitant to say a physical brain is needed. But as for a universal consciousness, we don't yet know enough about our own species or any other species to have even the slightest estimate if there is such a thing.
I personally believe we will never really have a good answer until we have discovered alien life so that any hypothesis to the question can have an experimental group. An article someone on RF posted recently mentioned a blob in space that appears to be living and it gives birth to new stars. Does this thing have a brain and consciousness?

 

[KittensAngel]

"I do not say there is no soul in man because he is not sensible of it in his sleep. But I do say he can not think at any time, waking or sleeping, without being sensible of it. Our being sensible of it is not necessary to anything but our thoughts, and to them it is and to them it always will be necessary." John Locke

How do we know what we as the individual awareness think of as consciousness isn't simply a waking delusion that we've been programmed to accept as truth about self and the outer world?
How do we know there is consciousness, save for what we perceive it to be which is arrived at through our own intellectual reasoning of such a thing so named?

Perhaps Solipsism has a point.

 

[Copernicus]

Considering plants have their own form of thought, emotions, and communications, I am very hesitant to say a physical brain is needed.

What makes you think that plants have their own thought or emotions? They have no nervous system, let alone central nervous system. We can correlate human thoughts and emotions with events that take place in a physical brain. Is there any way to correlate plant "thoughts" and "emotions" with physical activity in their bodies?

But as for a universal consciousness, we don't yet know enough about our own species or any other species to have even the slightest estimate if there is such a thing.

We do have quite a bit of information about our own mental states and the corresponding physical events that take place in functioning brains. So we can say a lot about consciousness that is not "universal", and we have no evidence of a "universal consciousness". Unlike individual consciousness, "universal consciousness" is pure speculation.

I personally believe we will never really have a good answer until we have discovered alien life so that any hypothesis to the question can have an experimental group. An article someone on RF posted recently mentioned a blob in space that appears to be living and it gives birth to new stars. Does this thing have a brain and consciousness?

Not likely. Why would such a "blob" need consciousness? What function would such consciousness perform? Our own consciousness is extremely well-motivated from a functional perspective.

 

[atanu]

Consider these two different views on the nature of consciousness:Consciousness exists everywhere in the universe, and individual minds are just individual units of consciousness that may or may not be part of universal consciousness.

I do not know where you get that from -- that some individuals are not part of the whole?

Consciousness exists because bodies that move need to be aware of their own condition and surrounding conditions in order to survive. Bodies that do not move (e.g. plants) do not need conscious awareness of their surroundings. That is why moving lifeforms (mammals, reptiles, arthropods, etc.) have brains and, consequently, minds. No brain, no consciousness. Minds are "embodied" things. They exist only because moving bodies can make use of them.

Earlier a similar assumption was that that animals other than humans were not conscious. But plants do move. Plants move when subjected to electical shock or similar other stimuli. That we do not know whether plants communicate or not does not mean that they do not. Moreover, in the light of Skwim, plants have existed and exist -- exhibiting continued evolution and diversity.
..............

I will try to give a succinct, simple description of what drives me to believe that consciousness (self-awareness) is ephemeral and individual rather than universal. Human cognition--and very likely all animal cognition--is embodied. That is, it develops in response to the sensory inputs--the sensations--of a body. Bodies move around, so their environments change quickly and radically. The brain is the hardware mechanism that drives and guides the body. It reacts to new conditions as they happen, and it anticipates future conditions. Self-awareness is necessary for a body, because, among other things, it is what gives the body an ability to detect malfunctions in itself, replenish energy, repair itself, etc. Awareness of the environment is necessary, because that allows the body to survive rapidly changing conditions. In other words, consciousness has a functional role to play that is directly related to the nature of a moving body. There is no functional role for self-awareness beyond the needs of a moving body. Therefore, it makes no sense that consciousness would exist outside of bodies or extend beyond the life of a body.

I have few questions:

1.Why there is world? (I see that Willamena has already asked that).

2.Do 'consciousness' and 'conscious embodied individual' signify the same idea. Or do they correspond approximately to 'appleness' and 'an apple'?

3.If there is no single indivisible consciousness, similar to single space, then are there many and many disconnected embodied conscious beings? What connects them and how they commonly know that there is an object that is an apple? How first a word like apple was coined? Who coined it first? How others came to know about that? What does idea of an apple, i.e. appleness mean? Where does the idea of 'appleness' exist and how the idea exists so uniformly.

4. How every embodied individual comes to say 'I' and 'Me'? Why do people not think that they are apples or oranges? Can there be an all pervasive idea like "I-ness", similar to 'apple-ness' that makes the definition of "I" constant?

5. Is there proof that conscious conveying of ideas only takes place through spoken words? How is knowledge conveyed through intuition and instinct? A joey, though blind at birth, is known to travel unaided to mother's pouch. How such information is coded and who reads and understands them?

6. What is the explanation of EPR paradox through QM? EPR experiments show that communicaion between two paired photons, seaparated at more than 10 km. happen instantaneously -- violating the speed of light. How? What explanations are provided by QM? In the light of iunderstanding of QM that funadmentally, matter and energy are effects of 4 matterless fields, how a physical brain comes into a picture as a reality?

7. How does experience correlate to neurons? The existence of cerebral events, in and of themselves, cannot explain why they are accompanied by these corresponding qualitative experiences, which are different for different individuals. Yet there are common ideas shared by humans. How the particular differences and common shared ideas can be explained together?

8. Natural processes are not true or false, they simply happen. But mental ideas or judgments are true or false? How this difference can be explained?

9. How can an embodied consciousness that has material interactions as the basis can explain a) how sensations arise from matter? and b) that there is no neural correlate of consciousness?

10. Assuming that there may be some substance in out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and near-death experiences (NDEs), how can a local materialist consciousness explain them.

11. There is evidence that meditation, yogic processes, bio-feed back etc. modify physical states. If physical states were the sole cause and the mental the effect, then how does the effect alter the cause?

12. As ice, steam, and liquid water are three experienced states of water, every human has three types of conscious experience: waking, dreaming, sleeping. Which of these experiences is the true one? Or is the true one that which experiences these three views alternately?

13. If the consciousness/intelligence is product of a physical brain then, why does not a dead body, with a physical brain inside, say "I want to live"?

 

[The Wizard]

Great subject... I have known consciousness as being a survival mechanism or thought invention of mankind to bypass nature's rule over the species- perhaps the bicameral mind- the god voices and audio commands of the primal past. Society got too complex. We had to find a new way once the many god voices became dangerous, confused, contradictory and intermingled. We had to find our own voice and authority to follow and obey. Worth read might be Julian Jayne's.. "Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind".

Metaphores, analogues, symbols, language, other thinking methods, etc expediated the process and made us able to seperate from primal commands/ reactions of surroundings and take control of our selves. The "I" and the "me" forever dancing together, internally.. IMO.

I'm sure there is alot of other things involved too.

 

[horizon_mj1]

Consider these two different views on the nature of consciousness:

1. Consciousness exists everywhere in the universe, and individual minds are just individual units of consciousness that may or may not be part of universal consciousness.
2. Consciousness exists only in individual bodies with physical brains. It exists nowhere else.

There are other possibilities, but these reflect two very different points of view that tend to distinguish religious and non-religious points of view. Christians usually hold that God is immanent--a spiritual consciousness that pervades everything--and that human minds are also spiritual consciousnesses temporarily associated with bodies.

In my Five Reasons to Reject Belief in Gods thread, I took the position that (2) was true ("Minds depend on physical brains."). For me, this is one of the most important beliefs that underpins my personal conviction that personal gods are implausible beings. What follows is a paragraph from one of my last posts in that thread. I thought I would put it here in a separate thread to get reactions from others.

I will try to give a succinct, simple description of what drives me to believe that consciousness (self-awareness) is ephemeral and individual rather than universal. Human cognition--and very likely all animal cognition--is embodied. That is, it develops in response to the sensory inputs--the sensations--of a body. Bodies move around, so their environments change quickly and radically. The brain is the hardware mechanism that drives and guides the body. It reacts to new conditions as they happen, and it anticipates future conditions. Self-awareness is necessary for a body, because, among other things, it is what gives the body an ability to detect malfunctions in itself, replenish energy, repair itself, etc. Awareness of the environment is necessary, because that allows the body to survive rapidly changing conditions. In other words, consciousness has a functional role to play that is directly related to the nature of a moving body. There is no functional role for self-awareness beyond the needs of a moving body. Therefore, it makes no sense that consciousness would exist outside of bodies or extend beyond the life of a body.

Well considering that science has yet to know exactly what it is we do with our subconscious mind, maybe the conscious could not handle "the full aspect and abilities" of our brains. Self-awareness that does not exist outside of the body in order to extend life to it seem rather mundane and pointless. To say that there is no sense in consciousness existing outside of bodies is to say energy created by a thought is barricaded withing the skull. This is something of mere speculation, but that does not mean that there will not ever be facts to prove either way. Consciousness is rather of an inability to dreaming and inventing as well as other creative arts if it is allowed to barricade what it is you want to achieve in life. What I mean by this is if you can not sit and think, maybe even have a dream while sleeping;one that may actually help you in waking hours by directing your attention toward something that needs your attention. As far as consciousness extending into death, who cares. Maybe in death we can all finally be whatever it is we have always wanted to be.

 

[Sunstone]

I'm not sure why consciousness evolved, but it seems possible consciousness evolved as a defense mechanism. It also seems possible consciousness evolved in order to facilitate verbal communication. Lastly, it seems possible that it evolved in order to further argumentation, which itself appears to have evolved to promote social cooperation.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

What makes you think that plants have their own thought or emotions? They have no nervous system, let alone central nervous system. We can correlate human thoughts and emotions with events that take place in a physical brain. Is there any way to correlate plant "thoughts" and "emotions" with physical activity in their bodies?

It's not the same as we perceive them, but plants have been documented to react to various stimuli, and even communicate among eachother. And it is debatable if we are nothing more than a machine that reacts to stimuli.
SpringerLink - Journal of Chemical Ecology , Volume 28, Number 9
ScienceDirect - Trends in Ecology & Evolution : Explaining evolution of plant communication by airborne signals
Self-recognition affects plant communication and defense - Karban - 2009 - Ecology Letters - Wiley Online Library
Plant Communication

We do have quite a bit of information about our own mental states and the corresponding physical events that take place in functioning brains. So we can say a lot about consciousness that is not "universal", and we have no evidence of a "universal consciousness". Unlike individual consciousness, "universal consciousness" is pure speculation.

If we really knew that much, psychology and psychiatry would have much of a need for research. The same goes for much of all social sciences, and even to what extent biology plays in our own mental processes. It is nothing more than speculation if we are really aware, really conscious, and really able to determine our own actions and behavior. We have perception and thought, but is it our own or just an elaborate and complexed end result of our internal wiring.

Not likely. Why would such a "blob" need consciousness? What function would such consciousness perform? Our own consciousness is extremely well-motivated from a functional perspective.

It's a question of does it posses these things? You can say not likely, I can say likely, while some other person can put together some other explanation of a new bio-system that we have not seen and they all three have equal merit since we have not studied this entity in detail.

 

[Riverwolf]

I should point out that just because something doesn't have an obvious function is not automatically an indication that it doesn't exist.

I do agree that "universal consciousness" is speculation, and any experience of it would be anecdotal and therefore not verifiable by third parties (whatever the Yogi Sages may say to the contrary), but it's one that I see no reason to discard for now.

 

[atanu]

I'm not sure why consciousness evolved, but it seems possible consciousness evolved as a defense mechanism.

Hello Brother.

Defense mechanism for unconsciuos things? How they knew that they needed defence mechanisms? As far as I can visualise and imagine, I see that the 'I' sense has not evolved -- it has remained a constant cause for which beings eat each other (or help each other, if you prefer it that way).

The forms and names that encase those apparently many "I"s have evolved so that a body can more easily eat another body (you know what I mean).

 

[Twilight Hue]

Consciousness exists because bodies that move need to be aware of their own condition and surrounding conditions in order to survive. Bodies that do not move (e.g. plants) do not need conscious awareness of their surroundings. That is why moving lifeforms (mammals, reptiles, arthropods, etc.) have brains and, consequently, minds. No brain, no consciousness. Minds are "embodied" things. They exist only because moving bodies can make use of them.

I dunno. Bacteria move and are seemingly aware enough of which they can sense through receptors their preferred food and swim toward it. Also brainless to boot.

I take consciousness exists only because we think that way. Otherwise we remain only aware to which consciousness is response to stimuli not requiring any thought.

 

[Riverwolf]

Question.

Is consciousness the same as awareness?