Why is there consciousness?

[Shadow Wolf]

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.

You can also consider computers. They have no brain, no consciousness, but yet with proper programming they can "be aware" of harmful programs and dispose of them.

 

[ninerbuff]

So we can watch MMA and boxing and see great knockouts.......

 

[Falvlun]

So I'm reading a novel (Confusion, by Neal Stephenson) that has a lot of historical and scientific basis to it. I'm not sure if this is the actual position of the person in question, but the position is interesting nonetheless.

I just read a passage in which two different viewpoints for the foundations of the universe were briefly laid out. The first is the traditional atom example (which apparently won out... the book is set in the late 1600's). Small bits of matter smack into other small bits of matter, or otherwise exert a force over them, and thereby create all the diversity of matter we see in the universe.

But the other viewpoint, championed by Leibniz, holds that monads are the basic unit of the universe. Monads are like atoms in that the are (essentially) the smallest particle of matter. But, actual physical forces are not the impetous that drives their arrangment. Rather, the monads perceive other monads, and make decisions based upon their arrangment. He does not claim that they reason like we do; they act more like a computer. They "see" a certain set arrangement, and this causes them to perform a specific action. So, if a monad sees xyz, it does abc. Perception, then, is the foundation of the universe.

Where there is perception, there must also be conciousness. Which, if every monad has it, means that everything in the universe is conscious. An interesting theory. Leibniz proposed to test it by building a "logic mill"-- essentially a computer-- but I was not very clear how this would prove the theory.

Anyway, I found it interesting. Perhaps something to look into in a more thorough manner.

 

[horizon_mj1]

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.

Well said, but do you think that the way society is today with violence, drugs and sex being mainstreamed, that conscious evolution needs to proceed to the "next level"? Shouldn't human consciousness by now have the ability to realize the separation and superiority over animals and be able to categorize themselves as thus?

 

[Willamena]

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.

My response was kind'a rhetorical. It suggests not only that there are other ways of approaching the question, but that your proposed solution to the question is ...particular.

 

[Willamena]

Question.

Is consciousness the same as awareness?

Perhaps not --but in the case that you can't have one without the other, isn't speaking about one as good as speaking about the other?

 

[Willamena]

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.

Gott'a link everything back to these forums, don't 'cha? :areyoucra

 

[PolyHedral]

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

"Why" would imply a cause or intent. I do not believe either exist, for the most fundamental idea of "the world."

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

Yes, AFAIK.

3.If there is no single indivisible consciousness, similar to single space, then are there many and many disconnected embodied conscious beings?

Yes.

What connects them and how they commonly know that there is an object that is an apple?

They communicate by modifying the world around them. Don't you remember how you learned in primary/elementary school?

What does idea of an apple, i.e. appleness mean? Where does the idea of 'appleness' exist and how the idea exists so uniformly.

IMO, appleness is a template; it is a set of criteria for determining "Is this an apple?" It is thus an entirely logical construct, and so exists only in peoples' minds. The reason it is (mostly) uniform is that people communicate. "This is an apple." "This is not an apple." "I don't know if this is an apple."

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?

There is no analogous concept of "I-ness", because being able to consider "I" does not imply anything else about the individual. Anything that we can call an apple will have certain properties, and we can infer, simply from the label "apple", that it will have these properties. It will be a certain shape, and have a certain composition, and have a certain origin. There is no such inference possible with "conscious." Aliens can consider "I".

5. Is there proof that conscious conveying of ideas only takes place through spoken words?

No, but there is no other method of conveying abstract ideas easily, AFAIK.

How is knowledge conveyed through intuition and instinct?

Intuition is, IMO, a result of an unconscious heuristic. Some part of the brain invents and tests a hypothesis, and only presents it for conscious consideration once it has been tested. Thus, from the point of view of the brain itself, the idea appears fully-formed from apparently nowhere.

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?

It is most likely the case that a kangaroo's genetics build a brain "programmed" to do that.

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?

It doesn't; You've misunderstood what entanglement means. It is not two separate photons that collapse; a single system collapses, and so there is no communication involved.

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?

The brain is constructed of cells. The cells are constructed of molecules, which are constructed of atoms, which are constructed of nucleons and electrons. Nucleons and electrons are mostly the nuclear strong and electric fields, but where their mass comes from is still an open question. Most theories use one (or more!) extra fields to give particles mass. The most famous of this is called the Higgs' field.

7. How does experience correlate to neurons?

We don't know. If we did, we'd probably have brain uploading by now.

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.

There is no accompaniment; those cerebral events are qualitative experiences.

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?

Natural processes are physical objects or systems. Mental judgements are logical objects, and the idea of "true" and "false" appear when they are compared to the physical, but only then.

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?

Why are sensations arising from matter problematic?
And there would be neural correlations with matter, they'd just be very hard to find. It would be akin to working out which operations represented "Internet Explorer" by only looking at a raw computer processor.

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.

By not making that assumption.

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?

Keep track of what you're saying. Meditation et al do have physical effects on the body, but from a reductionist point of view, they are physical phenomena themselves. It's quite easy for physical things to affect other physical things, isn't it?

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?

What do you mean, true? How can a state be true?

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"?

Consciousness is the product of a physical, working brain. A dead brain does not work.

 

[Willamena]

"Why" would imply a cause or intent. I do not believe either exist, for the most fundamental idea of "the world."

That sort of prudent agnosticism would seem to be the wise approach to the question.

 

[Copernicus]

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.

But reaction to stimuli is not the same as consciousness. When a doctor tests human reflexes, the reactions are not what we would consider "conscious". When a robot makes decisions, we do not consider them decisions made "consciously". The question is whether plants are really more "conscious" than machines. Because they lack a central nervous system, it is reasonable to conclude that they are not.

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.

I see that as a false dilemma. We know that the "internal wiring" correlates directly with perception and thought. We do not know how other creatures with brains experience reality, but we can see that their brains have similar structure to ours and that brains affect our own mental states. Hence, we can conclude that they probably do have a quality of conscious experience that is similar to ours. We can identify structures in the brain that affect specific mental experiences, so we can conclude that the physical brain itself controls experiences.

]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.

I have bold-faced the part of your statement that I disagree with most strongly. They do not all three have equal merit. There is nothing at all in the structure or behavior of the "space blob" to suggest conscious behavior. It is pure speculation to impute consciousness to it. We have examined human brains and their relationship to mental states in enormous detail. We can confidently say that brains have something to do with our ability to remain conscious. Why assume that consciousness exists independently of brains?

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 agree completely. That goes without saying. However, if consciousness in humans depends on the functioning of a physical brain, then it is reasonable to conclude that the brain itself is the seat of consciousness. We do not observe things in nature that lack brains, e.g. plants, to behave as if they were conscious.

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.

I'm not sure what it means to "discard" the idea. If you consider a hypothesis highly unlikely but still logically possible, have you discarded it? The argument here is that we see a clear correlation between brain activity and consciousness. We expect our own consciousness to depend on the status of our brains. Is it reasonable to impute consciousness to entities or objects that lack brains? I think not.

Edit: Awareness is a component of "consciousness", and we can probably take the two words as synonyms for the purpose of this discussion. I can see where one might want to make a distinction, but I have no good reason to at the moment.

 

[Copernicus]

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...

I agree up to a point. That is, I don't think of the "subconscious mind" as a coherent entity, but most mental activity is activity that we are unaware of. Let's not forget that psychology is a science, and psychologists have amassed a lot of information on just what kind of mental abilities we have and how they operate. We should not be confidently declaring how little we "know" about the mind, when, in fact, there is a body of scientists out there who know a lot more than most of us in this discussion group do. Most of us are really ignorant of how ignorant we are on this subject.

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...

I'm never sure how to interpret remarks like this. Mental states don't really have a location, because they are not physical in nature. Nevertheless, they clearly depend on a physical system--a functioning brain--to take place. Minds are "embodied" things in the sense that all knowledge is built up from bodily experiences. If you lack a body, then you have no sensations and no way of interacting with the physical world. Without a body, what purpose does a mind have? It exists to process information that is collected by bodily experiences. That is why we imagine ghosts to have the same spiritual equipment and abilities that bodies have. All ghosts can detect and interpret sound waves, and they have bodily orientation with stereoscopic (and perhaps color) vision. That is, the spiritual entities that we imagine to exist are still very much like the physical bodies that have real-world experiences.

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.

We can detect the ability in animals to think ahead about the future and even to make fairly long-range plans. Humans have a super-charged ability to imagine future outcomes, and that is what accounts for our success as a dominant form of life on the planet. But some animals can also dream in their sleep as well. Again, the ability to think ahead has obvious functional value for beings with moving physical bodies. That allows one to establish a possible explanation for why consciousness exists. If consciousness has functional value, then is it reasonable to impute it to entities or things that have no such obvious use for it? If consciousness exists for a purpose, then why would it exist in the absence of purpose?

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.

A brainless being?

 

[atanu]

THE REPLY IS IN THREE PARTS DUE TO LIMITATION OF 10000 WORDS PER POST. THE ORIGINAL QUESTIONS ARE INCLUDED AND NUMBERED.

Q1.Why there is world? (I see that Willamena has already asked that).

Originally Posted by PolyHedral
"Why" would imply a cause or intent. I do not believe either exist, for the most fundamental idea of "the world."

OK. So, do not link a material brain to consciousness. There is no matter at the most fundamental level. There is certainly no brain. But not to believe means a reason, a cause.

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

Yes, AFAIK.

To me Consciousness and being conscious are different. Knowing that one is unconscious is also part of consciousness.

Q 3.If there is no single indivisible consciousness, similar to single space, then are there many and many disconnected embodied conscious beings?

Yes.

What connects them and how they commonly know that there is an object that is an apple?

They communicate by modifying the world around them. Don't you remember how you learned in primary/elementary school?

Yes. Yes. Someone needs to understand the modifications and INTEGRATE those coherently. How the non local changes are understood by the local processes? You will say that light reaches eye and sound reaches ears and so communication takes place. That does not explain how these stimuli are interpreted in common ways?

What does idea of an apple, i.e. appleness mean? Where does the idea of 'appleness' exist and how the idea exists so uniformly.

IMO, appleness is a template; it is a set of criteria for determining "Is this an apple?" It is thus an entirely logical construct, and so exists only in peoples' minds. The reason it is (mostly) uniform is that people communicate. "This is an apple." "This is not an apple." "I don't know if this is an apple."

Q 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?

There is no analogous concept of "I-ness", because being able to consider "I" does not imply anything else about the individual. Anything that we can call an apple will have certain properties, and we can infer, simply from the label "apple", that it will have these properties. It will be a certain shape, and have a certain composition, and have a certain origin. There is no such inference possible with "conscious." Aliens can consider "I".

Why? Going with your materialist understanding, corresponding to ‘apple’ there is ‘body’, the indicator of a specific “I”. Human bodies certainly have measurable characteristics like apples. And going with my idealism, the “I” awareness itself is the template that builds into “I am this” in different bodies. The awareness needs no second awareness to know itself as light requires no other illumination to illuminate itself. So, “I” template is indicated in the universe. And, the “I” template is unbroken through succession of many bodies. It is actually funny that an apple and its corresponding “appleness” seems more real than the intelligence that knows them.

 

[atanu]

Q 5. Is there proof that conscious conveying of ideas only takes place through spoken words?

No, but there is no other method of conveying abstract ideas easily, AFAIK.

Fortunately you sometimes say AFAIK. But bodily actions can also do some functions of communication?

Q 5 How is knowledge conveyed through intuition and instinct?

Intuition is, IMO, a result of an unconscious heuristic. Some part of the brain invents and tests a hypothesis, and only presents it for conscious consideration once it has been tested. Thus, from the point of view of the brain itself, the idea appears fully-formed from apparently nowhere.

So, we do not understand the mechanism of intuition as much of it happens at unconscious level. But we claim that we can model consciousness by modeling brain? Or we say that we know the correlates to all conscious effects perfectly and we can conclude that there is no consciousness apart from the physical brain?

Q 5 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?

It is most likely the case that a kangaroo's genetics build a brain "programmed" to do that.

So, who has programmed the kangaroo’s genetics? And who implements it during Joey’s travel to its mother’s pouch?

Q 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?

It doesn't; You've misunderstood what entanglement means. It is not two separate photons that collapse; a single system collapses, and so there is no communication involved.

How funny. I have this considered opinion that you do not understand the implications of QM and so you cling to physicality where there is no such matter at fundamental levels. You seem to be confusing mental model fitting to physical observations as physicality?

I think you are confused between observation and theoretical fit to the observation. We are making measurements on separated photons and we observe that two separated photons communicate at greater than speed of light. To explain that, we either say that a single wave system (which is real) has collapsed on observation to create particle positions (due to observation and thus unreal) or we introduce a non-local pilot wave to still maintain that the particles are real.

So, either you accept that the fundamental system is matter-less wave and the matter is effect of observation. Or you have to accept that there is implicate intelligence connecting and underlying all observed discrete objects.

Q 6 n 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?

The brain is constructed of cells. The cells are constructed of molecules, which are constructed of atoms, which are constructed of nucleons and electrons. Nucleons and electrons are mostly the nuclear strong and electric fields, but where their mass comes from is still an open question. Most theories use one (or more!) extra fields to give particles mass. The most famous of this is called the Higgs' field.

Thank you. Now tell me where is the individual conscious material brain? Fields are not localized particles. So, even if you attribute intelligence to brain, effectively, that intelligence cannot be localized at fundamental level. But at observational level this illusion seems real.

Q 7. How does experience correlate to neurons?

We don't know. If we did, we'd probably have brain uploading by now.

Wow. This should finish the discussion. But…..

Q 7 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.

There is no accompaniment; those cerebral events are qualitative experiences.

Wow. We do not know how experience correlate to neurons but we know that “There is no accompaniment; those cerebral events are qualitative experiences.”

Q 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?

Natural processes are physical objects or systems. Mental judgements are logical objects, and the idea of "true" and "false" appear when they are compared to the physical, but only then.

My question is unanswered. How do you explain the gap between natural processes and mental judgements? Do the material processes themselves form the judgements?

Q 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?

Why are sensations arising from matter problematic?

And there would be neural correlations with matter, they'd just be very hard to find. It would be akin to working out which operations represented "Internet Explorer" by only looking at a raw computer processor.

First. Simple! There is no such experience of any matter saying “I feel pained”. There is not a single observation of a brain devoid of life saying so. And, there is impossibility of physical processes giving rise to judgements of their own, if not programmed.


Second. If neural correlations with matter would be very hard to find, then how hard would it be to find the intelligence that finds the correlation itself? Can’t you see that it would not be merely hard, but it is impossible? You yourself are that intelligence. How can you find it in any other place or in an observed object? The intelligence itself is observing the object. So, can you imagine that your intelligence has come out and still you are observing it? Musk deer does not know that the fragrance is innermost to itself. I hope you comprehend this.

 

[atanu]

Q 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.

By not making that assumption.

That does not explain the observations and experiences though. That is like Dennet ‘Explaining away consciousness’.

Q 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?

Keep track of what you're saying. Meditation et al do have physical effects on the body, but from a reductionist point of view, they are physical phenomena themselves. It's quite easy for physical things to affect other physical things, isn't it?

First. I request the same to you. The question is how an effect (the intelligence) arising of cause (physical brain) alter states of the cause? Intelligence is not a physical phenomenon, even if reductionists shout at top of their lungs. Have you ever seen a picture outut of a program changing the program itself, if not programmed to do so?

Second. There is nothing graspable in subjective feelings, perception, jealousy, love etc. and thus they are not physical.

Q 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?

What do you mean, true? How can a state be true?

Yes.The states are as true or less as the Seer of the states. Without a seer that exists as “I” the states will not even be known. The states are not evident in a dead brain.

Q 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"?

Consciousness is the product of a physical, working brain. A dead brain does not work.

A dead brain does not mean absence of a physical brain. The physical brain is still there but it lacks consciousness. So, the physical brain is not equal to consciousness. Every physical body, including a brain, has measurable true properties. A dead brain and a living brain are equal on all their true measurable properties but the effects are not same. Thus the effect of intelligence that apparently seems to be attributable to the physical brain is not a true property of physical brain but it is a distinct class.

OTOH, a brain is not known in absence of consciousness-life. So, individual consciousness is a parameter of life and not of physicality. Nothing of existence is known apart from consciousness. There is no such experience of anyone of knowing anything, including the knowledge of a physical organ called brain, in separation from conscious individual. which is a signifier of consciousness.

 

[Riverwolf]

I'm not sure what it means to "discard" the idea.

Primarily, I mean I'm not going to disbelieve it.

If you consider a hypothesis highly unlikely but still logically possible, have you discarded it? The argument here is that we see a clear correlation between brain activity and consciousness. We expect our own consciousness to depend on the status of our brains. Is it reasonable to impute consciousness to entities or objects that lack brains? I think not.

Only if it's dependent on the brain, which it may not be.

Edit: Awareness is a component of "consciousness", and we can probably take the two words as synonyms for the purpose of this discussion. I can see where one might want to make a distinction, but I have no good reason to at the moment.

Fair enough.

 

[dsmith678]

Its kinda like does a falling tree in a vacant forest still make a noise. Whether your aware or not it does fall with or without your awareness. And with that it will fall reguardless if your conscious or not. So with that being said I do not believe the physical world as we know it requires awareness to be.

Dead or alive talk of the brain is too black and white. What about an impaired brain by injury or other...The consciousness or awareness of "being" is lessened due to the physical issue at hand. So to be conscious and aware is to be alive and well and without it you are dead at the physical level. Since I dont think an impaired awareness would be welcome in any afterlife then I conclude being aware and conscious is separate from the soul.

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[Morpheus]

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.

Quantum physics suggests (1) is the case. The universe is a singular consciousness out of which all existence arises.
Amit Goswami - theoretical nuclear physicist - states "consciousness is the ground of all being".
All this is debatable and hypothetical and people will be arguing this forever. But I choose to believe (1) because it implies we are all connected - both with each other and the entire world of existence - and therefore what you and I do in the world matters. Our actions affect everything. This encourages us to look at ourselves in the perspective of inclusiveness.
On the other hand, if we are separate, then what I do doesn't matter. I can behave any way I want without negative consequence. This sounds great on the surface but it leads to misbehaviour, selfishness and apathy. Separation sounds like freedom, but it is quite the reverse. We become victims of passion, trapped in the prison of self.
If we see ourselves as connected, part of a singular organism and all take responsibility for the state of the world then we are likely to be a little more self-less in our behavior. Sounds a bit like karma doesn't it?

 

[horizon_mj1]

Mental states don't really have a location, because they are not physical in nature. That is, the spiritual entities that we imagine to exist are still very much like the physical bodies that have real-world experiences.

The physicality of any mental state is energy based. Maybe the reason entities are seen in "human physical form" is because that is how we expect to see them, or maybe we can not see them in their pure form.

If consciousness exists for a purpose, then why would it exist in the absence of purpose? A brainless being?

This is a good question for a coma patient (I am not in any way trying to be difficult and apologize if this appears that way). What is an absence of purpose, absence of life? The energies it takes to make life do not just disappear after death, they altar. Science just has not yet invented any machine that can detect and prove the existence of life after death, so until then the possibilities are immense. What if after we die our conscious mind and all of the energies put forth from it in life are altered toward nature; maybe a part of wind, water, etc.; or better yet, what if our energies help humanity by allowing ideas to be placed in front of someone who is innovative and creates something to help the entire human race. I guess you can say that IMO absence of purpose can not exist within consciousness, unless allowed by an individual in which case professional help is usually needed (this to me sounds too much like depression).

 

[atanu]

Its kinda like does a falling tree in a vacant forest still make a noise. Whether your aware or not it does fall with or without your awareness. And with that it will fall reguardless if your conscious or not. So with that being said I do not believe the physical world as we know it requires awareness to be.

Dead or alive talk of the brain is too black and white. What about an impaired brain by injury or other...The consciousness or awareness of "being" is lessened due to the physical issue at hand. So to be conscious and aware is to be alive and well and without it you are dead at the physical level. Since I dont think an impaired awareness would be welcome in any afterlife then I conclude being aware and conscious is separate from the soul.

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ds,

No one will like a scratchy spectacle. But one will surely like to get rid of a spectacle altogether, if there was another way.

Sense intelligence is rooted in life energy. It is co-existent with life and not with matter. There is no experience at all of matter becoming intelligent. There is evidence that sensual intelligence is only present when life activity is present.

Those who stumble upon or come to of know the Life-energy, called prAna, do not need embodiment. prAnayAma, a technique of yoga shows us glimpse of this. This however, I acknowledge is yet not in realm of science -- and may never be, since the medical big brother never likes to see such simple solutions.

 

[Copernicus]

Quantum physics suggests (1) is the case. The universe is a singular consciousness out of which all existence arises.

AFAIK, quantum physics suggests nothing of the sort. Can you explain how you get from the premise to the conclusion?

Amit Goswami - theoretical nuclear physicist - states "consciousness is the ground of all being".

How would he know? He may be an expert in quantum physics, but his claim is not about physics. It is about consciousness. Not all physicists would agree with such a claim, so we need to be careful about offering the opinions of credentialed scientists as if their statements followed from their specialized knowledge.

All this is debatable and hypothetical and people will be arguing this forever. But I choose to believe (1) because it implies we are all connected - both with each other and the entire world of existence - and therefore what you and I do in the world matters. Our actions affect everything. This encourages us to look at ourselves in the perspective of inclusiveness.

This is an argument from consequences, not a good justification for belief. Everything is "connected", but that doesn't mean that everything shares the property of consciousness or self-awareness. Moving bodies need awareness of self and surroundings in order to survive. Why would disembodied entities need consciousness?

On the other hand, if we are separate, then what I do doesn't matter. I can behave any way I want without negative consequence. This sounds great on the surface but it leads to misbehaviour, selfishness and apathy. Separation sounds like freedom, but it is quite the reverse. We become victims of passion, trapped in the prison of self.

It gets a little scary when people suggest that they would behave very badly if they didn't have some religious belief to keep them from crossing the line. The fact is that behavior has positive and negative consequences regardless of whether or not we are "separate". It is not just about personal survival, but about about the survival of things that make our lives meaningful--our relationship with others that we care about. Selfishness and apathy have consequences even if we are fundamentally separate consciousnesses.

If we see ourselves as connected, part of a singular organism and all take responsibility for the state of the world then we are likely to be a little more self-less in our behavior. Sounds a bit like karma doesn't it?

To be honest, I cannot make much sense at all of this position. Do you think your life more important than the head of cabbage that you consume in order to sustain your life a little longer? If so, then maybe you value some living things more than others. I suspect that what you value most is the same thing that I value most--the lives and well-being of other human beings as well as yourself. We are social animals. That is the instinct that nature has built into us. To the extent that other human beings lack that natural empathy for their own species, they put their own continued survival at peril.