Bring4th

Full Version: Is consciousness a state of matter?
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.
Fascinating.
Can we measure Consciousness now?

They ask for suggestions, hopefully someone drops the infinity equation to make sense of why a consciousness can store more than it supposedly is equated to.
While I think that is certainly a step up from previous scientific theories of consciousness (for example, the theory that consciousness is simply an artifact of neurology), I think they still have a ways to go before they get to the root of it.  For the longest time, scientists have wondered how inert physical matter somehow generates consciousness, with its inherent subjective sense of being a single indivisible qualia.  

They theorized that it was an emergent property of matter that appeared when said matter was arranged in a certain brain like pattern, which is actually a bit backwards from my perspective.  It's a bit like asking: how does a whirlpool generate water?  They have the question backwards, a whirl pool is a localization of water motion, not the other way around.  Similarly, consciousness is not a state of matter, but rather, matter is a localization of consciousness.

I think what is most difficult for people in the scientific community to accept is that there are things, which are in no way physically measurable, but are nevertheless still REAL.  This is the inherent problem with materialism. The brain isn't a file cabinet, rather it is more like an antennae.  
Is matter a state of conciousness?
(01-18-2016, 10:21 PM)anagogy Wrote: [ -> ]While I think that is certainly a step up from previous scientific theories of consciousness (for example, the theory that consciousness is simply an artifact of neurology), I think they still have a ways to go before they get to the root of it.  For the longest time, scientists have wondered how inert physical matter somehow generates consciousness, with its inherent subjective sense of being a single indivisible qualia.  

They theorized that it was an emergent property of matter that appeared when said matter was arranged in a certain brain like pattern, which is actually a bit backwards from my perspective.  It's a bit like asking: how does a whirlpool generate water?  They have the question backwards, a whirl pool is a localization of water motion, not the other way around.  Similarly, consciousness is not a state of matter, but rather, matter is a localization of consciousness.

I think what is most difficult for people in the scientific community to accept is that there are things, which are in no way physically measurable, but are nevertheless still REAL.  This is the inherent problem with materialism.  The brain isn't a file cabinet, rather it is more like an antennae.  

That seems like they are failing to ask is why does that 'pattern' have that property? Where does the information pertaining to this pattern come from? If it is inherent in the matter then how does it come to be so? How is that information differentiated from other information?

As you say, there are so many subtleties to reality that we literally do not have a way to measure them all (outside of our own bodies, of course, but scientists are only just beginning to consider that). That creates a very broken view of reality, imo.