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Consciousness could be described as the feeling of being inside your head, looking out, or of having a soul.
How we learn, store memories, or perceive things, are easy problems to solve. The problematic part is why all those complicated brain processes feel like anything from the inside.
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The problems of consciousness straddle the border between science and philosophy.
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Science has been trying to ignore the problem of consciousness for a long time.
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We could tell simple mechanical stories about the machinery of the eye, but it doesn't begin to explain the breathtaking experience of depth and clarity.
Consciousness can't just be made of ordinary physical atoms. Philosopher David Chalmers argues that it must be an additional ingredient in nature.
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Most may think of consciousness as something above our physical being - as if your mind were driving your body. But to accept this as a scientific principle would discount the laws of physics.
Everything we know about the universe tells us that reality consists of physical atoms and their component particles. If non-physical mental stuff did exist, how can it cause physical things to happen?
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Professor Daniel Dennett, the high-profile atheist, argues that consciousness is an illusion, that the normal functioning of the brain just makes it look as if there is something non-physical going on.
His opponents think he simply denies the existence of something everyone knows: that of their inner experience of sights, smells, emotions, and rest.
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Patricia Churchland, a self-described neurophilosopher, thinks neuroscience will eventually show that consciousness is just brain states.
Several ideas are surfacing: "global workspace theory," "ego tunnels," "microtubules," even speculation that quantum theory may provide an answer. But some thinkers raise the possibility that they should not assume that they can solve every big philosophical puzzle that arises.
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In the last few years, several scientists and philosophers are looking at panpsychism, the idea that everything in the universe might be conscious, or potentially conscious, or conscious when putting into particular configurations.
A narrower view is that anything could be conscious, providing that the information it contains is sufficiently interconnected and organized. The human brain fits the description, so do the brains of animals, though their consciousness may be different. But that principle may also apply to the internet or a smartphone.
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The "integrated information theory" has been tested. A device has been designed to measure how integrated the brain's neural circuits are. When people fall into a deep sleep, the device demonstrates that their brain integration declines too.
In theory, you can take any device, measure the complexity of the information contained in it, and then work out whether or not it was conscious.
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Consciousness is everything you experience - taste, pain, love, feeling. Where these experiences come from is a mystery.
Many modern analytic philosophers of mind either d...
What is it about brain matter that gives rise to consciousness? In particular, the neuronal correlates of consciousness (NCC) - the minimal neuronal mechanisms jointly sufficient for any conscious experience.
Consider this question: What must happen in your brain for you to experience a toothache?
The whole brain can be considered an NCC because it generates experience continually.
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The growth of technology and Artificial Intelligence(AI) is on track to provide us with:
... or self-awareness is something many scientists and philosophers are discussing. The fact that there is consciousness inside us, is a big problem for those developing AI, as no matter what they do, and how technologically superior the product is, nobody can explain or even fathom the juggernaut of consciousness.
Qualia relates to the raw sensations of experience, like colours, smells, sounds.
It is through our actual experience that we know what something tastes, looks or smells like, and it is not some information already drilled inside our brains on birth. We have to experience sensations to understand them.
Though the subject of consciousness is hard to define and varies from individual to individual, at the base level it can be termed as ‘sentience’.
To say that a person or c...
Quantum mechanics and modern physics (like string theory) has made the concept of physical reality and the tangible, solid universe a fluid and slippery concept.
Those who are trying to find consciousness in the physical world are stuck in the past, as consciousness may have nothing to do with the brain or the subjective reality.
The idea that about 13 billion years ago, everything including time, matter, space, laws, gravity, cause and effect, simply sprang out of nothing in a loud bang, seems to be a foolish thing to believe.
Nothing cannot suddenly give rise to everything. The very act of the big bang requires time and space as a prerequisite to even occur.