Where did consciousness come from?

We are made up of cells, atoms, quarks like everything else. We have evolved through millions of years just like everything else. We are all everything, and one.

So where did consciousness come from?

We are the only thing to experience, to think, to emote...and this is one of the argument for proof of a God, and life path etc.

So I believe this is actually the most powerful question askable, this asks why we are able to ask questions, and the answer explains why we can have answers to questions.

Where did this dream that we experience and call life come from? Naturally as well as philosophically.

Oh what the hell...

If you're transcendentally inclined: Consciousness (in the broadest sense of the term) always was because "Consciousness as Such" is God. Consciousness is the fundamental reality: the brain does not create it. The brain (which, as matter, is itself a "dense form" of consciousness) "filters" it for best use on the physical-sensory level.

If you're a materialist (especially with a radical bent): consciousness is a by-product of the electrochemical activity in the brain. It has no independent reality because it is an epiphenomenon: a secondary phenomenon, not only unnecessary for, but actually a distraction from, a true understanding of reality.

😮‍💨

what do you mean by consciousness?

for instance, imagine humans had no language. Imagine, or try to imagine, what experience would be like without language. In many ways, my opinion is that what most people call consciousness is really just our ability to ascribe language to items and think using language.

Further, consciousness, as it exists in the tradition of Western philosophical thought, doesn't exist.

I prefer a functionalist approach to consciousness. Every aspect of it has a biological imperative designed to further genetic reproduction. Also, I believe that all animals have some form of subjective experience, and thus, some form of "consciousness".

Originally posted by inimalist
what do you mean by consciousness?

Originally posted by inimalist
for instance, imagine humans had no language. Imagine, or try to imagine, what experience would be like without language. In many ways, my opinion is that what most people call consciousness is really just our ability to ascribe language to items and think using language.

Originally posted by inimalist
Further, consciousness, as it exists in the tradition of Western philosophical thought, doesn't exist.

I prefer a functionalist approach to consciousness. Every aspect of it has a biological imperative designed to further genetic reproduction. Also, I believe that all animals have some form of subjective experience, and thus, some form of "consciousness".

So, them my question is, where does that thought come from? Why do we think and have a conscious? (I guess this would include animals as well now.)

Originally posted by inimalist
Imagine, or try to imagine, what experience would be like without language.

It makes me want to start another thread about language.

Imagine, or try to imagine what experience would be with any of the senses missing from birth. I've always wondered in the case of people born deaf, blind or mute, or any combination of the 3. How different their 'consciousness' is.

Originally posted by lord xyz
Consciessness. Awareness of self and reality. Our thoughts, experiences, feelings, emotions etc.

in my opinion, most of these things are more aptly described as individual or potentially dozens of individually specified processing channels dispersed throughout the brain. The major point, (and I'll source stuff later if you want, just expect it to be slow) the conscious experience that you would identify as "consciousness" is not always aware of these things we describe as consciousness.

Originally posted by lord xyz
Thought would be pretty primitive without language. We'd also have pretty bad memories, since pnemonics and repetition are greatly reduced without language.

different to say the least. A lot of the human brain has evolved with language in mind (a quick example: if you want someone to find a tilted line among vertical and horizontal lines, telling them to find the "steep" object gives faster reaction times than telling them to find the "45 degree" object. This indicates very strong linguistic connections to the earliest visual channels, and the most basic processing in the brain (stuff that never comes close to consciousness)). Other animals likely have other types of memory to satisfy their needs. humans have a very unique set of things they need to remember.

Originally posted by lord xyz
I see that you're saying consciousness as it's defined is thought with language.

not necessarily. I believe consciousness to be largely illusory. I feel each of the systems create a component of what we would refer to as conscious experience, language being one, the senses being another. However, I do not believe they come together to form this "thing" that is conscious.

More than anything, to me, the entire concept of consciousness is a red herring

Originally posted by lord xyz
So, them my question is, where does that thought come from?

thought is the activation of various integrated neuro-pathways. The content of that thought depending on which neurons are activated.

Originally posted by lord xyz
Why do we think and have a conscious? (I guess this would include animals as well now.)

a) self- awareness is, when logically thought about, probably an advantage over no sense of self-awareness

b) we have a region in our left brain hemisphere that uses language to put together a coherent narrative of the world around us.

both of those last questions are still questions in science, and are largely some of the most important ones in philosophy

It's a result of evolution. Alice has no self-awareness but lots of food. Bob has self-awareness but no food. Bob steals the food and survives to have kids with Carol.

Materialistically it's a result of the way in which the brain is wired which is so complex that we might as well say "a wizard did it" and be done with the whole question.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
we might as well say "a wizard did it" and be done with the whole question.

you might as well say 😉

As I understand it, the materialist sees "consciousness" as not worthy of serious consideration. The actual nature of reality is best determined without it.

Yet, it is this very consciousness which defines our humanity, which has built our civilization, which has adopted scientific method to understand what might be worth serious consideration.

Is all that we've done then, for better or worse, ultimately not to be taken seriously?

I agree as always with Mr. Mindship who has that weird avi.. 😑

Originally posted by Deja~vu
I agree as always with Mr. Mindship who has that weird avi.. 😑

Originally posted by Deja~vu
I agree as always with Mr. Mindship who has that weird avi.. 😑

And yeah, Mindship gave a good post.

In replying to it, it's interesting how consciousness fits into the materials of life and the Earth. If we believe we are made up of atoms that have no consciousness, how did consciousness come about? What purpose does it have? Of course, this is a very important question in wondering why our lives are like they are.

Originally posted by inimalist
in my opinion, most of these things are more aptly described as individual or potentially dozens of individually specified processing channels dispersed throughout the brain. The major point, (and I'll source stuff later if you want, just expect it to be slow) the conscious experience that you would identify as "consciousness" is not always aware of these things we describe as consciousness.

Originally posted by inimalist
different to say the least. A lot of the human brain has evolved with language in mind (a quick example: if you want someone to find a tilted line among vertical and horizontal lines, telling them to find the "steep" object gives faster reaction times than telling them to find the "45 degree" object. This indicates very strong linguistic connections to the earliest visual channels, and the most basic processing in the brain (stuff that never comes close to consciousness)). Other animals likely have other types of memory to satisfy their needs. humans have a very unique set of things they need to remember.

Originally posted by inimalist
not necessarily. I believe consciousness to be largely illusory. I feel each of the systems create a component of what we would refer to as conscious experience, language being one, the senses being another. However, I do not believe they come together to form this "thing" that is conscious.

More than anything, to me, the entire concept of consciousness is a red herring

Originally posted by inimalist

thought is the activation of various integrated neuro-pathways. The content of that thought depending on which neurons are activated.

Originally posted by inimalist
a) self- awareness is, when logically thought about, probably an advantage over no sense of self-awareness

Originally posted by inimalist
b) we have a region in our left brain hemisphere that uses language to put together a coherent narrative of the world around us.

Originally posted by inimalist
both of those last questions are still questions in science, and are largely some of the most important ones in philosophy

Originally posted by lord xyz
I'm confused.

Like you said, the term "consciousness" includes many components. It includes the memories you are currently aware of, it includes your sense of awareness, it includes the sensory information you are currently attending to, and your attention in general.

In Western Philosophical tradition, consciousness is much like a person living inside of our brains, seeing all of the information comming in, balancing it, and making descisions. It would insinuate that there is a place in the brain where a coherent picture of reality is built. Further, it supposes ideas of rationality, self-awareness and free will that are not in line with neuroscience. The last items are likely superfulous to the current convo, as one can easily imagine a consciousness that is deterministic and irrational (though that conceit immediatly makes the western philisophical idea of consciousness untenable), however, the "man inside the brain", or rather "specific neurological place/system" responsible for consciousness is necessary to posit that consciousness is an actual thing worthy of investigation.

My point is that, of all the things it appears we are conscious of, there are better explanations for our subjective experiences that are not "consciousness". For instance, vision. There is a condition known as blind sight, where people who are unable to see (see, as in the subjective experience of vision and not the neurological activation of visual systems in the brain) are still able to navigate complex obstical courses or judge the colour or direction of movement of lines. Some are able to play catch, though report no sense of sight. To talk about that in light of consciousness is irrelevant at best, unless we start making consciousness subordinate to other neurological systems. At the very least, we can say that our conscious experience of the world is not the same as our neurological processing of the world, and that we can be aware of (non-consciously) many things that our consciousness is not just unaware of, but denies awareness of. There is no historical phisosophy of consciousness that describes consciousness as such (Buddhists come closest imho) and to start using the term only adds more complication.

Originally posted by lord xyz
It's not about thinking power, it's the fact that we think. That we feel and emote etc. why and how do we do that?

my comment was in regards to memory and language, and how the human brain is specifically designed to use language in memory, and how animals likely have evolved hugely different systems.

Thinking power is meaningless in a neurological sense. "Think" is also rather meaningless. Do you mean your inner voice that speaks to you in language? Do you mean the concepts that your inner voice turns into language? Are you talking about social or mathematical problem solving? Descision making?

This connects very heavily to what I was saying above. "consciousness" and "thinking" are catch phrases that essentially are used as an umbrella for thousands of different processes going on in the brain. Vision, for instance, can be seen as one system, or potentially millions of individual systems that, working together, process incomming visual stimuli. The "thinking" or "consciousness" related to vision is not best described in the language of thinking or conscious experience, but rather, by threshold activation of salient stimuli contrasts (yes, that was deliberately difficult, but it is to make the point that simple generalizations of the most complex object in the know universe (besides the universe itself) are not going to be sufficent. If you want to talk about subjective experience at a depth any more involved than "this is how I feel", they HAVE to be dropped).

Originally posted by lord xyz
It most likely is an illusion, that logically makes sense to me. The problem is, if it's an illusion, what is it really, and how did we come into this illusion of consiousness.

the what is easier than the how, sort of in the way that flying by flapping my arms is easier than growing 25 feet in height.

What is the illusion of consciousness really: Well, what part of consciousness. What I am trying to express is that consciousness, or at least the current subjective experience you would label consciousness is not a unified thing. It is the simultanious processing of different pieces of information from your environment by potentially billions of different indivuated systems in the brain. It feels like they all form a single percept, as we have many brain areas of sensory integration (combines audio and visual signals, for example), but the various pieces can be separated when there are specific problems to any of the underlying systems. Futher, much of the processing and preparation for action (not to mention descision making processes) are done at such low processing levels, that the information may never become conscious, though you behave in response to it.

ummm... I'll let you ask about that before I start to confuse myself

how: it evolved. How did consciousness evolve? That would involve describing the evolution of individual brain regions and the evolution of their integration and cross-connectivity. My opinion is, again, that "consciousness" will not have evolved per se, but that the neuro systems that work together to create subjective experience each evolved in its own way. The idea that self awareness and a sense of being conscious might be evolutionary beneficial are important, but that is a tautology with no other evidence (which, given the nature of evolutionary research, is not likely to show up anytime soon).

Originally posted by lord xyz
So it's all to do with thoughts being pieced together. Is that consciousness: a collection of thoughts?

I would use different language to describe it, but essentially. I would just mention my distaste for ambigious terms like "consciousness" and "thoughts" when trying to describe subjective experience.

Originally posted by lord xyz
Where did self-awareness come from? How do we have it?

nobody knows. Self awareness seems to develop through early childhood, and in my opinion represents the memory of sensory consequences to basic movement. Like, an infant builds neurological associations between the motor activation of moving the muscles in the eye socket and the impression on the visual system of everything in the world moving which is understood as: I am moving my eye, so the world is not moving, but only because the connections have been made. I appologize for that being highly insufficent of an answer.

Originally posted by lord xyz
That's part of consciousness, right?

I would describe it as a part of our subjective experience, given I'm less inclined to call it consciousness.

Originally posted by lord xyz
Hence this thread.

indeed. It is actually only recently that "consciousness" has become a valid topic of consideration in psychology, so there will likely be major breakthroughs in comming years.

Originally posted by Mindship
As I understand it, the materialist sees "consciousness" as not worthy of serious consideration. The actual nature of reality is best determined without it.

However, this is not how the science of psychology began. In the earliest days, consciousness was one of the most essential components of psychology, and it was not until Freud who proposed sub-conscious influences and Behaviourism which focused entirely on behavioural responses to stimuli, that psychology moved away from "consciousness" as a description for behaviour.

The extreme lack of material evidence for consciousness, combined with the robust explanations for how "conscious" experiences are created by lower level processing generally point materialists in that direction.

It is certainly not a philosophical point of denial. That human behaviour is best predicted and understood without needing a level of "consciousness" indicates that it truly might not be meaningful to study.

Originally posted by Mindship
Yet, it is this very consciousness which defines our humanity, which has built our civilization, which has adopted scientific method to understand what might be worth serious consideration.

you would ascribe those things to "consciousness"?

There are many theories of the evolution of civilization and of the scientific method. I can't think of one that requires humans to be conscious, especially given that items like abstract reasoning, imitation, prediction, etc. Have known neurological parallels.

I get that consciousness provides a good term for quickly conveying a message from one person to another. It does not, however, stand up to direct scientific scrutiny.

Originally posted by Mindship
Is all that we've done then, for better or worse, ultimately not to be taken seriously?

less seriously than labeling all the potential influences to "all that we have done" as an ambigious term which we could argue for pages about the simple definition of?

I see labeling the history of civilization as a product of consciousness to be highly dismissive.

both those posts seem a little heavily one sided. To be fair, I am in a minority of people who think consciousness is an illusion. Most psychologists think there is some use to the term, though clearly not from its philosophical traditions. They feel this way because (and this list is not exhaustive, I figured I'd be less one sided though):

There is some EEG evidence that suggests that items that are currently in consciousness have activation in a predictable bandwidth.

There are major differences between the activation of neurological systems and the conscious experience people report. Drugs are exemplary of this.

Consciousness as a word provides a very basic definition and term that most people are familiar with and makes the research more accessible.

So, whether or not there is this "thing" that might be "consciousness" is still debateable, however, it will look nothing like the philosophical versions of consciousness.

Originally posted by inimalist
Like you said, the term "consciousness" includes many components. It includes the memories you are currently aware of, it includes your sense of awareness, it includes the sensory information you are currently attending to, and your attention in general.

In Western Philosophical tradition, consciousness is much like a person living inside of our brains, seeing all of the information comming in, balancing it, and making descisions. It would insinuate that there is a place in the brain where a coherent picture of reality is built. Further, it supposes ideas of rationality, self-awareness and free will that are not in line with neuroscience. The last items are likely superfulous to the current convo, as one can easily imagine a consciousness that is deterministic and irrational (though that conceit immediatly makes the western philisophical idea of consciousness untenable), however, the "man inside the brain", or rather "specific neurological place/system" responsible for consciousness is necessary to posit that consciousness is an actual thing worthy of investigation.

My point is that, of all the things it appears we are conscious of, there are better explanations for our subjective experiences that are not "consciousness". For instance, vision. There is a condition known as blind sight, where people who are unable to see (see, as in the subjective experience of vision and not the neurological activation of visual systems in the brain) are still able to navigate complex obstical courses or judge the colour or direction of movement of lines. Some are able to play catch, though report no sense of sight. To talk about that in light of consciousness is irrelevant at best, unless we start making consciousness subordinate to other neurological systems. At the very least, we can say that our conscious experience of the world is not the same as our neurological processing of the world, and that we can be aware of (non-consciously) many things that our consciousness is not just unaware of, but denies awareness of. There is no historical phisosophy of consciousness that describes consciousness as such (Buddhists come closest imho) and to start using the term only adds more complication.

my comment was in regards to memory and language, and how the human brain is specifically designed to use language in memory, and how animals likely have evolved hugely different systems.

Thinking power is meaningless in a neurological sense. "Think" is also rather meaningless. Do you mean your inner voice that speaks to you in language? Do you mean the concepts that your inner voice turns into language? Are you talking about social or mathematical problem solving? Descision making?

This connects very heavily to what I was saying above. "consciousness" and "thinking" are catch phrases that essentially are used as an umbrella for thousands of different processes going on in the brain. Vision, for instance, can be seen as one system, or potentially millions of individual systems that, working together, process incomming visual stimuli. The "thinking" or "consciousness" related to vision is not best described in the language of thinking or conscious experience, but rather, by threshold activation of salient stimuli contrasts (yes, that was deliberately difficult, but it is to make the point that simple generalizations of the most complex object in the know universe (besides the universe itself) are not going to be sufficent. If you want to talk about subjective experience at a depth any more involved than "this is how I feel", they HAVE to be dropped).

the what is easier than the how, sort of in the way that flying by flapping my arms is easier than growing 25 feet in height.

What is the illusion of consciousness really: Well, what part of consciousness. What I am trying to express is that consciousness, or at least the current subjective experience you would label consciousness is not a unified thing. It is the simultanious processing of different pieces of information from your environment by potentially billions of different indivuated systems in the brain. It feels like they all form a single percept, as we have many brain areas of sensory integration (combines audio and visual signals, for example), but the various pieces can be separated when there are specific problems to any of the underlying systems. Futher, much of the processing and preparation for action (not to mention descision making processes) are done at such low processing levels, that the information may never become conscious, though you behave in response to it.

ummm... I'll let you ask about that before I start to confuse myself

how: it evolved. How did consciousness evolve? That would involve describing the evolution of individual brain regions and the evolution of their integration and cross-connectivity. My opinion is, again, that "consciousness" will not have evolved per se, but that the neuro systems that work together to create subjective experience each evolved in its own way. The idea that self awareness and a sense of being conscious might be evolutionary beneficial are important, but that is a tautology with no other evidence (which, given the nature of evolutionary research, is not likely to show up anytime soon).

I would use different language to describe it, but essentially. I would just mention my distaste for ambigious terms like "consciousness" and "thoughts" when trying to describe subjective experience.

nobody knows. Self awareness seems to develop through early childhood, and [b]in my opinion represents the memory of sensory consequences to basic movement. Like, an infant builds neurological associations between the motor activation of moving the muscles in the eye socket and the impression on the visual system of everything in the world moving which is understood as: I am moving my eye, so the world is not moving, but only because the connections have been made. I appologize for that being highly insufficent of an answer.

I would describe it as a part of our subjective experience, given I'm less inclined to call it consciousness.

indeed. It is actually only recently that "consciousness" has become a valid topic of consideration in psychology, so there will likely be major breakthroughs in comming years. [/B]

What I'm trying to find out is, the whole idea of self-awareness and our morals and emotions. All these thought processed aspects, how does it fit in science and our survival, when it seems so mystical?

I hope they'd be some major breakthroughs, understanding how we think and feel etc would be like completing level 1 and going onto level 2.

Originally posted by lord xyz
It's Escher. Noob.

hysterical

Originally posted by inimalist
However, this is not how the science of psychology began. In the earliest days, consciousness was one of the most essential components of psychology, and it was not until Freud who proposed sub-conscious influences and Behaviourism which focused entirely on behavioural responses to stimuli, that psychology moved away from "consciousness" as a description for behaviour.

The extreme lack of material evidence for consciousness, combined with the robust explanations for how "conscious" experiences are created by lower level processing generally point materialists in that direction.

It is certainly not a philosophical point of denial. That human behaviour is best predicted and understood without needing a level of "consciousness" indicates that it truly might not be meaningful to study.

you would ascribe those things to "consciousness"?

There are many theories of the evolution of civilization and of the scientific method. I can't think of one that requires humans to be conscious, especially given that items like abstract reasoning, imitation, prediction, etc. Have known neurological parallels.

I get that consciousness provides a good term for quickly conveying a message from one person to another. It does not, however, stand up to direct scientific scrutiny.

less seriously than labeling all the potential influences to "all that we have done" as an ambigious term which we could argue for pages about the simple definition of?

I see labeling the history of civilization as a product of consciousness to be highly dismissive.

In effect: "Consciousness is an illusion," said the illusion.