Hello Kindred, Thank you for this opportunity for me either to answer the two questions, fear & consciousness or create a further question. I was brought up in an area where the general consensus was any problem would be measured against how hard you could thump them before they did you, I am 47 years of age & a carpenter, I hold nor follow any religious beliefs. I always used to say, I believed it wasn't folk that change only situations, I also done some time as a member of the Parachute regiment, being a large person in build. Back to the questions posed, I went out one night in the city I lived in with my best friend, to celebrate my becoming a father as well as it being my birthday, we went off to 10 bin bowling drinking very little but enjoying the bowling, the song playing all night was, Tubthumping(i get knocked down) by Chumbawamba, I great tune but played to death. so around midnight we headed home via a kebab shop, then we entered the main park in the city as a shortcut to get home. We were having a great time I would say more or less sober, My best friend went off into a bush for a pee whilst telling me a really bad joke, regardless of my laughing at the really bad punch line, As I laughed I noticed a male figure coming right up to me, without warning punching me on my left had side, just above my waste. Next thing, I punched him back, then restrained him to the ground by his throat, asking him who the hell did he think he was. By this time my friend was leaning over my shoulder looking at my attacker laughing saying you have picked the wrong guy, I should point out my friend is just over 6 feet tall & into martial arts, the attacker looked like he was looking at a ghost when he stared at me and cried he was really sorry & wouldn't do it again, he also said at one point he was a student. After about 5 minutes I let him go and he disappeared as quickly as he had appeared, it was raining and cold, end of November and we were at the center of the park, so both my friend and I proceeded on our way not being too bothered about what just happened, please bare in mind my environment and parachute regiment, so pretty calm and unaffected, not shocked or fearful or even upset, certainly not running on adrenalin or anything like it, we were joking about the look on the guys face so about 7 or 8 minutes in total feeling really good, then I felt something warm trickle down to my waste, I remember thinking this to be a very odd sensation, as the area he punched me felt cold to my mind, All the time I was holding him, I remember thinking it feels like if you got a piece of metal and placed it on your skin exactly where his fist hit me. As I sliped my hand under my coat, jersey, t shirtand flet what was running down me, two of my fingers slid into the hole his 8” bread knife blade had made, the nano second my mind registered what had happened and I mean nano second, I felt immense pain, my lung collapsed, I couldn't see or walk and because the knife was spun in a circular fashion, it had sliced though sever parts of my intestine, I was later told I suffered peritonitis (poisoning of the blood) because the bowel contents was directly flowing into my blood supply, I was like a real drama queen. My best friend carried me to the exist of the park then put me on the roadside whilst he attempted to look like a madman shouting for folk to stop and help, so this took a while, during which time, I was looking up but not seeing anything but hearing everything around me, then I felt myself starting to slip away, all of a sudden I felt myself feeling nothing, hearing nothing and then opening my eyes to seeing myself laying on the grass verge directly under me, I remember thinking, how is this possible, I looked at my hands, legs and body which were all attached to me, don't worry no shiny lights or gates stuff, but I remember thinking I am still complete, I could also see my friend in the road whilst cars where trying to avoid hitting him. then someone stopped and got me and my friend to the hospital. Where I was saved after a 14 hour operation, although for the first couple of weeks they were telling my family including my pregnant partner that they didn't hold out much hope. When I woke after the operation, I felt a huge amount of pain, also I had to use an oxygen mask to breath for about the first 5 or 7 days, but I could see and move my legs. I was eventually diagnosed with PTSD and given counseling, this stopped within the fist year, which didn't help anyway, after around five years I had managed to stop suffering from this and started to really remember what happened that night, even now whilst writing this when I ask myself the question, how would you feel if someone walked up and stabbed you, My immediate response to myself is always the same, “blind rage”, again when asking myself what do you think would be affected if someone stabbed you here, i.e the same place, again immediately to myself comes “probably be left paralyzed”. the surgeon said they believed I had died before I had got to them. Now the questions, what is consciousness, I believe it to be our very essence of what we are, an energy form, living in a physical form like someone wearing a suit, the pain all in my head, after about 3 years, my close to retirement GP spoke to me about my still believing I needed pain killers daily for the pain I kept feeling, he explained regardless of my anger that maybe If I could spend some time reading up on phantom pain as there was no reason in his mind, that I should still be feeling pain, baring in mind my mind had a very good basis for comparison for pain then so I was very annoyed with him suggesting it was all in my mind, but he was absolutely right. by the end of the first five years, I understood that my soul, essence, spirit, whatever you wish to call it, had ten fingers & ten toes, but I believe the form I was holding was residual memory. Another example of pain, I was in a very bad car crash around 10 years ago, I had a small fracture in my lower spine which led to me taking co-codamol for years to help elevate the pain, Then I remembered the stabbing and the pain not being real form that, so I stopped taking the drug and started to think more positively about my condition as well as exercising more as I did not like to take the prescribed drug. Then one night I was giving my wife a massage, the reson I am explain this will become apparent, I was standing behind her whilst she sat on one of our dinning chairs, as I massaged her shoulders and back, I was feeling very relaxed, then my wife asked “you haven't mentioned your back for ages, how is it?” As I was thinking what I was about to say, which was going to be, magic, no problems or discomfort at all, but before I could start to say this, I felt the pain which was really intense, I explained what had happened to my wife then tried to focus away from the pain but also considering when it comes back so observing self, sure enough, as I focused away the pain went, as soon as I started thinking about it in any shape or form, after about 1 week of thinking and talking about this, no more pain, completely disappeared, again maybe it was my minds basis for comparison. Pain is something taught, like anger as both born from fear within,, whist I had the PTSD I felt more like a psychitzophrenic, There was obviously two of me, it was so intense after the stabbing, if you imagine your memory's being stored in an old grey three story filling cabinet, as each event happens it goes into the lever arch folder alongside all the others, for me it was like someone threw all the memories up in the air which then landed on the floor around the cabinet, leaving only one memory prevalent, the stabbing, I could still see the memories but not clearly as I kept getting distracted away and back to the trauma. eventually I got all my memories back where they belonged, prior to then this taught me a great deal about the two within me, 1 the person born as me, the other, the experiences of me or in other words my baggage, which I never realised existed, the influence our baggage has is huge on us. So if this doesn't not answer either of your questions, perhaps you could explain why they cannot be? When I understood this, I was at One with self and the field, all living things. PS your video also made me remember one day in science class, when we sat down, the teacher told us he wished to do an experiment to test the draft speed going from one end of the room to the other. I was at the back of the class. Our teacher held a jar, he said it had very strong mint extract, so as soon as folk could smell it, they had to put up their hands, easy enough, as he lifted the lid off the large jar, within 1 second, I had my hand up as well as 90% of the class, the rest had colds or couldn't be bothered, anyway, the teacher then explained it was only water in the jar, nothing else, the experiment was to teach us how easily manipulated we can be, regardless of how strong we believe ourselves to be, even after being told this, when it was my turn to smell like everyone else, we could still smell and even taste mint. I think, therefore I am. I trust this to be of some use to you, I have enjoyed writing about it, please also bare in mind, now all behind me, I understand it was the best thing which ever happened to me to open my mind to what we truly are, through a very surreptitious event, as with everyone else.
I know, right? I'm sure they can solve up a mystery that's endured for millennia, right? Should be a walk in the park for those almighty keyboard warriors!
@@jasonmaguire7552 Yeah, I hear you. Like sure we have an imperfect understanding of reality, but that's more of a flawed perception. I've never understood why anyone calls it an "illusion." It's like calling human memory fictitious when in reality people remember many things correctly on a regular basis.
I can see how the "contents" of consciousness can be illusory, but subjectivity itself is, in my opinion, the heart of the mystery. Perceiving things to be something that they aren't is understandable. What has me perfectly stumped is how you can somehow cross the fence that separates objective, material existence and find yourself on the other side where even the faintest glow of experience is possible. I am starting to think that perhaps the fence which separates the two is a more important illusion that could be focused on.
6:42 To Descartes principle, Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh kindly and usefully retorted "I don't think therefore I am", to which you beautifully add "I feel therefore I am". Splendid vids as usual !
The fundamental problem in this presentation is that you (Humphrey) think that there could be a difference between your alleged "appearance of [pain]" and "real [pain]". But, if you reflect upon the matter (as it were), there is no difference here. An illusion is still a state of consciousness. Therefore this explanation is wholly inadequate, and belongs to the past.
I never understood the "illusion" trump card. There has to be something "veridical" (non-illusory) by which to make a contrast. Or are there just degrees of illusion? The impossible triangle presupposes veridical, possible triangles- otherwise your run of the mill right angle, with an adjacent of 25 degrees, is also an illusion from which you could never distinguish from the impossible one. Illusion turtles all the way down?
If pain and feelings are an illusion, who is the receiver of the illusion?? I get that the impossible triangle fools our brain into seeing something impossible, but who is our brain "fooling" into feeling pain or other emotions?
You made a good point about how consciousness helps us survive by making us more empathetic to other conscious creatures. That certainly helped our own species or "tribe' survive. Did you purposely avoid the more obvious reason consciousness evolved? Consciousness enables us to review our memories and imagine various future possibilities before we move. It is mostly about the fact that we are mobile creatures in a competitive environment. By using the wonderfully evolved data processing orchestra we are better equipped to avoid dangers and acquire food, shelter and reproductive companions. The more we had to relocate in response to environmental challenges, the more consciousness played a role in survival.The reason consciousness is difficult to define is that it is not one thing. It is a mixed bag of many complex organic activities and we are already finding that even the symbiotic bacteria that we carry are an essential part of the consciousness orchestra. It is so beautifully complex that folks are tempted to rush to one of the thousands of supernatural explanations before they have credible evidence.
The purpose of life is to feel life. What this means on one level is that consciousness is the re experience of memory of an experience. IF it is a new experience then we are openly memorizing it and constructing the conscious frame and picture of the experience for future reference. This is why a new journey takes a long time whereas the next experience of the journey feels shorter. We are not recording it all, just the delta, the difference. Evolutionarily this is advantageous because it helps us to survive. It helps us to find food, mates and avoid danger. When we feel something intangible we are remembering and replaying the neural record of how we should react to that circumstance or potential experience. This doesn't always have to be experienced directly. We can learn it third hand through media and being educated by other's experiences. How is this true? Because our feelings can be wrong and our memories are fallible, our senses even more so. Our educated guess can be completely wrong and once the experience is actually experienced we can then edit the mistaken recording and be more sure of it's correctness. Even if it is still full of holes. This is why some experiences are beyond us. We simply cannot relate to them. Death, childbirth for a genetic male etc... Ultimately a new experience is a wonder because we give it a blank page and put upon it all our feelings.
My guess is that out there in spacetime is that everything is so uncertain so random so incomprehensible that creation constructed itself lifeforms like ourselves in order to experience itself. It created in its own way an interface to make sense of things and to guide itself through this space. Perhaps all lifeforms are there doing the same in order to experience itself. I believe everything is consciousness trying to be conscious of itself.
Was hoping this would answer the question I've been asking myself since I was a child, but it doesn't. Of course consciousness is an illusion in the sense that what I experience as red is just my internal representation of what signals my eyes are sending to my brain. But why do I need the subjective experience of red, or pain, or heat etc. and how does that work?
I've noticed that I can type, think of the sound of the words of what I'm thinking, and imagine an image, such as my son's face, all at the same time. but - why can't I, for example, imagine the sound of /two/ words, both being said at the same time? why can't I imagine what two tunes would sound like when played in unison? is this personal to me? is it something that could be learned with practice? or is it something fundamental to how human consciousness is put together?
Kae, if I rephrase your question it gets more interesting in my estimation. Here goes: What prevents you from splitting your focus into two parts? While we background that question, why can some people whistle a tune while cooking, what is likely to stop them whistling? Driving and talking can work, can be dangerous.
Your brain is good at doing stuff, one at a time. However, it also has different parts processing different things. One bit does sound, another images, another words. Consider it three processors, but that can only do one thread at a time, connected with one bus.......
Try having two emotions at once. Happy and sad at once doesn't work. You can switch between them, quickly, but you can't have them both in the same instant.
One of the gifts that humans have is being able to create models (in our brain) of other people. We can emulate other people's actions, voices, and even thoughts. Consciousness may be the capability to model ourselves, and in turn, to model ourselves modeling ourselves. The illusion is like placing 2 mirrors facing each other, where you can "see into infinity".
The analogy about the impossible triangle could be said about consciousness originating in the brain, like the illusion of a flat earth and the sun and stars evolving around the earth. Consciousness is of nature, and likely has its origins in the foundations of existence itself. Perhaps consciousness is the empty void simply developing a personality through self reflection (I to I, II to II, IIII to IIII, and so on)
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness...." - Albert Einstein. It's always nice if Einstein has your back ;) I should say that the wording gets super tricky though. The sense of being human for me definitely comes from the brain, so I would argue human consciousness is from the brain, there's not much to find outside the brain, unless you are prepared to consider things like ESP research (the later stuff is experimentally better). I like to think of awareness as fundamental, rather than using the word consciousness.
Ok let's just say you're right for a minute...and consciousness is just an illusion. What sort of predictions does this "theory" offer up? Surely if consciousness is an illusion, there should be some testable differences between it & theories that embrace consciousness.
Unless or until we can delve into the non-physical, speculating about non-physical consciousness is only sidestepping the question. Pretty much what Descartes did. Consciousness is real, physical and it seems to be linked with the perception of time. Now, Time may very well not exist in the Universe and it may be a biological illusion but the creation of personal timeline is very much physical, separating our existence in past (memories), future (imagination) and present (conscious existence). This also means that, at least at some level, consciousness is not a unique human trait. And this opens up a huge window of experimental exploration.
When we say something is an illusion, we are saying that it exists in someone's consciousness but not in objective reality. We a priori admit to consciousness being real to even use the word illusion. By very simple logic, then, my consciousness cannot be an illusion to me. Can someone else's consciousness be an illusion to my mind? Sure. Go back to Descartes on automata for a discussion of this. This whole discussion of "conscious living creatures" is a fine philosophy salon but it would be a mistake to dignify it as "science". Very humane & humanistic for someone else to empathize with me as a conscious living feeling being, but this comes from the speaker's emotions & intuition. They didn't arrive at these beliefs by using science. Every application of scientific method would find "particles & the void" at every point in my brain. A few hundred years ago, it was customary to mention God in any scientific work. Now we feel we've moved beyond that. But how is gushing over another person's feelings any different? You don't see them, you can't measure them, you just believe them to be there, it feels good to talk about them.
Mr. Chopra wrote "The hard problem of consciousness cannot be solved by assuming a physicalist ontology", Why not? I believe our brains generate our perception/consciousness just as our brains generate the sounds and colours as we percieve them in our heads, Colours don't exits per se, it's our brain transforming light of different wavelenghs into colours (i.e. our brains "paint" what we see in our mind's eye. Similarly with sound. I think it's a matter of time before scientists figure this out. I know this statement sounds preposterous now, but it would also have been just as preposterous to state that our brains generate sounds and colours 200 years ago.
I think the evolutionary advantage of consciousness is that it gives us emotions such as the ability to desire things that are not necessary for survival but will nevertheless enrich our existence. Curiosity, or a thirst for knowledge concerning something unfamiliar to you, can - if acted upon - result in the discovery of improvements to your chances of survival or lengthen your lifespan or simply make your life more enjoyable. I don't believe it is possible to be curious without first being self aware.
Of course it's possible. If you think thr brain generates conscious experiences, then the causal neural activity already exists, so the cause of your behavior is already there
While I don't think it's possible to dismiss the benefits of consciousness mentioned at the end of the video, for all we know these benefits are exaptations, not adaptations. What is the initial evolutionary drive for consciousness? Where can we find its benefits at an initial, basic level?
Thinking about and discussing that topic is fun, yet trying to understand it seems like an endless task. I prefer the mysterious unknown and try to get enjoyment out of it with humour. (Reggie Watts is one of my greatest Idols in that regard)
"I feel, therefore I am, therefore you feel and you are, too." seems like it would bestow an evolutionary advantage of, as a predator, more accurately predicting the behavior of one's prey and, more generally, facilitating the types of inhibitors necessary for social behavior. I agree with many of the comments questioning the definition of the word "consciousness" - what is Dr. Humphrey's definition? Is this definition of consciousness a boolean, or a spectrum? If it is a spectrum, how would it be measured/quantified?
Does it have to be measured and quantified in a standard we know now? Do we use numbers to quantify consciousness? If I was a "57", would that be large for the spectrum of consciousness or small?
Could consciousness be explained in its most simple form as electrical activity in the brain that is aware of its own electrical potential? We can then place each individual in the centre of their own reference frame in ‘the moment of now’ relative to this electrical activity. It is this personalization of the brain that gives us the concept of ‘mind’. Because we are all in the center of our own reference frame we all have an individual view of the Universe being able to look back in time in all directions at the beauty of the stars!
+An artist theory on the physics of 'Time' as a physical process. Quantum Atom Theory-- Agreed, all NOW is but the wavefront of experience, no time, just constant change. Mindfulness, consciousness is how an organism sorts out and keeps track of the constantly changing universe.
when a person is born colour-blind, is it possible for that person to "imagine" the missing color? is it possible for a 3-colour-coned person to imagine what a tetrachrome would see? can profoundly deaf people imagine sound? related: we live in a 3D world. is it possible to imagine a 4D shape comfortably enough to rotate it?
we live in a 4d world (time passes) we have a problem imagining/navigating 3d spaces (why we still inhabit/shape a series of 2d floors and stack them into a house as were not comfortable with more complex ) so as last guy said not really
Alan Doherty I think it could be possible for a select few to be able to project their thoughts onto a 4 dimensional space, but I would say that evolutionarily humans have evolved for several million years in a mostly 2d world, such as is the savannah to most intents and purposes. But I think it is only possible to carry out such thoughts because the concept of a dimension is something projected onto the universe, just as there is no such thing as a perfect sphere. It's because this concept is created, and not experienced (like colour), that any answer to kae verens question must be subjective to a certain extent, although their are people who can solve a digital 4d Rubik's Cube.
Alan Doherty Well, I like to think of it like seeing microscopic slices of 4d space inside the 3rd dimension. It's like the way a 2d plane is made up of small 1d lines. Similarly, we can experience time from the 4th dimension without seeing ALL time there has been since the big bang.
Explaining everyone else's consciousness is not so hard; it is the explanation of your own that presents the hard problem. It is much like trying to lift yourself up off the floor by pulling on your own bootstraps. If you are strong enough, it will work for lifting others around you, but never yourself.
I wish deepak would use his own page to proselytise his woo woo. I have a genuine enquiry, and we were asked to leave questions for the follow up film, not take advantage. I'd like to know how a person who is sleep walking can perform complex tasks, and can be unaware of these events once conscious? Thank you.
Organisms find themselves evolved into a state or niche, they are armed with sensory apparatus and the neural network, to such an extent they are at the leading edge of the evolutionary point in the ongoing unceasing constant change that is the universe unfolding. There is no time. Only change. Consciousness is the neural apparatus keeping track of change, meaning time is an index for the mind. the reverberations of short term memory and the ability to form long term memory is the goal of being aware.
I like it a lot, but don't really understand why is this series has so low number of views? It seems to be professionally made, quite interesting topics. Why is that not even close to 1M views in each series?
I hope that the greater understanding of how consciousness works will lead to some help for the many people who suffer the effects of chronic pain. For those people, something has gone horribly wrong and they continue to experience pain after the stimulus that triggered it has been removed.
I think, therefore I am - I feel therefore I am. Is not feeling akin to thinking? Do I simply think that I feel something, or do I feel that I think something? What is the difference between thinking and feeling? Do we not feel when we think? Do we not think when we feel? Are thinking and feeling not synchronous? Are they distinct or the same? Consciousness is awareness of thought or feeling - more correctly, of thought and feeling. Can thought be distinct from feeling? Are they not inseparable parts of a whole - a whole that we call consciousness?
7:25 - "When I observe this, from the theater of my mind..." What is this entity doing the observing, this "I"? It's not the brain - we've already established that the brain is producing the correlate. What's this "extra observation" and this thing perceiving the "appearance of a pain sensation"?
Exactly there is a fundamental awareness or no-thing that is experiencing this theater of mind - body - universe in my opinion that is your true nature formless awareness
Sir Roger Penrose in his works dichotomize problem of consciousness by asking question: Is consciousness deterministic? If it is, then for us "all hopes are lost". We would never understand what consciousness is. He rigorously proved it implying Gödel's incompleteness theorems. If it not deterministic, than our view of a brain as a completely logical machine is inconsistent. There have to be some distinctly nondeterministic element from witch our consciousness emerges. Assuming you prefere latter choice, I suppose my question is this - where would you look for that nondeterministic element? In the world of subatomic particles or in holistic ideas of Stanislav Grof and Alan Watts?
As Morpheus would say "What is real? How do you define 'real'? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain." Personally I think being alive is quite weird once you become aware of being alive. I mean here I am guided in life by a three pound sponge looking object inside my head and with out it I just become a complex organic object where a common house fly is superior to me.
Can we measure how much we are concious? Does the quantity of our consciousness vary by time? Do different persons have different levels of consciousness? Are children more or less conscious than adults? How is it switched off every night? (Is it switched off?) How much do we do without impinging on the conscious? Is consciousness the ability to have an image of the world, or is it the habit of referencing oneself as an observer? Is self recognition the same as being conscious or is that an even rarer effect? Is not recognising your reflection any guide to not being conscious?
As someone said: Now you tell me, is this true that i exist therefore i think? How can you think without existing? First there must be existence in order to think.
sigur, Mircea... someone else said 'i am therefore why think?!' The professor comes up with 'i feel therefore i am' Well, how about in deep sleep- you feel nothing and yet are you not?! The problem with this is that his focus is on the object [feeling in this case] not on the subject that experiences it, i.e. who is the one who feels? which is way more interesting to look at because this 'i' is the root of all... perception, thinking, feeling, doing... being. 'i am a scientist and therefore i must look at things a certain way'... well, that's a pretty tough self imposed limitation on the field of view. [liceul 1 hd iti spune ceva?]
Terrific video. Since you mentioned the evolutionary aspects of consciousness I wish you had touched on the subject of animal consciousness. We keep expanding our estimation of how much consciousness a given animal can have. So, what is the simplest level of life in which consciousness can be found? Consciousness certainly started long before our primate ancestors came along. How far back can it be traced?
Where do you personally believe consciousness ends? At a microorganic level? Are all animals conscious? Are jellyfish conscious? And trees? If not, why not? Can a human being ever manufacturer a conscious being, or is it too difficult? We can certainly create a machine that responds to outside stimuli in a way that another one might not, but is this consciousness? Thank you for your video
a "non-standard" VR model such as MBT can explain most of these how's & even some of the why's quite simply.....as well as being the only satisfactory interpretation of QM & other fundamental scientific principles..... that I'm aware of...... it is a shell with most of the pieces in place that really can unite physics/meta-physics/philosophy/theology/para-normal/supernatural under a single overarching understanding.
I feel, therefor I am. What are the evolutionary advantages to be able to feel sorrow, love and hate? These feelings, I find sometimes to be utterly unlogical in the decisions we make. Love makes as behave in ways that lessen our chances of attracting the person we have feelings for. Sorrow make as set aside lots of important things and hate, well... You get the picture.
I interpret the conclusion of this video to be linked to Richard Dawkins's "meme" theory. Would I be correct in this link or have I misunderstood this explanation for consciousness? Also, would this video concur with panpsychism or are they exclusive concepts?
Why is there a consciousness at all? Why doesn't our bodies just respond to stimuli without having a conciousness feel a tangible effect of stimuli. Do any complicated enough physical processes also generate consciousness? Are insects conscious? Can computers become concious? Inferred logic dictates the answer to be yes, but it cannot say why.
why do we experience dreams while we asleep? could consciousness be the dream that runs those dreams? is consciousness the link between quantum mechanic state and the atoms of the neurons in the brain ? or is it just a simulation to keep us busy ?
What if consciousness is just an instrument of the brain to diagnose and direct its own activity. It would make total sense from an evolutionary standpoint to possess such an instrument. A machine that is able to at least get an overview of its own functions and adjust them to the challenges at hand will be more effective than machines without these properties. The sense of wonder we feel when we think about our own thinking might stem from the selective focus of consciousness. We are not able to visualize all hidden processes that lead to one of our thought, we mostly see the result which lies at the end of these processes. This could be due to the need of our brain to reduce complexity and focus only on central aspects of its own activity. Therefore we have this feeling that there is an enourmous depth beneath us we aren't able to grasp. I learned the basics of coding lately and I was amazed at how many lines of code can go into a program that seems quite trivial when one just looks at the graphical interface. A user that doesn't know how to code will look at the program and perceive less complexity at first glance and think mostly about the way he wants to use the program. But eventually this user might wonder how the program looks beneath the surface, not able to understand its inner workings. I think this experience is quite similar to how we perceive our consciousness.
At about 5 mins he says "given that consciousness has evolved by natural selection" I ask on what evidence can he say that consciousness has evolved by natural selection?
My question is this: The Pear Labs experiments at Princeton seemed to show that consciousness could, under some circumstances, directly affect the material world. I am aware that those studies have been vigorously attacked, but I am not satisfied that those attacks completely discredit the work. What do you think?
I see Humphrey doesn't say consciousness is an illusion. Plus i agree with what he says (things we are conscious of are illusions) but i also think consciousness is an illusion, although two illusion words here mean something different respectively. The word illusion which we use in our daily lives may signify something post-consciousness, but when I (and some people who think likewise) say that consciousness is an illusion, I mean there is no substance to consciousness. We, as conscious beings, are merely a part of the space and i dare to say we are the parts of the space that think that "exist". We sure exist, but no more than the keyboard i am typing with now :) In that sense consciousness is an illusion. We'll get back to being the general part of the space which doesn't think that exists once we die.
That attempt at an explanation of consciousness isn't very fulfilling though. In fact, it still feels rather empty. I could make a very complex clock mechanism with a vast number of physical processes... but no one would believe or expect it to be "experiencing it's own complex physical processes.". No, we would expect it to experience nothing. The question then is what makes us different than the complex clock mechanism. There *seems* to be no physical process which gives rise to an experience.
My explanation may seem rather unfulfilling and empty because it really is just a creative re-phrasing of what already seems apparent to us. It's not any new revelation but a different way at looking and the boring physical, mechanical world that we already observe. It may be that the reality behind consciousness isn't amazing at all - it might be just as mundane as chemical reactions happening in the right places at the right times - a chemical system. Though this might not be the case, and there might yet be some larger hidden mechanism behind consciousness, however that makes more mystical assumptions and thus I am inclined to accept the idea that makes the least assumptions based on our current evidence. Your point about expecting a clock to experience nothing is a fantastic and valid one - if we look at consciousness from the standpoint of it arising from chemical systems, we must then ask *what* makes this system special, and perhaps other systems are, to some degree, conscious - even where we would expect them not to be. These mysteries, as far as we can tell right now, are impossible to solve. There are no conceivable tests that you can run to prove the consciousness of a system, at least not yet. We even simply assume that other humans are conscious because they have brains like us - but we really cannot look at an individual brain and prove that that system is in any way conscious.
I'm somewhat satisifed (but unhappy with) simply stating that we don't yet have a clue. We speculate this and that about consciousness, but I suspect its true nature is as distant to us as quantum mechanics is to a caveman -- maybe not. It just seems like we've not made even an inch of progress is explaining it after hundreds of years of science. I suspect (and hope) we will one day have a good grasp, but I suspect it's quite some time away. I'm personally not impressed with many of the functional explanations of consciousness, though as I don't believe they actually describe any fundamental process. On the other hand, I'm certainly not ready to hop on board with any new age quantum mechanical guru woo-woo :)
Dear Professor Humphrey: I believe one of the core questions regarding consciousness is not addressed in this video. That core question is: is consciousness a product of the brain (generated inside the brain and an "illusion"), OR is consciousness something outside of the brain, and perceived by the brain. Currently most scientists assume that it's ridiculous to even consider this. To give an example: we would never say that the sunlight we see, is an illusion. Our eyes/brain perceive that light, and we all know that this light still exists when we die. Evolutionary our brain (and the brains of most creatures) learned to perceive and interpret light, for the obvious advantages it has in biological survival. Why would it not be possible that consciousness (the state of being self-aware) is a state (field or potentiality) that is prior to the brain? In other words the hypothesis is that consciousness existed before our brains were evolved (and complex) enough to perceive it. I think scientists should be bold and look into this. My personal observation by the way, is that "thinking" is not the same as being self-aware.
I don't see how the argument hangs together. The only things that can affect behaviour are the "neural correlates" and they can do their stuff without the consciousness. We can learn and adapt as social animals without ever being conscious of it. Like a computer doing what-ifs and becoming a better chess player, it can do all that without switching on the display. Awareness is NOT required, and neither is consciousness. But it's there - hence the problem. Name one thing that you are attributing to consciousness that could not be done unconsciously, by the "neural correlates".
I suspect that every living thing is conscious to varying degrees. It appears to come out of self modifying algorithms. In order to have an algorithm that can moduify itself one needs to have some kind of a goal, a way to measure the achievement of that goal and some kind of a mechanism to modify the parameters or the entire algoritm.
Before posting my question, I present these premises: The idea of scientifically examining consciousness from an evolutionary point of view is sound, since evolution is proven beyond all doubt AND because studying evolution has always historically led to other scientific revelations. So the idea that there is some evolutionary advantage or "purpose" to nature evolving consciousness seems like a good staring-point. Indeed, it is easy to see how consciousness can lead to empathy, ethics and morality without the simplistic supposition of an external supernatural entity. Those "feeling" characteristics of consciousness could have enormous survival value for us or any species. That value should be observable and testable by examining the evolutionary record and history. Unlike the common use of the word theory, ( which is a guess or hunch) Scientific “theory” must be testable, verifiable and potentially falsifiable. Evolutionary selection of higher consciousness or self-awareness or ‘feeling’ seems not only plausible, but eminently provable. However, it seems Professor Humphrey is suggesting that consciousness is an illusion. So my question is... HOW do you design a scientific test to show consciousness is an illusion? Without using clever optical illusions as metaphors, HOW can we test the consciousness-as-illusion theory?
I think consciousness is very real; it is as real as "don't touch the fire it burns", or I'm hungry therefore I eat; but consciousness is an instinct little bit more tremendously complex .. If a dog could choose between a smashed squirrel and a sandwich, it probably would eat both.. and so would do some human being probably. but still we can have a deeper and complex chace of choosing... (I only drink water from the mount everest snow, but I eat just macdonald) Despite what we are and what we lived, we have even the possibility choose to moove to higher step of consciousness for as thin as it can be,
QUESTION(S): Evo biologists make the point that the eye has evo benefit on a planet bathed in sunlight, and so has evolved independently several times. What about neurons and central nervous systems? Are they too independently evolved? Or do all animals with neurons have some common ancestor?
do we really think or is it just talking again but silently without moving the mouth a way of rehearsing because nobody can hear you and is it consciousness or a second person? and doesn't it scare anyone when it talks back? and even questions you and is it a form of pregnancy, is it possible for men to become pregnant?. and what does one do when it becomes like wilie coyote from roadrunner and what do the beeps mean, two?
"What if the pain I feel does not exist at all?" What about the experiencing (consciousness) of this non-existing pain...? Is this experiencing (consciousness) also non-existing..? If so, what does exist..? Does this video exist..? If "yes" why..? What is the difference between experiencing the video and experiencing the color red, or experiencing pain..?
The experience of the pain does not physically exists. You brain literally hallucinates everything. You don't even see the world but your brain interprets the visual information and creates what it thinks it's looking at. That's why when people ingest psychedelic drugs it messes with things they see, hear or feel. None of the things in conscioussness are tangible physical things just illusions.
Devil Dude. You say: None of the things in conscioussness are tangible physical things just illusions. Response: Do you believe there is a "real external reality made of matter" outside consciousness..? Or do you hold to an idealist perspective..?
There's reliable amount of data gathered using really sensitive measuring equipment that do suggest that reality is made of matter(There are question about what makes up this matter but that's too long to get into). Just because what the inside of your head generates isn't real things but pattern doesn't mean the world outside does not exists. I hate to use a computer analogy but it would be easiest here. The software that runs on computer are just a stream of 1s and 0s through gates and at the end you get a screen to render a lot of things based on certain information. There's code that dictates what the final result will be but the software that outputs to your display is just a result of thousands of lines or millions of bits of code being processed. Obviously computers are far more simpler and less dynamic so the code can be physically read but processing it can create something else(new if you will). The brain is in fact similarly tangible and everything that physically happens to it affects your consciousness. To be idealistic and assume the internet exists inside your computer might be dumb. It exists regardless of your computer. Same goes for the rest of reality, which has existed for a few billions years without any living thing with consciousness...at least in our part of the universe. As much as the idea of a Boltzmann brain is interesting to think about, I would still like to play my dice saying at the end it would not matter if anything outside your brain exists or not, as you would never know and it's the same as any other scenario you can imagine where reality is not as concrete. tl;dr- No. Reality very much Matter...don't do something you think you can stop regretting the next morning.
Devil Dude. What are your thoughts on consciousness itself..? Do you think Dennett is correct; that consciousness is some kind of magic trick of the brain, or do you think Chalmers version of panpsychism: "some fundamental physical entities have mental states." is more plausible.
I do believe in a somewhat deterministic reality, maybe we are just philosophical zombies. If the world is only made up of philosophical zombies than what difference does it make if you think you feel. Nothing in that statement undermines what we call subjective experience. Subjective experience is made up of all the past experiences and future expectations thereof, not magic but still a lot goes into to create it. On the subscription of a single philosophy of consciousness, I would like to go more the Anil seth's approach to stuff. It's a result of a complex system and like all complex systems it may not be reduced the sum of its parts. It is an emergent phenomenon that seems to very specific to functioning of mammalian brains that led us to this road to probably nowhere. Being emphatically devoid has made me consider other people's position from their point of view which really makes the idea of direct link between two brains using neural laces connected to a translating neural net modem really worthwhile for me. At that point if we can artificially create something that is conscious and experience it to confirm I would say we have come one step further to possible immortality. As for the east's approach to pansychism, it has always been wishy washy thing for no consideration. It's just made of things you would say that "makes sense" but has no value or way to prove it. Something the human brain does from time to time, creates things that cannot be proven and have to be taken at face value. Look at all the religions that exist and how many of them rely on the subscription of faith as it can't be proven. Almost as if that's the best version a brain can come up with for something that does not exist.
conciousness is an emergent property of the complex brain. we look at a computer and we think little of the thousands of pieces of information, combined over a vast network of switches - all of that make programs, store information and so on in dead computer hardware. yet we find it so hard to believe a dynamic, flexibel, adapting brain could perform the same basic pinciple: from basic pieces of information, basic chemical processes, it produces layers upon layers of complexity. ultimately it results in a model of how we view our world, it produces variables internally we call emotions, it stores and reshapes memories in our personal dynamic databank. If you cant believe that the brain is the only thing responsible, then i have something cool (and a bit sad) for you: There are many people who suffer brain damage due to accidents, health problems, etc. Some parts of the brain are linked to certain functions, such as a section controling speach. If those part gets damaged, you may be unable to speak a proper sentence, maybe unable to read, unable to understand speech. With alzheimer's memory is reduced. With a concussion you may suffer a decrease in your ability to focus on a task. Heck, there is Deep Brain Stimulation, in which small electrodes are stuck into a brain of a person with severe fears or other neurological issues. This helps to make people feel better or function better, taking away feares or severe tremors in their movements. There are even types of medicine, and even some drugs, that change your brains chemistry (usually temporarily) and totally change your conciousness and how you experience the world around you. I expect a future experiment in which a super computer or server will be used to simulate the human brain.
My premise... consciousness IS the ghost in the machine... ...Our brains are numb, they have no sense of feeling/touch like our skin, hence our thoughts, memories, feelings, identity -- if indeed, a physiological phenomenon, all happen in limbo, disassociated space, allowing itself to build stories, via reason/logic and Faith (its all Faith really), that serve our survival... so much so that we don't even, or can't, question their/our very nature, with-out, seemingly, hitting a brick wall of non-explicity. This could be a built in self preservationary adaptation.. there are plenty of examples of how some people lose this ability/connection, and cease to be able to function, as well as drugs that can unhinge our-selves from our stories that allow us to feel at home in our comfortable, deluded, "realities." Brain/mind = phantasmagorical conjuring machine extraordinaire. Language and identity are technologies/tools we've evolved/created, like the lever, wheel, ..ologies, interwebs... all to serve our survival and thrival.
I don't see a reason not to include the feeling of pain as part of reality. A psychologist would expect consciousness evolved to influence our social psychology.
Arnold Kim Why do you doubt that? There seems to be a double standard here by anti-physicalists: you physicalists don't understand consciousness to be able to infer that it is a physical process, but we understand it enough to be able to tell you you will never understand it and will never produce it artificially. The point of this video was that the self that we perceive is a representational model, one formed by the brain about itself.
I do a lot of software programming and in narrow areas can beat human intelligence (quite easily). I can design feedback systems based on representational models. I do not feel like I am building the beginnings of real sentience. No one feels guilty about turning off my programs.
When you, the uploader were 2, you thought your consciouness directly affected your actions and the internal structure of your body was exactly the same regardless of your consciousness and it was impossible for one person to read another person's mind regardless of what technology they used. Maybe the physical world doesn't exist at all but the conscious world exists for you in the following way: The whole truth is determined entirely by the state of your consciousness at each time. Your reaction to pain is entirely a response to your consciousness. Other people only exist when you see them and are not conscious. You got mislead into believing brain activity gives rise to consciousness by trusting what other people said to you that people saw a connection between other people's brain activity and their actions but you thinking brain activity gives rise to consciousness is actually a type of consciousness. Even if you did use a device to see the connection between your consciousness and your brain activity, the seeing that connection would be a result of your consciousness and you wouldn't know for sure that it wouldn't happen some time in the future, you suddenly get shocked to see different brain activity going on in your brain that you would have previously predicted would give rise to a different state of your consciousness than you actually have, which you would interpret as a violation of the laws of physics that the universe had previously been following and as consciousness being separate from the physical world.
How to write software that translates information from sensors into virtual world that includes a virtual image of itself does not seem such a challenge compared to organising civilisation into something sustainable, progressive and satisfying to sentient beings.
The somewhat teleogical evolutionary argument for the "why" of consciousness at the end is not convincing to me. Things like empathy and can be computed without being "felt". It is not hard to imagine evolution selecting for sophisticated behavioural calculators. This is the "zombie" argument put forward by the philosopher of mind David Chalmers, who coined the term "The Hard Problem of Consciousness". David Chalmers would say we have no choice but add consciousness as an additional "primary colour" of physical interactions (beyond 4 fundamental forces, matter, etc.).
Hi, want to share about it, your theory is essential, Maybe before 30000 years our brain didnt make feel us believe that we are spiritual beings and there is a life above but after 10000 there began evolution for that with reason for rise of religions And now science with feeling of reality and hope for eternity invented. Thanks.
Calling consciousness an illusion is silly, much like saying that the apple is an illusion, because what is really there is a collection of atoms that are together in a loose confederation in an apple-shape... Just as the cell membrane evolved to help maintain the integrity of the cell, consciousness evolved to help the creature to better associate circumstance with opportunity, and thus have better (And more frequent) opportunities, as well as avoiding impairment and non-existence.
Consciousnesses cannot be an illusion. If it’s an illusion, then the illusion itself is consciousness. There is no place in the laws of physics for illusion. The real mystery is that of subjectivity. How and why does irreducible subjectivity arise from objective processes happening in the brain? That’s the hard (impossible) problem of consciousness
I really don't want to sound arrogant. I first spontaneously added this remark, then removed it, but... ... I really had this understanding when I was about 5 years old. What's more: I seem not to be the only one. Many people I spoke share this memory. Somehow, children seem to ask these questions quite naturally: why am I Me and not You? Is my sensation of Red the same as yours or do You perceive it as Green? Why does Pain feels as Pain or is it just the sensation of something very unpleasant? It is at least a very distinct Kind of Unpleasiness. Why does it take a life time, only to re-ask us these childish questions, and still not able to answer them satisfactory? What drives you to seek answers for simple questions that children seem to understand a-priori? And why do I?
People who believe in magic are simply confused. As a materialist (I am educated in physics and math), I find almost every sentence uttered in this video to be nonsense. It makes the common mistake of assuming that a noun names some "thing" - whereas some nouns names a process. Consciousness is not magic. It is nothing more than the operation of a brain. When we are aware of the environment, we are simply processing what our sensors are detecting. When we are aware of being aware, we are simply processing our memory of some prior events. These processes may affect other processes (e.g. hormones) which we may names "emotion" - but again, it is a process - and there is no magic. People who believe in magic are simply confused.
Professor Humphrey explains pain thus: pricking a finger causes the brain to create a neural correlate of pain which appears in the theater of mind letting us know we are in the presence of a pain sensation. That is a bad and useless explanation. We experience pain when receptors cells in the finger change polarity in response to the cellular damage. Nerve cell depolarization causes the neurotransmitters to be released resulting in a cascade of neural impulses up the nerve fiber to the brain. The single is then propagated to various areas of the brain and it is that propagation we experience as pain. That’s the sort of explanation is useful and much more worthy of the Royal Institute. I think the idea that consciousness is some great mystery for science to solve is misguided. It is more like a category of topics such as perception, memory, decision making and language processing to name a few. Out understanding in those ares is growing all the time. As we know more and more about those topics the problem of consciousness will be much less of a problem.
The word "Consciousness" has meaning? It clearly has no proven definition. Surely it would be more rewarding and useful to concentrate on the nuts and bolts and less on the bigger picture. Since if the bigger picture is about the definition of consciousness then that is likely to go on forever with no definite answers. Where as, for example, the study of how neurons communicate, has and is moving forward. Why do people need to define "Consciousness" anyway? If we concentrate working from the bottom up, it will get us to the definition anyway, if there is one.
At last Science has found something that is not made of matter and energy that needs analysis. Questions about consciousness are unquestionably the most important questions Science has ever asked. Yet, the question will evolve as understanding progresses. The real question is, what is Spirit. Consciousness is simply the only manifestation of Spirit that Science can identify. Clearly, Life, Spirit and Conciousness are three different things. There is so much to learn. Can you imagine a living creature who arrives at an entanglement receiver without his spirit? How could it get transmitted? It is not matter or energy! Is it dead or alive? All the questions about how we perceive time. Do animals have spirits, or just souls? Does leaving religion out of the discussion help us be objective or empirical?
I expected more. You don't answer the question by simply declaring that consciousness is an "illusion." Why ever should we believe that it is? What, in fact, does it mean to say that consciousness is an illusion? It's an arbitrary move to say so and, while attempting to do away with everything non-physical, only creates an additional layer of confusion. I suspect Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations came nearer the right answer, namely, that the puzzle itself exists only in language and arises when we twist words from their usual meanings.
So there's no mind-body dualism. I hope that's not news to anybody. Other than that, the metaphor of consciousness being an illusion doesn't explain anything to me. Plus, I don't think we understand the How good enough to explain the Why. Why can't a philosophical zombie exhibit all the behaviour Mr Humphrey described?
I think it's a matter of perspective. Try this: ronmurp.net/2014/09/14/consciousness-a-physicalist-perspective/. The philosophical zombie is a fudge by Chalmers. He presumes to remove a consciousness from a human to leave a zombie, when there is not actual consciousness to remove.
Ron Murphy Thanks for the link but no, that text doesn't actually help with any of my questions or criticisms. Which is unsurprisingly since you state right at the beginning that it's for people who believe in mind-body dualism. Going the step further from "consciousness is an illusion" to "there is no such thing as consciousness" as you do in your comment here ... well let's say it's not even a bad argument for me, it's just plain boring. Of course there's something we perceive as consciousness. When I use the concept of the philosophical zombie, I don't care how this consciousness perception comes about or whether "illusion" is a good description for it. I only care that the zombie doesn't have it. And any explanation of consciousness either has to explain what the difference between me and the zombie is or has to explain why the zombie cannot exist. Redefining the word "consciousness" until you no longer feel you have any explaining to do is not going to get you off the hook here.
Penny Lane "Which is unsurprisingly since you state right at the beginning that it's for people who believe in mind-body dualism." - No I don't. I start explaining that such dualist views prompted the post, not that it is an explanation only for dualists. My actual words in the comments above were, "no actual consciousness to remove" (with not=no typo removed) What I mean by that is that when Chalmers speaks of removing consciousness, that he does so as if it is something that can be removed such that his description of a Zombie would remain, when he has no evidence that this is what would happen. To remove consciousness from a human brain requires the removal or damage to parts of the brain that contribute to consciousness. Remove the parts of the brain that together cause a human to appear as a conscious being and you are not left with a working zombie but an unconscious human. That is clearly the case from the many cases of brain injury and brain disease that neurologists have to deal with In that sense the Zombie of Chalmers is a thought experiment that relies on the illusion that consciousness is something that can be removed and that would still leave a human behaving pretty much as they do with it.
Ron Murphy As I said, stating that the philosophical zombie is an impossibility and why exactly is a perfectly valid response. It is also a view that I tend to agree with, even though I acknowledge that I might be wrong here because I, as every other human being on this planet, don't actually know what consciousness is or how it works. "It's an illusion so you cannot remove it" doesn't explain anything though, it's just a cop-out.
Penny Lane It does explain that if it is illusory in that sense then it cannot be removed, because what is being proposed to be removed does not exist in a form that cannot be removed. If someone proposed that water's wateriness could be removed from a glass of water and we'd have zombie water that looks and behaves as water does, then I think that responding that the wateriness is an inherent aspect of the collection of molecules that is water and cannot be removed without removing the water. I think that would explain why someone's illusions about the nature of wateriness is illusory. I don't think that would be a cop-out. What's hard about the hard problem comes in two regards. One is that it is as yet difficult to explain the mechanistic biological detail of what causes a brain to start to experience consciousness. This does not deny that we have an experience that we call consciousness but admits we don't know what it is about the brain that causes it, such that we don't know how to build a conscious system from scratch or build one from any other medium. This is a difficult, hard, problem, but it is not a claim that having the experience is illusory - as if we are believing falsely that we are having the experience. The other is to suppose there is something about consciousness that is not the direct cause of the physical brain's behaviour. This view comes as the dualist mind, or as Deepak Chopra's fundamental consciousness idea, or the religious soul. It is these imagined immaterial notions that are being claimed to be illusory when it is said that consciousness is an illusion. But illusions take many forms. To think the 2-D drawing of an impossible triangle because that's how it looks to the brain, or that the 3_D object viewed from a certain angle is actually an impossible triangle, is to fall for an illusion. Even more subtly, to think that our internal brain perceptions are anything other than internal representations of the external objects we perceive is to fall for the illusion. That this type of illusion is subtle, and to a great extent unimportant, is part of the problem when we rely on witness statements. Experiments show that people can be deceived into thinking they saw things they did not. They suffered errors or perception, illusions, is perceiving something their eyes did not see.
Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose postulate the transition point between quantum processes and directive information production in the mind as an event that takes place in the microtubules of neurons in the brain ( www.hameroff.com/penrose-hameroff/orchOR.html#Stuart Hameroff). My question is how long do you believe it will take until a substantial collaborative effort between physicists and neurologists occurs and whether or not the general consensus supports the probable relationship between human consciousness and quantum physical processes which operate most probably with, perhaps, the non-physical lucidity of the fifth dimension.
We can describe a human zygote as unconscious, and we describe human adults as conscious. When then in the course of human development does consciousness arise?
NEW FILM: Professor Nicholas Humphrey tackles one of science's greatest conundrums: The magic of consciousness.
@@SupremeFeline Who says animals aren't concious beings? That hasn't been postulated in the video
Hello Kindred, Thank you for this opportunity for me either to answer the two questions, fear & consciousness or create a further question.
I was brought up in an area where the general consensus was any problem would be measured against how hard you could thump them before they did you, I am 47 years of age & a carpenter, I hold nor follow any religious beliefs. I always used to say, I believed it wasn't folk that change only situations, I also done some time as a member of the Parachute regiment, being a large person in build.
Back to the questions posed, I went out one night in the city I lived in with my best friend, to celebrate my becoming a father as well as it being my birthday, we went off to 10 bin bowling drinking very little but enjoying the bowling, the song playing all night was, Tubthumping(i get knocked down) by Chumbawamba, I great tune but played to death. so around midnight we headed home via a kebab shop, then we entered the main park in the city as a shortcut to get home.
We were having a great time I would say more or less sober, My best friend went off into a bush for a pee whilst telling me a really bad joke, regardless of my laughing at the really bad punch line, As I laughed I noticed a male figure coming right up to me, without warning punching me on my left had side, just above my waste.
Next thing, I punched him back, then restrained him to the ground by his throat, asking him who the hell did he think he was. By this time my friend was leaning over my shoulder looking at my attacker laughing saying you have picked the wrong guy, I should point out my friend is just over 6 feet tall & into martial arts, the attacker looked like he was looking at a ghost when he stared at me and cried he was really sorry & wouldn't do it again, he also said at one point he was a student.
After about 5 minutes I let him go and he disappeared as quickly as he had appeared, it was raining and cold, end of November and we were at the center of the park, so both my friend and I proceeded on our way not being too bothered about what just happened, please bare in mind my environment and parachute regiment, so pretty calm and unaffected, not shocked or fearful or even upset, certainly not running on adrenalin or anything like it, we were joking about the look on the guys face so about 7 or 8 minutes in total feeling really good, then I felt something warm trickle down to my waste, I remember thinking this to be a very odd sensation, as the area he punched me felt cold to my mind, All the time I was holding him, I remember thinking it feels like if you got a piece of metal and placed it on your skin exactly where his fist hit me.
As I sliped my hand under my coat, jersey, t shirtand flet what was running down me, two of my fingers slid into the hole his 8” bread knife blade had made, the nano second my mind registered what had happened and I mean nano second, I felt immense pain, my lung collapsed, I couldn't see or walk and because the knife was spun in a circular fashion, it had sliced though sever parts of my intestine, I was later told I suffered peritonitis (poisoning of the blood) because the bowel contents was directly flowing into my blood supply, I was like a real drama queen.
My best friend carried me to the exist of the park then put me on the roadside whilst he attempted to look like a madman shouting for folk to stop and help, so this took a while, during which time, I was looking up but not seeing anything but hearing everything around me, then I felt myself starting to slip away, all of a sudden I felt myself feeling nothing, hearing nothing and then opening my eyes to seeing myself laying on the grass verge directly under me, I remember thinking, how is this possible, I looked at my hands, legs and body which were all attached to me, don't worry no shiny lights or gates stuff, but I remember thinking I am still complete, I could also see my friend in the road whilst cars where trying to avoid hitting him. then someone stopped and got me and my friend to the hospital.
Where I was saved after a 14 hour operation, although for the first couple of weeks they were telling my family including my pregnant partner that they didn't hold out much hope.
When I woke after the operation, I felt a huge amount of pain, also I had to use an oxygen mask to breath for about the first 5 or 7 days, but I could see and move my legs.
I was eventually diagnosed with PTSD and given counseling, this stopped within the fist year, which didn't help anyway, after around five years I had managed to stop suffering from this and started to really remember what happened that night, even now whilst writing this when I ask myself the question, how would you feel if someone walked up and stabbed you, My immediate response to myself is always the same, “blind rage”, again when asking myself what do you think would be affected if someone stabbed you here, i.e the same place, again immediately to myself comes “probably be left paralyzed”. the surgeon said they believed I had died before I had got to them.
Now the questions, what is consciousness, I believe it to be our very essence of what we are, an energy form, living in a physical form like someone wearing a suit, the pain all in my head, after about 3 years, my close to retirement GP spoke to me about my still believing I needed pain killers daily for the pain I kept feeling, he explained regardless of my anger that maybe If I could spend some time reading up on phantom pain as there was no reason in his mind, that I should still be feeling pain, baring in mind my mind had a very good basis for comparison for pain then so I was very annoyed with him suggesting it was all in my mind, but he was absolutely right.
by the end of the first five years, I understood that my soul, essence, spirit, whatever you wish to call it, had ten fingers & ten toes, but I believe the form I was holding was residual memory.
Another example of pain, I was in a very bad car crash around 10 years ago, I had a small fracture in my lower spine which led to me taking co-codamol for years to help elevate the pain, Then I remembered the stabbing and the pain not being real form that, so I stopped taking the drug and started to think more positively about my condition as well as exercising more as I did not like to take the prescribed drug.
Then one night I was giving my wife a massage, the reson I am explain this will become apparent, I was standing behind her whilst she sat on one of our dinning chairs, as I massaged her shoulders and back, I was feeling very relaxed, then my wife asked “you haven't mentioned your back for ages, how is it?” As I was thinking what I was about to say, which was going to be, magic, no problems or discomfort at all, but before I could start to say this, I felt the pain which was really intense, I explained what had happened to my wife then tried to focus away from the pain but also considering when it comes back so observing self, sure enough, as I focused away the pain went, as soon as I started thinking about it in any shape or form, after about 1 week of thinking and talking about this, no more pain, completely disappeared, again maybe it was my minds basis for comparison.
Pain is something taught, like anger as both born from fear within,, whist I had the PTSD I felt more like a psychitzophrenic, There was obviously two of me, it was so intense after the stabbing, if you imagine your memory's being stored in an old grey three story filling cabinet, as each event happens it goes into the lever arch folder alongside all the others, for me it was like someone threw all the memories up in the air which then landed on the floor around the cabinet, leaving only one memory prevalent, the stabbing, I could still see the memories but not clearly as I kept getting distracted away and back to the trauma. eventually I got all my memories back where they belonged, prior to then this taught me a great deal about the two within me, 1 the person born as me, the other, the experiences of me or in other words my baggage, which I never realised existed, the influence our baggage has is huge on us.
So if this doesn't not answer either of your questions, perhaps you could explain why they cannot be?
When I understood this, I was at One with self and the field, all living things.
PS your video also made me remember one day in science class, when we sat down, the teacher told us he wished to do an experiment to test the draft speed going from one end of the room to the other. I was at the back of the class.
Our teacher held a jar, he said it had very strong mint extract, so as soon as folk could smell it, they had to put up their hands, easy enough, as he lifted the lid off the large jar, within 1 second, I had my hand up as well as 90% of the class, the rest had colds or couldn't be bothered, anyway, the teacher then explained it was only water in the jar, nothing else, the experiment was to teach us how easily manipulated we can be, regardless of how strong we believe ourselves to be, even after being told this, when it was my turn to smell like everyone else, we could still smell and even taste mint.
I think, therefore I am.
I trust this to be of some use to you, I have enjoyed writing about it, please also bare in mind, now all behind me, I understand it was the best thing which ever happened to me to open my mind to what we truly are, through a very surreptitious event, as with everyone else.
Boy, I can't wait for all the TH-cam comments to figure out what has puzzled scientists for thousands of years.
I know, right? I'm sure they can solve up a mystery that's endured for millennia, right? Should be a walk in the park for those almighty keyboard warriors!
@@LuxAeterna22878 we won't solve it, but we can recognise when a claim about it is nonsense, like consciousness being an illusion
@@jasonmaguire7552 Yeah, I hear you. Like sure we have an imperfect understanding of reality, but that's more of a flawed perception. I've never understood why anyone calls it an "illusion." It's like calling human memory fictitious when in reality people remember many things correctly on a regular basis.
"The body is an extension of my soul", "The matter is an extension of the spirit". Blake said it already.
I can see how the "contents" of consciousness can be illusory, but subjectivity itself is, in my opinion, the heart of the mystery. Perceiving things to be something that they aren't is understandable. What has me perfectly stumped is how you can somehow cross the fence that separates objective, material existence and find yourself on the other side where even the faintest glow of experience is possible.
I am starting to think that perhaps the fence which separates the two is a more important illusion that could be focused on.
Brilliant (9 year old) comment!
6:42 To Descartes principle, Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh kindly and usefully retorted "I don't think therefore I am", to which you beautifully add "I feel therefore I am".
Splendid vids as usual !
The fundamental problem in this presentation is that you (Humphrey) think that there could be a difference between your alleged "appearance of [pain]" and "real [pain]". But, if you reflect upon the matter (as it were), there is no difference here. An illusion is still a state of consciousness. Therefore this explanation is wholly inadequate, and belongs to the past.
Consciousness is a biological function. Not woowoo!
@@GeoCoppens dont be afraid of woo woo, its just something that you dont understand and is field beyond physical senses.
@@mexdal Where is this imagined field beyond the physical senses?
"Consciousness is an illusion" But surely this statement is nonsense.
The experience of illusion itself is an expression of consciousness.
I never understood the "illusion" trump card. There has to be something "veridical" (non-illusory) by which to make a contrast. Or are there just degrees of illusion? The impossible triangle presupposes veridical, possible triangles- otherwise your run of the mill right angle, with an adjacent of 25 degrees, is also an illusion from which you could never distinguish from the impossible one. Illusion turtles all the way down?
If pain and feelings are an illusion, who is the receiver of the illusion?? I get that the impossible triangle fools our brain into seeing something impossible, but who is our brain "fooling" into feeling pain or other emotions?
Pienso luego existo ..... siento luego existo . El teatro de la mente nos da la ilusión y la magia necesaria para socializar , sentir , amar .
You made a good point about how consciousness helps us survive by making us more empathetic to other conscious creatures. That certainly helped our own species or "tribe' survive.
Did you purposely avoid the more obvious reason consciousness evolved? Consciousness enables us to review our memories and imagine various future possibilities before we move. It is mostly about the fact that we are mobile creatures in a competitive environment. By using the wonderfully evolved data processing orchestra we are better equipped to avoid dangers and acquire food, shelter and reproductive companions. The more we had to relocate in response to environmental challenges, the more consciousness played a role in survival.The reason consciousness is difficult to define is that it is not one thing. It is a mixed bag of many complex organic activities and we are already finding that even the symbiotic bacteria that we carry are an essential part of the consciousness orchestra. It is so beautifully complex that folks are tempted to rush to one of the thousands of supernatural explanations before they have credible evidence.
The purpose of life is to feel life.
What this means on one level is that consciousness is the re experience of memory of an experience.
IF it is a new experience then we are openly memorizing it and constructing the conscious frame and picture of the experience for future reference. This is why a new journey takes a long time whereas the next experience of the journey feels shorter. We are not recording it all, just the delta, the difference.
Evolutionarily this is advantageous because it helps us to survive. It helps us to find food, mates and avoid danger.
When we feel something intangible we are remembering and replaying the neural record of how we should react to that circumstance or potential experience.
This doesn't always have to be experienced directly. We can learn it third hand through media and being educated by other's experiences.
How is this true? Because our feelings can be wrong and our memories are fallible, our senses even more so. Our educated guess can be completely wrong and once the experience is actually experienced we can then edit the mistaken recording and be more sure of it's correctness. Even if it is still full of holes.
This is why some experiences are beyond us. We simply cannot relate to them. Death, childbirth for a genetic male etc...
Ultimately a new experience is a wonder because we give it a blank page and put upon it all our feelings.
My guess is that out there in spacetime is that everything is so uncertain so random so incomprehensible that creation constructed itself lifeforms like ourselves in order to experience itself. It created in its own way an interface to make sense of things and to guide itself through this space. Perhaps all lifeforms are there doing the same in order to experience itself. I believe everything is consciousness trying to be conscious of itself.
Was hoping this would answer the question I've been asking myself since I was a child, but it doesn't. Of course consciousness is an illusion in the sense that what I experience as red is just my internal representation of what signals my eyes are sending to my brain. But why do I need the subjective experience of red, or pain, or heat etc. and how does that work?
You need the subjective experience of pain to keep you from hurting yourself like Cutting your finger off
Fascinating. Thank you.
What is the name of the song being played in the background?
This video is special.
Are you in the Cotswolds? That stream looks incredibly familiar!!
I've noticed that I can type, think of the sound of the words of what I'm thinking, and imagine an image, such as my son's face, all at the same time.
but - why can't I, for example, imagine the sound of /two/ words, both being said at the same time? why can't I imagine what two tunes would sound like when played in unison?
is this personal to me? is it something that could be learned with practice? or is it something fundamental to how human consciousness is put together?
Your operating system doesn't support it lol
Kae, if I rephrase your question it gets more interesting in my estimation. Here goes:
What prevents you from splitting your focus into two parts?
While we background that question, why can some people whistle a tune while cooking, what is likely to stop them whistling?
Driving and talking can work, can be dangerous.
Your brain is good at doing stuff, one at a time. However, it also has different parts processing different things. One bit does sound, another images, another words. Consider it three processors, but that can only do one thread at a time, connected with one bus.......
Try having two emotions at once. Happy and sad at once doesn't work. You can switch between them, quickly, but you can't have them both in the same instant.
Anders Holm ambivalence
However, that is a symptom of schizophernia.
It's often hate+love to their relatives.
This fellow appears within my consciousness and tells me its an illusion. Guess I can't trust him then.
One of the gifts that humans have is being able to create models (in our brain) of other people. We can emulate other people's actions, voices, and even thoughts. Consciousness may be the capability to model ourselves, and in turn, to model ourselves modeling ourselves. The illusion is like placing 2 mirrors facing each other, where you can "see into infinity".
The feels.
The analogy about the impossible triangle could be said about consciousness originating in the brain, like the illusion of a flat earth and the sun and stars evolving around the earth. Consciousness is of nature, and likely has its origins in the foundations of existence itself. Perhaps consciousness is the empty void simply developing a personality through self reflection (I to I, II to II, IIII to IIII, and so on)
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness...." - Albert Einstein.
It's always nice if Einstein has your back ;)
I should say that the wording gets super tricky though. The sense of being human for me definitely comes from the brain, so I would argue human consciousness is from the brain, there's not much to find outside the brain, unless you are prepared to consider things like ESP research (the later stuff is experimentally better). I like to think of awareness as fundamental, rather than using the word consciousness.
To my, consciousness this is in my list of life's great mysteries. I do not know the answers, but this type of question keeps me up at night...
Ok let's just say you're right for a minute...and consciousness is just an illusion. What sort of predictions does this "theory" offer up?
Surely if consciousness is an illusion, there should be some testable differences between it & theories that embrace consciousness.
Unless or until we can delve into the non-physical, speculating about non-physical consciousness is only sidestepping the question. Pretty much what Descartes did.
Consciousness is real, physical and it seems to be linked with the perception of time. Now, Time may very well not exist in the Universe and it may be a biological illusion but the creation of personal timeline is very much physical, separating our existence in past (memories), future (imagination) and present (conscious existence).
This also means that, at least at some level, consciousness is not a unique human trait. And this opens up a huge window of experimental exploration.
When we say something is an illusion, we are saying that it exists in someone's consciousness but not in objective reality. We a priori admit to consciousness being real to even use the word illusion. By very simple logic, then, my consciousness cannot be an illusion to me. Can someone else's consciousness be an illusion to my mind? Sure. Go back to Descartes on automata for a discussion of this.
This whole discussion of "conscious living creatures" is a fine philosophy salon but it would be a mistake to dignify it as "science". Very humane & humanistic for someone else to empathize with me as a conscious living feeling being, but this comes from the speaker's emotions & intuition. They didn't arrive at these beliefs by using science. Every application of scientific method would find "particles & the void" at every point in my brain. A few hundred years ago, it was customary to mention God in any scientific work. Now we feel we've moved beyond that. But how is gushing over another person's feelings any different? You don't see them, you can't measure them, you just believe them to be there, it feels good to talk about them.
Mr. Chopra wrote "The hard problem of consciousness cannot be solved by assuming a physicalist ontology", Why not? I believe our brains generate our perception/consciousness just as our brains generate the sounds and colours as we percieve them in our heads, Colours don't exits per se, it's our brain transforming light of different wavelenghs into colours (i.e. our brains "paint" what we see in our mind's eye. Similarly with sound.
I think it's a matter of time before scientists figure this out. I know this statement sounds preposterous now, but it would also have been just as preposterous to state that our brains generate sounds and colours 200 years ago.
"you might as well suggest, it's been said, that number emerged from biscuits" lol
I think the evolutionary advantage of consciousness is that it gives us emotions such as the ability to desire things that are not necessary for survival but will nevertheless enrich our existence. Curiosity, or a thirst for knowledge concerning something unfamiliar to you, can - if acted upon - result in the discovery of improvements to your chances of survival or lengthen your lifespan or simply make your life more enjoyable. I don't believe it is possible to be curious without first being self aware.
Of course it's possible. If you think thr brain generates conscious experiences, then the causal neural activity already exists, so the cause of your behavior is already there
While I don't think it's possible to dismiss the benefits of consciousness mentioned at the end of the video, for all we know these benefits are exaptations, not adaptations. What is the initial evolutionary drive for consciousness? Where can we find its benefits at an initial, basic level?
Thinking about and discussing that topic is fun, yet trying to understand it seems like an endless task. I prefer the mysterious unknown and try to get enjoyment out of it with humour. (Reggie Watts is one of my greatest Idols in that regard)
"I feel, therefore I am, therefore you feel and you are, too." seems like it would bestow an evolutionary advantage of, as a predator, more accurately predicting the behavior of one's prey and, more generally, facilitating the types of inhibitors necessary for social behavior.
I agree with many of the comments questioning the definition of the word "consciousness" - what is Dr. Humphrey's definition?
Is this definition of consciousness a boolean, or a spectrum? If it is a spectrum, how would it be measured/quantified?
Does it have to be measured and quantified in a standard we know now? Do we use numbers to quantify consciousness? If I was a "57", would that be large for the spectrum of consciousness or small?
Could consciousness be explained in its most simple form as electrical activity in the brain that is aware of its own electrical potential? We can then place each individual in the centre of their own reference frame in ‘the moment of now’ relative to this electrical activity. It is this personalization of the brain that gives us the concept of ‘mind’. Because we are all in the center of our own reference frame we all have an individual view of the Universe being able to look back in time in all directions at the beauty of the stars!
+An artist theory on the physics of 'Time' as a physical process. Quantum Atom Theory-- Agreed, all NOW is but the wavefront of experience, no time, just constant change. Mindfulness, consciousness is how an organism sorts out and keeps track of the constantly changing universe.
when a person is born colour-blind, is it possible for that person to "imagine" the missing color?
is it possible for a 3-colour-coned person to imagine what a tetrachrome would see?
can profoundly deaf people imagine sound?
related: we live in a 3D world. is it possible to imagine a 4D shape comfortably enough to rotate it?
Good questions. I have thought to myself the same as well.
To all questions: No.
we live in a 4d world (time passes) we have a problem imagining/navigating 3d spaces (why we still inhabit/shape a series of 2d floors and stack them into a house as were not comfortable with more complex )
so as last guy said not really
Alan Doherty I think it could be possible for a select few to be able to project their thoughts onto a 4 dimensional space, but I would say that evolutionarily humans have evolved for several million years in a mostly 2d world, such as is the savannah to most intents and purposes. But I think it is only possible to carry out such thoughts because the concept of a dimension is something projected onto the universe, just as there is no such thing as a perfect sphere. It's because this concept is created, and not experienced (like colour), that any answer to kae verens question must be subjective to a certain extent, although their are people who can solve a digital 4d Rubik's Cube.
Alan Doherty Well, I like to think of it like seeing microscopic slices of 4d space inside the 3rd dimension. It's like the way a 2d plane is made up of small 1d lines. Similarly, we can experience time from the 4th dimension without seeing ALL time there has been since the big bang.
Explaining everyone else's consciousness is not so hard; it is the explanation of your own that presents the hard problem. It is much like trying to lift yourself up off the floor by pulling on your own bootstraps. If you are strong enough, it will work for lifting others around you, but never yourself.
I wish deepak would use his own page to proselytise his woo woo.
I have a genuine enquiry, and we were asked to leave questions for the follow up film, not take advantage.
I'd like to know how a person who is sleep walking can perform complex tasks, and can be unaware of these events once conscious?
Thank you.
Organisms find themselves evolved into a state or niche, they are armed with sensory apparatus and the neural network, to such an extent they are at the leading edge of the evolutionary point in the ongoing unceasing constant change that is the universe unfolding. There is no time. Only change. Consciousness is the neural apparatus keeping track of change, meaning time is an index for the mind. the reverberations of short term memory and the ability to form long term memory is the goal of being aware.
I like it a lot, but don't really understand why is this series has so low number of views? It seems to be professionally made, quite interesting topics. Why is that not even close to 1M views in each series?
+Igor Kostin because its not synced up to a rap song or contain piano kitty
+realcygnus it doesn't have enough women in it.
When God said 'Let there be light.' Is the moment consciousness began.
but could god be a state of consciousness
But there is no God
@@___Truth___ god is who you want God to be
Consciousness is the only thing that you can consider is probably real. But does everyone has it?
I hope that the greater understanding of how consciousness works will lead to some help for the many people who suffer the effects of chronic pain. For those people, something has gone horribly wrong and they continue to experience pain after the stimulus that triggered it has been removed.
I think, therefore I am - I feel therefore I am. Is not feeling akin to thinking? Do I simply think that I feel something, or do I feel that I think something? What is the difference between thinking and feeling? Do we not feel when we think? Do we not think when we feel? Are thinking and feeling not synchronous? Are they distinct or the same? Consciousness is awareness of thought or feeling - more correctly, of thought and feeling. Can thought be distinct from feeling? Are they not inseparable parts of a whole - a whole that we call consciousness?
7:25 - "When I observe this, from the theater of my mind..." What is this entity doing the observing, this "I"? It's not the brain - we've already established that the brain is producing the correlate. What's this "extra observation" and this thing perceiving the "appearance of a pain sensation"?
Exactly there is a fundamental awareness or no-thing that is experiencing this theater of mind - body - universe
in my opinion that is your true nature formless awareness
Sir Roger Penrose in his works dichotomize problem of consciousness by asking question: Is consciousness deterministic?
If it is, then for us "all hopes are lost". We would never understand what consciousness is. He rigorously proved it implying Gödel's incompleteness theorems.
If it not deterministic, than our view of a brain as a completely logical machine is inconsistent. There have to be some distinctly nondeterministic element from witch our consciousness emerges.
Assuming you prefere latter choice, I suppose my question is this - where would you look for that nondeterministic element? In the world of subatomic particles or in holistic ideas of Stanislav Grof and Alan Watts?
As Morpheus would say "What is real? How do you define 'real'? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain."
Personally I think being alive is quite weird once you become aware of being alive. I mean here I am guided in life by a three pound sponge looking object inside my head and with out it I just become a complex organic object where a common house fly is superior to me.
Can we measure how much we are concious?
Does the quantity of our consciousness vary by time?
Do different persons have different levels of consciousness?
Are children more or less conscious than adults?
How is it switched off every night? (Is it switched off?)
How much do we do without impinging on the conscious?
Is consciousness the ability to have an image of the world, or is it the habit of referencing oneself as an observer?
Is self recognition the same as being conscious or is that an even rarer effect?
Is not recognising your reflection any guide to not being conscious?
As someone said: Now you tell me, is this true that i exist therefore i think? How can you think without existing? First there must be existence in order to think.
sigur, Mircea... someone else said 'i am therefore why think?!' The professor comes up with 'i feel therefore i am' Well, how about in deep sleep- you feel nothing and yet are you not?! The problem with this is that his focus is on the object [feeling in this case] not on the subject that experiences it, i.e. who is the one who feels? which is way more interesting to look at because this 'i' is the root of all... perception, thinking, feeling, doing... being. 'i am a scientist and therefore i must look at things a certain way'... well, that's a pretty tough self imposed limitation on the field of view. [liceul 1 hd iti spune ceva?]
But will it blend?
Definitetly stuff people should read about.
Terrific video. Since you mentioned the evolutionary aspects of consciousness I wish you had touched on the subject of animal consciousness. We keep expanding our estimation of how much consciousness a given animal can have. So, what is the simplest level of life in which consciousness can be found? Consciousness certainly started long before our primate ancestors came along. How far back can it be traced?
Where do you personally believe consciousness ends? At a microorganic level? Are all animals conscious? Are jellyfish conscious? And trees? If not, why not? Can a human being ever manufacturer a conscious being, or is it too difficult? We can certainly create a machine that responds to outside stimuli in a way that another one might not, but is this consciousness?
Thank you for your video
How do we shut off the illusion of pain
a "non-standard" VR model such as MBT can explain most of these how's & even some of the why's quite simply.....as well as being the only satisfactory interpretation of QM & other fundamental scientific principles..... that I'm aware of...... it is a shell with most of the pieces in place that really can unite physics/meta-physics/philosophy/theology/para-normal/supernatural under a single overarching understanding.
I feel, therefor I am. What are the evolutionary advantages to be able to feel sorrow, love and hate? These feelings, I find sometimes to be utterly unlogical in the decisions we make. Love makes as behave in ways that lessen our chances of attracting the person we have feelings for. Sorrow make as set aside lots of important things and hate, well... You get the picture.
I interpret the conclusion of this video to be linked to Richard Dawkins's "meme" theory. Would I be correct in this link or have I misunderstood this explanation for consciousness?
Also, would this video concur with panpsychism or are they exclusive concepts?
Why is there a consciousness at all? Why doesn't our bodies just respond to stimuli without having a conciousness feel a tangible effect of stimuli. Do any complicated enough physical processes also generate consciousness? Are insects conscious? Can computers become concious? Inferred logic dictates the answer to be yes, but it cannot say why.
The recognition of a body reacting require consciousness.
May I suggest “The Myth of Religious Neutrality” by Professor Roy A Clouser Ph.D.
why do we experience dreams while we asleep? could consciousness be the dream that runs those dreams? is consciousness the link between quantum mechanic state and the atoms of the neurons in the brain ? or is it just a simulation to keep us busy ?
What if consciousness is just an instrument of the brain to diagnose and direct its own activity. It would make total sense from an evolutionary standpoint to possess such an instrument. A machine that is able to at least get an overview of its own functions and adjust them to the challenges at hand will be more effective than machines without these properties.
The sense of wonder we feel when we think about our own thinking might stem from the selective focus of consciousness. We are not able to visualize all hidden processes that lead to one of our thought, we mostly see the result which lies at the end of these processes. This could be due to the need of our brain to reduce complexity and focus only on central aspects of its own activity. Therefore we have this feeling that there is an enourmous depth beneath us we aren't able to grasp.
I learned the basics of coding lately and I was amazed at how many lines of code can go into a program that seems quite trivial when one just looks at the graphical interface. A user that doesn't know how to code will look at the program and perceive less complexity at first glance and think mostly about the way he wants to use the program. But eventually this user might wonder how the program looks beneath the surface, not able to understand its inner workings. I think this experience is quite similar to how we perceive our consciousness.
At about 5 mins he says "given that consciousness has evolved by natural selection"
I ask on what evidence can he say that consciousness has evolved by natural selection?
My question is this: The Pear Labs experiments at Princeton seemed to show that consciousness could, under some circumstances, directly affect the material world.
I am aware that those studies have been vigorously attacked, but I am not satisfied that those attacks completely discredit the work.
What do you think?
3:10. What does he mean 'what if the pain I experience doesn't really exist at all' Surely it must exist- he can feel it.
I see Humphrey doesn't say consciousness is an illusion. Plus i agree with what he says (things we are conscious of are illusions) but i also think consciousness is an illusion, although two illusion words here mean something different respectively. The word illusion which we use in our daily lives may signify something post-consciousness, but when I (and some people who think likewise) say that consciousness is an illusion, I mean there is no substance to consciousness. We, as conscious beings, are merely a part of the space and i dare to say we are the parts of the space that think that "exist". We sure exist, but no more than the keyboard i am typing with now :) In that sense consciousness is an illusion. We'll get back to being the general part of the space which doesn't think that exists once we die.
You are your brain experiencing its own complex physical processes. Consciousness may actually just be a property of systems.
That attempt at an explanation of consciousness isn't very fulfilling though. In fact, it still feels rather empty. I could make a very complex clock mechanism with a vast number of physical processes... but no one would believe or expect it to be "experiencing it's own complex physical processes.". No, we would expect it to experience nothing. The question then is what makes us different than the complex clock mechanism. There *seems* to be no physical process which gives rise to an experience.
My explanation may seem rather unfulfilling and empty because it really is just a creative re-phrasing of what already seems apparent to us. It's not any new revelation but a different way at looking and the boring physical, mechanical world that we already observe. It may be that the reality behind consciousness isn't amazing at all - it might be just as mundane as chemical reactions happening in the right places at the right times - a chemical system. Though this might not be the case, and there might yet be some larger hidden mechanism behind consciousness, however that makes more mystical assumptions and thus I am inclined to accept the idea that makes the least assumptions based on our current evidence. Your point about expecting a clock to experience nothing is a fantastic and valid one - if we look at consciousness from the standpoint of it arising from chemical systems, we must then ask *what* makes this system special, and perhaps other systems are, to some degree, conscious - even where we would expect them not to be. These mysteries, as far as we can tell right now, are impossible to solve. There are no conceivable tests that you can run to prove the consciousness of a system, at least not yet. We even simply assume that other humans are conscious because they have brains like us - but we really cannot look at an individual brain and prove that that system is in any way conscious.
I'm somewhat satisifed (but unhappy with) simply stating that we don't yet have a clue. We speculate this and that about consciousness, but I suspect its true nature is as distant to us as quantum mechanics is to a caveman -- maybe not. It just seems like we've not made even an inch of progress is explaining it after hundreds of years of science.
I suspect (and hope) we will one day have a good grasp, but I suspect it's quite some time away.
I'm personally not impressed with many of the functional explanations of consciousness, though as I don't believe they actually describe any fundamental process.
On the other hand, I'm certainly not ready to hop on board with any new age quantum mechanical guru woo-woo :)
Is consciousness identical in person to person?
I don't understand why he says " it appears AS pain " is it not pain already? can anyone help me with this please?
Dear Professor Humphrey: I believe one of the core questions regarding consciousness is not addressed in this video. That core question is: is consciousness a product of the brain (generated inside the brain and an "illusion"), OR is consciousness something outside of the brain, and perceived by the brain. Currently most scientists assume that it's ridiculous to even consider this. To give an example: we would never say that the sunlight we see, is an illusion. Our eyes/brain perceive that light, and we all know that this light still exists when we die. Evolutionary our brain (and the brains of most creatures) learned to perceive and interpret light, for the obvious advantages it has in biological survival. Why would it not be possible that consciousness (the state of being self-aware) is a state (field or potentiality) that is prior to the brain? In other words the hypothesis is that consciousness existed before our brains were evolved (and complex) enough to perceive it. I think scientists should be bold and look into this. My personal observation by the way, is that "thinking" is not the same as being self-aware.
Expected some pretty hectic debating in the common section below! :D
I don't see how the argument hangs together. The only things that can affect behaviour are the "neural correlates" and they can do their stuff without the consciousness. We can learn and adapt as social animals without ever being conscious of it. Like a computer doing what-ifs and becoming a better chess player, it can do all that without switching on the display. Awareness is NOT required, and neither is consciousness. But it's there - hence the problem.
Name one thing that you are attributing to consciousness that could not be done unconsciously, by the "neural correlates".
I suspect that every living thing is conscious to varying degrees. It appears to come out of self modifying algorithms. In order to have an algorithm that can moduify itself one needs to have some kind of a goal, a way to measure the achievement of that goal and some kind of a mechanism to modify the parameters or the entire algoritm.
Before posting my question, I present these premises:
The idea of scientifically examining consciousness from an evolutionary point of view is sound, since evolution is proven beyond all doubt AND because studying evolution has always historically led to other scientific revelations. So the idea that there is some evolutionary advantage or "purpose" to nature evolving consciousness seems like a good staring-point.
Indeed, it is easy to see how consciousness can lead to empathy, ethics and morality without the simplistic supposition of an external supernatural entity. Those "feeling" characteristics of consciousness could have enormous survival value for us or any species. That value should be observable and testable by examining the evolutionary record and history.
Unlike the common use of the word theory, ( which is a guess or hunch) Scientific “theory” must be testable, verifiable and potentially falsifiable.
Evolutionary selection of higher consciousness or self-awareness or ‘feeling’ seems not only plausible, but eminently provable.
However, it seems Professor Humphrey is suggesting that consciousness is an illusion. So my question is...
HOW do you design a scientific test to show consciousness is an illusion?
Without using clever optical illusions as metaphors, HOW can we test the consciousness-as-illusion theory?
If consciousness is not in us but recieved like alike a tv what's left of us when we die.....
I think consciousness is very real; it is as real as "don't touch the fire it burns", or I'm hungry therefore I eat;
but consciousness is an instinct little bit more tremendously complex ..
If a dog could choose between a smashed squirrel and a sandwich, it probably would eat both.. and so would do some human being probably.
but still we can have a deeper and complex chace of choosing... (I only drink water from the mount everest snow, but I eat just macdonald)
Despite what we are and what we lived, we have even the possibility choose to moove to higher step of consciousness for as thin as it can be,
I aware there for I am
QUESTION(S): Evo biologists make the point that the eye has evo benefit on a planet bathed in sunlight, and so has evolved independently several times. What about neurons and central nervous systems? Are they too independently evolved? Or do all animals with neurons have some common ancestor?
do we really think or is it just talking again but silently without moving the mouth a way of rehearsing because nobody can hear you and is it consciousness or a second person? and doesn't it scare anyone when it talks back? and even questions you and is it a form of pregnancy, is it possible for men to become pregnant?. and what does one do when it becomes like wilie coyote from roadrunner and what do the beeps mean, two?
"What if the pain I feel does not exist at all?" What about the experiencing (consciousness) of this non-existing pain...? Is this experiencing (consciousness) also non-existing..? If so, what does exist..? Does this video exist..? If "yes" why..? What is the difference between experiencing the video and experiencing the color red, or experiencing pain..?
The experience of the pain does not physically exists. You brain literally hallucinates everything. You don't even see the world but your brain interprets the visual information and creates what it thinks it's looking at. That's why when people ingest psychedelic drugs it messes with things they see, hear or feel. None of the things in conscioussness are tangible physical things just illusions.
Devil Dude. You say: None of the things in conscioussness are tangible physical things just illusions.
Response: Do you believe there is a "real external reality made of matter" outside consciousness..? Or do you hold to an idealist perspective..?
There's reliable amount of data gathered using really sensitive measuring equipment that do suggest that reality is made of matter(There are question about what makes up this matter but that's too long to get into). Just because what the inside of your head generates isn't real things but pattern doesn't mean the world outside does not exists. I hate to use a computer analogy but it would be easiest here.
The software that runs on computer are just a stream of 1s and 0s through gates and at the end you get a screen to render a lot of things based on certain information. There's code that dictates what the final result will be but the software that outputs to your display is just a result of thousands of lines or millions of bits of code being processed. Obviously computers are far more simpler and less dynamic so the code can be physically read but processing it can create something else(new if you will). The brain is in fact similarly tangible and everything that physically happens to it affects your consciousness. To be idealistic and assume the internet exists inside your computer might be dumb. It exists regardless of your computer.
Same goes for the rest of reality, which has existed for a few billions years without any living thing with consciousness...at least in our part of the universe.
As much as the idea of a Boltzmann brain is interesting to think about, I would still like to play my dice saying at the end it would not matter if anything outside your brain exists or not, as you would never know and it's the same as any other scenario you can imagine where reality is not as concrete.
tl;dr- No. Reality very much Matter...don't do something you think you can stop regretting the next morning.
Devil Dude. What are your thoughts on consciousness itself..? Do you think Dennett is correct; that consciousness is some kind of magic trick of the brain, or do you think Chalmers version of panpsychism: "some fundamental physical entities have mental states." is more plausible.
I do believe in a somewhat deterministic reality, maybe we are just philosophical zombies. If the world is only made up of philosophical zombies than what difference does it make if you think you feel. Nothing in that statement undermines what we call subjective experience. Subjective experience is made up of all the past experiences and future expectations thereof, not magic but still a lot goes into to create it.
On the subscription of a single philosophy of consciousness, I would like to go more the Anil seth's approach to stuff. It's a result of a complex system and like all complex systems it may not be reduced the sum of its parts. It is an emergent phenomenon that seems to very specific to functioning of mammalian brains that led us to this road to probably nowhere. Being emphatically devoid has made me consider other people's position from their point of view which really makes the idea of direct link between two brains using neural laces connected to a translating neural net modem really worthwhile for me. At that point if we can artificially create something that is conscious and experience it to confirm I would say we have come one step further to possible immortality.
As for the east's approach to pansychism, it has always been wishy washy thing for no consideration. It's just made of things you would say that "makes sense" but has no value or way to prove it. Something the human brain does from time to time, creates things that cannot be proven and have to be taken at face value. Look at all the religions that exist and how many of them rely on the subscription of faith as it can't be proven. Almost as if that's the best version a brain can come up with for something that does not exist.
conciousness is an emergent property of the complex brain.
we look at a computer and we think little of the thousands of pieces of information, combined over a vast network of switches - all of that make programs, store information and so on in dead computer hardware.
yet we find it so hard to believe a dynamic, flexibel, adapting brain could perform the same basic pinciple: from basic pieces of information, basic chemical processes, it produces layers upon layers of complexity.
ultimately it results in a model of how we view our world, it produces variables internally we call emotions, it stores and reshapes memories in our personal dynamic databank.
If you cant believe that the brain is the only thing responsible, then i have something cool (and a bit sad) for you:
There are many people who suffer brain damage due to accidents, health problems, etc. Some parts of the brain are linked to certain functions, such as a section controling speach. If those part gets damaged, you may be unable to speak a proper sentence, maybe unable to read, unable to understand speech.
With alzheimer's memory is reduced. With a concussion you may suffer a decrease in your ability to focus on a task.
Heck, there is Deep Brain Stimulation, in which small electrodes are stuck into a brain of a person with severe fears or other neurological issues. This helps to make people feel better or function better, taking away feares or severe tremors in their movements.
There are even types of medicine, and even some drugs, that change your brains chemistry (usually temporarily) and totally change your conciousness and how you experience the world around you.
I expect a future experiment in which a super computer or server will be used to simulate the human brain.
My premise... consciousness IS the ghost in the machine...
...Our brains are numb, they have no sense of feeling/touch like our skin, hence our thoughts, memories, feelings, identity -- if indeed, a physiological phenomenon, all happen in limbo, disassociated space, allowing itself to build stories, via reason/logic and Faith (its all Faith really), that serve our survival... so much so that we don't even, or can't, question their/our very nature, with-out, seemingly, hitting a brick wall of non-explicity.
This could be a built in self preservationary adaptation.. there are plenty of examples of how some people lose this ability/connection, and cease to be able to function, as well as drugs that can unhinge our-selves from our stories that allow us to feel at home in our comfortable, deluded, "realities."
Brain/mind = phantasmagorical conjuring machine extraordinaire.
Language and identity are technologies/tools we've evolved/created, like the lever, wheel, ..ologies, interwebs... all to serve our survival and thrival.
I don't see a reason not to include the feeling of pain as part of reality. A psychologist would expect consciousness evolved to influence our social psychology.
When computers eventually reach the singularity, will they have a sense of self?
No. They will have a representation of self, but I doubt the computer will "experience" the self.
Arnold Kim Why do you doubt that? There seems to be a double standard here by anti-physicalists: you physicalists don't understand consciousness to be able to infer that it is a physical process, but we understand it enough to be able to tell you you will never understand it and will never produce it artificially. The point of this video was that the self that we perceive is a representational model, one formed by the brain about itself.
I do a lot of software programming and in narrow areas can beat human intelligence (quite easily). I can design feedback systems based on representational models. I do not feel like I am building the beginnings of real sentience. No one feels guilty about turning off my programs.
Multiply the degree of sentience in this machine intelligence (which in my view is zero), by a googleplex and you still have zero.
Representations of self awareness is not the same thing as the 'real thing', just as a schematic diagram of consciousness is not its equivalence.
When you, the uploader were 2, you thought your consciouness directly affected your actions and the internal structure of your body was exactly the same regardless of your consciousness and it was impossible for one person to read another person's mind regardless of what technology they used. Maybe the physical world doesn't exist at all but the conscious world exists for you in the following way:
The whole truth is determined entirely by the state of your consciousness at each time. Your reaction to pain is entirely a response to your consciousness. Other people only exist when you see them and are not conscious. You got mislead into believing brain activity gives rise to consciousness by trusting what other people said to you that people saw a connection between other people's brain activity and their actions but you thinking brain activity gives rise to consciousness is actually a type of consciousness. Even if you did use a device to see the connection between your consciousness and your brain activity, the seeing that connection would be a result of your consciousness and you wouldn't know for sure that it wouldn't happen some time in the future, you suddenly get shocked to see different brain activity going on in your brain that you would have previously predicted would give rise to a different state of your consciousness than you actually have, which you would interpret as a violation of the laws of physics that the universe had previously been following and as consciousness being separate from the physical world.
How to write software that translates information from sensors into virtual world that includes a virtual image of itself does not seem such a challenge compared to organising civilisation into something sustainable, progressive and satisfying to sentient beings.
The somewhat teleogical evolutionary argument for the "why" of consciousness at the end is not convincing to me. Things like empathy and can be computed without being "felt". It is not hard to imagine evolution selecting for sophisticated behavioural calculators. This is the "zombie" argument put forward by the philosopher of mind David Chalmers, who coined the term "The Hard Problem of Consciousness". David Chalmers would say we have no choice but add consciousness as an additional "primary colour" of physical interactions (beyond 4 fundamental forces, matter, etc.).
Hi, want to share about it, your theory is essential,
Maybe before 30000 years our brain didnt make feel us believe that we are spiritual
beings and there is a life above but after 10000 there began evolution for that with reason for rise of religions
And now science with feeling of reality and hope for eternity invented.
Thanks.
Calling consciousness an illusion is silly, much like saying that the apple is an illusion, because what is really there is a collection of atoms that are together in a loose confederation in an apple-shape...
Just as the cell membrane evolved to help maintain the integrity of the cell, consciousness evolved to help the creature to better associate circumstance with opportunity, and thus have better (And more frequent) opportunities, as well as avoiding impairment and non-existence.
What if we are all just physical and when you die is the same as before you were born?
Consciousnesses cannot be an illusion. If it’s an illusion, then the illusion itself is consciousness. There is no place in the laws of physics for illusion. The real mystery is that of subjectivity. How and why does irreducible subjectivity arise from objective processes happening in the brain? That’s the hard (impossible) problem of consciousness
I really don't want to sound arrogant. I first spontaneously added this remark, then removed it, but... ... I really had this understanding when I was about 5 years old. What's more: I seem not to be the only one. Many people I spoke share this memory. Somehow, children seem to ask these questions quite naturally: why am I Me and not You? Is my sensation of Red the same as yours or do You perceive it as Green? Why does Pain feels as Pain or is it just the sensation of something very unpleasant? It is at least a very distinct Kind of Unpleasiness. Why does it take a life time, only to re-ask us these childish questions, and still not able to answer them satisfactory? What drives you to seek answers for simple questions that children seem to understand a-priori? And why do I?
People who believe in magic are simply confused.
As a materialist (I am educated in physics and math), I find almost every sentence uttered in this video to be nonsense.
It makes the common mistake of assuming that a noun names some "thing" - whereas some nouns names a process.
Consciousness is not magic. It is nothing more than the operation of a brain. When we are aware of the environment, we are simply processing what our sensors are detecting. When we are aware of being aware, we are simply processing our memory of some prior events. These processes may affect other processes (e.g. hormones) which we may names "emotion" - but again, it is a process - and there is no magic. People who believe in magic are simply confused.
Professor Humphrey explains pain thus: pricking a finger causes the brain to create a neural correlate of pain which appears in the theater of mind letting us know we are in the presence of a pain sensation. That is a bad and useless explanation.
We experience pain when receptors cells in the finger change polarity in response to the cellular damage. Nerve cell depolarization causes the neurotransmitters to be released resulting in a cascade of neural impulses up the nerve fiber to the brain. The single is then propagated to various areas of the brain and it is that propagation we experience as pain. That’s the sort of explanation is useful and much more worthy of the Royal Institute.
I think the idea that consciousness is some great mystery for science to solve is misguided. It is more like a category of topics such as perception, memory, decision making and language processing to name a few. Out understanding in those ares is growing all the time. As we know more and more about those topics the problem of consciousness will be much less of a problem.
The word "Consciousness" has meaning? It clearly has no proven definition. Surely it would be more rewarding and useful to concentrate on the nuts and bolts and less on the bigger picture. Since if the bigger picture is about the definition of consciousness then that is likely to go on forever with no definite answers. Where as, for example, the study of how neurons communicate, has and is moving forward. Why do people need to define "Consciousness" anyway? If we concentrate working from the bottom up, it will get us to the definition anyway, if there is one.
At last Science has found something that is not made of matter and energy that needs analysis. Questions about consciousness are unquestionably the most important questions Science has ever asked. Yet, the question will evolve as understanding progresses. The real question is, what is Spirit. Consciousness is simply the only manifestation of Spirit that Science can identify. Clearly, Life, Spirit and Conciousness are three different things. There is so much to learn.
Can you imagine a living creature who arrives at an entanglement receiver without his spirit? How could it get transmitted? It is not matter or energy! Is it dead or alive?
All the questions about how we perceive time.
Do animals have spirits, or just souls?
Does leaving religion out of the discussion help us be objective or empirical?
I expected more. You don't answer the question by simply declaring that consciousness is an "illusion." Why ever should we believe that it is? What, in fact, does it mean to say that consciousness is an illusion? It's an arbitrary move to say so and, while attempting to do away with everything non-physical, only creates an additional layer of confusion. I suspect Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations came nearer the right answer, namely, that the puzzle itself exists only in language and arises when we twist words from their usual meanings.
That zoom tho.. Don't you guys own a wide angle lens?
So there's no mind-body dualism. I hope that's not news to anybody. Other than that, the metaphor of consciousness being an illusion doesn't explain anything to me.
Plus, I don't think we understand the How good enough to explain the Why. Why can't a philosophical zombie exhibit all the behaviour Mr Humphrey described?
I think it's a matter of perspective. Try this: ronmurp.net/2014/09/14/consciousness-a-physicalist-perspective/.
The philosophical zombie is a fudge by Chalmers. He presumes to remove a consciousness from a human to leave a zombie, when there is not actual consciousness to remove.
Ron Murphy Thanks for the link but no, that text doesn't actually help with any of my questions or criticisms. Which is unsurprisingly since you state right at the beginning that it's for people who believe in mind-body dualism.
Going the step further from "consciousness is an illusion" to "there is no such thing as consciousness" as you do in your comment here ... well let's say it's not even a bad argument for me, it's just plain boring. Of course there's something we perceive as consciousness. When I use the concept of the philosophical zombie, I don't care how this consciousness perception comes about or whether "illusion" is a good description for it. I only care that the zombie doesn't have it. And any explanation of consciousness either has to explain what the difference between me and the zombie is or has to explain why the zombie cannot exist. Redefining the word "consciousness" until you no longer feel you have any explaining to do is not going to get you off the hook here.
Penny Lane "Which is unsurprisingly since you state right at the beginning that it's for people who believe in mind-body dualism." - No I don't. I start explaining that such dualist views prompted the post, not that it is an explanation only for dualists.
My actual words in the comments above were, "no actual consciousness to remove" (with not=no typo removed)
What I mean by that is that when Chalmers speaks of removing consciousness, that he does so as if it is something that can be removed such that his description of a Zombie would remain, when he has no evidence that this is what would happen.
To remove consciousness from a human brain requires the removal or damage to parts of the brain that contribute to consciousness. Remove the parts of the brain that together cause a human to appear as a conscious being and you are not left with a working zombie but an unconscious human. That is clearly the case from the many cases of brain injury and brain disease that neurologists have to deal with
In that sense the Zombie of Chalmers is a thought experiment that relies on the illusion that consciousness is something that can be removed and that would still leave a human behaving pretty much as they do with it.
Ron Murphy As I said, stating that the philosophical zombie is an impossibility and why exactly is a perfectly valid response. It is also a view that I tend to agree with, even though I acknowledge that I might be wrong here because I, as every other human being on this planet, don't actually know what consciousness is or how it works. "It's an illusion so you cannot remove it" doesn't explain anything though, it's just a cop-out.
Penny Lane It does explain that if it is illusory in that sense then it cannot be removed, because what is being proposed to be removed does not exist in a form that cannot be removed.
If someone proposed that water's wateriness could be removed from a glass of water and we'd have zombie water that looks and behaves as water does, then I think that responding that the wateriness is an inherent aspect of the collection of molecules that is water and cannot be removed without removing the water. I think that would explain why someone's illusions about the nature of wateriness is illusory. I don't think that would be a cop-out.
What's hard about the hard problem comes in two regards.
One is that it is as yet difficult to explain the mechanistic biological detail of what causes a brain to start to experience consciousness. This does not deny that we have an experience that we call consciousness but admits we don't know what it is about the brain that causes it, such that we don't know how to build a conscious system from scratch or build one from any other medium. This is a difficult, hard, problem, but it is not a claim that having the experience is illusory - as if we are believing falsely that we are having the experience.
The other is to suppose there is something about consciousness that is not the direct cause of the physical brain's behaviour. This view comes as the dualist mind, or as Deepak Chopra's fundamental consciousness idea, or the religious soul. It is these imagined immaterial notions that are being claimed to be illusory when it is said that consciousness is an illusion.
But illusions take many forms. To think the 2-D drawing of an impossible triangle because that's how it looks to the brain, or that the 3_D object viewed from a certain angle is actually an impossible triangle, is to fall for an illusion.
Even more subtly, to think that our internal brain perceptions are anything other than internal representations of the external objects we perceive is to fall for the illusion. That this type of illusion is subtle, and to a great extent unimportant, is part of the problem when we rely on witness statements. Experiments show that people can be deceived into thinking they saw things they did not. They suffered errors or perception, illusions, is perceiving something their eyes did not see.
As the famous Brunel once said, what is a biscuit without tea, what is ice without oxygen, but most of all what is life without death...
Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose postulate the transition point between quantum processes and directive information production in the mind as an event that takes place in the microtubules of neurons in the brain ( www.hameroff.com/penrose-hameroff/orchOR.html#Stuart Hameroff).
My question is how long do you believe it will take until a substantial collaborative effort between physicists and neurologists occurs and whether or not the general consensus supports the probable relationship between human consciousness and quantum physical processes which operate most probably with, perhaps, the non-physical lucidity of the fifth dimension.
We can describe a human zygote as unconscious, and we describe human adults as conscious. When then in the course of human development does consciousness arise?