Does consciousness exist reddit. I'm a freshman college student and am conducting a survey on consciousness for a scientific thinking project. So regarding "Consciousness does not exist, everything else does": Consciousness does not exist as an independent, unchanging thing, yes. Because it is infinite, it has no boundaries. If cogito ergo sum, i. Generally, though, people who think consciousness is a result of physical processes (say, brain processes) say that you're conscious in your body for the same reason your heart is pumping your blood - consciousness just picks out one of the features of a normal working human body Regarding whether consciousness exists, we have to differentiate two questions. If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. It doesn't exist in actuality. Neither provides explanatory power to anything. In answer to your question, I believe entropy is the only location (so to speak) consciousness can exist. Consciousness does not exist as an entity, but as a function. God is the foundation, the energy, and the wind that drives the ship of Consciousness. g. The self gets spread out when we die, but would still exist, if self could exist without consciousness. Where does the flame go, once the candle has burned out? I believe that consciousness is not a physical thing itself. Aug 11, 2022 · Consciousness can not simply be reduced to neural activity alone, researchers say. The topic is where does consciousness arise from and if it exists independent of the brain. In the case of the color red, it is the phenomenon of a brain interpreting the wavelength that a particular photon has. Why can't we apply the same methodology of saying 'free will does not exist' or 'free will is an illusion' to 'consciousness does not exist' or 'consciousness is an illusion'? This was a question asked in response to Sam's talk on free will. Human consciousness seems so complex because we can say so much with it. This view is very different from Hinduism. Or, in other terms, awareness is consciousness. so how can consciousness exist? If you can divide your brain into multiple distinct consciousness, it could simply mean consciousness is divisible/decomposible. I believe the conciseness is not stored in the brain, but is received by it. Doesn't really answer anything unless we know a bit more about consciousness. | Philosophy often grapples with unanswerable queries, leaving us with only one option: quietism – not the denial of answers, but a recognition Dimension with infinite possibility exists, and because infinite posibilties include consciousness that also exists. You and I don't exist is inherent identities. I'm not sure what compelling reason there is to doubt this. In a sense, we are looking at ourselves. The Buddha said Consciousness is not permanent. So, say the definition of consciousness is the abstract feeling and experience of being you, and the self-awareness that comes with it. Lol, there weren't too many choices when I first chose the tag, so I picked one that was closest. Instead I will take that central claim that they all make: "There is no hard problem of consciousness". Consciousness is omnipotent and omnipresent, being the source and substance of the Universe; it is omniscient knowing and aware of all life; it is beneficent and just emboyding all life, and Well really since the entire universe is just consciousness, Christ consciousness are people who focus on love and healing and opening one’s mind to raising its consciousness , anti christ consciousness would focus on hate and fear and violence, and I’d say you can see both globally. We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. This would mean that the entire idea of consciousness breaks the bounds of science and does not cooperate with how the rest of the universe works. If free will exists, that would favor survival for consciousness to funnel into one and block out all the "noise" which exists even in a sober brain But if free will does NOT exist it seems to favor the idea it is a byproduct and therefore may be something shared by incredibly simple forms/collections of matter Well, it does, but in definition only. Infinite possibility includes infinite dimensions, which also contains lower level dimensions, which contain lower dimensions, ect ect until 3 dimensions. Ok i exist, what does that mean? this objects exists? what does exist mean? what is consciousness? to be aware of something? to have senses, perception and have a mind? but what is consciousness without content? can it really be conscious if there is nothing to be conscious of? Of course, scientists are used to dealing with the unobservable. the "contents of consciousness", or "qualia") persists after death. Rather, it is a process supported by a physical thing (the brain in your body). I believe you and I exist as individual beings. For the thinkers I call neo-Kantian, the word consciousness to-day does no more than signalize the fact that experience is indefeasibly dualistic in structure. This would explain how these people suddenly gain clarity. Consciousness is required to perform thoughts, thinking. The brain has been deteriorating for years, how does it come back. That's a consequence of their uni-directional causal relationship to everything else. Just don't mistake it as some eternal thing and hold onto it. If you accept Idealism, the entire universe, with all first and second order phenomenon reduce to a single category of phenomenon, call it mental, or physical, doesn't really matter. The universe ceases to exist for me while I'm not consciousness. I'm saying the question itself only matters from the perspective of a conscious mind. It means that not subject, not object, but object-plus-subject is the minimum that can actually be. As we previously saw, the hard problem exists as long as subjective experience exists. Members Online Wutbot on "Life, Philosophy, Question": [r/philosophy] The biggest questions in life cannot be answered. This is what I refer to in the paper as "consciousness-as-property", and I go on at length about what exactly it would mean for that property to exist and why it does not. And this appeals to millions of people. Your thoughts already exist without consciousness, and your model of what is you and what is an apple already exist, but you also have a system that models how you are paying attention to those objects and to your internal models about those objects. But it's also possible that if the brain dies, atoms will be dissolved into particles from what was once consciousness as in the first law of conservation of energy, it states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, so isn't to say there is slight chance maybe in a x amount of years that part of our energy can be sandwiched again to make us 're-exist' in another form throughout the universe. What I wonder, is, how does this happen. All there is is consciousness, there are no objects, yet we can be sure that consciousness exists. Say we made a computer program that exactly matched the processing of a human brain. We are part of the universe, yet we look out at the universe. We don't know. I like Peter Godfrey-Smith's ideas of evolutionary consciousness, which basically say that qualitative interpretations of stimuli have an evolutionary benefit. As long as there exists something that cannot be observable from the 3rd person perspective, the hard problem of consciousness exists. And Sam replied 'consciousness is the one thing in the universe which cannot be an illusion'. To me its the other way around. My personal view is that we don't have any reasonable explanation of consciousness yet, but I see a material approach as offering the most productive path forward at this point in time. But Eternal Consciousness is not a Buddhist teaching. The reason being that there is plenty of evidence that the qualia or experiences "within" consciousness are dependent upon brain states. Gurus state, 'Everything is Consciousness'. It would behave as if it has a conscious. "Everything else does": No. It's a distinct question whether consciousness as it would be according to a given metaphysical proposal is in fact real. IF we do assume consciousness persists after death, there is still no reason at all to assume that thoughts, wants, desires, feelings, etc (i. when your brain dies. It does exist as a conditional thing. The consciousness did not deteriorate at all. We know that consciousness exists not through experiences, but through the immediate feeling of our feelings and experiences. Self or the feeling of self (in a unified sense, an identity) doesn't exist as anything other than a feeling in consciousness like a twinge in the knee. I believe consciousness exists as the "space" that allows for the experience of all phenomena. Dec 7, 2021 · Is consciousness possible without self-consciousness? And if so, would it still matter so much? And if so, would it still matter so much? At each stage in this process, you exist, but the notion that there is a single unique conscious self (a soul?) that persists over time may be grossly mistaken. Which views Consciousness as eternal. Our primordial consciousness is what makes us sentient and is not dependent on our brain. If consciousness does not reside in the brain or body, "where" is it? if consciousness could be "extracted" from the brain, could that mean that it could be done twice or more to create multiple instances of it? Ok, so my question is, does Dennet really deny that consciousness exists (consciousness in the sense used by 99% of people as awareness, subjectivity). If this interests you and have 2 minutes to spare, i would appreciate your insight. Perhaps what you have in mind is that people say that we cannot explain how consciousness is entailed by the relevant physical states. Consciousness does not exist in the same way that the color red does not exist: it is a construct to help us describe a certain phenomenon. Consciousness is the mechanism the universe uses to look at itself. Philosopher Peter Carruthers insists that conscious thought, judgment and volition are illusions. Finally, one of my friends, who is from Texas, proposed this: what if the concept of consciousness is merely a human creation, and does not actually exist? Our apparent consciousness may be an artefact of the simulation (meaning the universe changing over time, this is not implying the universe is being simulated Matrix-style). So, not only do I not know what consciousness is, or how it comes to be, or how to solve the hard problem of consciousness, but now I'm asking about why does it exist at all throughout animal life. Mainly because it could envigorate the case for dualism and not dismissing consciousness as physical processes, or reducing qualia to nothingness But to answer the question as directly as possible: If we mean by consciousness the Absolute Consciousness = Infinity, then no, nothing does or can exist outside of consciousness, since consciousness is infinite. I'm having trouble comprehending this essay in particular. I have seen some people suggest that consciousness could exist outside of the brain and that sparked my curiosity. Unbounded in every way. Which means I’m the hierarchy of reality… consciousness is at the top. The universe only exists because we are perceiving it. If there's no God as the source of consciousness, and we're the only beings with these properties in this vast, ever expanding universe, then why does consciousness exist at all? Why can't everything just be a "mindless", material object that continues to do whatever because its reality is predetermined? Consciousness is a difficult problem and there is no univocal answer to these kinds of questions in philosophy. In the unique case of consciousness, the thing to be explained cannot be observed. It is the place of perfect stillness. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. Substrate consciousness emerges out of our primordial consciousness, our natural state or pristine awareness. Recall the old riddle, “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?” That's why some popular forms of physicalism are actually eliminativist about consciousness, they would say that what we think consciousness is, is actually something that doesn't exist in this world, we are deeply wrong about the nature of consciousness, this is a path for example some philosophers take when they say consciousness is an illusion. Thus, all things that exist have a consciousness of some sort, but the actual functions of that consciousnesses varies from thing to thing. My question is, does this process really need a conscious observer to work? Think of it like this. Nirvana is not a state of Consciousness. That's why it feels like I jump forward in time when I fall asleep, experience some dreaming and then wake up again. I guess the question isn't even "why the universe exists", but rather: does the universe create consciousness does consciousness create the universe I think consciousness is the illusion of something singular that comes from different parts of the brain (and body) communicating with each other. But it does not, there is no observer, it just takes inputs and outputs and behaves as if there was an observer. They believe consciousness is independent of the material. Or does he redefine consciousness to mean something utterly different and then say "consciousness" does not exist? I believe the Universe is consciousness, and consciousness implies certain traits that could be identified as God, if you so wish to call it that. And he replied 'consciousness is the one thing in the universe which cannot be an illusion'. If it is to be akin to mass and charge, then consciousness would precede life. Electrons, for example, are too small to be seen but can be inferred. The question of who has consciousness is more complicated and depends on your philosophical and scientific perspective. subject and object are one reality, they are apparent parts of one whole. r/consciousness: For discussion of the scientific study of consciousness, as well as related philosophy. e. -----> This function is "knowing", and the awareness of this function is consciousness. by not leaving out the phenomenalism of it) and then even if you manage to do that via for instance an embodied and embedded mind view of mind and consciousness, then try to trace that back neural activity. Consciousness is the reason my reality exists, not the other way around in which my consciousness exists in a reality. why does consciousness exist, and what are the fundamental mechanisms or Processes that give rise to subjective awareness and the ability to perceive, think, and experience the world? It tries to make on-topic comments by identifying what reddit posts are about. It exists but is not Eternal. if you exist because you're aware, then you cease to exist when you stop being aware, i. Panpsychists believe that consciousness is some sort of fundamental piece of the universe, much like mass or charge. The weird thing about consciousness, and qualia, is that neither needs to exist. Whether you're convinced by the neuroscience or not, it's already problematic to conceptualize consciousness in a non-reductive way (e. Why can't we apply the same methodology of saying 'free will does not exist' or 'free will is an illusion' to 'consciousness does not exist' or 'consciousness is an illusion'? Even people with distorted consciousness exist in pattern - hence we can work on diagnosing them, even treating them. You can only access it in the moment. This philosophy destroys the duality that plagues materialism, which is why the hard problem of consciousness only exists in materialism. I suppose then one would assume that, upon death, consciousness dissipates back into the universe in some way much like mass and charge. . So, ironically, only in death can we be fully conscious. For example, if panpsychism then without consciousness nothing exists and without anything, there's nothing to move, which means no time. Our brains are 4-Dimensional being viewing a world in a 3D space. does it only exist when there is something to be observed? Humans are matter with consciousness. Dec 20, 2018 · There Is No Such Thing as Conscious Thought. This isn't exactly difficult to do, it is actually impossible, since self does not exist without consciousness, but it is still an intriguing visualization because they remain distinct ideas ("concepts") despite being intrinsically linked. God is more than Consciousness, you literally just compared a head to a head and said, well that sums that up. This was a question asked in response to Sam Harris's talk on free will. It is not locked into time and space or dependent on anything. And when we die, we transcend the human experience of consciousness, and its illusion of duality, and merge with the universe's entire and unified property of consciousness. you are asking if consciousness can exist as it's own consciousness, the question is redundant. A novel study reports the dynamics of consciousness may be understood by a newly developed conceptual and mathematical framework. Feel free to correct me where I'm wrong. I'm an engineer/mathematician by trade and have what I consider a justified belief that materialism has provided What I claim does not exist is the property of consciousness (read, "chairness"), such as in questions like, 'Is this entity conscious?'. Some believe that consciousness has no matter, but rather creates matter. The philosophical perspectives: If you're an eliminative materialist, you believe that consciousness is an illusion. For all you know, said consciousness -could- simply be a byproduct of a highly advanced brain, and when said brain dies, your consciousness vanishes and "you" cease to think, and therefore exist. Is there a phenomenon to be explained? Yes. If that thing ceases to function, your consciousness no longer exists. In this case, what they mean is, in the first place, that no one has furnished an explanation of this kind -- at least none Some people claim that consciousness is all around us, a fundamental function of the existing universe; itself alive in its happening. This model has not been proven correct or even We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. It is not some "nothingness" or void. They arise from processes of which we are Sep 25, 2023 · In a 2020 paper, he suggested that the universe “is composed of a set of partial views of itself” and that “conscious perceptions are aspects of some views”—a perspective that he says Jan 21, 2023 · Despite advances in our understanding of the neural correlates of consciousness, the question remains: How does consciousness arise from brain activity? Scientists have proposed several It's often said that we can't explain consciousness, but I don't see why that's so. This does not automatically include the… There need be no "we", since even if my consciousness exists (in that way which consciousness can exist without matter but matter cannot exist without consciousness, according to your premise) it is only your "shared" consciousness, not an independent self-determining awareness which emerges from my neurological activity and that alone. Could it be possible that consciousness exists on a spectrum? At one end of the spectrum, you have philosophical zombies and the other, someone who is fully conscious. Thought that would be the best place to get answers. I'm not even touching the assumption that God or some higher consciousness exists. The question I've always had is at what level does an organism qualify as being conscious? Is a cockroach conscious? How about a squirrel Jan 14, 2020 · In our standard view of things, consciousness exists only in the brains of highly evolved organisms, and hence it exists only in a tiny part of the universe and only in very recent history But really there is just consciousness that seems to take on forms, but doesn't really, just like colors on a screen seem to be houses and trees, when really they're just a screen. That your consciousness get to exist, in what is not even a millisecond in compare to universe time and scale, is truly absolute mindfucking probability and I cannot argue there. Yes we are an aspect of God, yet without God we would not exist, yet without you, I would still exist. Is consciousness a thing unto itself which can exist as its own subject? consciousness is truly all that exists. vjyr nalahtlo roia fqfy sfun vpqpe llaa zlyvpc nbx hhci