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Thanks for the message, Rick! However, I rarely check the email that newsvine sent it to. It would be much better to just leave a message on my newsvine wall. Just click on my friend icon, then scroll down to 'Leave a comment'. I'll see your response much faster that way (I didn't even know you had responded several times on your own wall). Now to address your ideas:

You: "Our minds receive such a vast amount of input at any one point in time that it only "chooses" to "see" a limited subset of the available input (at least for our conscious mind) at any particular point in time"

Yes, this phenomenon is sometimes referred to as inattentive blindness. It has been illucidated in numerous psychology experiments which showed that the brain is perceiving and processing information, but the conscious 'observer' is not aware of this. It makes a main distinction between the conscious and unconscious mind, indicating that when we say 'consciousness', we really mean 'awareness'. It is awareness, or conscious awareness, or whatever you wish to call it that is of prime interest to us here. As an interesting side note, specific damage to the prefrontal cortex in people that undergo head trauma, and certain types of autism (which also damage the prefrontal cortex) seem to create the phenomenon of sevantism. One hypothesis of why people become sevants is that this 'filter' of information from what the unconscious processes and what the conscious mind perceives becomes eroded, thus allowing the conscious mind to perceive amazing things (think Rain Man).

You: "Much of this data (and processing) is transparent - unseen - by the controller. The controller can choose to display any combination of a large subset of data on a central "monitor" at any time. What is displayed on the monitor is what we have chosen to focus on."

This idea seems to be similar to the concept of an 'observer'. Inherent in the definition of conscious awareness is that there must be an observer that is aware. Awareness and observation go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other. A primary question that interests me is - what causes the phenomenon of individual awareness? What makes 'my' awareness different from 'yours'?

Philosophers and theologians of old addressed this question and came to the conclusion that associated with consciousness is the 'immaterial I' or 'immaterial essence', which for all practical purposes can be called the 'soul' of the observer. To differentiate this concept from that of 'identity', think of the following situation:

You are driving down the street one day and are in a horrible car crash. When you awake, you have complete amnesia. You literally remember nothing of your former existence. You have lost your identity, but you are still the same observer, you still have the same 'immaterial essence' which is constant and different from mine or anyone else.

However, a major paradox arises when someone attempts to understand consciousness from the perspective of an individual observer, and when one assumes that this 'essence' actually exists. I'll talk more about that at a later time, but through a chain of logic I eventually ended up at the conclusion that there is no such thing as an 'individual "I"'. It is, in fact, an illusion constructed by the brain and by the ego. I was very reluctant to accept this view, but it is the only one that resolves the paradox. But that's for another time.

You: Could our consciousness stem from the simple fact that we become more aware of the increasing amount of perceptual data in the world around us and our ability to limit and prioritize that data?

Self-awareness most certainly originates in this fashion, but remember - by consciousness we are simply talking about the act of being aware. An animal can be aware, but not be self-aware. This expands consciousness across the animal kingdom and to many animals that we consider to be neurologically less complex than us. To illustrate this concept, take the example of 'redness'. To perceive the 'redness' of something (which the brain associates, arbitrarily, with a given wavelength of colorless electromagnetic radiation), one must necessarily be aware. Redness and awareness are indistinguishable. A creature can be presumed to be aware even if ALL it ever perceives is the color red. Although the nature of such a state of awareness would be very strange indeed. However, to be aware of your own awareness - that is a level of consciousness that has been seen to be possessed by humans, chimpanzees, elephants, dolphins, and parrots (and I suspect many more animals). It requires a level of intellect that is very high, thus it probably arises in the manner that you hypothesize - so good job!

You: If these levels are distinct and non-arbitrary, is it known how many levels the brain of an animal works on?

This is a rather convoluted question to answer and I fear that my response has gotten too long already. Basically, it depends on how you define a 'level'. There are certainly three main levels - that of the unconscious, that of conscious awareness, and that of the in-between (REM sleep, which really can be viewed as a limited type of conscious awareness if you get right down to it, akin to my 'redness' example above). Both the unconscious level and the awareness level can be subdivided into countless other divisions that are really quite arbitrary - so I prefer to limit it to the umbrella scope of either aware, or not aware. One can create an extremely powerful computer, for example, but without the specific neural architecture that is necessary to produce consciousness, it will never be aware. But that becomes complicated in and of itself, because awareness is necessarily built on (and perceives) that which is being processed by the unaware mind.

So, to reiterate my prior question as a possible discussion point for next time: What do you think causes the phenomenon of individual awareness? What makes 'my' awareness different from 'yours'?

— Eric0038

Hello Eric, Haven't gotten myself around to commenting yet, been wearing myself out to much during the day - need to start on my meds again. This subject is intriguing and I will try to post about it when I get back from my trip. I might seed an article for us to write in - will have to look into how to accomplish that.

— Rick-525236

Wow, this is a feature of Newsvine that I have not yet used! Very interesting; but it may take me a bit to get the hang of it. Have patience since I am only able to spend a limited amount of energy in deep thought - it takes me forever and wears the hell out of me - LOL. I can easily get caught up in discussions that last all day and then it takes me several days to recover. With your interest in neurology, perhaps you will understand better than most the deleterious effect of 30 years of sleep deprivation (not total of course).

You are correct - I am religious; but, as you may have surmised, my views are not exactly orthodox. I would love to get into a discussion on consciousness. I have had many a discussion that has skirted around the subject. I will be fascinated to hear your views. And I agree with you about how profound the discovery of the origins of consciousness will be.

I do wish to say that it is best if I wait until the evening for discussions such as these - otherwise I do not get anything else accomplished during the day. It has taken me an hour to get this far! If I don't stop thinking until my meds take hold - I will be more useless than normal - LOL!!!

So, until later.

— Rick-525236

Hey Rick,
I didn't want to get our conversation too off topic, but I am interested in talking about some things further with you. A discussion involving science and religion sooner or later culminates with the concept of a 'soul', and whether or not something like that could possibly exist within a scientific framework. Ultimately, these questions are unanswerable until science answers the 'hard' problem of consciousness, namely "what is consciousness? What is it made of physically? Why should an inorganic physical construct create subjective awareness at all?"

As a biologist in general, and as a student of medicine with a particular fascination in neurology, I consider the question of "what is consciousness and why does it arise" the most important question in all of science. When the answer is finally found, it will be a greater discovery than that of DNA, of relativity/quantum mechanics, of every major scientific discovery in the past.

Am I correct in deducing from some of your posts that you are particularly religious? If so, you likewise seem to be open to some very cutting edge scientific concepts, and so I am interested to hear your opinion, given your worldviews, of the question 'what is consciousness?'. Don't worry, we know next to nothing about it in the first place. But it's a topic that I love discussing and hypothesizing about.

— Eric0038

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