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Are we conscious?



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Ven-Dono

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Okay, think about it.

There's an article in The Economist that counters intuitive notions about consciousness. We are quickly accumulating evidence that consciousness may be a product of our behavior, rather than the determinant of behavior that we always assume it to be. So now turns out that the brain activity that drives a behavior is often well underway before the person ever has the experience of having a conscious thought.

So, an example. When we are in class in school. We decide to raise our hand in response to a teacher's question. Before we are ever aware of making that decision, our brain has already begun the neural processes necessary to lift our arm. Our brain is raising our hand before we make the conscious decision to raise our hand.

Obviously not true on the occasion. Like when we are insecure about the subject that the teacher is discussing and we struggle to find a correct answer. Still. Once we do find the right answer, we aren't thinking of raising our hand at the time, are we? It just comes natural.

All of this begs the question of if consciousness exists. If it does exist.. what exactly is it? We intuitively feel as though consciousness guides and determines our behavior. We decide to raise our hand, and then we do it. But do we intuitively feel that way simply because we want to believe that we work this way? Is it really possible that we form our conscious thoughts and decisions around the things that our brain has already done? It is seeming more and more likely that "conscious decisions" are simply decisions that our brain made which we then assume responsibility for. Do we really want the donut off the shelf at the store, or do we just talk ourselves into wanting it after our brain decides to buy it? What does it even mean to want something in the first place?

Just felt this was worthy of discussion.
 
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It most certainly is worthy of discussion, and of further reading. This Times article provides a concise and fascinating overview of "the consciousness problem" : The Brain: The Mystery of Consciousness - TIME

To respond in brief to your post. The question of "are we conscious?" is not, I don't think, a possible way to approach the matter. If we take consciousness to mean the subjective experience, the sensation of self or "I", then we are conscious. We cannot 'remove ourselves' from that subjective condition, even hypothetically.

The question must follow then, "I am conscious, I experience the world as a thinking, acting Self; what gives rise to this sensation, this consciousness?" The Times article breaks it down into the Easy and the Hard problems (or rather, the Hard and the Potentially-Impossible problems). The Easy problem deals with what you address here, that in fact what we experience as consciousness rests entirely in the activity of the brain, it does not 'direct' the brain from outside. Thus, when I raise my hand, it is an action that my brain has undertaken, not an action my 'Self' told my brain to undertake. But what precisely is the difference?

The proposed answer, which I find very intriguing, is very much what you lay out above--that our brain is at any point processing many different stimuli and tasks. Our consciousness is whichever wavelength comes out at the forefront of all those processes at any given point. It is not specifically retroactive, but it is also not 'active' in the sense we often think of it, as directing the actions of the brain; in effect, it is a limited cross-section of the brain's activity at a given time (at least, that is the artistic rendering I've done in my mind of the article).

But you make it sound like a question of free will, as though this somehow determines or even changes the question of how "I" make decisions. Why?
 

Nyangoro

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Well, from what I've read on the matter, being conscious is still about making decisions. The only difference is the kind of decisions that it makes. Rather than deciding whether or not to perform and action, it is deciding whether or not to follow through with an action (the longer this takes resulting in what we know of as "hesitation", which involves a lot more conscious thought). This way is also a lot more efficient than the traditional "thought before behavior" notion. It serves to lessen the wait time between thought and action, as opposed to thinking and then having the action start up.

Another way you could think about it is as a traffic checkpoint. The car (action) is already on it's way, but then is temporarily stopped by the workers (thought or conscious) who decide whether they can go through or not.
 

Camilo101

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Well consciousness means awareness, right? It's basically, do I realize I just chose to click on this thread, or reply to this thread, right? If I understand that I just did this, and if I'm thinking about this, I'm conscious, wouldn't you say? It's like "I think therefore I am", I always thought that was the thing that counted when you questioned your consciousness.

I know that there could be a whole lot of discussion to "did you move your hand? Or did you brain move your hand and you just realized it?" And maybe it was you, maybe it was your brain. But that refers to conscious decisions, wouldn't you say? It's not the same as consciousness, at least I don't think so.

This is how I see it: I am consciously thinking about how to answer this question, while my brain is subconsciously moving my fingers to hit the keys while I type it out. So while my conscious mind is focusing on what I'm trying to say, my subconscious mind is what's actually making me say (type) it.

Basically what I'm saying is that I think consciousness refers primarily to thinking and your mind, while subconscious has a lot more to do with your physical reactions and such. So we are conscious, it's just that everything we do isn't always conscious.

Lol I can just imagine somebody coming in here and saying "But did you really think of an answer, or did your brain think of it for you?"
 

Nyangoro

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Lol I can just imagine somebody coming in here and saying "But did you really think of an answer, or did your brain think of it for you?"

That would not only be weird, but would also imply a disconnect between a person and their own brain.

. . . now that I think about it, that's what makes it weird.
 

Ven-Dono

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It most certainly is worthy of discussion, and of further reading. This Times article provides a concise and fascinating overview of "the consciousness problem" : The Brain: The Mystery of Consciousness - TIME

But you make it sound like a question of free will, as though this somehow determines or even changes the question of how "I" make decisions. Why?

I'll have to respond to what follows your reading of the Times' "hard questions" when I get home from school in an edit or something. It's 5:51, and the bus comes at 7:00.

This isn't, to my knowledge, questioning free will at all. Just that, from my studies in Psychology, I have always learned that what I am processing now is in my conscious state. Whereas, when I am dreaming, not thinking of what I'm doing with a relatively large amount of focus, or under the influence of a drug I would be in a subconscious state.

I feel as though there is way more to subconscious than previously thought. And what exactly could be the line dividing subconscious from conscious? With things like Camillo said (typing on a keyboard), we know that we are doing that, it just isn't brought to our attention. It isn't relatively a strong focus, because it isn't deserving of that.

I dunno. I'll come back later to respond. Breakfast and all that.
 

Camilo101

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I'll have to respond to what follows your reading of the Times' "hard questions" when I get home from school in an edit or something. It's 5:51, and the bus comes at 7:00.

This isn't, to my knowledge, questioning free will at all. Just that, from my studies in Psychology, I have always learned that what I am processing now is in my conscious state. Whereas, when I am dreaming, not thinking of what I'm doing with a relatively large amount of focus, or under the influence of a drug I would be in a subconscious state.

I feel as though there is way more to subconscious than previously thought. And what exactly could be the line dividing subconscious from conscious? With things like Camillo said (typing on a keyboard), we know that we are doing that, it just isn't brought to our attention. It isn't relatively a strong focus, because it isn't deserving of that.

I dunno. I'll come back later to respond. Breakfast and all that.

I think conscious thoughts/actions are the ones that you're focusing on, the ones that you definitely know you're doing, because they're the most important. But subconscious thoughts are the ones that you don't even realize you did or don't think about. For example, as I was typing those first two sentences out, I didn't realize I was typing keys on the keyboard. I didn't think about it, because it wasn't important. But after I finished that thought, I just realized I was typing the keys. It's not a HUGE surprise, I know whenever I go onto a computer I use the keyboard, but I didn't think about it. Instead, I thought about which sites I was going to first, where I would click on the screen, etc.
 

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Just because some of our actions are initiated by our subconscious minds doesn't mean we aren't in control. After all it's your own mind driving those actions.
 

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That would not only be weird, but would also imply a disconnect between a person and their own brain.

. . . now that I think about it, that's what makes it weird.

Just because some of our actions are initiated by our subconscious minds doesn't mean we aren't in control. After all it's your own mind driving those actions.
Put these posts together, and you have what is necessary to proceed with discussion.

But we, as individuals, do not define ourselves by every electrical impulse in our brain. We are aware of ourselves, much more narrowly, as that subjective experience which is consciousness. Why consciousness is manifested thus is the "Hard Problem" of the article linked above, which we seem no closer to answering.
 
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