Matter and Consciousness

Fool said:

some folks believe that matter creates consciousness.


so at what point does matter create consciousness? how does something go from being no conscious matter to conscious matter?


how do you create something from nothing?

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Some people acknowledge that life and the universe is mental. The mental universe. Like a brain ... consisting of pathways and data intermingling between synapses, transferring information from one point to another. I've never known anything different. I've always known consciousness. I've known rest also, a break from the input of information.

I think mind and matter coexist continually. There's never not been both present in our universe, nor any other from times past.

Polymath257 said:

Being able to chemically signal (even electrochemically) does not imply intelligence.

Of course multicellular living things are able to signal between cells. But the ability of your brain to control the construction of arteries does not imply that this is consciously done or even a result of intelligence. Many things that the brain controls are done completely unconsciously.

Do you have any evidence the signalling in plants is actually conscious or intelligently done?

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having a brain does not imply consciousness. especially when the brain is dead, or lacking electrical signaling.

again the form is irrelevant.

having a neural pathway and electrical impulses are the only thing necessary for mind.

Do Plants Have Brains? | Natural History Magazine


so again this is scalar and not absolute brain.


on an autonomic system I shouldn't have to be consciouss until something severe and catastrophic goes wrong. i shouldn't have to be conscious of everything and anything. only those things that would directly effect what ever I AM.


the silliness of this whole discussions is that the heart has it's own neural network that the upper self isn't even aware of until something goes awry. the digestive system has it's own neural network that some call the gut brain and the self isn't directly conscious of until again something goes awry.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-3-d-map-illuminates-little-brain-nerve-cells-within-heart

The Secret Life of Gut Neurons - Science in the News

the form is irrelevant the process of how it works is relevant.

Fool said:

some folks believe that matter creates consciousness.

so at what point does matter create consciousness? how does something go from being no conscious matter to conscious matter?

how do you create something from nothing?

Click to expand...

Brain vs. mind:

The brain is the physical material in your head. It is something like a computer. It has memory, and it can process information, and link one piece of information with another (it actually grows new neurons to do that). It is largely made of fat, so I am proud that I am a fat head.

The mind is the software. It is what we have stored away in our memory, and it is the cross connections that we have made. Even identical twins don't have the same minds, and because their minds are different, they store info in different parts of the brain.

https://www.scienceabc.com/innovation/can-computers-read-minds.html

In the year 2022, a computer analysis of brain waves reconstructed thoughts and images stored in a brain with 96% accuracy. They also made people think what they wanted him to think. . . A French person was made to think "hola" and "ciao," using flashes of light. Some of those with their heads cut open, to study epilepsy, volunteered to have electrodes implanted in their brains to be studied like human Guinnea pigs for this experiment. It is amazing that images can be retrieved from brain waves considering that each brain stores info in different areas.

I suppose that experimenters get very little criticism or their critics might be next on the list of their patients.

Facebook is building tech to read your mind. The ethical implications are staggering.

"Various scientists, the US military, and companies like Kernel and Paradromics are also working in this space. Elon Musk’s company Neuralink recently revealed that it’s developing flexible “threads” that can be implanted into a brain and could one day allow you to control your smartphone or computer with just your thoughts. Musk said he hopes to start testing in humans by the end of next year." (Quotation of vox.com article, above).

All they have to do is jab tiny glass rods into your brain to see if they can read your thoughts. The richest man in the world (who wants to send people to Mars to live) is the one who wants to do this.

"brain implants have also brought objects into focus and moved robotic arms" (Source: vox.com, above).

"companies like Facebook are researching noninvasive methods, like a system using near-infrared light that could detect blood-flow changes in the brain" (Source: vox.com, above).

Near-infrared means microwave. They can penetrate bone and flesh. Two frequencies superheterodyne, producing the sum and difference of their frequencies. This can be used to detect the speed of blood (an indication of brain activity).

Imagine a world with no crime, where free thoughts are not allowed (vote for me...no dissention--resistance is futile). Nothing can go wrong with computers....Nothing can go wro. . . Noth. . .N. . .reboot. . . reboot.

Babies start with blank slates. But, their minds are especially able to grasp new information. Their senses grasp movements, colors, and shapes. Soon, they piece together the world and begin to understand that the sounds (words) correspond to objects. "Mommy" "bobbu (bottle)," "synchrocyclotron" (I was a precocious baby bent on global domination).

How can we get something from nothing? This is how modern computers are programmed. Chess computers are no longer given every alternative move, rather they are given AI (Artificial Intelligence) learning tools to allow them to learn on their own. This is because there are just too many things to know to play chess. The Shannon A chess program strategy brute force analyzed each and every move. The Shannon B chess program strategy only evaluated the promising moves, with a program to choose which moves were promising and which were not. Strong chess players are able to think many moves in advance, so they can sneak up on computers with sacrifices that will pay off in the distant future.

I think that the Religious Right should not dismiss game theory. The Religious Right (who insist that no one but a member of the National Rifle Association could run for office, and insist that we get lies to motivate wars and torture camps), would benefit from game theory and AI (artificial intelligence) so they could kill people more effectively. God said "thou shalt not kill" and the Religious Right wants to kill for Jesus.

Game theory can also be applied to economics, to find the best way to share limited resources (which is essentially the definition of economics).

The central theme of Socrates was that wisdom can come from discussion. By merely discussing ideas, Socrates reached conclusions. That was obtaining something from nothing.

Is it possible for an inferior being to create a superior being? Take the cube root of 43567 in your head. Difficult? Now use a pocket calculator to do it. Apparently, humans were able to get computers to do certain tasks better than they could.

Some argue that the brain is just a computer, but it is biological rather than made of computer chips.

Balthazzar said:

Some people acknowledge that life and the universe is mental. The mental universe. Like a brain ... consisting of pathways and data intermingling between synapses, transferring information from one point to another. I've never known anything different. I've always known consciousness. I've known rest also, a break from the input of information.

I think mind and matter coexist continually. There's never not been both present in our universe, nor any other from times past.

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Cute girls get good grades. It is a matter of brain vs. bra on.

Clara Tea said:

Cute girls get good grades. It is a matter of brain vs. bra on.

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It takes two to tango - syncing up creates the better dance. I'm just saying -

Fool said:

some folks believe that matter creates consciousness.


so at what point does matter create consciousness? how does something go from being no conscious matter to conscious matter?


how do you create something from nothing?

Click to expand...

Consciousness does not stem from matter nor this physical world.

We are Spiritual beings in our true natures. Who we are is Consciousness.

That's what I see. It's very clear!!

PureX said:

I suspect it's a matter of complexity. As the interaction of material physics become more and more complex, they also become more and more enabling of new possible results. Eventually those possible results reach the threshold of the metaphysical, I.e., conscious awareness.

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Intelligence also has a limitation. We can't get much smarter than Einstein.

If I was smarter, I would be more efficient. If I eventually have to bring a dish back to the kitchen, and bring a book back to a bookshelf, and bring in the newspaper, I could accomplish all of those things in one trip or three. An intelligent mind would do it all in one trip.

I believe that a computer could do the things that humans do if sufficiently complex and allowed to program itself.

We cannot load all of the info necessary for a computer to out-think us, but we can program it to learn to do it on its own.

Fool said:

some folks believe that matter creates consciousness.


so at what point does matter create consciousness? how does something go from being no conscious matter to conscious matter?


how do you create something from nothing?

Click to expand...

Please explain how you think consciousness has anything to do with the bits of dead tuna apparently enjoying an afterlife. I have, in fact, enjoyed okonomiyaki with bonito, and yes, they waved at me. I would be horrified to learn that I was eating something still conscious. (Although I confess, I've eaten oysters on the half-shell, which is something that is universally eaten while still alive (but we hope non-conscious).

Fool said:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-3-d-map-illuminates-little-brain-nerve-cells-within-heart

The Secret Life of Gut Neurons - Science in the News

the form is irrelevant the process of how it works is relevant.

Click to expand...

Now you've got me thinking ─ in the traditional manner, that is. What if the gut is conscious, as well as conscientious? Is your gut busting itself to tell you to cut back on the pickles and pay more for your bourbon? Has it daily expressed its opinion of Donald Trump? Do the heart and the gut play cards together when everything's quiet?

Hmm ...

The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of the universe has to increase. The term, entropy, was first coined by engineers who were developing the first steam engines in the 1800's. When they ran experiments they would do an energy balance to calculate efficiency. What they noticed was there was always missing energy that could not be accounted for. Energy disappeared.

This missing energy was termed entropy, to describe a new type of energy that was lost and could not be explained but needed to be accounted for. This missing or lost energy is why we cannot have perpetual motion machines. The action of the 2nd law will lose some of the starting energy making it impossible for any machine to go on forever. This is not theory but based on experimental evidence from which the 2nd law appeared.

The conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. However, energy can be made to change its expression into another form. The energy lost due to entropy was conserved, but it was made unusable in any net way by the universe, since the entropy of the universe had to increase with time.

Since the entropy of the universe has to increase and entropy is a measure of lost energy, this means that the universe is bleeding energy; losing energy, via the constant entropy increase of 2nd law in the universe. More and more of our useable universal energy is made not reusable, tied up as lost energy connected to entropy.

The second law implies that the universe is building this pool of lost and hidden entropic energy, with the second law assuring this pool of conserved energy, gets larger and larger with time. as the universal useable energy supply shrinks with time. The universe ages and is not a cyclic perpetual motion machine. Infinite and cyclic Universe models violate the second law; perpetual motion theory.

In my last post, I tried to show how life and consciousness makes use of entropy. Life has ways to reverse the 2nd law, at the expense of universal energy. Life can tap into the lost energy pool. This is part of its purpose. Life is universe plus lost energy pool.

Consciousness and life is not so much about matter forming life and consciousness, but about the 2nd law and entropy, working on matter, force and energy, to filling a pool, that is used by life and also fill by life, and consciousness.

When neurons fire, this triggers memory. The firing point of neurons is when the 2nd law takes over. With each memory trigger, there is lost energy going into the pool, that equals that memory. This energy cannot be destroyed. This is classically seen as us writing into the book of life; entropic energy pool, from which the dead arise into their stored memories. Consciousness appears in the pool.

wellwisher said:

The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of the universe has to increase. The term, entropy, was first coined by engineers who were developing the first steam engines in the 1800's. When they ran experiments they would do an energy balance to calculate efficiency. What they noticed was there was always missing energy that could not be accounted for. Energy disappeared.

This missing energy was termed entropy, to describe a new type of energy that was lost and could not be explained but needed to be accounted for. This missing or lost energy is why we cannot have perpetual motion machines. The action of the 2nd law will lose some of the starting energy making it impossible for any machine to go on forever. This is not theory but based on experimental evidence from which the 2nd law appeared.

The conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. However, energy can be made to change its expression into another form. The energy lost due to entropy was conserved, but it was made unusable in any net way by the universe, since the entropy of the universe had to increase with time.

Click to expand...

Except that the energy doesn't just vanish. It dissipates. Because the universe is expanding. The same amount of energy remains extant, but the space within which it's being expressed is increasing. And since we exist within that space, from our perspective, the energy available to do 'work' within that space is decreasing.

PureX said:

That's pretty debatable. The fact that a cell will contract in response to some external stimuli hardly warrants it being labeled as 'conscious'. On the other hand, it is an example of how consciousness can eventually result from such dynamic complexity.

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I don't know. Do cockroaches have brains?

Kfox said:

How does a non conscious sperm and a non conscious egg (both matter) form together to become the most intelligent being in the known Universe? And it happens everyday.

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The next scientific endeavor. I suppose. Maybe. After figuring what the first prokaryote was and when. I guess maybe. It's a good question, however. Someone soon may say they both (the sperm and egg) are conscious, who knows?

Fool said:

some folks believe that matter creates consciousness.


so at what point does matter create consciousness? how does something go from being no conscious matter to conscious matter?


how do you create something from nothing?

Click to expand...

Environmental sensors make mater conscious of its surroundings. Information fed into the system which the system can act on.

You are not creating consciousness. You are gathering information that already exists in the environment so you the system can act on it.

Fool said:

amoeba's don't have brains but they are conscious

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Yes, it doesn't take much. Just a minimum system to have some environmental awareness to act on.

YoursTrue said:

I don't know. Do cockroaches have brains?

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Not all brains result in consciousness. Many life forms have "brains" but that doesn't mean they are conscious. This becomes a semantic debate: what exactly constitutes 'consciousness'?

PureX said:

Not all brains result in consciousness. Many life forms have "brains" but that doesn't mean they are conscious. This becomes a semantic debate: what exactly constitutes 'consciousness'?

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lol, I think I'll stay out of this one.

Fool said:

some folks believe that matter creates consciousness.

so at what point does matter create consciousness? how does something go from being no conscious matter to conscious matter?

how do you create something from nothing?

Click to expand...

Something from nothing, such as consciousness from matter, is connected to the observation that the team can become more than the sum of its parts.

When Henry Ford perfected the assembly line, the same number of people, organized as a team, we're able to out produce the same number of people acting, independently. The team creates a type of boost that takes things to a new level, for an apparent quantum gain. It is the same parts, but when set up as a team, magic happens.

One can buy an automobile packed in crates all disassembled. Once this is assembled into a team of parts that all work together; assembled car, a whole new range of capacities and uses suddenly appear, that it could not do, assembled as a team only for shipping.

In sports, the championship teams do not always need to be composed of the best players. The best team has to be better integrated than all the rest of the teams.

The rise in the GNP; gross national product, is based on a capitalist team affect, where new wealth is constantly created, out of thin air.

When life went from single cells to multicellular life and individual cells became organized as a team, a whole new layer of potential appeared, due to the coordinated distribution of labor and functionality.

As single cells, entropy is maximized compared to the same number of cells all stuck together. Single cells have more degrees of freedom and have to take care of more things for themselves; higher complexity. Cells all stuck together have more limited options and other cell do for it; less complexity needed per cell.

The movement into multicellular, by forming a more ordered structure of cellular units, lowered individual cellular entropy, opposite the second law. This is doable but requires energy. This created an entropic potential or a potential to increase the overall entropy, again, using this conglomerate of cells, all with lowered structural entropy. The 2nd law results in a new layer or team affect.

The new layer of capacities that appear, can more than make up for the limitations imposed on all the individuals. Blood cells maintain highest entropy being single cells. The neurons are so interconnected by branches and synapses; dependency, this neuron team has to gain entropy through organized ionic currents from which awareness can appear.

In the assembly line, each person has a single task. This is in contrast to everyone being a jack of all trades before the invention of the assemble line. The assembly line lowered the complexity of individual workers; less skills needed. But this added a potential to make up for that loss This adds a boost. The members of the team are not content to be robots, so they also enhance the assembly procedures.

Part of this team affect within life resulted in consciousness, added to base genetic coordination. Multicellular plants are coordinated via genetic coordination. Any good team needs a coach, to help get the most out of the team. A coach is also part of that team and leads the team. Multicellular animals got the coach; brain, which then adds to the team boosting it through leadership; consciousness.

Evangelicalhumanist said:

Please explain how you think consciousness has anything to do with the bits of dead tuna apparently enjoying an afterlife. I have, in fact, enjoyed okonomiyaki with bonito, and yes, they waved at me. I would be horrified to learn that I was eating something still conscious. (Although I confess, I've eaten oysters on the half-shell, which is something that is universally eaten while still alive (but we hope non-conscious).

Click to expand...

The Lazarus phenomenon: When the 'dead' come back to life


Some People Were Dead For Several Days - Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife



pg 75


Even in modern times there are many well-attested cases of yogis who can remain in this apparently lifeless condition for more than a month. I have myself seen a case where the yogin stayed in this condition for nine days. The case of Saint Haridas is well-known. He remained buried underneath the ground for forty days under strict vigilance of guards. When, after forty days of breathless and foodless condition of suspended animation, he was brought out of the earth, there was apparently no life in him, no movement of breath, no heart-beats. But after his body had been rubbed and much water had been

poured on him he again came back to life and began to breathe normally.

wellwisher said:

Something from nothing, such as consciousness from matter, is connected to the observation that the team can become more than the sum of its parts.

When Henry Ford perfected the assembly line, the same number of people, organized as a team, we're able to out produce the same number of people acting, independently. The team creates a type of boost that takes things to a new level, for an apparent quantum gain. It is the same parts, but when set up as a team, magic happens.

One can buy an automobile packed in crates all disassembled. Once this is assembled into a team of parts that all work together; assembled car, a whole new range of capacities and uses suddenly appear, that it could not do, assembled as a team only for shipping.

In sports, the championship teams do not always need to be composed of the best players. The best team has to be better integrated than all the rest of the teams.

The rise in the GNP; gross national product, is based on a capitalist team affect, where new wealth is constantly created, out of thin air.

When life went from single cells to multicellular life and individual cells became organized as a team, a whole new layer of potential appeared, due to the coordinated distribution of labor and functionality.

As single cells, entropy is maximized compared to the same number of cells all stuck together. Single cells have more degrees of freedom and have to take care of more things for themselves; higher complexity. Cells all stuck together have more limited options and other cell do for it; less complexity needed per cell.

The movement into multicellular, by forming a more ordered structure of cellular units, lowered individual cellular entropy, opposite the second law. This is doable but requires energy. This created an entropic potential or a potential to increase the overall entropy, again, using this conglomerate of cells, all with lowered structural entropy. The 2nd law results in a new layer or team affect.

The new layer of capacities that appear, can more than make up for the limitations imposed on all the individuals. Blood cells maintain highest entropy being single cells. The neurons are so interconnected by branches and synapses; dependency, this neuron team has to gain entropy through organized ionic currents from which awareness can appear.

In the assembly line, each person has a single task. This is in contrast to everyone being a jack of all trades before the invention of the assemble line. The assembly line lowered the complexity of individual workers; less skills needed. But this added a potential to make up for that loss This adds a boost. The members of the team are not content to be robots, so they also enhance the assembly procedures.

Part of this team affect within life resulted in consciousness, added to base genetic coordination. Multicellular plants are coordinated via genetic coordination. Any good team needs a coach, to help get the most out of the team. A coach is also part of that team and leads the team. Multicellular animals got the coach; brain, which then adds to the team boosting it through leadership; consciousness.

Click to expand...

this is not possible without something. the something was workers