(February 1, 2016 at 11:20 pm)Emjay Wrote:(February 1, 2016 at 10:26 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: I'd say the more basic question is why are these output stages experienced as consciousness. I think it takes more than just neural nets to give rise to consciousness. Neural nets of a specific configuration, perhaps, but something more.
I have to go to bed now so I'll reply to this properly tomorrow. But before I forget I think one thing that is interesting is that if you get lost in thought you lose awareness of your senses. I think... it's very hard to actually catch yourself in the act of daydreaming, but I think you lose awareness of your senses whilst the mental imagery of imagination gets more vivid. Again, it's hard to catch yourself in the act but a small few times I've managed to be aware at the moment of exiting a daydream of vivid colours whereas usually imagination when superimposed over your 'viewscreen' is more like a vague sense than a vision. So that leads me to believe or at least strongly suspect that what is conscious at any given time is what is most strongly and richly activated in the network. But there's still the question of how any area of this network is accessed for this - how focus 'observes' it. But anyway I really really need to go to bed so I'll talk more tomorrow. Night night
Yeah, I've noticed something similar in that the mind wanders, no matter how we try to focus on one thing, soon we're focusing on something else; thoughts 'vie' for attention, displacing other thoughts. It is a central challenge to account for this 'locality' of the specific brain stimulus being attended to, for surely they're different centers being activated, while at the same time accounting for the seeming global nature of consciousness. If consciousness is just another center, then why does it not go in and out of existence depending on which centers are being attended to? How is a center able to access these widely divergent brain areas?