RE: How to measure consciousness?
November 27, 2011 at 7:06 am
(This post was last modified: November 27, 2011 at 7:12 am by The Grand Nudger.)
I'd ask anyone of a religious bent what they meant by consciousness before I even indulged them. If it's just a smokescreen for "soul" it's not a discussion worth having. If they mean human consciousness it's a simple answer, our own brand of consciousness didn't appear out of nowhere, or from non-consciousness. What a hilarious question by the way. Assuming that something can't happen because he can't imagine how it could have happened (especially in light of the fact that it did, as evidenced by the increasing complexity of nervous systems as we go through the timeline leading up to ourselves and a whole host of other shit displaying levels of consciousness that correspond to that increasing complexity). For example, worms have brains. They're capable of learning behaviours, sometimes even when their brains are removed, hilariously. So exactly how difficult is it to maintain the "consciousness" of a worm, how complex is this system? Not very, apparently. If, on the other hand, you so much as shake your head to hard you could do damage to your own "consciousness". So there's a wide gap between us with regards to consciousness. This gap corresponds, again, to our respective levels of complexity and specialization with regards to our brains. That alone makes measuring consciousness more a task of setting a definition that suits your experiment and then moving forward from there. Worms, by the way, are the simplest organisms with brains but definitely not the simplest organisms with nerves. A worm can use it's brain, it doesn't have to. It's brain is a more evolved piece of machinery than the nervous system of a jellyfish (used to open and close it's skirt), but much less complicated that our own. Is a Jellfishy conscious? A worm? How about a human being?Further, the notion that there was some line in the early dawn of life whereby one group of things was plainly conscious while another was not is also problematic. While mystic may not be fond of grey areas, nature absolutely is.
One has to ignore a fantastic wealth of information to suggest that consciousness is a complete and utter mystery, or that it just couldn't have come part and parcel with our evolutionary journey.
One has to ignore a fantastic wealth of information to suggest that consciousness is a complete and utter mystery, or that it just couldn't have come part and parcel with our evolutionary journey.
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