(October 2, 2013 at 12:38 am)Vincenzo "Vinny" G. Wrote: If you are looking for serious answers, this is about as much as I can give you. Google or wikipedia can get you up to speed pretty quickly.Both these guys are phylosophers.. none of them understand how the biological brain gives rise to awareness, or consciousness.... hence, jump the gun to some sort of non-corporeal consciousness external to the actual brain...
-David Chalmers on the Easy & Hard Problems of Consciousness.
-I would also recommend Thomas Nagel's hated "Mind and Cosmos". Failing that, his NY Times editorial summarizing his ideas: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/201...smos/?_r=0
Add time, mix... some more time.... oh damn, the brain has been doing it all, all this time!
Philosophers can't understand that we can't yet understand mega-complex systems.... but maybe one day we will... Even if we don't, so what? It doesn't prove anything. only that it's not proven yet!
Until then, I keep as most likely the fact that consciousness arises in the brain, out of millions and millions of neuron interactions.... too many to count, each too small to measure... yet.
Why do I think this is the most likely case? well, I find nothing, except wishful thinking, suggesting that human or animal consciousness is independent from the physical human or animal brain.
Of course, I don't study neural activity, nor anything of the sort... but it seems those who do also posit this scenario as most likely.
http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/106/3/623.short
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/c...1889.short
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/im...1/art00008
So there's my mini-google search and reading skillz for you to read.
Enjoy