A Conscious Universe

[bennyboy]

The mechanisms boundaries, Benny. If you were connected to my head perhaps we would have a shared experience, an objective experience (at least as related by the two of us), but you aren't, so your experience is your own, and mine is my own -it's subjective...

IOW, the same way that the subjective state of the display on your computer is arrived at.....

1) The transplant of brain parts is a pretty exciting idea, and I suspect we may actually see, in this lifetime or in the next couple, what it's "like" to have a natural brain supplemented by one from another human, or by an electronic part.

2) My computer did not arrive at a subjective state, by any sensible definition of the word-- that is a semantic abuse that goes too far for the word "subjective" to have any meaning any more-- something which suits your purposes just fine, hmmmm?

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I'm asking for ideas about a physical mechanism that could take function in disparate parts of the brain and assemble them into a singular, subjective experience. Where does the subjective agency come from?

I assume that you are querying the actual source of awareness/consciousness and it's placement in the physical world?

Actually, I'm giving for now the assumption that the singular mind is "in the brain somewhere," and I'm trying to find exactly what about the brain it is that has a singular consciousness. Is it the particular organic chemistry? Is there a specific organ which serves as the seat of consciousness (I believe we knot this not to be the case, btw)? Is consciousness a product of the complex interrelationship among brain parts? Or is it something more elemental: that all exchanges of information represent elemental consciousness, so consciousness is really just a localized complexity of processing?

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1) Evolution is a great idea, but not when it causes people to start making up imaginary narratives in which they outline any trait they want to explain in terms of fitness.

Is there actually any particular statement that I made you'd like to take issue with? Do you think, for example, that brains evolved to seek truth? We could have that discussion, after all....or you could wave a very salient point about our brains (and every potion of our bodies) away "because".....

You are conflating the evolutionary process and the resulting mechanism about which the question was asked. I asked HOW people believe the brain assembles different kinds of experience into the sensation of a single event. You started babbling about evolution and charging boars and how useful it must have been to avoid them.

If multiple types of experience are unified, there needs to be some principle or mechanism of unity. What is it? And no, waving at the brain is not sufficient explanation of how the brain achieves this sense of unity, if it does in fact achieve it.

Your computer example is poor, because there is no unity in the computer representation of a ball. The unity is established by humans, who view the pixels and process them as being sufficiently representative of a ball.