Julia Mossbridge - Why is Consciousness so Baffling?
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- Опубликовано: 28 ноя 2024
- How does consciousness weave its magical web of inner awareness-appreciating music, enjoying art, feeling love? Even when all mental functions may be explained, the great mystery-what it ‘feels like’ inside-will likely remain. This is the ‘Hard Problem’ of consciousness. What could even count as a theory of consciousness, even in principle?
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Julia Mossbridge, M.A., Ph.D. is a Visiting Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), the CEO and Research Director of Mossbridge Institute, LLC, and a Visiting Scholar in the Psychology Department at Northwestern University.
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Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
Oh wait - I had to work it out for myself (b/c it's just so freaking weird), but I finally get it. The unconscious literally IS predicting {seeing and knowing, rather) what the conscious mind calls the "future." The "event" actually extends in both directions, only the conscious mind is restricted by ideas of causality in the past and inability to perceive what it thinks of as the "future." Those constraints don't exist for the unconscious, which doesn't perceive time, at least in the linear way the conscious mind does. But it's (i.e., the future) actually to some extent already existent. So it's really only "anticipatory" from the standpoint of the limitations of the conscious mind, whereas it's an experiential fact/truth/reality from the standpoint of the unconscious mind,which is why it can elicit the response.
Julia is an amazing thinker!
Surprisingly close. Yes. The brain conducts a continuous recursive competition between predictions and the prediction with the greatest return succeeds in gaining our attention.
Yeah, I’m somewhat new to this too but very excited about her research. Seems we face the uphill battle of being animals who have evolved to perceive in a limited scope.
This isn't really a great feat of thinking. It's saying that the unconscious is acting in a realm whereby the future becomes apparent. The unconscious can see into the future. Too many words in your description.
I am not educated and had zero idea what she was talking about at all for half the video. The simplified concept of her intuition at the end I could relate to.
I googled for Zinc Roofing used as Wall Panel and it led me to here....Consciousness really works.
I see it differently; The subconscious is a model of the world as we are building it from first perception. Consciousness is the observation of part of that subconscious model. The part we are paying attention to at that moment. The subconscious sometimes builds up an event gradually through expectations (in the form of associations and hormonal processes). Awareness always comes after that. Sometimes even more than enough. No need for reverse progression in time.
Our bodies are aware of stimuli that we are not consciously aware of, and responsive to it. Olfaction for example is particularly sensitive.
I am reminded of Karl Friston and "active inference" (minimizing free energy, generative model, ...). Our brain is continuously sampling the environment and using (perhaps Bayesian) probability to make inferences about the immediate future.
This describes the same thing you can understand by realizing that your conscious self can only focus upon the center of what it sees. The other stuff is going on, but you will only shift focus if something large enough to exceed your expectations happens in the peripheral.
Yes, what we see is in some measure a function of what we expect to see. If we haven't got the metaphors to explain something, it probably doesn't exist. In that sense, the unconscious is like a skier taking a lateral step, when its corrections still lead in the expected direction. When that can't be held together, we are most likely at the point where we need to re-evaluate whether our metaphors were taking us in the right direction to begin with. So our imagining about our expectation and result of actual expectation are too far apart to maintain our worldview. And we know that by approximation, not so clearly. Sometimes that sort of snap is just like a hole in time. Sometimes it is more fundamental than that. And, probably most of the time, we were only a little off and hardly notice what we need to do to correct.
What I'm really curious about is the difference between observation and action. Can you hold the two concepts together at once, or is it like how you can understand that both views of a Neeker cube are valid at the same time, but you can't ever see them both at the same time? Is action about some form of recruitment that is best characterized as taking place under some common umbrella? And does that recruitment exclude other forms of recruitment? Is the very distribution of probability reliant upon this?
And so we see how emotion can be so vast, especially in comparison to intention. Also, the role of memory. Does pure consciousness actually have memory, or is that assigned to the unconscious? We see that emotions can't be so rudely discounted. Memory seems to have an emotional component. It could rely upon the unconscious. The thing we probably need to remember is that a central state of non-memory consciousness doesn't need to "belong" to its surrounding unconsciousness. Programming loops have memory. Some loop looking for error away from expectation would have memory. Consciousness merely needs to be able to readily communicate with those processes. Anyway, I explain it that way so as to understand the difference between being able to move my body and trying ESP, or other. Other forms of matter other than the right brain tissue don't seem to be able to form those sorts of communication bridges, where there is enough memory that we can say something about certainty.
I believe that eventually, physics will be able to completely explain this effect. I myself believe there is no real arrow of time. It is our minds that create it to make sense of our surroundings. And I believe we are able to reverse the direction of time. I have an eidetic memory. I remember every moment of every dream I've ever been aware of. Once in a while, I will have a strong sense of deja vu and be able to tie it directly to a dream I had in the past. It has happened so many times that it is just a normal thing to me. But it is not like I can predict events in my future. It is always tied to an ongoing event. I've been trying to change this so I can predict events before they happen, but I have been unsuccessful. I keep a detailed dream journal, and so far, several have become reality. But I can't look at them and say this one will happen tomorrow, or that one will be next year. It's all just a dream until it isn't any more.
This video has been mind-blowing for me. I believe everyone experiences what I experience. It's just that most people don't remember the dreams they had in the past, probably because they are fleeting for most people. And if she can scientifically explain what I experience all the time, I am on board for that type of research!
Do you always remember your dreams? What about you ever do the lucid dreaming? Have a look at Dr Denholm Aspy. Australian scientist who is a lucid dream researcher.
One technique I remember reading from Castaneda is to look at your hands frenquently during the day and ask yourself "Is this a dream?". The idea is that eventually you'll repeat this action in a dream state and go lucid. Also look up Tibetan dream yoga.
@Corteum9000 Thanks! That is awesome! I appreciate the advice, and I'll check it out!
One of the most brilliant talks I've ever heard.
Lawrence really finds the best minds to interview regarding the latest theories of conciouness. This is excellent!
We are connected to the reality through the subconscious, she is smart!
Wow, never mind the hard problem, Julia is after time itself as being this flow only for our consciousness but not even in every aspect. Matter doesn't flow with time at all. Delayed choice and apparent signals occurring before our perception of unexpected things. The retro-causation Julia is talking about here is the most interesting but tangible (from evidence not conjecture) thing I've seen on this show so far.
Retro causation in science experiments, is showing us that time realy doesn't exist, in spite of our experience of things happening one after another. So what's realy going on here? Is this what we are? Hallucinating pieces of consciousness, filtering harmonious progression out of total chaos? Maybe.
@@gitaarmanad3048 why is it so difficult for scientists to either say... we don't know, or at least admit dualism?
@@nadineblake6354 Good question Nadine. Maybe so because scientists are control freaks?
@@nadineblake6354 I think its not because they're scientists, its because they're humans.
@@anthonypanneton923 so humans don't need God?
One thing I've noticed is that not a few people involved in this field of study say, Wow! Consciousness! Look how strange and mysterious it is... But none of them it seems can really say in what way it is so strange and mysterious. Other than, Like wow man!! Look how the image of the tree lights up in my mind!! _!_
What would you have the image of the tree do otherwise?
it's mysterious in the sense that it has no place whatsoever in contemporary physics, partly because it's absurdly abstractly mathematized. phenomenal consciousness, experientiality, is qualitative. there is no "image of the tree" without an experiencing perspective. it's a 'real pattern', exhaustively describable by quantities, which, without a conscious perspective, isn't a qualitatively perceivable, differentiated entity, but merely a bunch of excitations of quantum fields, temporally sustained for a while, enmeshed in a web of all other real patterns (which again, aren't meaningful, or informative patterns in themselves). quantum fields being abstract, unobservable mathematical entities, theoretical fictions, allowing for prediction by interpreting the effects of experiments 'as if' there were quantum fields.
it's very confusing if one believes the non-scientific a-priori assumption that only mind-independent 'matter' exists - physicalism, which has varying versions, lacking consensus in the literature. it's pulling the territory out of the map. it's confusing, because it's incoherent, because you're trying to explain the only given - consciousness, by arguing that actually, it is not given, while an unobservable mentally constructed fiction is the only given, and consciousness emerges, or 'supervenes' on this transcendental 'matter', or isn't actually real...
there is no neuroscientific theory of consciousness, because there's a principled distinction between qualitative and quantitative.
@@real_pattern I agree contemporary physics is unlikely to give us much help in understanding consciousness -- especially as consciousness is a product of living biological systems -- not particle physics.
@@longcastle4863 and living biological systems are 'bookkeeping devices' for us, concepts that we - conscious observers, hold, by cognitively relating regularities observed in conscious experience. the concept of biology presupposes conscious observers.
@@real_pattern Suppose an infinite perfectly flat mirror and
your imagined position is floating in front of, not behind it and
you are looking in a direction parallel to the mirror surface and
then something and its reflection manifests in your field of view.
If you were ignorant about the existence of the mirror
could you tell just by looking
which of the two objects was the 'real' one?
Isn't it interesting and germane that
a synonym for thought is reflection?
And then you turn your head and
notice the reflection of your body and
begin to wonder, 'Am I the reflection'
(as though you were channeling
Jorge Luis Borges)?
Robert looks slightly puzzled by the end😉. So am I.
When you hear someone say with a straight face "backwards causation" based on mata-analysis and then brush it off like it's nothing, it's natural to be puzzled. Or totally unconvinced.
I don't know what the heck she is talking about. 🤷♀
First person experience of anything is just magical if you think about it🧐🧐😌😌
Closer to the truth, i would say. Best explanation, even though imperfect, that I've heard in a while. Would like to question her more for answers.
I think consciousness is fundamental,
Sounds like intuition.
Consciousness is only baffling to the materialist who believes that consciousness arises from something independent of consciousness.
What I find interesting is that all of the great minds don't have a definition of what consciousness is. How can you do any research in the field if you don't have an accepted definition and boundaries of the problem space. I thought that was the first step?
one fish says to the other fish, "how can you say the ocean is wet (whatever "wet" means...), when we don't even have a good definition of what an ocean is, and can't describe its boundaries?"
Is this related to how we, for example,
set an alarm to 6:00am and go to sleep then wake up at 5:59am?
If what she is saying is true, they could do more modern tests on a larger sample size and then use those results. It sounds like an interesting concept to try and prove
It seems to me as if they have merged research into foresight and premonition. If the first does not exist and the second is a common phenomenon, the outcome gives a significant signal to both.
Wow... the analogy of the stick in the water flow and backpressure and bulge is so wrong. The appearance of the bulge is a steady state phenomenon. When the leading edge of the flowing water starts to flow and first time approaches the stick in its way, the bulge does not form right away. The backpressure builds up, albeit over a very, very short period of time as the leading edge of the water first touches the stick. I can't believe Robert allowed her to get away with that analogy. It should be very easy to see in slow motion. The same is true for any unconscious phenomenon. Simply wow!
There are many similar errors in the theory.
it's baffling because it's connected to reality and truth.
Perhaps I'm not understanding her points very well about the physiological response preceeding an event, but if my take is correct, wouldn't the implications be that the brain works in conjunction with other receptors in the body and these receptors may even at times work independently of the brain to contribute in making choices about our actions? This is an interesting twist on the free will debate as well as giving us more clues into what intuition is and the way it plays a role in decision making.
That is a very interesting idea. You don't even need to involve "other receptors" into the discussion (even though, it's interesting to consider the possibility of other semi-autonomous parts of the body, such as how bacterial dysfunction in the digestive tract can be linked to various mental disorders somehow, which implies that the way we operate as people is very dependent on these separate beings inside of us). To consider how complicated the idea of free will and decision making can get, just consider the fact that the human brain isn't one thing. It's many billions of neurons and several more orders of magnitudes of connections between neurons. And many of these will be involved in producing any particular thought in your consciousness at any given moment. So you might think that you are one singular "thing" but your brain certainly is not. And the thoughts in your head do not just show up instantaneously. The neural response that your brain comes up with for a particular impression, like "oooh, that's a nice color - I like that", that might manifest as conscious thought takes a certain non-zero time to initiate, propagate and finally somehow pop up in your consciousness. When you have that thought you probably think "that was one thought I just had... made by me - the only person in my head - at this very singular moment in time". But in fact, it was countless neurons interacting to form some kind of response where different types of neurons contributed to the overarching response and together they worked together to form the end result... and it took time... so in the end it was more of a choir of voices that produced a wave that went back and forth and finally rang out and that final echo in your head was what you perceived as that thought you just had. And your consciousness did NOTHING to betray that fact. In fact, it hid it quite well from you. Which is incidentally why I don't trust consciousness one bit - it's just a veil that hides our true nature from us. For good reason ;).
So, yeah... I'm not sure who has that precious free will. Whoever it is, it's not running the show by itself - it's influenced my many others. And how does free will work in that setting when it's not one person producing one thought but rather a crowd of shouting neurons that somehow reach a consensus?
@@tomahzo you said it better than I ever could👌💯👏
Did you record all these interviews over a span of several years and wait until this year to upload all of them? Just wondering.
@@user-yp8ix6zn2e Oh yeah, several of these are clearly quite old. And there's no way he conducts multiple interviews every week. So there must have been quite a backlog!
I think what they do is pick a topic to post on for a while, then post clips relevant to that topic taken from their catalogue of interviews, some old, some new. So you will see some of the same content repeated over the years, but on the other hand when they have new clips on a topic, you'll get them posted in a series with past clips on that topic which provides useful context and alternative views. Right now they're doing a series of videos on Consciousness. For me this is fine, as I'll quite happily re-watch many of those clips this way, especially after a few years.
Yes, this was recorded in 2012 or 2013 when the meta-analysis had just come out. I definitely look older now (further proof that our conscious perception of time is largely linear)! But I still agree with virtually everything I said, so that's heartening (or maybe it means I'm already too staid in my beliefs/conjectures).
@@JuliaMossbridge Interesting! What was the context for your being invited to participate in this interview? Did he tell you it was for a RUclips channel?
@@ArcadianGenesis I was approached at the SAND (Science and Nonduality) conference in San Jose. I had just given this talk -- ruclips.net/video/-y5MFbDcDA8/видео.html -- or would give that talk in a few years (I'm not sure about the timing). Closer to Truth was a TV show at that point (I believe), but I'm sure I signed a form saying they could use it however they wanted. I have no problem with it being released, it's just like a time capsule!
5:26 it's true that unconscious processes predict a certain outcome but that is a result of a learning process... i.e. one doesn't place the finger in a hot surface because it experienced the pain associated with that action previously...
The point is that a robot could easily learn not to put its finger on a hot surface by simply registering the temperature, zero consciousness necessary at all.
@@outisnemo8443 to much energy is required for every process though... subconsciousness seems to be in control there, as well...
@@r2c3:
You can outfit a robot with a nuclear reactor. Lack of energy has nothing to do with why consciousness isn't necessary to learn or predict anything.
@@outisnemo8443 what stopped you from fitting a whole star, are you serious now...
Besides a good definition for consciousness, she also has good insight into "the conscious mind is the only thing that gives us the arrow of time". I agree this part is worth a lot more investigation, clarification in science and philosophy. Seems to be too readily ignored.
I went to public school so forgive me, I barely understand what they are talking about. But, is she saying there is LATENCY between the subconscious/unsconcious and the conscious human mind? Why is that so incredible? Or is she suggesting something of our minds unconscious part, is connected to something outside the universe? Somewhere where time doesn't exist? Or something else still within my body, like: my stomach has a malady that I can't feel as pain, but makes me emotional and grumpy and I have no idea why I'm grumpy? I don't get what she is imagining. It sounds fascinating. Can someone point me in the right direction.
Good push back on the meta analysis. A new study is needed.
Agreed! Why not just do it? Are they that tight on money?
Fascinating
That criticism of meta-analysis was particularly damaging, I think.
Julia piqued my interest in this discussion., particularly the phrase, 'physiological response preceding an event.' Over 60 years ago, i met up with a young female friend, who requested a chance to drive my newly acquired Lambretta motor scooter. I picked her up and we stopped at a certain point so that she could have a drive. I got off and she clambered on; before I was about to get on to the rear seat, I had a strong physiological 'impression,' around the heart area of the torso, which unambiguously translated to, 'don't keep going down this street.' When I related this to my friend, she laughed it off, and said to me, 'Don't be silly: 'Get on!' Which I did, ignoring the 'warning' (because that was the feel of the impression. Off we went, traveled about a quarter of a kilometer, along an unfamiliar street, encountering a sudden rise in the street, then being hit by a car that had suddenly appeared, heading along a road that emerged at right angles to our direction. I was relatively, unscathed; but my friend ended up in hospital, with a leg injury that required 60 stitches.
Beautiful “Concept”…
Magnetic Field is the Unconscious back flow, from the Electric Forward motion of Active Conscious…
(+) Charged Hydronium Ions oscillating would create the “Magnetic Field from our “SENSORS” that build “Emotion…
Matches my Consciousness Theory perfectly due to Exclusion Zones, EZ’s…
Voltage…
Dean Radin’s “Pre-Sentiment” experiments are SIGMA 6 on this topic if I remember correctly…
Interesting. I think the grandiosity is on the side of the physicalists, not idealists. Since, as she said, consciousness is all we know, the idealist is humbly staying within the boundaries of their one true certainty. The physicalist, on the other hand, has the temerity to step outside of our one "known" and posit a class of existents that can never be experientially validated.
It would be humble to be in awe at the fact that we are perceiving our own existence; it is quite grandiose to believe that you are creating the entire universe with your consciousness.
@@guaromiami Idealism does not equal solipsism. Under an idealist framework, it would still be coherent to posit a world existing outside of my personal consciousness.
I have a love-hate relationship with idealism. It's nonsensical but it seems true.
@@cibriis1710 , I'm with you here. I think it's partially because we've been steeped in physicalism, being engrained in our cultural grammar as it is. It makes it's initial intuitive plausibility hard to overcome
Totally agree! The most conservative stance is not to infer anything other than "experience is happening." It's Descartes position, though he added in an inference of a self.
what is interaction of conscious perception to subjective awareness?
Strange that self-styled hard-nosed scientists wish to explain Away consciousness, as if statements such as, "Consciousness is merely a product of the human brain," are meaningful in any way. It is like saying, "The brain merely performs a miracle." What's more, it is a miracle On Top of a greater miracle - the fact that anything exists at all.
As Terence McKenna famously noted, the entire endeavor of science can be summarized as such:
_"Give us_ one _free miracle, and we'll explain the rest!"_
the stick in river is like human being in cosmic consciousness?
I never believed consciousness was "biological". My own personal experiences have led me to believe consciousness is some kind of energy field which is neither created nor destroyed, and indeed "non-local". I have had 2 Out of Body Experiences and I can tell you now - I DEFINITELY separated from my physical body. Sounds insane, but it's truth. 1000% truth.
@Marco Andre i can't explain it really.
Allow me to be the guy with dumb basic questions, but isn’t it what the self-reference (default mode) network is all about? Subconsciously integrating reinforming and updating the associative neural network and it’s arrangements?
Also, under Hameroff’s isn’t it all suspended under anesthesia?
If none of this happen during anestesia than she is just calling unconscious what is a different aspect of consciousness but still is consciousness.
how did consciousness express itself before language?
The moment a particle is a wave; it has to be a conscious wave! Gravity is the conscious attraction among waves to create the illusion of particles, and our experience-able Universe. Max Planck states "Consciousness is fundamental and matter is derived from Consciousness". Life is the Infinite Consciousness, experiencing the Infinite Possibilities, Infinitely. We are "It", experiencing our infinite possibilities in our finite moment. Our job is to make it interesting!
She is quite amazing
In which we CAN be aware.
Those results can be produced by analyzing studies where the random process is patterned in such a way as to subtly conform to the average expectation values of the test subjects, so the galvanic or optical signs appear to show this mysterious "unconscious" predictive process, but are actually just consistent with a predictably unpredictable experimental model and normal expectation values.
There’s no objective flow of time but consciousness is ever present. Consciousness with a memory gives the experience of a flow. The flow is in the direction of gained memories (for example seeing a plant is a memory of the plant). Experience wouldn’t be possible in the other direction because that would mean constant unseeing, unhearing, forgetting etc. although from an outside perspective both directions make equal sense
There is definintely an objective flow of time. Time has nothing to do with consciousness! And consciousness is not ever present.
@@peterdamen2161 Time, no. But flow of time, yes. Consciousness is ever present. Example: the eternity before your birth seemed like an instant. Because any amount of time being unconscious is an interval of 0s in experience
@@dans3158 Of course not. When there is no life, there is no consciousness. The eternity before my life doesn't seem like an instant. I have absolutely no idea about that because is is before I was born. That's quite easy!
@@peterdamen2161 Thanks for saying what I just said but in the most conventional way possible. That’s why consciousness is ever present
@@peterdamen2161 But it’s understandable, so I’m jot judging. Here’s a more familiar, yet same example: you’re under anesthesia or sleeping without dreaming. There’s little to no experience during those hours, so the next moment in experience is by definition the moment you’re conscious again. You have no idea about the time you were unconscious, as you said. So that time is skipped from a 1st person perspective, seemingly instantaneously. The doctor who gave you the anesthesia experiences those hours that you skipped. If you experienced being unconscious, then by definition you were conscious. Either way, the flow of consciousness is uninterrupted for both the doctor and yourself. Therefore experience is always present and there’s actually no way out of it. Wether unconscious for hours or an eternity before birth (or after death), it doesn’t make a difference. They’re all an instantaneous (non-existent) event in the flow of experience
Has Closer to Truth ever interviewed Dr. Robert Sapolsky, Stanford neuroendocrinologist?
Even that tiny little bit you can't explain how it arises. What exact processes give rise to it? What is so unique about consciousness that make it an exception to all else, is that its subjective. Its the only subjective thing for each one of us. Our awareness, can anybody else access it???
We cannot see outside our daily time, trust me never take mudrooms, it was mind bending
There is sometihng in here, but I need to think more about it...
Not only is she an amazing mind, but absolutely beautiful. I just don't get that science has spent billions in trying to prove that God doesn't exist. So who or what is responsible for keeping our hearts beating, everything in space orbiting at just the correct speed to avoid crashing? Creating electric sparks in the brain? Making thought and memories possible from a 3 pound piece of meat? Etc etc.
We've been living in this world for a very long time, yet there are still things we don't understand.
The only person who can explain everything is God.
Therefore God exists.
You just had to go there. lol This argument is one of the oldest and most easily debunked by exactly what you just tried to do, which is quite silly, as is this, my own statement, so therefore, you're wrong. This is of coarse, is all nonsense. I couldn't resist either lol. Seriously though, this logical fallacy is called 'begging the question'. In this case I suspect, you are begging for a particular 'God' since you capitalized it. Side note: there are thousands of gods humans have proposed, so then, which one exactly? Good luck working that out. However, that's not the real problem which is: this argument simply tries to sneak in the answer to the question, in the question. It is assuming an existence of 'something', a 'who', that 'can explain anything'. Simply give the answer in the question, and the answer is: voila God. [cue Handel's 'Hallelujah Chorus'] The arguement also ignores all of the any other 'what it could be', boldly assuming one posible domain, a god of some kind. It could be anything though. Anything else. A pizza perhaps. I was hoping(begging) for a god too when I was much younger. Had invested so much of my life to my imaginary friend. Since birth, I was forced into it. Catholicism, ouch, double whammy for me! Stuck in a terrible sunk cost fallacy. 30+years, so I understand. religious and theist folk simply can't help themselves. It was a lot of work deprogramming my mind, and i lost family and friends over it. But it's ok, you can keep your God if you prefer, and it works for you. Just don't harm others with it, use logical fallacies to prove it, and most importantly, keep it out of science. All that said, I went to public school, bam, tripple whammy on my life, so I could still be totally wrong. Very probably, I am. lol Trying to prove an unprovable thing, is really hard, but it's been fun thinking about it all. ;) Cheers.
@@GungaLaGunga
Thank you Gunga, you have given me much to think about.
Julia said that, after the fashion of William James, the unconscious mind is attached to everything, and that's how we access accesses a lot of non-local other information. Kuhn said that's radical. No kidding. But that gets to the core of our being and our conscious/unconscious selves doesn't it? And that is transcendent.
Margaret Mead, during her tenure as president of AAAS and her brief inclusion of parapsyschology as a member discipline, quipped as did many others that "Mind Mediates Matter". Equally radical and transcendent.
At the very least scientific research into consciousness by neuro-scientists and others needs to evolve from the unworkable set of reductionist tools they currently use to a systems approach that embraces psycho-social system dynamics, game theory, and automata a la Wolfram.
As the late great Yogi Berra stated, “ it’s like Deja vu all over again”
Can someone post the meta analysis that she is citing?
I am wondering when Robert talks about consciousness does he actually mean life? It could be life
as mush as he likes to pretend otherwise, Kuhn is a very rigid thinker.
I think her concept is entirely plausible, if you are in the camp of The Many Worlds Theory as described to me by Sean Carroll. If the quantum mechanic is our reality, the wave function/entanglement can support her research. Everett's stance, if true, will support this concept.
Great
Has interesting implications vis a vis the "feeling" of free will.
Awareness is known by awareness alone.
might there be a conscious mind of nature / cosmos (unconscious to human) that interacts with physical brain?
I think consciousness is simple, a reflection of our processes into the absorption of environment. The unique and amazing thing is the adaptations by living entities over time seems to involve and be motivated by interesting laws of physics
not sure i agree it's that simple...
Conscious is not simple. It is an electromagnetic/electrochemical phenomenon which arises like an image on a fantastic computer screen which has attached cameras which can also absorb the information on the screen plus information outside the screen. This information activates the hardware (wetware)of neurons (each built from small to large molecules acting synergistically with the open DNA reading frames, in a massively parallel way, then connected uniquely to others) to produce a local field around neural bundles and across the cortex which stimulates or depresses other neural firing. All is synchronized , appearing as brain waves, updating the whole system every ? 1/8 of a second.
Consciousness is not specifically created by the brain, but arises from it.
Can awareness exist non-locally? The CIA and Soviet KGB all put large sums of money into remote viewing until more accurate means , like satellite imaging and big data allowed better espionage. You do not keep funding what doesn't provide valuable information.
@Dion @Glen Liesegang all these things you make up, fiction, the mind is beautifully simple, and actually as it was probably 25 million years ago or more
@@glenliesegang233 Great comment! What is looking at that 'screen', that almost perfect representation of the semi-immediate world around us, within our brain? All we know is that it's there somehow. Does the perfect representation see itself? Is it permanent during our lives, or beyond but still in a physical sense?
@@pjaworek6793 the conscious image , I think, arises out of layers on layers working together in a level of complexity too great for us to understand.
Some AI systems seem to have achieved rudimentary "awareness" just like insects whose neural webs respond to tiny triggering changes.
Then there's "hive consciousness" where individual bees may be capable of facial recognition, and that can possibly be shared among important other members.
For fun, read about the" telling of the bees" when the beekeeper dies...
We lack definition. Not that the definition isn't there, simply we choose not to apply it. Grasping into water should leave one's hand dry, after time. So ask, why do you not wish to accept that which is, simply in order to understand? By that I mean, does a rubber-band ball bounce once you unravel it to discover it's not one string? Does a plate become unbroken when you say sorry? Does Trust rekindle? The Answer, in my opinion, "should," be no. Asking why the tunnel remains open isn't always as important while you're going through.
Chew on that wood, worms.
are unconscious human activities caused by external nature / consciousness?
unconscious connected to physical and - or non physical? how does physical brain interact with unconscious, or is there a phenomenal consciousness without awareness?
could human conscious develop from physical brain and nature which itself developed from a consciousness (which can be considered unconscious as not personal to human being?)
I was thinking acausality/correlation over time, not causation.
This is NOT a even WHY question, but an 'as a result of which' question or 'whereby'.
natural consciousness at speed of causation squared?
Are mind and consciousness two separate things?
"It depends. It depends on your definition. But to me, mind is that part which has been given to you. It is not yours. Mind means the borrowed, mind means the cultivated, mind means that which the society has penetrated into you. It is not you. Consciousness is your nature; mind is just the circumference created by the society around you, the culture, your education.
Mind means the conditioning. You can have a Hindu mind, but you cannot have a Hindu consciousness. You can have a Christian mind, but you can't have a Christian consciousness. Consciousness is one; it is not divisible. Minds are many because societies are many; cultures, religions are many. Each culture, each society, creates a different mind. Mind is a social by-product. And unless this mind dissolves, you cannot go within; you cannot know what is really your nature, what is authentically your existence, your consciousness.
The effort to move into meditation is a struggle against the mind. Mind is never meditative, it is never silent, so to say 'a silent mind' is meaningless, absurd. It is just like saying 'a healthy disease'. It makes no sense. How can there be a disease that is healthy? Disease is disease, and health is the absence of disease.
There is nothing like a silent mind. When silence is there, there is no mind. When mind is there, there is no silence. Mind, as such, is the disturbance, the disease. Meditation is the state of no-mind. Not of a silent mind, not of a healthy mind, not of a concentrated mind, no. Meditation is the state of no-mind: no society within you, no conditioning within you. Just you, with your pure consciousness.
In Zen they say: Find out your original face. The face that you are using is not original; it is cultivated. It is not your face; it is just a facade, just a device. You have many faces, each moment you change your face. You go on changing it. The changing has become so automatic by now that you don't even observe it, you don't notice it.
When you meet your servant you have a different face from when you meet your boss. If your servant is sitting on your left side and your boss is sitting on your right, you have two faces. The left face is for the servant and the right face is for the boss. You are two persons simultaneously. How can you have the same face for your servant? Your one eye has a certain quality, a certain look. Your other eye has a different quality, a different look. It is meant for the boss and the other one is meant for the servant. This has become so automatic, so mechanical, so robot like that you go on changing your faces, you have multi-faces, and not a single one is the original.
In Zen they say: Find out your original face, the face you had before you were born, or the face you will have when you are dead. What is that original face? That original face is your consciousness. All your other faces come from your mind.
Remember well that you don't have one mind; you have multi-minds. Forget the concept that everyone has one mind. You don't have, you have many minds: a crowd, a multiplicity; you are poly-psychic. In the morning you have one mind, in the afternoon a different mind and in the evening still a different mind. Every single moment you have a different mind.
Mind is a flux: river like, flowing, changing. Consciousness is eternal, one. It is not different in the morning and different in the evening. It is not different when you are born and different when you die. It is one and the same, eternal. Mind is a flux. A child has a childish mind, an old man has an old mind; but a child or an old man have the same consciousness, which is neither childish nor old. It cannot be.
Mind moves in time and consciousness lives in timelessness. They are not one. But we are identified with the mind. We go on saying, insisting, 'My mind. I think this way. This is my thought. This is my ideology.' Because of this identification with the mind, you miss that which you really are.
Dissolve these links with the mind. Remember that your minds are not your own. They have been given to you by others: your parents, your society, your university. They have been given to you. Throw them away. Remain with the simple consciousness that you are ¯ pure consciousness, innocent. This is how one moves from the mind to meditation. This is how one moves away from society, from the without to the within. This is how one moves from the man-made world, the maya, to the universal truth, the existence."
it's baffling to me because everything, all the little pieces, that generate consciousness aree inanimate.
I dunno. I suspect that consciousness is so "baffling" because so many folks have insisted that it cannot possibly be a physical phenomenon. So they separate it from physicality ... which is actually how we "feel" (experience) consciousness to begin with ... in order to analyze it "on its own [non-physical] terms", and then wonder how a non-physical consciousness can actually feel things.
IOW, the folks who separate consciousness from physicality are creating their own "hard" problem.
As much as I want consciousness to be something more than that, I cannot escape from one very inconvenient fact: that every example of consciousness that we know of is always, without exception, associated or intertwined with a very specific type of physical / material infrastructure ... i.e., a nervous system.
If consciousness was truly independent of that ... or even possible without it ... then there should be at least some evidence of that.
🤯
And if consciousness is not solely the product of a physical brain, how would people then suggest we then acquire it?
@@longcastle4863:
We don't "acquire" consciousness, it's fundamental. The brain, like all other objects, is a product of consciousness. Also, the word "physical" is virtually meaningless in this context, because "physical" and "material" both refer to the phenomenological experience of consciousness, not to the purported external noumenal realm posited by so-called "materialists" (an egregious misnomer).
Robert is such a materialist everytime someone suggests consciousness is fundemental is freaks out. “Well mainstream science doesn’t see it that way”
So she's a member of the Institute of Noetic Science, and several of the studies in her meta-analysis were also associated with the Institute of Noetic Science and other fringe psychosocial studies groups. The thing is James Randi spent a career debunking studies like these, several times he was invited to comment on the design or conduct of such studies and found gaping methodological flaws that wiped out the results. It doesn't matter how many such studies you include in a meta-analysis, it's woo in, woo out.
Yeah, sometimes i'm amazed by how stupid scientists are. An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence
Do you know if Sheldrake's functional MRI studies of visual cortex activation before the startling image is presented? Or, his paired fMRI studies where "highly connected" individuals show activation of the visual cortex in a "receiver" in a darkened room when the "sender" sees highly emotionaly charged images?
Obviously this should either be debunked, or confirmed. This would make these claims either, "woo," or "Wow!"
@@glenliesegang233 Rupert Sheldrake, the morphic resonance guy?
@@simonhibbs887 Yeah, him. But prolly look at the studies before you lop him off based on hearsay. And about your original comment… is there a perfect methodology to study things like consciousness and phenomenology? It seems that some skeptics even doubt their own senses, so first-person experience isn’t even a reliable methodology…
@@theautodidacticlayman Oh I know of Sheldrake, it's all patent nonsense on stilts. He's also associated with the Institute of Noetic Science. Funnily enough several of the studies in the meta analysis discussed in this video were conducted there as well. It's a veritable nexus of nuttiness. Must be on a lay line or something.
So Julia...is there any correlation between what you posit and the existence of some type of consciousness after the end of the physical process of the body? Does the experience of death foreshadow experience "further down the line "?
Amazing
I wonder if cats and dogs fleeing seconds before an earthquake is also a predictive physiological activity.
There is no backward causation.
Isn't there? You've done the experiments and are just waiting to publish your findings that contradict Julia's and delayed choice experiments? Can't wait to see you on CTT.
It’s interesting that she downplays the significance of consciousness relative to the unconscious mind. Keep in mind that it is consciousness that makes ethics and morals relevant. Without consciousness, nothing really matters because there’s no one for it to matter to. An unconscious being, however complex, is interesting, but unless it ultimately becomes conscious, has no more ethical or moral relevance than does a rock.
What's so baffling? Everything else is an object. Only consciousness is subject.
Its baffling because with the brain unlike other organs and parts of the body...form does not follow function
The form of the brain absolutely does follow its function; it's literally a wrinkled-up ball, the shape which would allow for the highest density of connections while retaining layers of neurons.
Our consciousness is indeed limited. Our brains are aware of only a minute amount of the Universe and its mix of underlying fundamentals.
A bigger question is: what is emotion?
Chinese Philosophy:has it that “Nothing happens without Three.” Based on this, daily awareness or consciousness is bookended by subconsciousness and superconsciousness. Conscious awareness connects us with our environment and inner state. The subconscious connects us with history and archetypical material, the superconscious connects us with consciousness proper, which just is. It has no environment other than itself, and has no past, present, or future based on a linear progression as it just is. Some call this state god but an atheist could accept it as just what is or what exists. There need not be any disagreement over it. If religion wants to honor or worship it, why not? There is no need to get bent out of shape over it, or over the different ways it is honored. Religion and science need not be at odds. If science does not want to ascribe a universal personhood to it they do not have to. If some do want to assign personhood to it that should be okay as well.
She’s brilliant. And a hottie.
“Physical” and “experience” seem like two un-relatable domains. If consciousness is the experience of the redness of red and sweetness of sugar (or 👄), then that is likely correlated with, but not accessible to the human mind. The unconscious mind, however, might could be interactive with our physical mind, and therefore with our responses.
When we have awareness of redness, then the awareness is it’s own, nonphysical reality. “Physical” and “experience” seem like two un-relatable domains. Arousal, the physical response, on the one hand and, on the other hand the awareness, consciousness, thereof- these are correlated. However, while consciousness is alive to the states of the embodied mind, the physical mind is not aware of consciousness. If it was, we will have endless echo of experience> awareness of experience > experience of the awareness of experience > experience of the awareness of the … you get my point.
Darn, I had a hard time understanding the meaning of what she was talking about.
A stick in a river is not an adequate analogy to explain the idea of unconscious prediction of future events.
my two cents, can you define space and time in un-consciousness. If cannot, then, all the physics laws will fail explain what is "not consciousness"
It's the sound of one hand clapping.
We accept gravity as a force, but science cannot accept intention as a force. We applaud Evolution yet skip through Darwin's will as if it shouldn't matter.
Gravity is an inference as is evolution, yet intention is not, it is personal. I can't see gravity but I can read about Newton. I can't witness an evolutionary process going on but I've heard of Darwin.
What is behind this blatant, unscientific, double standard in thought? Are you conscious or aren't you? If you don't know then what do you know?
Consciousness is not just detached, observation of the world it is in depth interaction with Nature. Interaction not just inspection.
What was Darwin looking for? What was Newton thinking about when he made that famous inductive, inference? If you have no interest in these questions then science has reached its grasp. It will be left to others to carry the hope of the future.
might be awareness in brain, consciousness in nature?
The transcendental object at the end of time, the strangest attractor of all; what could it be?
Jung's Collective Unconscious is mirrored by the Quantum Field. Two sides of the same coin.
I think the question is not "Why is consciousness so baffling?". I think the question is "Why are so many people baffled by consciousness?". I believe consciousness is a very easy thing to understand. What is extremely difficult to understand is the ramifications of consciousness. It has similarities to things like representing states as true or false. When this is done on the smallest scale, it is very easy to understand. However, who at the time would ever think that "representing states as true or false" would ever lead to modern computing as it is today.
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Wow
On the other side of consciousness it will baffle you if you ever experience it. To master it, you MUST be willing to do more to expand the veil. That part of you obey the laws of conscious innocents such as be patient, kind, endurance and are willing to remain steady in mind.
Wickedness to others will bring this part of them out, whether or not they are are expecting. It can also manifest with certain routine that follows nature and its environment.
The ultimate implications of this work are astounding. If a piece of our mind can actually predict the future, all sorts of things are possible. I certainly hope much more work is done. I'd like to see well designed studies in animals, both species that we consider having consciousness and those without. I'd also like to know the timing of unconscious response prior to conscious perception. Must it be measured in milliseconds or in years as well? So much to address!!
And its not always a 'precognitive' awareness.. It can also be an ongoing situation.. I'm a psychic and I woke up one morning knowing that something was going down at my office. I didn't know what it was but something was wrong. Turns out the State Inspector was doing a surprise, unannounced audit/visit of the office. It didn't even really effect me. I was in and out in 5 minutes. But it did effect something that was related to me.. effecting the people in my environment.
Scientist seem to overcomplicte everthing. Basic councessness is just bring aware of your surrouding. it's as simple as that.