Consciousness

 What is consciousness

A question that seems to be circulating the scientific community more so now with internet social networking than perhaps before the onslaught of the internet. I’ve recently seen a few articles that claim to be scientific in nature may seem to lend little in the way of scientific reasoning and evidence. So here are my thoughts.

Consciousness, being an experience of pleasure, pain, visual or auditory experience, et cetera requires a system that can experience the above. Let’s take each of these words individually. Pleasure is a complex experience involving emotional responses. The emotional responses need a complex system of pattern matching and temporal sequencing which trigger a range of neurotransmitters (chemical messengers) in many parts of the brain. Visual and auditory experience require a large number of neurons working in conjunction processing signals that directly relate to each other spatially and temporally. This data is segmented by the processing algorithm into shapes with edges in both space and time to identify an object and its function. That information then is processed in a more abstract fashion and is understood by its own object and function along with its interaction with other objects related to the entire observed sequence. The observations of these effects are fed back into the mind and alterations to the algorithms are made which may bring the responses so that they produced the desired effect.

"Among life's many baffling properties, the phenomenon of consciousness leaps out as especially striking. Its origin is arguably the hardest problem facing science today and the only one that remains almost impenetrable even after two and a half millennia of deliberation"

Consciousness appears to be an emergent function of a highly organized system. Though some people call this reductionism, which it is, but they often consider reductionism negatively. Reductionism is the practice of analyzing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of phenomena that are held to represent a simpler or more fundamental level, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation. This is what quantum physics does.

Our biology is a complex system of organs working together. Those organs comprised of individual cells which in themselves are comprised of complex molecular structures. The systems evolved and through cooperation became able to function as a unit. From a central nervous system commanding these systems along with the self regulated functioning of the animals’ autonomic systems brought about a form of self awareness. This, I hypothesise, is due to the self-regulating algorithms of the nervous system. For a system to be self regulating it requires the algorithm have an overall general goal and able to modify its behaviour bringing the algorithmic function closer to its goal. This is called a closed loop system in control theory. But not only does the individual neuron regulate control according to its algorithm but the algorithm itself is regulated according to the overall goal of the entire system. This is where it appears consciousness begins to arise, a sort of self reflection.

Our biology is a complex system of organs working together. Those organs comprised of individual cells which in themselves are comprised of complex molecular structures. The systems evolved and through cooperation became able to function as a unit. From a central nervous system commanding these systems along with the self regulated functioning of the animals’ autonomic systems brought about a form of self awareness. This, I hypothesise, is due to the self-regulating algorithms of the nervous system. For a system to be self regulating it requires the algorithm have an overall general goal and able to modify its behaviour bringing the algorithmic function closer to its goal. This is called a closed loop system in control theory. But not only does the individual neuron regulate control according to its algorithm but the algorithm itself is regulated according to the overall goal of the entire system. This is where it appears consciousness begins to arise, a sort of self reflection.

To say that consciousness is an entity on its own is a claim that requires evidence to support it. There is not even a workable model to support consciousness as a separate physical entity. There are no observed ‘consciousness’ particles and they have never appeared in the standard model. What is in the standard model can describe what is explained in the above paragraphs.

From the World Science Festival with Brian Greene, a video discussing this interesting topic of consciousness addressing; how does the brain retrieve memories, how do we articulate words, and focus our attention? The recent advances in this exploration have provided a newfound ability to decipher, sharpen, and adjust electrical signals relevant to speech, attention, memory and emotion. Join Brian Greene in this YouTube video and leading neuroscientists György Buzsáki, Edward Chang, Michael Halassa, Michael Kahana and Helen Mayberg for a thrilling exploration of how we're learning to read and manipulate the mind.

The complex, the human brain. Is it the most complex structure in the universe? This video brings you to a deeper understanding of the brain, its architecture and how the parts work together to bring you, you.

From the Feb. 5 Grand Rounds, Mark Solms, PhD, of the University of Cape Town, presented on how the metaphysical experience of consciousness relates to the physical brain. Consciousness is fundamental to our species. Our feelings guide us and the seat of consciousness is our feelings. Consciousness is the feeling of your way through the updating of prediction errors as you try to meet your needs in the world. All of this can be reduced to equations which represent the model. It’s not magical, mystery, it’s just physics.