Why does consciousness exist reddit

Why does consciousness exist reddit. If life has no goal, then it will at most be an unconscious reflex, no different than the knee jerk reflex. so first: what is intelligence? it is an ability to approximate time function of natural events. As long as there exists something that cannot be observable from the 3rd person perspective, the hard problem of consciousness exists. Consciousness has a purpose - to keep itself alive, and to spread its genes. For instance the "flow" of time may well be more to do with consciousness than to do with time "out there in the 4D world". If we define a soul as a non-physical essence of a person then a soul must exist, as consciousness is not physical and we each personally have it. Although for sure, all evidence points to that, and it definitely seems the most logical conclusion, the problem is that we’re limited to our own senses, and what we can see, observe and record, which is not necessarily the entire picture. Consciousness is the reason my reality exists, not the other way around in which my consciousness exists in a reality. Evolution gave it to us so we can be aware of our surroundings and aware we have certain properties to help us survive. Physics does not support this. But the I ? If we live in a material universe with concrete and predicable rules, then how does consciousness exist? Consciousness is a phenomenon simply based on the manifestation of processing in the brain. I just can't think of why, leading me to believe there is no 'why'. " Before your birth there was nothing to be conscious of and the same is true for the time after death (just like deep sleep which one does not remember, yet you exist). g. How does that exist- as a possibility or potential. We will eventually figure out in… to answer you question "what is consciousness": it is an emergent byproduct of an intelligence. Could this explain why people like David Grush, Jacques Vallée, Gary Nolan, Ross Couthard, and Luis Elizondo have all suggested that the UFO phenomena could be linked to alternative dimensions and that solid matter (including UFO craft r/consciousness: For discussion of the scientific study of consciousness, as well as related philosophy. So when you ask do I exist ? The question exists for sure. Thus the brain does not create consciousness. The void cannot be said that it exists. Consciousness does not exist in the same way that the color red does not exist: it is a construct to help us describe a certain phenomenon. Brains generate consciousness via a complex system of interactive elements, powered by chemicals with the aid of electrical current. A novel study reports the dynamics of consciousness may be understood by a newly developed conceptual and mathematical framework. I think it's not unreasonable to say that subjective time is as different from physical time as subjective colour is different from frequency dependent albedos of physical surfaces. Throw in an attention mechanism that identifies the largest self need and isolates the relevant sensor inputs to satiate that need and you have a system that has consciousness like a human has consciousness. Consciousness is required to perform thoughts, thinking. Consciousness at the least requires the flow of information. it is pure awareness with no object. I'm not clear if you're talking about consciousness (i. Instead I will take that central claim that they all make: "There is no hard problem of consciousness". We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. A non physical subjective system that can operate on physical entities like you yourself, and act better than a simple zombie would. r/DebateAnAtheist is dedicated to discovering what is true, real, and useful by using debate to ascertain beliefs we can be confident about. so far we don't have any evidence that this is the case. Consciousness does not exist as an entity, but as a function. That means that we are because of The Being not the other way around. I think you’re wrong to say it’s indisputable that consciousness is created in the brain. From this perspective concepts like an afterlife (of any kind) and God become much less absurd, although this doesn't prove either. The fact we exist at all means its possible for our consciousness to erupt out of nothingness. This purpose explains how it evolved, as part of the competition for resources of agents sharing the same environment. Relative to the waking world, my dream characters don't exist. There is no “before” for a person before they were conceived, and there is no “after” for a person after they die. , physics, chemistry, and quantum events). If there's no God as the source of consciousness, and we're the only beings with these properties in this vast, ever expanding universe, then why does consciousness exist at all? Why can't everything just be a "mindless", material object that continues to do whatever because its reality is predetermined? The fact that consciousness evolved means it's preferred to unconscious animal beings, so consciousness creates an advantage, a reward system, that can influence reality. To me arguments on the subject look like wishful thinking of people wanting the consciousness to be something "beyond" or physical If you want to know consciousness, look at your own at any given moment. Jan 14, 2020 · In our standard view of things, consciousness exists only in the brains of highly evolved organisms, and hence it exists only in a tiny part of the universe and only in very recent history Consciousness is a fictitious illusion; it doesn't actually exist. I also believe that there is only one consciousness, and that there is barely a connection between consciousness and identities, besides general immersion which arguably is an illusion within the identity itself. The fact we exist already proves there is something after death. As we previously saw, the hard problem exists as long as subjective experience exists. It's all that was needed for survival. Is the question then why does existence exist? Can existence not-exist; if not then existence must exist by definition, what else could it be? Depending on context, something, the contents of my dream for example, can both be thought of as "existing" or as "non existing". In the colloquial sense, was there something before any conscious being existed, then yes, it must have since we're all contingent beings. Even saying consciousness doesn't exist proves that it does exist, as only a conscious entity may describe the negative property of itself as a string that includes memories. Consciousness seems to be the important one , not individuals. Consciousness is subjective experience, privileged private access to publicly observable events. Jan 21, 2023 · Each of us knows that we are conscious, in terms of having thoughts, perceptions, and feelings, but we are unable to prove it to anyone else. We know that consciousness exists not through experiences, but through the immediate feeling of our feelings and experiences. I mean that is equally as well answered in the cosmic psyhist view if matter is eternal and conscious at some level than the arrangements of that specific matter would also give rise to a subjective sense of consciousness humans aren't really special in this were just species that are under the selection of evolution Science also has some answers but they are often limited because the perspective is often that solid matter exists and somehow creates consciousness thus creating a "hard problem" of consciousness which they'll never be able to answer for the very view of reality is wrong to start with. it is the ability of your brain to create scenarios with some Finally, one of my friends, who is from Texas, proposed this: what if the concept of consciousness is merely a human creation, and does not actually exist? Our apparent consciousness may be an artefact of the simulation (meaning the universe changing over time, this is not implying the universe is being simulated Matrix-style). Dec 20, 2018 · Consciousness is generally understood to mean that an individual not only has an idea, recollection or perception but also knows that he or she has it. We exist to bring about an ideal state of energy for the universe that cannot be achieved by natural reactions alone. Think about it, chimps can use sticks but that's life has no meaning, so u should seek to do what makes you happy in your temporary blip of consciousness in the universe, but why do we have to exist at all. Your mind impacts your next steps, and over a whole species the genes that lead to those next steps also lead to the highest odds of r There's a part of your brain that makes you different from everything else in the known universe, but why does it exist? You could say consciousness exist to help us survive. This is what I refer to in the paper as "consciousness-as-property", and I go on at length about what exactly it would mean for that property to exist and why it does not. Some of us are better at it than others. That being said, I'd say that if the Universe is a Game, and The Being is The Creator, then Consciousness is your cheat code/guide. If you want to know God subtract the contributions of your brain as you are looking inward, and let the silence that is left consume you. r/AskReddit is the place to ask and answer thought-provoking questions. Electrons, for example, are too small to be seen but can be inferred. consciousness needs the self or individual to be aware of it's own awareness, this is called self-awareness. This does not automatically include the… Why do we need knowledge in order to be aware? Intelligence and consciousness are not the same thing. Olga Danylenko. Perhaps this is why Joshu shouted "Mu" when asked whether a dog has the Buddha-nature. I know I do, and you know you do (assuming) but neither of us can ever truly know that the other has awareness. It's entirely possible that consciousness is the net result of electrical signals passing through a complex weighted network. The consciousness of it also. Your consciousness in that scenario is a byproduct of the randomised conditions that lead to your evolution. When the brain dies, the mind and consciousness of the being to The difficult problem is explaining why such a connection even exists, that is: why some physical arrangements produce consciousness and others do not. We're incredibly contained to a huge number of blatantly flawed biases specifically because of how ridiculous the idea is. What I claim does not exist is the property of consciousness (read, "chairness"), such as in questions like, 'Is this entity conscious?'. . I can replace your brain with a machine that is its equal in every way, so that from the outside, nobody could tell the difference. Aug 11, 2022 · Consciousness can not simply be reduced to neural activity alone, researchers say. Human consciousness is unique and uniquely capable. Or that it is "not existing" either. 11 votes, 21 comments. Yet, you know for a fact that things do exist, because here you are. that size relationship is dictated by 3 dimensional spatial scale as we see through our eyes and measure with our tools. And by “consciousness”, you should understand it as broadly as “the totality of all first-person experiences”. -----> This function is "knowing", and the awareness of this function is consciousness. Opening up a human won’t let you find their ghostly spirit, nor do ghosts exist in the first place afaik. Sure AI can, but you haven't shown that AI isn't conscious since you haven't posed any specific criteria for what is, or isn't "consciousness". If we fail the big crunch happens, which is the current reigning champ for lowest energy state. Then later we evolved to have the parts of our brain responsible for conscious thought. So why discuss this? Just for the fun of not being able to respond in a way that makes sense to thought. Our consciousness can live there without needing a body, but to experience this dimension ( or simulation) it needs one. It seems like you think that consciousness itself needs to be selected for in order for us to explain why it exists, but this already isn't true. But I know some stuff. What separates us from other animals, a higher consciousness. Human consciousness is an important topic of discussion because it is believed to be the reason humans experience what we experience. If you accept Idealism, the entire universe, with all first and second order phenomenon reduce to a single category of phenomenon, call it mental, or physical, doesn't really matter. But the wondrous experience of consciousness itself seems to require a brain to give rise to it and a brain-based mind to perceive it. I can see you sitting in the chair—that is publicly observable, but only you know what it's like for you to sit in the the chair and experience your thoughts and feelings—that is private. In a spiritual sense, our soul brings us to heaven or hell and nothing more. Why, oh why, APPPLESAUCE are we here?? What's the purpose of a rubber chicken riding a unicycle on the moon?. So, my theory is that a soul does not exist, and consciousness comes directly from our hardware (our brain). You then need to think about the possibility of new code, yet to be made. Ex Catholic here. To me its the other way around. Focusing on determinism: everything from the Big Bang unfolds in exactly one way, In the same vein, all of the energies and biophysical phenomena that the brain experiences as consciousness do indeed exist independently and outside of the brain (e. Modern humans have an undeniably different consciousness than modern Chimpanzees. Well, it does, but in definition only. How does this make consciousness non-existent? This is some kind of Krishnamurti-style shit, you won't surprise me with that. In the case of the color red, it is the phenomenon of a brain interpreting the wavelength that a particular photon has. One can happily be Atheist and yet believe in the continuation of consciousness after death, as there is no conflict between the two philosophies, being of different categories of philosophical insight. , in a coma) but still are “conscious” because they still have subjective experiences. in the words of NDT if you ask a tapeworm what our purpose is it would respond that we're here to feed them. You do things for reasons that are largely unknown to you and make up reasons for why you do them. Sep 11, 2020 · The solipsism problem, also called the problem of other minds, lurks at the heart of science, philosophy, religion, the arts and the human condition A very active subreddit to debate and pose arguments to atheists. That's why it feels like I jump forward in time when I fall asleep, experience some dreaming and then wake up again. i don’t want to feel anything, i’d rather just not exist. Consciousness is a system function to acquire energy and take specific actions to preserve the persistence of the self. Raw sensations are useful on some scale but can often be misleading or unhelpful. The one thing I’d mention is that there seems to no reason to claim that you can distinguish between ‘a logical reason why anything exists’ and ‘a logical reason why … nothing’. There might be some cases where energy is the cause of why something isn't better but it's better explained as local vs global minima. Consciousness is obviously generated in the brain, and we know the brain needs more energy and oxygen to function than any other part of the body, so it totally follows that interrupting either of those things would rapidly Nov 1, 2019 · We know that consciousness exists not through experiments but through our immediate awareness of our feelings and experiences. When you screw up, you get cognitive dissonance. There is no obstacle in principle to solving the "Easy" problems of consciousness. Consciousness is little more than an elaborate narrative authored after the actions unfold. This is very similar to a question like, "Does a dog exist outside of consciousness of the dog?" I guess you could define consciousness however you like, but that definition doesn't really capture the essence of what most people would conflate with "my consciousness" as my ability to feel and perceive things wouldn't exist if I uploaded my brain to a computer even if a computer could exert will just like my own. The fundamental issue of consciousness is that we don’t even know if consciousness does reside in the brain matter, because we don’t know if consciousness is the kind of thing that can be found. In the unique case of consciousness, the thing to be explained cannot be observed. At times I believe that consciousness doesn't really exist in any external sense, that is to say consciousness is literally the internal experience of the very correlated electrochemical processes we've discussed, and hence won't ever be adequately described or analysed in such a descriptive level because it's actually a false problem. Your thoughts already exist without consciousness, and your model of what is you and what is an apple already exist, but you also have a system that models how you are paying attention to those objects and to your internal models about those objects. The question of whether or not consciousness continues after death has nothing to do with belief or lack thereof in a deity. As an atheist, it's not that I rule out the possibility that some higher power may be the basis for consciousness, it's that that it hasn't been proven. it is the basis and the reason for the abstract thinking. In that perspective, then question is actually about why brain works the way it does. Of course, scientists are used to dealing with the unobservable. There are certainly examples of people who are “unconscious” in the medical sense of not being alert (e. But it's also possible that if the brain dies, atoms will be dissolved into particles from what was once consciousness as in the first law of conservation of energy, it states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, so isn't to say there is slight chance maybe in a x amount of years that part of our energy can be sandwiched again to make us 're-exist' in another form throughout the universe. - Doesn't really answer the "why does consciousness exist and where does it come from" question though. Given the idea of Murphy’s law + the assumption that the universe is infinite and time is infinite than one’s consciousness will never cease to exist and there will be a you out there somewhere in the infinite time and space of the universe that will exist in the exact same way making it where you consciousness can never be permanently If consciousness is fundamental then why does pain and suffering exist? Because consciousness requires a goal such as do not get injured, so getting further from that goal is suffering. With that brief introduction to some of the ideas surrounding what consciousness is, we might now want to ask an explanatory question. in simpler words, to predict what will happen in time, given some starting state. For perception, this Sep 25, 2023 · In a 2020 paper, he suggested that the universe “is composed of a set of partial views of itself” and that “conscious perceptions are aspects of some views”—a perspective that he says Jun 26, 2019 · The prevailing consensus in neuroscience is that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain and its metabolism. So while we can scientifically show that some functions reside within the brain, we counterintuitively cannot yet conclude that we have found the We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. Can't prove it though. Then again, this is the problem of other minds: you cannot even prove that I have consciousness. It's already happened. You can confirm that you are conscious, at least conscious of something [creation], but you can't confirm where does this consciousness comes from. It was just random chance the universe created this virus that just keeps creating with no real purpose. It's that open-ended. He means like there is a higher dimension, than this one. Thus, all things that exist have a consciousness of some sort, but the actual functions of that consciousnesses varies from thing to thing. Six or seven million years ago our ancestral species was the same as the ancestral species of the Chimpanzees. Dec 7, 2021 · Why do we experience life in the first person? Imagine that a future version of me, perhaps not so far away, offers you the deal of a lifetime. This is why I believe other animals have consciousness too. I'm having trouble comprehending this essay in particular. If it was proven to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, I would believe it. Why or how does consciousness exist? Why is it that when I put this small brown square in my mouth I have the experience of tasting chocolate? One thing that seems obvious is that the brain plays a role. 43M subscribers in the AskReddit community. , The universe doesn't give a hootenanny about us- it's busy juggling flaming pineapples while tap-dancing on a xylophone made of spaghetti! We're just a bunch of flapdoodle, a cosmic kazoo solo played by a hyperactive kangaroo! Look out The document states that “solid matter, in the strict construction of the term, simply does not exist”. View community ranking In the Top 1% of largest communities on Reddit. The universe ceases to exist for me while I'm not consciousness. In philosophy, “conscious” is not usually equated with “alert. When you will be dead exists in the same way as when you were born, and when you are now. Though we couldn’t even experience the latter. This philosophy destroys the duality that plagues materialism, which is why the hard problem of consciousness only exists in materialism. It’s not really a “soul” or “spirit”, that’s just what we call it to understand it. ” Consciousness is the presence of subjective experience. It’s all about who is actually American scientist Robert Lanza, MD explained why death does not exist: he believes that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, and that death is just an illusion created by the linear perception of time. Thus consciousness is intrinsically linked to the flow of time moment to moment (required by information flow), and thus your consciousness is causally linked to its past self. If David Hoffmann's theory is right, then the question why reality exists, converts into the question why consciousness exist. Now before we go, I'm not an expert on psychology or neuroscience. Question: Why, then, does it seem so real? If, for example, the experience and sensation of the color green, it's green-ness, is an illusion, why does it seem green? Consciousness is a property that exists entirely separately from the physical world, perhaps in the form of a soul. The first half of your post sounded very solipsistic, the second half merged that with a bit of a pantheistic version of the universe. The reason we complicate things and ask silly questions like why is there everything is because of this thing called Counsciousness, Without counciousness we would have none of this questions, thus I ask was Counsciousness a mistake, if not a mistake why constantly looking for reasons to exist in a meaningless reality or life ? If you mean subconscious it exists because it evolved first. through the lens of our perception, we are tiny compared to an infinite world around us that we are looking out at, and that is a big part of how our brains work. So, not only do I not know what consciousness is, or how it comes to be, or how to solve the hard problem of consciousness, but now I'm asking about why does it exist at all throughout animal life. 42M subscribers in the AskReddit community. Only you can experience your emotions. self-awareness) or conscious as in a "moral compass. So consciousness is also random chance, maybe 'we', as the universe werent meant to be experiencing and observing ourselves at this level. why does consciousness exist? This thread is archived New comments cannot be posted and votes A theory of consciousness should explain why consciousness exists in order to explain how it evolved. Without consciousness anything you could call yourself does not exist and when people die consciousness appears just fine. You should ask yourself why consciousness exists in the first place and you'll know the correct answer: because The Being willed it. It might be that a specific set of behaviors which are selected for are the result of a bunch of stuff which gives rise to consciousness and that consciousness itself has no specific function. Only we have access to the mysterious essence that If the universe is a perceptibly infinite series of dice rolls then you don't have free will, you don't have will, you simply are. As far as I know, the origin of consciousness is unknown. Feel free to correct me where I'm wrong. There is no time for something that does not exist. This model has not been proven correct or even If matter cannot change, information cannot flow, and consciousness cannot exist. Does existence only exist with consciousness? It depends on how you're using the language. For me, the layman, the hard problem of consciousness doesn't look hard at all. Human consciousness seems so complex because we can say so much with it. The fact that we exist means it's happened atleast once, and if can happen once it can happen again. Ok, so far, no religious system was able to consolidate an all powerful, all knowing, and all loving deity, and no god I'm aware of made his presence known to us, so I would say, he does not exists, or he just does not give a fuck Why does there need to be a point to having consciousness? Why does there need to be a higher power to have consciousness? Time is not a steadily moving monolith, the past present and future exist simultaneously. Or, in other terms, awareness is consciousness. Post your best arguments for the supernatural, discuss why your faith is true, and tell us how your reasoning led you to a belief in the supernatural. why does consciousness exist, and what are the fundamental mechanisms or Processes that give rise to subjective awareness and the ability to perceive, think, and experience the world? Some people claim that consciousness is all around us, a fundamental function of the existing universe; itself alive in its happening. Well, no, we don’t really need to understand the mechanism behind consciousness to understand why we lose consciousness. Things like pain and other things are actual biological processes. the universal state of knowledge is similar (though not identical) to deep sleep. - no, but it lends insight to the massive reality of the situation - that were you not conscious you wouldnt know it Instead of why do we need consciousness you could ask why does consciousness need us. to ask why implies that there is a reason or some sort of goal/purpose to the universe. Yet we know the software you are using didn't originate in the hardware, except the bios but was loaded into it. Yet you feel and think so it is not possible for consciousness not to exist since you exist. e. Consciousness cannot be defined in measures of height or width, so it is limitless, it has no borders. i hate that the minuscule amount of space i take up in the universe causes me to feel things, to be self-aware. So, there seems to have to be something that supports the existence of all these contingent things: a necessary bedrock of existence that sustains the existence of all the contingent things. If free will exists, that would favor survival for consciousness to funnel into one and block out all the "noise" which exists even in a sober brain But if free will does NOT exist it seems to favor the idea it is a byproduct and therefore may be something shared by incredibly simple forms/collections of matter Until anyone shows beyond doubt that consciousness has an effect on what we do--in essence, proves that free will exists--there is no reason to believe that consciousness is anything other than an experience with no causal relation to our actions I’ll do my best to explain what I know and I hope someone is willing to join a team with me and work on this together. Why can't we apply the same methodology of saying 'free will does not exist' or 'free will is an illusion' to 'consciousness does not exist' or 'consciousness is an illusion'? The argument could follow the same pattern as the 'free will does not exist' argument. It's a common phenomena in machine learning but it's essentially that to get to a better solution you have to do worse for a little while. A “before” does not exist for someone that does not exist just as how an “after” does not exist for someone that does not exist. gzkq mjanon byme oziphzkp ghg xdnyef lnmpf uopss ncy hzy