Hello.
I came from another account, but I forgot my username and password, and I changed to another Gmail since. I want to say that this is philosophy, so I put it in philosophy. Anyways, I have a distinguished opinion on the state of awareness (I will say awareness instead of consciousness because I type so fast that I mess up words and this is one of those words that is really easy to mess up). Awareness is a man-made construct. My thought is that the human brain is a machine, just like a steam engine or computer, except it is really complex. We don't know everything about it, but what we do know is that it is a physical object that follows physical properties. Now, some people would start talking about their vision of what quantum mechanics is and say that the brain operates on quantum effects. I used to think this would explain a lot of things, but I am thinking that it probably does not explain anything. When you think of it, there are millions of other explanations for awareness, and I am going to tell you my favorite one.
Awareness is not a thing, and we actually don't have a choice on what we do. Let me explain this by using as much science as I can. Everything you do is based on either instinct or experience, nature or nurture. Why did you click on this post? You probably thought it was interesting. Why did you think it was interesting? You have probably had some kind of interaction with philosophy. Why did you have an interaction with philosophy. Because somebody told you that you would like it. Why did the person tell you that? They liked philosophy. Rinse and repeat a few times, we get all the way to Plato. Why did Plato like philosophy? I would take the time to read the Wikipedia article about him, but I am sure that he did it for some reason.
That is experience, or nurture. We can explain some other things with nurture too. Why did you watch a scary movie last night? According to philosophy, humans are always looking for arousal, or stimulation. This is something you are born with. Why did you have nightmares about that scary movie? Fear is the strongest emotion according to human philosophy, meaning that you had strong emotions about the movie. Why were you scared of the movie. Whether the movie was about a giant monster or something like that, it triggered something in you to be afraid of.
See what I am saying? Everything you did was because of instinct and experience, nature or nurture, all that stuff. Awareness is making choices for yourself, and do you think you were making the choices for yourself in the examples I showed you? No, it was either nature or nurture. This is why my opinion on awareness is that we don't have it at all.
I am open to any criticism, and if you want to say anything, reply to this topic. Thank you very much for reading this.
