Greg Boyles

I suspect the option of vetoing an instinctual behavioural pattern is sill in effect a instinctual behavourial pattern in many cases. Consider the generic flight or fight response. We can choose to kill an atacker or we can choose to run away. We may rationalise a choice to run away as not giving in to violence, but at the end of the day it is still a choosing self preservation which is entirely instinctual. That is what I mean by by behavioural patterns being quantised within the realms on instinctual behavioural patterns. We always weigh up our options, some times rationally and sometimes not, as to what course action will least likely lead to our death or most likely to lead to our social success. Our behavioral patterns are an example of ermergent complexity built by our frontal lobes upon the instincts of our primitive mid brains etc.

'Free will' is some what of an illusion. A great deal of what who presume that we choose to do is really a manifestation of instinctual behaviour, or at least directed and influenced by it. There is probably a fair amount of evidence that much of our behavioural patterns are 'quantised' within the realms of instinctual behavioural patterns influenced by the reasoning and logic of the frontal lobes. What we perecive as free choice is simply choosing from among those quantised behavioural patterns.

Some chemicals can penetrate the skin barrier - depends on the size of the molecules and the chemical groupings the molecules contain etc. Consider nicotine patches for smokers - clearly nictotine can pentrate the skin barrier. Or anaesthetic oinments that clearly pentrate your skin enough to cause some numbing. But as for pain killers penetrating the skin and entering joints etc directly......I seriously doubt it. If they did work it would be due to the fact that the active ingredients penetrate the skin, enter the blood stream and are then distributed indirectly to the joints etc. But in that case it would probably be more efficient to pop pill than rub ointment over your joints and muscles.

Emergent complexity can be mathematically defined in some cases, e.g. the Madelbrot set. So it is theoretically theoretically possible to also mathematically define the emergent complexity of thought and self from simple brain biochemistry and physiology. I.E. So that the complexity has a basis in the physical world and not just an illusion created inside our brains.

So my description of lucid dreamers possibly being in a waking state but with all sensory input from the external world inactivated has been considered by scientists. A similar situation to when dreamers awake and remain paralysed because their motor cortex remain deactivated as a protective mechanism during dreaming.

Mmmmmm, interesting. Hadn't considered that. But this from Wikipedia: suggests that lucid dreaming is a seperate and distinct state from sleeping and coma etc and that consciousness is still switched on and off much like a light switch. It may be an alternate form of consciousness but it apparently is not a case of 50% consciousness. Even in locked in syndrome you are entirely conscious and aware of your surroundings without being able to respond in any physical way. Apparently they can still respond by initiating various thought patterns that can be detected with an MRI scan. Presumably lucid dreaming is a variation on this theme. But the fact remains you are still 100% conscious and aware and not 50% conscious and aware. If I am able to concentrate hard enough I could similarly conduct a dream inside my head. But usually inputs from the outside world distract you from maintaining such a day dream for long. Perhaps lucid dreaming is simply a case of all sensory inputs being turned off while in a waking state. I wonder how a electroencephalogram in a lucid dream state would compare to an electroencephalogram in a waking state.

"the fact that conscious awareness lies on a continuum has to be one of the most obvious, self-evident things I can think of. " Where does that continuem of consciousness lie. I interpret this statement as meaning that the continuem lies across different species. "I don't believe nonhuman animals are consciously aware at all." And the great apes for starters? Or dolphins and whales? This seems more like a sweeping theological type statement rather than one based in science.

My sentence is entirely consistent but obviously you have misunderstood it. You will receive no opposition from me about this idea that different animal species experience different levels of consciousness commensurate with the complexity of their CNS. And I have no doubt that there is an abundance of scientific evidence to back it. But I am quite specifically criticising questionposter's yoga/mystic like notions of consciousness. That consciousness does not switch off when you sleep or pass out and that you are conscious when you dream. This is just psuedoscientific nonsense.

No, I am not referring to that. I noted your valid point and modified my approach. I am not to sure what the rest of your post is about, but I am specifically responding to questionposter and his/her notions of degrees of consciousness and conscious dreaming. The degrees of consciousness that the scientific community might discuss is related to the level of complexity of the CNS among various species. But short of brain damage or disease a single individual of any given species cannot vary the level of consciousness its experiences. http://www.grandin.c...sciousness.html This is a science thread only evidence backed science should be discussed in here and degrees of consciousness is not backed by the current scientific evidence. => me It would appear, rather, that it is. => phwannabe We are taling about levels of consciousness within one individual here, not comparing levels of consciousness between brain damaged individuals and normal individuals or between other species and humans.

With split brain patients, there seems to be two independant personalities associated with each of the two hemispheres. Well I reckon the 'self that calls itself Greg and lives inside this skull is pretty important and special, but not in a theological sense. I find it truly awe inspiring that the cosmos has acheived sophisticated consciousness, that can question its own existence and that of the cosmos, through us.

Good point! It would be the the smell combined with the appearance that would trigger Rocky to give a response one way or the other. Smell is after all a major part of a dog's perception.

In you own thread you stated emphatically that you are conscious while you dream because you can remember them and that conscious does not cease when you sleep......remember your response to my tv analogy????? So who is insane here???? I have no doubt that any qualified and publishing medical scientist will tell you, despite not having an absolutely precise definition of consciousness, that consciousness is pretty close to being like a light switch - it is either on or it is off. http://www.dream-yoga.org/getting-started/degrees-of-consciousness Oooohhhhhh! I suspect I can see where your non-scientific notions about consciousness are coming from - in this yoga website they talk about degrees of consciousness and dreaming yada yada yada. You wouldn't by any chance be practising yoga would you? If so then I have a little wisdom that you would do well to consider - yoga, like astrology etc, is not science. If you wish to discuss psuedoscientific disciplines like yoga then you should confine it to the appropriate 'speculations' thread. This is a science thread only evidence backed science should be discussed in here and degrees of consciousness is not backed by the current dcientific evidence.

I was watching a doco on this quite recently. A genuine out of body experience was induced by placing virtual reality goggles on the subject and mounting the camera that feeds the goggles on the head of the scientist. The scientist then shook hands with the subject wearing the goggles who had the irresistable sensation that his 'self' was located in the scientist who was doing the hand shaking. The point is that there are explantions for out of body experiences that don't involve the 'soul' physically leaving the body in the theological sense.

Does anyone else in here believe, as questionposter does, that you are conscious while you are dreaming or that consciousness does not cease when you sleep or pass out? Or that individual cells or neurones are conscious and self aware?

Then stop posting in this thread. As long as you continue posting comments on the subject of consciousnes that fly in the face of the current science on the subject I will continue to refute them. Nothing personal but I am just as determined as you!

Incorrect! Usually you only remember a dream imediately prior to waking up. Because some images and sounds, stored in long term memory, have been deposited unconsciously in your short term memory. Unless you immediately write down the detail of your dream, and thus transfer them to long term meory, the details of that dream nearly always fade rapidly and you are no longer able to recall them. Your notion that your ability to re-call a dream is evidence that you are conscious during your dreams is simply false logic and not consient with current brain science. From Wikipedia: So association and rehearsal result in transfer of short term memory to long term memory, and association and rehearsal are conscious acts carried out in a waking state. That would indicate that short term memory can and does operate regardless of whether you are asleep or awake. You have not defeated any of my arguments, merely demonstrated that your logic is flawed. I have provided plenty of evidence that you can verify for yourself in any current physiology text book. So far the logic you have followed in coming to you pet conclusions is not consistent with the current brain science. Well the current science establishes that individual neurones are not conscious and until some scientist proves otherwise then it stands. That is how science works. If you don't accept it then you are a theologist or anything else but a student of science.

I put it to you that your perceived ability to direct a dream while dreaming is an illusion that you have created while remembering your dreams later in a waking state. Your notion sounds to much like a hollywood fantasy, along the lines of 'A Nightmare on Elm Street', to be remotely credible to me.

You can sense your own existence while you are remebering the dream in a waking state. You are simply confused about this questionposter. If you can truly sense your own existence while dreaming then logically you would be able to direct your dream and choose where you want go in it......as you can do in the real world in a waking state. I challenge you to direct your next dream by choosing to dream about a specific place or thing before you go to sleep.

Funny you should mention that because the doco also detailed how such a person is still capable of responding to instructions, e.g. imagine playing a game of tennis in which case the medical staff can pick see the activation of parts of the motor cortex in an MRI scanner. But obviously this would not happen to a person who is asleep. So the definition of consciousness stands not withstanding those who suffer from ocked in syndrome. Let's think of a way of measuring the reality of a tv set in a way more impartial than touching it then. Hitting it with sick will make a noise and damage the tv set. Firing some radio waves from a radar will produce a reflection. If a human or other animal walks into it then the tv set will hal their progress. A tv set is 'real' however you want to measure it. However the image on the screen of a tv set cannot be detected by any of these means, other than us 'seeing' it and our brain processing the image. The act of 'observation' does not only involve a human observer. I can also involve some other particle or photon interacting with a particle whose state is uncertain up until the point of interaction. That is generally how humans observe the sub atomic world anyway, but particle interactions happen with or without the presence of humans. Not really! All it means is that consciousness is no generated by a single specific region of the brain but rather by the interactions between a number of key areas of the brain. With the tv analogy.....which part of the tv generates the image? Answer.......basically all of the electronic components! Remove any one of those electronic components and the image on the screen will cease to exist. Your are not conscious when you dream. You merely remember, or not, dreams when you wake up. That does not mean you were consciously experiencing the dream. It means that, like the auditory system, other parts of the brain remain active while you sleep thus allowing images etc to be formed and sometimes laid down in short term memory.

If you don't believe that you loose consciousness when you fall asleep then clearly you are not using the accepted definition of consciousness. Consciousness is the ability to respond to the outside world and others. Clearly you are not capable of responding to anything when you are asleep, short of violent jolt or loud noise, so therefore you are not conscious. I might add that the auditory system does not become inactive when you sleep but rather responds reflexively to noises, hence you can be woken by a loud noise. When you turn the power off on your tv it remains where it is, but the image that is normally displayed on the screen certainly does cease to 'be'. Consciousness is not a physical reality than can be touched like the tv - it is more like the image on the tv screen that only exists while the power is on.

Yeah well I would probably even question whether Rocky would be incapable of recognising that his reflection is him. Perhaps this test of self awareness is flawed. I wonder if it is a widely accepted diagnostic test or whether it is merely a hypothesis of some researchers. Perhaps a better predictor of self awareness is ability to respond to instructions - birds and mammals are capable of that, probably reptiles as well based on another doco I watched about an alligator that responds to its own name being called at feeding time.

Let's examine this idea logically. Let's assume that individual neurones posses 0.0000000X of the total consciousness of a single working brain. That is all neurones regardless of where they occur in the brain as a nuerone is not aware of what structures or circuits it is part of. So then the entire brain and all its neurones contribute to consciousness. When you faint or fall asleep, the neurones in frontal lobes and other key parts of the brain cease firing off impuleses or at least greatly reduce the number of impulese they fire off. But there are plenty of neurones still functionaing normally, e.g. neurones in your visual cortex or auditar regions etc that must be involved in dreams. Logically, if neruones conain a proportion of he total consciousness, there would be a reduction in consciousness as a proportion of neurones cease functioning rather than a total loss of consciousness. But a total loss of consciousness is what is oberved. This therefore suggestes that consciousness results from information processing in a waking state. And paricularly that key parts of the brain, pricipally the frontal lobes, are responsible for generating it.

I don't dispute this. But the problem is harnessing that energy on the scale that is required to sustain the current global population. The massive infrastructure requirements almost certianly mean that the average EROEI of supplying energy through these means is just too low. If the global population was only 3 billion then the infrastructure requirements would be orders of magnitude smaller and it might be entirely feasible to entirely supply the energy consumption through solar energy in one form or another.

Was watching a doco about this and how humans and great apes are the only species that seem to realise that their reflection in a mirror is them and that they therefore have self awareness. But I was thinking about this in terms of my dog. I find it very difficult to believe that Rocky does not have just as intense sense of self awareness as myself, even if he does not have the cognitive capability to project himself into his own future or perhaps even into his own past. Yet according to this test, since he would not be able to recognize himself in the mirror, he therefore must have not have a sense of self awreness. Surely the mirror test is more a test of the cognitive ability to reason, i.e. that since the other entity does everything that I do it must be me, rather that the existence of self awareness.

I believe that Salmonella, including the species that causes food poisoning in humans, are part of the normal gut flora of chickens and many other bird species.