[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Explain your own consciousness. How do you exist? What causes your conscious self?

There are some prevailing theories, philosophies, cosmologies, theologies etc we could discuss but I'd really, in the tradition of Socrates, to get out of the jargon and hear what the everyday perspective is to this deep question.

Is there a soul? What is the mind? If (or if not) the mind is the soul (ie, the soul is the source of consciousness) how does it operate? Is consciousness just a chemical reaction like strict evolutionary psychologist postulate? But how can our individual minds, personalities, experiences, lives themselves simply be the result of chemicals in the brain? What is the mechanism behind the chemicals? What causes them to react in the first place? Is it the conscious mind, the soul perhaps? This is NOT a religious thread, this is philosophy, science, psychology, cosmology etc. THOUGH.. if your perspective in explaining consciousness involved the model or theory of a particular religious or spiritual viewpoint by all means contribute

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

FROM WIKI:

Philosophical criticisms

From the eighteenth to twentieth centuries many philosophers concentrated on relations, processes and thought[citation needed] as the most important aspects of consciousness. These aspects would later become known as "access consciousness"[citation needed] and this focus on relations allowed philosophers such as Marx, Nietzsche and Foucault to claim that individual consciousness was dependent on such factors as social relations, political relations and ideology.
Locke's "forensic" notion of personal identity founded on an individual conscious subject would be criticized in the 19th century by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud following different angles. Martin Heidegger's concept of the Dasein ("Being-there") would also be an attempt to think beyond the conscious subject.
Marx considered that social relations ontologically preceded individual consciousness, and criticized the conception of a conscious subject as an ideological conception on which liberal political thought was founded. Marx in particular criticized the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, considering that the so-called individual natural rights were ideological fictions camouflaging social inequality in the attribution of those rights. Later, Louis Althusser would criticize the "bourgeois ideology of the subject" through the concept of interpellation ("Hey, you!").
Nietzsche, for his part, once wrote that "they give you free will only to later blame yourself", thus reversing the classical liberal conception of free will in a critical account of the genealogy of consciousness as the effect of guilt and ressentiment, which he described in On the Genealogy of Morals. Hence, Nietzsche was the first one to make the claim that the modern notion of consciousness was indebted to the modern system of penalty, which judged a man according to his "responsibility", that is by the consciousness through which acts can be attributed to an individual subject: "I did this! this is me!". Consciousness is thus related by Nietzsche to the classic philosopheme of recognition which, according to him, defines knowledge.[9]
According to Pierre Klossowski (1969), Nietzsche considered consciousness to be a hypostatization of the body, composed of multiple forces (the "Will to Power"). According to him, the subject was only a "grammatical fiction": we believed in the existence of an individual subject, and therefore of a specific author of each act, insofar as we speak. Therefore, the conscious subject is dependent on the existence of language, a claim which would be generalized by critical discourse analysis (see for example Judith Butler).
Michel Foucault's analysis of the creation of the individual subject through disciplines, in Discipline and Punish (1975), would extend Nietzsche's genealogy of consciousness and personal identity - i.e. individualism - to the change in the juridico-penal system: the emergence of penology and the disciplinization of the individual subject through the creation of a penal system which judged not the acts as it alleged to, but the personal identity of the wrong-doer. In other words, Foucault maintained that, by judging not the acts (the crime), but the person behind those acts (the criminal), the modern penal system was not only following the philosophical definition of consciousness, once again demonstrating the imbrications between ideas and social institutions ("material ideology" as Althusser would call it); it was by itself creating the individual person, categorizing and dividing the masses into a category of poor but honest and law-abiding citizens and another category of "professional criminals" or recidivists.
Gilbert Ryle has argued that traditional understandings of consciousness depend on a Cartesian outlook that divides into mind and body, mind and world. He proposed that we speak not of minds, bodies, and the world, but of individuals, or persons, acting in the world. Thus, by saying 'consciousness,' we end up misleading ourselves by thinking that there is any sort of thing as consciousness separated from behavioral and linguistic understandings.
The failure to produce a workable definition of consciousness also raises formidable philosophical questions. It has been argued that when Antonio Damasio[10] defines consciousness as "an organism's awareness of its own self and its surroundings", the definition has not escaped circularity, because awareness in that context can be considered a synonym for consciousness.
The notion of consciousness as passive awareness can be contrasted with the notion of the active construction of mental representations. Maturana and Varela[11] showed that the brain is massively involved with creating worlds of experience for us with meager input from the senses. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins[12] sums up the interactive view of experience: "In a way, what sense organs do is assist our brains to construct a useful model and it is this model that we move around in. It is a kind of virtual reality simulation of the world."

[SONIC GAIL]

Let's not get me started on religion. But...........I have been thinking.......maybe...all religion's god's are the same god......maybe..he just communicates to different people in different ways.....is that Blasphemy?

[SONIC GAIL]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

FROM WIKI:

Philosophical criticisms

From the eighteenth to twentieth centuries many philosophers concentrated on relations, processes and thought[citation needed] as the most important aspects of consciousness. These aspects would later become known as "access consciousness"[citation needed] and this focus on relations allowed philosophers such as Marx, Nietzsche and Foucault to claim that individual consciousness was dependent on such factors as social relations, political relations and ideology.
Locke's "forensic" notion of personal identity founded on an individual conscious subject would be criticized in the 19th century by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud following different angles. Martin Heidegger's concept of the Dasein ("Being-there") would also be an attempt to think beyond the conscious subject.
Marx considered that social relations ontologically preceded individual consciousness, and criticized the conception of a conscious subject as an ideological conception on which liberal political thought was founded. Marx in particular criticized the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, considering that the so-called individual natural rights were ideological fictions camouflaging social inequality in the attribution of those rights. Later, Louis Althusser would criticize the "bourgeois ideology of the subject" through the concept of interpellation ("Hey, you!").
Nietzsche, for his part, once wrote that "they give you free will only to later blame yourself", thus reversing the classical liberal conception of free will in a critical account of the genealogy of consciousness as the effect of guilt and ressentiment, which he described in On the Genealogy of Morals. Hence, Nietzsche was the first one to make the claim that the modern notion of consciousness was indebted to the modern system of penalty, which judged a man according to his "responsibility", that is by the consciousness through which acts can be attributed to an individual subject: "I did this! this is me!". Consciousness is thus related by Nietzsche to the classic philosopheme of recognition which, according to him, defines knowledge.[9]
According to Pierre Klossowski (1969), Nietzsche considered consciousness to be a hypostatization of the body, composed of multiple forces (the "Will to Power"). According to him, the subject was only a "grammatical fiction": we believed in the existence of an individual subject, and therefore of a specific author of each act, insofar as we speak. Therefore, the conscious subject is dependent on the existence of language, a claim which would be generalized by critical discourse analysis (see for example Judith Butler).
Michel Foucault's analysis of the creation of the individual subject through disciplines, in Discipline and Punish (1975), would extend Nietzsche's genealogy of consciousness and personal identity - i.e. individualism - to the change in the juridico-penal system: the emergence of penology and the disciplinization of the individual subject through the creation of a penal system which judged not the acts as it alleged to, but the personal identity of the wrong-doer. In other words, Foucault maintained that, by judging not the acts (the crime), but the person behind those acts (the criminal), the modern penal system was not only following the philosophical definition of consciousness, once again demonstrating the imbrications between ideas and social institutions ("material ideology" as Althusser would call it); it was by itself creating the individual person, categorizing and dividing the masses into a category of poor but honest and law-abiding citizens and another category of "professional criminals" or recidivists.
Gilbert Ryle has argued that traditional understandings of consciousness depend on a Cartesian outlook that divides into mind and body, mind and world. He proposed that we speak not of minds, bodies, and the world, but of individuals, or persons, acting in the world. Thus, by saying 'consciousness,' we end up misleading ourselves by thinking that there is any sort of thing as consciousness separated from behavioral and linguistic understandings.
The failure to produce a workable definition of consciousness also raises formidable philosophical questions. It has been argued that when Antonio Damasio[10] defines consciousness as "an organism's awareness of its own self and its surroundings", the definition has not escaped circularity, because awareness in that context can be considered a synonym for consciousness.
The notion of consciousness as passive awareness can be contrasted with the notion of the active construction of mental representations. Maturana and Varela[11] showed that the brain is massively involved with creating worlds of experience for us with meager input from the senses. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins[12] sums up the interactive view of experience: "In a way, what sense organs do is assist our brains to construct a useful model and it is this model that we move around in. It is a kind of virtual reality simulation of the world."

The old testiment makes more sense than this shit

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by SONIC GAIL

Let's not get me started on religion. But...........I have been thinking.......maybe...all religion's god's are the same god......maybe..he just communicates to different people in different ways.....is that Blasphemy?

it is to them, and they will KILL you for saying so

[SONIC GAIL]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

it is to them, and they will KILL you for saying so

It's OK I am full blooded catholic. We can do what we want in the name of god.

[Rob Instigator]

consciousness - the ability of a living being to understand itself .

next level consciousness - the ability of a conscious living being to understand that others have consciousness.

unconscious - most people who wander around in a self-involved daze, relegating other's feelings and emotions to the trash heap, and holding only their consciousness as worthy of care.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by SONIC GAIL

Let's not get me started on religion. But...........I have been thinking.......maybe...all religion's god's are the same god......maybe..he just communicates to different people in different ways.....is that Blasphemy?

again, this is not a religious thread, this is a philosophy thread.. but to answer your question. NO, to see the concept of God as being universal is by no means blasphemy.

[pbradley]

I'm an avowed Heideggerian on the issue.

[SONIC GAIL]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

again, this is not a religious thread, this is a philosophy thread.. but to answer your question. NO, to see the concept of God as being universal is by no means blasphemy.

When you say it is not about religion of course that is my first thought. Sorry....post away.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

I believe consciousness is individual, unique, and separate from the body or the brain. Whether you call this consciousness the Ego, the Mind, or the Soul is irrelevant, that is just terminology, the concept remains the same regardless of its particular name.

This mind/soul I believe also exists for ever, as it is pure energy, the E in E=mc2. If energy is eternal according the Law of Conservation of Energy, then the soul/mind made up of energy is eternal. Actually, everything is eternal, your body exists for ever, not necessarily as it does now, but the elements of your body have always existed since the big bang, and always will exist after the fact. So whether you believe your consciousness lies strictly in the physical brain, or your believe in a soul that is energy, it exists forever. Einstein ain't no joke and physics as much a philosophy as a science, especially when you get into the multi-flavored universe of string theory...

So to go further..
There are three major schools of though on this subject of the soul and consciousness.

The first (1) states that the soul is part of the Divine God, it is not individual, it has no consciousness in and of itself, it simply part of a whole. This is the essence of Hindu mysticism, Jewish mysticism, Zorastorianism, and a variety of cultures. Essentially, there is no individual consciousness according to this philosophy, there is no you at all! Everything is simply ONENESS.

It evolves in the the (2) premise, the the soul is the life force of the body, and it exists forever separate from the body. It is separate from the oneness, a piece of the oneness but distinct, individual, unique. This is soul lives forever but not in this state of consciousness. This is Hindu/Buddhist concept of reincarnation. The soul exists forever, and creates your conscious mind, but this particular conscious state is only temporary to this body, and will disappear. In your next incarnation, as jellyfish or the President of Botswana, you will not retain the consciousness of your previous existence, you will have an entirely new consciousness, it will be a product of your soul, but not the same version as before. Essentially this argues that consciousness is also a part of the body, separate from the mind, but designates a kind of indivual source, where as the first theory says there is no individual consciousness at all, just a universal collective experience.

The final is more akin to the western Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman version of the world. The soul is individual, it is eternal, it is also the the life force, and it is the seat of consciousness. The soul is the mind. It exists.

Now in my opinion, if you combine this concept with Toltec/Meso-american philosophies regarding consciousness in an immaterial universe, the conscious mind dwells in the soul which actually converts the Einsteinian universe of pure energy into matter, into substance, into the tangible world. But, just as physics and mechanics explain, is only as technicality, the universe does not actually physically exist the way which your conscious mind and senses perceive.

In my opinion, the soul, the origin of the individual, self-reflective and conscious mind, is both the source of thought, as well as the mechanism for Einstein's universe of energy to be converted into a universe of physical objects and tangible, substantial reality. The conscious self exists after this particular "incarnation" is it is also pure energy. This belief basically combines all three, the soul is the life-force, the soul is in oneness yet has distinction, however I do attribute a distinct permanence to you conscious self and identity. You are always you, so I therefore reject the current Hindu/Buddhist version of reincarnation. I accept a more Qabbalistic version of reincarnation where the eternal soul, the conscious self, can reanimate into flesh and blood, but still remain the original consciousness.

[max]

how do my illusory fields of unconsciousness fit into this scheme of things?

I do have an answer...

[EVOLghost]

Originally Posted by pbradley

I'm an avowed Heideggerian on the issue.

heidegger?

 

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GWAHAHAHAA