Consciousness.....a basic rule of physics

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The Man said:
No, we do not have accept the fact that “Gravity just exists” but we can demonstrate the effects of what we call gravity and attempt to find the cause of those effects. Can you demonstrate the cause and effects of consciousness? Until you can, you can not claim it as a “law of nature” or an indispensable part of this or any conceivable universe.
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Sure I can. I close my eyes and reverebison's assertions disappear from sight, therefore they no longer exist to me. Now where was that Reply button...?

Aw damnit, there's his post again!
 
Silentknight said:
Sure I can. I close my eyes and reverebison's assertions disappear from sight, therefore they no longer exist to me. Now where was that Reply button...?

Aw damnit, there's his post again!
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Ah, but you were still conscious after you closed your eyes. What you need to do is bash yourself in the head with a hammer until you are in a persistent vegetative state. At that point reverebison's assertions or posts loose their significance (as if they had any), yet you still exist.
 
Hokulele said:
I see it as a little more of a gray area. The best single example I can think of is blindsight. I believe you mentioned reading Ramachandran in the past, and he devoted parts of both of his popular science books to the issue of blindsight. In short, there are two visual pathways in the brain, only one of which passes through the visual cortex. When this path is knocked out, that person is effectively blind from a conscious point of view. They cannot register what they "see". However, the second pathway is still in effect, it just can't communicate with the "conscious" areas of the brain. A person with this type of blindsight can correctly locate things spatially, determine the orientation of objects, and interact with those objects.

The one example that stuck in my mind was the woman who experienced this later in life (so she had already had experience with the world of conscious vision). She could recognize common objects if she could hold them, but could not see and recognize anything visually. However, when the researcher held up a pen, she could easily reach out and take it from his hand in order to determine what it was by touch.

Conscious recognition apparently isn't necessary for living in and interacting with the universe as we know it.
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Does Conscious recognition must be a 0,1 game (0-recognition, 1-recognition whare there is nothing in between)?

Does consciousness has to be treated differently than any other existing thing in the universe?

I do not think so. By using this attitude Consciousness is not something that other things depends on it, but it is simply some property of any existing thing that can be found in any degree of self-reference.

In that case the name of the game is self-reference, that may be found by any [0,1] degree, where 1-degree (full self awareness) is nothing but some particular case of the general concept of Consciousness.

For one thing I am quit sure, what is known as Universe, is not just a 0,1 game (where there is nothing in between).
 
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doronshadmi said:
Please provide more details.
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We have a physical theory of matter and energy, gravity and electricity. We have a physical theory of human behaviour. We don't have a physical theory of consciousness. Therefore it is something different to the rest of what we deal with.

When we have a physical theory of consciousness, then we can consider it in the same way as everything else.
 
westprog said:
We have a physical theory of matter and energy, gravity and electricity. We have a physical theory of human behaviour. We don't have a physical theory of consciousness. Therefore it is something different to the rest of what we deal with.

When we have a physical theory of consciousness, then we can consider it in the same way as everything else.
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What do you think are the outlines of such a theory (please be aware of the fact that any physical theory must survive well formulated experiments of its predicted results)?
 
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