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Permalink Reply by The Shiznit on May 7, 2012 at 12:47am

- Moved to the Consciousness Forum - 

Nice post, Stefan.  I'm personally not a believer in the concept of a Multiverse.  Isn't one enough?  lol 

But, I do enjoy discussions about human interconnectedness and the Gaia Hypothesis, etc.; even though metaphysical  {a nice word for things we can't explain yet}  debates can get a bit messy and irrational sometimes. 

I have had similar thoughts to the one that you proposed here; and I made a reference to this same kind of microcosmic cooperation in a recent post of my own, which you can find here:

Selfishness, Altruism, and the Soul

In any case, consciousness is a tricky thing.  We all know that we are conscious beings; and most of us would admit that the other animals on this planet are consciously self-aware, as well.  But, as we move away from the animal kingdom and start asking about insects, plants, or even single-cell organisms, we end up encountering all sorts of different opinions.  We know that plants respond to external stimuli, like sunlight, and even music, for example; but does that mean that they have a form of conscious awareness? 

What makes the individual cells in our bodies react to fight off parasites and infections?  Do they "know" what they are doing?  And if they are aware of their environment, at all,  how aware could they possibly be of the larger organism they are a part of?

I hope that you get some good responses to this from some members who are more philosophically minded than I am.  We are getting closer with the answers to these kinds of questions every year; but we're not there yet.  :-)

Oh!  and regarding the idea of a "Multiverse" -- you might enjoy this short video: 

Time Traveling The Multiverse - YouTube

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Permalink Reply by Bogdan Stefan R on May 7, 2012 at 2:56am

watched the vid. as i mentioned in my post, i am not sure if information is infinite. probably it is but my brain just limits itself by thinking it isn't. if it is infinite, then I think a Multiverse is likely to exist. Infinite situations existing in this Multiverse, creates as many questions and problems too, yes. Just like the one with the creature that has the power to destroy all matter in all dimensions and has already done it. I don't really believe there can be infinite versions of fate. Infinite dimensions, yes, but let's think of how much potential power you would need in order to destroy the matter of an infinite universe. and if it's infinite, then the amount of time taken to destroy it, would be infinite too. I also believe that each Universe created (or will create at one point in time) it's own laws of physics by evolving (just as organisms do and create an ecosystem). At the beginning information probably created all kinds of random things like that creature that can destroy everything but at some point, the creature faded, the information it was made of got recycled and formed energies and atoms like our own and everything stood like that since then. it stood like that because it had to obey the laws that got to become so in time. Now that we became aware of all these, we could use tiny nanobots to eat up matter from the universe and to create a creature like that, which would  constantly expand it's power and try to destroy all existence but again this would take infinite time.

Now. Regarding consciousness. What I am trying to figure out is what if we as individuals, create an other consciousness all together. One that doesn't "feel" itself as separated but united. Exactly as we find our consciousness a unity and not as something being separated when it actually is. There is no center for our consciousness in the brain. There are separated neuronal circuits with different activity at separated times. Wouldn't there be a one higher consciousness that is being formed of all our consciousnesses then ? I cannot see why it wouldn't be so. Hope I made it clearer now.

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Permalink Reply by Jesse C on May 7, 2012 at 5:20am

Interesting post :)

"There is no center for our consciousness in the brain. There are separated neuronal circuits with different activity at separated times. Wouldn't there be a one higher consciousness that is being formed of all our consciousnesses then ?"

As for my individual consciousness I only feel when my hand is burning on the stove when the sensory neurons for heat in my hand are stimulated, then Its passed on through the nerve(s) if the stimulus is strong enough to fire the nerve, which might fire the next nerve, if again, the stimulus is strong enough to fire it(all or none law).  Traveling from the peripheral nervous system to the central nervous system etc.  But if the sensory nerves in my hand aren't connected to the rest to the nervous system I can't feel my hand burning.  I would sure see and smell it burning though! :P

For the one collective consciousness (or even Collective Soul - cool band btw :P), information (e.g. my consciousness) would have to be wirelessly or directly connected through circuits/materials different from a regular human nervous system to the collective one.  Unless there is some sort of quantum entanglement going on.

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Permalink Reply by Bogdan Stefan R on May 7, 2012 at 12:10pm

That's why I thought of this too. I just didn't want to complicate things too much from the beginning and was waiting for someone to bring this up :). In the cerebral hemispheres, there is distance between neuronal impulses which means that they aren't directly connected. We humans aren't directly connected either. You are right on this. Mirror neurons "connect" us. Our consciousness is an illusion in that case. It's the result of hundreds of billions of neuronal impulses and neurotransmitters that move at high speeds in the exact order but note that every single element is still individual. The axon is just a way for the impulse to circulate. Even if the paths (neurons) represent a solid connection in our brain, the elements that circulate and form the illusion of our consciousness are still individual and not connected. So could our consciousnesses create a higher one without being directly connected. It would be an illusion too, yes, but it would still be perceived as our consciousness is. 

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Permalink Reply by Will Hope on May 12, 2012 at 12:21pm

I don't see how merely networked processors and data banks would constitute consciousness in any way.  It is a new commons of information, a resource we use for individual/group purposes, but the whole itself does not draw on its individual parts to form a perception of the world or to make any decisions based on any of the stored information. 

However, Machines can be hooked up to the internet and given certain goals.  It can then set up a frame of reference and attempt to identify a problem and a solution.  Maybe one can call that moment a brief bout of consciousness on the machine's part, when it is engaged in a process of information processing and decision making all dependent on contextual clues like its environment and self. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMkHYE9-R0A) "self aware robots"
Maybe the answer may be easier to figure out if you also try to answer for yourself if you think people are ever devoid of consciousness.  If so, when, and what details describe a lack consciousness?

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Permalink Reply by Jarod Phillip Benowitz on May 7, 2012 at 8:03pm

I believe the multiverse concept arose from Quantum Electrodynamics where if something is physically possible it must occur. A multiverse would simply be an infinite variations of possible outcomes rather than impossible ones. On the other hand such a notion is not renormalizable meaning you can't get rid of infinities which makes it automatically suspect.

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Permalink Reply by Richard Lennox on May 8, 2012 at 5:37pm

Interesting, hypothetical God could be kind of common conciousness of all people,animals, maybe all life on earth or even more "occurences". Just as in "Athene's theory of everything" it would be transcendental neuronal activity-web, just as all the Data stored on servers and broadcasted by users create the greatest of all things: The Internet :) But anyway the thing is that such communal conciousness wouldn't be able to break laws of physics, and do most of the miracles described in The Bible, Qu'ran, Vedes and other religion-related sources. Maybe IT would be able to somehow distort our brain activity and therefore seem supernatural but there is still no reason why IT would do such things. But I think that this theory could be aswell connected to the evolution. There are some occurences which would be hard to believe as a result of random mutations such as wings which are useful only after eons of mutations, there might be some communal conciousness that directs those changes somehow, and sometimes. But anyway I don't think any theory would end science-religion wars as those happen between rather theoryproof people :)

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Permalink Reply by John Graff on May 9, 2012 at 6:05pm

How are we creating this "higher consciousness"? What do you mean by that?

I think when most people say "God," they literally mean a god. They mean some sort of ethereal life-form or power that created the universe. Anything humanity creates could never fall under that definition.

What is the "final consciousness"? Why would this thing necessarily contain all our information?

The war between science and religion will only stop when we stop allowing religion. As long religion continues to be a socially acceptable thing to do, people will believe it. It makes life explainable and gives it meaning. We can solve this culturally or physically: we can phase it out of society, or we can phase out the people who are weak enough to need religion through eugenics.

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Permalink Reply by The Shiznit on May 9, 2012 at 7:33pm

A military officer talking about Eugenics.  uh oh!  :-)

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Permalink Reply by Jesse C on May 10, 2012 at 10:25am

"Would this theory be a good idea to stop the war between science and religion ?"

I do love discussing and thinking about these sort of ideas and philosophy in general.  But I'm not sure if this theory could be proven (well not right now anyway).  There would be too much faith riding on it in order to believe in it.  Science demands evidence and I'm not sure how we would go about measuring/observing a 'one higher consciousness'.

Teach children the methods of science and how to apply it to life.  Teach them how we relate to the environment.  Give them the tools to sort out what is relevant and what isn't.  Something like this might phase out religion and end the war.  But that is if you want science to be the victor...

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Permalink Reply by Will Hope on May 12, 2012 at 12:42pm

Somehow kids can learn the methods of science and still be motivated to make a car bomb out of it.

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Permalink Reply by Jesse C on May 13, 2012 at 4:11am

Too right...

If we teach them to be interested in whats relevant to survival they shouldn't be interested in such a thing.  Also they can't know of car bombs and build them if they don't know they exist.  Remove the triggers for behavior we don't want.

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