When my dog gets a treat from my left hand she 'knew' was in my right hand.... it blows her mind. That's exactly what Closer To Truth does to me. Thank you CTT!
"When I ask for a report on a horse, I don't want a count of the number of hairs in it's tail." Abraham Lincoln The reason he doesn't want that count is....it serves no useful purpose. EXACTLY like CTT's endless hair-counting
@@ktx49 You have to look at the reports in context through a political screen. The most reliable report seems to be the first; Zarathustra's experience is not unique and, like most, makes a great deal of sense in context. The point about hair counting is appropriate, imo.
Unlike others, I am here to observe the hair counters themselves and those in comments that haven't yet graduated the kindergarten of civilization, that all of this endlessly repeating hair counting represents.
This may shock you. But the sun and planet is considered as Non-Living thing. But how can this be proven when we do not know the Truth? We are merely Closer to Truth but never reached the Truth
I love these convos! Merry Christmas to you Robert, to everyone at CTT, to everyone here watching/reading, and to the ever sensing all knowing infinite universe! 🌌
Robert has done a superb job with this series. I love the clarity, his pace throughout interviews and his commentaries, while taking us to the “edge” of top thinkers in the various fields. I get to interview top people through him. Great work Robert for which I am grateful. It advances me in my wrestlings for truth.
Maryilyn at Noetic Sciences suggests how disturbing it is that humans place themselves at the top of the consciousness heirarchy, enabling us to dismiss all empathy with cows as we slaughter and eat them. I would suggest that to be consistent, we should have empathy with all life forms, such as plants (which do react to stimuli), and refrain from eating them too. We might also consider not using hand sanitizer because it kills bacteria which can be observed to be motile with a purpose, hence display a level of consciousness. So I suppose we can drink water, but are allowed to eat nothing, since eating rocks and sand will not sustain us. As Bob Dylan so brilliantly wrote, "I was born here and I'll die here, against my will". And I would add, "What hidden hand is forcing us to eat only other living things?"
That is actually a serious question. I know I am self-aware (i.e. conscious) at times, but how can I know if you are, or anyone else for that matter? I INFER you are conscious, and assume that the Porsche is not. When I think about it , I must admit that is arrogance on my part. As I can NEVER know what constitutes your conscious experience, likewise I can never know if that juicy Porsche has any sort of experience, or not!
That is actually a serious question. I cannot experience your experience, I can only INFER you have experience. In other words, I cannot experience how vanilla ice-cream tastes to you. If my inference that you are conscious is actually a matter of belief, as it is, how can I deny experience to something I have labelled a "thing", i.e. that tasty Porsche? I can neither confirm or deny it!
@DOC TOR Come on. Survival is not all that matters. All through history, the most sublime minds have yearned much beyond mere survival. There are higher ideals, truths and morals. Therefore survival as an ideal can appeal only to certain individuals in certain conditions, not to all.
I love that Robert responded to Marilyn with, "your humbleness is you arrogance." I am usually very open minded with people's theories of consciousness, but I found hers to be hard to take seriously (it flies the face of common sense). Interesting (but I guess not surprising) that it is the most replayed part of the video.
19:09 - "I would consider that there are different levels of consciousness, different complexities of consciousness..." Isn't that what she called the "arrogant western view" just moments earlier? Haha
I appreciate Robert's work. I really do. I'm fortunate that this channel provide me smart people's thoughts and opinions on questions that I've in my mind. Thanks a lot Robert!
The Hebrew word often translated as "soul" or "ghost" is nephesh which literally means "that which breathes". It does not mean some eternal spirit thing attached to a physical body. That is also where the old saying "he gave up the ghost" came from for when a person dies -- literally he stopped breathing. I personally believe that dead is dead. There is zero evidence of anything else. It wasn't until later that philosophers like Plato (400 BCE) and the New Testament authors changed the meaning of "soul" to be a persistent eternal entity. Most likely to comfort dying people that they will soon be "united with their loved ones". We crawled out of the trees 200,000 years ago, there was no Adam and Eve, so like all of the other primates we die when we die. That is my personal belief anyway...
Interesting coincidence that both our names and thoughts are the same. I say I am not the atoms that serve as my substrate. They come and go in a pretty steady stream. Rather, I am the dancing pattern they describe. The pattern can change a little and I will still be. But too much change spells the end of me. Cheers!
Robert , thank you for sharing these investigations with me. Your project is very special to me. I also want to understand these provoking problems. From Brazil, SC, Florianópolis.
Alan Guth is my favourite scientist on this show. He has appeared 14 times. 1. How weird is the cosmos? 2.How Vast is the Cosmos? 3.Did Our Universe have a Beginning? 4.How Many Universes Exist? 5.What does an Expanding Universe Mean? 6.What would Multiple Universes Mean? 7.Will the Universe Ever End? 8.Does Information Create the Cosmos? 9.Will the Universe Ever End? 10.Does Information Create the Cosmos? 11.Must Multiple Universes Exist? 12.Does the Cosmos have a Reason? 13."Observing Physics, Observing Nature?” 14.To Seek Cosmic Origins
I totally agree. I think Robert knows of him but is a little afraid of sitting down with him. Why is science so adverse to really getting to the “bottom” of things.
My dog's nose is ten thousand times more conscious than my nose. He knows the cat is there six gardens away! Oh, and his auditory canal is pretty conscious too!
The humans may be the least conscious of all. You don't see deer lying to other deer. Or rabbits trying to take over and control others rabbits. Bears don't clear cut the wilderness. Weasels don't build tanks, missiles, guns. Blue jays don't try selling you something everyday. Owls don't ridicule other owls for having differing beliefs than their own. Eagles don't take it personally when they see a flock of pigeons -- eagles soar higher anyways. All animals, living things in general, are part of a higher consciousness, and the humans like to think they're above that. The further you go from the garden, the less connected in conscious you are. Nature is greatly part of conscious Light & water is everything conscious.
Wow, I had no idea how long ago these episodes must have been filmed until I saw Kuhn speaking with Sheldrake. These episodes must be 20 or more years old now. I enjoy all of them, though. I tend to agree with Sheldrake, and I was quite surprised to see Kuhn included Sheldrake. I wonder if Fenwick is included in any of these episodes......
Love this series and have to say this is one of the best episodes. Larry loves this very topic and it shows by the diversity of of the participants in this episode and his willingness to listen to and hear them out.
I've explored the effects of psychedelics so I'll tell ya. But first... The discharge frequency of a neuron is the encoded form of an analogy. Thus a brain is stuffed with from 86 to 100 billion analogies all synaptically jostling each other. When, say LSD, changes the discharge frequencies of all those neurons, the meanings of all the analogies are changed differentially. Change them enough and the self becomes unconscious. Change them a little less and one finds oneself sitting cross legged, upside down in a green pea soup colored fog. Less still and one's body rotates one eighty and extends one leg then the other to the ground. Heavens forbid you need to take a piss for paranoia assaults as ya leave the campfire light and hope to find privacy behind a shrub or tent. Who knows who might be watching eh, and ya hope yer not actually in a crowded lecture hall. lol Cheers!
I might be more pan psychic leaning but I think we we were all created by the universe to serve as it's eyes and ears. A way for the universe to acknowledge that it's alive. Not saying that rocks have consciousness but things that have evolved to "think" are fundamentally all connected by a network to the universe as a whole.
Everything is conscious. To be conscious is to feel. Not all things are quick in response. Some, like rock strata, are very slow. I have walked over rock ledges after a forest fire and felt them responding to the noonday sun, after decades of shade, with a kind of enjoyment.
I have a metaphor: I have observed my cat has an itch inside his ear. He try to scratch it from the outside, but by all possible means, there is nothing he can do about it. So he accept the itch as natural, and move on with his life. He is conscious about his problem, but he has to ignore it to succeed, there is no other option. I propose we humans have a similar problems to some other sorts of problems, even though we have invented the cotton buds to address most of our physically 'itching' problems. Human's greatest itch is 'to know' things. There are things which we cannot know by any possible means. So that is the itch we have to scratch several times from out side, accept it is there, and then move on with other stuff in life. So I define this state of prevailing, but insolvable itch as the "Consciousness".
So will a computer ever be Conscious? as far as it is deterministic, I don't think so. If there is a computer which can handle paradoxes, and can accept the contrast between what it is suppose to do and what it can achieve by itself without a help of a programmer's instructions, then there will be Consciousness.
Nothing more rewarding than to listen to an intelligent person making intelligent comments and participating in an objective intelligent conversation. On a separate note; you must sense that "we are not alone in the Universe"; Hundreds of proofs left that corroborate the presence thousands of years ago of intelligent life more so and advanced that ours. When are you diving into this subject???
4:00 I'm nowhere near an expert on this topic, but I do know a thing or too about falsification. When he says they would know conclusively that the snail is conscious and the ant is not, my brain immediately found a way around that "truth". Maybe he's only explaining in lay terms, and his idea is actually more flushed out. But to me, if snails were suddenly considered conscious, I wouldn't be thinking my mechanism worked. Even worse than that, there *will* an an exception, because ofc there will. We'll find a spider in America that is not conscious, but it's ancestor in Africa is! Then what?? In a topic such as the hard problem, I don't think "exceptions" would really give us conclusive evidence. It would just open up another question that we don't get closer to truth on.
Rupert Sheldrake is new to me. But he immediately brought to mind C.S.Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader: “In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.” “Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of."
I'm not conscious while dreamless sleeping. Seems to me rocks and plants are definitely dreamless sleeping. Just because a rock swells up in the morning sunlight heat does not make it conscious. It merely means the rock is reactive and reactivity is not the same as what we mean by conscious.
Are we? Do you think robots want to rule anything (esspecially without programs for it) is it comes with consciousnes? Humble observations could be perfectly satisfactory. Even while helping organic life forms. (Or was it sarcasm and I fell for it? 😯)
@@HardcorebergO The point is: once conscious, machines will be able to self program..... why would “Superior” machines want/need ~7Billion humans around?..... maybe a few human pets, but not billions.
I like the analogy with flying. Because it emphasizes that our intelligence and our intellect reflect a deep structure of reality which we have adapted to. Like air. In a lot of ways, computers are like a left-hemisphere false idol of itself. But a very very useful one that is not inherently bad, but actually vital. We should just know how to regard it properly.
In other words there is not enough room in our craniums to grow brains large enough to allow us to become intelligent enough, quickly enough, to deal with all the problems confronting us that civilization is causing us thanks to its making us so fecundly successful?
Such a shame Prof. Mark Solms wasn’t part of this video. Thanks to his body of work, we do know now why and how consciousness emerged in nature and we can go as far as codifying it.
"You don't have to have neurons in order to have consciousness" 5:20. The brain is an organ that is used by consciousness and does not solely produce consciousness. I would say that Electromagnetism is the mechanism of consciousness.
I am saddened that you've interviewed Rupert Sheldrake only one time. Though I don't necessarily fully agree with Rupert, I do think we're going to need radical ideas like his if humans are to ever fully understand consciousness.
12:00 I dont belive in souls or spirits, im an atheist, but i do agree With his infights on our percepsion of consiousness With being sapient (*that is, thinking like us). As well as atrributing Sentience (that is the ability to feel pleasure and especially pain) With Sapience*
Based on the available evidence, when a person dies, their body dies, cools, and begins to decompose. Their brain is dead & since no evidence has ever been shown for a consciousness existing outside of a physical brain, that person's consciousness ceases to exist.
@@cnault3244 True.. But Humans have long explored only the physical realm. Consciousness is not something physical but is of another realm. Science cannot be used to bisect each and every aspect of this bizzare Universe
@@rahuldwivedi1070 "True.. But Humans have long explored only the physical realm." Can you present evidence for a non-physical realm ? "Consciousness is not something physical but is of another realm. " No other realm required. Consciousness is the product of & exists within physical brains. Do you have evidence for a consciousness existing outside of a physical brain, or of a consciousness that isn't produced by a physical brain?
@@cnault3244 I cannot provide any evidence brother. Only Physical things have evidence. But I can assure you the difference between experimental and experiential truths. The Later is what is used by Spiritual practitioners to understand the true meaning of Consciousness. The problem lies in the foundation of science. It excepts any thing with proves and evidences, but does not have place for Experiential methods ( not a problem with science though, its like trying to mix oil and water. )
Yes we are consciousness operating through machines, now am writing some letters and you can read them and understand what's on my mind, now this is consciousness of two living beings communicating their conscious thoughts and it's amazing.
You can program a machine to have intelligence, to learn, to calculate, and through the use of robotics, to do. But a machine will never 'feel'. That is the experience of biochemistry, neurotransmitters, and hormones. ---- A most excellent episode on consciousness.
Awareness is non-local. Consciousness is awareness turned in on itself. It is self-referential awareness. Non-local does not mean everywhere. It means that it is beyond space/time.
@@geraldvaughn8403 I wrote my personal observations based on almost 50 years of taking notes on my experience. As I said, Mind seems to be a fundamental, if the THE fundamental force in the universe. Mind is axiomatic. An axiom is something accepted as true, though it cannot be proven. "I Am" is axiomatic. What would it mean to prove "I Am"?
I don’t think it works like that. There are chemical mechanisms that lead to certain functions like including survival but it’s not certain that mechanisms leads to consciousness. The brain leads to a single conscious experience but when something is not right it leads to multiple identities so that shows a certain configuration is required
@@rotorblade9508 well my definition of conscious doesn't necessarily mean self-conscious it just means that you have a living thing and it wants to keep on living and it exhibits behavior that facilitates that. So even if it's automatic, at some point it had to be conscious of its own existence enough to want to protect it. And everything else is on the spectrum from that . . even ourselves. Course that's just one guy's opinion; none of us can really prove the existence of consciousness. .
All THINGS are an INFINITE part of an INFINITE universe! Consciousness is within ALL THINGS! ...... even in the material THINGS! ....... What did he juz say! Yeah I said it! 🤣
With respect to "machine consciousness" I think it's a prerequisite that it be part of a system that has as much sensory input as mammals: devices which provide sight, hearing, touch, maybe smell, so that its experience can be as similar to our own as possible. To the extent that there develops a body/machine interface in the future, it may be that conscious computers will use people, or people's "parts", to actually achieve organic parity. Banks of servers, as we currently understand such things, will never have Consciousness. IMO, of course.
If you provide the system with a microphone and webcam, to allow for hearing and sight, will this suffice as a replacement for the mammal sensory system? If that's the case, we may be able to create machine versions of our sensory systems and therefore meet the criteria you laid out. Let me know your thoughts.
This can only be the case if consciousness is a product of complicated computation, whether in the brain or in a computer. But as we do not really know how consciousness is created, we may be over estimating the importance of computation. If this is the case, then consciousness may need some other causal mechanism, that we can not at the moment replicate.
While sensory input should certainly be requisite, the ability to DO something in the physical world, and sense the results of those actions, and REMEMBER both and the connections between them, would also seem to be necessary. And perhaps also some 'impulsive' behaviors like the HCN pores in the heart pacemakers and also in the neurons of the brain provide.
@@snoracle4926 I suspect smell is included as regards consciousness because it is a SENSORY input, and some sensory input would seem to me to be necessary for consciousness. I understand that Helen Keller became at a young age (19 mo.) both deaf and blind, and certainly was conscious, but she did have a TACTILE sense remaining, which allowed her to learn about the world around her. What do you think consciousness would be like for a person if they were born without any sensory input at all, neither exterosensive or interosensive?
No one knows that..but here is a theory I came up with...while you are in deep sleep you are no more conscious...because our brain is constantly in conscious mode...we are in a particle state...we are in solid state...but when brain does not observe us we become wave...and our entity travels through all other dimensions. That's the reason we experience a lot weird dreams...but those are reality in other dimensions. Main point is when we do not observe a particle it behaves like wave but when we observe it with a detector it behaves like particle again...because our brain observes us constantly 24x7. Only time when we are in deep sleep we enter into other realms that are impossible to enter with consciousness. Like your body divides into 100s and 1000s of waves and travell through all other dimensions while you sleep...you seem solid to others bcz they observe you and when they observe you for them your wave function collapses and you become solid again.
@@saicharanchepuri8145 Interesting but; i'm trying to get at specifics of brain function that differ as our experience changes. You should write a book; very thought provoking👍
The whole prior to the parts it’s something immaterial? In the case of the brain, it generates abstract thoughts, but it still a result of firing of neurons. Now I don’t know if you can call it immaterial or not but what is pretty clear is that consciousness can’t occur without a brain. If transfer the information to a machine that does the same functions then it is possible for consciousness to occur and that individual will remember the same things and should be able to feel similarly depending on the level of emulation . That’s how I see it working
Self-awareness is personhood. Going farther, consciousness, itself, is personhood. Awareness and consciousness are not equivalent. Awareness is the blank canvas, infinite and non-local. Consciousness is the picture on that canvas. The Artist? Got me. Who made the integers (counting numbers)? That's who knows.
No more than a cat is conscious. Consciousness is available to the child at a certain point in their brain development, around 18 months when most infants can recognize themselves in a mirror (i.e. they pass the "mirror test"). That does not mean they are not aware; they certainly are. But awareness and consciousness are not equivalent.
I think we should ask the questions what conciousness does, what its (biological) function is, what the benefits are of having conciousness. Following that avenue might some day bring us closer to truth
Indeed. I suspect we are conscious because that's what it takes to do civilization. Civilization is the protective cocoon by means of which evolution makes more of us than mere instinct can accomplish. Cheers!
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL That's an interesting thought. On a more fundamental level (the individual) I think i'd go with the views of Damasio and Solms, but that could well be expanded onto a higher level as you laid out. We'll see, looking forward to what insights future research will bring. Cheers too!
@@0The0Web0 To expand slightly on the idea... Suppose the conscious mode of human being truly did evolve to address the need to better negotiate the inevitable increase in social complexity that burgeoning civilizations were heir to. (Civilizations that our instinct driven ancestor's discovery/invention of agriculture initiated ten millennia ago ). If true, civilization constitutes the substrate, the foundation, the fundament over which individual consciousnesses float abstractly, on a 'higher' level. Yes, I'm a fan of the theory because I think the theory nails it.
In the presentation, Sheldrake described consciousness as the ability to choose between different options and said that quantum physics presents the possibility that even an electron occupying a given "orbit" around an atom's nucleus is the result of a choice. This seems to be saying Mind is a fundamental force of reality. I would certainly not dispute this, but I don't think this is something that can be proved. There are certain things which can be demonstrated, but cannot be proved. Mind, it would seem, is axiomatic.
I’m with Ray (3) ultimately although we still only have evidence of high order animals (2). This seems to boil down to the Chinese box problem: if the output, when tested, is indistinguishable from human output, it’s likely consciouses.
This can only be the case if consciousness is a product of complicated computation, whether in the brain or in a computer. But as we do not really know how consciousness is created, we may be over estimating the importance of computation. If this is the case, then consciousness may need some other causal mechanism, that we can not at the moment replicate.
That’s because they’re beginning with the wrong premise. Which is trying to insist that somehow consciousness is a product of a brain. It’s the other way around.
Based on my hypothesis that there is a field that permeates space; that observers "puddle" when large numbers of them are close together; my new hypothesis is that this was stumbled upon early in the evolution on mammal brains, and that it is evolutionarily advantageous and for that reason as mammals evolved this was intertwined with the growth of biological brain in both size and complexity to make the conscious brain a sort of neural nexus or a nexus of many neural networks in the brain. This explains the emergence of consciousness from observers and allows us to have a sort of panpsychism without having to say that rocks, for instance, are conscious. So: 1 observers are everywhere; 2 consciousness emerged: 3 evolution took advantage of it; and finally, 4 rocks are not conscious.
I say energy in universe is there to hold up larger structures indeed this shows why we see accelerated universe and inflation but shows why matter is part of consciousness and maybe in the beginning energy is infinite but to hold structure alive.
I believe the Universe is Consciousness at it's best. A computer on the other hand is programmable Consciousness limited to human input. It's a fantastic quest for the Truth.
Perhaps consciousness isn't a tangible thing, but a process involving matter and energy. In that case, what "we" are, are the underlying elements that are performing this action.
Every animal is consciousness just operating at different levels of awareness. The brain of the host organism will determine the experience of consciousness. In human beings we all share that pure unconditioned state of awareness. But as soon as the ego starts to develop our consciousness becomes polluted by our environment. And throughout our lives our conditioned ego obscures our shared essence identity. Everything is a dream within consciousness and every human or animal is just a temporary finite point of awareness through which consciousness gets to experience life.
When we do science, we are trusting that others see what they say they see. The interesting thing about science is that it exists given that our observations are subjective and potentially different. We dont see others' experience. Is your sky my sky? Mine is blue, but could be your red, it still works. We would still have science. So objective is a complex concept.
Here's what I think... Consciousness is the ability to gain knowledge through experience, whether that is through solitary experience, coming up against challenges and finding a way past, or through being taught how to deal with situations and talking those lessons onboard. Consciousness is the ability, whether singly, or collectively, to act outside the box of current reactions and approaches to life's challenges. It is also tied to our ability to empathise with another, to see our selves in another's situation and think what should they and by inference, what should I, do in that situation. So... Consciousness is the ability to learn through experience, whether directly through the entity's own experience, or through the that of others. Essentially, if the entity being considered is teachable, then it must have some degree of consciousness... Rocks No, Dogs Yes..!
I think there's a nesting of sensation. The self is a control issue; the bits of self disemble the potential more whole self. The nesting is contexts within contexts.
Consciousness is One tiny part in biological Evolution albeit important. examples: 1. Evolution of mimicry, an animal looking like a Plant, a Plant looking like an insect. 2. in just a few years (less than 10 years) moths have changed their biology to avoid predation 3. plants can evolve weapons to survive , can even evolve in a symbiosis. etc
When my dog gets a treat from my left hand she 'knew' was in my right hand.... it blows her mind. That's exactly what Closer To Truth does to me. Thank you CTT!
"When I ask for a report on a horse, I don't want a count of the number of hairs in it's tail."
Abraham Lincoln
The reason he doesn't want that count is....it serves no useful purpose.
EXACTLY like CTT's endless hair-counting
@@WayneLynch69 99% of the people on this channel are here precisely for the "hair counting" as we haven't found answers or truth in the "reports".
@@ktx49 You have to look at the reports in context through a political screen. The most reliable report seems to be the first; Zarathustra's experience is not unique and, like most, makes a great deal of sense in context. The point about hair counting is appropriate, imo.
Unlike others, I am here to observe the hair counters themselves and those in comments that haven't yet graduated the kindergarten of civilization, that all of this endlessly repeating hair counting represents.
This may shock you. But the sun and planet is considered as Non-Living thing. But how can this be proven when we do not know the Truth? We are merely Closer to Truth but never reached the Truth
Great series. Love my regular hit of Kuhn and Closer to Truth.
You just gave me a good idea. I'm going to carv in the name "kuhn" on my bamboo bong😊
I love these convos! Merry Christmas to you Robert, to everyone at CTT, to everyone here watching/reading, and to the ever sensing all knowing infinite universe! 🌌
he's jewish
Thanks, man, and happiness right back atcha!
@@ProfessorDeezNutz Who's Jewish?
@@robertthomas4234 the host
@@ProfessorDeezNutz As is Woody Allen and Robert Zimmerman (Aka Bob Dylan). Oh, and Christ was Jewish..
Robert has done a superb job with this series. I love the clarity, his pace throughout interviews and his commentaries, while taking us to the “edge” of top thinkers in the various fields. I get to interview top people through him. Great work Robert for which I am grateful. It advances me in my wrestlings for truth.
Maryilyn at Noetic Sciences suggests how disturbing it is that humans place themselves at the top of the consciousness heirarchy, enabling us to dismiss all empathy with cows as we slaughter and eat them. I would suggest that to be consistent, we should have empathy with all life forms, such as plants (which do react to stimuli), and refrain from eating them too. We might also consider not using hand sanitizer because it kills bacteria which can be observed to be motile with a purpose, hence display a level of consciousness. So I suppose we can drink water, but are allowed to eat nothing, since eating rocks and sand will not sustain us. As Bob Dylan so brilliantly wrote, "I was born here and I'll die here, against my will". And I would add, "What hidden hand is forcing us to eat only other living things?"
Good point
6:47 That's Robert Kuhn in a different dimension.
Every living organism has a consciousness, ie an awareness of self. Period.
Any thing that strive to alive is conscious.
Nice Porsche Robert. I wonder if it has consciousness!!
That is actually a serious question. I know I am self-aware (i.e. conscious) at times, but how can I know if you are, or anyone else for that matter? I INFER you are conscious, and assume that the Porsche is not. When I think about it , I must admit that is arrogance on my part. As I can NEVER know what constitutes your conscious experience, likewise I can never know if that juicy Porsche has any sort of experience, or not!
That is actually a serious question. I cannot experience your experience, I can only INFER you have experience. In other words, I cannot experience how vanilla ice-cream tastes to you. If my inference that you are conscious is actually a matter of belief, as it is, how can I deny experience to something I have labelled a "thing", i.e. that tasty Porsche? I can neither confirm or deny it!
Me, barely 🤔...☺️
So succinct and so well said.
Amazing that the universe itself resembles a brain, and we observe how nature scales itself relentlessly. So, what was the universe thinking?
@DOC TOR Come on. Survival is not all that matters. All through history, the most sublime minds have yearned much beyond mere survival. There are higher ideals, truths and morals. Therefore survival as an ideal can appeal only to certain individuals in certain conditions, not to all.
@DOC TOR 😳
The consciousness of the universe would be very slow, unless causality is totally misunderstood by physicists.
The universe is constantly checking itself for anomalies in the singularity
@@rmac8380 I think that you used four rash assumptions in that one statement. Very cool.
I love that Robert responded to Marilyn with, "your humbleness is you arrogance." I am usually very open minded with people's theories of consciousness, but I found hers to be hard to take seriously (it flies the face of common sense).
Interesting (but I guess not surprising) that it is the most replayed part of the video.
I have no doubt that dogs are sentient beings with emotions. Great topic.
19:09 - "I would consider that there are different levels of consciousness, different complexities of consciousness..."
Isn't that what she called the "arrogant western view" just moments earlier? Haha
I appreciate Robert's work. I really do. I'm fortunate that this channel provide me smart people's thoughts and opinions on questions that I've in my mind. Thanks a lot Robert!
The Hebrew word often translated as "soul" or "ghost" is nephesh which literally means "that which breathes". It does not mean some eternal spirit thing attached to a physical body. That is also where the old saying "he gave up the ghost" came from for when a person dies -- literally he stopped breathing. I personally believe that dead is dead. There is zero evidence of anything else.
It wasn't until later that philosophers like Plato (400 BCE) and the New Testament authors changed the meaning of "soul" to be a persistent eternal entity. Most likely to comfort dying people that they will soon be "united with their loved ones".
We crawled out of the trees 200,000 years ago, there was no Adam and Eve, so like all of the other primates we die when we die. That is my personal belief anyway...
Interesting coincidence that both our names and thoughts are the same.
I say I am not the atoms that serve as my substrate.
They come and go in a pretty steady stream.
Rather, I am the dancing pattern they describe.
The pattern can change a little and I will still be.
But too much change spells the end of me.
Cheers!
Robert , thank you for sharing these investigations with me. Your project is very special to me. I also want to understand these provoking problems.
From Brazil, SC, Florianópolis.
Yeah, man! I like to imagine people who comment here mean me, though maybe Robert Kuhn reads them too! Peace, brutha!!
23:30, That right there. That’s the one.
Closer to Truth is now our favorite thing on UA-cam.
Alan Guth is my favourite scientist on this show. He has appeared 14 times.
1. How weird is the cosmos?
2.How Vast is the Cosmos?
3.Did Our Universe have a Beginning?
4.How Many Universes Exist?
5.What does an Expanding Universe Mean?
6.What would Multiple Universes Mean?
7.Will the Universe Ever End?
8.Does Information Create the Cosmos?
9.Will the Universe Ever End?
10.Does Information Create the Cosmos?
11.Must Multiple Universes Exist?
12.Does the Cosmos have a Reason?
13."Observing Physics, Observing Nature?”
14.To Seek Cosmic Origins
As always, the BEST channel in the world, and Dr Khun, a warrior and a magnificent being
I would love to see you interview Swami Sarvapriyananda and talk about the Advaita Vedanta's take on consciousness.
I totally agree. I think Robert knows of him but is a little afraid of sitting down with him. Why is science so adverse to really getting to the “bottom” of things.
More RUPERT SHELDRAKE!!!!
He cut off Rupert Sheldrake to go back to the completely superficial and thoughtless view of John Searle. This show is useless.
My dog's nose is ten thousand times more conscious than my nose. He knows the cat is there six gardens away! Oh, and his auditory canal is pretty conscious too!
A sense organ and a conscious self are worlds apart in meaning.
The humans may be the least conscious of all.
You don't see deer lying to other deer.
Or rabbits trying to take over and control others rabbits.
Bears don't clear cut the wilderness.
Weasels don't build tanks, missiles, guns.
Blue jays don't try selling you something everyday.
Owls don't ridicule other owls for having differing beliefs than their own.
Eagles don't take it personally when they see a flock of pigeons -- eagles soar higher anyways.
All animals, living things in general, are part of a higher consciousness, and the humans like to think they're above that.
The further you go from the garden, the less connected in conscious you are.
Nature is greatly part of conscious
Light & water is everything conscious.
Wow, I had no idea how long ago these episodes must have been filmed until I saw Kuhn speaking with Sheldrake. These episodes must be 20 or more years old now. I enjoy all of them, though. I tend to agree with Sheldrake, and I was quite surprised to see Kuhn included Sheldrake. I wonder if Fenwick is included in any of these episodes......
Consciousness might be action on physical reality.
Love this series and have to say this is one of the best episodes. Larry loves this very topic and it shows by the diversity of of the participants in this episode and his willingness to listen to and hear them out.
I wish Robert would explore the effects of psychedelics on consciousness and what they can teach us about how it works. Loved the program though!
I would be interested in a video on that as well.
I've explored the effects of psychedelics so I'll tell ya. But first...
The discharge frequency of a neuron is the encoded form of an analogy.
Thus a brain is stuffed with from 86 to 100 billion analogies all synaptically jostling each other.
When, say LSD, changes the discharge frequencies of all those neurons, the meanings of all the analogies are changed differentially.
Change them enough and the self becomes unconscious.
Change them a little less and one finds oneself sitting cross legged, upside down in a green pea soup colored fog.
Less still and one's body rotates one eighty and extends one leg then the other to the ground.
Heavens forbid you need to take a piss for paranoia assaults as ya leave the campfire light and hope to find privacy behind a shrub or tent. Who knows who might be watching eh, and ya hope yer not actually in a crowded lecture hall. lol
Cheers!
Don't you think the intro is a little harsh on the ears? I think making it a bit lower pitch would improve it significantly
I enjoyed it.
I might be more pan psychic leaning but I think we we were all created by the universe to serve as it's eyes and ears. A way for the universe to acknowledge that it's alive. Not saying that rocks have consciousness but things that have evolved to "think" are fundamentally all connected by a network to the universe as a whole.
Everything is conscious. To be conscious is to feel. Not all things are quick in response. Some, like rock strata, are very slow. I have walked over rock ledges after a forest fire and felt them responding to the noonday sun, after decades of shade, with a kind of enjoyment.
I have a metaphor:
I have observed my cat has an itch inside his ear. He try to scratch it from the outside, but by all possible means, there is nothing he can do about it. So he accept the itch as natural, and move on with his life.
He is conscious about his problem, but he has to ignore it to succeed, there is no other option.
I propose we humans have a similar problems to some other sorts of problems, even though we have invented the cotton buds to address most of our physically 'itching' problems.
Human's greatest itch is 'to know' things. There are things which we cannot know by any possible means. So that is the itch we have to scratch several times from out side, accept it is there, and then move on with other stuff in life. So I define this state of prevailing, but insolvable itch as the "Consciousness".
So will a computer ever be Conscious? as far as it is deterministic, I don't think so. If there is a computer which can handle paradoxes, and can accept the contrast between what it is suppose to do and what it can achieve by itself without a help of a programmer's instructions, then there will be Consciousness.
2:51 Agreed. Proof this vid above
Nothing more rewarding than to listen to an intelligent person making intelligent comments and participating in an objective intelligent conversation.
On a separate note; you must sense that "we are not alone in the Universe"; Hundreds of proofs left that corroborate the presence thousands of years ago of intelligent life more so and advanced that ours. When are you diving into this subject???
4:00 I'm nowhere near an expert on this topic, but I do know a thing or too about falsification.
When he says they would know conclusively that the snail is conscious and the ant is not, my brain immediately found a way around that "truth". Maybe he's only explaining in lay terms, and his idea is actually more flushed out. But to me, if snails were suddenly considered conscious, I wouldn't be thinking my mechanism worked.
Even worse than that, there *will* an an exception, because ofc there will. We'll find a spider in America that is not conscious, but it's ancestor in Africa is! Then what??
In a topic such as the hard problem, I don't think "exceptions" would really give us conclusive evidence. It would just open up another question that we don't get closer to truth on.
Rupert Sheldrake is new to me. But he immediately brought to mind C.S.Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader:
“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”
“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of."
How can we not be aware of anything else's consciousness? It's apparent to me that everything is conscious, though some are not entirely awake.
I'm not conscious while dreamless sleeping.
Seems to me rocks and plants are definitely dreamless sleeping.
Just because a rock swells up in the morning sunlight heat
does not make it conscious.
It merely means the rock is reactive and
reactivity is not the same
as what we mean by conscious.
When robots become conscious we are in trouble
Are we? Do you think robots want to rule anything (esspecially without programs for it) is it comes with consciousnes? Humble observations could be perfectly satisfactory. Even while helping organic life forms.
(Or was it sarcasm and I fell for it? 😯)
I'm pretty sure my washing machine is making plans to take over the kitchen.
@@HardcorebergO
The point is: once conscious, machines will be able to self program.....
why would “Superior” machines want/need ~7Billion humans around?.....
maybe a few human pets, but not billions.
@@downswingplayer9712 for starters, one should not put washing machine in the kitchen. Atbleast it will take them longer to get there.
@@jimliu2560 i understood the point. But this idea that "we want to gain control because we can" is a very human concept. I think.
Consciousnesses is the precursor to anything and everything.
I like the analogy with flying. Because it emphasizes that our intelligence and our intellect reflect a deep structure of reality which we have adapted to. Like air.
In a lot of ways, computers are like a left-hemisphere false idol of itself. But a very very useful one that is not inherently bad, but actually vital. We should just know how to regard it properly.
In other words
there is not enough room in our craniums
to grow brains large enough
to allow us to become intelligent enough,
quickly enough,
to deal with all the problems confronting us
that civilization is causing us
thanks to its making us
so fecundly successful?
i.e. If there were only a million of us
we could all drive hummers.
Sheldrake's received pronunciation is so superb; elegant.
24:50 Shows stock footage of various animals then proceeds with a CG dolphin. That was random, LOL!!!
Oh, yeah. That's awesome! 😂
honor to your impartial search for the truth ... discussing with varying minds in their fields
Enjoy it while it lasts
Such a shame Prof. Mark Solms wasn’t part of this video. Thanks to his body of work, we do know now why and how consciousness emerged in nature and we can go as far as codifying it.
Greet SUMMARY‼️👍🏼
"You don't have to have neurons in order to have consciousness" 5:20. The brain is an organ that is used by consciousness and does not solely produce consciousness. I would say that Electromagnetism is the mechanism of consciousness.
How strange it is to be anything at all.
"And maybe Chinese consciousness is different than American consciousness..." Whoa! Let's be careful where we let that consideration take us.
I am saddened that you've interviewed Rupert Sheldrake only one time. Though I don't necessarily fully agree with Rupert, I do think we're going to need radical ideas like his if humans are to ever fully understand consciousness.
EXcellent! 👏
12:00 I dont belive in souls or spirits, im an atheist, but i do agree With his infights on our percepsion of consiousness With being sapient (*that is, thinking like us). As well as atrributing Sentience (that is the ability to feel pleasure and especially pain) With Sapience*
The correct question is maybe, what dies when one dies!
Agreed.
Based on the available evidence, when a person dies, their body dies, cools, and begins to decompose. Their brain is dead & since no evidence has ever been shown for a consciousness existing outside of a physical brain, that person's consciousness ceases to exist.
@@cnault3244 True.. But Humans have long explored only the physical realm. Consciousness is not something physical but is of another realm. Science cannot be used to bisect each and every aspect of this bizzare Universe
@@rahuldwivedi1070 "True.. But Humans have long explored only the physical realm."
Can you present evidence for a non-physical realm ?
"Consciousness is not something physical but is of another realm. "
No other realm required. Consciousness is the product of & exists within physical brains. Do you have evidence for a consciousness existing outside of a physical brain, or of a consciousness that isn't produced by a physical brain?
@@cnault3244 I cannot provide any evidence brother. Only Physical things have evidence. But I can assure you the difference between experimental and experiential truths. The Later is what is used by Spiritual practitioners to understand the true meaning of Consciousness.
The problem lies in the foundation of science. It excepts any thing with proves and evidences, but does not have place for Experiential methods ( not a problem with science though, its like trying to mix oil and water. )
That consciousness is biological is the dumbest thing a philosopher can say about consciousness!!!
This video went from real and scientific, to the woo woo.
We're conscious machines, OR we're consciousness operating through machines?
Yes we are consciousness operating through machines, now am writing some letters and you can read them and understand what's on my mind, now this is consciousness of two living beings communicating their conscious thoughts and it's amazing.
You can program a machine to have intelligence, to learn, to calculate, and through the use of robotics, to do. But a machine will never 'feel'. That is the experience of biochemistry, neurotransmitters, and hormones. ---- A most excellent episode on consciousness.
This is outstanding, well done.
I wish that _I_ had never been a conscious thing.
Nice Porsche Lawrence soul more aware in that car 🚗
Consciousness is everywhere. Matter and energy are intermittent.
Awareness is non-local. Consciousness is awareness turned in on itself. It is self-referential awareness. Non-local does not mean everywhere. It means that it is beyond space/time.
@@tbarrelier good points. Do you have a reference?
@@geraldvaughn8403 I wrote my personal observations based on almost 50 years of taking notes on my experience. As I said, Mind seems to be a fundamental, if the THE fundamental force in the universe. Mind is axiomatic. An axiom is something accepted as true, though it cannot be proven. "I Am" is axiomatic. What would it mean to prove "I Am"?
Mr. Kuhn I love your vids. Very thoughtful.
If an animal acts so to stay alive; it's conscious.
I don’t think it works like that. There are chemical mechanisms that lead to certain functions like including survival but it’s not certain that mechanisms leads to consciousness.
The brain leads to a single conscious experience but when something is not right it leads to multiple identities so that shows a certain configuration is required
@@rotorblade9508 well my definition of conscious doesn't necessarily mean self-conscious it just means that you have a living thing and it wants to keep on living and it exhibits behavior that facilitates that. So even if it's automatic, at some point it had to be conscious of its own existence enough to want to protect it. And everything else is on the spectrum from that . . even ourselves. Course that's just one guy's opinion; none of us can really prove the existence of consciousness. .
My running theory is #5.
Unconscious?
Mmmm. Let me think about that for a moment while I am unconscious.
All THINGS are an INFINITE part of an INFINITE universe! Consciousness is within ALL THINGS! ...... even in the material THINGS! ....... What did he juz say! Yeah I said it! 🤣
Can you present evidence for a consciousness that exists outside of & is not the product of a physical brain?
I wish this was proven with empirical evidence...
@@ItsAGoodChannel It has been back in the 70s! 👍
@@cnault3244 We did back in the 70s understand the "background" radiation!
@@terrywheelock9458 Do you have any links or video suggestions to help me spread new light on this? I'm genuinely curious.
With respect to "machine consciousness" I think it's a prerequisite that it be part of a system that has as much sensory input as mammals: devices which provide sight, hearing, touch, maybe smell, so that its experience can be as similar to our own as possible. To the extent that there develops a body/machine interface in the future, it may be that conscious computers will use people, or people's "parts", to actually achieve organic parity. Banks of servers, as we currently understand such things, will never have Consciousness. IMO, of course.
If you provide the system with a microphone and webcam, to allow for hearing and sight, will this suffice as a replacement for the mammal sensory system?
If that's the case, we may be able to create machine versions of our sensory systems and therefore meet the criteria you laid out.
Let me know your thoughts.
This can only be the case if consciousness is a product of complicated computation, whether in the brain or in a computer. But as we do not really know how consciousness is created, we may be over estimating the importance of computation. If this is the case, then consciousness may need some other causal mechanism, that we can not at the moment replicate.
While sensory input should certainly be requisite, the ability to DO something in the physical world, and sense the results of those actions, and REMEMBER both and the connections between them, would also seem to be necessary. And perhaps also some 'impulsive' behaviors like the HCN pores in the heart pacemakers and also in the neurons of the brain provide.
Deaf people or blind people are still conscious. Its not necessary to consciousness. Certainly not smell.
@@snoracle4926 I suspect smell is included as regards consciousness because it is a SENSORY input, and some sensory input would seem to me to be necessary for consciousness. I understand that Helen Keller became at a young age (19 mo.) both deaf and blind, and certainly was conscious, but she did have a TACTILE sense remaining, which allowed her to learn about the world around her.
What do you think consciousness would be like for a person if they were born without any sensory input at all, neither exterosensive or interosensive?
17:18 a Clooney of ants being consious, maybe, but an ecosystem is not consious, i am sure of that. Yeah(😂).
The dog in the thumbnail got me here. That dog is very aware of what they are doing with their face - they are sucking us into their will. lol
Literally everything with a nervous system.
Loved it!! 💜💙💜💜
12:08 do gingers have souls?
Didn't Eric Cartman teach you anything?
.. great episode, synergy of all individual species needs more exploration..
Plzz add the English subtitles... 🙏
What happens to my "whole" when i'm sleeping?
@Swoosh Swish 😂😂😂 ... I'm leavin it! 😂😂
No one knows that..but here is a theory I came up with...while you are in deep sleep you are no more conscious...because our brain is constantly in conscious mode...we are in a particle state...we are in solid state...but when brain does not observe us we become wave...and our entity travels through all other dimensions. That's the reason we experience a lot weird dreams...but those are reality in other dimensions. Main point is when we do not observe a particle it behaves like wave but when we observe it with a detector it behaves like particle again...because our brain observes us constantly 24x7. Only time when we are in deep sleep we enter into other realms that are impossible to enter with consciousness. Like your body divides into 100s and 1000s of waves and travell through all other dimensions while you sleep...you seem solid to others bcz they observe you and when they observe you for them your wave function collapses and you become solid again.
@@saicharanchepuri8145 Interesting but; i'm trying to get at specifics of brain function that differ as our experience changes.
You should write a book; very thought provoking👍
The book has already been written: Reality Transerfing by Zeland. Only its translation into English is not of high quality.
Reality transurfing.
The whole prior to the parts it’s something immaterial? In the case of the brain, it generates abstract thoughts, but it still a result of firing of neurons. Now I don’t know if you can call it immaterial or not but what is pretty clear is that consciousness can’t occur without a brain. If transfer the information to a machine that does the same functions then it is possible for consciousness to occur and that individual will remember the same things and should be able to feel similarly depending on the level of emulation . That’s how I see it working
A machine can only imitate consciousness. Biology allows us to have experiences such as seeing light.
I hope that this is followed up with the question what is personhood?
Self-awareness is personhood. Going farther, consciousness, itself, is personhood. Awareness and consciousness are not equivalent. Awareness is the blank canvas, infinite and non-local. Consciousness is the picture on that canvas. The Artist? Got me. Who made the integers (counting numbers)? That's who knows.
So a new born child is not conscious?
No more than a cat is conscious. Consciousness is available to the child at a certain point in their brain development, around 18 months when most infants can recognize themselves in a mirror (i.e. they pass the "mirror test"). That does not mean they are not aware; they certainly are. But awareness and consciousness are not equivalent.
4:11 yes but how does that prove that all mammals are consious? I mean I cant see any correlation there whatsoever.
Even a "fungus" seems to be conscious, the cordyceps family, on arthropods and arachnids
We are conscious to something, or we sleep.
Not just being conscious.
We are conscious even in sleep of the absence of the universe.
Consciousness alone is conscious which is singular and fundamental
I think we should ask the questions what conciousness does, what its (biological) function is, what the benefits are of having conciousness. Following that avenue might some day bring us closer to truth
Indeed.
I suspect we are conscious because that's what it takes to do civilization.
Civilization is the protective cocoon by means of which
evolution makes more of us than mere instinct can accomplish.
Cheers!
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL That's an interesting thought. On a more fundamental level (the individual) I think i'd go with the views of Damasio and Solms, but that could well be expanded onto a higher level as you laid out. We'll see, looking forward to what insights future research will bring. Cheers too!
@@0The0Web0 To expand slightly on the idea...
Suppose the conscious mode of human being truly did
evolve to address the need to better negotiate the inevitable increase
in social complexity that burgeoning civilizations were heir to.
(Civilizations that our instinct driven ancestor's discovery/invention of agriculture initiated ten millennia ago ).
If true,
civilization constitutes the substrate, the foundation, the fundament
over which individual consciousnesses float abstractly,
on a 'higher' level.
Yes, I'm a fan of the theory because I think the theory nails it.
Things are not "concious". Conciousness has "things".
Humans are not "concious". Conciousness has humans.
In the presentation, Sheldrake described consciousness as the ability to choose between different options and said that quantum physics presents the possibility that even an electron occupying a given "orbit" around an atom's nucleus is the result of a choice. This seems to be saying Mind is a fundamental force of reality. I would certainly not dispute this, but I don't think this is something that can be proved. There are certain things which can be demonstrated, but cannot be proved. Mind, it would seem, is axiomatic.
I’m with Ray (3) ultimately although we still only have evidence of high order animals (2). This seems to boil down to the Chinese box problem: if the output, when tested, is indistinguishable from human output, it’s likely consciouses.
This can only be the case if consciousness is a product of complicated computation, whether in the brain or in a computer. But as we do not really know how consciousness is created, we may be over estimating the importance of computation. If this is the case, then consciousness may need some other causal mechanism, that we can not at the moment replicate.
To be conscious of another is key to search this out of a whole not just the oneness
Love the christian guy using the phrase, immaterial substance
I have watched a lot of the Closer to Truth episodes, but after watching them I don't feel that I am getting any closer to any truth.
That’s because they’re beginning with the wrong premise. Which is trying to insist that somehow consciousness is a product of a brain. It’s the other way around.
Until we know why there is something rather than nothing we can't know anything.
Based on my hypothesis that there is a field that permeates space; that observers "puddle" when large numbers of them are close together; my new hypothesis is that this was stumbled upon early in the evolution on mammal brains, and that it is evolutionarily advantageous and for that reason as mammals evolved this was intertwined with the growth of biological brain in both size and complexity to make the conscious brain a sort of neural nexus or a nexus of many neural networks in the brain. This explains the emergence of consciousness from observers and allows us to have a sort of panpsychism without having to say that rocks, for instance, are conscious. So: 1 observers are everywhere; 2 consciousness emerged: 3 evolution took advantage of it; and finally, 4 rocks are not conscious.
I say energy in universe is there to hold up larger structures indeed this shows why we see accelerated universe and inflation but shows why matter is part of consciousness and maybe in the beginning energy is infinite but to hold structure alive.
I believe the Universe is Consciousness at it's best. A computer on the other hand is programmable Consciousness limited to human input. It's a fantastic quest for the Truth.
There is no Truth. There is only what's most likely. Imho naturally.
Perhaps consciousness isn't a tangible thing, but a process involving matter and energy. In that case, what "we" are, are the underlying elements that are performing this action.
Every animal is consciousness just operating at different levels of awareness. The brain of the host organism will determine the experience of consciousness. In human beings we all share that pure unconditioned state of awareness. But as soon as the ego starts to develop our consciousness becomes polluted by our environment. And throughout our lives our conditioned ego obscures our shared essence identity. Everything is a dream within consciousness and every human or animal is just a temporary finite point of awareness through which consciousness gets to experience life.
When we do science, we are trusting that others see what they say they see. The interesting thing about science is that it exists given that our observations are subjective and potentially different.
We dont see others' experience. Is your sky my sky? Mine is blue, but could be your red, it still works. We would still have science.
So objective is a complex concept.
Maybe objective is that to which most seem to have descriptive access. Subjective is only accessible, or experienced by the subject.
very weird moment 17:38. don`t watch if u have anxiety
I find the idea that plants couldn’t possibly have consciousness, absolutely ridiculous.
The first guy (john) is spot on. Finally someone who thinks about this topic without irrelevant fantasy, or egoistic human centric view
Here's what I think... Consciousness is the ability to gain knowledge through experience, whether that is through solitary experience, coming up against challenges and finding a way past, or through being taught how to deal with situations and talking those lessons onboard. Consciousness is the ability, whether singly, or collectively, to act outside the box of current reactions and approaches to life's challenges. It is also tied to our ability to empathise with another, to see our selves in another's situation and think what should they and by inference, what should I, do in that situation. So... Consciousness is the ability to learn through experience, whether directly through the entity's own experience, or through the that of others. Essentially, if the entity being considered is teachable, then it must have some degree of consciousness... Rocks No, Dogs Yes..!
Every thing have some form of consciousness
I think there's a nesting of sensation. The self is a control issue; the bits of self disemble the potential more whole self. The nesting is contexts within contexts.
Consciousness is One tiny part in biological Evolution albeit important.
examples:
1. Evolution of mimicry, an animal looking like a Plant, a Plant looking like an insect.
2. in just a few years (less than 10 years) moths have changed their biology to avoid predation
3. plants can evolve weapons to survive , can even evolve in a symbiosis.
etc
What is born (or should I say "reborn") after death?
@-GinPi Gamma Very interesting... It's hard for me to understand the nature of consciousness. I want to believe in souls & life after death, but...