Hi to all,

I just came in here. I'm glad I found this forum that focus on the study of consciousness.
I believe this is the truly last frontier, the study of the mind.

As for myself, I thought I have asperger's now I think I'm like Phineas Gage - that's the beauty of the human mind, we can change!

peace.

OMG! Did you get a rod blasted through your head?

HI,

Thank God I don't have a metal rod through my frontal lobes; if I did people would avoid me in the streets! But my mom told me I was a premature baby & she almost died giving birth to me! I think my frontal lobes got oxygen-starved as a result. As I grew up she realized I'm different & I too begin to think I'm not like other kids. As she was dying, 20 yeras later, she worried about me, about my inability to network socially.
People think I'm smart but emotionally detached & I'd rather be alone. I don't have the normal capacity to connect with another person in the right emotional way - the so-called emotional intelligence, E-IQ. Also, I avoid confrontation & I avoid looking people straight in the eyes during conversation. But my biggest minus is I don't care much about the future & that, coupled with my poor E-IQ, prevents me from being in that social & financial level as I should be.

Thank God my poor executive function didn't bust my ability to say, "Thank God!' In fact, I have Maslow's peak experiences & even mystical feelings. Since I was a boy I've always had that religious feeling.
So I believe that if a person can cultivate, in one way or another, her innate religious emotion, she will be a believer - it has nothing to do with rational logic!

If you insist on being rational then your only recourse is to say that that you're merely a complex but solipsistic computer, PC! The brain is exactly like the PC in that it can only process the outputs of transducers; it is not designed to compute the outside world, OW directly. Which means, I'm saying here that Kant is right about the noumenon/phenomenon divide; what we can only experience is phenomena, not the OW. If he's alive today he'll point to the PC as proof of his philosophy!

This makes the current study of consciousness, CONS, so very interesting to me! But the present consensus about CONS is wrong & not because it's reductionist/ materialistic. It's because everybody has the wrong point of view, POV!

Think about this, guys. You can only think about anything from your own POV, within your own CONS!
From your POV all objects are mental objects, they're elements of your CONS. Moreover, you can have the realization that your mind uses IDEAS to think about things & other ideas. Your CORVOC, core vocabulary, is innate; if you were a bat your CORVOC would be different; ETs who live in planets so far advanced in evolution would also have different CORVOCs; their mathematics & philosophies would be incomprehensible to our greatest minds.

Peace!

So, basically you're saying that it's all in our head? Reality is based on each individual's Point Of View? And, this POV, in turn, is directly related to our CORE VOCABULARY? How does this work at the individual and the specie level?

The brain is not a computer. It may compute but that is not its sole function. The metaphor of brain as computer is several decades old now. More recent metaphors make it like a computer network, which are equally ridiculous.

I don't see why anyone who has given the matter due consideration would conclude that we are a complex but solipsistic computer PC.

I don't agree that Kant would find the PC as validation of any of his philosophy since the computational nature of mind does not form a key component of his philosophy. Rather, one of his important contributions was that space and time are mental creations, that we can only be conscious of objects in space and time, that our consciousness of objects requires our mental creation of space and time. I recommend reading a good english translation (unless you can read German) of his 'Critique of Pure Reason'.

In terms of core vocabularies, linguists and philosophers have written about this to death. Search the internet for "what it's like to be a bat".

Hi,

Absolutely! I urge you to embrace your birthright as CREATOR! From within your CONS - you have no choice here! - I am just one of your mental objects! The OW merely triggers your sense organs to outputs electrochemical pulses. From these pulses your brain creates shapes, colors, sounds, music, etc., within your CONS. Your reality is your CONS - your CONS is your reality.
This has tremendous significance, for if you destroy something - you're creator/destroyer like the godess Kali!- you're destroying a part of you own CONS, a part of your own self! Consider: if you're capable of destroying all of your mental objects you've destroyed your self, you won't be CONS! For these objects consist your CONS! Note too, that the totality of objects are animate & inanimate, & that's according to your own CORVOC!


Peace.

...............................

Hi Dreamer,

I'm not saying that the brain is nothing but a PC. The OW is extremely complex & if your brain can't compute enough you'd be consider a mentally disabled person! Moreover, I'm not saying here that the brain or PC computes the OW. The OW merely triggers the sense organs to outputs electrochemical pulses & out of these the brain creates mental objects within CONS; the process or computation that makes this happens is something nobody knows about!

The PC & the brain both possess self-contained internals which are closed systems. The OW merely triggers the internal 'tokens' & the inner processes take over from there. In the PC these are the binary patterns or voltage levels & in the brain, the electrochemical pulses.

That's why we can say that when 2 objects interact the result depends on the objects' 'hardware & software' nature, their surface interaction, which we can see, & what happens in their internals, which we can't normally observe.

This means that we create our own reality. The phenomena within our heads/CONS which we project into the OW is not our representation of the OW but rather our own creation.

This means too that your pet dog does not compute the OW less than you do. His reality is as much as valid as your own self-created CONS. He too creates his own reality according to his hardware/software nature!

I also must say the same for that flea on his ear!

peace.

But the hardware/software analogy you're using to describe the brain has not been justified in any way, and I am not inclined to view the mind/brain as software/hardware since this propagates the brain-equals-computer fallacy.

Also, we do not project anything into the OW, but nor as you contend are we free to create whatever we want, otherwise you should be able to perceive a cat as a dog or some other such nonsense. Our mental creations are constrained; we cannot create whatever we want. This statement of creating what we want doesn't even make sense unless you explain the nature of want and where it comes from and what determines it. And so in the end we conclude, from experience, that our mental representations and creations are constrained by other factors and that we cannot always create what we want.

Lucid,

Again, I have to repeat that I'm not equating the brain=PC; I am saying that the sense organs - not the OT, but in respond to the OT - send very complex signals that the brain computes or processes, the end of which results in our having our qualia.

You're right there & I have to rephrase what I wanted to say: 'OW' in your 2nd paragraph should be replaced by 'PS', Personal Space; coz that's what I mean! We project those mental objects into our PS!
Space is a creation of the mind! CONS creates it first before we can project mental object into it!

Can you explain this? ............I pick the 5th string of my guitar (I'm a working musician) & the books say it's vibrating at 110hz, the note La. But I can confirm that the air around me is vibrating at this frequency by plugging my mic into my frequency counter (my hobby is electronics) & the counter does display 110hz.
This vibrating air stimulates my ears to send electrochemical pulses down my auditory nerves & my brain computes these pulses. Finally, in my CONS I hear the sound of the tone La.

1. Now, would you agree that this is my primary reality - this pitch in my mind's ears, so to speak?
2. This tone/pitch does not exist in the OT for there it's only vibrating string.
3. If I plug my auditory nerves - possible in the future! - to a machine that can mimic those pulses my brain will compute those pulses just the same & within my CONS it would be the same sound!

Please note that I didn't write that we can create whatever we want. The above example is clear; whatever the auditory nerves send into the interior of the brain will become sound within CONS. However like in electronics systems wires get crossed or due to software bugs which in CONS result in synesthesia.


peace.



un
o know that space isn't just readpersonal anThose mental