What is consciousness?

I think of it in terms of what I call "dual sensorium feedback framing." The hippocampus contains separate input streams for Evey sense in duo: the evanescent external input AND internal modelled input; sight, scent/taste, sound, tactility, and kinesthetic presence/motion sense and emotion, in the momentary input of the sense, and in thinking about each sense and all of them together from memory and experiential fantasy... thought. Thought is equivalent to fantasy. When we do work,bwe attempt to make the external world match to an imagined goal, moving physical reality toward the imagined desired results... We mix our ingredients and bake our bread. We eat our food and empty be our plate.
At its simplest level to be conscious is to sense responsively in the moment. Humans appear to do this in sensorium frames in which all senses, inputs and memory/fantasy are associated together each seperable and all together. These frames have mobile sequentiality; they occur one after another in quick sequence like frames of film giving rise to a perceived flowing connectivity.
 
Think in terms of function - Funxion. Then, "We write poetry and rabbits don't, as far as we can tell," she said. "So, it's a difference of degree, not of kind", illuminates itself and us.


@iluvweed: videos everywhere for me start muted, and off to the side if popped out. Perhaps a browser setting?

As well, this can happen. 23 skidoo


200807-23-skiddoo.png
 
So. Are you the Heinlein character we met in 1963 who "grokked*, cut off his finger into the soup, and implicitly volunteered to be torn apart by the crowd? Then posthumously protected Earth from Martian destruction? Micheal Valentine Smith.. . the Man from Mars... Stranger in a Strange Land.
 
@VennieThompson : I represent the embodiment of that character.

In '92 my SO and I had fallen asleep after making love. An hour or so later I had a dream of she and I having fused, and I jumped awake. It startled her awake and I exclaimed, "Did you feel that?!" "Yeah!" It was like we were fused!" "Yeah!" In '02 I rummaged through my dad's SF and Fantasy (mostly SF) collection and found Dan Britain's (Don Pendleton) THE GODMAKERS (1970), the cover intriguing me, which it would not have as a teen as I prefered SF, and I took it home and read it. At the end, the main character and secondary character die....fused together in coitus....after using their spiritual energy to vanquish the mindless God entity underlying Humanity's consciousness.

My SO in '92, two years younger yet a gray magic practitioner and trained and seasoned Dom, instructed me in making love and tending to someone. Showing THE GODMAKERS to my SO of that time, a 'psyhic healer', she gave me Stranger in a Strange Land, my first time considering reading it.....

(Curiously, Pendleton a little later published the Mack Bolan series....)

a3a3aff33b78f1b6101e68f889b25444.jpg
 
Last edited:
Apr 8, 2021
1
0
10
Visit site
Consciousness is something unique, an emergent quality that is different in kind than the sum of its constituent parts, and as such is not a good candidate for scientific inquiry. Reducing consciousness to neurons or processes misses the point - it is similar to trying to "get" music by analyzing the notes, when the music occurs between the notes. Understanding consciousness belongs in the world of spiritual discovery, and it is still a work in progress - awareness of the interconnectedness of all life was hardly a concern in consciousness a few hundred years ago. Although consciousness may be measured to a degree, it cannot be defined using scientific terms; it is too elusive, singular, and sublime to be delimited.