There must be something unknown in physics that makes consciousness exist

[Cesrate]

All right, just a personal thought, ignore this.

[Charzy]

If it's just a personal thought, why would you post it?

Also, that's wrong and you should feel silly for having said it.

[SpaceHole]

May you elaborate why that is? Otherwise this thread is pointless beyond repair.

[drakesdoom]

If you want to say this prove it. If you can't prove it it is not physics it is religion.

[bjo0rn]

It's an interesting topic. Too bad you didn't have the balls to take a discussion.

[Cesrate]

All right, the reason why I say this is simple, there's no known physics (I've known) that indicates the existence of consciousness. But consciousness do exist.

[sojourner]

Consciousness is an emergent property of a complex system. In this case the brain.

We really are more than the sum of our parts.

[N_las]

All right, the reason why I say this is simple, there's no known physics (I've known) that indicates the existence of consciousness. But consciousness do exist.

There is no known physics that indicates the existence of orange juice. It is an emerged product. But in the case of consciousness, you can't even argue for its existens, because there isn't a decent definition of it.

[Albert VDS]

Around 85 billion neurons and 100 times that for the neural connections, thats a whole lot of brain power.

To put that perspective:

http://www.asianscientist.com/features/japanese-supercomputer-takes-big-byte-brain-2013/

the K computer is able to pull together the power of 82,944 processors to create a network simulating 1.73 billion nerve cells connected by 10.4 trillion synapses – approximating about 1% of the raw processing power of a human brain.

...

But the simulation still took 40 minutes to provide the computational power of one second of neuronal network activity of the brain in real, biological, time.

Now imagine what it would take to simulate 100% of the brain. To me that seems like enough proof that consciousness is a product of the brain.

Basically we are biological robots with sensors and enough processing power to make us conscious.

But of course it's not limited to us, all animals have a form of consciousness one form or an other. It's just good trait to have to ensure your survival.

[Cesrate]

There is no known physics that indicates the existence of orange juice. It is an emerged product. But in the case of consciousness, you can't even argue for its existens, because there isn't a decent definition of it.

Yes I know there isn't a decent definition of it, but compared with men in sleep, bacteria and personal computer, consciousness does exist, no matter what it is.

And, consciousness is limited to certain areas in cerebral cortex. See blindsight experiments.

Edited September 8, 2013 by Cesrate

[SargeRho]

Wrong. It's a byproduct of electrochemical reactions within the brain. It's not a physical entity, but a process.

[m1xte]

I think mankind knows about 1% of the laws of physics at the moment, but we are so limited in our capacity that we think we know it all. :/

One interesting thing to note is that rules of the universe seems to generate data (DNA) and order (life) out of randomness.

"Our laws of physics" say randomness will always increase but what in the "real laws of physics" is driving it backwards.

[Kryten]

"Our laws of physics" say randomness will always increase but what in the "real laws of physics" is driving it backwards.

No they don't. They say net entropy (which you could describe as 'randomness' if you're looking at it simplistically) always increases. Any decrease in entropy is able to occur due to a larger increase in entropy elsewhere; in the case of life on earth, the larger increase is a result of fusion in the sun.

[SargeRho]

Net entropy always increases. You can (and actually have to) use energy to decrease entropy, which will increase entropy elsewhere.

[Cesrate]

Wrong. It's a byproduct of electrochemical reactions within the brain. It's not a physical entity, but a process.

You just totally followed my thought, why you say it's wrong? Uhh... "something" had included process.

[Kryten]

But we know exactly what the process is; a combination of summation of action potentials in neurones and neurotransmitter release by glial cells. It's like saying physics can't explain computers because the laws underpinning transistors don't explicitly say you can hook together a few million and use them to play pac-man.

[lajoswinkler]

Yeah, it's not a process. It's the emergent property of the sum of the processes. It can be manipulated with tiny tools that attack the molecular foundations of it - drugs.

Love the orange juice analogy.

[m1xte]

Last few posts are the "Know it all approach"

I think its In truth more like "know all we are capable of knowing"

Brains are severely limited in processing data and very efficient at filling the gaps with "intuition".

We know the electrochemical reactions but thats about it. Some knows little farther but only some and only little.

Why does electrochemical reactions which always go towards increased total entropy have a byproduct of data and order.

Its written in the laws of universe but our brains cannot comprehend that so they'll fill the gap with things we already know (electrochemical reactions).

[Diche Bach]

We are probably only about 100 years from actually understanding what the psyche, much less consciousness "is."

Main problem is that we have 10,000 years of non-scientific epistemology blocking the way, and still fairly limited neuroscientific, epigenetic and developmental data. It is going to be slow going because experimenting on human children is not okay.

ADDIT: Com'n now, lets not be sexist . . .

It's an interesting topic. Too bad you didn't have the GAMETES to take a discussion.

Fixed.

Edited September 8, 2013 by Diche Bach

[lajoswinkler]

Last few posts are the "Know it all approach"

I think its In truth more like "know all we are capable of knowing"

Brains are severely limited in processing data and very efficient at filling the gaps with "intuition".

We know the electrochemical reactions but thats about it. Some knows little farther but only some and only little.

Why does electrochemical reactions which always go towards increased total entropy have a byproduct of data and order.

Its written in the laws of universe but our brains cannot comprehend that so they'll fill the gap with things we already know (electrochemical reactions).

No they are not.

Not only do we know the basics, we also know a lot about the end result of that basic elementary processes.

A.......K..............P..............Z

50 years ago we knew a lot about Z. The blackbox model. You don't know what's inside, but you know how the end result behaves. Psychology.

Today we know a lot about A. Really, a lot. Biochemical reactions and neuron behavior.

We know some K, some P, here and there. Our problem is that we have no working model that would connect A to Z in a continuous fashion. That the problem. Not A and not Z. The alphabet is the problem. Nothing in the science has ever reached the whole alphabet, but some things are covered, a lot. The human mind isn't one of them.

There is absolutely not a single shred of evidence consciousness is anything else than an emergent property of an extremely complex array of synapses. Not a single one, and there are whole sciences about the evidence that talks about the opposite. Sciences about A and sciences about Z. Not one of them includes anything else.

You can't say "there is nothing else", that would be unscientific, but you must say "there is not one evidence for something else". That's scientific positivism. You work with the things you know, and you don't keep whishful thinking about the stuff that you'd like to be true.

Regarding the local decrease of entrophy, it's because of larger increase in environment entrophy. That's how mind and life work. And refrigerators.

Edited September 8, 2013 by lajoswinkler

[hugix]

With a simple set of instructions you can create complex structures. A computer can only count to 1 (binary) yet it is capable of producing KSP. Given that you count enough times to 1 (or sometimes 0). Our brains kinda work the same way. It sends signals between neurons but does this a lot of times per second. This creates a very complex structure that we experience as conciousness.

If you give enough simple instructions on something it can produce something complex. We all know how a brick work, yet building a house isn't something we all can do. The same is with our brain. We know the instructions yet cannot compass the amount of them a second.

[Majiir]

With a simple set of instructions you can create complex structures. A computer can only count to 1 (binary) yet it is capable of producing KSP. Given that you count enough times to 1 (or sometimes 0).

Erm... by this logic, humans can only count to 9. (Unless you know hexadecimal, in which case you can count all the way to F!)

The biggest objection I have to this thread is the title (emphasis is mine): "there must be something ..." Why must there be? Why is consciousness special? Even if there is some fundamental component of nature dedicated to consciousness (and I think we have a large body of evidence suggesting the opposite) you're still wrong right off the bat for insisting without evidence that it must exist.

[SargeRho]

Computers only can count to 1, because they only know 2 numbers. 1 and 0, everything else is built out of combinations of those (bytes).

[PakledHostage]

I think it is naive to believe that neurons or even a neuron's axons and dendrites are analogous to bits in a computer. Cells have incredibly complex biology and a lot of processing happens at the sub-cellular level. Even single celled organisms are capable of responding to diverse stimuli in their environments.

Drew Berry did a TED talk a few years ago that gave some insight into the molecular machinery inside every cell. What blew me away was the bit at the end where the chemical signal broadcasting system molecules actually walk along the micro-tubules in the cell's nucleus... How do they know where they are going?

[Seret]

I think the underlying cause of the OP asking this question in this way is the inherited idea that there's a dichotomy between the physical and mental or emotional parts of us. It's a cultural icon that the body and mind (or soul) are to be considered distinct.

Personally I don't think there's any actual evidence that that's the case.