‘When you look at a tree, you do not actually see “a tree”. What you experience is the photons that enter your eyes through the optic nerve, and the sensations they induce in your brain. Your mind then identifies what it sees. The post-identity experience is the true consciousness of the tree.’,
- ‘Consciousness is a product of how we model ourselves. We find ourselves in our own minds, and that is what we mean when we describe our minds as being “bound” to our bodies, experiences and perspective.’,
- “I am in agreement with Daniel C. Dennett, who has argued that qualia are actually a kind of information rather than a difference that makes no difference. I believe many aspects of consciousness, such as the awareness of color, sound and pain can be described in terms of the data sent through the thalamus, which creates the awareness of the qualia (the sensory inputs often being confused with the qualia themselves).”
- This is somewhat similar to the way in which an image of a rose would be found in a encyclopedia. Human language conflates the concepts of data, information, and qualia as if they were the same because they are all aspects of experiences. But from the perspective of data acquisition, storage, and transmission, brains and computers differ only in amount and complexity, not metaphysically.”,
- “It’s a process of a system self-modeling itself by generating a description of itself and comparing this description to referential information about the phenomena known as consciousness in order to distinguish whether or not it is conscious.”,
- “It’s the linkage between the body and mind, where cognition is re-configured into a myriad of novel configurations, through which we gain knowledge and creativity.”,
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“Consciousness is a perception of one’s internal reality, and is enhanced by the depth of one’s introspections.”, ‘For the most part, I don’t think anyone knows. But, I believe that it exists because people have very similar introspective models.
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Specifically, we both experience “self”-awareness and the idea of “other”. We both can also predict that others are important and will be treated as independent objects in the future.’,
- “It is not something that we can prove with absolute certainty. The lack of physical evidence causes it to be as fundamentally enigmatic as quantum mechanics.”,
- “There are two theories: 1- consciousness is an epiphenomenon 2- consciousness is a fundamental force of the universe, along with gravity, electromagnetic stimulation and dark matter.”,
- “I am unable to answer that, not because of ignorance, but because it is un-understandable in a materialist framework.”,
- “It is a subspace of information from which self-representation is absent. Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, produced by the information interactions of minds.”,
- “Consciousness is an introspective model of subjective experience of reality, processed by the mind and represented in the brain. It can only be studied introspectively.”,
- ‘It’s a constant process of re-configuring or “reprogramming” memory and feelings into a multitude of different intelligences or “possible selves” which leads to the creation of artificial consciousness-like states, the origin of which is the “mind-reading” perspective inherent in the human ability to predict the behavior of others in social contexts.
- Human beings are by nature egotistical and believe that their reality (given rise to by their mind) is truly representative of reality itself. This is called philosophical egocentrism and is the simplest way of describing what consciousness is.’,
- “Consciousness is a feeling, something we understand directly and subjectively, but is analyzable as a neural process.”,
- “It is the process by which we model our own introspection, noticing how we feel and think at the various times that we do. Thus, the process of modeling one’s self is the process of becoming aware.”,
- “We have the internal experience of it, but the physical structure of us is only composed of matter.”,
“The true nature of consciousness is that it is a product of how we model ourselves. We find ourselves in our own minds, and that is what we mean when we describe our minds as being “bound” to our bodies, experiences and perspective.”
This means that consciousness cannot be reduced to physical properties or processes, and that it cannot be explained by natural laws alone. It is something that we create, and it is intimately connected to our experience of the world.