If anyone knows of an interesting read on this topic, please post it. Thanks

Here is a site you may find interesting:


http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/ ... #more-1443

Thanks etudiant, that was an interesting read. It illustrated to me how people can have differing views on the topic of consciousness and yet there are always underlying flaws in their logic and structure of their arguments. This is an example of how the current ontology can prove to be deficient to correctly explain consciousness. Semantics and meaning are something very subjective, as is consciousness, and thus different people can have different views of the same thing.

I did a quick search on consciousness on google and found this link http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/ which describes the many kinds of consciousness, what it is about, why and how there is such difficulty in describing it, and describes several models and views on consciousness. Although it does not form its own opinions and remains objective, it is an informative read and will atleast shed some light on the problem at hand.

Another link http://consc.net/online is a large collection of online papers on consciousness from science and philosophy of the mind, so if you have some time on your hands, that might be a good start to gaining a good base of understanding on consciousness. It has many and varied topics on the subject, and from many different viewpoints, ranging from Neural Correlates of Consciousness, to Quantum theories to philosophy to dualistic views, so choose wisely because you don't want to spend hours reading something which is purely speculative.

Anyway, theres a lot of material there so its a start.

Found Novella's thoughts on consciousness arising from approach-avoidance to stimuli a very interesting take on the subject. Have to really take some time and mull that over in my mind.

No one has come on in a few days so maybe I'm talking to the air but after looking at suggested sites for readings, thought of this.
Twiddling with a Rubik's Cube, I thought if each separate smaller cube represented a part of consciousness; genetics, neurotransmitter chemicals, etc. and the whole cube, it's gestalt = consciousness that would define it better. Plus it's not static. Like Rubik's when you turn it, each cube would be abutting a different part.
It's hard for me to describe, I'm not that intelligent, but seeing consciousness not split into separate entities has started a new way of thinking about it for me. Does that make sense?

Vagabond wrote:I also think about consciousness along these lines, that it is a mechanism which can be useful for manipulating information, however when considering this point of view I am faced with the possibility that all our thoughts, actions and motivations are merely a result of an unconscious supporting neural network, and thus when these thoughts become conscious for our use it would seem that the mere act of them being conscious would prove to be useless, and might be performed by an unconscious process. This would then leave one with 2 conclusions, that, as you said, consciousness is merely an artifact produced from a high level of connection between neural networks, or that there is something special that consciousness imparts that an unconscious process can't achieve, or is more efficiently achieved by conscious intervention. I have been flip flopping between these 2 conclusions for a while, but I'm sure there is more to be said about it.

I think it does seem likely that everything really is a result of unconscious neural firing, but I think you may be able to draw another conclusion out from that idea. There's always the possibility that the interaction between the pattern of activation and the area of activation plays some role in consciousness. It may very well be that activation in the prefrontal cortex (the area related to planning, amongst other things) is more prone to be consciously attended to than activation in the pons (an ancient area related to basic physical functioning). But even if something enters our consciousness, there's necessarily a recoding of information. We aren't aware of the specific patterns of neural activation, we're aware of their (qualitatively different) implication.

Vagabond wrote:I think alot of psychologists have simply tried to 'explain away' consciousness or ignored it completely, it is like noone knows what to do with it so noone chooses to discuss it. You are right there about not having a definition for consciousness, this is because the word itself is used for many different things, such as attention, self-consciousness. And even when you are clear on which kind of consciousness you are trying to describe, when you attempt to define it from a 3rd person perspective, it becomes virtually impossible. This is where self report or introspection is useful. How can you detect consciousness from a 3rd person perspective? Some experiments have attempted to use brain activity, but this is not an accurate measurement.

I don't think that's really the case; there have been many interesting studies on consciousness, a fact which owes a great deal to the cognitive revolution. Many people do work on, for example, differences between unconscious and conscious reactions to stimuli. This ranges from social psychologists examining implicit associations in how we react to other races and genders to cognitive scientists looking at unconscious processes in visual and auditory perception, to neuroscientists conducting neuro-imaging studies of consciousness.

In cognitive science, we often talk about the binding problem in relation to consciousness, which is basically the problem of understanding how things come together in the brain to form a unified whole. Perhaps that term could aid you in your googling.