What is Consciousness?

What Is Consciousness?

Excerpted for Choices and Illusions by Eldon Taylor

What is consciousness? Language is often thought to be the tool of consciousness and evidence for the kind of consciousness that makes humans different from monkeys. Indeed, language has often been referred to as the “jewel of cognition.” Some scientists have argued that Neanderthal man possessed advanced talking ability. This assertion is largely based upon a neck bone found in 1988. Other scientists argue for a more recent origin to speech—recent in this sense being between 50 and 100 thousand years ago. By contrast, early origin theorists date the beginning of language at more than 2 million years ago.

The evolution and history of language have a bearing on certain philosophical issues where consciousness is concerned. For example, take any date for the first appearance of language. For fun, let’s just assume some hairy bipedal creature that has never spoken. Is this creature conscious? Conscious in the sense humans are conscious? Now one day the creature utters some meaningful form of speech. Not a grunt or guttural sound, as all animals do, but some form—beginning—of speech. Is the creature now conscious?

What is the difference between the consciousness of animals and the consciousness of humans? What is intended by distinguishing between the two conscious forms as different and why? If a primate species shows the ability to learn, remember, and associate learnings, some insist this is evidence for reason. Most flatly refuse to recognize it as such. Is it possible that by recognizing consciousness as worthy and ripe for study that man’s consciousness will lose its unique, elevated status? What precisely is it that one means by consciousness, anyway?

Certainly reason preceded language. It would be rather odd if it were the other way around. Still, that’s an interesting thought.

Some seem to reason only with the tools of their language. In other words, their reason is limited by the rules and definitions of their language. Plus, there is some argument in favor of certain language structure as having greater or lesser faculties for developing logical thinking. Literal languages such as German, for example, tend to encourage the development of logical thinkers. However intriguing this may be, it still seems reasonable that reason preceded the conceptualization and development of speech. As such, one is hard pressed to limit the consciousness of a species on the basis of sound patterns called speech.

It gets still tougher--sound patterns that resemble speech, are uttered by so-called non-conscious animals such as whales and dolphins. So, what is consciousness?

Is consciousness a matter of wakefulness? No, it can’t be just that, for one can be a conscious being and still be asleep. Is consciousness memory? According to the experiments of Cleve Baxter, plants exhibit memory. Since science abandoned the study of consciousness years ago, the problems inherent in describing consciousness have proliferated during the interim. The advent of animal studies, plant studies, and synthetic or artificial intelligence has greatly complicated the matters of consciousness. Or perhaps simplified them.

For most people, parts of the left brain handle language. Brain hemispheric studies, including the now popular Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans show that the right ear sends acoustic information to the left hemisphere. According to Marc Hauser of Harvard University and Karin Andersson of Radcliff College in Cambridge, rhesus monkeys “display a similar cerebral setup, with the left half of the brain often taking responsibility for vocalizations intended to signal aggression.” If that is true, does it mean that the anatomical evidence for language processing is evidence for consciousness in the sense that we normally think of mankind’s consciousness. If not, what are the differences?

For some, mind equals brain. But for many, mind is a more general term that refers to the processes handled by the brain. Therefore, mind is often used interchangeably with consciousness. Is mind equal to brain? The chief area of inquiry offering evidence one way or another to answer this question is a discipline often held in low regard. Still, literally thousands of laboratory experiments in scientific parapsychology demonstrate that many aspects of mind cannot be reduced to anatomical or material brain.

Eldon Taylor

Eldon Taylor has made a lifelong study of the human mind and has earned doctoral degrees in psychology and metaphysics. He is president of Progressive Awareness Research, an organization dedicated to researching techniques for accessing the immense powers of the mind. For more than 20 years, he has approached personal empowerment from the cornerstone perspective of forgiveness, gratitude, service and respect for all life. To contact Eldon in response to the story, you can reach him via his website: http://www.eldontaylor.com

Eldon Taylor's New York Times Best-Seller, Choices and Illusions, is available at all fine online and retail bookstores. However, to participate in the online event that Eldon has put together, including a chance to win a customized $500 InnerTalk library, please visit: http://www.parpromos.com/pp/it/14k/index/R.html

What is Human Consciousness?

Human consciousness has been discussed in philosophy for many years yet still there is some debate as to what it actually is. Consciousness is talked about frequently in ‘new age’ therapies as much as traditional psychology, it plays a huge part in everyone’s life and we've all considered it at one point or another. So what is Consciousness?

The Free Dictionary describes it like this:

1. The state or condition of being conscious.

2. A sense of one's personal or collective identity, including the attitudes, beliefs, and sensitivities held by or considered characteristic of an individual or group: Love of freedom runs deep in the national consciousness.

Being ‘conscious’ means being aware, the very fact you are reading this blog means you are conscious of it. Another way to describe it would be the active processes of the mind, what you are thinking of in the moment is what you are conscious of, and that could be anything from accessing memory, forward planning, emotions etc. We are conscious most of the time, unless we become ‘unconscious’ in blacking out, either through a head injury for example or being asleep, but even in sleep we can be conscious in certain forms of dreams.

What we are aware of is determined by the conscious aspect of our minds that processes everything in our unique environment much like looking at a computer screen to access different files and doing different tasks (like computer RAM). Usually only one or two aspects can be focused on at any one time, while the subconscious  (what we are not aware of) carries on behind the scenes doing the large proportion of the work (like the computer hard drive) such as regulating blood flow, body temperature, digestion etc.

So it is relatively simple to describe what being conscious is, the trouble philosophers and scientists have had for thousands of years is how we experience this consciousness. Welcome to the argument!

The brain is a living tissue that so far no one has been able to look into to see exactly how it works, we know certain areas do certain things, but consciousness seems to be invisible, immeasurable phenomena unreachable to us with our current scientific know-how. Does just thinking that it exists mean that it does? In science everything has to be proved with testable data, and for matters of the mind there appears to be very little.

There are many theories, some immensely ancient, that say consciousness is far bigger than something that exists purely in our own heads. Consciousness has been described as ‘everything’ like ‘God’; a ‘universal life force’ we are all connected to in order to experience life, like one giant all-encompassing WiFi system. Psychics and such people are said to be able to access into this ‘Universal Consciousness’ better than the average person and therefore gain insight where the rest of us cannot. In the same vein ‘Human Consciousness’ is the network all humans are connected to and affects only us. This consciousness is said to flow and evolve as directed by all the individual minds connected to it. My blog post ‘The 100^th Monkey Principle’ discusses this a little further.

Another theory goes that consciousness does not exist at all, that we are simply highly evolved organisms that perceive rather than being part of some wider more complex consciousness. Our brains compute many different thoughts and theories, and especially over time many have joined together to argue we are something more than we actually are. We analyse our environment and nothing more.

But how would that theory explain mental experiences such as remote viewing, near death experiences, out of body experiences or the various psychic phenomena? Studies have showed humans have the ability to perceive outside the realms of the five senses, can that really be explained simply by chemical processes of the brain?

The subject of consciousness is certainly an open one and will probably remain so for a long time as the mind is such a tough entity to measure, especially when it is something that has not yet been ‘located’ so to speak, either inside the brain or outside. Current science is finding out more and more about how the brain functions but there still remains a very large gap to bridge in regard to understanding exactly how we think and the processes behind it.

For more information and current research on consciousness: http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/consciousness/

The 100th Monkey Principle: Can this Explain the Evolution of Human Consciousness?

The 100th (Hundredth) Monkey - story about social change (wowzone.com) WOW Poetry, lyrics, music, stories, classics Wish Only Well:

'via Blog this'

Article that examines how human ideas and consciousness may have evolved, and may still be evolving.