Where does consciousness originate?

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Have you ever wondered where consciousness comes from?

So far as we can understand it comes from all the individual parts, - our cells - many if not all are perhaps completely unaware they play this part to a greater body, and they all work in harmony so you may control your movements and thoughts.

Is it hard to believe then, that we, humans maybe working as parts too like cells to a greater being?

Has it ever occured to you, that nations, and coorporations are conscious beings in and of themselves? That the groups we make up are as alive as you or I?

That's very interesting that you brought up something I've often wondered about. I've always thought of Earth as a giant living body itself and that all the living organisms on this planet like animals and plants are the cells that make up this one body. Of course due to the fact that we humans are always destroying each other and poisoning the Earth, I wonder if we're like the cancer cells who's sole purpose for existing is to bring death to living planets like this one.

In a way yes. The language and literature is the memory of a nation; even though say, the Chinese have gone through several hundred different generations of people, each generation is connected to the last, even the most ancient generations, because the language, culture, customs, and literature creates a group consciousness. You could say 'China' is a being as well as a group of billions of people spread throughout a region of space and time.

As for the origin of consciousness, I think consciousness is a property of the Universe, just like the material is. The human body likely either creates or captures a 'field' of consciousness (the soul) and that is what we actually are. When we die it either migrates to some other body, or it disapates into the greater Being. just a guess.

A book that has many devotees is "The Origins of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes. I only read the first edition, Julian Jaynes has a website with much of the model: http://www.julianjaynes.org/

I take it mainly as Left-brain Right-brain stuff, and thinking as sub-articulated words, with a person responding to their own such internal but non-emitted words (do they "hear" their thoughts as "voices" from themselves or from the Gods???). The definition of consciousness is a major problem, with little agreement. Types of partial seizures from epilepsy are roughly divided over the issue of impaired or non-impaired "consciousness". Extreme cases are like "Johnny Got His Gun" (is Johnny conscious?).

With brain damaged patients and individuals with strong and intense aversive conditioning, short-term memory versus long-term memory problems reveal the long-term with "holographic" properties, and the artistic/emotional right side brain versus the intellectual left side of the brain.

With the Limbic System, my partial seizures are sometimes right-sided with intense aura of amygdala "fear", while the left-sided "cross-over" partial seizures are aura of "divine bliss" or ecstatic seizures sometimes called Dostoevsky's Epilepsy.

Tadzio

as for where consciousness comes from the answer is simple and material. It is merely the interaction of the neurons and chemical signals occurring in your cranium. it would be nice to think that it is something deeper, more intrinsically inherent in this universe, but it isn't.

GOD

Hey, Don't Blame Me!! !

Tadzio

but how can inanimate matter just create consciousness? do you think true artificial intelligence is possible then?

interesting, explain what you mean by holographic.

Total crackpot nonsense, but it was amusing to read.

ruveyn

I'd like to believe consciousness is generated through wetware quantum logic gates.

If anything your brain and your nervous system exists to gate logic magnetic fields. Get enough of them together with the power of chemistry and you have a brain that generates consciousness.

If you can think logically, there must be some underlying physics generating that logic.

What about greater bodies of consciouness. Like suppose nations are conscious entities that have control over people much like we have command over our own cells. How do we test and prove that organizations we make up are conscious?

Imagine some grand alien looking down at us through a mega-microscope. He identifies the United States of America as a living entity he charts the activities of each one of its cells. one of which, a Mr. Phil Davis, who works at the Pentagon apparently serves to protect against invaders, he works much like white cells do in our body.

Is a beehive or an ant colony a living, conscious entity? at what point do we recognize these meta-groups as being conscious in and of themselves. How connected do each of the parts have to be to one another in order to form a being we take to be conscious?

I have encountered people with a grasp of their own consciousness and the interconnectedness they share with other peoples' consciousness. I personally feel there is more to life than what the scriptures, dieties, etc have to say about this world, universe, galaxy and so on. Some entities or individuals grasp it better than others. I can't figure out why some people have more wisdom- for lack of a better word- than others. Is it age.. does age translate into multiple lives?

Could be the Geico guy who lives under a rock and see's a road poster advertising 15% savings with Geico. Reacting to data, and especially copying data is a hallmark of consciousness and it can be seen at any scale. I'd reckon to say our DNA proteins have consciousness of a sort. They don't ponder these questions but they sure do manipulate and copy data utilizing the physics of the universe; that's how it starts, very small. On larger scales, it's the same idea. There would be some cosmos within the cosmos going about it's daily business.

Group consciousness? Well maybe, it certainly works for successful segmented societies. In beehives for example the whole really serves one mind and will, that of their queen bee.

Lets hope not for the sake of their suffering.