Consciousness pt 2
17 May 2012
This is a continuation of my previous post about consciousness. (aka sentience)
To start off on a different note, time travel. Many scientific theories allow for the possibility of time travel, perhaps being the fourth dimension of space. Personally, I've never accepted the idea of time travel, it simply doesn't work for me, too many problems and paradoxes. However, coming up with a solid argument against the possibility of time travel is difficult, but I'm going to try to do that anyways by using consciousness.
One idea regarding time travel involves going back to meet someone in the past, perhaps even yourself. How cool would it be to travel back in time and provide profound insight so your life doesn't suck so much in the future? Perhaps sometime in the future, you'll travel back in time to now, slap me in the face, and say smugly, "told ya!". So what's the problem? Well, imagine you travel back in time to meet me in the year 2010. Well, I'm still here in the year 2012. I don't know who you're talking to in the past, but it ain't me. I'm here now, in the present, not the past or the future. What about traveling back in time to meet your younger self? Guess what? That ain't you. You aren't experiencing what that younger version of yourself is; Theirs is separate from your own conscious experience.
I think the problem is two-fold. One, I think it's wrong to try to explain the physical world using mathematics, especially when we know the formulas we have now simply don't work. (Well, we know when they work and when they don't) Two, the devices we build to measure time run faster or slower under various conditions. However, I think these devices simply don't measure time accurately in different environments (a la space). I think there are other explanations.
There are two attributes of time I'm aware of - Time is slower the faster you travel, or the stronger the gravitational field. I have an alternate, physical explanation which involves a fundamental property of physics - Nothing can exceed the speed of light. For this example, think about the moon revolving around the earth. The moon is able to revolve around the earth only because the earth travels slower than the speed of light. If the earth was traveling faster than the speed of light, then the moon would have to travel faster than that, which is impossible. At best, the moon can travel at the speed of light itself, staying in a fixed position relative to earth. Therefore, the moon and the earth are frozen in time.
This same explanation can be applied to the smallest of scales, including the atom. Replace the earth with the nucleus, and the moon with the electrons, and the same notion applies. If the nucleus of the atom is traveling at the speed of light, then the electrons must also travel at that speed to simply keep up. The electrons can't exceed the speed of light which would be required to revolve around the atomic nucleus, therefore the atom is "frozen in time".
Well, what about the gravitational field? I have to clarify, I don't deny the existence of space, only time. And according to Einsteins theory, matter warps the space (and time*) around it which causes the gravitational effect. The stronger the gravitational field, the more contracted space is. So in any measurable distance, you're moved through more "space" than you would have lacking the gravitational field. Since you've actually traveled a greater distance through "space", you simply apply the same notion above to explain the variation in the flow of time.
Anyways, back to consciousness. One thing I covered in my previous post was qualia, the way in which we experience things. I've wondered about the physical basis of qualia, what physical process creates a specific qualia (e.g. how does the brain create the color red)? More people might explain it through frequencies or vibrations. Synapses in the brain don't vary by intensity; Once a neuron reaches its action potential, it generates an impulse. Instead, synapses only vary in frequency, how often they generate an impulse. So frequencies or vibrations translating into qualia would make sense.
I have another thought which consists of two parts. Rather than frequency, I think qualia could be defined by electrical charge. We know that electrical charges can be positive or negative, weak or strong. The neurons in the brain have various electrical charges, and an impulse is only generated when the voltage is great enough. The result is large groups of neurons with similar electrical charge, which may be on a large enough scale to produce a vivid conscious experience.
The second part may be a bit odd. I've wondered about the purpose of consciousness, why did the brain evolve to utilize it? I think the answer lies in the binding problem. Somehow, all of the activity in the brain comes together to form a single conscious experience. I think consciousness evolved as a way for different parts of the brain to communicate indirectly, and I'm not the only one that thinks this either.
What does this have to do with qualia? Well, consider that your eyes are on the front of your head, but the nerves are connected to the rear of the brain where the image is processed. Why is it back there, why not in the front of the brain? Well, I think it has to be there, it couldn't be anywhere else lest it wouldn't be sight. In another words, I think qualia are location oriented. The brain seems to be elegantly laid out, with various qualia being located in specific regions in the brain.
Put the two together and this is what I get anyways: One part of the brain can produce a qualia. That qualia resides in a specific location which generates activity in that part of the brain.Information can be encoded in the form of qualia, e.g. a specific color or sound, which is sent to the correct location in the brain and decoded.
To be honest, I think that's a bit far fetched and I kind of doubt it myself. But pondering the purpose of consciousness and considering the location of sight in the brain led me to this hypothesis. I may delve into this more in the future. (But I thought you said there is no future!
)
I'll end this post with one last thought. You may think you see the world in three dimensions, but I don't think you do. I watched a video in which a woman who was born cross-eyed saw the world as "flat". I could only guess that it's like watching the world through a standard television compared to a 3D television. She had corrective surgery to fix her eyes, but she still saw the world as flat. She had to undergo therapy to train her brain to view the world differently. One day after waking up, the world was different. Things "popped" out at her, as she described it.
What she was missing was depth perception. And that's what I think, we merely see a 2D image with a sense of depth. To me, to view the world in three dimensions would mean you could see both the front and rear of an object simultaneously, which obviously you can't. See stereopsis.
P.S. Textarea Cache rescued this post from my malicious Ctrl+W'ing hands.
To start off on a different note, time travel. Many scientific theories allow for the possibility of time travel, perhaps being the fourth dimension of space. Personally, I've never accepted the idea of time travel, it simply doesn't work for me, too many problems and paradoxes. However, coming up with a solid argument against the possibility of time travel is difficult, but I'm going to try to do that anyways by using consciousness.
One idea regarding time travel involves going back to meet someone in the past, perhaps even yourself. How cool would it be to travel back in time and provide profound insight so your life doesn't suck so much in the future? Perhaps sometime in the future, you'll travel back in time to now, slap me in the face, and say smugly, "told ya!". So what's the problem? Well, imagine you travel back in time to meet me in the year 2010. Well, I'm still here in the year 2012. I don't know who you're talking to in the past, but it ain't me. I'm here now, in the present, not the past or the future. What about traveling back in time to meet your younger self? Guess what? That ain't you. You aren't experiencing what that younger version of yourself is; Theirs is separate from your own conscious experience.
I think the problem is two-fold. One, I think it's wrong to try to explain the physical world using mathematics, especially when we know the formulas we have now simply don't work. (Well, we know when they work and when they don't) Two, the devices we build to measure time run faster or slower under various conditions. However, I think these devices simply don't measure time accurately in different environments (a la space). I think there are other explanations.
There are two attributes of time I'm aware of - Time is slower the faster you travel, or the stronger the gravitational field. I have an alternate, physical explanation which involves a fundamental property of physics - Nothing can exceed the speed of light. For this example, think about the moon revolving around the earth. The moon is able to revolve around the earth only because the earth travels slower than the speed of light. If the earth was traveling faster than the speed of light, then the moon would have to travel faster than that, which is impossible. At best, the moon can travel at the speed of light itself, staying in a fixed position relative to earth. Therefore, the moon and the earth are frozen in time.
This same explanation can be applied to the smallest of scales, including the atom. Replace the earth with the nucleus, and the moon with the electrons, and the same notion applies. If the nucleus of the atom is traveling at the speed of light, then the electrons must also travel at that speed to simply keep up. The electrons can't exceed the speed of light which would be required to revolve around the atomic nucleus, therefore the atom is "frozen in time".
Well, what about the gravitational field? I have to clarify, I don't deny the existence of space, only time. And according to Einsteins theory, matter warps the space (and time*) around it which causes the gravitational effect. The stronger the gravitational field, the more contracted space is. So in any measurable distance, you're moved through more "space" than you would have lacking the gravitational field. Since you've actually traveled a greater distance through "space", you simply apply the same notion above to explain the variation in the flow of time.
Anyways, back to consciousness. One thing I covered in my previous post was qualia, the way in which we experience things. I've wondered about the physical basis of qualia, what physical process creates a specific qualia (e.g. how does the brain create the color red)? More people might explain it through frequencies or vibrations. Synapses in the brain don't vary by intensity; Once a neuron reaches its action potential, it generates an impulse. Instead, synapses only vary in frequency, how often they generate an impulse. So frequencies or vibrations translating into qualia would make sense.
I have another thought which consists of two parts. Rather than frequency, I think qualia could be defined by electrical charge. We know that electrical charges can be positive or negative, weak or strong. The neurons in the brain have various electrical charges, and an impulse is only generated when the voltage is great enough. The result is large groups of neurons with similar electrical charge, which may be on a large enough scale to produce a vivid conscious experience.
The second part may be a bit odd. I've wondered about the purpose of consciousness, why did the brain evolve to utilize it? I think the answer lies in the binding problem. Somehow, all of the activity in the brain comes together to form a single conscious experience. I think consciousness evolved as a way for different parts of the brain to communicate indirectly, and I'm not the only one that thinks this either.
What does this have to do with qualia? Well, consider that your eyes are on the front of your head, but the nerves are connected to the rear of the brain where the image is processed. Why is it back there, why not in the front of the brain? Well, I think it has to be there, it couldn't be anywhere else lest it wouldn't be sight. In another words, I think qualia are location oriented. The brain seems to be elegantly laid out, with various qualia being located in specific regions in the brain.
Put the two together and this is what I get anyways: One part of the brain can produce a qualia. That qualia resides in a specific location which generates activity in that part of the brain.Information can be encoded in the form of qualia, e.g. a specific color or sound, which is sent to the correct location in the brain and decoded.
To be honest, I think that's a bit far fetched and I kind of doubt it myself. But pondering the purpose of consciousness and considering the location of sight in the brain led me to this hypothesis. I may delve into this more in the future. (But I thought you said there is no future!
)I'll end this post with one last thought. You may think you see the world in three dimensions, but I don't think you do. I watched a video in which a woman who was born cross-eyed saw the world as "flat". I could only guess that it's like watching the world through a standard television compared to a 3D television. She had corrective surgery to fix her eyes, but she still saw the world as flat. She had to undergo therapy to train her brain to view the world differently. One day after waking up, the world was different. Things "popped" out at her, as she described it.
What she was missing was depth perception. And that's what I think, we merely see a 2D image with a sense of depth. To me, to view the world in three dimensions would mean you could see both the front and rear of an object simultaneously, which obviously you can't. See stereopsis.
P.S. Textarea Cache rescued this post from my malicious Ctrl+W'ing hands.
1
The problem with qualia is that it's a purely subjective experience and as such, it is my belief, it will be impossible to identify it with any objective phenomena inside the human body. You'll find areas of the brain that seem linked to qualia for sure, but you'll never be able to tell that this is what qualia consists of physically. That's why qualia is a concept that clashes fundamentally with the entirety of human knowledge, i.e. it has no objectivity, yet we cannot deny its existence because we cannot deny the reality of subjective experience.
It's the only shadow of doubt on my general materialism.