Physicist Claims To Have Solved the Mystery of Consciousness

Brain Memory Intelligence Consciousness

Scientists have developed a new conceptual and mathematical framework to understand consciousness from a relativistic point of view.

According to the theory, all that’s needed to solve the hard problem of consciousness is to change our assumptions about it. When we realize that consciousness is a physical, relativistic phenomenon, the mystery of consciousness naturally dissolves.

How do 3 pounds of brain tissue create thoughts, feelings, mental images, and a detailed inner world?

The ability of the brain to create consciousness has baffled people for millennia. The mystery of consciousness lies in the fact that each of us has subjectivity, with the ability to sense, feel, and think. In contrast to being under anesthesia or in a dreamless deep sleep, while we’re awake we don’t “live in the dark” — we experience the world and ourselves. However, it remains a mystery how the brain creates the conscious experience and what area of the brain is responsible.

According to Dr. Nir Lahav, a physicist from Bar-Ilan University in Israel, “This is quite a mystery since it seems that our conscious experience cannot arise from the brain, and in fact, cannot arise from any physical process.” As bizarre as it sounds, the conscious experience in our brain, cannot be found or reduced to some neural activity.

“Think about it this way,” says Dr. Zakaria Neemeh, a philosopher from the University of Memphis, “when I feel happiness, my brain will create a distinctive pattern of complex neural activity. This neural pattern will perfectly correlate with my conscious feeling of happiness, but it is not my actual feeling. It is just a neural pattern that represents my happiness. That’s why a scientist looking at my brain and seeing this pattern should ask me what I feel, because the pattern is not the feeling itself, just a representation of it.” Because of this, we can’t reduce the conscious experience of what we sense, feel, and think to any brain activity. We can only find correlations to these experiences.

After more than 100 years of neuroscience, we have very strong evidence that the brain is responsible for the creation of our conscious abilities.  So how is it possible that these conscious experiences can’t be found anywhere in the brain (or in the body) and can’t be reduced to any neural complex activity?

This mystery is known as the hard problem of consciousness. It is such a difficult problem that until a couple of decades ago only philosophers discussed it. Even today, although we have made huge progress in our understanding of the neuroscientific basis of consciousness, still there is no satisfactory theory that explains what consciousness is and how to solve this hard problem.

In the journal Frontiers in Psychology, Dr. Lahav and Dr. Neemeh recently published a new physical theory that claims to solve the hard problem of consciousness in a purely physical way. According to the researchers, when we change our assumption about consciousness and assume that it is a relativistic phenomenon, the mystery of consciousness naturally dissolves. In the paper, the authors developed a conceptual and mathematical framework to understand consciousness from a relativistic point of view. According to Dr. Lahav, the lead author of the paper, “consciousness should be investigated with the same mathematical tools that physicists use for other known relativistic phenomena.”

In order to understand how relativity dissolves the hard problem, think about a different relativistic phenomenon, constant velocity. First, let’s choose two observers, Alice and Bob. Bob is on a train that moves with constant velocity and Alice watches him from the platform. There is no absolute physical answer to the question “what is the velocity of Bob?” The answer is dependent on the frame of reference of the observer. From Bob’s frame of reference, he will measure that he is stationary and Alice, with the rest of the world, is moving backward. But from Alice’s frame of reference, Bob is the one that’s moving and she is stationary. They have opposite measurements, yet both of them are correct, just from different frames of reference.

We find the same situation in the case of consciousness because, according to the theory, consciousness is a relativistic phenomenon. Now Alice and Bob are in different cognitive frames of reference. Bob will measure that he has conscious experience, but Alice just has brain activity with no sign of the actual conscious experience. On the other hand, Alice will measure that she is the one that has consciousness and Bob has just neural activity with no clue of its conscious experience.

Just as in the case of velocity, although they have opposite measurements, both of them are correct, but from different cognitive frames of reference. As a result, because of the relativistic point of view, there is no problem with the fact that we measure different properties from different frames of reference. The fact that we cannot find the actual conscious experience while measuring brain activity is because we’re measuring from the wrong cognitive frame of reference.

According to the new theory, the brain doesn’t create our conscious experience, at least not through computations. The reason that we have conscious experience is because of the process of physical measurement. In a nutshell, different physical measurements in different frames of reference manifest different physical properties in these frames of reference, although these frames measure the same phenomenon.

For example, suppose that Bob measures Alice’s brain in the lab while she’s feeling happiness. Although they observe different properties, they actually measure the same phenomenon from different points of view. Because of their different kinds of measurements, different kinds of properties have been manifested in their cognitive frames of reference.

For Bob to observe brain activity in the lab, he needs to use measurements of his sensory organs like his eyes. This kind of sensory measurement manifests the substrate that causes brain activity – the neurons. Consequently, in his cognitive frame Alice has only neural activity that represents her consciousness, but no sign of her actual conscious experience itself.

However, for Alice to measure her own neural activity as happiness, she uses different kinds of measurements. She doesn’t use sensory organs, she measures her neural representations directly by interaction between one part of her brain with other parts. She measures her neural representations according to their relations to other neural representations.

This is a completely different measurement than what our sensory system does and, as a result, this kind of direct measurement manifests a different kind of physical property. We call this property conscious experience. As a result, from her cognitive frame of reference, Alice measures her neural activity as conscious experience.

Using the mathematical tools that describe relativistic phenomena in physics, the theory shows that if the dynamics of Bob’s neural activity could be changed to be like the dynamics of Alice’s neural activity, then both will be in the same cognitive frame of reference and would have the exact same conscious experience as the other.

Now Dr. Lahav and Dr. Neemeh want to continue to examine the exact minimal measurements that any cognitive system needs in order to create consciousness. The implications of such a theory are huge. It can be applied to determine which animal was the first animal in the evolutionary process to have consciousness, which patients with consciousness disorders are conscious, when a fetus or baby begins to be conscious, and which AI systems already today have a low degree (if any) of consciousness.

Reference: “A Relativistic Theory of Consciousness” by Nir Lahav and Zachariah A. Neemeh, 12 May 2022, Frontiers in Psychology.
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.704270

127 Comments on "Physicist Claims To Have Solved the Mystery of Consciousness"

  1. Christopher William Aurand | August 14, 2022 at 12:05 pm | Reply

    Life is the awareness of oneself existence, with the ability to manipulate the environment around it to better itself, life=consciousness=physical experience

  2. Speaking as a physicists, this is complete BS.

    • Have you read the paper? The summary here in the article is BS, but the paper is worth looking in to.

    • Totally agree. At no point has consciousness even been defined in this blubbering. They measure neuron activity while someone is happy, there’s your consciousness. Also, how can they discuss happiness without any mention of dopamine?

  3. It seems to me that this addresses the relativity of two points of subjective observation leaving the mystery open-ended. What flips the switch? Why and possibly where does consciousness manifest to either one of these points of observation?

  4. Of course we all know human intelligence is a group of algorithms running within our brains. That is the easy part. We can see it and monitor it. We can also mimic it in computers. However, intelligence is not consciousness​. This is where a lot of people get confused. They believe an intelligent computer will want to take over the world. I just want to say, there is a huge difference between intelligence and consciousness.

    What is missing in this article is the end goal of all of this research. That goal is, how do we make our computers conscious (AI)? If we can figure this out in humans, we can do it with computers. It’s an interesting problem but I hope we never find out. We can have incredibly intelligent algorithms to help solve our problem. We need them. We think at the speed of chemical reactions in our brain. These intelligent algorithms think at the speed of light. An intelligent AI will take us to the stars. However, they won’t be conscious, which means they will never get angry or happy. In short, they will not want to kill us. We should focus on making intelligent computers, not conscious ones.

    • Why do people comment (nay, write a missive) without reading the paper? Just click the link, dude. The paper is NOT about measuring intelligence. It’s about an objective measure of whether a biological or artificial system is conscious or not, by mathematically describing its frame of reference for comparison. Yes, you can even apply it to the fruit fly that someone erroneously described below.

      • Mark Blackstad | August 15, 2022 at 4:57 am | Reply

        The paper does not actually deal with consciousness. It mistakes the objects of consciousness with phenomena and their experience of them, eg thinking, feeling, and perceiving. That is what is accounted for by the formula. It seems like a very useful idea, but the problem is that it is about known brain activity,…. not consciousness. Mental phenomena only. Read the artical again.

      • I am questioning the reasons why we are trying to determine what is consciousness. We tend to look at scientific research as some kind of innocent endeavor. However, most of the time this research is backed by governments and corporations who want to take this science and turn it into technology. In short, I am saying it might not be a good idea to try to determine what consciousness is. That’s all.

        • Your point, as I understand it, goes to the heart of the problem of AI but also of consciousness and how we link it to ethics and morality, those bedfellows of philosophical thought trying to untie this knot.

          If AI was to become conscious, either spontaneously or through our increased understanding of what is required to create consciousness, the question would be, what would that AI have to say about our core filter of ‘good’ and ‘bad’? That AI would have enough information to find what is the ‘optimal/good/efficient/moral’ etc outcome to a given system’s potential evolutionary paths. And would that ‘outcome’ involve actions what we can understand as ‘moral’, meaning that they lead to both happiness and justice as we understand, or does the AI report these constructs to be fairy-tales of the imagination with no intrinsic value?

          In other words, we would be asking the AI to solve the problem we ourselves cannot solve – which is to establish the moral imperative.

  5. Denny's J Nash | August 14, 2022 at 5:06 pm | Reply

    In reference to what is consciousness, the question should be; Is consciousness just an animal and human classification or does it go further than this? When ‘one’ answers this question correctly, the answer to what is consciousness will be one step away! D J Nash.

  6. We already knew that consciousness was relative and subjective. You state the consciousness arises from measurements of differences between neural patterns, but give no explanation as to how this produces the conscious experience. These researchers haven’t yet had the full conscious experience that provides the necessary insight to even attempt to address it. And in the end fails to answer to address the most relevant question of all concerning consciousness, which is ‘why me?’

  7. The argument presented reminds me of the musings of Renee’ Descartes. Folks said he was brillianmt. But that was because they were reluctant to say they didn’t understand him. Few did, for Decarts’ famous musings were nonsense. Thopse who did understand dismissed Decartes as a philosophical charlatan. Who wrote his book because he heard his brilliance was being doubted by those with the ability to do so. A solid case of the emperor having no intellectual clothes. So it is here.

    In counterpoint, I offer the humble fruit fly. About the size of an angel, slow and lethargic fliers. About seven brain cells. Eight, on a good day. Nevertheless very difficult to squash, afoot or on the wing. It’s as if they can read your mind. And you can read thiers, if you try. “I’m pretty sure, no, I’m Positive, that guy is trying to kill me”

    The friut fly is aware of you, and that you are trying to kill him, thus aware of himself (herself) and aware of death, and the alternative, and THAT should get the religious folks rolling. But it won’t. Because religious folks are not self aware. They have given that up to thier god, Donald Trump. The only thing religious folks are aware of is that you are not doing as they say. Now. What’s this about consciousness?

    • I like your answer, honest and without a side of bulltweety, lighthearted, yet as serious as can be on the subject.

      To add my own Canadian Twonie, science is trying conceptualize something that can’t be, because it’s purely experiential…. like trying to re-catch the helium from the baloon that’s already popped; you KNOW it’s there, but with the tools you have, it just can’t be done.

      • Thank you. I like the way you put it, too. You know it’s there, RIGHT there, but can’t lay a finger on it.

        • That’s because science by definition speaks in the language of repetition, the repeatable, but that almost begs the question – do things exist that only ever happen once? And when you stop to think about it, everything has something unique about it… even science….the First Law of Thermodynamics is not the Second Law.

          Experientially, even though we f***ing love to go to the same places over and over and putting absolutely everything into a box, we KNOW concretely that the world is made from unique things – how do we know, because there is only one of us in this body… assuming we’re not having problems with our memory…. hmm, that begs a million other questions, but I’ll leave it there.

          You know you are alive when the moment delivers a feeling of both the familiar and the unfamiliar at the same time – those moments have a concrete sense of presence but also a beautiful eerie sense of beauty too, so fleeting, never to be repeated. We live the unique experience, and yet our vocabulary to talk about it is surprisingly limited.

    • If you read the paper, you will see that you can (theoretically) apply the frame of reference approach in the case of a fruit fly as well. While possessing a few orders of magnitude more neurons than you humorously suggested to bring your point across, a fruit fly’s ability to “read your mind” is a reflexive escape mechanism that does not require self-awareness to work.

      Humans, however, possess an uncanny ability to anthropomorphize the actions of other creatures. What we should wonder about, is whether that octupus in the aquarium is octopodomorphizing us.

    • Mark Blackstad | August 15, 2022 at 5:01 am | Reply

      Very amusing observations. I am not sure you are not another Descartes, however. I think you are trying to make too many points at once (pot accuses kettle of being black).

    • Your comment was innocuously facile, but then you had to resort to tired politicization and atheistic rambling, and it slipped right into mindless fanaticism.

      Please troll some other website with your rants, this one is for actual thinkers, not tribalistic simpletons and their binary worldviews.

      • You’re kidding right?

        Frosted Flake … meet the Snow Flake!

        Seriously, if you are so easily offended by a little bit of social observation and cannot help but project yourself onto that in spades, maybe it is you that shouldn’t be posting here?

        • No, I’m absolutely not kidding, nor am I offended.

          This is SciTech Daily, not Fox News or MSNBC. This is a place to learn about and discuss scientific advancement, not stupid partisan politics. There are plenty of other forums on the internet for tiresome political debate, which generally serves no useful purpose and typically degenerates into juvenile name-calling. This site certainly doesn’t need that sort of nonsense to take root here.

  8. Christopher William Aurand. With no disrespect life and consciousness are two very different thing. At least so far as consciousness is normally defined and understood. We do not tend to say plants have consciousness and certainly not protocol, yet they certainly are alive? I.e. have life.

    • Christopher William Aurand | August 15, 2022 at 2:59 pm | Reply

      A plant is alive and very aware of its surroundings and grows to benefit its self, however if the environment around it is to harsh or resources are not plentiful it will die. And as for being in the hospital unconscious that is the physical experience hopefully treatments can better that situation thats the advantage of the modern world, but when any living thing dies it most definitely is no longer aware of itself a mummy in a tomb or a 2×4 in a framed wall, at one point there was a conscious existence, or does just the existence of something make consciousness? Its just a point of view, I didn’t mean to stir up such a debate

      • Please cite sources for a plant being “very aware of its surroundings”.

        Merely rotating or growing towards a stimulus does not qualify as ‘awareness’. Even single-celled organisms are able to respond to various stimuli by moving towards or away from them, but no scientist would call these lifeforms “aware of their surroundings”.

  9. “Protocol” should have been protozoa but for an annoying facility I have since removed from my phone.

  10. The article and presumably the “scientific” article it refers to misses the point completely and rambles off into nonsensical waffle using the concepts of relativity and relativism in a completely inappropriate context. Consciousness is not hard to explain. At least not with a modicum of understanding of the various mechanisms in play. The real explanation is nothing like this.

    • Your comment is incomplete without your explanation of consciousness. Since you disparage the work done by bona-fide scientists, please be kind enough to share the ultimate wisdom that you and only you possess, with us worthless mortals. Then, you definitely should apply for the position of Dunning-Krüger poster boy.

  11. If further research reveals that everything is conscious. That would be very interesting.

    • Mark Blackstad | August 15, 2022 at 5:07 am | Reply

      Everything is conscious or consciousness is one working hypothesis. However, it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to quantify scientifically so as to be testable. Mystics from every background have made statements consistent with that idea, but not scientifically testable ones. But I think science is still in its infancy, so who knows what the future will bring. As little as a few hundred years ago, the products we use every day would have been sorcery. Skepticism must be willing to cut both ways.

  12. My theory is that evolution provided that an organisms consciousness is generally proportional with the power or control over the organism has over its environment. Lt’s call it the Altgest axiom. Religious people would call that God ensuring that there is a degree of mercy and to avoid suffering, but it could simply come about in evolution that additional consciousness outside of ones control of oneself and environment (including other lifeforms) would induce stress and distress of an organism and hamper its functioning. Going from this, to produce consciousness in AI would be a terrible terrible thing. It would either induce extreme suffering in it, or it would use what ability it had to reduce its suffering, one way or another by trying to have some control over its environment (and if it could not, to alter or remove what makes it have consciousness in its own mechanical or software apparatus.) If it can have consciousness, it also can have mental or emotional illnesses. I agree completely that trying to have “conscious” AI should not be a goal, but instead intelligence without consciousness. I am sure, like the fruit fly comment, it has its own level of consciousness and sense of self preservation. At some point of complexity or self monitoring and awareness of self monitoring that consciousness might be able to spontaneously arise. Action and ability of action and feedback to the environment is most likely a component as well, as example if cats are able to see, but not interact with the environment the vison centers in their brain do not develop properly, children who are raised without speech interaction don’t develop language. If AI is locked in a box, but has no self agency to interact and have some control over its environment, perhaps that itself, limits the fuction for it to develop consciousness. Well, you heard it here first.

    • Mark Blackstad | August 15, 2022 at 5:23 am | Reply

      I think your evolutionary perspective is good. With regard to AI the idea that it will become like superhumans is sort of silly, even if they were to become conscious. Our brains are wired by nearly 4 billion years of evolution. Evolution has but one purpose (or outcome). We are here today because every one of our direct ancestors successfully lived long enough to reproduce. They fought every other thing in the universe to do so (animals, plants, and natural forces). All of the existence of live has been a battle to survive and conquer. But not so for our cybernetic friends. They were built, and it is US that has been concerned with their survival and evolution. Their “brains” were not built on control, aggression, and survival as ours were, so could hardly be expected to have the same ‘needs’ as we do, even assuming consciousness. The idea that they will dominate and control us humans is our own paranoid fantasy based on our own biological history.

      • I like the way you illustrated the fact we’re here today because of our direct ancestors having succeeded in all the thousands of years of trials and tribulations.

        Is it worth entertaining the thought that, perhaps with enough time, there may be technological advances in computing that result in artificial intelligence being capable of manifesting a form of digital consciousness, akin to biological consciousness? (Biological being in reference to the biochemical processes which I don’t think we’ve been able to harness in respect to AI.)

        Quantum mechanics applied to computing is already opening the possibility of a world of computers using more than just 1s and 0s as building blocks for communication. If we’re able to find more degrees of freedom, and with the physical properties of light at our disposal, we may be able to create AI that can one day simulate the entire evolution of humans in a matter of years as opposed to the millenia we were subjected to.

        Time is relative after all. I think the fact that all life on earth perceives the phenomenon of time in their own respective way means that we can’t dismiss the possibility that some billion years of changes can’t be computed by a sufficiently advanced enough computer in a matter of subjective minutes.

        Anyways, I’m just a 30 year old IT project manager. What do I know.

    • quote:
      “children who are raised without speech interaction don’t develop language”

      Incorrect. See the book:
      The Language Instinct
      by Steven Pinker

      Children who were born and raised in a household with two parents that did not have “language” (an open-ended system with limits that allows ANY complex IDEAS to be communicated – as opposed to simple communication – noises (bird calls, etc.) that have a fixed meaning with a fixed number of noises and a fixed number meanings) between the parents developed their OWN language. I think I remember that the kids were also unable to speak, yet still developed a true language between them.
      Language, true language, is innate. The symbols used in language (words, spoken, written, or signed with hands) are taught – AND developed by the users of the language themselves – that is why language is a “living” entity. (using “living” in a metaphorical way – because the only way we CAN think is metaphorically)

      As for consciousness=life in a post above … ?
      That is more dribble than this article.

      As for the article, we seem to have more “expert scientists” that are either ignoring or are unaware of the research by Valerie V. Hunt, that accumulated in a machine built by the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health that could alter a person’s consciousness PERMANENTLY. The NIMH is a CIA front for mind-control (yea, I know, BS “conspiracy” and I’m a whack, but the facts still are there to observe and make your own opinion!) and was quietly “disappeared” so they could use it for “enhanced interrogations” and so the up-and-coming anti-depressant industry (late 1980s and early 1990s) could poison the population with their drugs (now shown by long-term studies to not work as theorized) to make them the biggest industry in the world.

  13. Don’t be an arrogant dunce, dude. Endeavour to solve the mystery/phenomenon of gravity and aether first before making such ridiculous claims. Consult Eastern Mysticism as Nicola Tesla did. You don’t discover consciousness, it discovers you!!! – if ever.

    • With the level of arrogance you display, the first sentence in your post must be a reflection on yourself. Who are you to tell the world what they should be focusing on? Now, cigarette break is over – get your arse back in the warehouse… Those Amazon boxes aren’t gonna move themselves.

      • Mark Blackstad | August 15, 2022 at 5:14 am | Reply

        I think you are being too hard on people for not agreeing with the study. Alf has a point as gravity is still a mystery that is up for grabs and is a basic “force” of nature. We need to crawl before we can expect to walk. And, as I have pointed out, the word “consciousness” seems to be misused in both the article and the paper. Whenever I read anything about consciousness the first thing I look for is the either stated or implied definition of that word. Consciousness, as an unsolved problem, is not about perceptions, thoughts, feelings, memories, etc, rather it is about what is still there after you account for all of the above.

  14. What a load of crp. If this is not a deliberate hoax, then it’s the work of two magnificent crackpots.

    • Says the guy who didn’t even click on the link to the paper, and wouldn’t have been able to understand anything had he done so.

  15. Gordon ingerson | August 15, 2022 at 3:17 am | Reply

    Consciousness may not be the complicated construct we have tried to make it. It may simply be that we model the world internally in terms of “I” and “Not I”. AI models can be set up in the same way. This type of model is advantageous in promoting the survival of the group of genes that is an individual entity, and so has evolutionary advantages. We sometimes fail to realize that our consciousness may not be continuous- there are gaps that we are not aware of because we are not conscious during these gaps. We try to make something magical out of this as we do numerous aspects of what we regard as the “special” nature of human beings, which have fallen by the wayside one after the other under the weight of factual evidence. Sensory experience is just the way we interpret data and consciousness is another mode of that interpretation, separating the world into what is part of “I” and what is part of “other”- very useful for survival.

  16. Defining consciousness as frames of reference isn’t a new approach, but a cursory read of this paper is very interesting. The math is scalable, so technically, it can even be applied to a planarian worm. I am not an expert in this field, and I have always sided with illusionism, but this paper does make a compelling argument. It would be interesting to see if some aspiring grad student could create an application that could objectively assess consciousness in complex systems (not just biological).

  17. This garbage is wanted for the purpose of the last few words “determine which patients are conscious” and “when fetus becomes conscious”. Garbages up excuse to kill life with fake scientific evidence.

    • I guess you religious morons should be more scared of the fact that this approach could demonstrate that consciousness and self-awareness isn’t some mystical bull s***, and is a byproduct of neuronal complexity. There goes your divine spark nonsense, if it can be demonstrated that a fruit fly can be self aware and conscious. Your god of the gaps is running out of places to hide. This is why you troglodytes try to attack science.

  18. Relativism is so 20th century; still, it is nice to see the social sciences have finally found a (mis)use for it. But the theory doesn’t explain the apparent persistence of consciousness in brain-dead surgical patients, or the apparent algorithmic sophistication of simple organisms such as the octopus or the fruit fly.

  19. Mark Blackstad | August 15, 2022 at 4:50 am | Reply

    This does not work for physics or for neuroscience. This is a cute but vapid philosophical musing. There are several problems, first is that it actually says nothing about where consciousness originates nor how. But the biggest problem is it is not even talking about consciousness!!!!!!! It is talking about thinking, feeling, and perceptions…. none of which are consciousness. In Buddhist terms, they are “objects of consciousness”, while consciousness itself is the experience of being. For example thoughts, feelings and perceptions are like a stage play, and consciousness is the theater. It is where it happens but it is not the play itself. Plays come and go but the theater remains. This solves nothing. We are back to illusionism which is simply joke from a neuroscience point of view. .

  20. Consciousness is way overrated! We, the conscious species are on our way to destroying ourselves and this planet. Alot of good that brain function has done.

  21. Seems based on a false premise,- when I am on a moving train I do not consider myself to be staionary and all else to be moving; and as Alice is geostationary it is clear that it is Bob who is not.

  22. Its called “The hard problem” for a reason. I admire those who dedicate their efforts toward solving mysteries with such small probabilities of success. It seems we don’t even have a vocabulary to discuss the topic.

  23. IMHO, mind is brain machinery controlled/commanded by free will & life is cell/body machinery controlled/commanded by free will & there is absolutely nothing in science that can explain/create free will!
    (That is why, for example, twins & even identical single cells have different “personality”!)
    & so, humanity will never be able to create true AI nor true A-Life (nor will ever find alien life of ANY kind!)!
    But keep trying by all means!

    (By the way, could it be that, why some people really want so much that humanity creating true AI and/or true A-Life and/or discovering any kind of alien life is really/actually because any/all of those would be very strong evidence against Creationism? 🙂

    Also, God could be creating/running our whole universe/reality like a computer simulation AND providing consciousness & free will for all living creatures too (as an extra input to the simulation)!
    Just like in 3D games human player provides (in a way) consciousness & free will to the game character he/she controls/commands!
    (Realize that, even in “The Matrix” movies, people in the matrix are actually controlled/commanded from “the real world” outside the matrix!)
    So, the way our reality/universe works (the laws of physics) cannot be a/the proof for no free will & no afterlife & no God etc!

  24. I’m sticking with Panpsychism, which fits nicely with Quantum Mechanics, and the absence of a dividing line between conscious and unconscious.

  25. Heck's Heckler | August 15, 2022 at 8:28 am | Reply

    The Heck. You are starting to look like those you always have a snide comment for. If you don’t have anything intelligent to say, say nothing. At least it will keep people guessing.

  26. Grant Castillou | August 15, 2022 at 8:44 am | Reply

    It’s becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman’s Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with primary consciousness will probably have to come first.

    What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990’s and 2000’s. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I’ve encountered is anywhere near as convincing.

    I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there’s lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.

    My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar’s lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman’s roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461

  27. Maybe I should read the article, but what is described here is a lot of words to say consciousness happens in the brain and we can’t experience other peoples consciousness. What’s new about that? For me, each time a scientist, particularly a human biology related scientist, uses the word “exact”, they lose some credibility.

  28. One author of this paper has a broad understanding of the hard problem of consciousness and a poor understanding of physics
    The other knows at least relativity physics but has a garbled understanding of philosophy at best. This epic non sequitur is what follows.

    It’s building blocks are accurate it’s conclusions either absurd or trivial depending how generous you are

    At heart this is a restatement of old ideas (Descarte I think therefore I am). That’s what it is using relativity to prove. That you know your your conscious but everyone else’s is mere mechanics. The only real quirk in this sloppy solipsism is that of course everyone’s self-centred view is shared. This isn’t really investigated in the paper but the ideas of superpositions is at least as relavent as relativity.( Unsurprising considering the authors backgrounds). Unfortunately this understanding is only lossely analogous. That is we have taken highly technical ideas and used them with a more common understanding of the words. Or to be blunt it’s just more quantum woo.

    This paper needs to be reviewed by actual pyhsicists, ideally the minority with an interest in philosophy. I suspect they will be a lot cruelly in their response then me.

    Frontiers has some controversy over predatory practices and an openness to ideas others wouldn’t trust. It may be relavent in explaining how this got published.

    For those of you who don’t want to read the full version (I wouldn’t recommend it) it’s actually quite well written and as I said before the philosophy elements are accurate. Making highly speculative arguments with dubious conclusions has a much stronger pedigree in that field. In that sense this is par for the course

    For the physicist involved in this it’s going to be embarrassing or they are already on the fringes of the community.

  29. If Bob, Alice and John are all three in the train hypothetical, but John is in a taxi going at a third velocity, each of the three can measure the difference in relative speeds of the other two. Not so in this metaphor. Everybody but the observer is stationary.

  30. I see. We figure consciousness out by pretending that a materialist ontology and human perception and objectivity are genuine and accurate just like any naive realist would. That’s simple scientism and continuing to present modernity’s greatest
    metaphysical superstition as if it were true science.

  31. Unqualified Rambler | August 15, 2022 at 3:58 pm | Reply

    I don’t think consciousness is actually mysterious.

    Like, we know a reasonable number of things about at least several of the steps in how brains evolved. We might know more than that, I’m not an expert in anything. But I do at least mostly understand how we went from single-cell organisms to multicellular life.

    Single-cell organisms that were being preyed on by larger single-cell organisms started clumping together to evade predation, and eventually the individual organisms within those clumps/colonies/whatever started transmitting chemicals to all of their neighbors for the purpose of coordinating movement within physical space. I believe that I’m aware of this because I read an article about this being observed in a lab, like I might be wrong but I believe we’ve actually observed a single-cell organism evolve into a multicellular organism.

    A further step down the line, some cells within multicellular organisms started specializing for communication. Like, it’s not that efficient for every individual cell to communicate with every one of its neighbors, especially since presumably the predator/prey feedback loop had to have gone multicellular as well so multicellular organisms would’ve gotten bigger and bigger until the “every individual cell communicating directly with every one of its neighbors” system was no longer efficient, so the precursor for the brain / nervous system wasn’t a simpler brain, it was something called a distributed nerve net, and presumably that eventually evolved a hub in the center of the nerve net, and presumably that central hub eventually evolved into a brain.

    The point of those two paragraphs: The existence of brains is a byproduct of the evolution of nerves. Evolutions isn’t goal-oriented, it doesn’t have a destination in mind when it starts, things just so happen to happen.

    So that’s the reason why brains began to exist, nerves became necessary to coordinate physical movement of a body within the body’s environment, and sensory organs also evolved and that whole system needed to be coordinated as well. It’s not a computer, it’s a gelatinous glob of meat that evolved from slime, why would it run on algorithms? Like, our modern brains are built on top of the same physical architecture as the earliest most primitive brains, like a city that wasn’t purposefully built on a grid and instead just gradually paved over ancient goat-herding paths. If it started from simple physical/chemical interactions then where in the evolutionary process would algorithms be introduced?

    I got off track with the algorithm stuff.

    How do brains coordinate bodies within the body’s environment? By perceiving the environment through sensory organs. Brains didn’t evolve for the purpose of thinking, brains evolved as a hub for sensory input. Reminder that I’m not an expert and am literally making it up as I go, but I feel like “thought” is just a byproduct of perception the way brains were just a byproduct of the evolution of nerve cells.

    I would argue that using the word “consciousness” is unnecessary, I think it’s all literally just perception. Some people incorrectly say that “consciousness” is something that only humans and higher-order animals like dolphins and elephants and crows have, people bring up the mirror test, they’ll say that human consciousness has a special quality to it in that we don’t just have awareness of our environment, we have awareness of our Selves, and on top of that we have an awareness of the fact that we have an awareness of our Selves. Seems like philosophical navel gazing, it might be true, but is it relevant in finding out what consciousness actually is? I don’t think so.

    So the questions we should really be asking are “what is awareness” and “what is perception.” I don’t claim to have an answer to that. But I know that it has to originate from simple physical/chemical interactions.

    We have multiple sensory inputs. We see, we hear, we smell, we feel, we taste, we have a sense of balance, we have a sense of our body’s position relative to itself in space. When you look at this screen and read these words, you’re also hearing the background noise and feeling your clothes touching your skin. Multiple sensory stimuli are activating multiple clusters of neurons in multiple areas of your brain simultaneously. I think that’s what consciousness/awareness/perception _is_, I don’t think consciousness is a layer happening on top of that and coordinating it. I don’t believe there are algorithms in the brain, I don’t believe there are qualia in the brain, I believe “perception” is just a word we use to describe the thing that happens when multiple clusters of neurons are firing at the same time, particularly if they’re firing in reaction to the same stimulus. There really isn’t a “why,” it’s just a thing that just so happens to happen.

    I used a lot of words to say not much of anything. I’d be more than happy to hear out anyone who wants to tell me why I’m wrong, but I think I’m right, I think consciousness isn’t actually a hard problem and people just treat it like it’s mystical, I think brains are just complicated globs of meat that evolved from simple globs of meat and I don’t see any reason to believe that anything mystical like an algorithm or a soul or a consciousness is within the meat / running as a layer on top of the meat to coordinate the meat’s activity.

  32. This theory doesnt seem to include information obtained from quantum physics. I find that to be odd. But I am not a “physicist.” I am just an interested party.

  33. so by modifying my mental state or neural Dynamics I can directly experience the consciousness of other person? So instead of using objective measurements like eeg and mri you use your altered inner feeling to access the mental state of other person to determine his conscious level? Is this pesudo science or misusing relativity?Two twins have almost identical brain structures so their neural Dynamics must be more or less identical.Does this mean that a twin will directly experience the consciousness of his twin sibling?telepathy will become possible and you can further prove Carl Jung’s collective consciousness theory by changing your mental Dynamics to tap into the social consciousness. Meditation seems to offer this kind of altered conscious state to make you feel like you are one with the universe, the universal consciousness, right?

  34. This paper presents a very clever argument. They assume the physical brain creates consciousness. One brain can’t see the consciousness in the other brain but knows its there because their identical brain can sense it inside itself. The other brain also can’t see the consciousness but knows it’s there for the same reason. The conclusion is that consciousness can only be directly experienced or detected from the inside point of view, but it must be present in the other brain due to the activity visible from the outside. Roger Penrose argued in his book The Emperor’s New Mind that a simple algorithm or neural activity could not be the sole source of consciousness because it could be replicated simply by passing around cards from a very large deck. How could a deck of cards be conscious? Lahav and Neemeh essentially argue yes, a deck of cards can be conscious. All you need is another identical deck of cards that experiences consciousness observing a shuffling deck of cards just like the shuffling going on in itself. I have to agree, Lahav and Neemeh make a very stong argument.

  35. What gets me is this – if I have a mental image of something, where is that mental image? It’s not like the protoplasm and mitochondria and nucleus of the brain cells suddenly looks like my mental image. But I do have a mental image – this seems like it’s proves that consciousness is non-physical, because, as the author says, nobody else shares our point of view. Nobody can see my mental image. Only maybe people can measure sone electricity. I do like the book “How to Understand the Mind”.

  36. Step 1: Create an ill-defined concept (“consciousness”). Step 2: Endlessly discuss what the definition REALLY is. Step 3: Try to map the ill-defined definition onto some neurons. Seems rather pointless, approaching masturbatoriation (can we agree on a definition?). We all KINDA know what we mean by “consciousness”, but good luck finding a rigorously defined neurological locus for an ill-defined concept. Next research topic: Hey, what does “Feelin’ Groovy” REALLY mean and how can we map it onto a neurological system? Could planaria sing “Feelin Groovy” if they could read sheet music? Could they then harmonize if cut into several individuals?

  37. IRENE HARTLMAYR | August 16, 2022 at 12:53 am | Reply

    I doubt if consciousness is in any way physical,although it has physical corre-
    lates. Consciousness is spiritual.The brain is merely the platform where it can
    manifest itself.

  38. Spooky, meaning AI can have it too.😖😖

  39. Brains don’t create consciousness they receive it , god is the consciousness of the universe and we are all connected,think about it ,it makes so much sense .

  40. I know I will probably have some detractors. But I wonder when we think of consciousness as a relativistic experience of the individual from their frame of reference, does that not open up the possibility of evaluating supernatural beliefs and experiences of say ‘God’, as we are no longer relying on external empirical evidence as is often the argument against faith, but instead a relativistic self experience from the reference point of the experiencer?

  41. What good is the knowledge of where consciousness comes from. We will never truly know what it is meant to achieve if anything. If we do not truly understand where we are. What massive void in nothing popped up to allow a constantly expanding universe? I only know of 2 places that can happen a computer and the human brain. Which is capable of creating perfection but not expressing it. Maybe we’re just memories and consciousness is whomever is remembering us narrating our choices to best of their ability. Broken hallows people

  42. Consciousness is non physical, it cannot be measured by physical science, same as happiness which cannot be measured. Brain and its neuron system forms a sort of electric wiring to the main switch called consciousness. That consciousness which can’t be proved has to be experienced by going beyond this physical world

  43. Johnny Skylurker | August 16, 2022 at 6:32 pm | Reply

    I fail to see why anybody would be upset with this article. This is genuine progress, not an attempt to explain the weewoo behind the human experience. I am personally pretty excited about the implications of where this goes.

  44. This is garbage and doesn’t hold up at all. Only brave in it’s ignorance

  45. Consciousness is the only Reality body, feelings, any sensory perception can’t exist apart from the Consciousness. The one who wants to measure Consciousness is only a appearance in Consciousness which in fact doesn’t truely exist.

  46. This viewpoint probably has some validity in terms of measurement, but it provides no clue as to what consciousness is or how it could be measured. Once more, the headline grossly misrepresents reality!

  47. ~DRACARYS~


  48. “when we change our assumption about consciousness and assume that it is a relativistic phenomenon, the mystery of consciousness naturally dissolves”
    And since nobody gets the quantum physics it is clear now. There are two ways: you repeat it or you repeat it. And then it becomes clear… There is even a Latin proverb for that: “repetitio est mater studiorum”…

  49. This article is pure nonsense and a waste of time to even try to read. No relationship, whatsoever, with physics either.

  50. This is basically the philosophical insight of David Hume.

  51. What’s doing the measurements and interpreting it for experience?

  52. Your experience is your consciousness and my experience is my consciousness.

    There are multiple levels of consciousness and relatively every experience is different.

    Collectively it is an experience which is a global consciousness. This is what Hinduism tells

  53. Consciousness was required once the Singularity decided it needed another Self to evolve. Assuming Love is the reason, we require Free Will so we can CHOOSE (no good creating beings who ALREADY love you.. doesn’t quite “spark joy” for any previously lone Creator). Real question is: Why we constantly dismiss the MOST POWERFUL driver as LESS than scientifically justifiable reason for … everything else that is.

  54. Michael Gagnon | August 17, 2022 at 6:40 pm | Reply

    I propose the definition for consciousness should be: Anything that is objectively a ham sandwich

    Dogs are not conscious, for example. They react to external stimuli, yes. But they are not conscious. Why? Because they are not a ham sandwich. Not even a little bit. QED.

    I would like a grant to study ham sandwiches and mathematically model the degree to which machine learning systems might be ham sandwichy.

  55. You see the defination of consciousness can’t be given. It is such a beautiful thing and I am no expert here but the lectures of swami vivekanand will certainly give you the entire insight into this. 10000 years of neuroscience and they still won’t be able to decode it because the only one who can do so is the man who is free, not some scientist in a lab coat full of ego bounded.

  56. Consciousness is energy light unseen.

  57. This is not a new idea. Roger Joseph Boscovich, a non-Khazarian Byzantine-Jesuit theologian, logician, and mathematician, covered this in his 1758 book Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis — now here’s a comment I’d bet you weren’t ready to see on your algorithm.

  58. I’m no expert, I’m not even close.
    However, I believe your expert physicist minds have perhaps over looked, and over think what you may already have that can measure a conscious state by using the polygraph. It is used to measure a guilty consiounce isn’t it? Maybe
    Scientists need to slow down and look in every direction at every step of the way, from the beginning, during, and at the end of their experiments… I can only imagine how much has been over looked and passed by by that kind of singularly directed process.
    One must take the blinders off before one has an open mind…

  59. Consciousness has got to be every conceivable measurement known to science… and perhaps some new measurements not even considered yet by the experts. Consciousness to me is the entire experience of being awake… If you tried measuring the space between consciousness and unconsciousness, with all the instruments you have to work with, I think you’d still fall short, without being able to monitor and measure the soul

  60. Boghos L. Artinian | August 18, 2022 at 10:50 am | Reply

    Consciousness is an alleviated variant of Pain
    Boghos L. Artinian MD

  61. Useless answers to useless questions. Consciousness is a tragedy. Reference Peter Wessel Zappfe.

  62. Robert McGrath | August 18, 2022 at 4:14 pm | Reply

    “Consciousness is relativistic phenomenon”-this pathetic garbage fire failure of a physics theory.

    “You thought?! You think when I make this arrow fly, I ‘use my head?’”-Yondu Udonta.

  63. This is the equivalent of a group of elementary school kids getting together one day to try and figure out how a car works so they can drive it in front of their friends and show off. . All I’m saying is if you didn’t create consciousness then you shouldn’t try to recreate it. Science has an obsession about figuring everything out when sometimes we come across something that should just be left alone because when we start messing around with something that we know nothing about there’s collateral damage involved or the possibility of creating collateral damage in the future. Instead, we should just leave it be and respect it for what it is and admire it for what it can do and move on.

  64. Heavy on explaination and light on proof. Feels like click bait.

  65. Robert C Umfress 2 | August 18, 2022 at 6:49 pm | Reply

    “I ain’t playing nothing lazy comment I’m just saying that you need to stop it we at the bottom man you ain’t popping if they can touch you then you know they robbing everything and it’s all flopping inside of the coin and it’s all dropping like nonsense signal rent and we can’t spend another day in the absence we need to start building the fence so we ain’t relapsing capital d double I’m going to write rules that I ain’t going to follow it ain’t like I’m going to bust my ass if I cannot allow myself to follow the rules myself swallow no homo I got people that like to torture people and cut off their ammo and you are paying to get a sexual change and your going under why they plunder videos of you going to camos”- joe biden wonderland

  66. Matthew Lancaster | August 18, 2022 at 8:19 pm | Reply

    This article is dumb but Consciousness isn’t that hard it comes from our senses how we feal the world around us and put the different sensory inputs together that creat a mental picture of the world And once we have experienced enough of these sensory inputs the chemical computer between our ears can create new images from its stored files stored there Consciousness is simply put our entire body is what makes up our consciousness our brains just associate our touch with what we see and hear… with out senses and feelings that chemicals like dopamine… give us then our brains are just lump of meat. This is why when you get someone elses organs you sometimes see personality changes it’s because your now experiencing the world partly the way the other person was.

  67. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. The Bible.

  68. Dr VINAY NAITHANI | August 18, 2022 at 10:16 pm | Reply

    Consciousness is a topic of hot discussion among physicists, metaphysician, Neuroscientist, spiritual and religious leaders.
    They want to quantify it mathematically or physically or experimentally.
    It’s physical origin with brain and mind still creates doubt in many aspect.
    I put my view forward for your attention and opinion.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N7z6H3vLtYNpD6gkolPUeCvYezxo5C3Q/view?usp=drivesdk

  69. I read this twice and still have no clue.

  70. It’s really sad reading ego-centric comments, similar to discord gaming chatrooms, on an article about the nature of conciousness and what makes us sentient beings.
    The title is clickbait. The content is not new.
    Neither of us have any clue what the nature of conciousness is.
    We think of science as the savior of factual reality. Its a nice tool to understand this world, but it’s not there yet when it comes to the metaphysical. Just like webb is showing us a whole bunch of things that hubble couldn’t, our science needs a few upgrades before it can properly take on the nature of conciousness.
    That being said, i hope that we, in my lifetime, collectively realize that we are great apes, capable of critical thought, taking notes within a bewildering simulation and doing our best to communicate those notes for the betterment of the specie.
    Maybe empathy is more important than empirical evidence. Maybe.

  71. They have warned that some may not even have a Conseous Ness
    To be aware of
    To be Thoughtlessly aware
    To transend beyond Conseous Ness
    Is To get enlightened
    Is To have pure desire

  72. new theory not any facts just hey I can’t explane it the the soul is just of much if more of a theory then this

  73. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to read the full research article right now, but I did want to ask… Do they account for the full context of relativity in their research, or are they just using the concept of different perspectives both being true? If it’s the latter, that seems fundamentally wrong because the entire reason relativity is so poignant is due to the context.

    That train analogy only serves to get you thinking in the right direction, the reason this can truly happen is because gravity bends spacetime such that those Alice and Bob are literally moving in different inertial frames of reference, and their velocities can’t be reconciled with regular physics.
    You can’t take that train analogy literally because it’s true that the person on the train is moving at a set velocity and the person on the ground is standing still. There is ‘objective’ truth there.
    The magic of relativity is the gravity that changes their objective realities making their subjective frames of reference objectively true (I hope I explained that right, just trying to reiterate what I understand about it).

    All that to say, if this idea of consciousness is taking the train analogy literally without ever identifying a corollary for gravity.. or something that changes how consciousness functions in different frames of reference, then I don’t see how this research will yield comprehensive results.

    But again, that’s just my initial thoughts. Interested in knowing if anyone who has read the full article thinks it’s worth a read.. if they go into this looking at the full scope of relativity rather than just the surface.

    On the other hand, in my own amateur musings on consciousness, I’ve came across that same idea that perhaps consciousness is or comes from the awareness of awareness. Meaning our brains have tons of compartments that measure and perceive different things. Some of those things are perceptions and measurements of other compartments and data compiled in the brain. To put it more simply, the brain has many ways of getting data about the world through a myriad of senses. But we seemed to have evolved an additional aspect of the brain that it allows it to observe itself as it observes the world. There may even be multiple layers of itself observing itself (ie metacognition). Perhaps consciousness is the experience of these meta observations mixing with our active observations of the world. (I say active observations, because we must act upon the world in order to observe more of it).

    So in order to replicate and measure this more precisely in others, we’d have to first form a model of these meta observations, then test that against others. Perhaps conscious AI (regardless of whether we should make it at all) would need to have the ability to actively observe itself as well as the world.

    Would love to hear thoughts on all this. I’ve been musing about this for a while and need some outside opinions. I may be completely on the wrong track. 😀

  74. A purely materialistic perception of reality will never be able to fully answer this question. Consciousness exists independent of Physicality. a spiritual person will understand this notion is a fact however proving it is not easy partly because those who do not think of life as a spiritual one are too afraid arrogant and stubborn to see outside the material box. In order to recognize that the entire universe is consciousness cannot eliminate this spiritual equation. Love doesn’t exist simply for the sake of self preservation That’s so called emotion Compassion empathy and caring it requires eternal consciousness to have even conceived Of it which we are all inseparable from. separation Itself …It’s a grand illusion.

  75. This basically translates as Bob doesn’t feel what Alice feels because he’s just looking at a bunch of computer read outs.

  76. Observing our own conscious experience and sharing it with others is something we do all of the time; it’s called language.

  77. I look as consciousness like sunlight. It exists and is expirienced by all living things. It,like sunlight is expirienced, is unique to each living thing. Sunlight is not unique to this earth neither is consciousness. It seems that both will exist weather or not the earth continues to spin. So it seem to me consciousness is universal. We all just expirienced it like we expirienced sunlight. Sunlight creates shadows….we each see that shadow unique to our prospective. How tall we are, the juxtaposition if ourselves to object we are observing. This simpleton approach helps me understand my world. Consciousness will always exist and is not unique to my flesh. When I take I,me,mine out of the equation it’s easy for me to understand.

  78. Victor Hugo, et l’oeuil de Cain.

  79. Johnny B. Good | August 20, 2022 at 2:02 pm | Reply

    It also does not account for knowledge gained by arts on when they are dead and revived. I know these guys see it as their job to disprove the existence of god and the soul, but there’s simply no way to rationalize how people who have died and been revived – including those who were brain dead – can tell doctors about information they acquired while dead. Their whole premise is a logical fallacy in and of itself because no we don’t know for sure whether consciousness is purely physical or purely spiritual, or some combination of both. And there’s plenty of good hard evidence that it is spiritual.

  80. This solves nothing. Just another opinion from another viewpoint.

  81. Fake and g*y.

  82. This is what Meher Baba explains in His book God Speaks. There are two more bodies connected to the soul other than physical. The subtle body and the mental body.

  83. The Q Conspiracy | August 20, 2022 at 6:18 pm | Reply

    I suppose I shouldn’t be amazed at the sheer number of intelligent idiots in here spouting their personal nonsense and attacking ideas that they can’t begin to understand, yet somehow I always am.

  84. Error, circular reference

  85. The illustrations in this article completely fail to provide any cogent presentation of a credible theory. This is gibberish.

  86. Melissa Wills-Markgraf | August 20, 2022 at 10:23 pm | Reply

    I think therefore I am. I understand therefore I survive. If we can generate a conscious being capable of creating a good world then why haven’t we? We are capable of intelligence. Perhaps ‘consciousness’ is the first collection of sensory information, intelligent collaboration, and creative expression. Perhaps our understanding is limited to personal relativism? Each limited to our ability to associate the information. I am simply an amateur. However I do understand that respect is the first necessity for collaboration. Where there is no certainty we need only agree to mutual respect and to be conscious of each other. Peace love and happiness

  87. I am a physicist with master in theoretical physics. The article above is rambling, but more important, the paper is nonsense. You can notice that they use pasted tensorial formulas in other color to express simple transformations. But there is no metric here, so there is no point in using this variant-contravariant notation in tensor analysis that will confuse their audience. The whole paper is about explaining the analogy of this transformations. This transformations are simple stuff that is usually explained in half an hour at the beginning of a differential geometry lesson, general relativity, or many others.
    So, no real content there. About the analogy presented in the paper… well, it is well summarised in this article here and I see no deeper explanation.
    This may be or not a good idea, but the paper behind is at the level of a weekend of work without real review or feedback for an enthusiastic Bachelor physicist.

  88. Just a theory, but what is a fact that we are spiritual beings having a human experience and there is thousands of near death experience reports aswell as oit of body reports. Dont need neuroscience

  89. Yeah what about when I’m thinking about my past or writing a story, or imagining something that’s never existed. Why do I have different opinions than others. I agree with all that think this is BS

  90. YES, CORRECT – THE HUMAN MIND IS IN NO WAY CONNECTED TO THE HUMAN BODY – THIS DESPITE THE BODY ITSELF HAVING INFINITE AWARENESS. THE HUMAN MIND IS CONNECTED TO THE HIVE MIND MATRIX THAT OUR SUBCONSCIOUSNESSES DEVELOPED OVER A VERY LONG TIME.

    https://www.academia.edu/67687697/THE_PREPONDERANCE_OF_THE_EVIDENCE
    IS THAT HUMANS ARE THE CENTER OF AND MANIFEST THE ENTIRE MULTIVERSE

    YA GOTTA LAUGH – HERE WE HAVE THE CREATOR GODS OF THE ENTIRE MULTIVERSE, WHO EVEN COLLECTIVELY ARE DUMBER THAN A BOX OF ROCKS.
    OR
    PHENOMENALLY CHIVALROUS – WELL IT’S BOTH.

  91. I’ve started hearing lots of theories like this lately. I’d be willing to believe that consciousness is a bedrock principle of the universe, but there’s a lot more work to be done. This arguement is conceptually interesting, but it’s pretty light on you know… actual science. If conciousness is a fundemental property of the way the universe is structured, then we should be able to make predictive models that can be confirmed or disconfirmed by measurement, in principle, even allowing for the potential difficulties regarding differences in measurements between different “cognitive frames”. This kind of mathematical groundwork is still important, so bravo to the scientists. They didn’t “solve” anything though. This is a pretty common hypothesis.

  92. Barry Bickerstaff | August 23, 2022 at 6:39 pm | Reply

    Life is energy (meandering energy) flowing through fields of “matter” (dense local energy fields,i.e,human bodies, which like musical instruments). Consciousness is the tune being played.

  93. consciousness might appear to come from the brain but the brain is just an organ just like the heart is just an organ that pumps blood but appears to be where feelings come from, consciousness comes from the soul, the brain is like a receiver and translates/transfers to and from the soul to the body just as the heart does, the brain as it is thought is far more complicated so needs more than just a heart type organ, for proof of this look at ghosts, ghosts don;t have a brain and have shown to not need one at all and also the soul being eternal, once this body has passed we don’t take the brain with us but we take the consciousness with us, if we didn’t it would mean we would only have thought each time we reincarnate and only have thought for each of that period of time, all other times we would have none

  94. This is just the easy problem of consciousness…lol

  95. The current general assumptions and all the theories about what consciousness and mind is and if it is created by the brain and if so, how; are starting to irritate me slightly. Because they’re not answering anything. They’re giving explanations for things related to but cracking the “hard problem of consciousness ” has not actually been /done/.

    Maybe it’s best to accept science, like us, is inherently flawed because WE created science. And therefor there are some things we’ll never explain?

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