Jalenack | Home

Who ever said it was an argument? What I’m wondering is what exactly are you asking. The main idea of what you are saying is that we are conscious beings, and that we can think—and you’re wondering how we got to be this way…am I correct? I think we should find out and win a Nobel prize for this, all before getting out of high school, lol.

I think the first thing we have to figure out is whether or not we are just a super-duper complex type of machine. You make the point that jellyfish have a stimulus->response existence, and not much more than that. Well…didn’t we come from the same line as jellyfish, at least somewhat. If you completely break it down, we too are completely stimulus->response…just a lot more complex. If this is true and we were able to go into one’s DNA and discover everything about them, it would be possible to know that if x happened, this person would react with y-just like we expect computers too. Uh-oh…this is starting to scare me now (actually not really but kinda) Maybe we are supercomputers-its just that living in this world presents such a widespread amount of inputs its impossible to know what is going to happen. About the AI bit…scientist have actually developed computer programs that have learned to evolve. You should read Prey by Michael Crichton (not quite sure how to spell his name). It’s about these scientists who developed this swarm of cameras with collective intelligence to use for military purposes, only the get loose and start evolving and becoming smarter and start trying to attack them. (or something like that) Anyways GOOD TOPIC!!! I can’t wait to see what other people say about it.

Tell me dear jackass, how do you reason that is what actually happens in your brain? Because some other people spent their life studying what they believe happens in the brain, them some other person printed that up in some snotty textbook, then you read that textbook, liked the idea, and magically that idea suddenly became your own. Have you spent your life studying how The brain reacts to stimulus? At least I think that all our thoughts, actions, and other Brain stuff is controlled by little people up in my brain, it might not be logical but it won’t really ever make a difference. Get your own goddamn opinion. All I know is that when I’m hungry, I’m hungry, when I’m sleepy, I’m sleepy. Simple as that.

How about sunflowers, they move along with the sun and yet are not living thinking beings.

Plants are a whole new ballgame. They have quite a different structure and process from what I understand. But they also operate on a action/reaction basis.

Sunflowers don’t think about moving to face the sun. They don’t do it because they feel like it. They do it to survive. When their essential parts are pointed towards the sun, they receive more light and therefore grow more. But I see what you’re getting at. What “brain” is actually is directing the plant to change its position? It doesn’t have muscles, it doesn’t have a central nervous system. But this kind of “consciousness” occurs in every sort of living being.

Haha made you blink. Two for flinching! *Punches you in the arm*

No doubt some idiot little kid has got you on this one. But I didn’t want to blink. I didn’t consciously decide to blink. There was no thought involved, I just did it. Why did I blink? Survival. I wanted to protect my eyes from danger by shielding them with my eyelids. We all want to survive, spread our seed, etc. It’s built-in. So there is another “brain” apart from our own that controls “instinct” and “unconscious decisions.” And that one is present in all beings. We are just lucky to have another one, so to speak, that takes us to another level (consciousness).

Now I don’t care too much about the science too much on this subject. SuperDave got the point across beautifully. We can dissect and dissect our own brains and our own thought processes all we want, but it won’t get us anywhere. I don’t think by studying the actual, physical brain will we understand ourselves. We need to discover it from the inside.

Ah yes, phototropism. Unfortunatly, this has nothing to do with my topic, numnuts. Thank you to andrew for setting that sucker straight so that I don’t have to. Sean, I dunno WHAT you’re talking about, something about me stealing this idea, maybe? Anyway, if it’s at all important, try to make it a little more clear next time.

Andrew brings up a good point, and it leads me to another reason why I think we are more than complex supercomputers. Of course we are born with the reflex to sheild the vulnerable parts of our body, such as the eyes, face, groin, with our less important and more durable appendages, like eyelids and arms. We evolved this way because creatures with these reflexes survived and creatures without them didn’t. But isn’t it possible to override these reflexes? How would anyone be able to put contacts in if this were these programed suvival instincts were unchangable? If you aren’t thinking about it and you accidentally put your hand on a hot frying pan, your muscles will immediatly, involuntarily spasm, and your arm will retract. But if you put your concious mind to it, you can keep your hand there pretty easily. This life force can override this natural instinct to avoid pain. How could that be programmed into our brains? And what about extreme daredevils? They’re putting their lives at risk every day because they’ve become so addicted to the adreniline rush, it no longer matters what there instinct tells them to do. They do whatever gives them the biggest thrill.

I say there is some outside force that is intelligent life. What is it? Where is it coming from?

SO THIS FORCE DIDN’T COME FROM EVOLUTION DID IT???????????????

Ah, but this force certainly came into being because of evolution. And the explaination for that is that the force itself evolved. Some alternate universe doesn’t have to be the answer. It could have come from evolution and still be something that cannot yet be explained by our laws of physics.

You love the laws of physics too much We don’t even know what the “force” itself is, so how can you say that it “certainly” came into being by ways of evolution? You cannot say that “the force itself evolved” because you don’t know what the force is. The smallest of bacteria is just as alive as I am (may not live as long…but its alive) It may have come from evolution, but right now you cannot definitively say it did.

Yes Ian you put to much influence on the laws of physics, although they are riddled with paradoxs and conundrums, we shouldn’t be able to walk with our current understanding of physics, just plop down on ground

|)U|)3 \/\/|-|0 (/-\R35?

A note to mr(s). |)00/\/\/\/\/-\|,
I have no problem with your name containing / or ) or whatever, your name can be whatever you like. Though I do have objections to your comments being written in the same fashion. For those of us who are not familiar with reading garbled text, it is quite inconvenient. If you could please leave your comments in plain English it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

Okay, here’s my question for those of you who don’t want to read an essay: What is this force that is our consciousness, as it doesn’t seem to hold true to our laws of the universe.

Well, it appears that the only comment that had a point this round was Sam’s, which is kinda disappointing, since his had nothing to do with my topic. Jackie, I agree, this force didn’t have to come about through evolution, but it most certainly could have. Sciguy, I’d like to point out that you didn’t actually say…anything at all in your comment.

As for you, Doomman, or whatever, you may have no interest in the inner workings of your mind and the origins of life, I could care less. However I do care, and if you are happy being blissfully ignorant, fine, but unless you have something to say, don’t add to the clutter on this site.

Anyone else ready to gag Ian, tie him up, and throw him in a closet until he is ready to consider other peoples’ points of view?

Consider others points of view? Let him out?

Okay, no one’s commented for a while, so I gotta keep this topic going.

About the whole ability to endure pain thing, when you think about it, a species would have to have some tolerance for pain in order to survive. If there was a creature who avoided pain at absolutely all costs instinctively, then any competition for food would cause it to die immediately. It might have to fight for a dead carcass, but of course it wouldn’t, it would instinctively run away, and eventually die of hunger. But then there are the species that have too high a tolerance for pain, and so they don’t mind being ripped to pieces by another animal. The just sorta go on like nothing had happened. And eventually when it’s missing a leg and an eye and an ear, it won’t be able to get food for itself, and it too will die off.

So the most effective species are the ones that have just the right balance of instinct to avoid pain and tolerance for pain. They have to know how much it’s worth getting hurt in order to survive.

Let’s say there are two tribes, tribe A and tribe B. In between the two tribes is a herd of buffalo. Tribe A has control of the herd, but now tribe B needs buffalo for food. They speak different languages, so there’s no chance of an agreement of compromise. So what does tribe B have to do? Either sit at home, avoiding confrontation, and starve to death, or go to war. They have to be willing to go to war. But they also should not go to war unless it is an absolute necessity. If they went around attacking every tribe they met for no reason, they would eventually die off. I guess in poker terms, you could say they got to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.

These kind of actions are, I think, part of what is programmed into you. That’s how a species can pass this trait down heretically. Where the consciousness comes into play is when your willpower can come into tolerance for pain. People with really strong will can make themselves do anything, even if it’s going against what is programmed into them for survival. Why would they be able to do this?

I think consciencous might just be a very advanced form of action reaction stimulus.

If you were raised as a child and never heard anyone say anything and had no conception of language, then would you still posses the same form of “consciencous”? Would you have the same level of reasoning in your head? You couldn’t talk to yourself in your mind and reason through situations the same way as we all do now. You would understand that you shouldn’t touch hot glowing objects, and you probably wouldn’t touch any after learning not to through trail and error. This would be due to our memories, so what if along with language you also removed memory. You would basically be reduced to a level of reacting off our most basic responses. You wouldn’t remember to not tourch hot objects, but when you did your basic response would be to pull your hand off. So maybe consciencous is just our ability to remember things and analyze them using our concept of language and therefore react to our surroundings differently depended on how we’ve learned to see the world. This also allows us to raise questions like the ones here.

I don’t see how language could be the thing that lets us learn from our mistakes… plenty of animals that don’t communicate in the way we do can learn. However, the idea that somehow language is related to this conciousness is an intriguing one. I mean, they were devoloped at about the same times, right? Good observation…

I think I implied that memory is why we learn.

I think the conscience works by feeding images from our memory into maybe our optical cortex and feeding in thought from whereever language is controlled from. This combination of images and language in our mind forms our conscience. I haven’t really thought of this yet but our thoughts don’t jump rapidly and are determined by stimuluses. FOr intance reading about this topic has caused me to think linearlly about how the mind works and my thought process hasn’t bounce around onto other random things. random memories may jump into a train of thought but it’s mostly not random. Maybe only random in a persons head that has some kind of condition. Maybe this is why certain people with mental handicaps seem to be incomprehensive when you talk to them, becuase they don’t have a fully developed conscience.

i believe that our brain is no more advanced than any other animal. Just because we simply want to believe we are something better, something special, doesn’t mean it’s true, although hundreds of religions have been created promising a better after life for all humans. Even though we have the benefit of language, we just use it in a different manner than those of our animal counterparts. Take for example, horses- They can communicate anything they need to through body language and a few vocal noises. They make concious decisions whether or not to trust something, and learn through different experience what not to trust. A abused horse soon becomes fearful of people and makes the decision to stay away from them, while a well loved horse will follow a person around all day. Intelligence to me is no more than a evolved control center, which works so simply that it manages to baffle people. It goes in three simple steps: 1.Take in information 2.Evaluate Information 3.React to Information. This is the same pattern exhibited in all living beings, from the jellyfish to the worm to the wolf to the human.

you guys, though interesting, smoke entierly too much weed

i have a problem… speeches are coming up and i want to do it on a sea creature. any ideas?

Note for Super Dave = Super ASSHOLE
Rude assholes like you are what makes this world even more depressing!
I am not happy but I dont make it my calling to make everyone else miserable!

P.S. Good blog otherwise

first at all: I am not a native english speaker, so sorry for the inconveniences.
I will put my point not with many answers, but with a few questions.
Why, really, need you to relate anything with physical/material/raw phenomens/objects? some times i think about the CDs, are all the musical/mental emotions really in the plastics of the CD?
Lets think about shadows or projections, they are like manifestations of a superior-order object (more dimensions) in a less dimensions surface (not ever, i know) through the intermezzo of the light. The rules that govern the superior object arent necessary the same that rules the shadows. The shadows can become a new whole object, with no more conections (only causal connections) with the first object (that generated them). Like the projections we have the intersections of objects with surfaces. The intercections can appear new objects, but are connected forever with the superior-order object, they are like manifestations of some properties of that objects at an inferior plane.
We can also have projections and intercections of a less dimensions object in a superior order universe/plane! I dont care what is the real universe, but i wander if the mind can be a new universe, with new laws and dimensions, if the society can be a new universe, if the chessboard! can be a new universe, and the conciousness are not jailed in any one of then, i ask, where did really the conciousness came from?? what are her/its supreme laws? So i suspect/try a solution: We arent childs of the material, raw, physical universe controled by the supreme laws of Light, but a manyfold being connect to too many universes by the intermezzo of light. And more, that i said is because i dont want to speculate about another thing more than light to obey, but really, we have no nees to think thats todays conceptions of the world are the supreme manifestation of reality.
Finally: Yes, i am a little platonic, but much more i have no need to be jailed by coherence or reason, they have a limited utility in the superior planes of thought.
thanks, i would be happy to have any response.
Cya