Thread: What do you believe is consciousness? How did it begin and how does it work?

I think in the future, with humanity's advanced technology, we'll be able to take the information in consciousness and upload it to a device in which we can live, giving us immortality. I got this idea from Through the Wormhole which goes over things of slim possibility or even impossible nonsense.

But it is an interesting idea. What do you think about consciousness?

The nature of consciousness is not yet fully understood, in fact the field is in its infancy, and spans the disciplines of neurobiology, psychology and philosophy. Despite the ability to map and model neuronal networks in silico, it seems that consciousness is not entirely programmable but rather is an emergent biological property. I therefore struggle to see how it would be possible to upload consciousness to a device, although it would be a stunning feat.

I suspect that the function of consciousness is delayed decision making. A simple life form receives a stimulus and responds in a fixed way pretty much instantly. That mechanism has no flexibility of action.

An intelligent animal can receive sensory input, process it, and make a decision as to action, based on learning, other sensory inputs, and the main input, and include future needs. The final action response may be sophisticated and clever, and very effective in achieving longer term goals.

Consciousness is part of the mental processing of all this to gain a delayed and smarter response. In other words, a conscious being can think about thinking.

consciousness is awareness of awareness

awareness is knowing 'what' you are doing.

computers only know 'how' to do things but dont know 'what' they are doing.

to know 'what' you are doing you need logic programming.

eventually computers will know 'what' they are doing.