Consciousness is one of the last remaining puzzles of life
that I have not comprehensively studied, experimented, analyzed, and
understood. I have investigated and solved the underlying
mysteries of reality, the origin of our
existence, and the evolution of creation based on
Information Materialization.
From more than 2 decades of extensive experimenting, researching,
theorizing, and discovering new knowledge, I have uncovered Life's beauty, lessons, and its secrets. However, with all these inspiring results, one final captivating
mystery
of Life is still on the drawing board:
The Riddle of Consciousness.
Mother nature revealed to me that everything
we sense is an illusion. Life is an Illusion. Reality is an illusion.
They are constructs fabricated by the brain. The things we know and
perceive only exist because our brain has someway tricked us to believe
that information is being processed in the brain. Like in computer, the brain
is an empty hard-drive. It only stores information when information is provided. However, if these stored
information are not processed, it becomes a useless machine.Furthermore, without its external peripherals, it will not function either. Thus, the brain is an important tool in processing information.
However, based
on the Black Train Experiment, the brain is not the only organ that stores information (see SKIN). When the brain
temporarily shuts down, a non-physical substance - an abstract form
that emanates not from the brain but behind and above, floating and
connected - takes over the brain. The Philosophy of the
Mind called this form as Consciousness. Here, I named this phantom mind, the
Oculus.
Even with all the state of the art technologies, various laboratory techniques, and intensive scientific studies humans have these days, no mind experts can still pin point the exact location of consciousness in the brain. Some neuroscientists suggest that consciousness might emanates entirely from the brain and not in a specific area or portion of the brain. Others suggest that consciousness is not even a product of the brain, the premise that I also claim based on the train and bathroom experiments.If consciousness doesn’t originate from the brain, then where else could it possibly originate?
If consciousness is something abstract(non-physical), how can it interact with something physical (scriptional jump)? Is there really a nonphysical that is conscious present in the brain? Is Consciousness cerebral, physical, mechanical, causal or all of the above?
Surprisingly, there are simple experiments in Physics and more from Information Materialization that might answer some of these questions. The results
that mental activities don't give rise to consciousness are based on the following scientific and mathematical models: (1) The Codexation Dilemma. (2) The Hello Inversion (3) The Mirror Equation (4) The Inverse Square Law (5) The Software Illusion (6) The Human Mental Handicaps (7) The Guesswork Predicament, (8) The Scriptional Jump, (9) The Illusion of Reality, and (10) The Self-Conscious Robot.
In addition, Consciousness can also be understood better by illustrating it with a simple equation: If x is conscious with y then x is conscious. If x is alone then x is not conscious. This means that If I(x) am conscious with my dog(y) then I(x) am conscious. If I(x) am alone by myself(x), without people and without everything, then I(x) could not be conscious (
see the caveman in box theory).
From the equations we can deduced that consciousness is made up of two basic elements: you and your environment. To be conscious one should be aware of one's surroundings.Once outside awareness is established, self-awareness comes next. If plants are aware of their surroundings, but they are not aware of themselves, are plants conscious beings? If all animals pay attention of their environment, yet some of them are not aware of themselves (The Mirror test), are these other animals conscious? Where do we draw the line now to determine if one is conscious or not?
The feeling of pain is believed to be one of the indicators that shows consciousness is present. Is this true? One day, when I was grooming my dog Zero, I accidentally cut his skin with a scissor. Zero yelped after a second, stared into my eyes, and attentively enjoyed the grooming back again as if nothing happened. His delayed reaction showed that since he doesn't have any idea what pain is and has the cut experience for the first time, the feeling of pain was unnoticed. But what caused the yelping sound? Instinct? A nerve trigger mechanism? Skin sensors? Or something else?
The capability to associate an abstract idea to a physical object is also crucial in the resolution of robotic consciousness. In his work on I.M., Lawsin coined the expression "
the Human Mental Handicap" in an effort to define consciousness in its simplified form. He claimed that "No Humans can think of something without associating such something with a physical object". This simplicity of comparative association is the basic indicator that determines if one is conscious or not. If plants can hear, smell, feel and remember their surroundings, then they have the ability to associate what they sense with another objects. If they can feel warm, then they know what hot is. If they can hear music, then they can differentiate regular from irregular waves, from breeze to noise. If they can do this ability of one to one correspondence, matching one thing with another thing, then plants are conscious beings. However, my experiments show they can't. On the other hand, my dogs use objects like bowls, balls, and bones and pair them with words like food, play, and walk respectively. Their ability to associate mental images with physical objects just shows that dogs are conscious beings.(The Bowlingual Experiment, Lawsin 1988)
Other misconstrued indicators of consciousness are
recognizing, feeling, knowing, remembering, mimicking, and decision making. All of the above are believed to be the products of the brain generated through the process of collecting, (encoding?), storing and retrieving of information from ones environment. However, the idea that mental activity depends on brain activity - when brain activity stops, all conscious experiences also stop - is flawed. Due to this misinterpretation, I.M. is redefining the idea based on the Scriptional Jump Theory.
In the study of I.M., I discovered that there is a crucial gap between abstracts and physicals. This gap seems to prevent the connection between abstracts and physicals. However, on the contrary, the gap was nothing but a perceive illusion. In philosophy, the hard problem of consciousness - the connection between mental activity (abstracts) and brain activity (physicals) - is actually not really hard at all.
The True Hard Problem of Consciousness is - How does the brain store information?
To answer the hard question, let us first examine how does some particular brain operations process the sensations of taste, smell, sight and feeling. How does the tongue detect the difference between the taste of sweetness or bitterness. Can the brain be tricked by switching sweetness with bitterness? Why is the skin the largest organ of the body? Why do we have hairs? How do babies learn to move in the womb? Where did they get the idea of movement? Do babies have the ability to acquire information inside the womb? Why do plants move? If a robot is inside a womb, will it learn to move too?
Remember that before our brains evolved, the inherent world was already in existence.
Mother Nature came first, we humans came next. Without the outside world, the inside world of our brains will still be empty to this day. But because Nature is the source of early information, our body manages to discover these pieces of information through our biological sensors.
In the caveman in the box experiment, we concluded from the second box results that Nature was the Mother of Early Information. She was the one who provided all the pieces of information for the very first human to enjoy. Through her living environment, man acquired such information from his surrounding. He saw how birds fly, how lions get their foods, how deer drink water and how every creature in his environment behaves, creates sounds, and looks different from one another. Eventually, he copied these behaviors and began to put them into use (emulation-simulation process). Afterwards, these pieces of information were used to create new ideas, the very first invention of humans. He then discovered the art of judging and choosing, the concept of right and wrong, inventing and creating new things, and converting abstract ideas to physical realities. Copying Man became Thinking Man. Thinking man became conscious being.
Additional information why consciousness doesn't root from the brain:
(1) Information can only be acquired in two ways: by choice or by chance, by copying or by discovering. Early humans acquired information by copying or mimicking what they see and hear, sometimes by discovering new things due to unfortunate accidents, unexpected experiences, unknown events or natural interventions.
(2) Physical and material are two different things. Since all objects have mass, then Mass is material. At rest, it has gravity, potential force, temperature, volume, pressure, density, electrostatics, and even velocity. All these parameters are known as Non-Materials because they are the products of something material. Even though we don't see them, they exist. Both Materials and Non-materials are defined as Physicals. In contrast, Ideas are Abstracts. Ideas are non-physicals. Non-physicals are abstract impressions fabricated by our senses. They are deceptive illusions. They don't exist. Like Consciousness, ideas don't emanate from the brain too!
(3) The Zizo Effect, what zips in must zips out. This catch phrase is similar to other notions like what comes in must come out, garbage in garbage out, and gold begets gold. It is a natural law that prevents the interaction - the gap - between physicals and non-physicals, abstracts from physicals, ideas from realities, something from nothing. Mental activities don't zip out from brain activities.
Furthermore, the hardware-software system, also known as
The Software Illusion, is another good example that contradicts the brain-mental configuration idea. It reveals why consciousness doesn't exist.
In a computer system, two basic entities exist; the hardware and the software. However, in reality, there is no such thing as a software. Just like consciousness, it is an illusion. It doesn't even exist. The various colors, moving objects, words, and every picture we see on our computer screen are but simulations. They are merely the products of binary switches and picture elements(pixels/leds). All these pixels, which form the picture on the monitor, will not even make sense on our eyes when aligned in a straight line. The pixels will simply be a string of lighted bulbs or leds.
As well as when we press the letter K on the keyboard, we are simply lighting up the leds that form the letter K on the monitor. The simulation of typing a program is merely a series of switching on and off leds.
The switching of LEDs is what we called the software (the result of input-decode-encode-output configuration. This electronic concept is important in the design of your robot). Even the binary language, the hexa-scripts, and the virtual programs may seem to be physical, but electronically they are actually non-physical. The non-physicalness is an illusion that doesn't even exist. Like consciousness, the software doesn't even emanates from the computer system. It is all hardware.
It is only the computer(hardware) that exists and not the "it"(software).
NOTICE: Articles on this site are composed on random
thoughts. The transcript may not be in its final form. It maybe
edited, updated or even revised in the future based on the outcomes of my experiments.
Public Domain Notice: Copyright (c) 2000. All rights reserved. This article is part of a book entitled Biotronics: The Silver Species.
Copies are welcome to be shared or distributed publicly as long proper
citations are observed. Please cite as follows: Biotronics: The Conscious Robots, Joey Lawsin, 1988, USA.
"Every creature is a living instruction that runs the algorithm of Nature." ~ Joey Lawsin
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