What is consciousness?

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new ideas to the subject:

1. Consciousness in the brain is found in the "ARAS", or Ascending Reticular Activating System. It is a set of brain areas in the ancient part of our brain (forebrain and midbrain) that regulate the sleep/wake cycle.

Consciousness is the control of attention.

You are attention. All else is just your brain doing its thing, sending thoughts and stimuli to your attention.

It is you, who choses what to listen to and what to pay attention to.
Everything else a zombie could do.


Here are some pieces to the puzzle of consciousness:

4 necessary conditions for consciousness:
  • Store info
  • Process info
  • Independence (choice)
  • Integrated (unified)
5+1 properties: (from integrated information theory)
  1. it exists
  2. subjective, present, intrinsic
  3. has a structure (Integrated?)
  4. Specific
  5. Unified
  6. Axiom of exclusion (definite). It has borders, it is limited.


my opinion about consciousness one year ago:

Consciousness is just an illusion that heightens our sense of self-importance.
Consciousness is so deeply rooted in our minds, it seems impossible to even define it.
Consciousness seems to be the platform upon which all cognitive phenomena play out.

Consciousness is so important, it feels like it is everything.
All that this is, is evolutions most elaborate measure to trick you into feeling important and unique.

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