Identity and Consciousness
IDENTITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS
Basics
My Question for Edge: Who am I? What am I? Since we are constantly changing, are we just patterns? What if someone copies that pattern? Am I the original and/or the copy? Ray Kurzweil responds to Edge publisher/editor John Brockman's request to pose "hard-edge" questions that "render visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefine who and what we are."
Reflections on Stephen Wolfram's 'A New Kind of Science' By Ray Kurzweil In his remarkable new book, Stephen Wolfram asserts that cellular automata operations underlie much of the real world. He even asserts that the entire Universe itself is a big cellular-automaton computer. But Ray Kurzweil challenges the ability of these ideas to fully explain the complexities of life, intelligence, and physical phenomena.
A Dialogue on Reincarnation By Ray Kurzweil If you were offered physical immortality as a "Wallerstein brain" (a human brain maintained in a jar interfacing to a virtual reality through its sensory and motor neurons), would you accept it? The question came up in an email dialogue about reincarnation between Ray Kurzweil and Steve Rabinowitz, a practicing attorney in New York City (which he says may explain his need to believe in reincarnation).
Some concepts of consciousness (Ned Block, NYU, 2002)
John Eccles on Mind and Brain (By David Pratt) - see J.Eccles in the wiki - Neuroscience and the Soul: The Dualism of John Carew Eccles (J. Allan Hobson) - 5. The Eccles-Beck Approach.
Sir John Eccles suggested in 1990, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (Eccles 1990), that quantum theory plays a key role in the workings of the conscious brain. - Works by John C. Eccles (Philpapers) -
Consciousness (John R. Searle, 1999)
Three facets of consciousness (David Woodruff Smith University of California, Irvine, 2001)
The Consciousness Conundrum How can we hope to create consciousness if we don't know anything about it? (By John Horgan, IEE Spectrum)
Defining Consciousness (Chris Nunn)
Is consciousness definable? (Robert Lawrence Khun)
Research seminar on consciousness (New York University, 2000)
Seminar on Consciousness and Intentionality (University of California, Santa Cruz, 2002)
The Essence of Conscious Conflict: Subjective Effects of Sustaining Incompatible Intentions (Oct, 2009) - Consciousness resolves competing muscle demands, study finds
Conciencia y Sistemas conscientes (Fernando Galindo)
The feeling of what happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness (Antonio Damasio, 1999) - La Conciencia según Antonio Damasio (comment by Trung Doan)
NIPS International Workshop for Scientific Study of Consciousness (Abstracts - Sept, 2009)
Human consciousness (Storm's nest)
Evolution of consciousness (in Philpapers)
The human-brain's ability to produce conscious awareness is also trainable (Schwiedrzik, Max Planck Institute)
Who Will Edit Your Life? (Marcelo Rinesi, nov 2009) - Soon we’ll be able to remember every second of our lives. But how will we make sense of it? As we increasingly remember things not only with our brains but also with our machines, the specific boundaries of individual memory, and hence of personal identity, might come to be redefined.
Free will
Free will is not an illusion after all (New Scientist Life, Sept. 23, 2009) A new experiment challenges a 1983 experiment that found that volunteers' movements were preceded by a "readiness potential," suggesting that unconscious neural processes determine our actions before we are ever aware of making a decision.
Possible site of free will found in brain (New Scientist Life, May, 2009)
Free will – is our understanding wrong? (New Scientist Life, August, 2007)
Cognitive liberty
Cognitive liberty is not just about the right to modify one’s mind, emotional balance and psychological framework (for example, through anti-depressants, cognitive enhancers, psychotropic substances, etc.), it’s also very much about the right to not have one’s mind altered against their will. In this sense, cognitive liberty is very closely tied to freedom of speech. A strong argument can be made that we have an equal right to freedom of thought and the sustained integrity of our subjective experiences (George Dvorsky says)
Cognitive Liberty and the Right to one's mind (George Dvorsky)
Neuroplasticity and Coordinated Cognition: the Means of Self-Mastery? (Casey Rae-Hunter)
Neurodiversity vs. Cognitive Liberty - Neurodiversity vs. Cognitive Liberty, Round II (Casey Rae-Hunter)
Vegetative state, learning and consciousness
Individuals In Vegetative States Can Learn, Scientists Find (ScienceDaily, Sept. 21, 2009) Some individuals in vegetative and minimally conscious states can learn and thereby demonstrate at least partial consciousness, scientists in Argentina and the UK report. By using classical Pavlonian conditioning, the researchers played a tone immediately prior to blowing air into a patient's eye. After some time training, the patients would start to blink when the tone played but before the air puff to the eye. This type of learning was not seen in the control group of subjects, who had been under anaesthesia. The researchers suggest that this could be a useful, simple tool to test for consciousness, and the fact that these patients can learn associations shows that they can form memories and may benefit from rehabilitation.
Signature of consciousness captured in brain scans (Anil Ananthaswamy, Novr 2009, NewScientist)
Out-of-body experience: a peculiar state of consciuosness
Out of your head: Leaving the body behind (Anil Ananthaswamy, 13 October 2009)
Dictionaries' definitions of Consciousness
Conciencia y Consciencia en el RAE
El RAE incluye dos términos: Consciencia y Conciencia. El punto de parttida, en mi opinión, deben ser la acepción 3 de Consciencia y la 1 de Conciencia, aunquer otras ayudan al planteamiento.
consciencia.
(Del lat. conscientĭa).
1. f. conciencia.
2. f. Conocimiento inmediato que el sujeto tiene de sí mismo, de sus actos y reflexiones.
3. f. Capacidad de los seres humanos de verse y reconocerse a sí mismos y de juzgar sobre esa visión y reconocimiento.
conciencia.
(Del lat. conscientĭa, y este calco del gr. συνείδησις).
1. f. Propiedad del espíritu humano de reconocerse en sus atributos esenciales y en todas las modificaciones que en sí mismo experimenta.
2. f. Conocimiento interior del bien y del mal.
3. f. Conocimiento reflexivo de las cosas.
4. f. Actividad mental a la que solo puede tener acceso el propio sujeto.
5. f. Psicol. Acto psíquico por el que un sujeto se percibe a sí mismo en el mundo.
~ errónea. - 1. f. Rel. La que con ignorancia juzga lo verdadero por falso, o lo falso por verdadero, teniendo lo bueno por malo o lo malo por bueno.
a ~. - 1. loc. adv. Con empeño y rigor, sin regatear esfuerzo.
acusar la ~ a alguien. - 1. loc. verb. Remorderle alguna mala acción.
ajustarse alguien con su ~. - 1. loc. verb. Seguir en el modo de obrar lo que le dicta su propia conciencia. Se dice más comúnmente cuando es sobre aquello en que hay duda de si se puede ejecutar o no lícitamente.
ancho de ~. - 1. loc. adj. Dicho de una persona: Que a sabiendas obra o aconseja contra el rigor de la ley o la moral.
argüir la ~ a alguien. - 1. loc. verb. acusar la conciencia.
cobrar ~ de algo. - 1. loc. verb. Darse cuenta, percatarse de ello.
en ~. - 1. loc. adv. Según conciencia, de conformidad con ella.
escarabajear, o escarbar, la ~. - 1. locs. verbs. Remorder la conciencia a alguien.
estrecho de ~. - 1. loc. adj. Dicho de una persona: Que es muy ajustada al rigor de la ley o la moral.
formar ~. - 1. loc. verb. ant. escrupulizar.
manchar la ~. - 1. loc. verb. manchar el alma.
tomar ~. - 1. loc. verb. cobrar conciencia.
□ V.
cargo de conciencia - caso de conciencia - examen de conciencia - fuero de la conciencia - gusano de la conciencia - libertad de conciencia - matrimonio de conciencia - objeción de conciencia - objetor de conciencia - tribunal de la conciencia - voz de la conciencia
Consciousness in Answers.com
con·scious·ness (kŏn'shəs-nĭs)
n.
The state or condition of being conscious.
A sense of one's personal or collective identity, including the attitudes, beliefs, and sensitivities held by or considered characteristic of an individual or group: Love of freedom runs deep in the national consciousness.
Special awareness or sensitivity: class consciousness; race consciousness.
Alertness to or concern for a particular issue or situation: a movement aimed at raising the general public's consciousness of social injustice.
In psychoanalysis, the conscious.
Answers.com offers more on consciousness
Consciousness in the wiki - Conciencia in the wiki