Consciousness; a radically new theory. Diaphonous? (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, July 12, 2015, 19:42 (3421 days ago) @ romansh


> Romansh: But there is an ephemeral quality to our consciousness. It goes to sleep every night and if we examine our consciousness in waking moments we find our conscious is not actually seamless as David claims.-I would like you to explain that 'not seamless' comment. I meant it is the context that my consciousness is always present while I am awake and I don't notice any disconnect as if it turns on an off and surprises me. I view sleep as a reduced awareness, not that my consciousness has turned itself off.
> 
> Romansh: David no doubt would then argue it is our material brain chemistry that is not seamless. Thus reducing David's position to an unfalsifiable speculation. Ultimately to try find evidence for David's position we would have to show that our brains don't comport with the first law of thermodynamics.-The First Law states that energy cannot be destroyed. It just changes form. You are implying that consciousness contains energy, I think, and that is exactly the mystery presented by consciousness. Thoughts are not any form of energy that we can measure, but the brain uses close to 1/3 of our calories per day to produce them and control our muscular movements, etc.. So the brain uses energy to produce consciousness which does not contain energy. No philosophic approach has solved it yet. NDE's open a window into the problem. fMRI's do show deeper functions in flat-line coma patients. It is believed by neuroscientists that consciousness resides in the neo-cortex, the outer layer of the brain that is read as non-functional by the flat line EEG. One could conclude that consciousness to survive an NDE hides in those deeper layers, but one still has to come back to the recognition that conscious thought dos not carry energy, in and of itself. For me it is hard to avoid dualism.