Consciousness survives the deterioration and death of the brain. No doubt about it.
The question is how.
Is the transition experienced by consciousness or does it occur outside conscious experience?
How does it happen?
I still haven't been able to articulate it, but thought experiments localized at various stages of personal existence as well as of the existence of life on earth, various larger cosmic and existential points of view and a bunch of other evidences and anecdotes suggests survival.
Not one person has stepped up and offered an explanation as to how consciousness is continuous despite periods of lack of consciousness.
SUMMARY: If consciousness is an emergent brain phenomenon, then as soon as all the complexity that goes into produces it is thrown out of whack and no longer produces it, that particular iteration of consciousness ends. As soon as the brain reorganizes itself into a state that generates consciousness, a new iteration should emerge as an emergent property.
The fact that the new iteration feels continuous with the previous iteration is well beyond any physical explanation.
Just think about it for a second.
Is it just obvious to me? Am I missing something?
It seems to be an insurmountable problem of the brain equals mind hypothesis, but people have dismissed this argument with a single sentence, one that they are satisfied with, but which hardly answers anything.
Sort of like how some peeps dismiss The Great Silence or the Fermi Paradox with a single sentence as if they have grasped its implications, but are really completely missing the point when they say something like "Why would aliens want to come to this technological stone age place?"
It completely misses the probabalistic nature of the paradox.
Same here. The continuity of consciousness from iteration to iteration, between bouts of non-consciousness, cannot be easily explained physically as far as I know.
It is the flaw that causes Neo to see the matrix.
I hate to ask it since I don't have the right or the credentials, but it would be really cool if someone meditated on this for 15+ min before spinning off a one sentence reply.
Just try to get where I am on this for a few contemplative moments.
Edited by Brafarality, 16 October 2010 - 11:08 AM.