-------- quote from qwedsa--------
a computer can interact with the environment
a computer can create maps of it
a computer can etc.
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using a computer as an analogy for the mind is the result of living in 'the age of computers'... what computers are capable of is derived directly from someone's mind and not by the computer itself, which is non-creative.
------ quote from yougene--------
The knowledge of Quantum particles/waves and Strings informs us of the world from which our consciousness arises.
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quantum theory is an attractive analogy for the processes of the un-conscious, from which normal consciousness arises (emergent from). conscious phenomena is stuck with the rules of the material world, whereas the unconscious exists outside of the rules of space-time logic, much as sub-atomic quantum theory implies.
this explains why dreams exist as they do, as the phenomena experienced defies all rules of space and time i.e. our brains do not take account of normal logic as ANYTHING is possible, like meeting people that have been long dead in a place that we have never atually visited - this is utterly illogical and at odds with computing.
within the realm of the unconscious, categories and distinctions between things become blurred, and this represents the 'trunk' of the tree of consciousness, where all the branches (or logical/categorical distinctions of knowledge) converge.
I have an internal 'map' dedicated to the knowledge of Napoleon and of the Carribean, however I have met or visited neither. Within a dream I may meet Napoleon on a beach in the Carribean (??
) becuase the distinctions between the categories have become blurred.
It is therefore plausible that two forms of logic exist, much as the two modes the laws of physics exist (quantum and normal). One form of logic maintains the logical distinctions between things whereas the other form does not obey normal logic and allows information to converge, so two seperate memories can become unified, illogically.
In quantum physics it has been shown that one sub-atomic particle can exist in two places at once... this tears up the traditional book of laws, as this is clearly an impossibility in the material world, but not in the sub-atomic one. This analogy represents the difference in logical rules. In the unconscious, two seperate things can combine to be one thing, and the laws of space and time are irrelevant. this coincides with a notion of the 'coincidence of contradictories'
This is all derived from the work of Professor Ignacio Matte-Blanco, a Chilean psycho-analyst, who proposed a bi-logic theory of the mind, whereby normal waking consciousness obeys a-symmetrical logic (normal space-time, normal categorising of knowledge), and the unconscious uses more symmetrical logic (where boundaries of things fall away, and space and time become less defined). Consciousness is finite and to a specific point, unconsciousness is infinite.
We still use unsconscious drive when awake when we are being creative, for example. Creativity takes sepreate ideas and combines them to form something new. The combination of ideas is a blurring of the strictly sepeate categorical information.
An example includes the inventor of the car, whoever that was. He took the idea of an engine, of wheels, glass, metal, axis, chasis etc etc and combined them to form something new. The categories of these things became blurred.
But this still doesn't answer how consciousness can be explained. Maybe nature and physics exist in order to comprehend itself in the form of consciousness...
The existence of an unconscious explains the parts of the brain that are NOT us in the conscious being sense.
this title question is a little like 'What is the meaning of life?' and the answer is clearly 42.
An excellent but admittedly difficult essay on the nature of bi-logic, to me it helps explain a lot of things, from love to sub-atomic behaviour
