Whether your answer is yes, no, or undetermined, please ellaborate to the best of your understanding. This is an ongoing project. Please do not answer just for kicks or points.
2006-08-05 05:43:03 · 16 answers · asked by Archetypal 3 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Medicine
I didn't anticipate such success in obtaining so many answers so quickly. Unfortunately, most people are missing that the question is not about the obvious but the subtle. It does NOT mean "where does our being alert and conscious happen?" It means "Where does our sense of self-awareness, our "I" and "self" reside?
2006-08-05 06:15:10 · update #1
Thanks very much to those who are grasping without additional explanation the nuances involved...
2006-08-05 06:17:39 · update #2
this is an EXCELLENT question.
I wish could give a good answer but i really cant.
The simple facts i can enter are that your spirit may or may not be inheriently attached to your brain or body, no one can be sure. Perhaps the spirit resides in the body but is really a part of something greater, or not attached. No one can be sure.
2006-08-05 05:51:13 · answer #1 · answered by Subtle_Romantic 2 · 1⤊ 2⤋
It's a popular interpretation at least. Sorry I don't have a much better answer, but check out these books:
1) The Feeling of What Happens, by Antonio Damasio. Probably the BEST book written on human consciousness in the last 10 years.
2) Consciousness Explained, by Daniel C. Dennett. Also good, but I'd read after I had read the first one.
3) The Mind's I, by Marvin Minsky. A classic that is referenced constantly by others. Minsky originated the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of a large and well-connected collection of neurons. He has some interesting insights into the nature of schizophrenia and multiple consciousnesses residing in a single brain.
Good luck with your research.
2006-08-05 05:49:38 · answer #2 · answered by Don M 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Since consciousness involves ideas, I find it hard to believe that ideas can exist in the form of neural matter as such. For example, the number 3 could never exist as a form of flesh, since it is an idea. Three stones on the table reminds you of the number 3, but it is not the number 3. It is only a representation of the number 3.
It is far more likely in my opinion that our consciousness exists out of this space/time continuum, and that the brain acts more like a TV than anything else, and that nerve impulses start as a result of virtual particles that zip in and out of existence from another dimension, just as the physicists mention in their new 11 dimensional models of space. In other words, consciousness is to the brain as software is to computers, information, and not hardware. The brain would be the hardware, but the information that really is your spirit would not be the brain, but rather, just a tool that it uses. Roger Penrose has written quite a bit about this.
2006-08-05 17:35:46 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Consciousness is not in the brain, but in each of the billions of living cells in the body. It is also not synonymous with life, or the mind or the soul. It is the part of the universal essence by which one can identify himself with the whole. The life, the mind, and the soul are the media by which the consciousness expresses it self at times. The consciousness is the Truth within and without. Human consciousness is the ego which thinks that it is separated from the universal consciousness and there starts the ignorance. Self realisation is the journey from individual consciousness towards the universal consciousness by which the apparent separateness is removed and both merge in the process.
2006-08-05 05:58:52 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Have you seen the Lifetime movie "Who's Julia?" It presents a good argument that consciousness does reside in the brain. It was about a brain transplant operation (if such a thing were theoretically possible) and how everybody was trying to figure out (including the patient) who the person in the live body really was.
I suggest you watch that movie.
2006-08-06 13:05:04 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes. When the brain is under anesthesia, you loose consciousness.
Experiments with patients who had their connection between the left and the right hemisphere cut, show that those persons develop dual consciousness. So a normal person with only one consciousness would presumably have consciousness not in one specific part of the brain, but as a sort of collaboration between at least one center in the left hemisphere and one in the right.
Another difficulty is that it has not been possible to localize a single brain center which is always active during consciousness.
2006-08-05 06:03:08 · answer #6 · answered by helene_thygesen 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The human consciousness resides within your spiritual body. The brain is a tool for you to use, a gift from God. If you are aware of who you really are then you must know this body is only a temporary residence ( a temple for the soul) for the real you, a spiritual being made in the image of the one and only God.
2006-08-05 06:39:16 · answer #7 · answered by traveler 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Too many inquiries to respond to in any systematic way. Your unique question approximately regardless of if the soul is residing interior the ideas provides a dualist image of the international. For there to be a soul there might might desire to be some place the place the soul and the physique linked and inspired one yet another. Rene Descartes theory that grew to become into the pituitary gland. at present few philosophers preserve the dualist theory as, by using definition, the spirit international and the actual international have not any thank you to effect one yet another. If there's a soul, it does not stay interior the physique. the newborn's tale "The Golden Compass" takes that interpretation actually as assumes that there are souls exterior to our bodies interior the varieties of small animals that we talk with. whilst a eye-catching tale it quite is not greater supported by using any data than any religious interpretation is. at present maximum philosophers are materialists, it quite is they reject the belief of a separate spirit international. in case you insisted that there grew to become right into a spirit international the place there are issues like souls, they might ask you to grant some data for that perception. Being referred to as a "perception" is the kiss of death for reality. in case you run in the time of a dualist reality seeker at some college, he or she is probable appearing an act to make certain if scholars can see by using his play with worlds. One form of coaching. people who can see, instruct themselves. people who can not see does not study something besides.
2016-12-11 07:18:45 · answer #8 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes. The brain the control center for the body. Consciousness is "in" the body, so yes, it does reside in the brain. Where else would you think?
2006-08-05 05:49:05 · answer #9 · answered by cihlar_00 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Intro to Philosophy...eh?
I suggest reading Decartes Mediation...
http://instrweb.constantinformation.com//files/PHIL1301/readings/med_2.htm
or Hume's Inquiry...
http://instrweb.constantinformation.com//files/PHIL1301/readings/sec_12.htm
These guys have already WAY overthought this issue and there is no reason for you to have to...unless you really wanted to.
2006-08-05 05:57:24 · answer #10 · answered by smutz 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋