What is the origin of consciousness?

Question

What is your perspective on the origin of consciousness? Do you beleive that science can make reasonable considerations on what the origin of consciousness is?

Consciousness, as in the awareness of self.

Thanks everyone for such great answers. :)

Answer 1

i think, therefore i am.

the religious, scientific, and philosophical considerations boggle the mind, and i see you've managed to approach each one in its respective arena. it's interesting to read over the various viewpoints your question(s) have brought forth...

from an analytical viewpoint, i think you wish to know when that exact moment occurs when consciousness is first raised. at birth or in the womb, with the first inputs from our senses? one could argue that until the fetus/baby is able to mentally process what the senses feed him, he is not truly 'conscious'. or is the mere sensing of light and sound enough? being self aware, and being able to impact one's environment (even if it's only a tiny kick) to me indicates consciousness but i may have a different view of when life begins than someone else.

science may have its definitions and guidelines as to the origin you seek, but i think it ultimately comes down to just how much latitude you're willing to give 'consciousness' as an individual. being able to influence and perceive one's environment to me is a sufficient definition of being conscious... a gift given within those first precious months of life.

Answer 2

it's a question cosmogenists could bang heads together over for years...but you also would need to clearly define conscioiusness...

are animals conscious? are insects? are any living things other than humans conscious?

i truly find it hard to believe we would be the only ones...but that's just speculation and my thought, given how enormous the universe is, and thus, how unlikely it is that there is only a single planet able to support life and its evolution into more complex beings, such as walk the earth today...

but as to the origin of consciousness, i have no idea how it would be possible to specify the origin...we have a good idea how the universe started, but until we figure out how life came into being (how organic compounds combined in such a way as to allow bacteria to move, consume, and reproduce, and later evolve, and what formed all the great number of different species that have ever lived on this earth), this question is just beyond the scope of modern science...

Answer 3

Consciousness has it's origin in each individual. At some point during the nine months before a child is born his or her brain develops to the point of consciousness, although we have no memory of when this happens it is clear that once birth takes place a baby gains full consciousness. Consciousness is controlled somewhere in the brain, I base this on the various factors that can cause one to lose consciousness and then re-gain it. A hard blow to the head, certain illnesses can cause someone to loss consciousness, hypnotism, medications etc. all of which target the brain, the control center of consciousness. Therefore as the brain develops, at some point the part of the brain that controls consciousness develops and at some point brings the developing fetus to a state of consciousness.

Answer 4

What is this "consciousness" of which you speak? Before science can address a question, you need to pose it in a well-defined way. Suppose that I present to you an alien from the planet Zonga. How do you determine if the alien is conscious? What observable behaviors constitute it?

Answer 5

Present thinking is that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain's ability to create a predictive model of the world (including oneself). Such modeling evolved due to its selective advantage in a changing environment. An "emergent property" is one for which a given level of description (in this case neurochemistry) fails to adequately describe the phenomena due to it reaching a critical level of complexity that defies present human abilities (even though it is so reducible *in principle*). In such cases, a higher order phenomenological description must be developed (in this case psychology).

Such emergent properties are common in science, and result in the different branches of sciences, each with their own way to describe things. It's important to remember though, that sciences are human inventions which reflect human limits. It's presumed to all be reducible to physics, but only in principle.

This view is *itself* a model of the world called "reductionism". It is highly predictive and, therefore, selectively advantageous in a changing environment. Such self-reference is implicit in any discussion of conciousness. Self-reference, however, is a logical mine field, so be careful where you step!