http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...-consciousness
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I haven't been able to find anything else on this but from what the article says, I like the number phi that he comes up with being large as a necessary condition for consciousness but I want to see something more to persuade me that it's a sufficient condition.
I think this theory has a really good start. I think this theory shows enough information to believe that consciousness is deeply linked to phi. But I think this theory is really overlooking something right infront of their eyes.
It's like the depression argument. Does a depressed individual cause an imbalance in the brain? Or does an imbalance in the brain cause an individual to be depressed?
the article proposes that the linking of information gives rise to states of consciousness. That seems to make logical sense when we start talking about deep sleep versus waking. the more connected the areas of the brain, the more conscious right? which is why we can't remember deep sleep right?
But there's a problem with saying that connecting the information is what gives rise to states of consciousness.
It ignores the reality that individuals who perform deep meditation can consciously remember a deep state of mind that is actually deeper than deep sleep. It ignores the reality that people who do successfully WILD consciously remember entering a dream, when entering dreaming 'should' be anunconscious-unrememberable activity. It ignores the reality that scores of individuals remember lucid and vivid dreams in times of low brain activity where dreaming isn't supposed to take place (such as surgery). And it ignores the simple reality that at any given time, any given moment, should you want to, you can increase your awareness of your own awareness entirely at will.
It would seem to me that once you reach a level of consciousness (which I would call human), you can consciously and freely choose to be more conscious. You can consciously choose to become more aware, thereby connecting more information in your brain (at will)
In such, that your heightened state of consciousness is not the result of more information being connected. But vice versa.
That more information being connected is the result of consciousness.
Actually, this reminds me of Elisabet Sahtouris writings.
http://www.ratical.org/LifeWeb/
Elisabet proposes an interesting theory for the origin of life on earth. In short, the earth itself was already alive/conscious, and organic life was just the next natural evolution after mineral life.
If you ask Elisabet how did the earth come alive, you follow a journey of various celestial life forms all the way back to the big bang. That a conscious life form comes from another conscious life form, following a living celestial legacy tracing all the way back to the beginning of the universe.
If you look at this theory of consciousness, consciousness doesn't begin in the brain either.
It too has a continuous history of consciousness tracing back to the first organic life form. That the living conscious cells in your body belonged to your mother, and have a legacy tracing back to the first living organic thing.
But the great mystery behind our consciousness, and other animals, is that our individual consciousness, is 'separate', but upheld by the tireless cooperative work of millions of other life forms. Millions of other life forms, that form this cooperative ecosystem, we just happen to call our body.
The ancient idea that the earth is conscious, Gaia, is not so strange when you take a closer look at your own body. How giant and massive it is to a tiny living cell. How it too has forests, deserts, canyons, lakes, rivers, and even electrical storms.
Was it necessary for this cooperative ecosystem to 'produce' 'our' consciousness to survive? The article does ask a good question. It's not necessary, according to darwinian evolution, for our consciousness to exist. There are many other examples of cooperative ecosystems (organisms) that do just fine without a brain..................Like grass.
But the darwinian theory of evolution isn't the only theory of evolution out there.
Elisabet sees a biological purpose and meaning behind our evolution. The story of millions of individual cells (our body) cooperating for a single purpose (our consciousness) is a story we need to understand for our survival.
Because evolution has a pattern. And it's not, in Sahtouris understanding merely survival of the fittest. Oh no...quite the opposite. According to Sahtouris when you take microscopic life forms into account, cooperative ecosystems vastly out number our predator and prey ecosystems.
And once upon a time those single cells didn't cooperate. Once upon a time they were at war, eating and consuming and destroying one another. They 'learned' according to Elisabet, a conscious activity, to cooperate. To live as a community. These cooperative and amazing communties became the complex organisms we know and love today.
But before those single celled organisms learned to live as cooperative communties.......they nearly destroyed themselves. Extinction loomed over them.
Guess which part of the evolutionary pattern we are in?
Wow you are smart! he he he I mean that sincerely.
I agree and understand what you're saying. I would like to add that consciousness is greater than any container built to contain it. Which is to say that we aren't really human & all that is contains something that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Through quantum physics it shows that sub-atomic particles aren't made of energy but are energy & that energy makes decisions (consciousness). From this one could gleam that energy is an aspect of consciousness if not consciousness itself.