When did “consciousness” enter the Universe?

[durangodawood]

....Some here say that it popped into existence at some moment of life's evolution. I believe it started at the moment of the Big Bang and that it's part of the unseen universe that will pop up in life forms.....

But its not really a thing, as I see it. Its an action performed by things with the capacity to perform it. The capacity to "do consciousness" came on the scene when beings with a nervous system and some unitary sense of self arrived, imo.

I still dont feel youve given an example of an event of pre-life consciousness. That would help just to get my head around your concept of it.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

Why? It evades an explanation by just making consciousness fundamental, makes no testable predictions, has no supporting evidence, raises more questions than it supposedly answers, and ignores all the evidence that correlates consciousness with brain activity and richness of consciousness with sophistication of the brain.

You prefer consciousness popping into existence at some arbitrary point of development? An emergent property of matter? That also evades explanation and makes no testable predictions, has no supporting evidence, raises more questions than it supposedly answers. I think of it as a continuum of consciousness. So even subatomic particles are a manifestation of minimal consciousness sharing in the unity of being.

 

[durangodawood]

You prefer consciousness popping into existence at some arbitrary point of development?....

Did running "pop into existence" at some arbitrary point?

Or did running start happening once there were beings who could run?

 

[Bradskii]

Talking to yourself again, Bradskii?

I'm pretty certain that she's real. If she was actually a figment of my imagination, how come she just told me she wanted the bedroom repainted?

 

[dlamberth]

I have no objections to people believing such ideas, my critique is of this 'explanation' proposed as a scientific hypothesis.

Same here. I totally agree with you.
In the same way though, I have issues with those who insist only scientific explanations for things that we experience as Human Beings.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

Did running "pop into existence" at some arbitrary point?

Or did running start happening once there were beings who could run?

Consciousness seems more than a mere activity. It is identity, part of our image and likeness to God.

 

[Bradskii]

Do I exist...Yes. The question that has to be asked though is: What is the "I".

It's your memories. If you had my memories you'd be me. It really is that simple.

And memories are just a form of feed back loop. I believe that some creatures live entirely in the present. With no memory of what has occured and no forethough as to what will occur. So I'm not sure that they are self-conscious. But the evolutionary process gave us a means to store information. So we remember what just happened - to us as an individual. And we could project a short time in the future to consider what will happen to us - as an individual.

And that is an ability we can see graduated throughout life in all it's manifestations. If something has a memory then it can be trained to a certain extent. So an ant isn't going to remember what happened a second or to ago. Maybe a goldfish can. A rat certainly can. And an ape can likely remember what happened a few weeks ago. And we can remember incidents from decades ago.

So from that we can make a fairly educated assumption that it's an evolved characteristic. And we can examine the brains of ants, godfish, rats and apes to see what each has that enables this increased ability and how it evolved.

 

[Tanj]

It might be a good idea to define it up front. I've got an idea that people will have different definitions. The standard definition might be 'self awareness'. But then we have the problem of determining what creatures have it so we can work out when it likely emerged.

Actually we have a pretty good test of self awareness. Plonk the animal in front of a mirror.

 

[dlamberth]

But its not really a thing, as I see it. Its an action performed by things with the capacity to perform it. The capacity to "do consciousness" came on the scene when beings with a nervous system and some unitary sense of self arrived, imo.

I totally understand that it's not an easy thing to understand. I was the same for most of my life. It took a whole different paradigm of what consciousness is that opened me up to this idea. Meditation and Contemplation played a pretty big part of it.

I still dont feel youve given an example of an event of pre-life consciousness. That would help just to get my head around your concept of it.

I start out with the image that absolutely everything that exists in the Universe (both the seen and unseen) got it's start with the Big Bang as the seed and it all evolved from that point forward. Events of pre-life consciousness would be for example the pull that electrons have to form H2O. The physics would explain the electoral properties of that pull in their way. The mystics would on top of the Physics explanation also see the consciousness aspect within that pull.

I don't know if that helps or not. But more than anything my goal in this thread is to open discussion on consciousness because it's so much a part of the evolutionary process.

 

[Bradskii]

Actually we have a pretty good test of self awareness. Plonk the animal in front of a mirror.

Absolutely fascinating, isn't it...

If you want to lose a couple of hours then search 'animals and mirrors' in Youtube.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

The standard definition might be 'self awareness'.

Why "self awareness"? What about environmental awareness alone?

 

[Ponderous Curmudgeon]

Why "self awareness"? What about environmental awareness alone?

expound please.

 

[Tanj]

Why "self awareness"? What about environmental awareness alone?

That's actually alot harder.

Bacteria have environmental awareness, don't think anyone would argue it has anything to do with consciousness or intelligence.

Less clear with this guy
Portia fimbriata - Fringed Jumping Spider.

...because that's Australia for you. Our spiders eat other spiders.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

expound please.

One of my favorites was
https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Brain-Understanding-Meditation-Consciousness/dp/0262511096

He talks about egocentric and allocentric consciousness. I will have to check those terms tomorrow. One is self awareness the other is outer non self awareness. There are times when we are self forgetful, totally absorbed in an outer event. But still very conscious.

 

[dlamberth]

It's your memories. If you had my memories you'd be me. It really is that simple.

And memories are just a form of feed back loop. I believe that some creatures live entirely in the present. With no memory of what has occured and no forethough as to what will occur. So I'm not sure that they are self-conscious.

Self-consciousness is a Human evolved capability. But an animal being aware of things around them, or aware of the predictor slinking near by, or what to eat, or that itch on the back flank are all born of consciousnesses. Maybe not self-consciousness, but consciousness still

And that is an ability we can see graduated throughout life in all it's manifestations. If something has a memory then it can be trained to a certain extent. So an ant isn't going to remember what happened a second or to ago. Maybe a goldfish can. A rat certainly can. And an ape can likely remember what happened a few weeks ago. And we can remember incidents from decades ago.

So from that we can make a fairly educated assumption that it's an evolved characteristic. And we can examine the brains of ants, godfish, rats and apes to see what each has that enables this increased ability and how it evolved.

The "I" is way more than memories. It's also your spirit, your soul, the kinds of things your aware of, your intelligence, the things that make you smile or cry or dance, the aweness experienced when seeing a rainbow or a mountain meadow full of spring flowers, the Love a mother has for her new born child, the musician, the singer, the artiest, feeling the sacredness of sacred spaces, the smell of a flower and a lot more all go into cooking up the "I".

 

[coffee4u]

Thought I'd try this out to see where it went.
I have some questions that I’m wondering how you all might answer.

The basic question I'm asking is "When did “consciousness” enter the Universe?"

Was it at the moment of the Big Bang?
Did consciousness exist before the Big Bang?
Did consciousness evolve into existence in parallel with the first creatures here on Earth?
Does the Universe itself have a consciousness that exist because the Universe exists?
What does science say about when consciousness entered the Universe?
The religious? What would you say?
The spiritual minded folks? Same question.
Any other ideas?

God was always there.

All animals with a soul have consciousness, it is part of nephesh. This began with certain sea creatures on day five of creation.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

Maybe not self-consciousness, but consciousness still

It is easy to get consciousness arrogance: if something is not conscious like me, like my consciousness, then it is not consciousness. We are only just beginning to understand consciousness and all that many forms it can take. We can hardly even define it.

 

[Bradskii]

Why "self awareness"? What about environmental awareness alone?

I think that's reasonable. But I'd suggest it's a stage to self awareness. One can react to be environment and hence 'be aware' of it in some sense. But when you realise that you are within the environment yet separate from it then I think we'd be self aware.

 

[dlamberth]

God was always there.

All animals with a soul have consciousness, it is part of nephesh. This began with certain sea creatures on day five of creation.

Didn't the Christian God have consciousness pre-Creation?

 

[Bradskii]

The "I" is way more than memories. It's also your spirit, your soul, the kinds of things your aware of, your intelligence, the things that make you smile or cry or dance, the aweness experienced when seeing a rainbow or a mountain meadow full of spring flowers, the Love a mother has for her new born child, the musician, the singer, the artiest, feeling the sacredness of sacred spaces, the smell of a flower and a lot more all go into cooking up the "I".

That's a bit too much peace and love and crystals and dream catchers for me.

There are reasons why some things smell bad and some good. There are reasons why a meadow full of flowers is more appealing that stunted trees on a dry plain. There's a reason why mothers love their children and we all like puppies, raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.

And knowing why we love things doesn't detract from the fact that we do. Here's my avatar explaining that: