Interdependant or Independant?

[Borommakot]

Does one conscisness' memories/thoughts affect my own? Are all counsciousness connected in a "web" or are we completely independant of one another, except from or physical actions?

[Kevin Solway]

Does one conscisness' memories/thoughts affect my own?

You tell me.

[Borommakot]

I don't know, thats why I asked. I think that Origin makes a big difference in the answer of this question. If all consciousness originated from one place/entity/whatever you want to call it,then there is a good chance that there is some connection. I believe that there is a connection, much like the "philotes" from the Ender series (by Orson Scott Card), but I would like to hear everybody else has to say. It is much easier to form a theory when you hear the opinions of a relatively intelligent community.

[Kevin Solway]

Does one conscisness' memories/thoughts affect my own?

If someone decides to burn down your house, would that affect your thoughts?

There is your answer.

[Borommakot]

The Impotency of Consciousness

When I was a young man, I had a simple but important insight into the workings of consciousness. I recognized that every thought and decision enters consciousness from some "place" outside of consciousness. In each moment of time, we do not actually create or choose the thought we will have in the next moment. It is not as if our consciousness burrows down into the neural pathways of the brain like a scurrying clerk and consciously selects what it will think next. It is too busy occupying itself with the thought that is already in consciousness to worry about what happens next. Instead, our thoughts and decisions just "pop" into the mind via a process that occurs completely beyond our awareness.

If truth be told, none of us have the faintest understanding of how a thought or decision is formulated in our minds. We have no consciousness or control over the thousands of millions of chemical processes which lead to its formation. All we ever experience is the end result. And yet here we are, proudly believing that we are exercising our free will!

If free will is to have any chance of being a reality, then at the very least our "willing" has to constitute a conscious act of some kind. If something is not a conscious act, then by definition it is just a blind happening - no different from the wind blowing through the trees or the waves crashing into the rocks. Since a blind happening is totally incompatible with the notion of "willing", it is clear that consciousness has to underpin any process that we care to call "free will".

But what exactly is consciousness? In essence, it is the act of perceiving one object, or a collection of objects, at a time. In each moment, consciousness is wholly absorbed in its field of awareness, during which it is unaware of everything else in the Universe. I might glance at a tree, for example, and, in the very moment that I do so, I am unconscious of everything else in the world, with the possible exception of the tree's immediate surroundings. In the next moment, I might focus upon a car, or another person's speech, or an inner train of thought - and each time, my mind automatically blocks out the entire Universe apart from these things. For all practical purposes, the rest of the Universe might as well not exist at all.

Consciousness is oblivious to everything except what it perceives in each moment. This is the fundamental truth of its being. It is even blind to what it will perceive next. Thus, by its very nature, consciousness cannot bring anything into existence.

You might feel that you are causing the next thought to arise, but what is really happening? Some muscular tension, a sense of continuity between one thought and the next, an urge to bring forth a new thought, an impulse to act, etc - in other words, happenings within consciousness. But consciousness itself is entirely passive in the matter.

This is not to say that consciousness is unimportant to human behaviour. On the contrary, consciousness is integral to our behaviour as biological organisms. It is the means by which we correlate and unify data from our senses. It enables us to respond quickly to complex situations. It provides us with the capacity to fuse our various perceptions, conceptions and reasonings into a manageable and self-consistent whole. Without consciousness, our species probably would have died out long ago.

But one thing consciousness cannot do is originate thoughts and decisions as though it were somehow an isolated, self-sustaining entity existing above the world of causation. In reality, our thoughts and decisions arise out of a multiplicity of factors - neurological, chemical, hormonal, psychological, environmental, etc - which consciousness also plays a part. But there is no beginning to any of it - anywhere.

Based on what was said about thoughts, and that we cant control what we think next, what does? If we dont know that than we cant know how one thought that someone has could affect my own.

[Katy]

the Ender series (by Orson Scott Card)

I was kinda wondering if that was where your name came from...

Though I've forgotten what the philotes concept was. Been too long since I read that. But I don't think our brains are actually interconnected. Otherwise we could read eachothers' minds, and experiments with psychics have always failed.

[Dan Rowden]

Does one conscisness' memories/thoughts affect my own? Are all counsciousness connected in a "web" or are we completely independant of one another, except from or physical actions?

Why would you think your physical actions are independent of your consciousness? And, they since they obviously are not, Kevin's point looms like a big Zen stick.

Whack!

[Borommakot]

I was kinda wondering if that was where your name came from...

Yes, I first heard my name from a branch off series of the main ender seires.

Though I've forgotten what the philotes concept was. Been too long since I read that. But I don't think our brains are actually interconnected. Otherwise we could read eachothers' minds, and experiments with psychics have always failed.

I didn't say that our brains are connected, I only wondered if one consciousness' undesplayed indepentant thoughts are correlated to another counsciousness' same. If they came from the same source that would be very possible.

Why would you think your physical actions are independent of your consciousness?

We aren't talking about physical actions at all. Actually they are completely irrelevent to my question. I am asking wether or not UNDISPLAYED thoughts(as in thoughts without physical action or indication at the time) are affected by an other person's UNDISPLAYED thoughts. My question is EXCLUDING physical actions.

[Dan Rowden]

There's no way to know if any other person has such thoughts, so I'm not sure your question means much.

[Borommakot]

A life long thought log for a group of people who will never make contact. :) Every thought that they can remember they write down. Then they compare them when they reach old age.(with computers of course.)

[Dan Rowden]

Yeah, well, now you're contradicting yourself because this would be physical actions produced by thought (presumably) and you said that's not what you're talking baout :)

[Borommakot]

I didnt mean that the thoughts cant bring about action, only that the acrtions do not affect the other person. And if the action holds no importance to the other, than the action matters not.

[Kevin Solway]

I didnt mean that the thoughts cant bring about action, only that the acrtions do not affect the other person. And if the action holds no importance to the other, than the action matters not.

All conscious people hold something to be important. Wise people hold truth to be important.

[Katy]

I was kinda wondering if that was where your name came from...

Yes, I first heard my name from a branch off series of the main ender seires.
quote]

I liked the Shadow books except for the most recent. Tried to get too much out of a good idea and destroyed it. Of course Card has always sucked at writing adults. Very good at brilliant children though.


Anyway, even your experiment couldn't really work because I'm sure a lot of us have very similar thoughts just based on the languages we speak and how the mind makes distinctions. I would guess that most of our thoughts have been thought by other people at some point but that doesn't mean they have an "external" source rather than internal or cultural

[Borommakot]

Yes, I think your'e right. I was referring to the timing of the thoughts along with subject, but, no matter. The expirement would be a general waste of time, because of the extreme amount of thoughts that they couldn't possibly record. But without expirementation there is only speculation, which is what I am attempting.