Will we ever understand the neuroanatomical, genetic, biochemical and physical basis of human consciousness in detail?

An oldie but goody. Imagine if we could! Asked by edfoug 53 months ago Similar questions: understand neuroanatomical genetic biochemical physical basis human consciousness detail Science > Psychology.

Similar questions: understand neuroanatomical genetic biochemical physical basis human consciousness detail.

In twenty years, we'll have most of the mechanisms pretty well deciphered. But, will we understand them fully, No! I say this because modern science seeks to measure and develop working models of how things work.

Since the time of Francis Bacon, science has given up trying to understand things in an Aristotelian sense. So eventually, we’ll have a very complex model developed that will illustrate and provide a tool for showing how they work, much like charts of how a complex chemical reaction occurs. But models aren’t the same thing as reality, they are but a poor approximation of it.

The most complex of models won’t be able to capture the intangibles of consciousness any better than how a complex book, diagram or model of human sexual attraction can capture the intangibles of the situation. Full understanding requires more than science can provide. Sources: personal opinion Snow_Leopard's Recommendations Popper wasn't a big fan of Freud or Psychiatry.

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I think that we will I'd actually really love to give a contrarian answer. There's so much going on in the brain that may make it impossible to solve. Relatively simple physics problems, like the three-body problem or the quantum electro-dynamics of a sugar molecule.

Are far too complicated to solve precisely. And the limits of computational power (I mean Turing machines, not Intel processors) make make a lot of these problems impossible to solve in any less time than it takes to simply run them. I could make such a wonderfully nerdy answer out of that.

But deep in my heart, I don't believe it. No computer model of the brain is ever going to out-think the brain. I don't think we'll ever be able to truly read anybody's thoughts by examining the state of an MRI.

I do think that we're going to be able to have a pretty good understanding of where consciousness comes from. I think that one day we'll have a pretty good grasp of what it means to think a thought. I think that one day we'll be able to see why a particular gene leads to a particular pattern of cells in the brain, and why that pattern of cells leads to a particular behavior.

I have no idea what that theory will look like. Understanding this is going to involve a scientific revolution, a thought as massively world-view-shaking as the discovery of the genetic code or general relativity. Possibly more than one.It feels oddly religious to feel this way about an idea.

I've got absolutely no proof of it whatsoever, beyond a general understanding tht humanity has always managed to get on top of problems that seem solvable. It may prove that we're just too limited to manage it. Or it may be that the whole question is wrong, that there really is a separate "soul" driving the machinery.

But I have faith. Ain't that funny?.

Yes, eventually. Provided that human civilization doesn't collapse first, it is inevitable that we will understand consciousness. It is all based on physical processes.

Even if it turns out to be based on quantum physics, there will be experiments that can shed light on the process even if it can't be reproduced exactly. The important thing to remember is that consciousness evolved, therefore it must be built up from the simplest of building blocks. The consciousness of a human may (or may not) be different from the consciousness of a dog, but it is only different in degree, not in kind.My personal suspicion, although I have no particular evidence of this, is that consciousness will turn out to be an illusion for the most part.

While there is no doubt that we think and act and move, the concept of the self could just be a trick that our minds play on us. When we look at the world with our eyes, we don't actually see every detail, but we fill in the blanks with representations of the actual world. There is no such thing as blue, for example.

There is only light at a certain wavelength, and our minds paint the color blue into our mental images. In the same manner, the mind could have invented the concept of self as a convenient shorthand for the experience of the world. That the self is just a representation, or an illusion, doesn't make it useless.

In the same way that it is useful to see blue, whatever the actual reality is, it can be helpful to think of the model of the self as long as it is understood to be a representation and not a fundamental reality. So if the self is an illusion, what is self-concsciousness? It is just a mode of thinking.

It produces results. Many of those results are counterproductive. When consciousness studies are able to show that self-consciousness in a human is no more valid or "real" than self-consciousness in a computer, it should have a positive impact on our culture.

Hopefully it would put an end to the mind set of "I'm so special" that allows people to be so selfish in their relationships with other people and with the plantet. Bannned's Recommendations Consciousness Explained Amazon List Price: $17.99 Used from: $3.99 Average Customer Rating: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 94 reviews) In the Blink of an Eye: How Vision Sparked the Big Bang of Evolution Amazon List Price: $15.00 Used from: $0.01 Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 14 reviews) The Emerging Physics of Consciousness (The Frontiers Collection) Amazon List Price: $69.95 Used from: $45.00 Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 2 reviews) .

Yes, but it won't matter. Understanding consciousness is probably like the war on cancer. When you start, it sounds simple, and then you discover that cancer isn't one thing, but a whole number of things, and each has to be studied separately.

Consciousness probably is the result of a very complicated set of interrelationships between multiple factors. As such, it is chaotic. So many possible factors involved, so many interactions between the factors, so many tipping points, that I suspect we will never make a very accurate predictive model of it.

I suspect that the predictions will never be very precise, but will always be pretty general. We'll never be able to build a model that will predict with any accuracy, all the choices of a given group of individuals when faced with the same choice environment. An example of the complexity: How do genes get expressed?

Well, they activated by activation sequences that respond to factors in the environment. You study the interaction of activation sequences through some statistical methods, and then trying to create those environments with and without the gene included in the DNA. It's hard to know for sure if the effect you are measuring has to do with the changes you make, versus other factors completely unrelated.

And that's just one gene. What about the multiplicity of environmental factors? What about the multiplicity of possible expressions of one gene (never mind all the genes in the genome).

What about factors that react one way in one kind of environment, but another way in a different environment? We may be able to get a sense of locus of control of various genes, and the range of possible activation options for that gene, but even if we knew it all, would we be able to make accurate predictions about individuals? Well, now we get into the probabilistic nature of science.

Since the predictions are formed in terms of probability, and interactions can complicate those probabilities, and individuals can vary wildly from the probabilities, our understanding of consciousness will become more detailed on average, but will be of little utility when considering individuals. And, since my sense of your question was that you were more interested in individual consciousness (details), I can't say we'll be able to understand individuals very well, although we will be able to say a lot about humanity. Sources: my general knowledge .

In order to understand the limits of thinking, we have to think outside the limits ... so No. What a pity. Interesting ... but I doubt it.

Wittgenstein said that in order to understand the limits of thinking we have to be able to think outside the limits. So we'd never be able to understand everything because by definition we'd never know when we'd come to the end ... more accurately, we wouldn't know whether we'd come to the limits of the phenomenon or to the end of our abilities to understand. Another way of expressing this is to say that a theory can never be proved with reference to its own axioms ... the journey becomes self-referential..

And if we did, try to imagine the results... Asked by edfoug 58 months ago Similar questions: understand neuroanatomical genetic biochemical basis human consciousness detail Science > Psychology.

Similar questions: understand neuroanatomical genetic biochemical basis human consciousness detail.

I think we will - and I will bet that the major part of self consciousness has to do with the two parts of our brains As for the results - that is something I am still working on, but one could imagine thinking machines and distributed consciousness as a start. We might even have hardware to support our brains - I could use a better graphics card. GPS would be nice.

Then we might even make devices to move our minds to as we age. But how do we know if it is really us or just a good copy? It is reasonable to expect that size and proximity of the basic units (neurons and such) will make a difference since the human brain is a master work of compact design.

Also, we tend to think more in terms of electronic hardware and the future might be in electrochemical or even nanotechnology. But larger machines, even on the microchip level might not work quite so well if the signals take too long to get from place to place. Final models may well depend on holographic structures that rely as much on the organization of signals as the material parts of reception and storage.

This is the time to solve the mind / brain question. And when it is over we may even know what happens at death. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_(philosoph...) Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciously .

Neuroscientists claim they are hot on the trail. Some quotes from a recent review article by Stanislas Dehaene, a leader in cognitive neuroimaging: "Some philosophers have highlighted the apparent gap between the subjective character of conscious experience and the objective analysis in the third person that we can engage in using the methods of cognitive science. According to them, conscious experience, by nature subjective, escapes experimentation.

I do not share that point of view. Paradigms such as masking, attentional blink, change blindness, and many others are witness to the fact that there exist reproducible experimental conditions within which all subjects agree on the nature of their conscious experience. These phenomena allow us to identify objectively the cerebral basis for subjective consciousness." "While this research, which is very recent, paves the way to a theoretical definition of consciousness, two major obstacles will have to be overcome in order to attain this goal.

The first consists in going from simple correlations to a relation of cause and effect.... In the future, the demonstration of a causal relation and, in fine, of identity between neuronal states and conscious mental states will require techniques that interfere with cerebral activity. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and other interference techniques ... are likely to play an essential role in establishing causal links between attention orientation, central integration, and conscious perception." "The second obstacle to the establishment of a theory of consciousness is of a different nature... The brain functions in an anticipatory mode, ceaselessly active, reassessing the past to better anticipate the future. However, cognitive psychology has all too often neglected this internal state of the conscious subject... Here again, neuroimaging techniques may offer a solution.

When a person is resting without any particular instruction, the brain shows an intense structured activation, often parietal – frontal, that spontaneously fluctuates between several states correlated across a long distance... this spontaneously activated state may constitute a solid neuronal correlate of conscious vigilance.... autonomous mental activity, too often neglected, must regain its status as a central object of study for cognitive psychology. " S. Dehaene, "A Few Steps Toward a Science of Mental Life," Mind, Brain, and Education, 1 (2007) 28-47 Sources: cited above a_scientist's Recommendations Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are Amazon List Price: $16.00 Used from: $7.37 Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 19 reviews) The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness Amazon List Price: $15.00 Used from: $7.47 Average Customer Rating: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 47 reviews) Two other notable neuroscientists present their views.

Yes, we will come to understand how consciousness arises, and in fact we already know. We already know the source of consciousness, if we first drop the idea of the "soul" and any ideas related to any sort of religion. Once we do that, then we see our selves - our bodies, including that part of the body called the brain - in the same way we see a car or a solar system .. as beautiful, intricate machinery whose complexity arises not from the hand of a "designer" but from the chance accumulations of structure and system.

Look around - no matter what you see, you see objects that are made of protons, neutrons, electrons, and photons. Shape and color, color and shape. Atoms become molecules become structures become cells become tissues .. tissues which work interactively to support continuing existence, and lo!

The best system (to date) for continuing existence is one which has, as a sub-system, a bi-partite brain built from neurons. How is that brain working? By the interconnections of all those neurons.It's just a machine, just a lovely machine which, as of yet, we do not fully comprehend.

Even so, we know enough to see that this "magic" we call consciousness isn't really magic .. it is merely complexity, and complexity always arises from enough repetition and differentiation of simpler structures. Sources: Being & Becoming, Finite & Infinite Games, Critical Path, On Intelligence .

Yes and no. Yes, I believe we will - it is inevitable. However, when we live, laugh and love, for example, we change.

We are ever evolving as our atmosphere is dynamic. To think that human behavior is static, so imagine: A thought forms Beautiful breaths Difficult to dispute The beauty in our world when there are dreams To hold close As beauty redfines as we grow and bloom we become wise beyond The dream. Sources: sanger.ac.uk/Teams/Team32/?;decor=printable; A little poem that I just made up and changed my brain's chemistry - like it?.

They are working on the human genome But I would say no. Somethings man can't understand. Kind, of like Kevin Federline is a celebrity..

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.