r/consciousness

I don't know how to describe It, all my whole life ive had this memory of absolutly nothing, an eternal void, non-existence, and then at some point simply knowing that im alive, even hearing inside my mom uterus i guees, and then ephemeral moments until 5 years old, my whole life i've lived through an existential crisis 'cause of this one memory, i literally remember it, i mean, ik its real, so real, but it terrifies me.

I mean, if that emptiness befire consciousness was non-consciousness, then would that emptiness be the same after death?

im sorry for the broken english, It's not my lenguaje :(

I’ve been thinking about dreams lately and how strange they actually are.

Sometimes dreams feel completely random like your brain just mixing memories, emotions, and random images together. But other times they feel almost meaningful, like they’re trying to process something deeper going on in your mind.

There are moments where a dream feels incredibly vivid or symbolic, and when you wake up it leaves you wondering if it meant something… or if your brain was just firing neurons in weird patterns.

So I’m curious how others here think about it.

Do you see dreams as just random brain activity during sleep, or do you think they reveal something deeper about consciousness, the mind, or even reality itself?

I built a Java simulation of Igor Aleksander's Five Axioms of Synthetic Consciousness and made a video of it - here's what it actually does and why it matters

I have been reading Aleksander's work for a while and wanted to see whether his five axioms could be implemented as a genuinely coherent system rather than just described theoretically. The short answer is yes, and the result is more interesting than I expected.

For those unfamiliar, Igor Aleksander was Professor of Neural Systems Engineering at Imperial College London. He spent his career asking what a machine would actually need in order to be conscious - not intelligent in the narrow benchmark sense, but genuinely aware of itself and its world. His answer, developed over decades and described in books including Impossible Minds and My Neurons, My Consciousness, was a set of five axioms he argued are both necessary and sufficient for synthetic consciousness to arise.

He was not a fringe figure. He was mainstream academic, rigorous, and deeply engaged with both the philosophy of mind and the engineering of real systems. He died in 2019 and I think his work deserves considerably more attention than it currently gets in discussions like the ones on this subreddit.

Here's a link to the YouTube video demonstrating the system

People are pretty much split between physicalism and non-physicalism. I think this argument below is very helpful for generating discussion to get to understand how we understand the nature of qualia in consciousness and also the way in which it comes about.

What is Physicalism?
Physicalism is a position in the theory of mind, stating that subjective experience is reducible to physical things. It is an emergent phenomena to specific physical systems such as the brain. The experience is directly tied to materiality, with some physical phenomena directly causing or being linked to subjective phenomena.

Qualia: the first-person, subjective experience
This can be the redness of the red, or the pokiness of being poked, the spirit of motivation, the sound of your internal monologue
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The Argument
Physicalism tends to say qualia is emergent from certain processes. But how can that be the case when emergent things can only be assigned to orders of concept? Qualia is the foundation and conditional to our concepts, not the higher ordered concept.

Take the emergence of temperature of a gas for example. All the discrete particles each have their own translational kinetic energy as they bounce around, but we uniform all of their qualities into a single quality by taking the average. We conceptualize a oneness to the gas.

However, qualia is the lowest building blocks to our concepts. You cannot think of something without finding feeling through or being felt towards it.

Here is the argument syllogistically:

P1. All emergent properties are concept-dependent.

P2. Qualia is not concept-dependent.

C. Therefore, qualia is not an emergent property.

This is a valid modus tollens; please point out a premise you disagree with to isolate the discussion. I believe that qualia is not emergent, but is fundamental to all physical interactions itself.

If you think because you are “awakened” or “pure consciousness” you are above looking down at the state of humanity , when you are the reason for it. You are no worse or better than anyone else, you simply took yourself out of the equation to let others suffer on their own and tell them it is their fault. Fine take yourself all of the way out of the human equation if you are not going to be part of the solution. Your presence and energy will not be missed for it was never really there in the first place.

Has anyone seen any neurological research on the Planes of consciousness? Sense Sphere, Fine material sphere, Immaterial Sphere, Supramundane ? Are they real?

hi. I use the act of real-time creation through the human energy system, as a method of exploring consciousness and the dynamics of reality. art that revolves around the concepts of time, deep self, and the sentient silence behind it all. hope it resonates, and, as another piece of the puzzle, allows us to collectively unfold the innate knowledge lost to the identity crisis of the ages, also known as history. thank you for being [t]here°

We like to suppose everyone experiences qualia. But does everyone? And are our experiences really all the same? Or are they more like religious experiences, deeply influenced by our culture and expectations? I'm not sure how else to put it--I'm starting to lose faith in qualia. Consider the following similarities with my religious experiences:

1. I was raised in a religion that firmly believes God is real.

2. My denomination taught me to interpret confirmation bias as confirmation from God. (I am aware this is not a universal teaching.)

3. I believed it. My belief grew into absolute certainty.

4. Of course, I could not prove it to other people. I had no physical evidence to point to.

5. But I certainly could "prove" it to myself. All I would need to do is pray, and I would have another interpersonal experience with God.

6. I could not understand people who thought God was a mere subconscious mental construct.

7. One day, I learned about confirmation bias.

8. I began to realize subjective experiences were not physical evidence, personal certainty was not public knowledge, and no level of confidence about my position would ever advance science. In short, my "absolute certainty" was indistinguishable from having deluded myself, and it only established me as a hindrance to people who actually wanted to make progress.

9. My faith in God began to crumble.

10. Even now, I do not *know* God is imaginary. I am willing to give consideration to the possibility that he might be real. But I think it is best to move forward supposing he is not real and I have just deluded myself. My former religious denomination was doing nothing productive. So if God is real, I think he would want me to be an atheist anyway, at least until he manifests in some manner I am not capable of fabricating.

Now, let's compare this with how I experience qualia:

1. I was raised in a society that firmly believes qualia is real.

2. I was told my subjective experiences prove qualia is real, meaning they are more than just a subjective experience. (I am aware this is not a universal position.)

3. I believed it. My belief grew into absolute certainty.

4. Of course, I could not prove to other people that I had subjective experiences. I had no physical evidence to point to.

5. But I certainly could "prove" it to myself. All I would need to do is look around, and I would have another personal experience involving qualia.

6. I could not understand people who thought qualia was a mere subconscious mental construct.

7. One day, I learned about illusionism.

8. I began to realize subjective experiences were not physical evidence, personal certainty was not public knowledge, and no level of confidence about my position would ever advance science. In short, my "absolute certainty" was indistinguishable from having deluded myself, and it only established me as a hindrance to people who actually wanted to make progress.

9. My confidence that qualia was more than just a hallucination began to crumble.

10. Even now, I do not *know* qualia is an illusion. I am willing to give consideration to the possibility that it might be something more. But I think it is best to move forward supposing qualia is just an illusion and I have just deluded myself. The people who obsesss about the "Hard Problem of Consciousness" are doing nothing productive. So if qualia is real, I think we will find it faster by ignoring it and focusing on cognition, at least until we understand the brain well enough to give us some real traction with qualia.

That's a lot of similarities, isn't it? So what are the substantive differences? Are there even any?

I've been working on a formula for Consciousness over the last 6 months. I thought it was stupid untill the news of the cleaner wrasse came around. I'm a little spooked now. If y'all could help me figure out where I'm wrong.

The main formula is A=SIU. Where all variables are a range between 0-1, making awareness a percentage. S is for senses, both depth and width and how many modalities. I is for how well the senses integration together. This is horizontal integration. The U is for Unity. The is how well Centralized or orginaized the experience of the senses are, or how well they funnel into a unified experience, this is vertical integration.

Originally, I had the formula as a variation of oms law as A=SI and this does kinda work, but I found blind sight was an issue along with daydreaming. That lead me to split integration into two terms I and U. Technically, S is also multiple terms. It can be divided into external and internal sensory streams for example.

Anyways, I just wanted to shared this with people who might find the flaws in it, and maybe. Fix them if possible. I'm a bit spooked by how well it works.

Also for the mods, please let me post, I wrote this all myself, and I even have some cool space photos on this account that I took from my backyard.