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I Am Interested In Consciousness

Consciousness, as I see it, is indeed an emergent phenomena, and can even be said to be registered and circuited within the brain itself. In this way, consciousness is rendered through biological functioning. However, as it is also emergent, it contains not just the isolated properties of its constituent parts and pieces, but also properties which, by definition, can NEVER be found within biology itself, and no amount of reductionist thinking will ever yield these properties.

We don't find emergent properties anywhere else EXCEPT within the emergent. An emergent quality of something is distinctly new and different - and unlike the basic components from which it arises. So to try and "find" this emergent property inside the brain is therefore pointless, though not entirely incorrect. As our everyday experience should tell us, consciousness is never, at any given moment, subjectively experienced as an individual part or piece, but as an already formed, already "complete" phenomena.

So consciousness is somewhat derived from biology in terms of a point of origin, but is also invariably greater and different from it at the same time, as it gives rise to properties which can never be found within its own biological matrix. I would say this makes consciousness transcendent. If consciousness were somehow reducible to the sum of its parts, then *any* kind of brain alteration or damage would surely bring it offline immediately. However, there are innumerable examples of people experiencing tremendous brain alterations and have yet still retained the "completeness" of their actual consciousness. The only way in which the emergent can be brought offline is either through a total annihilation of the structure which brings it fourth, or a temporary disuse of it (e.g. through sleep).

Here's Tom with the weather...

 
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