and btw if the world does end, no one will be there to gloat. If it doesn’t, everyone who believed that gets to be condescending to everyone who did. I know what I believe.

I have placed several bets with people saying that the world will not end

If December 22nd 2012 comes I will be £20 richer, if not I have bigger things to worry about.

Simple

Shame on you fear mongers… elevate your consciousness… everyone.

Just because they do not (usually) die from this does not mean they experience no harm. Often, their lives are irreparably harmed by it all.

But there’s plenty of time yet for people to get really crazy about this.

The take-home message here, Daffy, is that just because we don’t fully understand how consciousness has come about does not mean any off-the-wall explanation is entitled to be taken seriously without evidence.

I don’t know who built my apartment, but that doesn’t make it reasonable for me to suggest that Puff the Magic Dragon forged it from Unobtainium.

Not knowing how something happened does not make any given explanation, no matter how mundane or insane, any more likely. Evidence is required up front for it to be worth any consideration, because consideration is not free. It involves an investment of time and energy, and often money, too.

Well, Christopher, until someone can tell me just how matter becomes aware of itself, I think taking it off the table is premature. Just my opinion.

Well, that may be your opinion, but it is clearly in need of more thought.

For example, irrespective of how matter becomes self-aware, we have the basic fact that – as far as anyone can tell – it patently is. We have nearly seven billion examples.

OTOH, to propose that consciousness exists apart from our physiology is to not only fly in the face of the evidence (mentioned by Christopher in #61), but also to assume the existence of a phenomenon for which there is currently no evidence, no mechanism (for example, how could an “unphysical” consciousness interact with physical matter?) and no logical reasoning to support it.

Additionally, there is evidence against an “unphysical” consciousness – for example:
1. Why can I not disconnect my consciousness from my physical being and, for example, send it into a separate room?
2. No-one has ever received communication from a dead person (except in the mundane way of a letter having been written while that person was alive, but arriving at its destination after they had died). Houdini famously recorded a secret message that he would attempt to impart to the living after his death, yet this did not happen.
3. No-one has ever received communication from a living person without there being some tangible medium for that communication (e.g. speech, sign language, lip-reading, email, telephone etc.).
4. “Out-f-body” experiences are noted for their inability to impart information to a person that they could not have known if their conscisousness remained attached to their physical body.

If consciousness is genuinely separate from one’s physical self, these phenomena would all be expected to arise as a consequence of this separation. That they do not is fairly strong evidence that the consciousness is a part of one’s physical form.

“IIUC, the current leading idea is that human consciousness is an emergent property of our complex brains.”

There’s ample evidence of this, too. Changes in not just motor function, but personality in stroke victims, or in people who suffer other physical trauma of brain tissue. The fact that consciousness can be altered by introducing foreign chemicals into the brain, only to return to “normal” once those chemicals have been flushed. The fact that consciousness can be altered *permanently* as brain cells degrade due to disease.

“We” are our brains. As our brains form, so do “we”, and as our brains break down, we follow in lock step. If our consciousness was truly outside of ourselves (as it would have to be, if it were outside of the *universe*), it really shouldn’t matter what we smoke, or drink, or what sort of degradation or trauma our brains suffer.

But it does. Until there’s evidence to the contrary, ideas like those of John von Neumann don’t hold any more weight than those of Gandalf the Grey Wizard.

Until there’s a reason beyond your own incredulity to consider mind-body duality or the absurd notion that consciousness is unphysical or originates outside of the universe (whatever *that* means), there’s no reason for it to be ON the table.

Yes. This.