The study of consciousness needs to be lifted out of the mysticism that has dominated it.
Consciousness is not just a matter of philosophy or spirituality. It's a matter of hard science,
it's a matter of understanding the brain and the mind - a pattern structure made out of information.
It's also a matter of engineering: If we can understand the functionality of the brain,
its neural code, then we can build the same functionality into our computer systems.
We should recognize that our brain is not a standalone information processing organ, though.
It acts as a central unit of our nervous system with recurrent data exchange within the entire organism
and the universe. Many definitions are given to consciousness but we still seem far from
a conclusive answer. If we define consciousness as a degree of autonomy a given system gains
in dynamic relations with its environment, even the simplest self-organizing dissipative structure is
a primitive form of consciousness. Consciousness refers to a collapse of wave of possibilities,
resulting in a subjective multi-sensory perceptual experience and involving multiple
parallel processes such as interpreting sensory data stream, retrieving and creating memories,
using imagination, envisioning the future, planning, thinking, self-reflecting, reacting
to the sensory input and being aware about the surroundings. Consciousness
is a first-person phenomenal experience of an entity - it feels like something to be that entity.
Consciousness can be identified as an underlying mathematical pattern. It can
also be viewed as meta-algorithmic information processing and quantified via feedback loops
in interacting with environment. In this sense, consciousness is optimized information processing.
There's no consensus on what produces consciousness but everyone regardless of
metaphysical views can agree what it is like to be conscious. Given that consciousness is
subjectivity, what consciousness is like is what consciousness is. 'Mind' and 'Consciousness' are two
different but somewhat overlapping terms, related to the phenomenality of our experiential reality.
Both of these terms mean different things to different people and can refer to a broad
collection of interrelated phenomena. Both terms lack uniform definitions, although generally
speaking, consciousness refers to the awake state as opposed to dreamless sleep or coma and also to
subjective perceptual awareness which can shift, change and move around. What most people would
agree upon is that the mind is organized mental activity that is formed from the substructure of
consciousness and further made possible by memory and information processing capacities of the brain.
To be clear, the 'mind' which is a cultural term that is debated in philosophy and used in psychology,
generally refers to consciousness plus autobiographical memory, personal identity,
irreducible sense of self, ability for introspection - all of which we experience as 'qualia'.
Different species have a variety of their biological information processors which
unsurprisingly results in qualia diversity. All species live in their own unique sensory universes.
Consciousness and optimized information processing are the two sides of one coin.
Feeling and thinking are ways we process information but our emotional sensation
is normally faster than a conscious thought. 'Mind' has been used more often as a term in philosophy
while 'consciousness' has been used more in scientific literature. The mind that includes
subjective memory and cognition emerges from the underlying field of non-local consciousness.
Conscious awareness, i.e., local consciousness, is recognized as self-reflective feedback-driven
information integration: There is something it is like to be an organism.
We all are "partitioned realities" like "mind files" on the "universal operating system."
Minds are many, consciousness is one. Consciousness is absolute, mind is relative.
Your mind encompasses all of your reality - thoughts, emotions, ideas, beliefs, intentions,
attitudes, desires, motivations, and practically any other aspect of your life.
Your behavior and actions are influenced by your mind, so everything must start with a thought
which will then materialize into physical reality. Your beliefs are influenced by your environment
and your thoughts, emotions and actions are subject to your current system of beliefs.
So, when we're talking epigenetic evolution, we're actually talking evolution of the mind.
Contrary to conventional scientific wisdom, conscious minds as macro-level phenomena
might have greater influence over the unfolding future than does the sum of their cognitive
algorithms that are arguably their micro-level components. That's why human consciousness is
so scientifically elusive: Neuronal circuits supposedly give rise to cognitive modules
and these immaterial cognitive algorithms, in turn, give rise to meta-algorithmic conscious awareness,
all in all, at least two layers of emergence on top of "tangible" neurons. Mammalian neural circuits,
referred to as the limbic system, are responsible for human emotional intelligence and forming of
long-term memories. The main structures of the limbic brain are the hippocampus, amygdala and
hypothalamus. The neocortex, the latest evolutionary addition, is present in primates and now culminated
in the human brain with its two large cerebral hemispheres. The neocortex has been responsible for
the development of human language, abstract thought, imagination and self-reflective consciousness.
The neocortex is flexible enough to allow almost infinite learning abilities.
The neocortex is also what has enabled human cultures to develop. The human brain,
our biological "wetware," has a fractal structure on many genetic and abstract cognitive levels.
It employs a combination of forward chaining and backward chaining, just like certain types
of heuristics in artificial intelligence. But human intelligence cannot be simply reduced
to underlying algorithms since consciousness itself is what should be considered a truly
"ontological primitive" with qubits/bits of information as reality's building blocks
along with top-down causal principles. Information is "modus operandi" of consciousness.