[dlorde]

I guess what irks me is that there actually is a fair amount of information about the neuroscience behind things like perception, memory,  language, learning or emotion etc. - a lot of it a click away on Wikipedia. But there's this odd assumption that "Well, I have a brain, so I must know how it works,  and if I can't explain how the brain performs some task, it must be mysterious." There's no other area of science I can think of where so many people do this. I'm not criticizing anyone for asking questions, or not knowing something , just the tendency to make sh1t up willy nilly. 

Agreed - although quantum mechanics is another field where it happens - when it's used to 'explain' any odd or unexplained phenomena. When it's used to explain consciousness, all reason seems to disappear.

[puppypower]

Why do discussions about consciousness always go off the rails?

The hard to grasp and the unexplained always seem to attract a raft of pseudoscientific debris...

I guess what irks me is that there actually is a fair amount of information about the neuroscience behind things like perception, memory,  language, learning or emotion etc. - a lot of it a click away on Wikipedia. But there's this odd assumption that "Well, I have a brain, so I must know how it works,  and if I can't explain how the brain performs some task, it must be mysterious." There's no other area of science I can think of where so many people do this. I'm not criticizing anyone for asking questions, or not knowing something , just the tendency to make sh1t up willy nilly. 

One problem with addressing consciousness is, consciousness, to use an analogy, is as much connected to software as it is hardware. I prefer to call the processing stemming from consciousness, firmware related, which is a combination of the two.

Brain hardware is easier to investigate, using a normal third person approach. This approach is not as easy and straight forward, with the software side of consciousness. For example, I can look at a personal computer and differentiate the CPU versus the RAM, and tell you where the sound board and video card are. This is all useful information, which can be verified independently by others.


But from this same third person approach, used for hardware, you may not be able to differentiate software, if all were using the same hardware resources. One may not be able to tell Call of Duty from Halo, by looking at hardware alone. There may be subtle differences, but that does not begin to do justice to to difference in game play. However, if you could look at the software code, even without the hardware, you could predict the hardware profile, and once this hardware profile appears, you could better distinguish between which is playing. This approach allows me to infer hardware connections and attach the software side.


This approach is based on unconscious mind explorations, where you learn to use consciousness to trigger different parts of the brain. The eastern yoga master who can nearly stop his heart has to move the focus of free energy, closer to the brain stem. One will get a different picture from the inside, compared to the outside.
 
When I started this discuss of consciousness, I made the distinction that rest neurons are at highest potential. This is key, but it is not as obvious as one may think, since the term rest usually implies a state of lowered energy; sleeping. The established nomenclature is misleading and has led to many ideas about consciousness falling short, by conforming to a bad nomenclature system. If you ignore this nomenclature and just look at a neuron, it uses a lot of ATP energy to establish the membrane potential. The neuron climbs a free energy hill to reach a stable place at the top of the hill. The firing of the same neuron is lowering this potential, leading to secondary activity using the released potential. The naming conversion misrepresents what is actually going on and is another reason so many opinions are off the mark.


I also knew once you add water, this will lead to misunderstanding, even though water is the best way to explain the software side as a function of consciousness. Nothing can happen in the brain without protein. Proteins, in turn, have many conformational states all dependent on the degree of hydration and the activity of the water. The water activity, in turn, is dependent on all the dissolved things, including the the ions present. Firing versus rest neurons have different sodium and potassium profiles in the water, with each ion impacting water, differently. Sodium and potassium are like day and night relative to water. Based on the firing of neurons and the ionic profile, we get various water activity, which leads to various protein conformation and activity, which can then impact the water.

For example, studies have shown that the surface hydrogen bonded water on the DNA, generates 100 megavolts/cm electric fields. Water, like wth proteins, also defines the conformational states of the DNA, while hydrogen bonding of the water. to the DNA defines the potentials in the surface water. This study has shown that this water is very hot; energized. Now we have the voltages needed for quantum tunneling in the water near the DNA.



https://phys.org/news/2016-08-ultrastrong-ultrafast-localwater-electric-fields.html


Hydrogen bonding is unique in the sense it has both polar and covalent bonding characteristics. This is reflected, experimentally as high and low density zones in liquid water. The low density zones reflect expanded hydrogen bonding analogous to covalent bonding; ice expands. The high density zones are more polar in nature, due to attraction of charges. The net affect is each hydrogen bond is a binary switch between these two bonding states.


These are more than just on-off switches, like in semi-conductors. The high and low density zones in the water are reflected by differences in entropy, enthalpy and volume/pressure. For example, say we had an enzyme. Next, we have a flux of free energy moving through the water, equilibrium will require one or the other state of the switches. This is more than just information, since the state of the switch reflects physical and free energy changes. This can put the squeeze on the enzyme, extracting free energy, or it can loosen up the water around the enzymes so it can making conformational changes all based on information and local energy of the switch.


The fastest thing in water is the hydrogen proton. Unlike ions like sodium and potassium which have bulky hydration shells they need to carry around at the nanoscale, hydrogen protons can move from water to water molecule as a tiny entity. The result is the free energy flux can use hydrogen protons as curriers that can  begin to make preliminary changes, until the bulk capacitance arrives. Like a currier carrying a message to and from the command center, orders from the top can alter the need, via the currier, before the bulky stuff arrives. Our short term memory, can create impulse that will not be remembered or repeated, since the long term changes are aborted. What we do remember will be based on feedback that enters the sensory system.

[Ian Sowden]

The emotional tag is useful to an animal since, if a similar memory is triggered; sensory induced recall, the memory will induce the emotional tag. For example, if an animal was to find a food item, it once ate, which tasted good, by seeing it again, the food item will induce that same good feeling. The result is the animal will eat, without having to think, by reacting to the feeling. There is more emotional tagging in warm blooded animals, allowing a more complex social interaction, based on sensory cues.

I find it frustrating that these discussions always jump from neurons to the functions of areas of the brain. I hasten to say that I always find the subject interesting and this is not just abuse.

I am also surprised by a phrase like "which tasted good". This language seems to infer conscious experience when it is possible that in some animals the signal from the sensing cells to the matches memory of those signals and generates a chemical response to consume the food automatically or may be it is completely automatic without memory at all.
Your example is particularly relevant because this simple response evolves to a much more complex response as the organism evolves more specialised limbs and organs. The chemical response is moved to the gut. The sensing moves to the nose (for example) and a simple random movement the whole animal is now a complex movement of the snout and sniffing which are still automatic. The response to the food could still be automatic or use memory.
If the organism uses eyes as well as smell it now has to use memory. It is combining a massive amount of processing of the signals from the eyes to recognise the food but it has no knowledge of the value of the thing which is seen as food until it is tasted. Then the visual memory has to be combined with the memory of a signal from the taste buds. It might also have be using smell first and maybe memory of location. It is probably going to record location if the feeding is successful. This is so simplified that I hesitate to offer it as a description.
I believe that every step from the simple to the complex is matched in the brain and with enough knowledge of these steps we could discover much about the way consciousness works. The key is the combination of sensors, signals memory and the memory of the sensation of the response.
 What I have described is really only awareness and has no conscious thought as we would discuss it. I do think that self awareness is necessitated by the linking of sight and manipulation of paws or similar limbs. If I see a hand move a book there is no intrinsic way of identifying the mover without combining the visual signal with touch and there is only correlation of the two sensations to establish who did it.
I have run out of time to so this argument is not complete but it is a start.

[dlorde]

I am also surprised by a phrase like "which tasted good". This language seems to infer conscious experience when it is possible that in some animals the signal from the sensing cells to the matches memory of those signals and generates a chemical response to consume the food automatically or may be it is completely automatic without memory at all.

Consciousness isn't required for a positive response to the release of a reward system hormone like dopamine or serotonin (or some equivalent reward activity in simpler organisms).

[puppypower]

The emotional tag is useful to an animal since, if a similar memory is triggered; sensory induced recall, the memory will induce the emotional tag. For example, if an animal was to find a food item, it once ate, which tasted good, by seeing it again, the food item will induce that same good feeling. The result is the animal will eat, without having to think, by reacting to the feeling. There is more emotional tagging in warm blooded animals, allowing a more complex social interaction, based on sensory cues.

I find it frustrating that these discussions always jump from neurons to the functions of areas of the brain. I hasten to say that I always find the subject interesting and this is not just abuse.

I am also surprised by a phrase like "which tasted good". This language seems to infer conscious experience when it is possible that in some animals the signal from the sensing cells to the matches memory of those signals and generates a chemical response to consume the food automatically or may be it is completely automatic without memory at all.
Your example is particularly relevant because this simple response evolves to a much more complex response as the organism evolves more specialised limbs and organs. The chemical response is moved to the gut. The sensing moves to the nose (for example) and a simple random movement the whole animal is now a complex movement of the snout and sniffing which are still automatic. The response to the food could still be automatic or use memory.
If the organism uses eyes as well as smell it now has to use memory. It is combining a massive amount of processing of the signals from the eyes to recognise the food but it has no knowledge of the value of the thing which is seen as food until it is tasted. Then the visual memory has to be combined with the memory of a signal from the taste buds. It might also have be using smell first and maybe memory of location. It is probably going to record location if the feeding is successful. This is so simplified that I hesitate to offer it as a description.
I believe that every step from the simple to the complex is matched in the brain and with enough knowledge of these steps we could discover much about the way consciousness works. The key is the combination of sensors, signals memory and the memory of the sensation of the response.
 What I have described is really only awareness and has no conscious thought as we would discuss it. I do think that self awareness is necessitated by the linking of sight and manipulation of paws or similar limbs. If I see a hand move a book there is no intrinsic way of identifying the mover without combining the visual signal with touch and there is only correlation of the two sensations to establish who did it.
I have run out of time to so this argument is not complete but it is a start.

I began the discussion of consciousness, at neurons, because neurons work differently from computer memory. This was important because most analogies for consciousness think in terms of computers. Neurons expend internal energy to push themselves up and sometimes over a free energy hill. The creation of the membrane potential, composed of segregated cations, is implicit of a free energy hill. The firing of the neuron provides an output that contains both enthalpy and entropy, allowing increasing complexity and the energy to back it up.


Artificial intelligence, to be more than a robot, would need to be able to increase the complexity of its programs. Neurons are designed with this in mind. There are so many parameters that can change in an environment, that survival implies the need to adapt. Neurons make that easier. 

Your analysis appears to be making an analogy, more in terms of computer memory and programming, which does not require consciousness. Computer memory is designed to be stable, so when memory is precessed, nothing changes in the memory, unless we make an effort to rewrite the memory. Neurons are designed to be unstable. If we made computer memory, like neurons, the memory would exist at high potential and be subject to spontaneous change, even while in storage. If you tried to rewrite high energy memory; induce firing, this would trigger a cascade/chain reaction affect as a wide range of memory, might try to lower energy. Unlike computer memory, where such change will be random, neurons and the brain are designed to make use of this in ways that allow free energy hills to grow and the free energy to expand. Consciousness has the capacity to grow and evolve.




I would like to change directions again, and add another feature of memory and consciousness, which is easier to see from the inside. Since this is not common experience, I hope can explain it with an analogy. The brain has to the capacity to process in 3-D. This is different from computer logic which occurs in 2-D; cause and affect. The 3-D logic is affect, cause and affect and cause, affect, cause. In both cases, we are extrapolating cause and affect or logic, before and/or after; entropy driven complexity.


As an analogy, picture a 3-D ball. We can approximate this 3-D ball with a large number of 2-D circles that have a common center but which intersect at different angles. This is shown below with only three circles. The 2-D circles used to approximate the 3-D thought, represent logic planes based on cause and affect. As an example, political orientations can be very different from each other, even though each is based on its own logic and data. The 3-D ball in this case, is the sum of the logic within all political orientations, each with a different logic angle, but with a common center; politics.


The second image shows a golf ball being struck by a club, causing deformation. This deformation is totally logical in 3-D. However, it has the impact of distorting, 2-D planes out of their planes, into a 3rd dimension. In practical terms, this when someone comes up with an idea that does not follow in a logical sequence, yet is nevertheless consistent with logic; practical application.


Like the golf ball, which will deform, vibrate and then return to a 3-D spherical steady state, the 2-D logic planes can also be restored. The difference is a temporary state of 3-D, becomes connected to the one or mores of the 2-D planes; creative insight. You have the answer before the solution due to the 3-D,  cause, affect, cause. This may require one go to the lab to build a bridge in 2-D to the solution.  The solution will not be accepted until the bridge is made, since 3-D is taboo. This 3-D affect is part of creative nature of human consciousness which is part of the change associated with consciousness.

[Ian Sowden]

I began the discussion of consciousness, at neurons, because neurons work differently from computer memory. This was important because most analogies for consciousness think in terms of computers.

I agree completely that computers are a poor analogy for the brain. As you say constant change is vital to the understanding of the mind. The brain uses feedback all the time. Even talking about an event changes the memory of that event.
The activity of the brain is always effected by the physical context e.g. tiredness or hunger. It is effected by location. You think and behave differently if you are at home, at work, or playing sport etc. The chemistry of the brain is different in these circumstances and different memories are available.
Consciousness can include most areas of the brain which makes me think there are not specific areas of consciousness.
So:

There are two centers of human consciousness, one center each, for the both conscious and the unconscious minds. The studied cited seems to be connected to the secondary center, which to most people, is assumed to be the only center.  The primary center is far less conscious and is called the inner self. The primary center is shared by animals. Humans are unique in that we also have the secondary center, called the ego center, which is the center of the conscious mind. If you sleep and have no awareness of dreams, the secondary center is switched off. The primary center can still active, working the brain in a more integrated fashion; free energy movement.

Where can I read more about this? I am interested to know more.

[puppypower]

I began the discussion of consciousness, at neurons, because neurons work differently from computer memory. This was important because most analogies for consciousness think in terms of computers.

I agree completely that computers are a poor analogy for the brain. As you say constant change is vital to the understanding of the mind. The brain uses feedback all the time. Even talking about an event changes the memory of that event.
The activity of the brain is always effected by the physical context e.g. tiredness or hunger. It is effected by location. You think and behave differently if you are at home, at work, or playing sport etc. The chemistry of the brain is different in these circumstances and different memories are available.
Consciousness can include most areas of the brain which makes me think there are not specific areas of consciousness.
So:

There are two centers of human consciousness, one center each, for the both conscious and the unconscious minds. The studied cited seems to be connected to the secondary center, which to most people, is assumed to be the only center.  The primary center is far less conscious and is called the inner self. The primary center is shared by animals. Humans are unique in that we also have the secondary center, called the ego center, which is the center of the conscious mind. If you sleep and have no awareness of dreams, the secondary center is switched off. The primary center can still active, working the brain in a more integrated fashion; free energy movement.

Where can I read more about this? I am interested to know more.

The way I learned about this began by reading a book called, The Undiscovered Self, by the late psychologist Carl Jung. This little book created an awareness of something that fascinated me. This fascination then fueled my reading other books he wrote. From this reading and other research, I  became a self made expert in collective human symbolism.


Toward the end of my learning, I came to the conclusion that it was one thing to read and learn about the inner self, but it was another thing to experience this first hand.

The difference, I saw was like comparing two sets of observations. The first was having a toothache  and the second watching someone else have toothache. Both can provide observational data, but each does the same thing from a different angle; inside versus outside. These will not be the same data, since the inside will involve observation of first hand pain.

Now I wanted to generate my own inside information; first person experiences.  Collective human symbolism is the language of the unconscious mind, so I was prepared. From this first hand data, I am able to make correlations you cannot make from outside data alone, anymore than someone who never had a toothache, can gain that first hand experience by watching  someone the third person.


This inside information is usually left out of discussions of consciousness; software side. The primary center, to me, is not an abstract concept, but something I have experienced multitude of time to where I can infer and even connect to hardware. The idea of 3-D thought is not a theory but an experience explained. I also have chemical way to explain, which I may attempt in the future.

[puppypower]

Exploring consciousness from the inside is different from exploring consciousness from the outside. One path is not better than the other, but rather both paths are two sides of the same coin. If we use the toothache example, someone observing another person with a toothache tells us little about their level of pain. The description of pain medications is difficult and controversial since you can't always tell the magnitude of real pain from scam pain, from the outside in the third person. The poker player will hide their tells so the inside data cannot be easily inferred from the third person.


On the other hand, the person with the tooth ache, because of their pain, may not be able to focus properly on collecting body language data, as well as someone who is watching them in the third person. The poker player not aware of their tell, can be undermined, even with the best internal strategy. The combined data is the full picture of consciousness. If one had a toothache and could also observe yourself on camera, you start to approximate both, although the pain will cloud your reason with additional inside data. One cannot form a consensus theory of consciousness with half this data, which is the current state of affairs. 


My approach is slanted from the inside, since outside third person observation is already well manned and well funded. From the inside is more pioneering and is very cheap to do, since it only requires the brain that you already own. The internal approach is not new and is actually the original approach. When the ancients saw/imagined the gods of mythology, since these did not exist in an objective way; based on third person observation, it was being generated in the first person; projection of internal data.


Because I work from the inside, this data would be of value to me, since it gives me clues about another aspect of first person observation; projection. You can't see projection, from the outside in the lab. It comes from the inner self. If you ever watched a kitten run around the house chasing imaginary play, you can infer the projection affect. This can be witnessed from the inside but never seen outside accept by body language affects which seen unconnected to anything, outside.


Let me give you an example of internal data inference. If you observed and recorded your dreams, over time, one would notice that dreams rarely repeat themselves, nor do their appear to follow normal logic. Dreams work similarly to surfing the web and diverting your path through hyperlinks. The net is a modeled on dreaming. There are always new things that appear that may not appear connected; advertisement. There is an element of constant change. From this I inferred these should be an entropy variable in the hardware.


I tried many explanations, until I was able to reverse engineer this inference into the nature of neurons. The nomenclature of rest neurons was very misleading, since rest neurons are actually at highest free energy potential. But then again, third hand data collective benefits by external activity. The labelling of rest neurons was based on the amount of external activity to observe, and not chemical potential. An insider data collector will notice things like this, since this bias came from unconscious aspects of the inside.

[puppypower]

The 3-D processing of information is an important part of consciousness. This 3-D processing is often attributed to the right side of the brain; spatial side. The left side of the  brain is more 2-D. The right brain integrates in 3-D, while the left brain differentiates in 2-D; logic.  Both sides of the brain, work at the same time, so it not always clear, which is which in the third person. From the inside, it is easier to see since each generates different sensory feedback; feelings in the body.

The 3-D processing of memory would be called, artificial intelligence; AI, if a computer could do it. It goes beyond the 2-D cause and affect of the its original programming; if and do loops of logic, into extrapolation beyond the programming, via 3-D cause, affect, cause and effect, cause and affect. 

There is a chemical explanation for how this is possible. It is connected to the water. As a loose parallel for the affect, consider a chunk of brain matter submerged in a beaker of water. Next, I will add a pinch of salt. The salt will dissolve into the water and then diffuse throughout the water, driven by entropy, until it forms a uniform solution. The impact of the final salt solution will be to change the potential seen by all the proteins. based on the new final ionic potential. There is an integrated change in 3-D, where all the wiring changes, subtly.

The brain does this with the water associated with the cerebral spinal fluid. As a working example, that should be easy to visualize, say you felt depressed. The depressed feelings can alter the focus of memory, so only depressing thoughts appear. The memories that are conscious will have the same emotional tag, induce by the brain chemical balance, associated with the depression. You can still use the entire brain, but the main layer of memory that is conscious is connected to the memories of depression; targeted integration. The brain circulates and cleans out the CSF, which, along with entropy diffusion, is a way for the brain to add a 4th dimension; time element for the 3-D processing. 

In other words, if we added salt to the beaker, there is a time delay between the added salt, dissolving,  and ten diffusion until there is a uniform solution. The integration is not complete at first, but tends to over do it, locally, at the beginning. Then as the salt diffuses, the local impact weakens as the integration broadens. One ends up with a time dependent profile of the spreading 3-D affect.

Water has a couple of wild card variables that add complexity to this affect. Water can form what is called cooperative hydrogen bonding. This is loosely similar to the resonance of benzene, where electrons become delocalized, and therefore shared by all the carbon atoms of benzene. Water can do the same thing but at the level of the hydrogen bonding. The pH affect of water allow covalent bonds to form and break at ambient conditions, all driven by hydrogen bonding, which is able to cooperate and amplify electron mobility.

With cooperative hydrogen bonding, as we add more and more hydrogen bonds to the cooperative, all the bonds get stronger, with the first bond broken the hardest to break, no matter where that bond is on the cooperative. It is similar to benzene in the sense that all the bonds become stronger and equal, due to the delocalization and sharing of elections.

One recent study demonstrated that there are 100 megavolt/cm2 electric fields in the surface water surrounding the DNA. These extend about a nanometer out. I linked to this in an earlier post. This is due to the DNA inducing the water to align with the symmetry of the DNA surface, so cooperative hydrogen bonding can form extensively in the water. This cooperative merges with the hydrogen bonding cooperative along the DNA double helix. The electrons are so delocalized, specific electrons become ionized with respect to their original water host. As the cooperative gets disrupted, these electrons lose energy and reattach to one water;  reverse plasma

The other wild card, relative to cooperative hydrogen bonding, are the hydrogen protons can also be mobile; not fixed to any one water. The net affect is not only the relative ionization of electrons among the water of the cooperatives, but hydrogen protons can also be in motion, to add a hydrogen atom style wild card affect within and beyond the cooperatives. The net affect, in terms of consciousness, is the 3-D impact of the water has two layers. One is a signal layer, based on the hydrogen and electrons, and second, which is slower, is based on the capacitance layer; dissolve chemicals.

This distinction can be observed from the inside. Let me continue with the depression example. Say you had a tendency to get depressed each day.  When you awaken in the morning you feel OK, but soon the brain chemicals start to change. There is time delay, due to the entropy diffusion, such that the integration starts simple and gets more complex as the day goes on.

Will power and choice is connected to being tuned to the water signal layer, which can transmit and mirror the chemical signal, but before the bulk chemicals can fully diffuse through the water to the final destinations. One gets the gists of where this is heading; water signal layer, but before it becomes incapacitating, due to the chemical capacitance layer which can make a stronger physical change.  From the water layer, one can change the future, by changing the present. One may think of pleasant thoughts, to alter the chemical output signal. If the depression is physical, this may not turn  off those pumps, but will add countering chemical potential into the CSF.

[smart]

If human consciousness is massless, it cannot exist "inside" the brain.

The brain is merely a bioelectromagnetic envelope to transduce biophotonic energy into neuronal activity.
 

[alancalverd]

Why do discussions about consciousness always go off the rails?

Because nobody ever defines consciousness, or if they do, nobody else accepts the definition.

[smart]

Because nobody ever defines consciousness, or if they do, nobody else accepts the definition.

I'll go easy for you...

Human consciousness is a neuroholographic simulation...Ok?

In specific, the brain is also a quantum computer which happens to convert biophotonic emissions to weak bioelectromagnetic waves in the visible range. (aka the spectral red shift??)

To summarize, human consciousness is a coherent neuroholographic phenomenon which raises important questions on the atomic singularity of consciousness, physical status, and on the value of dreaming.

I hope this helps.

[Wisdomtooth]

Consciousness is physically everywhere, from the brain to the rest of the body. The controversy lies in the thought that no particular place in the brain is the centre, or is indespensible to consciousness. This is true, but we are talking about it Removing consciousness, not Altering it. Altering it does remove or add some of its capacity, so this is an argument that consciousness cannot be traced in the brain, and there is no "soul capsule" in there physically. The whole, including the body and senses contribute to the experience of living, which is the definition, and all parts are indespensible- consciousness is dying this moment, if your brain is aging.

[snorkfort]

Erika asked the Naked Scientists:
   Where in our brains does consciousness lie?
What do you think?

Consciousness is an illusion. It's a trick played on you by your genes. The objective is to make you feel like you're in control and that you have free will (which you don't), while simultaneously making life interesting enough for you to care sufficiently about surviving, thriving and mating. This ensures you cooperate optimally with the genes' goal of being replicated and passed on.

[smart]

Consciousness is an illusion. It's a trick played on you by your genes. 

I disagree, consciousness is independent from our genetic code (and brain), as it has been demonstrated experimentally that animal consciousness can survives a head transplant.

See: http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/798032/Neurosurgeon-bring-cryogenic-dead-BACK-TO-LIFE-brain-transplant

[Kryptid]

Consciousness is an illusion. It's a trick played on you by your genes. 

I disagree, consciousness is independent from our genetic code (and brain), as it has been demonstrated experimentally that animal consciousness can survives a head transplant.

See: http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/798032/Neurosurgeon-bring-cryogenic-dead-BACK-TO-LIFE-brain-transplant

You do realize that a transplanted head still has a brain in it, right?

[smart]

You do realize that a transplanted head still has a brain in it, right?

That is irrelevant to the OP. The purpose of a head/brain transplant is to demonstrate the "atomic singularity" of human consciousness as a fundamental aspect of life. Without consciousness there is no life. The brain is merely a evolutionary quantum computer to transcode the atomic singularity of consciousness into neuroholographic memory.

[snorkfort]

You do realize that a transplanted head still has a brain in it, right?

That is irrelevant to the OP. The purpose of a head/brain transplant is to demonstrate the "atomic singularity" of human consciousness as a fundamental aspect of life. Without consciousness there is no life. The brain is merely a evolutionary quantum computer to transcode the atomic singularity of consciousness into neuroholographic memory.

Your statement is very unscientific and vague. Various forms of life do not have consciousness. E.g. plants, lichen, bacteria, fungi, etc. The difference between life and inorganic matter include factors like being made of cells, being able to reproduce, metabolism, homeostasis, growth, etc.

[smart]

Various forms of life do not have consciousness. E.g. plants, lichen, bacteria, fungi, etc.

Yeah right. What evidence do you have to prove this claim? The question whether plants are conscious is controversial.

See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4594572/

[snorkfort]

Various forms of life do not have consciousness. E.g. plants, lichen, bacteria, fungi, etc.

Yeah right. What evidence do you have to prove this claim? The question whether plants are conscious is controversial.

See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4594572/

It is not controversial at all, unless you completely redefine what we mean by "consciousness". Redefining commonly understood words to support a wacky argument is VERY controversial within science, as it is unscientific. We commonly understand consciousness to be associated with a brain and neuron activity. Plants do not have brains.