When you see someone move their arm, the neurons for moving your own arm fire in your brain.
The implications of this for language and consciousness: we hear words and feel what the other person feels when they say the words to themselves.
Does this mean we our conscious of ourselves in the same way we are conscious of the feelings of others? That we feel what it is like to feel like ourselves!
Monday, January 4, 2010
sampling
Consciousness is a sampling of brain activity of manageable size so we can talk about it.
Language meant a limited repertoire of words with which to communicate. This forced the brain to simplify in order to communicate.
Which came first, consciousness or language? I imagine we spoke to others before we spoke to ourselves. In either case, consciousness would be a prerequisite. It's what we talk about. We could not talk about our "brain state:" it's too complex. But we can talk about our conscious thoughts; they're manageable.
We also need consciousness to imagine what the other person hears when we speak.
Shouldn't we say that we "feel" conscious rather than that we are conscious? And free.
Consciousness as a simulation, a simplified version of what's out there and in our brains.
Language meant a limited repertoire of words with which to communicate. This forced the brain to simplify in order to communicate.
Which came first, consciousness or language? I imagine we spoke to others before we spoke to ourselves. In either case, consciousness would be a prerequisite. It's what we talk about. We could not talk about our "brain state:" it's too complex. But we can talk about our conscious thoughts; they're manageable.
We also need consciousness to imagine what the other person hears when we speak.
Shouldn't we say that we "feel" conscious rather than that we are conscious? And free.
Consciousness as a simulation, a simplified version of what's out there and in our brains.
partial consciousness
What we call full consciousness is obviously only partial consciousness. Full consciousness of all brain activity would be overwhelming and useless. Compare our full vision to 360˚ vision.
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