How can you explain what I am without the concept of God?
A question for atheists. How do you explain or try to explain consciousness? Thank you all so much for your answers!However, some users misunderstood me. By I, I didn't mean a person. I understand perfectly well that personality is an acquired thing, which is formed by the environment, culture, etc. By I, I mean the perceiver, the observer, if you know what I mean. There could be any other observer in this body, but in the end, I am the observer. This is what surprises me most and does not allow me to fully accept the materialistic worldview.
To explain a concept, you usually need some other concept. If it is also incomprehensible to someone for some reason, the third one.
Etc.
That is, the “I” can theoretically be explained either nonverbally, or by resting on something inexplicable (inexplicable), or by continuing your explanations indefinitely.
Accordingly, there are atheists who will simply remain silent or hit you with a stick in response to your question (at best; this will be “zen”).
Others can continue their explanations until you knock them out yourself, thus achieving enlightenment (a variant of infinity).
Finally, there are still those who will rely on something inexplicable. If they think it is inexplicable, there is nothing to stop you from calling it incomprehensible and transcendent God – and thus reach an agreement (unless there is a sad irrational conflict between you, as is usual).
However, many atheists are not so simple. For example, they may say that a given inexplicable concept is inexplicable precisely because there is no need to explain it. It is already clear. And the fact that it is not clear to you personally does not apply to the concept itself, it is your personal problems; lack of life experience, illness, or just guile.
These are normal atheists; you should not tease them in vain and push them to rash actions. And then in addition to the stick, there is still a lot of things.
There are much weirder atheists who recognize the inexplicable as only temporarily or locally inexplicable, that is, inexplicable at the present time or even in just this particular conversation specifically with you. Or unexplained yet, until science has explained it. Or never explained at all due to the limitations of the human mind. Or inexplicable in principle, but not because it is inexplicable, but because there is no way to explain it.
There are also atheists who deny the possibility of any explanation, including all previous ones, including their own; and even that the lack of the possibility of explanations explains the absence of themselves.
The last atheists are the most dangerous, it is better not to ask them questions. I don't know why; just believe me. This is true.
For me, as an atheist, the following is not clear in these matters::
I will start with the last question: how are the consciousness or Personality of a person related to the concept of “God”? And also what exactly does the author of the questions understand by the concept of “God”?! Finally, why is it necessary to separate the atheistic, that is, the scientific understanding or attempt to understand “consciousness” as such, from the religious understanding of the “soul” in the question of “consciousness”?!
Apparently, the author is familiar with the ancient Jewish fairy tale, where God, who, according to the then savage consciousness, created the world and man. Moreover, he “blew” the soul into a person. According to the questions presented, it is this “soul” from Jewish mythology that the author calls “consciousness”.
Then I don't understand exactly how to answer these questions: either in terms of the historical development of religious, and then scientific ideas about human consciousness; or with philosophical concepts of the soul, in which we can not do without analyzing the “soul” in other beliefs, for example: in Buddhism; or purely modern concepts and attempts to determine what “consciousness”is?!
I will still try to define what “consciousness” is. I will immediately note that the question of the exact definition of consciousness has not yet been fully resolved. Methodologically, we need to start with consciousness as such: whether plants and animals have consciousness… and what is the difference between their consciousness and human consciousness? But for the sake of brevity, we will consider only human consciousness.
It is established that a person's consciousness is a quality of his brain. As soon as the brain dies, or receives critical damage, the person's consciousness disappears. For example, there are some people whose brain is so damaged that the person no longer remembers anything, does not show any signs of consciousness, but performs purely physiological instinctive processes that support human life.
Brain cells are very sensitive to lack of oxygen. Without it, they begin to die off in an average of five minutes. This condition is called “clinical death”. If the oxygen supply is restored, the brain can function again and consciousness will return to the person. There are cases of longer clinical death, but they are usually associated with a decrease in the temperature of the dying person. For example, they saved a boy who fell through the ice and was in icy water for more than half an hour. However, a team of doctors managed to pump him out, that is, start the heart, and the boy's brain, as it turned out, was not damaged at all.
Consciousness is indivisible. But you can conditionally define its components.
First: memory. Studying the structure of the brain showed that there are areas when stimulated which a person recalled long-past times. This is obviously caused by the influence of electrical signals on the” cells ” of memory. However, it's not all that simple here.
Secondly, what is called a thought process occurs in the human brain, for which special cells – neurons-are responsible. In principle, these cells are present in other parts of the human body, but only in the brain their concentration reaches its maximum level.
It has become commonplace when the human brain is compared to a modern computer, which also has “operational” and “long-term” memory and a processor where data processing takes place. This analogy is extremely simplified and far from correct. Apparently, each brain cell is a “processor” and “memory” and something else that we do not yet know more precisely.
There are, however, extremely rare cases when some part of the brain was damaged, but the person retained all his memory and ability to think. But most often, even a small brain injury can sometimes cause severe consequences.
Science fiction writers even invented the exchange of “intelligence” either between people, or even between computer devices. But this is again a banal and rather primitive understanding of what is… human consciousness. Apparently, the “chemistry” of our brain cells is so unique and unrepeatable that it is impossible to separate “data” or “algorithms” from the physical structures and brain cells. Our Personality and our Consciousness are unique along with our body and brain.
How exactly “Consciousness” is formed and functions is one of the most interesting and important aspects of modern science. We are just on the threshold of this Knowledge. Psychologists and neuropsychiatrists have only slightly touched the mysteries of human consciousness. They have even developed and are developing a new language for understanding the processes of consciousness and mental activity of the brain! Such new knowledge does not fit even into their verbal atavisms of religious past ideas.
If by “atheist” you mean a person who does not believe in the “old man with a belt in heaven”, then I am one of them, and therefore I dare to answer.
I didn't dare answer for a long time, because I never considered myself an “atheist” in the sense of “denying the existence of God.”
If you don't think I'm an atheist enough to give my answer your full attention, you don't have to read it.
Consciousness is an infinite set of fixed information that a person (“I”) interacts with, through the mind and brain.
By “information” I mean “changes”.
Individual consciousness is discrete, divisible, and limited.
The mind can operate only with finite discrete sets, something continuous (infinitely divisible) and infinite is beyond its control.
With infinities, the mind doesn't know what to do.
Sleep is a reboot, and access to the Internet (connection to the unified consciousness) to update software, speaking in computer analogies. In a dream, there is also a “virus check “and, in parallel,” defragmentation of the hard disk”: laying out” on the shelves”, ordering the information accumulated during the day. Sometimes in a dream, solutions to previously set tasks come up, like searching for an answer on the Internet.
Continuing the computer analogy, the brain is all the hardware of a computer, and all the interfaces, the individual consciousness is a database on a hard disk, and the mind is software (software).
The soul-emotions is a power supply unit, a distributor of energy flows.
“I”, of course, is the “user” or observer, the owner of the machine.
Working model, according to my observations.
I'll give you some more examples.
Depression is a general slowing down of the entire brain by malware and unnecessary data in the individual consciousness, “information obesity”.
Manic state – giving out your data to fraudsters due to software errors or incorrect operation of the program due to data loss (“information exhaustion”).
Catatonic stupor – the computer freezes.
Schizophrenia – a hacker's remote access to your computer.
Dissociative disorder – remote access by multiple hackers to your computer.
The “beast” state is the loss of the operating system completely.
A materialist is a user who considers himself / herself to be a part of the hard disk, and his / her individual consciousness to be the allocations of this disk.
Idealist – a user who considers himself a database on a hard disk.
Megalomania – a user who barely knows how to use a computer, but considers himself a great programmer, and the rest of the “lamers”.
“By ' I' I mean 'perceiver', 'observer' if you know what I mean. In this body, there could be any other “observer”, but in the end, I “observe”.”
The fact is that outside of the genome and life experience, our ” I ” (observers, consciousness) are absolutely identical, because they are empty. One void is no different from another. But if one glass vessel is filled with water (say, atheism) and another with sand (say, theism), it will appear that the vessels are different, but in fact they differ only in filling. But the essence of a vessel is not what it is filled with, but that it is empty, so it can be filled with anything. So there is no “other”, no ” I ” and “not me” – all this is a filler, an illusion of the mind. But most of us have a hell of a time figuring it out. The filler gets in the way.
It is very simple : I, an atheist, live without God, he does not affect my actions, thoughts, life, or even the existence of my life in any way. Because there is not a single proof of the existence of God, the soul, the afterlife, etc. And there are fairy tales about the creation of the world . This is a departure from the main question: “The lack of evidence for the existence of God is a direct proof that he does not exist. There is no other way to prove what doesn't exist. There is no god, and there are religions that are based on the majority's fear of death. and a minority is adept at exploiting this fear.
I'm not an atheist, but I found the question interesting. Consciousness is the perception of oneself as a whole. Our body is an interaction of many systems consisting of organs, each of which performs its own function. Including our brain, which is entrusted with the control function. When we are aware of something, we combine the power of functioning of our organs, to some extent, to perform a single action. For example, if we decide to go or run, in our consciousness we connect the functions of the body to perform this action. There are also unconscious actions, such as breathing in a dream. And in psychiatry, they observe a split consciousness, when a person cannot subordinate his actions to a single goal.
If there is a fact of different expressions of consciousness, then in your consciousness you can develop or degrade. The development of consciousness is a reasonable behavior. And degradation of consciousness is damage to the mind. For example, you feel hungry and make a mental decision to eat. If you eat healthy food in the right amount for your body, then you will feel a variety of tastes and after a while a surge of vitality. From this, your consciousness embraces new impressions and is able to combine the greater power of functioning of the body to perform a certain action. Of course, at this moment your consciousness has improved. In your mind, you did the right thing! If you have eaten too much food that is not good for your body, then you have no new impressions, and your body's ability to live is reduced. At this point, your consciousness has degraded, and lost the power to subordinate the functions of your body to a single action. In your mind, you have experienced Mind damage!
In life, all processes are interconnected and subject to certain laws. The comprehension of any pattern by consciousness is knowledge. Therefore, knowledge is a force that leads to a greater result in life than ignorance. Ignorance itself is a damage to the mind, because it denies the existence of a pattern as such. For example, atheism is one of these mental disorders. An atheist, every day he observes the change of day and night, that is, the existence of a pattern that he cannot influence. Under the influence of the time of day, the atheist sleeps at night and stays awake during the day, because there is a biological pattern in his body. If at some point an atheist decides to set up an order for himself to stay awake at night and sleep during the day, then after some time he will get sick. So, an atheist cannot change the regularity of the functioning of his body with his consciousness. But with his consciousness, he tried to establish his own pattern, leading to the destruction of his consciousness, or damage to his mind. Thus, the essence of consciousness is to create a pattern. The atheist, in his damaged mind, creates a pattern, outside the field of the pattern created by the Creator, for the existence of this life. But this is not possible! In consciousness, it is reasonable to embrace the pattern of life established by God in order to receive a portion of His legacy or power.
Consciousness is not equal to “I”.
I am not your brain.
I am not a brain-driven person.
I – can't explain it in words, can't find it in books and lectures.
I – beyond the brain, is known by the person individually, through awareness.
Everything is elementary here. Consciousness is a product of brain activity. We, our personality, are our brain. This is understandable even from how various organic or physical brain damage can change our personality. And of course we must not forget that the human personality is formed by upbringing and culture in the broadest sense of the word. Man is not a given from birth, but an eternal becoming. Here it is appropriate to recall the cases of the so-called “Mowgli”. There is no human being outside the context of culture.
The concept of an Observer is completely incomprehensible to me.
But God does not explain this at all, but only adds questions.
The most famous “If God is the cause of everything, then what is the cause of God? And if God doesn't need a reason, why does the universe need one?”
Well, if something is basically impossible to know, then how can you be sure that it is God? And what kind of god, what religion?
There are many such explanations. Type in the search engine Subtle human bodies. If your observer (attention, assemblage point) is located in one of the two higher bodies, then you will be able to feel not only yourself, but also people related to the system of values and purpose. For larger areas of activity, you are interchangeable.
Bodies consist of waves of different frequency ranges. Each body permeates denser and denser bodies of lower levels.
Traditionally, the thesis “If I can think, then I existed when I thought. If I existed when I thought, then I definitely am and am what I know about him.” And everything.
the difficulty of the answer lies in the fact that……… fish being in the water, can talk about water as much as you want, breathing it….))))) I am only a reflection, the essence is imperfection, i.e. the set of tools and mechanisms for cognizing the environment (GOD) is not complete. And it is precisely in this imperfection that the desire for knowledge lies. First complicating (for understanding), then simplifying everything more and more. Initially, the” laws “are simple and also reflected by multiplying complexity, etc. Imperfection is life for us, and there is also a “passive aspect”)))) well, about that ……..
Subjective ))))
Your question is clear and it concerns every thinking person. The fact that a person has a brain and it processes all the received information is also understandable. But this does not remove the question: What is my self? Why, isn't the brain enough? The question was born out of many questions to which our brain cannot give exact answers, but gives rise to numerous theories and guesses. This raises the question of God as the master of all knowledge.
But there is also a Soul, undeservedly forgotten, which also lives forever. What for? What is the meaning of its eternal life and what does it have to do with man? Direct!!! More precisely, what does a person have to do with the Soul?
It is the Soul that is our true Self! A soul that lives in the spiritual world and comes to the physical world for its various incarnations with the sole purpose of learning in the eternal process of its perfection. It is for this purpose that it lives (not only in a person. Intelligent life is infinitely diverse) countless different lifetimes to learn the necessary lessons in the infinitely difficult process of learning and realizing the knowledge gained.
consciousness is a phenomenon of the psyche. the psyche is the process of functioning of the neural network of the brain. “God”, in turn, is one of the phenomena of consciousness. something like that.
And who does the respected person call atheists? Atheism is a vulgar concept that is derived from the concept of faith in God. If people can't define faith or God accurately enough, then how do you take the derivative of the sum of these vague concepts? Or do we enroll pilgrims with religious literature on the street as believers, and those to whom they turn-as non-believers? Or maybe we immediately perceive the person who raised this meaningless question as a believer? Or maybe they are driven by a very common fear of the unknown and just want to learn as much as possible about it, and this method seems to be the easiest and most accessible for them. The questioner is ready to be baptized, and pray, and take communion, there is still nothing to do, but at least it is not so scary.
One of the options.
The video shows the approximate appearance of complex organisms, here it's a big soup of elements. Which became more complicated, etc.
youtube.com/watch?v=xrk8TA5tp_k
God is Me. I am God. Personally, I feel that way. But only when I don't get poisoned. And I didn't try to make a mistake at all, sorry, it didn't work out. This is why I have such an experience of feeling God , but these Christian or Muslim gods are not for me, so I am an atheist
I don't know how much of an atheist I am (I try not to limit myself to anything, because my “I” can be anyone, it's just that noticing these “transitions” is extremely energy-consuming for my brain, and therefore it gave up trying) … But I can define consciousness:
Consciousness is a process that passes into a state.
Where or what do you think we were before we came into this body, before we became conscious of what we were? The answer is silence. You were the silence! You are space, and now you are seen as an image superimposed on space. Now you are identified with an image, but before consciousness you were really neither a space nor an image.
What is is God. Someone asks the question: “Is the world real?” The world itself is an illusion. But God as the world is real. As we progress, we discover that God, as well as the world, never existed. But for the sake of conversation, since God is also the universe, everything from the smallest microbe to the largest galaxy is God in Its manifestation. God is everything. Every leaf, every piece of clay, every star, every planet in itself has no basis for existence. Everything is there because God is there.
Think about it!!!
“and does not allow you to fully accept the materialistic worldview” – materialism is also a faith) Belief in atoms, protons, neutrons, etc. At the heart of all our knowledge is faith.
How to explain consciousness? Yes, at least like this: if we draw an analogy with a computer (and it is quite obvious), then all our attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, etc.are a kind of program. Now imagine that a program has been recorded on your laptop that can monitor the work of other programs, write logs, and in some cases edit these programs. And this program also likes to display “I am a person”, “laptop is me”, “I control my body”, ” I am conscious!”.
You can add functions to this program as you wish.
Where did it come from? Copied from another device (parents, environment, etc.).
Where did the first such program come from? For almost 3 million years, if at least 1 line of code was added with each generation – by our millennium, you will get a pretty decent code)
There is no need to invent a super-entity for this explanation.
And how it really was, we are unlikely to find out 🙂
By the way, if God created us, who created God?
The ” I ” is a set of neurons that interact with each other by means of connections and electrical impulses.The ” I ” is a common information field of exchange between neurons,a control program that allows this exchange to take place, a virtual environment of awareness of the cells of the body as a whole.Without it, it is impossible to effectively interact with the environment and the very survival of a huge colony of single-celled organisms, proudly called by science: “Man”!
I will not deny that consciousness has the property of subjectivity, “in the first person”. Moreover, I consider it a key property that implies, among other things, the integrity of consciousness.
However, the existence of the Self is far from obvious to me. In folk psychology and in a philosophy like Husserl's, the Ego plays a key role: The ego thinks thoughts, the ego feels sensations, and the Ego, like a homunculus, is a spectator in the Cartesian Theater.
At the same time, it is only obvious that some events are taking place: the flow of sensations, for example. It is not at all obvious that there is an act of sensation, nor is it at all obvious that there is a center from which intentions – the Ego-originate. All this is not present in the consciousness, but, as the philosopher Gilbert Ryle put it, systematically escapes.
Explain subjectivity simply from the way our perceptual information is processed. For example, things are perceived to be located in the space around the” center ” associated with the body: something on the right, something on the left, etc. Different modes of perception also seem to be localized in the body: tactile sense on the surface of the skin, proprioception inside the body. As a result, the model of the external world that is built up in the head is subjective, although there is no subject.
This is reinforced by the fact that in this model there is also a model of this non-existent subject: there is a set of information about goals, emotional reactions, etc.
I also recommend Metzinger's book “The Ego Tunnel”, where he proves that I am not, but there is a phenomenal ego model.
About consciousness without the Ego.
In philosophy, this concept is found, for example, as “self without Self” by F. Girenok. It's difficult, but scientific. True, Girenok is not an atheist.
The concept of consciousness is given a serious place in the philosophy of Buddhism – and this is a religion “without God”. You can read parables, especially Zen Buddhist ones, about pure consciousness and so on.
If we talk at the everyday level, then, in my understanding, the “I” formed by the impulses of desire is exposed to the built-in “algorithm” called the “Golden Principle of Morality”.
The PO itself can be formulated in a negative way: don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you, and in a positive way: do to others what you want them to do to you. The negative formulation is more ancient, and this “rule” arose independently in almost all ancient cultures. A positive formulation was voiced in Christianity. Huseynov considers both formulations to be equivalent, but I disagree. A negative formulation is passive, but it saves you from mistakes, and a positive one can cause “harm for good”, because of the incentive to act. It is this mechanism that causes a person's self-action, makes it possible to observe others(I) and oneself from the outside and thereby forms consciousness.
Probably, in general, so much without going into details.
There are several theories about this. One of them is that consciousness is a product of brain activity. This approach is common in the neuroscience community.
But there is another, in my opinion, deeper one. It consists in the fact that there is only Consciousness, and everything else is an appearance in it. This is a philosophical approach. For example, Zen and Advaita talk about this, plus quantum physics also comes to similar conclusions.
If we talk about the “I”, then it can either be equated with the ego, or, if we follow the philosophical concept, then to the formula “I-am-consciousness” Here it turns out that there is a certain original “I” and I am temporary, like a set of opinions about myself, a kind of costume.
In general, if the topic of consciousness is interesting, then it is best to turn to philosophy, where it is more fully revealed, the same Zen and Advaita. Because any scientific explanation for this phenomenon will be limited.
Consciousness is the property of highly organized matter to reflect the surrounding world and itself. I am not what I am, but who I am, that is, a person with a first name, last name, patronymic, parents, time and place of birth, external signs, character, etc.