A sef-Aware Digital Computer?

 

 

In the last few years, scientists have used new scanning techniques to see which part of the brain "lights up" when you listen to music, read a book or recall a buried memory.

They have even uncovered neuronal circuits involved in mathematical computations.

The brain appears to be nothing else but a biological computer.

So where in this neurological wiring is the source of self awareness, of consciousness is the question being addressed by neuro-scientists, I am told.

In "The Astonishing Hypothesis", Francis Crick- the co-discover of the double Helical structure of DNA states

"You, your joys, your sorrows, your memories, your ambitions, your sense of personal identity, your free will are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules".

This is very interesting.
The end -result of that direction by science seems to be the creation of a Prozac for manipulating the neurons to give a "happy" feeling.

Who knows you may soon get a Prozac for enlightenment. LOL

This is interesting because for centuries, sages kept on saying you are not your experiences.

The seen is not the se-er.

Science appears to be arriving at this point but appears to be veering towards manipulation so that only "welcome" experiences take place.

Oh Man, your heights of ecstasies and depths of sorrows are just a play of neurons.

What a let down!


Let's walk the path science has taken/is taking, a bit further...

It appears, not too difficult for science to imagine and map out the billions of brain cells trading signals the process of processing the information.
There are circuits I am told for detecting patterns in the light that falls on the retina, circuits for teasing the phonemes of language from vibrations of sound.

From all these information the brain builds models of the world.

So why not models of one's own behaviour?

Why not models of self awareness?

Why not, what Daniel Dennet in his "Consciousness Explained" describes "a Joycean machine"?

The implication being that there is no reason why a properly programmed digital computer couldn't be made equally aware.

Very interesting where science is heading towards.

Is self awareness a description of the state where one is aware of something?

Is Consciousness about being conscious of 'something"?

What happens if there is no 'something"?

Would "one" not be?

One is aware one is alive.

How?
What parameters by which the neurons process what information and arrives at that conclusion?

Could a computer not be able to do that?

An argument given would be that a computer cannot do anything for which it is not programmed, ergo is limited by the awareness level of the programmer.

In what way is the human being different?
We do not go beyond our thoughts (our known) which emanates from our conditionings (the bag of knowns).

Normally we are our memories, are we not?
What happens if memory is kept aside?
Is consciousness also kept aside simultaneously?

Is this the consciousness, the awareness that sages down the history have talked about?

Or is consciousness really something, irrespective of memory?

A sense of presence, which does not depend on an "other", in order to be?