Consciousness and The Interface Theory of Perception

Are you changing horses in midstream here? First the car kills 'you', then that was modified to it being the body which dies. It's fairly straightforward, being hit by a car can destroy physical things, whether it is another car which is destroyed, or a rather less substantial human body. There's no mystery there. The question is, do we identify with the body as being who we are? Even those blessed with almost perfect physical bodies still have an inner life which is in some way unrelated to that body, physical perfection doesn't tell us anything about the inner turmoil which can be raging within.

Why does the consciousness seem to short circuit and go haywire if its not created by the brain and your body eventually dies? Then again consciousness is energy also?
Are you saying when hit by the car, that "consciousness seem to short circuit and go haywire"? I'm not sure what you mean by that. Certainly NDE reports don't use such terminology, instead they express things in terms of a sudden lack of pain, greater clarity of thought, ... and a whole range of other concepts which don't seem 'haywire' but rather seem more lucid than usual.

I didn't word it right I was tired. Or maybe I can't convey what I was asking.

Basically wondering what happens to our awareness when we die. But it just brought a thought to me that maybe when we die our conscious mind dies, but our subconscious universal mind can possibly survive after death?
I guess my question was why does our awareness/consciousness seem so affected by the physical? As if it is possible the mind creates consciousness? For example I get hit in the head with a bat and I go in to a coma/ erratic thinking etc. That physical impact of the bat hitting my head makes me lose conscious awareness in the external world?
 
I didn't word it right I was tired. Or maybe I can't convey what I was asking.

Basically wondering what happens to our awareness when we die. But it just brought a thought to me that maybe when we die our conscious mind dies, but our subconscious universal mind can possibly survive after death?
I guess my question was why does our awareness/consciousness seem so affected by the physical? As if it is possible the mind creates consciousness? For example I get hit in the head with a bat and I go in to a coma/ erratic thinking etc. That physical impact of the bat hitting my head makes me lose conscious awareness in the external world?

In my opinion, we exist in a physical universe. The brain is a physical system. For consciousness to operate efficiently in a physical universe it must exist in a physical system, the brain. When you "lose" consciousness from a trauma I don't believe consciousness is completely lost, just suppressed.

However, I do believe that conscious entities can interact with the physical world (ghosts, hauntings, etc) just not efficiently.
 
I didn't word it right I was tired. Or maybe I can't convey what I was asking.

Basically wondering what happens to our awareness when we die. But it just brought a thought to me that maybe when we die our conscious mind dies, but our subconscious universal mind can possibly survive after death?
I guess my question was why does our awareness/consciousness seem so affected by the physical? As if it is possible the mind creates consciousness? For example I get hit in the head with a bat and I go in to a coma/ erratic thinking etc. That physical impact of the bat hitting my head makes me lose conscious awareness in the external world?

In my opinion, we exist in a physical universe. The brain is a physical system. For consciousness to operate efficiently in a physical universe it must exist in a physical system, the brain. When you "lose" consciousness from a trauma I don't believe consciousness is completely lost, just suppressed.

However, I do believe that conscious entities can interact with the physical world (ghosts, hauntings, etc) just not efficiently....just my thoughts on the matter.

How can consciousness interact with the physical?...I have no clue.
 
I didn't word it right I was tired. Or maybe I can't convey what I was asking.

Basically wondering what happens to our awareness when we die. But it just brought a thought to me that maybe when we die our conscious mind dies, but our subconscious universal mind can possibly survive after death?
I guess my question was why does our awareness/consciousness seem so affected by the physical? As if it is possible the mind creates consciousness? For example I get hit in the head with a bat and I go in to a coma/ erratic thinking etc. That physical impact of the bat hitting my head makes me lose conscious awareness in the external world?

Because 'your' brain *is* apparently required to experience 'this' everyday reality.

As no one actually knows why or how we are having these experiences. No one can actually say why, when you get hit on the head, you have the experiences (or not) that you do.

Nevertheless, it appears we are unable to maintain our everyday selves as an everyday system, if we are exposed to what we understand as more, or less energy than the sweet spot of energy we usually inhabit.

Understanding the world in terms of matter, energy, and spacetime is pretty damn good. We can use these regularities we observed in the past, to predict how things may turn out in the future. But these are still only a way of understanding 'something' else, and what that 'something' is, is probably part of the big questions.

Sometimes we get a little confused, and begin to think that our understanding *is* the 'something', but it's not, it's just our understanding, and not the 'something' itself.
 
However, I do believe that conscious entities can interact with the physical world (ghosts, hauntings, etc) just not efficiently.
This is an interesting comment - in that it triggered a train of thought for me.

We tend to assume that unlike those entities, we ourselves have no such difficulty. Seems obvious, doesn't it? However, in my view we operate in multiple modes, sometimes we operate on a kind of auto-pilot, even entire conversations or interactions with the world can take place without our conscious intention. The extent to which we are truly involved in our own lives can vary. This is perhaps the most important concept to try to understand. What is our "real self" and what is just the body on autopilot?

Again, from NDE accounts, as well as a sudden absence of pain, there can be a similar shift in perspective, where many everyday concerns fall away in importance. What is it which pulls some people back from the brink, when they are pulled strongly away from this life? Usually it is the thought of the need to care for one's children, or family, or some other concern for the well-being of others. But when we are living our everyday lives, do we maintain that same level of concern for others? Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I know I don't. It is easy to get caught up in all sorts of alternative priorities and lose sight of others. Here is where I'm suggesting that just like ghosts which apparently have difficulty interacting with the physical, getting our 'real self' to interact with this world can be a challenge for us too, even while we are 'here'. Does any of this make any sense - perhaps I understand what I mean , but I'm not sure I explained it very well.
 
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Sounds like Don Watson's "Theory of Enformed Systems."

http://hilgart.org/enformy/$wsr02.html

Cheers,
Bill
an excellent old-timey paper! Gary Schwartz has continued the work. Watson tried to use a new term to separate physical patterns of information from the organizational aspects of information, by calling the organizational component - enformation. Very thoughtful analysis follows, but the term never caught-on.
Then one morning about 15 years ago, (now 33 years ago) I awakened with another epiphany experience: There must exist a fundamental, conserved organizing principle—a capacity to organize, like energy, the capacity to perform work. This notion really excited me. I searched the literature trying to find out if anyone else had come up with this concept. But there was no mainstream literature at that time. For instance, David Bohm hadn't yet published his ideas about "active information" and "passive information." Instead, the ideas of self-awareness and life itself were dismissed as givens. They were considered fundamental to science, not subjects for scientific inquiry. So, I continued my lonely quest. D. Watson
http://hilgart.org/enformy/$wsr02.html#Abstract:
 
This is an interesting comment - in that it triggered a train of thought for me.

We tend to assume that unlike those entities, we ourselves have no such difficulty. Seems obvious, doesn't it? However, in my view we operate in multiple modes, sometimes we operate on a kind of auto-pilot, even entire conversations or interactions with the world can take place without our conscious intention. The extent to which we are truly involved in our own lives can vary. This is perhaps the most important concept to try to understand. What is our "real self" and what is just the body on autopilot?

Again, from NDE accounts, as well as a sudden absence of pain, there can be a similar shift in perspective, where many everyday concerns fall away in importance. What is it which pulls some people back from the brink, when they are pulled strongly away from this life? Usually it is the thought of the need to care for one's children, or family, or some other concern for the well-being of others. But when we are living our everyday lives, do we maintain that same level of concern for others? Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I know I don't. It is easy to get caught up in all sorts of alternative priorities and lose sight of others. Here is where I'm suggesting that just like ghosts which apparently have difficulty interacting with the physical, getting our 'real self' to interact with this world can be a challenge for us too, even while we are 'here'. Does any of this make any sense - perhaps I understand what I mean , but I'm not sure I explained it very well.

Definitely makes sense. I don't think that we ever lose the concern or care for others (at least most of us), it's just that we get preoccupied with the necessities to live and survive in the physical world. We only have so much mind share, and I think often times the 'real self' gets suppressed the more we worry about the physical necessities to live.
 
an excellent old-timey paper! Gary Schwartz has continued the work. Watson tried to use a new term to separate physical patterns of information from the organizational aspects of information, by calling the organizational component - enformation. Very thoughtful analysis follows, but the term never caught-on.

Where do you stand on the afterlife issues?
Consciousness
reality?

You guys are so damn smart, I need to catch up!
 
Where do you stand on the afterlife issues?
Consciousness
reality?

You guys are so damn smart, I need to catch up!
Not very smart, I just have been after this for a couple of decades. Working backwards - I think reality is open to being understood. And that the science is moving its long-term focus from physical processes to informational processes. Hence, my take is one of Informational Realism. (K. Sayre, L. Floridi). As a realist with a focus on pragmatic information science, I think that there is a lot of new stuff that is only now coming into focus.

Consciousness is a colloquial term and - in my humble opinion - gets in the way.

I have warranted belief that minds are active in an informational environment and can experience sensation outside of strictly biological activity.
 
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