34540Y139AttentionBrainConsciousDreamEarEyeFriends

Q&@ THIS HAS ALLOWED THE SCIENTISTS TO DETERMINE, FOR EXAMPLE, WHETHER A SEEMINGLY VEGETATIVE STROKE VICTIM HAS COMPLETELY LOST CONSCIOUSNESS, OR HAS MERELY LOST CONTROL OF HIS BODY AND SPEECH! If the patient's brain displays the telltale signatures of consciousness, he is probably conscious, even though he cannot move or speak. Indeed, doctors have recently managed to communicate with such patients using fMRI imagining. They ask the patients yes/no questions, telling them to imagine themselves playing tennis if the answer is yes, and to visualise the location of their home if the answer is no. The doctors began to observe how the motto cortex lights up when patients imagine playing tennis (meaning 'yes', whereas 'no' is indicated by the activation of brain areas responsible for spatial memory. This is all very well for humans, but what about computers? Since silicon-based computers have very different structures to carbon-based human neural networks, the human signatures of consciousness may not be relevant to them! We seem to be trapped in a vicious circle? Starting with the assumption that we can believe humans when they report that they are conscious, we can identify the signatures of human consciousness, and then use these signatures to 'prove' that humans are indeed conscious! But if an artificial intelligence self-reports that it is conscious, should we just believe it? So far, we have no good answer to this problem. Already thousands of years ago philosophers realised that there is no way to prove conclusively that anyone other than oneself hàs a mind. Indeed, even in the case of other humans, we just assume they have consciousness - we cannot know that for certain. Perhaps I am the only being in the entire universe who feels anything, and all other humans and animals are just mindless robots? Perhaps I am dreaming, and everyone I meet is just a character in my dream? Perhaps I am trapped inside a virtual world, and all the beings I see are merely simulations? According to current scientific dogma, everything I experience isthe result of electrical activity in my brain, and it should therefore be theoretically feasible to simulate an entire world that I could not possibly distinguish from the 'real' world. Some brain scientists believe that in the not too distant future, we shall actually do such things?! Well, maybe it has already been done - to you? For all you know, the year might be 2216 & you are a bored teenager immersed inside a 'virtual world' game that simulates the primitive and exciting world of the early 21st century!? Once you acknowledge the mere feasibility of this scenario, mathematics leads you to a very scary conclusion: since the is only one real world, whereas the number of potential virtual worlds is infinite, the probability that you happen to inhabit the sole real world is almost zero! None of our scientific breakthroughs has managed to overcome this notorious Problem of Other Minds. As far as Mor Chai Set Asih etceterara knows 'I' really actually 'remember' the original 'mother womb', innumerable experiences full of colors, sounds, changes, discoveries, dreams, books & melodies that continually intermix, seek each other, paint, imagine, want, fear, enjoy, form, reform & deform possibilities, mix and re-mix, consider, sit, sleep, walk, talk, cling to each other, tell stories, make journeys, swim, fly, create, doubt, share & compare every where all of the time?! Gods, angels, devils, plants, animals, flowers, tastes, forms, dances, songs, games, aims, searches & conclusions full of (im)possibilities, strange forms of awareness, care, share & bear! We are all vegetable and animal forms of life on earth from the very 'beginning' till 'the end': we don't know for sure, but dó like to 'eat & be eaten' (dis)believe & (re)consider? After all, what is life more (or less) than experiences, experiments, existences & 'disappearances'? Millions of years full of our families, friends, neighbours, enemies, dangers & enjoyments! To be or not to be, to be me or not to be me, to see or not to see, hear or not, move, like, love, hate, trade & go playing tender and crude forms of plants & animals, humans, gods & their/our 'business' that comes & goes in between birth and death that we were, are and will be? About 75 years of 'all that' with all its shades, nuances, colors, smells, sounds, visions & 'acceptances': I am all that and so much more and/or less! Part of all things that ever came into existence, appeared & disappeared, seemed & changes all of the time 'everywhere'...