idea of consciousness

Well this is one subject I have always tried to understand and I will try to uncover the mysteries and the words surrounding it through various works
In thi blog let us understand Subhas Kak
Scienti c attitudes towards consciousness have changed due to the recent
advances in neurophysiology and because modern physics and computer science
are confronted with the question of the nature of the observer. In many
ways, the study of consciousness is centre-stage in the discussions of modern
science2. On the other hand, a considerable part of Indian thought is devoted
to the question of consciousness. Although a part of this tradition deals with
philosophical issues, there are other aspects, as in yoga and tantra, that deal
with structural aspects. Books such as Yogavasis.t.ha and Tripurarahasya
claim to describe the nature of consciousness. The same is generally true
of various works on yoga, the upanishads, and even the earlier Vedic texts.
The task for the historian of science is to sketch an evolution of the ideas
related to consciousness and see how this sketch ts with the development of
other scienti c ideas.In the Vedic theory, which dates back3to at least 2000 BC, one views
awareness in terms of the re
ection that the hardware of the brain provides
to an underlying illuminating or awareness principle called the self. This
approach allows one to separate questions of the tools of awareness, such as
vision, hearing and the mind, from the person who obtains this awareness.
The person is the conscious self, who is taken to be a reservoir of in nite
potential. But the actual capabilities of the animal are determined by the
neural hardware of its brain. This hardware may be compared to a mirror.
The hardware of the human brain represents the clearest structure to focus
the self, which is why humans are able to perform in ways that other animals
cannot. Within the framework of this theory humans and other animals are
persons and their apparent behavioral distinctions arise from the increased
cloudedness of the neural hardware of the lower animals. Self-awareness is
an emergent phenomenon which is grounded on the self and the associations
stored in the brain.
From a modern scienti c viewpoint, living systems are dynamic structures,that are de ned in terms of their interaction with their environment. Their behavior is taken to re ect their past history in terms of instincts.
Living systems can also be de ned recursively in terms of living sub-systems.
Thus, for ants, one may consider their society, an ant colony, as a living superorganism; in turn, the ant's sub-systems are also living. Such a recursive
de nition appears basic to all life. Machines, on the other hand, are based
on networking of elements so as to instrument a well-de ned computing procedure
and they lack a recursive self de nition.
The reality of consciousness is evident not only from the fact that responses
are di erent in sleepwalking and awake states but from the considerable
experimentation with split-brain patients.4The experiments of Kornhuber5
indicate that it takes about eight-tenths of a second for the readiness potential
to build up in the brain before voluntary action begins. According to
Libet the mind extrapolates back in time by about half a second or so the
occurrence of certain events. So consciousness is not an epiphenomenon. As
it possesses a unity, it should be described by a quantum mechanical wavefunction.
Cognitive abilities arise from a continuing reflection on the perceived world and this question of reflection is central to the brain-mind problem, the measurement problem of physics, and the problem of determinism and free-will14. A dualist hypothesis15to explain brain-mind interaction or the process of reflection meets with the criticism that this violates the conservation laws of physics. On the other hand a brain-mind identity hypothesis,
with a mechanistic or electronic representation of the brain processes, does
not explain how self-awareness could arise. At the level of ordinary perception
there exists a duality and complementarity between an autonomous (and
reflexive) brain and a mind with intentionality.