In order to achieve a full understanding of the biological foundations of consciousness, it may take several centuries, but what do you think?
Thoughts are born well before they become conscious. As we never live in the moment but seconds later, thoughts are part of a journey as if we are at a bus stop and wait for the bus to come pick us up.
What part of the journey interests you?
Dear Bekzod Bekchanov
You ask: " In order to achieve a full understanding of the biological foundations of consciousness, it may take several centuries, but what do you think? "
I think it depends. If you are thinking in terms of the physiology of the brain, I could well agree with you. BUT, really: NO, not centuries, not even decades.
I have no doubt there could be a good empirical science of behavior patterns PER SE (i.e."just behaviors" and that is all). This aspect of biological functioning (behavior patterns and patternings of such patterns) showed a good start in the 70s : it was called ethology; but unfortunately ethology is no longer properly understood or viewed (e.g. there is a common belief that ethology has LESS to do with learning than other approaches BUT that is demonstrably FALSE -- IN FACT, just the opposite is true: the more understanding we could get via just discovering (and empirically well-grounding) behavior patterns ("just 'behaviors'"),THE MORE WE WOULD FIND "learning" and this would be REAL learnings and be of essentially different qualitative types of learning and not some artificial and basically fictitious ubiquitous few "types of learning" now imagined; the ONLY learnings now imagined and seen properly are the simple types of associative learning (sensitization, habituation, and at a cruder level of understanding: classical conditioning and operant conditioning); the others have no clear empirical bases (they are very bad science and, actually NOT SCIENCE).
If we study behavior patterns and patterning well and have all our concepts well-founded or well-grounded as/or as connected-to (and, minimally, at LEAST in their inception SEEN, starting with) DIRECTLY OBSERVABLE OVER BEHAVIOR PATTERNS (basically the same definition of good empiricism is all decent science), MUCH advancement (and continuing advancement) of understanding could occur. But, we first have to rediscover the behavior science that won the Nobel Prize in 1973 ; IT IS THAT "biology of behavior" I have just described. We now basically do not know it.
Dear @Holly B. F. Warren
the first part, how did we get on the bus? ) how we decide to choose this bus ? why? where are we going to ?
Dear @Brad Jesness
but we're not talking about behavior, it's biology, maybe religion? Who knows what inspiration angels think Newton also created the theory of gravity when it hit apples, and why it didn't fly to heaven. Or did I write about a Shakespeare Hamlet and create dramas using bio physiological processes in his brain? The question is not in behavior or science or in the study of it. question is, can we handle it? and go to another step of evolution.
This thought might be helpful:
„Neurons in our brain act as individual agents, each one releasing particular neurotransmitters from specific dendrites in response to those that it, in turn, had received from other neurons. Thinking is an emergent property of these neurons. No one neuron can think a thought, but many neurons, each one following local rules, can think about phage assembly.“ Merry Youle, Thinking like a phage
Dear Bekzod Bekchanov
you are on the bus. You travel through your consciousness constantly. Which bus? Which path are you pursuing? What though are you working on? Where is it taking you?
Who are you sitting next to? When do you ring the bell?
Thoughts by free choice lead to free minds and markets=free societies.
Thoughts born in unfreedom of the human mind, lead to serfdom.
Our mind is a formidable jailer.
The moment a thought is born, within milliseconds it leads to a feeling about the thought. This feeling may be either positive or negative. This is the construct in cognitive behavioral psychology or RET
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