Camp Statement History

Statement :


As we are all aware, a biologist's assertion that pain 'is' the firing of C-Fibre neurones in the brain is an erroneous one. It does not in any way explain the sensation of pain; I may have never felt pain in my life, and upon having heard this assertion I would be no more enlightened as to how it really felt. This is one of the core issues of the philosophy of mind: the idea that there is a certain qualitative aspect of feelings and sensations that is not captured merely by descriptions of their biological cause. An easy to understand example of this is thought; while we know that thought is made up of various electrical impulses within the brain, it is clear that there is some dichotomy between these electrical impulses and the specific thought content which they entail, that is, what you're actually thinking. The issue the theory addresses is this one: what exactly is this qualitative aspect?
Thomas Nagel, in his 'What is it like to be a bat?' famously concluded that with the current model of understanding the universe we would never be able to objectively quantify true conscious experience as it is, by its nature, a subjective thing. The more objective of an explanation of the consciousness we attain, he claims, the further away we are from its essence, which is of subjectivity. The study of epistemology, on the other hand has shown us that there is next to nothing in this world which we can consider to be objective fact, showing that everything that is held in the mind is entirely subjective, including any knowledge or sensation of the world around us. The only exception to this, as Descartes shows, is the knowledge of the existence mind itself, for to deny its existence would be a self-contradiction as one would have to have a mind in order to do so. In each case, the two philosophers are clearly referring to two different levels (or more accurately, types) of objectivity. The reason I mention these points is because many see the ultimate goal of the philosophy of mind as being to objectively quantify the consciousness, and I wish to dispel this notion. Nagel's argument is wrong as far as I can see, because the same problem that exists with the consciousness itself from his description exists with any aspect of experience. Any aspect of experience is, like the consciousness itself, private to each person who experiences it. And, as with consciousness, we are not given a full description of how a given aspect seems to another person by its mere linguistic description. Take the example of the age old problem 'How do I know for sure that objects we both describe as red do not appear to me as objects we both describe as green appear to you?'. This is a clear example of how language does not truly objectively convey aspects of experience. Despite this, colour is something which Nagel would have probably have identified as being objective but he didn't think that consciousness itself would be able to achieve this degree of objectivity. It is clear however, that colour and other aspects of experience which are typically described as 'objective' are really no more so than the consciousness itself. The point here is that if you consider the likes of colour to be an objective descriptor at all, then you will find we already have an objective way of describing the consciousness in words and phrases like 'sad' or 'angry' or 'in pain'. And, since Descartes shows, through his cogito, that the only thing which is truly objective (that is, unsusceptible to doubt) is the existence of the conscious mind, it is unavoidable to conclude that we already have as objective an account of the consciousness as we ever will have.
Subjectivity versus objectivity aside, as I said, I'm now going to try and show exactly what the consciousness is and how it fits into the world around us.
The concept of dimensional reality will no doubt be known to most reading this, but there are those who may believe that a dimension is essentially a universe, hence the large amount of reference to an 'alternate' dimension in popular culture. Bluntly put, however, what I mean here when I say dimension could really be seen as being synonymous with 'aspect' (indeed, anyone familiar with Spinoza will be aware of the parallels between his theory of mind and my own). The first 3 dimensions then, are the aspect of an object to which we most commonly relate, that is, its physical structure or place in the world. Thanks to Einstein we now know that time is the 4th dimension, however, such could have been deduced without abstract mathematics using some very simple logic.
-An entity cannot rationally described to be part of some group or category if it is not at least compatible with the typical descriptors of that group (example, try to find a mammal that does not lactate).
-Time is not compatible with the typical descriptors of the first three dimensions (It does not have a breadth, height, or width).
-It can therefore not rationally be described as being within the first three dimensions.
-This being the case, and with Occam's razor in hand, time should be considered to be the 4th dimension.
If one looks, a similar problem can be seen with the consciousness and the currently described dimensions.
One can say serotonin concentration in the brain affects moods, or one can say the amount of time a particular concentration of serotonin last determines the lasting period of a particular mood. One can also say that the air resistance of an object determines how long it will take to fall. And yet, giving precise details of an object's shape and relative air resistance, no matter how comprehensively, cannot explain directly how long an object will take to fall. We may infer that data from calculations, but in describing the length of flight we do not invoke details of shape and size - we talk about specific lengths of time; in other words, revert to another dimensional plane (as shown in the above syllogism). In the same way as air resistance does not tell of flight length, brain chemistry does not tell of emotion: it only allows one to infer the emotion occurring - and to explain that emotion we revert to different language; no longer talking of concentrations and locations - we talk of sadness or happiness, elation or pleasure, or any other emotion, and we talk of those emotion's strengths.
These emotions are the current objective standard by which we can comprehend how another human being is feeling, and yet, they are so rough, imprecise and lacking in standardisation that if the same treatment were given to time no one would ever get anything done. I feel my theory should give us a starting point for fixing this issue, as well as answering questions about the nature of qualia.
It goes as follows:
-An entity cannot rationally describe to be part of some group or category if it is not at least compatible with the typical descriptors of that group.
-Consciousness/qualia is not compatible with the typical descriptors of the first 4 dimensions (see above example).
-It can therefore not rationally be described as being within the first 4 dimensions.
-This being the case, and with Occam's razor in hand, consciousness/qualia should be considered the 5th dimension.
This makes perfect sense; while other theories contrive to squeeze the square peg of the qualitative consciousness into the round hole of the first 3 dimensions, boggling our minds in the process, ours accepts their distinctness and provides for them their own niche in which they are liberated to be what they are.
The first objection to this theory that I have thought of is that if it is indeed the case then all objects must have a consciousness, e.g. thermometers must have a sense of temperature, clocks must have a sense of the passage of time etc. My first response is the obvious fact that we in our brains have a vast, complicated, but ultimately structured, network of thought, memory, vision and all the senses that other objects, such as thermometers simply do not. We couldn't feel heat without nerves, so what's so special about thermometers that they can? None, because they can't. I see the 5th dimension as requiring a degree of structured complexity to come through as consciousness, because as we acknowledge, the loss of an aspect of the brain's complexity, such as losing the part of your brain that deals with vision, results in a reduction of consciousness (the consciousness of sight). The proper (fancy) response to this argument is well documented and was meted out by Searle in a rebuttal to one of the responses to his famous Chinese Room experiment. The response to which I am referring is the conjunction fallacy; the idea that any conjunction or pattern of objects or events can form an intelligent system; if a thermometer can feel heat then perhaps, if enough willing participants could be found, we could recreate a human consciousness simply by having people stand in particular patterns which represent the cell structure of the human brain. This idea is obviously absurd, and yet, what is the brain, if not a conjuncted system? What is so special about the cellular level connections of the brain that make them more capable of creating consciousness than a group of people holding hands, or indeed a highly advanced computer program, for that matter? The answer is of course, nothing. What are we left with then?
Before I move on to answer that question I must clarify something. One thought which may have been ringing alarm bells in your head (as it certainly did mine for many a headache inducing night of thought) is this 'Why is there an entire dimension, presumably created at the big bang, which only ever represents itself in meaningful emotions and sensations? There is no place for such intentionality in the impersonal cosmos science has shown us to live in.' My answer to this is simple; these qualia have no meaning at all, not on their own – they merely appear to because they are apprehended by other brain events which have their own qualia. That is, they seem to have meaning because, for example, while we may have a sensation of pleasure in our brain, the rest of our brain is considering this sensation (or at least, the intellectual part is, the part that will later go on to ask the above question) and this 'considering' has its own qualitative character. An analogy to help explain this is to imagine a bundle of sticks, stacked, without the use of glue or any adhesive, into the shape of a pyramid. Imagine each stick as a particular qualia. In this analogy, each stick only has value as it relates to the whole pyramid - without the other sticks, we would just consider it an ordinary stick, and yet alongside the other sticks, it has a purpose and meaning, and that is roughly how I imagine qualia get their meaning, that is, in conjunction with all the other qualia.
And now for that earlier question about the specialness of the brain and the seemingly untenable problem which it creates. My answer to it however, is quite simple and already has a small following of people who have deduced it, for other reasons of course. It is the electro-magnetic field. It represents the brain's complexity, the brain's bundle of sticks, if you will, quite sufficiently (therefore allowing for the consciousness) and it does not suffer from the problem of conjunction as it is one, whole, analogue entity, not a collection of several arbitrarily connected atoms or cells.

Statement :

A biologist's assertion that pain is the firing of C-Fibre neurones in the brain does not in any way explain the sensation of pain; why or how it occurs, or even what it is.
This is one of the core issues of the philosophy of mind; the idea that there is a certain qualitative aspect of feelings and sensations that is not captured by mere descriptions of their biological cause. An easy to understand example of this is thought; while we know that thought is made up of various electrical impulses within the brain, it is clear that there is some dichotomy between these electrical impulses and the specific thought content which they entail. The issue that my theory addresses is this one: what exactly is this qualitative aspect?


Thomas Nagel in his 'What is it like to be a bat?' famously concluded that the current model of understanding the universe would never be able to objectively quantify true conscious experience as it is, by its nature, a subjective thing. The more objective of an explanation of the consciousness we attain, he claims, the further away we are from its essence, which is of subjectivity.
To an extent, I agree, but I also disagree.
The study of epistemology has shown us that there is next to nothing in this world which we can consider to be objective fact, showing that everything that is held in the mind is entirely subjective, including any knowledge or sensation of the world around us. The only exception to this, as Descartes shows, is the knowledge of the existence mind itself, for to deny its existence would be a self-contradiction as one would have to have a mind in order to do so, which would of course, defeat the purpose of denying it.
And so, by the argument that says we cannot have objective descriptors of the consciousness, we can also infer that nothing should have any kind of objective description – and yet we ascribe such descriptions readily. Of course it would be pertinent to point out that such descriptions are not really objective, more, subjective descriptions that are generally agreed upon, but we settle for these descriptions because we can infer by analogy what is being referred to by them and in the end they gets us by. For those looking for an objective definition of the consciousness that goes deeper than that you might as well stop reading; Cartesian doubt, which removes the certainty from everything we experience, really just refers to the consciousness. The consciousness is just basically an umbrella term for all that we experience and in particular its qualitative aspect: Cartesian doubt says that all that we experience is subjective, therefore the consciousness is subjective.
So, to summarize: when we try to objectively describe any quantity we are merely conveying our subjective viewpoint of it in a universally agreeable manner, and two, more importantly, when we describe a physical quantity, as far as we can know for certain, we are really just describing a part of our consciousness.
And to conclude on the note of subjective and objective descriptions of the consciousness: in order to proceed with answering the question I originally set out to answer, I must assume the existence of an objective reality, however this objective reality is the reality of that which we perceive - the reality of that which we sense, as in within the consciousness, is strictly subjective. Despite this, as we use analogy to infer the objective reality of the external world(i.e. outside of an organism's body) from descriptions of sense reality(e.g. the flower I am observing is red), I feel that it is perfectly suitable that we use analogy to infer the objective reality of the internal world (i.e. inside an organism's brain) from descriptions of sense reality (e.g. I am sad, which allows us to infer that the speaker's brain is objectively in a state which is conducive to sadness).
In other words, by a certain loose definition of objectivity, we already have objective descriptions of the consciousness, but by a stricter definition we have an objective description of nothing.


Subjectivity versus objectivity aside, as I said, I'm now going to try and find out what the consciousness is and how it fits into the world around us.




The concept of dimensional reality will no doubt be known to most reading this, but there are those who believe that a dimension is essentially a universe, hence the large amount of reference to an 'alternate' dimension in popular culture. Bluntly put, however, what I mean here when I say dimension could really be seen as being synonymous with 'aspect' (indeed, anyone familiar with Spinoza will be aware of the parallels between his theory of mind and my own).
The first 3 dimensions then, are the aspect of an object to which we most commonly relate, that is, its physical structure or place in the world. Thanks to Einstein we now know that time is the 4th dimension, however, such could have been deduced without abstract mathematics using some very simple logic.


-An entity cannot rationally described to be part of some group or category if it is not at least compatible with the typical descriptors of that group.


-Time is not compatible with the typical descriptors of the first three dimensions.


-It can therefore not rationally be described as being within the first three dimensions.


-This being the case, and with Occam's razor in hand, time should be considered to be the 4th dimension.


The second premise of the above argument is fairly clear, as one cannot describe the passage of time in terms of length, breadth, height, weight or energy, and these are the core underlying principles of the first 3 dimensions.


If one looks, a similar problem can be seen with the consciousness and the currently described dimensions.


One can say serotonin concentration in the brain affects moods, or one can say the amount of time a particular concentration of serotonin last determines the lasting period of a particular mood. One can also say that the air resistance of an object determines how long it will take to fall.
And yet, giving precise details of an object's shape and relative air resistance, no matter how comprehensively, cannot explain how long an object will take to fall. We may infer that data from calculations, but in describing the length of flight we do not invoke details of shape and size - we talk about specific lengths of time; in other words, revert to another dimensional plane (as shown in the above syllogism). In the same way as air resistance does not tell of flight length, brain chemistry does not tell of emotion: it only allows one to infer the emotion occurring - and to explain that emotion we revert to different language; no longer talking of concentrations and locations - we talk of sadness or happiness, elation or pleasure, or any other emotion, and we talk of those emotion's strengths.


These emotions are the current (loosely) objective standard by which we can comprehend how another human being is feeling, and yet, they are so rough, imprecise and lacking in standardisation that if the same treatment were given to time no one would ever get anything done. I feel my theory should give us a starting point for fixing this issue, as well as answering questions about the nature of qualia.


It goes as follows:


-An entity cannot rationally described to be part of some group or category if it is not at least compatible with the typical descriptors of that group.
-Consciousness/qualia is not compatible with the typical descriptors of the first 4 dimensions (see above example).


-It can therefore not rationally be described as being within the first 4 dimensions.


-This being the case, and with Occam's razor in hand, consciousness/qualia should be considered the 5th dimension.


This makes perfect sense; while other theories contrive to squeeze the square peg of the qualitative consciousness into the round hole of the first 3 dimensions, boggling our minds in the process, my own accepts their distinctness and provides for them their own niche in which they are liberated to be what they are.


I don't want to come across as some neo/pseudo-scientific cook here, so at this point I feel compelled to remind my readers that I have demonstrated in a thoroughly logical fashion that the consciousness cannot be described in terms of the first 4 dimensions this isn't something I have just assumed in order to pursue a dogmatic belief that consciousness is an expression of the 5th dimension. As far as I can see all you need do is accept my premises in order to accept my conclusion, and if there are any premises that you feel are worthy of contention, please indicate this to me so that I can either see the flaw of my thinking or clarify the truth of it too you.


The first objection to this theory that I have thought of is that if it is indeed the case then all objects must have a consciousness, e.g. thermometers must have a sense of temperature, clocks must have a sense of the passage of time etc. My first response is the obvious fact that we in our brains have a vast, complicated, but ultimately structured, network of thought, memory, vision and all the senses that other objects, such as thermometers simply do not. We couldn't feel heat without nerves, so what's so special about thermometers that they can? None, because they can't. I see the 5th dimension as requiring a degree of structured complexity to come through as consciousness, because as we acknowledge, the loss of an aspect of the brain's complexity, such as losing the part of your brain that deals with vision, results in a reduction of consciousness (the consciousness of sight).
The proper (fancy) response to this argument is well documented and was meted out by Searle in a rebuttal to one of the responses to his famous Chinese Room experiment. The response to which I am referring is the conjunction fallacy; the idea that any conjunction or pattern of objects or events can then form an intelligent system; if a thermometer can feel heat then perhaps, if enough willing participants could be found, we could recreate a human consciousness simply by having people stand in particular patterns which represent the cell structure of the human brain. This idea is obviously absurd, and yet, what is the brain, if not a conjuncted system? What is so special about the cellular level connections of the brain that make them more capable of creating consciousness than a group of people holding hands, or a highly advanced computer program, for that matter? The answer is of course, nothing.
What are we left with then?


Before I move on to answer that question I must clarify something. One thought which may have been ringing alarm bells in your head (as it certainly did mine for many a headache inducing night of thought) is this 'Why is there an entire dimension, presumably created at the big bang, which only ever represents itself in meaningful emotions and sensations? There is no place for such intentionality in the impersonal cosmos science has shown us to live in.'
My answer to this is simple; these qualia have no meaning at all, not on their own – they merely appear to because they are apprehended by other brain events which have their own qualia. That is, they seem to have meaning because while we may have a sensation of pleasure in our brain, the rest of our brain is considering this sensation (or at least, the intellectual part is, the part that will later go on to ask the above question) and this 'considering' has its own qualitative character. An analogy to help explain this is to imagine a bundle of sticks, stacked, without the use of glue or any adhesive, into the shape of a pyramid. Imagine each stick as a particular qualia.
In this analogy, each stick only has value as it relates to the whole pyramid - without the other sticks, we would just consider it an ordinary stick, and yet alongside the other sticks, it has a purpose and meaning, and that is roughly how I imagine qualia get their meaning, that is, in conjunction with all the other qualia. I know it's not the best of explanations, but it's all I've got for now.


And now for that earlier question (You know, the one about conjunction and all that?), and the seemingly untenable problem which it creates. My answer to it however, is quite simple and already has a small following of people who have deduced it, for other reasons of course. It is the electro-magnetic field. It represents the brain's complexity, the brain's bundle of sticks, if you will, quite sufficiently (therefore allowing for the consciousness) and it does not suffer from the problem of conjunction as it is one, whole, analogue entity, as opposed to a collection of several arbitrarily connected atoms or cells.

Statement :
Dualists rightly my opinion say that a biologist's assertion that pain is the firing of C-Fibre neurones in the brain does not in any way explain the sensation of pain; why or how it occurs, or even what it is. However as we all know the alternative to this has its flaws, hence the seemingly intractable gap between dualism and monism of the consciousness. My theory on the consciousness is an attempt not only to bridge this gap but solve the problem of qualitative experience once and for all.
A dualist might invoke the soul or some kind of spiritual plane to explain the consciousness. I, more logically as we will see, posit another dimension. How is this any more likely than a soul? Surely this is just as insubstantiable? In fact it isn't and I shall attempt to show this.
Before proceeding there are a few things I should probably clarify, as my last version of this statement was poorly written and badly structured - in many ways I have to say I marvelled at the fact that it was understood by anyone. This time round I want to make things more clear, and I'll star by explaining what I mean when I say 'dimension'.
The concept of dimensional reality will no doubt be known to most reading this, but there are those who believe that a dimension is essentially a universe, hence the large amount of reference to an 'alternate' dimension in popular culture. Bluntly put, however, what I mean here when I say dimension could really be seen as being synonymous with 'aspect' (indeed, anyone familiar with Spinoza will be aware of the parallels between his theory of mind and my own). The first 3 dimensions then, are the aspect of an object to which we most commonly relate, that is, its physical structure or place in the world. Thanks to Einstein we now know that time is the 4th dimension, however, such could have been deduced without abstract mathematics using a similar logic to that of my own in deducing qualia as products of the 5th dimension;
The concept of time is not adequately described by using terminology of the first three dimensions. It is therefore not of those dimensions. In conclusion, it shall now be referred to as 'The 4th Dimension'.
This is essentially the core logic behind my own theory, as shown:
The concept of consciousness (qualia) is not adequately described by the first 4 dimensions
Despite the fact that I am trying to clean up this camp statement, I did an example in my previous version which I was rather proud of and think is worth putting in here as it goes some way to proving the truth of this premise:

• I can say serotonin concentration in the brain affects moods, or we can say the amount of time a particular concentration of serotonin last determines the lasting period of a particular mood. I can also say that the air resistance of an object determines how long it will take to fall. Giving precise details of an object's shape and relative air resistance, however, will not explain how long an object will take to fall. We may infer that data from calculations, but in describing the length of flight we do not invoke details of shape and size - we talk about specific lengths of time; in other words, revert to another dimensional plane. In the same way as air resistance does not tell of flight length, brain chemistry does not tell of emotion: it only allows one to infer the emotion occurring - and to explain that emotion we revert to different language; no longer talking of concentrations and locations - we talk of sadness or happiness, elation or pleasure, or any other emotion, and we talk of those emotion's strengths.*

The concept of consciousness is therefore not of those dimensions. In conclusion, it shall now be referred to as 'The 5th Dimension'.
There are however, problems with the idea of a 5th dimension consciousness, ones which I intend to address.
The first one is that if this is this case then all objects must have a consciousness, e.g. thermometers must have a sense of temperature, clocks must have a sense of the passage of time etc. My first response is the obvious fact that we in our brains have a vast, complicated, but ultimately structured, network of thought, memory, vision and all the senses that other objects, such as thermometers simply do not. We couldn't feel heat without nerves, so what's so special about thermometers that they can? None, because they can't. I see the 5th dimension as requiring a degree of structured complexity to come through as consciousness, because as we acknowledge, the loss of an aspect of the brain's complexity, such as losing the part of your brain that deals with vision, results in a reduction of consciousness (the consciousness of sight). The proper (fancy) response to this argument is well documented and was meted out by Searle in a rebuttal to one of the counter arguments against his famous Chinese Room experiment. The response to which I am referring is the conjugation fallacy; the idea that any conjunction or pattern of objects or events can then form an intelligent system; if a thermometer can feel heat then perhaps, if enough willing participants could be found, we could recreate a human consciousness simply by having people stand in particular patterns which represent the cell structure of the human brain. This idea is obviously absurd, and yet, what is the brain, if not a conjugated system? What is so special about the cellular level connections of the brain that make them more capable of creating consciousness than a group of people holding hands, or a highly advanced computer program, for that matter? The answer is of course, nothing. What are we left with then?
Before I move on to answer that question I must clarify something. One thought which may have been ringing alarm bells in your head is this 'Why is there an entire dimension, presumably created at the big bang, which only ever represents itself in meaningful emotions and sensations? There is no place for such intentionality in the impersonal cosmos science has shown us to live in.' My answer to this is simple; these qualia have no meaning at all, not on their own – they merely appear to because they are apprehended by other brain events which have their own qualia. That is, they seem to have meaning because while we may have a sensation of pleasure in our brain, the rest of our brain is considering this sensation (or at least, the intellectual part is, the part that will later go on to ask the above question) and this 'considering' has its own qualitative character. An analogy to help explain this is to imagine a bundle of sticks, stacked, without the use of glue or any adhesive, into the shape of a pyramid. Imagine each stick as a particular qualia. In this analogy, each stick only has value as it relates to the whole pyramid - without the other sticks, we would just consider it an ordinary stick, and yet alongside the other sticks, it has a purpose and meaning, and that is roughly how I imagine qualia get their meaning, that is, in conjunction with all the other qualia. I know it's not the best of explanations, but it's all I've got for now.
And now for that earlier question (You know, the one about conjugation and all that?), and the seemingly untenable problem which it creates. My answer to it however, is quite simple and already has a small following of people who have deduced it, for other reasons of course. It is the electro-magnetic field. It represents the brain's complexity, the brain's bundle of stick if you will, quite sufficiently and it does not suffer from the problem of conjugation as it is one, whole, analogue entity.
I was never very big on conclusions and it shows, but I hope that I have provided a more concise, readable, and hopefully intellectually fulfilling read.

Statement :
Dualists rightly my opinion say that a biologist's assertion that pain is the firing of C-Fibre neurones in the brain does not in any way explain the sensation of pain; why or how it occurs, or even what it is.
However as we all know the alternative to this has its flaws, hence the seemingly intractable gap between dualism and monism of the consciousness.
My theory on the consciousness is an attempt not only to bridge this gap but solve the problem of qualitative experience once and for all.

A dualist might invoke the soul or some kind of spiritual plane to explain the consciousness. I, more logically as we will see, posit another dimension. How is this any more likely than a soul? Surely this is just as insubstantiable? In fact it isn't and I shall attempt to show this.


Before proceeding there are a few things I should probably clarify, as my last version of this statement was poorly written and badly structured - in many ways I have to say I marvelled at the fact that it was understood by anyone. This time round I want to make things more clear, and I'll star by explaining what I mean when I say 'dimension'.
The concept of dimensional reallity will no doubt be known to most reading this, but there are those who believe that a dimension is essentially a universe, hence the large amount of refference to an 'alternate' dimension in popular culture. Bluntly put, however, what I mean here when I say dimension could really be seen as being synonymous with 'aspect' (indeed, anyone familiar with Spinoza will be aware of the parallels between his theory of mind and my own). The first 3 dimensions then, are the aspect of an object to which we most commonly relate, that is, its physical structure or place in the world. Thanks to Einstein we now know that time is the 4th dimension, however, such could have been deduced without absract mathematics using a similar logic to that of my own in deducing qualia as products of the 5th dimension;
The concept of time is not adequetely described by using terminolog of the first three dimensions. It is therefore not of those dimensions. In conclusion, it shall now be referred to as 'The 4th Dimension'.
This is essentialy the core logic behind my own theory, as shown:
The concept of consciousness (qualia) is not adequetely described by the first 4 dimensions

• Despite the fact that I am trying to clean up this camp statement, I did an example in my previous version which I was rather proud of and think is worth puting in here as it goes some way to proving the truth of this premise:

I can say serotonin concentration in the brain affects moods, or we can say the amount of time a particular concentration of serotonin last determines the lasting period of a particular mood. I can also say that the air resistance of an object determines how long it will take to fall. Giving precise details of an object's shape and relative air resistance, however, will not explain how long an object will take to fall. We may infer that data from calculations, but in describing the length of flight we do not invoke details of shape and size - we talk about specific lengths of time; in other words, revert to another dimensional plane. In the same way as air resistance does not tell of flight length, brain chemistry does not tell of emotion: it only allows one to infer the emotion occurring - and to explain that emotion we revert to different language; no longer talking of concentrations and locations - we talk of sadness or happiness, elation or pleasure, or any other emotion, and we talk of those emotion's strengths.*

The concept of consciousness is therefore not of those dimensions. In conclusion, it shall now be referred to as 'The 5th Dimension'.
There are however, problems with the idea of a 5th dimension consciousness, ones which I intend to address.
The first one is that if this is this case then all objects must have a consciousness, e.g. thermometers must have a sense of temperature, clocks must have a sense of the passage of time etc. The response to this argument is well documented and was meted out by Searle in a rebuttal to one of the counter arguments against his famous Chinese Room experiment. The response is that this argument comits the fallacy of conjugation; the idea that any conjunction or pattern of objects or events can then form an intelligent system; if a thermometer can feel heat then perhaps, if enough willing participants could be found, we could recreate a human consciousness simply by having people stand in particular paterns which represent the cell structure of the human brain. This idea is obviously absurb, and yet, what is the brain, if not a conjugated system? What is so special about the cellular level connections of the brain that make them more capable of creating consciousness than a group of people holding hands, or a highly advanced computer program, for that matter? The answert is of course, nothing. What are we left with then?
Before I move on to answer that question I must clarify something. One thought which may have been ringing alarm bells in your head is this 'Why is there an entire dimension, presumably created at the big bang, which only ever represents itself in meaningful emotions and sensations? There is no place for such intentionality in the impersonal cosmos science has shown us to live in.' My answer to this is simple; these qualia have no meaning at all. They seem to have meaning however, because while we may have a sensation of pleasure in our brain, the rest of our brain is considering this sensation, or at least, the intellectal part is, the part that will later go on to ask thge above question. The important thing to remember is that it's not the qualia we are considering when we are feeling a sensation, but the particular firing sequence of nuerones which happens to have the qualia associated with it, now, since it is another set of neurone firing sequences wich are doing the 'consideing', and they have qualia too; it is this that gives the sensation meaning in my opinon. An analogy to help explain this is to imagine a bundle of sticks, stacked, without the use of glue or any adhesive, into the shape of a pyramid. In you imagined pyramid, go crazy, make it a giant pyramid with lots of sticks, as it helps represent the complexity of the brain. Imagine each stick as a particular qualia. In this analogy, each stick only has value as it relates to the whole pyramid - without the other sticks, we would just consider it an ordinary stick, and yet alongside the other sticks, it has a purpose and meaning. This is roughly how I imagine qualia get their meaning, that is, in conjunction with all the other qualia.

And now for that earlier question, and the seemingly untennable problem which it creates. My answer to it however, is quite simple and already has a small following of people who have deduced it, for other reasons of course. It is the electro-magnetic field. It represents the brain's complexity, the brain's bundle of sticks if you will, quite suffeciently and it does not suffer from the problem of conjugation as it is one, whole, analogue entity.

P.S. Sorry for any spelling errors.

Statement : Dualists are people who advocate a seperation from physical reallity and this consciousness. They may in my opinion say that a biologist's assertion that pain is the firing of C-Fibre neurones in the brain does not in any way explain the sensation of pain; why or how it occurs, or even what it is. An analogy would be computer game code representing the on-screen output resulting from it. The code isn't the same as the output, but, the output is dependant on the code. That last detail is important.


A monist says that physical reallity and the consciousness are one in the same. In the computer analogy the monist says that the code and the on-screen output are exactly the same thing.


My solution to the problem is similar to a dualist's, at least, it should satisfy dualists - but it is really monistic by its nature. A dualist would invoke the soul or some kind of spiritual plane to explain the consciousness. I, more logically as we will see, posit another dimension. How is this any more likely than a soul? Surely it's just as insubstantiable. Well, I disagree - and here's why.


One can say, 'X impulse in the brain happens at Y speed' or 'X chemical signal in the brain is delivered in doses of Y milligrams', but one can't say 'happiness is quick' or 'sadness is heavy'. This shows (or rather, goes some way to showing)that consciousness cannot be quantified in time or space. As you will see, the exact same problem occurs between time and space, one example: it would be innapropriate to make the statement '5 minutes is 300 contimetres long', but it would be appropriate, however, to say 'the 300 cm strip of paper lasted 5 minutes in the rain'.



For this conceptual dichotomy time was awarded the luxury of its own dimension, and for good reason; only spatial quantities can be expressed through space - this is why they are spatial quantities; it follows that if something cannot be expressed through space it is not a spatial quallity. This latter point applies to the consciousness, and it is why I assert that it must be considered to have a dimension of its own (let's say for arguement's sake, that it's 5), and why, ultimately all conventional theories of the consciousness have failed to capture the essence of the problem.


Another example of the dichotomy between consciousness and space: We can say serotonin concentration in the brain affects moods, or we can say the amount of time a particular concentration of serotonin last determines the lasting period of a particular mood.
I can also say that the air resistance of an object determines how long it will take to fall. Giving precise details of an object's shape and relative air resistance will not explain how long an object will take to fall. We may infer that data from calculations, but in describing the length of flight we do not invoke details of shape and size - we talk about specific lengths of time; in other words, revert to another dimensional plane. In the same way as air resistance does not tell of flight length, brain chemistry does not tell of emotion: it only allows one to infer the emotion occurring - and to explain that emotion we revert to different language; no longer talking of concentrations and locations - we talk of sadness or happiness, elation or pleasure, or any other emotion, and we talk of those emotion's strengths.


Note that, although I emphasise the conceptual dichotomy, remember that it is not only one of grammatical semantics - I merely use these to better express the actual dichotomy which is so hard to pin down.


One might then go on to argue that, if that is the case, and all objects exist in all dimensions (as they surely must), why don't all objects have a consciousnesses. Simple; they do. However, it's not the same as ours, even remotely. You see, we in our brains have a vast, complicated, but ultimately structured, network of thought, memory, vision and all the senses that other objects simply do not. I see the 5th dimension as requiring a degree of structured complexity to come through as consciousness, because as we acknowledge, the loss of an aspect of the brain's complexity, such as losing the part of your brain that deals with vision, results in a reduction of consciousness (the consciousness of sight).


Just like particles must come together before atoms and objects can represent the 3rd dimension and just like the temperature has to be above absolute zero for time to be represented by change, there must be complexity for conscious awareness to appear representing the 5th dimension.


Imagine the 5th dimension to be paparazzi and our electro-chemical, spatialy quantifiable sensations to be celebrities. The paparazzi require celebrities to be present in order to represent them in articles (imagine in this analogy that articles are the actual consciousness) - but the paparazzi still exist if celebrities are not present. This is the same as, for example, empty space existing without there being objects around to properly represent it, or time existing without any noticeable changes occuring in the environment. Other forms of the consciousness, different and abstract from ours, may exist, but not in inanimate objects, or artificial intelligence - as entailed by the true location of the consciousness, which I will soon suggest.


Every 'event' as we perceive it happens slightly differently to every atom: if you imagine yourself punching a wall - every atom in that wall and in your fist receives a slightly different measure of force from the one next to it, so it could actually be rationalised in this way to be several events, several million changes in the energy states of the wall atoms and your knuckle atoms. I regard the entire consciousness to be just one event, an event that occurs every planck second - not in the conceptual sense (as punching a wall)but in the physical sense - on an object to object basis (An object here means one indivisible thing, like sub atomic particles for example). And why not? Should the laws of physics adhere to our limited (to use the Dawkins-ism)middle brain conception of the world? Occam's razor and logic suggest that anything other than perceiving the consciousness as one event would be as arbitrary as saying that the punching of a wall is one event - or indeed that the brain is one object. Also, in a human consciousness all aspects of it are connected, i.e., one brain faculty, such as thought, can relate to another, such as vision or memory.


If we agree with the assertion that consciousness is another dimension, we must also realise that the relative spatial position of objects (atomic/molecular bonds inc.)should have no affect on what happens to them in the 5th dimensiontion representation of them. It doesnt matter where in the planet two biodegradable substances are, the amount of time they take to degrade does not depend on their proximity to each other, even if attached - the point being that spatial position does not affect the 4th dimension. Spatial position in terms of connected atoms and molecules, even in the brain has no affect on the 5th dimension/consciounsess.


This begs the question, how can the consciousness occur inside the brain if the brain is made up of many millions of atoms? Certainly, every atom within the brain does not have the necessary structured complexity to fulfill the conditions of consciousness and the brain itself does not fulfill the condition of being one indivisable object for the conscious 'event' to occur - so what's up?


The Electromagnetic Field. It's shape (I use the word tenetively) on a moment to moment basis is determined by brain activity - its is disturbed by the electric current of the brain - and so represents the brain's complexity, but it is also one indevisable object - in fact, luckily for my theory, besides sub atomic particles (or strings if you prefer) it is one of the only 4 things to be fully indivisable (Gravity, EM, Weak and Strong nuclear forces).




I would like to clarify that the 5th dimension does not exclusively represent the outside world as the consciousness, this is shown by our consciousness of emotions and thoughts, but I still want to explain. Specifically, it represents the internal complexity of a single object. In the EM field, most internal complexity is based upon the outside world because of the sensory organs, and thus we are conscious of outside events.

Statement : Dualists are people who advocate a seperation from physical reallity and this consciousness. They may in my opinion say that a biologist's assertion that pain is the firing of C-Fibre neurones in the brain does not in any way explain the sensation of pain; why or how it occurs, or even what it is. An analogy would be computer game code representing the on-screen output resulting from it. The code isn't the same as the output, but, the output is dependant on the code. That last detail is important.


A monist says that physical reallity and the consciousness are one in the same. In the computer analogy the monist says that the code and the on-screen output are exactly the same thing.


My solution to the problem is similar to a dualist's, at least, it should satisfy dualists - but it is really monistic by its nature. A dualist would invoke the soul or some kind of spiritual plane to explain the consciousness. I, more logically as we will see, posit another dimension. How is this any more likely than a soul? Surely it's just as insubstantiable. Well, I disagree - and here's why.


One can say, 'X impulse in the brain happens at Y speed' or 'X chemical signal in the brain is delivered in doses of Y milligrams', but one can't say 'happiness is quick' or 'sadness is heavy'. This shows (or rather, goes some way to showing)that consciousness cannot be quantified in time or space. As you will see, the exact same problem occurs between time and space, one example: it would be innapropriate to make the statement '5 minutes is 300 contimetres long', but it would be appropriate, however, to say 'the 300 cm strip of paper lasted 5 minutes in the rain'.



For this conceptual dichotomy time was awarded the luxury of its own dimension, and for good reason; only spatial quantities can be expressed through space - this is why they are spatial quantities; it follows that if something cannot be expressed through space it is not a spatial quallity. This latter point applies to the consciousness, and it is why I assert that it must be considered to have a dimension of its own (let's say for arguement's sake, that it's 5), and why, ultimately all conventional theories of the consciousness have failed to capture the essence of the problem.


Another example of the dichotomy between consciousness and space: We can say serotonin concentration in the brain affects moods, or we can say the amount of time a particular concentration of serotonin last determines the lasting period of a particular mood.
I can also say that the air resistance of an object determines how long it will take to fall. Giving precise details of an object's shape and relative air resistance will not explain how long an object will take to fall. We may infer that data from calculations, but in describing the length of flight we do not invoke details of shape and size - we talk about specific lengths of time; in other words, revert to another dimensional plane. In the same way as air resistance does not tell of flight length, brain chemistry does not tell of emotion: it only allows one to infer the emotion occurring - and to explain that emotion we revert to different language; no longer talking of concentrations and locations - we talk of sadness or happiness, elation or pleasure, or any other emotion, and we talk of those emotion's strengths.


Note that, although I emphasise the conceptual dichotomy, remember that it is not only one of grammatical semantics - I merely use these to better express the actual dichotomy which is so hard to pin down.


One might then go on to argue that, if that is the case, and all objects exist in all dimensions (as they surely must), why don't all objects have a consciousnesses. Simple; they do. However, it's not the same as ours, even remotely. You see, we in our brains have a vast, complicated, but ultimately structured, network of thought, memory, vision and all the senses that other objects simply do not. I see the 5th dimension as requiring a degree of structured complexity to come through as consciousness, because as we acknowledge, the loss of an aspect of the brain's complexity, such as losing the part of your brain that deals with vision, results in a reduction of consciousness (the consciousness of sight).


Just like particles must come together before atoms and objects can represent the 3rd dimension and just like the temperature has to be above absolute zero for time to be represented by change, there must be complexity for conscious awareness to appear representing the 5th dimension.


Imagine the 5th dimension to be paparazzi and our electro-chemical, spatialy quantifiable sensations to be celebrities. The paparazzi require celebrities to be present in order to represent them in articles (imagine in this analogy that articles are the actual consciousness) - but the paparazzi still exist if celebrities are not present. This is the same as, for example, empty space existing without there being objects around to properly represent it, or time existing without any noticeable changes occuring in the environment. Other forms of the consciousness, different and abstract from ours, may exist, but not in inanimate objects, or artificial intelligence - as entailed by the true location of the consciousness, which I will soon suggest.


Every 'event' as we perceive it happens slightly differently to every atom: if you imagine yourself punching a wall - every atom in that wall and in your fist receives a slightly different measure of force from the one next to it, so it could actually be rationalised in this way to be several events, several million changes in the energy states of the wall atoms and your knuckle atoms. I regard the entire consciousness to be just one event, an event that occurs every planck second - not in the conceptual sense (as punching a wall)but in the physical sense - on an object to object basis (An object here means one indivisible thing, like sub atomic particles for example). And why not? Should the laws of physics adhere to our limited (to use the Dawkins-ism)middle brain conception of the world? Occam's razor and logic suggest that anything other than perceiving the consciousness as one event would be as arbitrary as saying that the punching of a wall is one event - or indeed that the brain is one object. Also, in a human consciousness all aspects of it are connected, i.e., one brain faculty, such as thought, can relate to another, such as vision or memory.


If we agree with the assertion that consciousness is another dimension, we must also realise that the relative spatial position of objects (atomic/molecular bonds inc.)should have no affect on what happens to them in the 5th dimensiontion representation of them. It doesnt matter where in the planet two biodegradable substances are, the amount of time they take to degrade does not depend on their proximity to each other, even if attached - the point being that spatial position does not affect the 4th dimension. Spatial position in terms of connected atoms and molecules, even in the brain has no affect on the 5th dimension/consciounsess.


This begs the question, how can the consciousness occur inside the brain if the brain is made up of many millions of atoms? Certainly, every atom within the brain does not have the necessary structured complexity to fulfill the conditions of consciousness and the brain itself does not fulfill the condition of being one indivisable object for the conscious 'event' to occur - so what's up?


The Electromagnetic Field. It's shape (I use the word tenetively) on a moment to moment basis is determined by brain activity - its is disturbed by the electric current of the brain - and so represents the brain's complexity, but it is also one indevisable object - in fact, luckily for my theory, besides sub atomic particles (or strings if you prefer) it is one of the only 4 things to be fully indivisable (Gravity, EM, Weak and Strong nuclear forces).




I would like to clarify that the 5th dimension does not exclusively represent the outside world as the consciousness, this is shown by our consciousness of emotions and thoughts, but I still want to explain. Specifically, it represents the internal complexity of a single object. In the EM field, most internal complexity is based upon the outside world because of the sensory organs, and thus we are conscious of outside events.

Statement : Dualists are people who advocate a seperation from physical reallity and this consciousness. They may in my opinion say that a biologist's assertion that pain is the firing of C-Fibre neurones in the brain does not in any way explain the sensation of pain; why or how it occurs, or even what it is. An analogy would be computer game code representing the on-screen output resulting from it. The code isn't the same as the output, but, the output is dependant on the code. That last detail is important.
A monist says that physical reallity and the consciousness are one in the same. In the computer analogy the monist says that the code and the on-screen output are exactly the same thing.
My solution to the problem is similar to a dualist's, at least, it should satisfy dualists - but it is really monistic by its nature. A dualist would invoke the soul or some kind of spiritual plane to explain the consciousness. I, more logically as we will see, posit another dimension. How is this any more likely than a soul? Surely it's just as insubstantiable. Well, I disagree - and here's why.
One can say, 'X impulse in the brain happens at Y speed' or 'X chemical signal in the brain is delivered in doses of Y milligrams', but one can't say 'happiness is quick' or 'sadness is heavy'. This shows (or rather, goes some way to showing)that consciousness cannot be quantified in time or space. As you will see, the exact same problem occurs between time and space, one example: it would be innapropriate to make the statement '5 minutes is 300 contimetres long', but it would be appropriate, however, to say 'the 300 cm strip of paper lasted 5 minutes in the rain'.

For this conceptual dichotomy time was awarded the luxury of its own dimension, and for good reason; only spatial quantities can be expressed through space - this is why they are spatial quantities; it follows that if something cannot be expressed through space it is not a spatial quallity. This latter point applies to the consciousness, and it is why I assert that it must be considered to have a dimension of its own (let's say for arguement's sake, that it's 5), and why, ultimately all conventional theories of the consciousness have failed to capture the essence of the problem.
Another example of the dichotomy between consciousness and space: We can say serotonin concentration in the brain affects moods, or we can say the amount of time a particular concentration of serotonin last determines the lasting period of a particular mood. I can also say that the air resistance of an object determines how long it will take to fall. Giving precise details of an object's shape and relative air resistance will not explain how long an object will take to fall. We may infer that data from calculations, but in describing the length of flight we do not invoke details of shape and size - we talk about specific lengths of time; in other words, revert to another dimensional plane. In the same way as air resistance does not tell of flight length, brain chemistry does not tell of emotion: it only allows one to infer the emotion occurring - and to explain that emotion we revert to different language; no longer talking of concentrations and locations - we talk of sadness or happiness, elation or pleasure, or any other emotion, and we talk of those emotion's strengths.
Note that, although I emphasise the conceptual dichotomy, remember that it is not only one of grammatical semantics - I merely use these to better express the actual dichotomy which is so hard to pin down.
One might then go on to argue that, if that is the case, and all objects exist in all dimensions (as they surely must), why don't all objects have a consciousnesses. Simple; they do. However, it's not the same as ours, even remotely. You see, we in our brains have a vast, complicated, but ultimately structured, network of thought, memory, vision and all the senses that other objects simply do not. I see the 5th dimension as requiring a degree of structured complexity to come through as consciousness, because as we acknowledge, the loss of an aspect of the brain's complexity, such as losing the part of your brain that deals with vision, results in a reduction of consciousness (the consciousness of sight).
Just like particles must come together before atoms and objects can represent the 3rd dimension and just like the temperature has to be above absolute zero for time to be represented by change, there must be complexity for conscious awareness to appear representing the 5th dimension.
Imagine the 5th dimension to be paparazzi and our electro-chemical, spatialy quantifiable sensations to be celebrities. The paparazzi require celebrities to be present in order to represent them in articles (imagine in this analogy that articles are the actual consciousness) - but the paparazzi still exist if celebrities are not present. This is the same as, for example, empty space existing without there being objects around to properly represent it, or time existing without any noticeable changes occuring in the environment. Other forms of the consciousness, different and abstract from ours, may exist, but not in inanimate objects, or artificial intelligence - as entailed by the true location of the consciousness, which I will soon suggest.
Every 'event' as we perceive it happens slightly differently to every atom: if you imagine yourself punching a wall - every atom in that wall and in your fist receives a slightly different measure of force from the one next to it, so it could actually be rationalised in this way to be several events, several million changes in the energy states of the wall atoms and your knuckle atoms. I regard the entire consciousness to be just one event, an event that occurs every planck second - not in the conceptual sense (as punching a wall)but in the physical sense - on an object to object basis (An object here means one indivisible thing, like sub atomic particles for example). And why not? Should the laws of physics adhere to our limited (to use the Dawkins-ism)middle brain conception of the world? Occam's razor and logic suggest that anything other than perceiving the consciousness as one event would be as arbitrary as saying that the punching of a wall is one event - or indeed that the brain is one object. Also, in a human consciousness all aspects of it are connected, i.e., one brain faculty, such as thought, can relate to another, such as vision or memory. If we agree with the assertion that consciousness is another dimension, we must also realise that the relative spatial position of objects (atomic/molecular bonds inc.)should have no affect on what happens to them in the 5th dimensiontion representation of them. It doesnt matter where in the planet two biodegradable substances are, the amount of time they take to degrade does not depend on their proximity to each other, even if attached - the point being that spatial position does not affect the 4th dimension. Spatial position in terms of connected atoms and molecules, even in the brain has no affect on the 5th dimension/consciounsess.
This begs the question, how can the consciousness occur inside the brain if the brain is made up of many millions of atoms? Certainly, every atom within the brain does not have the necessary structured complexity to fulfill the conditions of consciousness and the brain itself does not fulfill the condition of being one indivisable object for the conscious 'event' to occur - so what's up?
The Electromagnetic Field. It's shape (I use the word tenetively) on a moment to moment basis is determined by brain activity - its is disturbed by the electric current of the brain - and so represents the brain's complexity, but it is also one indevisable object - in fact, luckily for my theory, besides sub atomic particles (or strings if you prefer) it is one of the only 4 things to be fully indivisable (Gravity, EM, Weak and Strong nuclear forces).


I would like to clarify that the 5th dimension does not exclusively represent the outside world as the consciousness, this is shown by our consciousness of emotions and thoughts, but I still want to explain. Specifically, it represents the internal complexity of a single object. In the EM field, most internal complexity is based upon the outside world because of the sensory organs, and thus we are conscious of outside events.