Regarding the complexity of the human brain, it now appears that RNA molecules may be just as important or more so for the development and biochemical guidance of the human brain formation than DNA is. The human brain has roughly 100 billion neurons and as many as 100,000 times as many synapses for each neuron. Moreover, there are dozens if not hundreds of major neurotransmitter compounds within the human brain and an even larger number of the different types of receptor sites. There are several different receptor sites for the neurotransmitter compound of dopamine alone.
It is currently believed that memories may be chiefly stored in molecules within certain portions of individual neurons. Moreover, it is possible that conscious behavior and memories or certain fundamental aspects of such may depend on continuous patterns of molecular, electrochemical, and even low frequency electromagnetic fields generated by the brain and the interaction of such electromagnetic fields within the brain with various neurons, groups of neurons, and anatomical structures and sub-structures within the brain. The result is a huge number of degrees of thermodynamic freedom within the human brain, of which we have only just begun to fathom.
It is entirely interesting that major mental disorders which are now widely held to be brain diseases involving among other things, faulty neurotransmission system activity, neurological structural defects, etc., still defy rigorous understanding as to the physiological mechanisms underlying the cause and maintenance of these conditions. In fact, it is often the case that for mental disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, post traumatic stress disorder and the like, no abnormalities show up on brain scans of persons afflicted with these conditions while in other cases, major deviations from normal brain functioning is clearly evident. To actually up load or duplicate a person’s psyche into another software storage medium is going to be quite some task since even the understanding of the grossly abnormal cognitive, perceptual, emotional, and social functioning associated with these severe mental disorders is far from complete and since treatment of such disorders even with the latest psychoactive drugs remains marginally effective in many individual cases at best. Just imagine trying to upload all of the fine individual memories, behavioral traits, mental schematas, the full individual patterns of personality spectrum traits, and the unconscious, subconscious, and conscious aspects of the individuals psyche into a software storage medium. And all of these psychic categories are just a very small subset of all of the psychodynamic aspects of humans which are each unique, even for genetically identical twins raised together from birth.
The process of uploading the human psyche to a software storage medium or duplicating it may eventually be possible but it is going to take a very long time to figure out how to do such.
It has even been suggested that inanimate matter, even fundamental particles in nature, may have some sort of consciousness to them. Such theories suggest that consciousness develops within the brain at least in part as a result of the collective aggregate of the individual consciousness aspects of inanimate matter and individual fundamental particles such as atomic nuclei, electrons, atoms as a whole, ions, quarks comprising the atomic nuclei etc.
These speculations suggest that the aggregated effects of the individual consciousness may lead to qualitative amplification into the consciousness, feelings, thoughts, emotions, drives, memories, experiences, acts of volition, unconsciousness, sub-consciousness and all of the other psychodynamic aspects of the human psyche. The morphing and modulation of such inanimate collective consciousness of fundamental particles aggregates may by effected by synergistic effects of the particles acting as a unity. Moreover, it may be the case that this consciousness gets imprinted on individual atoms, or molecules, in such a way that identical molecules in similar brain regions within different individuals may store completely different memories qualitatively and quantitatively. It might even be the case that physical quantum mechanical entanglement of the kind known under the umbrella concepts of the EPR paradox has an affect of modulating, morphing, distributing, and otherwise instilling the human psyche and all of its properties within the human brain.
We are aware of some fundamental properties of nature at least at the level to which our particle physicists have probed including among others, gravitation, electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, the various known leptons, quarks, and bosons in all of their varieties, electric charge, mass, spin, charmed-ness, strangeness, flavor, color and all of the other fundamental aspects of quarks, etc. And these are just the beginning of the known and yet to be discovered primitive aspects of our physical universe.
Could another all ubiquitous fundamental property imbue all particles, mass, energy, space and time in any of a large variety of forms such as some level of fundamental primitive primal consciousness? What I am proposing is not the same thing as the New Age movement cosmic consciousness or the Eastern religious tradition of pantheism or the belief that the universe or the cosmos is God. Instead, I am proposing that consciousness may be a fundamental property or aspect of every particle and perhaps every differential volumetric element of space-time within our universe. Perhaps even the properties of electric charge, mass, each of the four known forces, flavor, color, as global characteristics in the make up of our universe have their unique forms of fundamental, primal, primitive consciousness aspects. If such is the case, could all of the above mentioned physical entities and traits have other properties of the same class as consciousness but completely different or at least some what different from consciousness. Could an individual consciousness of particles and fields and differential space time volumetric elements have other properties associated with them or aspects just as say an electron possesses electric charge, spin, magnetic moment, and mass, or a quark possesses electric charge, color, flavor, spin, magnetic moment, mass.
The point I am trying to make is that the ontological, existential, accidental, and practical observable aspects of the human psyche and the human brain hold many mysteries and so it will likely be a very very long time before we can figure how to download, upload, or copy a human psyche. However, I am by no means saying we should abandon such attempts. In fact, we need to be more aware of the current limitations of our knowledge of the human psyche and brain so that we can more effectively facilitate such downloading, up loading, or duplication of the human psyche. I believe that ultimately, there is a very good chance that our technology will one day allow us to do such. This will no doubt result in other methods for us to reach the stars and beyond.
Regarding my discussion of the possibility that particles and inanimate matter might have a primal primitive type of consciousness, I have often wondered if any such consciousness qualities would have a composite nature analogous to the concept of hidden quantum mechanical variables. Perhaps any such consciousness subsists as accidental properties in a yet more primitive level of consciousness of physical matter which is an accidental property that subsists in yet a more primitive level of physical consciousness and who knows, perhaps on ward infinitum until one would reach the ultimate irreducible level or form of physical consciousness which would perhaps be associated with or be an aspect of the most primitive substantial form of physical material or physical entities.
Perhaps a dualist view of physical matter as having a composite nature wherein consciousness and the physical non-conscious aspects of physical material would have some kind of ontological or substantial independent existence from each other but together would form a compound substance in much the same way that the union of the human body and the human soul according to the Scholastic Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas forms a compound substance while the soul remains united to the body in this life but wherein the existence of the human soul is intrinsically independent of the human body even in this life all though the operations of some of its accidental aspects or features such as the faculties of memory, will, intellect, emotion etc, are extrinsically dependent on matter or the body for their operation in this life but which operate independently of the body in the next life.
As I conjectured about in my previous posting on this subject, perhaps there are other principles associated with physical matter that are of the same class as consciousness but which are very different or mildly different qualitatively from consciousness as such. Perhaps any such other principles within this would be class subsist as accidents within a more primitive set of principles which subsist as accidents in yet a more primitive set of principles and so on down to the ultimate substantial created principles that underwrite the existence of the dependent series of accidents.
The concept that the existence of what we observe to be matter and energy and space and time that much of contemporary physics and philosophy holds as irreducible principles by such conceptual frameworks embodied in the so-called conservation laws of mattergy, momentum, electric charge and the like might actually need to be modified seems to becoming more appropriate as we develop theories such as those of the Higgs Field as the origin of mass and mass-based inertia, and the formation of all of the observed negative and positive mattergy within our universe from perhaps a miniscule quantity of mattergy wherein the dynamic relation of the growth of space time and the quantity of both the positive and negative energy resulted from the boot strapping of space time and the vast quantities, perhaps even infinite quantities, of both positive and negative energy into existence from very little or perhaps almost no previous net quantity of space time and energy, the positive and negative energy within our universe nearly completely canceling each other out.
As we probe the sub-nuclear realm, it is appearing more likely that there may be additional nuclear forces perhaps even pointing to a composite structure to particles that were once and still are mainly considered to be fundamental with no sub-components such as the quarks, the leptons, and perhaps even the force mediating bosons of the photon, gluons, weak forces bosons, and the graviton and the Higgs Bosons. Perhaps an analogous sub structure will be found within any existent super symmetric mattergy particles such as the squarks, sleptons, photino, Higgsinos, gravitino, gluinos, and the weak force boson super-symmetric counterparts. The point I am trying to make is that if the currently observable non-conscious physical aspects of physical material currently thought to be irreducible turn out to be accidental, only meta-stable, and/or composite, perhaps the same could be said of any first level conscious principles of physical material.
Note that I will have yet more to say regarding conscious principles of physical material within a few days. I belabor the concept of such conscious principles because the brain is very much still a great mystery and holds many secrets. We need to be open minded to potentially paradigm changing concepts when attempting to come to grips with this greatly mysterious thing we call human and presumably ETI consciousness and the associated entities we refer to as psyches or personalities. Any such information obtained will at the very least help us determine how to keep our mind/brains healthy, happy, and strong, for extended or expanded human lifetimes as a result of medical intervention and may even lead us to the ability to upload our psyche or at least copy it to an appropriate medium to facilitate interstellar, intergalactic, and even cosmic scale space travel over extreme durations with respect to the space crafts’ reference frame.
I will share some of my perhaps dated outmoded Platonic views of the human soul which I believe even modern Catholic Theologians have gotten away from.
Basically, I tend to view the human soul as: a spiritual, naturally immortal, incorruptible per addens and perse, simple, spatially non-extended, substantial principle or essence which exist perse, a free, and rational entity which survives bodily death although I believe that it depends on God’s sustaining might for its existence as does every other first created or primitive principles. The soul, I hold, is that principle of individuality that gives us our ontological identity. Furthermore, I hold that the heart, intellect, and will are faculties of the soul and are more toward its accidental form rather than the essence of the soul itself.
I tend to believe that consciousness as we have it in this life is chiefly a manifestation of the brain but also involves the whole human person as a unity between body and soul. Thus, I hold that the consciousness or personality or psych is not identical to the immaterial soul and neither is it identical to the brain or purely based on the brain. I feel that this reality makes human and ETI consciousness all the more mysterious even from the ontological, philosophical and theological point of view.
In essence, there seems to me to be some sort of ungraspable uncontainable sublimity to it that just can’t be bottled, contained, or explained away. This mysterious thing we called or label consciousness and sentient identity has defied theological, philosophical, scientific, and faith based analysis from antiquity. Even if we are able to transfer our consciousness to another storage medium, that still does not destroy the mystery of consciousness or its transcendence and sublimity any more than say my transference of my human body from my economical Toyota Corolla to my Mothers fancy 2007 Toyota Camry with a 286 horse power V-6 engine. My body still has its geometric integrity, degree of health, mass, and security regardless of whether I drive my car or my mothers much more expensive and fashionable car. I make this analogy to the transference of the human consciousness from human body to a machine if such proves possible and it may well be possible one day. The human consciousness will in either case still remain mysterious and sublimely intangible.
The human consciousness somehow seems to retain its integrity of individuality through sleep, brain damage, mental illness, Alzheimer’s disease, general anesthesia, the most horrific child abuse, and even through the horrors of sudden unexpected severe trauma such as experienced by the survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima who were far enough away from the blast hypocenter not to be vaporized or reduced to a char but who nonetheless were close enough to receive nearly fatal burns, experience the blinding light, and horrible blast pressure and tremendous roar in an utterly shocking experience that they had no way of preparing for or imagining. Despite each of these severe forms of suffering, the conscious I is not corrupted despite feelings of utter hopelessness, despair, and mental usurpation. In fact, the conscious I’s individual integrity makes the suffering all the more real and experienced.
What is this principle, entity, or thing that we call consciousness that seems to have immutable properties at some level even when it is damaged and traumatized by the above kind of events? This is a great mystery which we still have not understood. As one who believes in the existence in Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, and the state of grace and lack thereof, I am keenly aware that not even these realities or states can erase or destroy the I in the consciousness. This I retains its exact immutable identity regardless of the human outcomes as such. This I, it seems to me, is what makes us all fundamentally morally equal for all eternity in Gods eyes. Regardless of our eternal destiny, we remained loved by God as his children because God sees our dignity in our I.
I thought that a discussion of consciousness as such might inspire the reader with a sense of his or her dignity even in the case that human consciousness ever proves to be transferable to a machine. There will, I believe, still always be that ever mysterious, sublime, intangible consciousness or irreducible I in either case.
We can all feel secure and remain so even as we learn more about how to manipulate, embody, transfer or otherwise effect the human consciousness. There will always be profound mystery and intrigue here.
Even though I have made some spiritualistic comments in my previous comments, I might be completely wrong in my approach and am open minded to all other viewpoints regarding the nature of human and ETI consciousness. In fact, in our mortal nature, perhaps there is really nothing that is immutable or indestructible about us, even in terms of what could be called be some as our souls. We have progressed in technology, according to the Late Great Pope John Paul II, such that we now have the ability to manipulate human life at its most fundamental levels, a technology that can be used for great good or for unspeakable evil that can cause us to lose our dignity as human beings.
However, I have hope that we can learn to improve human cognitive functioning, the health of our psyches, and perhaps extend our lives on Earth indefinitely by medical intervention and one day perhaps by giving ourselves new, more durable bodies of some sort or at least parts thereof. This may play a role in promoting human space flight into the Milky Way Galaxy and beyond. If we live up to a million years or more, than high gamma factor inertial travel through space throughout the Milky Way becomes much more politically acceptable and meaningful to the average person. If we can learn to live forever by medical enhancement, tissue replacement, etc., the whole wide cosmos becomes targetable for human exploration, colonization, utilization.
The book “Coming of Age in the Milky Way” is a great visionary work discussing among other concepts, the venturing of mankind out from our cradle and into the Milky Way. For those who have not read this book, I recommend it as a good read.
Best Regards;
Jim
