“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

– Albert Einstein

Welcome back to The @mindunleashed on Steemit! 🐣

What is Consciousness?

It is so hard to define and put in the words yet it is the foundation of our world, our self and our entire human experience.

How Do We Perceive?

Our senses capture information from the environment in the form of energy: whether radiation (light), vibration (sound), chemicals (smells and tastes) as well as heat and pressure (touch). Our sensory organs convert these inputs and create electrical pulses that reach our brain, which finally converts the electrical signals into our perception of reality within our consciousness.

Our senses receive only certain types of energy (for example: we only perceive the visible range of electromagnetic radiation spectrum) acting as filters and our brain generates what’s most probably out there based on our brain’s perceptual prediction patterns and memories. The reality we perceive is not necessarily a complete view of what’s out there. What’s really out there we’ll never know, all we know is what’s most probably out there based on the capabilities of our nervous and perceptual system.

We don’t just passively perceive the world from the outside in. We actively generate it inside out.

The reality we experience depends not only on the information out there but also on our brain and the ways it interprets that data and generates our perception. Reality is a mind-construct resulting from a large web of electrochemical signals flowing through your brain, spine and entire body, translating information from the outside to electricity and converting back into a perception of what’s probably out there.

Reality is our brain’s best guess of what’s out there.

What is Reality? 💭

Reality is the hallucinatory consensus we all agree on. Our conscious experience of reality and ourselves are similar to hallucinations and controlled by our bodies. On one hand, the brain predicts what’s out there based on sensory data and we experience them as material objects and luminous bodies. On the other hand, the internal state of our bodies (our organs, our tissues etc.) is experienced as feelings (such as hungry, sick, happy, sad etc.) Our bodies have evolved to operate in such a way for survival purposes. Our brains are hallucinating our sensory perception and when we agree on our hallucinations that’s what we call reality.

Are Robots Conscious? 👽

Consciousness and intelligence are often confused yet they are not the same and perhaps robots will never become conscious. Or could they? Determining whether humans and other animals are conscious is tricky philosophy, yet alone defining the consciousness of an artificially intelligent robot. The electrochemical activities that go on in our bodies and brains induce our perception of reality and our sense of self; and perhaps, electronic activity in quantum computers could induce a similar phenomena.

Final Thoughts 💡

Why is it important to study consciousness? Understanding how consciousness operates could be critically important for treating mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and many more.

It is quite transcendental to experience pure consciousness, our true essence, infinite. But when it comes to defining your own consciousness and putting it in words, it is as impossible as biting your own teeth.

Our five-sense human experience is a complex system of awareness designed through evolutionary process, rather to keep us alive than to allow us to understand how or why we perceive life in the first place. Nonetheless, as computation power increases, perhaps artificial intelligence will enlighten us one day.

Ponder this before you go... How does anesthesia work?

It is quite fascinating how anesthesiologists can take away people’s consciousness away and bring it back by the use of anesthesia. Magic? Life is magical indeed. I bet you created it.