Winter Sky

Put one word out there

"Cloud"

Put another next to it

"River"

Two nouns, it doesn't matter

a cloud river...

Next word, keep it going

word after word after word

river running 

the sounds continue ringing

if they're said out loud

even when vibrations have left

"the cloud river running west turns this way and that 

across the sky and into the distance"

becoming a sentence

Becoming a picture in the mind

one word, another, another

Bob is the neighbor. His dog is sick

Snow is expected and the birds seem to sense it

it might be a essay 

or become a story

telling about how this all began

"once" and "never again" 

how it will all end

kettle of soup and clouds of steam 

bubbling up in the kitchen

maybe a book 

that someone turns into a movie

with so many words

famous people saying famous words

And it too will tell a story all about the names 

names are nouns too

there is no where to go

nowhere to return from

no one to see

the crumpled paper with so many words written on it

drops to the floor 

the cloud river running west turns crimson orange

against a purple sky,

night approaches

the theater is dark

names scrolling on the screen

and a boat the shape of the moon 

rises in the east

traveling down the cloud river that is running west  

POEM

We live in turblent times

How well do you tread water in an ocean of negative emotion

Shame is a storm, welling up and approaching

...backstroke, kick kick, look up at the clouds,

The grey elephant with angel wings flows across the sky

...and the funny faces smiling back

Up and down,

The waves churning, 

With no land in sight

No compassion in sight, 

No one to toss us a peppermint lifesaver.

Toward a Scientific Definition of the Phenomena Known as "Consciousness"

My point here is simply, it is to ask the question, if we did not have the term "consciousness" to describe the phenomena under discussion, what might we otherwise call it?

Additionally, the "UN-" version of the term we substitute will certainly need to be understood to mean "the reverse of" the substitute word. 

un- 1

prefix

1 (added to adjectives, participles, and their derivatives) denoting the absence of a quality or state; not : unabashed | unacademic | unrepeatable.

• the reverse of (usually with an implication of approval or disapproval, or with another special connotation) : unselfish | unprepossessing | unworldly.

2 (added to nouns) a lack of : unrest | untruth.

ORIGIN Old English , of Germanic origin; from an Indo-European root shared by Latin in- and Greek a-.

USAGE The prefixes un- and non- both mean ‘lacking’ or ‘not,’ but there is a distinction in terms of perspective. The prefix un- tends to be stronger and less neutral than non-. Consider, for example, the differences between unacademic and nonacademic,as in : his language was refreshingly unacademic;: a nonacademic life suits him.

un- 2

prefix added to verbs:

1 denoting the reversal or cancellation of an action or state : untie | unsettle.

2 denoting deprivation, separation, or reduction to a lesser state : unmask | unman.

• denoting release : unburden | unhand.

ORIGIN Old English un-, on-, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch ont- and German ent-.

 Currently, this is not the case with consciousness, since "unconsciousness" is problematic.
 If we were to choice to stick with the current term of "consciousness", is science then willing to limit the definition of the "un-" version to mean, "the lack of" or "absence of?"  

If we do, this then presents us with the issue of needing a term for "the part of the mind that is inaccessible to the conscious mind but that affects behavior and emotions
"

Might this then be considered a part of consciousness too, with simply a lesser degree of awareness?

To press the point a bit further, I can suggest that we are only focusing here on human consciousness.

Christof Koch makes the claim that "consciousness arises within any sufficiently complex, information-processing system."

Koch: There’s a theory, called Integrated Information Theory, developed by Giulio Tononi at the University of Wisconsin, that assigns to any one brain, or any complex system, a number — denoted by the Greek symbol of Φ — that tells you how integrated a system is, how much more the system is than the union of its parts. Φ gives you an information-theoretical measure of consciousness. Any system with integrated information different from zero has consciousness. Any integration feels like something

It's not that any physical system has consciousness. A black hole, a heap of sand, a bunch of isolated neurons in a dish, they're not integrated. They have no consciousness. But complex systems do. And how much consciousness they have depends on how many connections they have and how they’re wired up. 

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/11/christof-koch-panpsychism-consciousness 

(Note that Koch does not address the part of "the system with integrated information" that is inaccessible in human minds, and how this may correspond to in other systems.)

What we can see in a human mind is that the phenomena referred to as "consciousness" does not “live” in a particular place in our brain but rather “arises from the mode in which billions of neurons communicate with one another.” 

  

Consciousness emerges from communication between brain areas (194 regions of interest were studied) and is mainly tied to cortico-cortical (left and center) and not subcortical and cerebellar areas (right) (credit: Martin M. Monti et al./PLoS Computational Biology)

Unfortunately, I cannot locate such scans of "un-conscious" thoughts. 

Martin M Monti adds "that without having a scientific definition of this phenomenon, it is extremely difficult to study,”   (Monti does not address the un-state of consciousness here except to observe the "off" state)

http://www.kurzweilai.net/is-a-scientific-definition-of-consciousness-possible

Where does this leave use: we cannot study what we cannot define, and we cannot define what we cannot study?

How to Define Consciousness?

George Miller wrote in 1962, "Consciousness is a word worn smooth by a million tongues."

I would like to address Prof. Oliver Carter's observations about my comments, specifically,

 "But I remain unconvinced for the most part that we are on the road that will lead us to a definition of consciousness.  A metaphor might be this: we are traveling down a road facing backward, conjecturing about where we are headed by describing where we have been.

Prof Carter is correct in questioning whether or not I intended to add the word, scientific, in front of "definition."  Upon further reflection, the statement I intended is," in our search for a scientific definition of consciousness I am convinced that we are  traveling down a road facing backward, conjecturing about where we are headed by describing where we have been." 

It's been pointed out that the dictionary is full of definitions, and many have evolved over time.  The definition of a word often adapts to mean whatever it is understood to mean through its usage.

I offer up the word "happiness" as an example.  It has been said that as it turns out, the word "happiness" is just not a useful word anymore, because we apply it to too many different things.

Isn't this true of the word "consciousness?"  The word "unconsciousness" is even a better example perhaps ( which there was some agreement on).

So let's ask then, "How is the word "consciousness" being used in scientific references?"

"When it comes to consciousness, a fundamental distinction is made between its contents and its levels. The contents of consciousness are our subjective experiences, such as the sound of a violin. "Levels of consciousness, on the other hand, have to do with outward signs of a person's...state of awareness." People with aberrant awareness are typically placed into one of three categories: having a coma, being in a vegetative state and being 'minimally conscious'. But based on recent research, those categories must now be reevaluated."

Here we find that we are measuring "subjective experience" and "awareness." We might reword this statement in such a way to eliminate the word consciousness altogether and just say that the boundaries of vegetative states are measured by a person's outward signs of their state of awareness, in relation to their subjective experience.  What was previously considered "minimal consciousness" becomes a measurement of brain activity.

We see that there really might be no need for the word at all, when it comes to science.

Let me close with a research paper that supports the notion that we are not ready for a definition of this phenomena referred to as "consciousness."

Abstract. Definitions of consciousness need to be sufficiently broad to include all examples of

conscious states and sufficiently narrow to exclude entities, events and processes that are

not conscious. Unfortunately, deviations from these simple principles are common in

modern consciousness studies, with consequent confusion and internal division in the field.

The present paper gives example of ways in which definitions of consciousness can be either

too broad or too narrow. It also discusses some of the main ways in which pre-existing

theoretical commitments (about the nature of consciousness, mind and world) have intruded

into definitions. Similar problems can arise in the way a “conscious process” is defined,

potentially obscuring the way that conscious phenomenology actually relates to its neural

correlates and antecedent causes in the brain, body and external world. Once a definition of

“consciousness” is firmly grounded in its phenomenology, investigations of its ontology and

its relationships to entities, events and processes that are not conscious can begin, and this

may in time transmute the meaning (or sense) of the term. As our scientific understanding of

these relationships deepen, our understanding of what consciousness is will also deepen. A

similar transmutation of meaning (with growth of knowledge) occurs with basic terms in

physics such as "energy", and "time."

http://cogprints.org/6453/1/How_to_define_consciousness.pdf

Conscious States

Back in October of 2013, this was the research that was brought to my attention:

"UCLA psychologists have used brain-imaging techniques to study what happens to the human brain when it slips into unconsciousness.

Their research, published in the online open-access journal PLOS Computational Biology, is an initial step toward developing a scientific definition of consciousness, Images of the scan are shown and some connection strength across sections of the brain provided.  They raise the question at the end in the context of brain damage."

Since that time many of us have offered our various viewpoints of the question of whether a scientific definition of consciousness is possibly. While I've pondered this question for a while now,  I'm left asking myself whether the opposite question is a valid option; Is a scientific definition of unconsciousness possible?

It is beyond debate that unconsciousness can be observed, when it is referenced to as it is in the example provided above (anesthesized brain), but the term carries with it an inexactness of meaning, and in language; an ambiguity exists around the word "unconsciousness" because the term can also refer to the part of the mind that is inaccessible to the 'conscious mind' but that affects behavior and emotions, a state that is below the level of our observable awareness. 

How then do we proceed with finding a scientific definition of consciousness when the opposing state, unconsciousness, is ambiguous?   Are consciousness, and its alternative states, unconsciousness, non-consciousness, subconsciousness etc, various parts of the same of the same entity.  I will suggest this is the discussion we need to be having.