Interesting documentary/paper on consciousness

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
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a_human_being
Posts: 33
Joined: Wed Jul 25, 2012 9:03 am

Interesting documentary/paper on consciousness

Post by a_human_being »

I watched a documentary on tv about consciousness where a guy suggests that "microtubules" , long small tubes found in neurons, could be connected to consciousness. I found a paper on it and also found the documentary I saw on vimeo. I found it very interesting although I wish I would understand more of the paper than I do :-/.

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/pen ... vents.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and http://vimeo.com/12376913" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
a_human_being
Posts: 33
Joined: Wed Jul 25, 2012 9:03 am

Re: Interesting documentary/paper on consciousness

Post by a_human_being »

From the paper:
It may be interesting to compare our considerations with subjective viewpoints that have been expressed with regard to the nature of the progression of conscious experience. For example, support for consciousness consisting of sequences of individual, discrete events is found in Buddhism; trained meditators describe distinct "flickerings" in their experience of reality (Tart, 1995). Buddhist texts portray consciousness as "momentary collections of mental phenomena", and as "distinct, unconnected and impermanent moments which perish as soon as they arise." Each conscious moment successively becomes, exists, and disappears - its existence is instantaneous, with no duration in time, as a point has no length. Our normal perceptions, of course, are seemingly continuous, presumably as we perceive "movies" as continuous despite their actual makeup being a series of frames. Some Buddhist writings even quantify the frequency of conscious moments. For example the Sarvaastivaadins (von Rospatt, 1995) described 6,480,000 "moments" in 24 hours (an average of one "moment" per 13.3 msec), and some Chinese Buddhism as one "thought" per 20 msec. These accounts, including variations in frequency, are consistent with our proposed Orch OR events. For example a 13.3 msec pre-conscious interval would correspond with an Orch OR involving 4 x 1010coherent tubulins, a 0.13 msec interval would correspond with 4 x 1012 coherent tubulins, and a 20 msec interval with 2.5 x 1010 coherent tubulins. Thus Buddhist "moments of experience," Whitehead "occasions of experience," and our proposed Orch OR events seem to correspond tolerably well with one another..
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m0rl0ck
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Re: Interesting documentary/paper on consciousness

Post by m0rl0ck »

From the 14 unanswerable questions:

Questions referring to personal experience:

9. Is the self identical with the body?

10. ...or is it different from the body?
The Buddha remained silent when asked these fourteen questions. He described them as a net and refused to be drawn into such a net of theories, speculations, and dogmas. He said that it was because he was free of bondage to all theories and dogmas that he had attained liberation. Such speculations, he said, are attended by fever, unease, bewilderment, and suffering, and it is by freeing oneself of them that one achieves liberation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_u ... _questions" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
“The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.” ― Robert M. Pirsig
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