In my previous article, I referred to mental constructs that I named "symbols" but I never explained what exactly I meant. I also referred to something that comprised of these entities, the "symbolic representation of the world humans have in their minds".
Well, a symbol is nothing more than what the word implies in its literal meaning: it's a formalistic representation of something. Since we are on the topic of the human mind, these symbols are thoughts. Obviously, the entities symbols represent may or may not have a tangible form. In practice, this formalism is not very strict. In other words, the outline is more important than the sharpness of the mental picture, especially when the definition of the symbol is done intuitively, using patterns and not with other symbols.
These symbols may have attributes and be subject to editing. They may even interact with other symbols. Thus, an object-oriented view of the world is created from these symbols. This symbolic representation of the world humans have in their minds I call consciousness.
Technically, the human brain works by storing data distributed to neurons. What data each neuron holds doesn't mean much on its own, but when the brain is fed with a stimulus, it is able to recreate relevant information by putting together data from a specific path on the neural network. Consciousness is like a virtual machine. It is based on the functions I described above, but implements a radically different way to represent the world. It uses relational memory and machine learning to create an object/symbol-oriented system.
Even if this is a good model to describe consciousness, it still needs to be noted that it is in no way absolute. Neither do all human functions go through consciousness nor is this network of symbols implemented as well as I imply. Where I'm getting to is that the fact that consciousness is not fully compatible with the human mental faculties nor does it cover them fully, means that there is a gap between it and the rest of the brain's functions.
I think this is the reason why there is this perceived distance between mind and body. In any case, the tools consciousness provides enable humans to build a variety of object-oriented systems, which may or may not have anything to do with the real world. For instance, mathematics is a logic system which is comprised from entities with relations, all which have nothing to do with senses. Also, it is really interesting to study the way in which consciousness is related and interacts with the "lower" level functions. Using mathematics as an example once more, one may notice that while a problem's solution is a sequence of logical steps, most of the time the solution is not calculated algorithmically-symbolically but intuitively.
To sum up, consciousness is defined as a system of mental symbols which is founded on the human brain but functions with a completely different logic. In computers, there are logic programming and object-oriented languages whose code ends up being compiled to machine language, which is always procedural. I think that a similar process takes place inside the human brain, which compiles the symbols of human consciousness into data which can be stored on biological neurons.
Well, a symbol is nothing more than what the word implies in its literal meaning: it's a formalistic representation of something. Since we are on the topic of the human mind, these symbols are thoughts. Obviously, the entities symbols represent may or may not have a tangible form. In practice, this formalism is not very strict. In other words, the outline is more important than the sharpness of the mental picture, especially when the definition of the symbol is done intuitively, using patterns and not with other symbols.
These symbols may have attributes and be subject to editing. They may even interact with other symbols. Thus, an object-oriented view of the world is created from these symbols. This symbolic representation of the world humans have in their minds I call consciousness.
Technically, the human brain works by storing data distributed to neurons. What data each neuron holds doesn't mean much on its own, but when the brain is fed with a stimulus, it is able to recreate relevant information by putting together data from a specific path on the neural network. Consciousness is like a virtual machine. It is based on the functions I described above, but implements a radically different way to represent the world. It uses relational memory and machine learning to create an object/symbol-oriented system.
Even if this is a good model to describe consciousness, it still needs to be noted that it is in no way absolute. Neither do all human functions go through consciousness nor is this network of symbols implemented as well as I imply. Where I'm getting to is that the fact that consciousness is not fully compatible with the human mental faculties nor does it cover them fully, means that there is a gap between it and the rest of the brain's functions.
I think this is the reason why there is this perceived distance between mind and body. In any case, the tools consciousness provides enable humans to build a variety of object-oriented systems, which may or may not have anything to do with the real world. For instance, mathematics is a logic system which is comprised from entities with relations, all which have nothing to do with senses. Also, it is really interesting to study the way in which consciousness is related and interacts with the "lower" level functions. Using mathematics as an example once more, one may notice that while a problem's solution is a sequence of logical steps, most of the time the solution is not calculated algorithmically-symbolically but intuitively.
To sum up, consciousness is defined as a system of mental symbols which is founded on the human brain but functions with a completely different logic. In computers, there are logic programming and object-oriented languages whose code ends up being compiled to machine language, which is always procedural. I think that a similar process takes place inside the human brain, which compiles the symbols of human consciousness into data which can be stored on biological neurons.
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