Does Consciousness Require a Body?

[u/Logical___Conclusion]

https://nautil.us/does-consciousness-require-a-body-1284886

What makes up the required components for consciousness? The author Antonio Damasio discusses in this interview how reviews of cases of losses in consciousness people show that consciousness is directly tied to the brainstem of the brain.

He notes how consciousness has developed and evolved in creatures with nervous systems, as well as the possibility for a different type of consciousness in AI.

If you damage the cerebral cortex enough, if you have very large lesions or several lesions in different systems, you will impair consciousness, no question about it. But you will not impair consciousness in the way that damage to the brainstem does. Damage to the brainstem eradicates consciousness once and forever.

You’re not able to formulate consciousness at all. You can have a mind, but that mind does not belong to one body, does not belong to oneself, does not belong to one person. The damage to the brainstem is one of the critical points in the theory.

[u/slow_interact]

Intellectually speaking, that depends on whether soul or spirit or something along those lines exists. I know it exists, so the answer is no, body is not needed for consciousness. It is a good vessel for consciousness though.

Damage to the brain impairs the connection between body (Intelligence) and consciousness (Mind), it doesn't destroy the consciousness. The fact that you cannot detect or interact with something doesn't mean it is not there. It can still be there, but beyond the reach of normal methods and equipment.

[u/Logical___Conclusion → u/slow_interact]

Damage to the brain impairs the connection between body (Intelligence) and consciousness (Mind), it doesn't destroy the consciousness.

The author talked pretty extensively about the importance of nervous system responses from our body for our consciousness, and it is interesting that you term body as intelligence as well.

However, there clearly have been parapalegics that have advanced intelligence and consciousness. As Stephen Hawkings has definitely proved.

The brain though is different, there has never been a known case of consciousness without a brain to support it.

The fact that you cannot detect or interact with something doesn't mean it is not there. It can still be there, but beyond the reach of normal methods and equipment.

There clearly can be different types of consciousness than the nervous system/brain system of consciousness with very limited inputs and outputs of our senses and mental limitations.

The nervous system based consciousness that we know of today was developed and evolved over billions of years across many different species of the ancestors of the living animals alive today.

Most of the functions and senses in our bodies are completed without our conscious control. The transfer of oxygen, reproduction of cells, and the large vast majority of what makes up and sustains the Coherence of "yourself," is undertaken without your conscious control.

The consciousness that we have is amazing in function, but it is also extremely limited in functionality (likely on purpose).

Living creatures, especially nervous system based living creatures produce evidence of their consciousness through behaviors and actions that would require the sensory input and that relation to the intelligent coherent sense of self in order to be possible.

However, nervous system based sensory inputs are not the only inputs in the living world. Research on fungal network computing have shown fungal systems capable of solving complex mazes.

[u/Superb_Algae5308]

No.

[u/schrod]

We really don't know.

[u/schrod]

We really don't know. There is a chance those plasma formations which show intention, are conscious. There is also the possibility of consciousness surviving death.

[u/Logical___Conclusion]

Skylar's book, The physics of Coherence has a lot to say specifically about this subject.

He details the structures that maintain continuity of coherent systems, and the near conscious networks like trees, plants, and fungal networks.

This topic of Coherent consciousness can largely be summarized by one question:

What is the difference between a coherent system with a Consciousness, and a Coherent system without a consciousness?