WHAT CONSCIENCE IS

I’ve asked to my philosopher Iacopo to define what conscience is for him – as the atheist he claims to be – and this is what he told me (in the best English I can use):

1) What is consciousness? It’s our ability to understand that "something happens" and, in greater or lesser extent, the ability to understand pretty well "what actually happens".

2) What is self-consciousness? The ability to distinguish between what is happening around us and what happens to us, which are the awareness of being a person with a body that is distinguished from the "rest of the world" and other people in particular.

3) So defined, consciousness and self-consciousness are not things that are transmitted in a conscious way between the generations, are phenomena that emerge from the physical structure and in particular from the brain, which has been refined through the natural selection of species.

4) What we hand down our culture that condenses the experience of the generations that have gone before us and allows better use and develop our consciousness, meaning the ability to understand and interpret correctly what happens to us and to act in more appropriate in the circumstances. In this sense, our collective knowledge amplifies our individual consciousness.

5) The most amazing thing of our world is that in nature have appeared living beings, i.e. beings can manifest a behavior that reacts to external stimuli in order to increase the chances to preserve itself, and that can replicate in a fairly faithful but open to the possibility of random changes. The first living beings had to be unicellular but even with these characteristics.

6) Random changes normally prevent the individual to survive and reproduce, but exceptionally may instead help him and increase his or her chances of reproducing, transmitting positive mutations to the next generation. In this way, the positive changes, although they are a small minority, continue to accumulate through the generations, while the majority of adverse changes disappear quickly.  And this goes from bacteria to humans.

7) The development of a brain capable of producing a consciousness is part of this continuous accumulation of constructive changes. The emergence of self-consciousness gave to mankind the crucial tool to control nature and be able to change the environment to suit its needs. The accumulation of technical information represents our cultural baggage that we transmit through generations.

8) Unfortunately, our instinct to conquer and exploit nature is suitable for us to survive in the struggle of the selection of species, but it cannot survive in a world that is now overcrowded and with limited resources as it is ours. Adapt to this new state of affairs, requires intelligence and a firmness which contrast with our primal instinct. The most difficult test for our survival is to be able to have our rationality prevail over our instinct. Not a test that gives an outcome to be taken for granted.

I truly believe that our future leaders will have to be able to manage the social outcome of decisions that will have to be made to ensure the survival of our kind in such a world rapidly extinguishing its resources, I guess that we best give a very high education to our children to ensure the survival of human kind (already existent since few millions of years).

I truly believe that I’ll be walking my princess to the altar when she’ll get married.... you are what you and your consciousness think to be.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/21/-sp-why-cant-worlds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness
2. http://www.livescience.com/4908-hate-consciousness.html
3. http://everythingiswithin.com/key-consciously-creating-life-want-people-keep-experiencing-old-circumstances/
4. http://thespiritscience.net/2015/04/05/proof-that-consciousness-creates-reality-welcome-to-the-matrix/
5. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22630190-500-the-human-universe-does-consciousness-create-reality/
6. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201303/what-is-consciousness
7. http://in5d.com/10-scientific-studies-that-prove-consciousness-can-alter-our-physical-material-world/
8. http://themindunleashed.org/2014/12/10-facts-consciousness.html
9. http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/12/what-makes-you-you.html