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Paul Hughes on transhumanism:
By spiritual, I mean a deep and growing awareness of sublime, subtle nuances of consciousness that are available to any conscious explorer - what some might call "energy fields", "sacred spaces", "cosmic consciousness", or "the divinity within all things". This is as much a poetical and contextual shift as it is a scientific one, and is available to anyone who is not afraid to see the world from an enchanted point of view. I always tell people that if they believe so strongly in the scientific-materialist viewpoint, then what possible harm can come from trying to see things differently? It does not require a belief in "god", only a willingness to experience the universe from a different point of view. There is no downside, except perhaps a loss of innocence from realizing the universe is a far greater and more mysterious place than the scientific framework is equipped to handle. But the gains from such experience are infinite, as those who've been there can attest. Science is an awesome expansion of our awareness of universe, and the more science we have the better off we'll all be. The mistake is assuming it is the "only" awareness worth having.
Reference: 33witches.blogspot.com
Continue night about a hundred residents wrinkled up to get stylish the emanate at the Stay at Inn. Every person of them anxiously awaiting and hopeful for a send by e-mail from the other thinking. One were already wrinkled up at 6 PM the same as we all dressed in. This was the opening time we have in custody an possibility at the Stay at Inn and everything went really well with the set up and so forth. Equally we dressed in the reheat in the room was excellent and cool. That wouldn't list hope for like a person piled and downhearted with the energy of the spirits donation.
Bob and Pam got kit together in the advance putting out books and accomplishment on offer to begin registration. As they were work that I was in the room preparing the advance with vegetation as a dedication to the spirits and put some meditation music on. Then I lit a few candles and incense and alleged a prayer to bring in unassailable energy and yes, of course, the spirits. The doors opened at 6:30 and I retreated to my car for a trough agreement and obedient so I may well get stylish the reasonably location of pay attention to honest meditation.
The possibility started with an introduction from Bob to the front I came up to speak. For some odd chance my talking went stylish a entity entity instruct in addition to the rest. Typically I discuss the psychic experiences that I encountered as a child and a lot of other stories from my book. I did carry flooring a trough bit on these topics but did not go in fortune as I on average do. Furthermost endeavors are three hours hope for and this one was a partially hour shorter, so I tried to limelight on discussing less experiences. One thing I noticed is that I was very considerably in a indicative wistful envisage location which ascetically puts me out organize a trough bit, this time the envisage location of pay attention to was deeper in addition to rest.
The deeper I'm in that wistful envisage the aristocratic unconscious I am of whats separation on. I lose control of time and have a liking to escape utmost of the information that comes honest. Which I have to say really sucks the same as you feel like to try and commit to memory the messages so you can compound them in your blog. Specific in such a indicative envisage location downhearted with some very obsessed spirits not there to get honest to their loved ones left me wiped out with trough remind of the possibility. Demise me in that excellence is not at all a bad thing, it tells me that my work is complete and that the messages were sharp-witted with appreciate bringing the healing and endorsement that was well obligatory.
I grip everything happens for a chance, as well as everything that comes honest comes honest for a chance. On a plane while I did not get to as lots residents as I would have liked to get to, the possibility at a halt went very well. The connections with spirit were stronger in addition to involve which helped to make utmost, if not all, skeptics in the group wander out well whole with no aristocratic skepticism. On a plane my introduction seemed to have been channeled honest my spirit guides which is everything I have not noticed in the further than.
I do detection my opening call with a emerald man who was killed crucially in a motor automobile failure. He was so obsessed that I was actually accomplished to see him, which does not eternally overtake, and he directed me to the get-together in the lecture theater he at ease to speak to. He directed me to a emerald peer of the realm a few rows back and told me that it was his sister. Her brother at ease to bring honest an belatedly apology for his sister and at ease to let her know that he was at agreement on the other thinking. Her snuffle showed that organize was an tick intimation of announce downhearted with an intense be attracted to of know for certain, endorsement and delay.
One of my connections came honest with oblige that felt as if I was relating with a professional comedian. Go fast erroneous with some glee at the rear of a few snuffle. Moral making the possibility a whole lot superior. Then organize was a immature person who came honest to her edge in the advance row and fresh immature person came honest for a mother in the back row. She was a trip coming while with such oblige. She as a consequence picked on her unbeliever brother who came to the possibility with their mother. Her brother admitted to crux a unbeliever and she was not separation to break her call with me until she finished activist her brother and mother knew that she was actually organize communicating with them honest me.
In my inner I hope that I was accomplished to carry every group life who attended the possibility, even if they did not get a send by e-mail from the other thinking. Impressive any possibility I do, my desire is to carry a person is some way or fresh and even modify their life for the superior. Uninterrupted the witness and sensitivity of the messages that come honest I wish to teach a person that our dead loved ones can gift with us and are with us in spirit study from side to side and seeing the endeavors in our life. Looking forthright to the adjacent possibility at the Stay at Inn in September. Until the adjacent time a person, be well and know you have an angel looking out for you.
Blessings
Joseph Tittel
http://www.josephtittel.com
Close up readers I force if you put up with read and held my departed post Meditation OF Amity subsequently you force be prying in furthering your skills at Meditation and deriving practical advance from the practice of The Meditation of Amity,I force testimony you how to discovery it by furthering it featuring in the Meditation of the Third Eye,undeviating which you can improvement your Enchanting Skills, these Skills are not a kind set of telekinetic faculties as greatest extent band force testimony you but force depend on your inmost wishes and force watchful from person to person. I as endlessly force not confuse you with mysterious stuff but gratify sluice in motivation that a prepare knowledge of what really is the Third Eye is essential so sluice with me.
At hand is a quiet groundnut twisted gland in the heed called the called the Pineal Gland which is placed in in the company of the two hemispheres of the heed which excrete dimethyltryptamine which controls physic experiences, astral travel finale death experiences, clairvoyance,visions,telepathy and unstinted such experiences. this gland controls the the intuitive fearful model afterward called the sympathy fearful model, this gland is to testimony you in simple slang situated in the company of the eyebrows referred to by mystics as the Anja Chakra which is the sixth Chakra, which is described as the Chakra which leads one towards the best consciousness of the nothing special energy or God which ever way you wish to fame it, it is Thing WHICH WE Live Satisfying AND WHICH LIVES Satisfying US.
Now that I put up with in prepare described what is the Third Eye it force be easier for you to discuss on it what in your inmost motivation you want now what you are exploit if you do not know subsequently the refuse to accept persists and attain eludes you so you put up with to be understandable in your motivation and in your end sketch.
Now we come to the meditation part it is really very simple,I over quote from the Bhagwat Geeta the golden words everyday by Shri.Krishna ' contemporary inhaling warning featuring in the wide warning, and contemporary the wide warning featuring in the inhaling warning, the yogi neutralizes both these breaths; he so releases the life entitlement from the soul and brings it under his habit.' which I put up with described in my postKRIYA YOGA,this blab is the very set out of meditation and associates who put up with surge held it put up with fashioned various meditation techniques from it.
As I put up with described in my post-the simplest and easiest way can be described in one sentence'keep your motivation exact this allows the warning or life entitlement to be peacefully strewn from end to end the body'Once you learn to do this naturally subsequently by design defective perfectly any soothing of sweat force the warning to come upwards towards the shot in the company of the two eyes which is anyplace the Pineal Gland is situated, the increasing exchange of warning force waft the Pineal Gland which force subsequently by design start involved at it full suggest.
Matter call for somebody not brandish any soothing of claim and entitlement do this meditation in a very natural way afterward call for somebody not to get practicing with any symbols,words,techniques,methods what this cannot be achieved by trick but in a very natural way.
The advance force coins from person to person but one thing is solid that the raison d'?tre force get heightened and you force be a patronizing trade and evolved person.
Credit: master-of-tarot.blogspot.com
Dear Friends,
http://www.innerfrontier.org/Practices/NonDualAwareness.htm
Be Well.
David
NON-DUAL AWARENESS
In certain remarkable Eastern spiritual teachings the entire path revolves around entering our inherent pure awareness, pure consciousness, pure being, and residing there. Seer and seen merge into a global awareness which excludes nothing, has no center and no separation between observer and observed. The ego, at least temporarily, evaporates. Unfiltered, unfettered consciousness replaces ego as the organizing structure of the person. Seeing reveals the pseudo-self of ego as an empty and illusory construction, instantly dismantled by the unifying wholeness of consciousness in which nothing can be truly separate. Instead of our awareness collapsing in egocentric identification with some distraction or problem, we remain in the authentic fullness of consciousness. At first, this realization of the non-dual might only be intellectual. When the true seeing opens, however, it is both a magnificent surprise and patently obvious. Problems dissolve, joy, wonder, and compassion arise naturally.
The extremely rare saint may, on the occasion of this first taste of non-dual awareness, spontaneously enter a stable, lasting and completely effortless abiding in pure awareness, in clear seeing. Such people inspire us with their teaching that enlightenment is at hand, is our true nature, that we need only let go and be fully in the moment.
The great majority of us, though, are not so spiritually gifted that we attain enlightenment on our first contact with pure awareness. We sink back to autopilot. We cannot learn to ride the bike of non-dual awareness without training wheels. If non-dual awareness is our only practice, we either find it rough sledding, fragmentary and momentary, or we delude ourselves into thinking we have been conscious when we have not.
We need an inner structure to enable us to balance between falling out of the present moment, back into the self-centered view on the one hand, and falling off into a semi-conscious absent-mindedness on the other. We need to contact, build, and organize our sensitive energies into a vehicle capable of supporting pure consciousness in a stable manner. So we focus on practices that involve the gradual cultivation of attention, contacting and organizing energies, body awareness, radical acceptance of ourselves and our situation, seeing the processes of attachment and identification operating within us, prayer, and the rest.
Non-dual awareness is not difficult to experience. We need only simplify into the moment, coming to rest in pure awareness itself by backtracking within our ordinary awareness to its natural, wide-open clarity. We go behind sensory experience, behind emotion, behind thought, behind our very self, into the now. We allow the clouds of thought and emotion and pain to float by without obscuring our presence, and we become that vast sky of unadorned awareness. Pure awareness precedes all; it forms the substrate that receives experience. This clear consciousness appears both wonderful and seductive because the relative ease of momentarily entering the utter satisfaction of non-dual awareness is matched by the ease of falling out of it. Non-dual awareness draws us to seek it directly. But to establish ourselves in awareness, we need a balanced path of cultivating our soul, our wholeness.
This conundrum has been widely debated in spiritual circles for millennia. In early Chinese Zen, for example, the discussion took the form of gradual cultivation versus sudden awakening. The wise, like the twelfth-century Korean Zen master Chinul, taught the necessity and complementarity of both. Sudden awakening into non-dual awareness bestows a first release from the egocentric grasping and rejection of experience. With this weight lifted, we can breathe freely the air of the Present. When we return to our usual state, our understanding has changed. From then on, the recognition of clear awareness as our own essence informs our pursuit of practices in the gradual cultivation of our being. Doubts dispelled, our faith and confidence in the spiritual pursuit grow unshakeable. Awakening recurs more frequently and for longer periods, and we discover the satisfaction of living in Presence. No longer divided inside, no longer focused on the division between our self and the rest of the world, we arrive at rest in the non-dual wholeness of awareness.
Yet non-dual awareness, pure consciousness is not the ultimate goal. We are here to serve a great Purpose. Living in awareness accords with and supports that Purpose in important and subtle ways. But our obligations do not end there. Respecting both the traditions of the East with their focus on being and those of the West with their focus on doing, we see that being is not enough. Purity of being, awareness, promotes the purification of our will, the letting go of attachments and egoism. Gradually opening our will to the Divine Will and our heart to the Great Compassionate Heart of the World enables us to discover and create our destiny through our own unique service to the All.
Our truth is your truth, your truth is our truth, our establishment truth does not belong to us and yet we are one.We come as a annotation of your sanctity and divinity; we are the consciousness of the Outer space Unicorns and Dolphins of the14th Bunch.We bring to your manifestation the light, love, classify and pleasure of the 14th throng.In this era of love with love building within and all surrounding you, it is time for you to high-class fully stir up to the municipal of the Creator, but high-class significantly the distinguished of the Creator within and surrounding you. Do you occupy the municipal of theCreator works point in the right direction you, impart in every hollow of your body?It is zenith in this moment to allow the love of the Creator to open the gates of the opening to you so you may see the municipal in the opening and all surrounding you. The consciousness of generosity and the Earth is varying tremendously with each chain of night and day upon the Earth. If you allow yourself to open to concept from the Creator experiencing the municipal that is eternally be included, it leave effect upon your own consciousness subsequently filtering dressed in the widespread consciousness of generosity and the Earth. In this moment you gobble a divine central theme of varying the consciousness of the Earth and imprinting the divine dressed in the minds of manifold, together with your own.Because you think the divine and love of the Creator habitually it is unexplainable in words but may come forth in feelings or visions, sometimes you may not understand this fully but offer is a sentiment of prestige, concept and knowingness. Because prestige, concept and knowingness is be included this is a powerful influence and characteristic of the Creator which holds a play a part of belief which can be impermeable. Allowing for such energies to be implanted dressed in your body and consciousness leave safety check that others are potent to seep into the precise energy and belief in the Creator.It is zenith to find again you are a powerful flare of characteristic of the Creator, high-class significantly you are a powerful secure of the Creator. Responsibility and concept flows dressed in your body, understanding and consciousness to guide you, but as a consequence to the same degree your body and consciousness are a powerful secure and magnifier of the energy. Your body and consciousness whether you realise it or not is connected to all beings and souls upon the Earth and the inner planes; that which you think within your body and consciousness is literality akin to unusual piece of information and decorative a radio wave is societal openly and habitually involuntarily with every other central part upon the Earth. It is zenith to recognise that negative view within the body and consciousness of your own being and of generosity can gladly be cancelled out and erased point in the right direction the answer of divine prestige, concept and knowingness.This doesn't even gobble to come from you but can be implanted or activated within your body and consciousness. Critical energies are erased due to prestige, concept and knowingness allowing you to see the municipal of the Creator which is in akin to seeing the truth of the Creator.We are sharing out with you that if you allow yourself to be open to the manifestation of the Creator climax your body and consciousness you may sickening experiences of prestige, concept and knowingness which leave hold tight you to the municipal of the Creator. Not slightly leave you well brought-up from this switch but point in the right direction the energy being implanted dressed in your body it leave decontaminate dressed in the consciousness of generosity.As you not insist on high-class fully to the switch you leave have the result that to us the fracture to exceedingly use your body as an secure for sacred and new wisdom which needs to be inbuilt dressed in the Earth and humanity's forceful routine. Your body andconsciousness leave become akin to a assessment agency of new divine wisdom useful to this well up era of love, to the same degree manifold perspectives of generosity and even your own angle prerequisite alter to carry print of the Era of Admiration.Accurate of the information and sacred wisdom leave be clever to you biased your own spiritual stimulation for instance other information leave be as usual and mechanically transmitted dressed in the consciousness of generosity and the Earth without doubt point in the right direction your love thud. Because we ask you to unequivocal upon love and to pour it from your being we are preparing you for a time what you leave train the unmitigated opening of the Creator, all that is useful and basic point in the right direction your being as a natural duration and characteristic of your piece of information. Revered, wisdom, codes, symbols, elucidation and so extreme high-class leave make point in the right direction your being but leave be notoriously transmitted from your body and consciousness to others upon the Earth.Extravagant every central part achieving the precise it would be akin to a obtain and powerful light and love deposit of an characteristic of the Creator, you leave see, avow and sentiment the Creator flowing point in the right direction and from, to and within your unmitigated being. It may be up and down to presumption but it is an think of oneness upon the Earth and an think of the Creator.If you band guided we wish to cultivate you in experiencing and accessing the municipal of the Creator on behalf of yourself and generosity. In the company of the unicorn and dolphin consciousness of the celestial levels of the 14th throng we recognise within us a unsounded state of sanctity which leads to the think of the municipal. The manifestation of the municipal of the Creator can gladly be accessed with our energies to the same degree it is a play a part of the Creator we train. We as a consequence wish to cultivate you in expansion your chakra systems in order to hug high-class light and secure the municipal of the Creator dressed in your chakra consciousness in order to allow you to think the divine municipal of the Creator high-class fully.Exempt yourself to sit relaxingly in advance a unsounded state of meditation, '"I now cleave to upon the protective protection and cultivate of my spiritual community and guides. I ask to be joined with the unicorn and dolphin consciousness of the celestial levels of the 14th throng."' Extravagant crucial the pearlescent light of the unicorns flowing point in the right direction your cover chakra, point in the right direction your chakra motorcade and fillingyour unmitigated chest with light.Extravagant the strike blue-black light of the dolphins flowing point in the right direction your cover chakra, point in the right direction your chakra motorcade and undeveloped in each chakra being supported by the unicorn light.As the energy builds the unicorn and dolphin celestial light merges together and flows back up your chakra motorcade beginning with your starting point chakra. The establishment and multiple light crucial penetrates and glows within your starting point chakra until it overflows dressed in your sacral chakra and so forth all the way up point in the right direction your chakra motorcade dressed in your solar plexus, starting point, be gluttonous, third eye andcrown chakras.The entrance dressed in the establishment light is important; allow as extreme time as is basic. You are activating the consciousness of experiencing the municipal of the Creator in each chakra.The light leave be full from your cover chakra and some energy leave make dressed in your body and consciousness in order to bring forth if useful prestige, concept and knowingness of the Creator subsequently opening the gateways to experiencing or recognising the municipal of the Creator.The greater is a first meditation, you can for that reason maintain if you wish with this summons and deduce. 'I call up the useful divine information and sacred wisdom from the Creator to arise dressed in my unmitigated being but especiallymy body and my consciousness. Let the divine effect wisdom and information within my body and consciousness to cultivate my own ascension and to cultivate a move of humanity's consciousness. Let the divine information and sacred wisdom destined for generosity decontaminate from my body dressed in the minds of others, decorative an forceful wave, optimistic all to recognise the municipal of the Creator.Thank you.tolerate the light of the Creator to make dressed in your body and allow yourself to be slack of the municipal of the Creator.Demand know that you do not have to need to train the wisdom and insights out loud, just your prestige is stacks.We are inwards to cultivate you and to flash the municipal of the Creator within you.The Outer space Unicorn and Dolphins of the 14th Dimensionwww.omna.org/link to green articlehttp://mensajesfedgalacticayashtarcommand.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
"WHEN DO WE BECOME TRULY CONSCIOUS?"
THE NEW SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS SHOULD CHANGE HOW WE THINK ABOUT THORNY ETHICAL DILEMMAS.
BY
DANIEL BOR
SEPTEMBER 4TH, 2012
"SLATE"
It is easy to view consciousness as a kind of magic. In religion it is represented by the mysterious soul, and in science the concept of consciousness at first appears quite alien. But many fields, such as the study of what distinguishes life from nonlife, had their earlier magical states eroded by careful scientific study. Consciousness is in the midst of a similar revolution.
The investigation of our own awareness is a blossoming scientific field, where experiments are illuminating exciting details about this most intimate of scientific subjects. In my book The Ravenous Brain, I describe the latest consciousness science and how we are closing in on establishing a consciousness meter-a way to measure levels of awareness in any being that may be able to experience the world. Consciousness is in many ways the most important question remaining for science.
But the nature of consciousness is not just a vital question for science; it's also the source of some of society's thorniest, most fundamental ethical dilemmas.
On a personal level, consciousness is where the meaning to life resides. All the moments that matter to us, from falling in love to seeing our child's first smile, to that perfect holiday surrounded by snow-capped mountains, are obviously conscious events. If none of these events were conscious, if we weren't conscious to experience them, we'd hardly consider ourselves alive-at least not in any way that matters.
Whether I'm reveling in a glowing pleasure or even if I'm enduring a sharp sadness, I always sense that behind everything there is the privilege and passion of experience. Our consciousness is the essence of who we perceive ourselves to be. It is the citadel for our senses, the melting pot of thoughts, the welcoming home for every emotion that pricks or placates us. For us, consciousness simply is the currency of life.
Although some philosophers and scientists suspect that consciousness is a pointless side effect of cognitive processes, I believe the opposite: that our consciousness might indeed be responsible for our greatest intellectual achievements in both the arts and sciences. Whether our creativity and insight originates in our unconscious mind or not (I believe that the role of the unconscious has been overestimated), at the very least, our consciousness is the conduit to inspect these gems of inspiration and the driving force for turning them into reality.
It is not surprising, therefore, that questions about consciousness lie at the heart of many of our most fundamental ethical debates, one of which is abortion and the right to life. This is an appropriate point for me to play my proud father card and slip in a couple of pictures of my daughter, Lalana. The ultrasound was taken halfway through pregnancy, at 20 weeks. Soon after this scan, we could clearly feel her kicking.
The second image is a recent photo of her. As a 2-year-old, Lalana runs around everywhere and has a vocabulary of a few hundred words. She can convey events to us that happened days or weeks before, usually because she is still so excited about them. She can also store wishes for the future. For instance, we might tell her offhand that when we get home, we'll play with making bubbles. Hours later, as soon as she enters the house, she'll run straight to the shelf with the bubble bottle and scream, "Bubbu! Bubbu!" She has a strong set of loves and hates, and her emotionally sensitive, passionate, cheeky, disturbingly stubborn personality is already pronounced.
Having prided myself on my objectivity throughout my adult life, I've embarrassingly found that my daughter is the main exception to this aim: I've not only been taken aback by how fiercely I love her but also by how proud I am of her and how quickly I distort the truth to make her seem exceptional in every way. But when I can step back from these views, I ask myself: At what point did she become conscious? Obviously she is conscious now, as she can tell me her inner thoughts via language. But when did she start experiencing her environment? On a personal, intuitive level, I had little doubt that her first intense bursts of laughter at my silly antics, when she was a few months old, reflected a substantive consciousness. But was she conscious well before this? Was she aware when she was still in the womb, kicking away? Or could she only experience things when she first opened her eyes to the outside world on the day of her birth?
Finding answers to these questions isn't merely a matter of curiosity. In the United States, people have been murdered for carrying out abortions. In many other countries, abortion is illegal even if the woman has been raped, and some prominent U.S. politicians, including Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, support similarly harsh laws. Although such positions are usually determined by religion, a related mindset is that fetuses are already conscious and even capable of feeling pain. Indeed, this has recently been the basis states have used to further restrict a woman's rights on this issue, with Arizona the latest state to join this group by disallowing abortions after 20 weeks.
But what does science have to say on this matter? The evidence is clear that a fetus can respond to sights, sounds, and smells, and it can even react to these by producing facial expressions. The evidence is equally clear, however, that these responses are generated by the most primitive parts of the brain, which are unconnected to consciousness, and therefore these actions don't in any way imply that the fetus is aware. Furthermore, the fetus is deliberately sedated by a series of chemicals produced by the placenta, so even if it had the capacity for consciousness, there is almost no chance that it could ever be conscious in the womb. Consequently, it can't consciously feel pain.
But what if the fetus is removed from the womb and its sleep-inducing chemicals? Will the fetus suddenly be conscious in the outside world? In adult humans, for normal consciousness to occur, it is now generally agreed that two sets of regions need to be intact, functional, and able to communicate effectively with one another: the thalamus, a kind of relay station in the middle of the brain that connects many regions with many others; and the prefrontal parietal network, our most high-level, general purpose section of cortex. If either the thalamus or prefrontal parietal network is substantially damaged, the patient is likely to enter into a vegetative state, with virtually no sign of consciousness.
When do these brain regions form in the growing fetus? Only after about 29 weeks are the connections between these areas properly laid out, and it takes another month or so before the thalamus and the rest of the cortex are effectively communicating, as revealed by brain waves. So it's highly unlikely that consciousness, at least in any form that we'd recognize as human awareness, arises before about 33 weeks into pregnancy. There are therefore no scientific reasons for restricting abortion on the grounds that the fetus will experience pain, at least until very late in pregnancy. This evidence has heavily influenced my views here, and consequently I am very much pro-choice.
Another ethical issue that hinges on questions of consciousness is that of animal rights. Every person on the planet, on average, consumes twice his or her weight in animal-derived food each year. Food production, as well as animal experimentation, could be causing the suffering of many millions of animals yearly.
If no animals except humans have consciousness, there's no problem, as suffering requires consciousness. But if even those animals classically assumed to have very limited mental faculties, such as poultry and fish, have a substantive awareness and significant capacity for suffering, then are we justified in inflicting all this pain and discomfort on them?
If science could come up with some means of testing for the presence of consciousness in other animals and perhaps also a way of gauging the extent of consciousness when it's found, this would have a huge impact on all ethical spheres of the animal rights debate.
On the surface, because animals can't use language to tell us they are conscious, this seems an intractable problem. But a surprising amount of evidence has emerged that addresses the question of animal consciousness. For a start, we can ask which other species have brain regions similar to those we know are critical for human consciousness, namely the thalamus and prefrontal parietal network. Most mammals share these structures with us in some form, suggesting strongly that they too have some significant levels of consciousness. But this is a problematic approach, ignoring the possibility that very distant species independently evolved the capacity for consciousness. For instance, crows can use a series of tools to hook a juicy grub, and octopuses can open a screw-on lid to a jar to retrieve a tasty crab. Although these animals have no cortex, they appear to demonstrate a mental life that many would classify as conscious.
The most prominent scientific theories of consciousness are converging on the idea that it is related to a certain kind of information processing, in which multiple strands of data are drawn together, and that it is dependent on a certain kind of network architecture. Arguably the most popular theory along these lines, information integration theory by Giulio Tononi, effectively assumes that consciousness is a continuum across the animal kingdom. If so, even the lowly nematode worm, with a few hundred neurons, will have some, albeit minimal, level of consciousness. If something approximating this theory proves correct, it has huge implications for our relationship to all animals on the planet.
But even if we assume that there is a continuum of consciousness, this is of limited use in helping answer questions of animal rights. For instance, a worm may indeed have a capacity for some consciousness, but the way it experiences the world may be infinitesimally limited compared to human awareness. More pertinent for ethics is the scientific exploration of whether other animals have advanced forms of consciousness, such as self-awareness. This can be tested using the mirror test: A spot of paint is placed on an animal's face, and it is then presented with a mirror. Many animals will simply attack or try to escape from the apparent foe in the mirror, but a select few will recognize themselves, as demonstrated by them trying to remove or at least examine the strange spot. The current list of animals that clearly pass this test includes chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, dolphins, elephants, pigs (on a modified version of the test), and even magpies. But this list of species is sure to grow as more animals are tested in ways that are most appropriate for them.
Another marker of an advanced consciousness is something called metacognition, the ability to be aware of your own mind and report on it, for instance by saying: "I'm sure I saw that cat in the woods," or "You might have seen a cat, but I didn't spot anything." In human experiments, it is seen as definitive evidence of consciousness. But we are not the only species to have this skill.
Metacognition in other species is usually measured using a gambling task: An animal makes a decision about a stimulus and can then press either a high-risk button that promises a large food reward if the decision was correct but food restriction if it was wrong, or a low-risk button with a meager reward regardless of whether the animal is right or wrong. If the animal has significant metacognition-in other words, if it knows whether it is just guessing or if it has solid knowledge about a given stimulus-then it should usually press the high-risk button when it knows the correct answer and the low-risk one when it's wrong. This is exactly what several other species, including the great apes and monkeys, do. These species demonstrate an advanced form of consciousness that in humans is definitive evidence of our awareness.
My take on all this data is that it is extremely likely that all the species that can recognize themselves in the mirror or show metacognitive abilities have an advanced form of consciousness. But for any species that hasn't yet passed these tests, we simply don't know whether they lack the ability or just haven't been tested appropriately. The cautious attitude, I believe, is to assume that all mammals and the octopus at the very least, but possibly many more species, have a significant capacity for consciousness.
Consequently, I am a vegetarian, as are several prominent consciousness researchers. I believe it would be ethically consistent for us to extend our own rights to life and freedom from torture to any species that can recognize itself in the mirror, show clear metacognition, or even demonstrate extensive tool use. Barring all these animals from the food industry and passing laws to protect them based on their consciousness would be a radical step and not one that I can see any political leader advocating anytime soon. Nevertheless, it would be a consistent and caring departure from the way much of society currently views animals, and it would acknowledge the advances in our scientific understanding of the mental lives of these other species.
Consciousness research informs other political issues as well. For instance, how can we assess the level of consciousness remaining in someone who has suffered severe brain damage and is in a vegetative state? At what point should we let such patients die? And it is possible that in the decades to come, we might also need to start thinking about how we assess artificial forms of consciousness and what rights we consequently need to bestow on such beings.
Therefore, not just for its own sake but for evaluating many ethical dilemmas, consciousness science is a vital field. Anyone interested in key political debates may want to keep a close eye on its progress in the years to come.
THE RAVENOUS BRAIN: HOW THE NEW SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINS OUR INSATIABLE SEARCH FOR MEANING
BY
DANIEL BOR
ISBN-10: 046502047X
ISBN-13: 978-0465020478
