consciousness always bothered me

[gumOnShoe]

I don't know how to put my finger on it to explain it. But the actuality of my existence bothers me.

If I make a little program that adds numbers together 1+1 = 2 + 1 = 3... etc forever. I don't expect it to be self aware. Because it isn't. But even if it were self aware, I wouldn't expect consciousness arise.

Its just that, a simple or complex machine ought to be able to go through the motions "thinking" or whatever else without having a "voyager" or "passenger" or whatever you call it. You know, there was "nothing" before I was born. And there will likely be "nothing" afterwards. But here in the middle I exist. And most of the time I don't have a problem with that. I accept that I'm human or whatever and go about my day. Most of time I'm thinking about work or food or whatever.

But what the hell makes a human brain so special as to create this unique persona that not only is capable of feeling rules; but feels confined at its little space in the brain; that creates some sort of perception that knows its real but can't face death; and where is that perception coming from that I have manifested in this temporal location but will likely cease to exist sometime after.

I don't understand how it is that I came to exist in this one body? You know. And that's something we'll probably never know. And I'm not a religious man, but its this one thing that probably keeps scientific people coming back to the soul and religion.

Have I made any sense?

[RubberTrucky]

At 1/24/11 07:34 AM, gumOnShoe wrote:
Have I made any sense?

Surely, it's things like that that make me realise we will never figure out everything about reality. Even with all our fancy science, we can not explain what this all means.

There are further enigmas regarding this. the biggest I've already explained a few times is how we are build of elementary particles, without any glint of consciousness, but as a whole are something totally different and alive. Heck, we even fight for our survival, have very complex system to ensure we stay alive and feel consciously pressed to survive even though our particles have no will in the matter whatsoever. Which ever state, they will survive anyways and even more so, they are in a more stable/ desirable state when we are dead. (we can die, but we can't un-die)

Science can dictate hough that our whole consciousness is a get together of a whole range of accidental interactions and a byproduct of physics processes. But it's still a weird thing, that i think is far from being dismissed easily.

On a side note, subconsciousness is also weird. We have done ages to find out how our body works and produces DNA and all of the sorts. Isn't it weird we still have a lot of questions about the matter, even though our body is producing every chemical for ages already?

[Drakim]

At 1/24/11 07:34 AM, gumOnShoe wrote: I don't know how to put my finger on it to explain it. But the actuality of my existence bothers me.

If I make a little program that adds numbers together 1+1 = 2 + 1 = 3... etc forever. I don't expect it to be self aware. Because it isn't. But even if it were self aware, I wouldn't expect consciousness arise.

Its just that, a simple or complex machine ought to be able to go through the motions "thinking" or whatever else without having a "voyager" or "passenger" or whatever you call it.

We really only have one type of machine under our toolbelt, the calculator, with some extra features like memory. If we made say, analog computers, something like this might be much easier to cause.

You know, there was "nothing" before I was born. And there will likely be "nothing" afterwards. But here in the middle I exist. And most of the time I don't have a problem with that. I accept that I'm human or whatever and go about my day. Most of time I'm thinking about work or food or whatever.

But what the hell makes a human brain so special as to create this unique persona that not only is capable of feeling rules; but feels confined at its little space in the brain; that creates some sort of perception that knows its real but can't face death; and where is that perception coming from that I have manifested in this temporal location but will likely cease to exist sometime after.

Analog brain + evolutionary finetuning = surprisingly detailed results, if a bit sloppy at times.

I don't understand how it is that I came to exist in this one body? You know. And that's something we'll probably never know. And I'm not a religious man, but its this one thing that probably keeps scientific people coming back to the soul and religion.

If you have a system of logic and thought that operates with a sense of "me" and things external from me, isn't inevitable that a persona is present?

I mean, even if you weren't in your body, somebody has to be, seeing how it has a functioning brain. You could just as well ask "why am I exactly here in this location?". You'd have to be somewhere to even ask that question in the first place. It doesn't need to have some sort of divine prophecy or anything.

[SteveGuzzi]

i think its pretty awesome that something so close to us (in terms of our experiencing it) is also the most distant from us (in terms of our understanding it). we are never NOT dealing with the human mind, and yet it's the most complex and hard-to-unravel thing we're presently aware of.

kinda neat.

[gumOnShoe]

At 1/24/11 09:06 AM, Drakim wrote: If you have a system of logic and thought that operates with a sense of "me" and things external from me, isn't inevitable that a persona is present?

I mean, even if you weren't in your body, somebody has to be,

You're sure about that? If you look at a complex algorithm, even if it is massively parallel (millions of processors running algorithms), there's still a governing algorithm and a finite set of data. When you look at a human brain, is this really anything more than that. Yes there must be a unique instance of the algorithm, and the algorithm must also understand that it is "a self" but that doesn't mean that there's an actual entity or "soul" watching everything. I being me. Like, what is it exactly about my brain that "I" (my soul/my whatever) came to be attached to this body. Why isn't this body just a silent algorithm that knows it exists and takes in input and spits it out. Why do I, ME, MYSELF need to exist for that to happen?

seeing how it has a functioning brain. You could just as well ask "why am I exactly here in this location?". You'd have to be somewhere to even ask that question in the first place. It doesn't need to have some sort of divine prophecy or anything.

The fundamental question here is that at what point and how does self awareness transcend basic calculation and memory storage so that it essentially develops a "soul" (And I don't mean divine godly soul).

At 1/24/11 05:30 PM, SteveGuzzi wrote: i think its pretty awesome that something so close to us (in terms of our experiencing it) is also the most distant from us (in terms of our understanding it). we are never NOT dealing with the human mind, and yet it's the most complex and hard-to-unravel thing we're presently aware of.

kinda neat.

Oh, I totally agree. But this is just like staring up in the sky and realizing you could never see the end of of what you're looking at. Its that infinity feeling. That pure mortality "I am finite" feeling. Its amazing, neat, scary and everything else.

[Bacchanalian]

I think we inherently regard consciousness as mystical largely because we have no intuitive concept of the degree of complexity between a simple machine and our brains. There's no visceral way to get it.

Ever hear of rule 110?

[satanbrain]

The perception of "I" is a delusion, the "conscious" being is a malfunction of an algorithm. The consciousness is transcending calculation by requiring illogical inputs, which cause more malfunctions (illogical desires), and to acquire these inputs a being must develop a "soul". The "soul", array of chemicals, provides the inputs the algorithm needs and in return the algorithm outputs more chemicals - which we call feelings. In the present state of a conscious being, abandoning the soul will likely crash the algorithm, lack of inputs and overrun of outputs.

[Yorik]

Yeah, consciousness is really a burden in my day-to-day life. It would be way more convenient if I were a robot without feelings and stuff.

[RubberTrucky]

At 1/25/11 02:06 AM, Yorik wrote: Yeah, consciousness is really a burden in my day-to-day life. It would be way more convenient if I were a robot without feelings and stuff.

Also, excruciatingly boring.

But to actually prove human mind is a simple algorithm, we should go Asimov eventually and build robots that behave exactly like humans (not just look like, I'm talking bi-centennial man). Though, this can still be a long way to go.

[altanese-mistress]

I have what you might call an 'obsession' with this sort of thing. If I'm not being distracted by life in general, my mind will always come back to this and literally make me feel physically ill. It has actually proven to be a crippling sort of mind set when it comes to real life.

The answer is I don't know, and will probably never know in this life, what stands just beyond the veil of death or why certain beings are capable of sentient thought. The fact remains, however, that we are capable of it. In the end, the cold factual answer is that our frontal cortex holds all of our morals, our values, our ethical judgement, our very personality- basically, the closest thing to a 'soul' that modern science has to offer. The real question arises as to why, in the course of evolution, a being did something that was not specifically for the purposes of carrying it's genes to a new generation. If we ever discover that, I imagine it will be as if we were looking into the very face of God.

Or maybe I misunderstood the whole point of this topic, in which case, please feel free to disregard.

[SteveGuzzi]

At 2/1/11 03:56 AM, altanese-mistress wrote: The real question arises as to why, in the course of evolution, a being did something that was not specifically for the purposes of carrying it's genes to a new generation. If we ever discover that, I imagine it will be as if we were looking into the very face of God.

Or maybe I misunderstood the whole point of this topic, in which case, please feel free to disregard.

nahh i think you're on point. or maybe i just like the 'very face of God' reference.

thing is, i know that there are people who would argue that we've NEVER done something that "was not specifically for the purposes of carrying [our] genes to a new generation". i know you know those cats. whether you're talking about art, literature, music... no matter WHAT abstract pursuit it is that seems to set humans apart from other creatures, they'll argue that all of it must certainly be tied to increasing the chances of survival and/or the chances of passing on genes. so when it comes to why something like religion has been such a ubiquitous cornerstone of human civilization, they will either point towards how it acts as a binding form of community/homogenizing social structure/etc. orrrr more likely dismiss it outright as simply being ancient ignorant peoples' way of bullshitting through things that they never understood. in the process they'll usually ignore the principles at the root of why religions exist in the first place (eg. our natural "common-sense dualism" between minds and bodies, our attempts at communicating transcendent personal experiences, our musings [like this topic] about the nature of consciousness/existence/perception/exper ience, etc).

consciousness is mind-blowing in part because its an entirely private experience. when i was a little kid i often had recurring thoughts along the lines of: how could i REALLY know that i wasn't the ONLY thing that was truly experiencing and seeing and living? i had weird thoughts about how maybe the entire world only existed for ME, that everything i encountered was there specifically to get some reaction or response out of me. it wasn't until years later that i learned there was actually a term for that concept (solipsism) or that lots and lots of other people have gone through a similar stage of musing and speculation.

it's mind-blowing enough to think about the intricacies of human perception, but of course we know that humans aren't the only conscious creatures around. we acknowledge other creatures as thinking, but, it's always assumed that they're on a lower rung on the ladder of perception. we never really know what kind of thoughts go through other animals' heads though. we can empathize with other mammals to an extent; sense by their expressions when they're pleased or in pain, see them show affection toward one-another, etc... but we don't know about any animals besides us who do things like philosophize for philosophy's sake, or look for something, ANYTHING to give thanks-to simply for the awesome privilege of existing. bugs can't frown so we don't think twice about stepping on them. grass doesn't cry and weeds don't scream when we cut them down. no one is concerned about the pursuit of happiness of bacteria... but, at some level, ALL of these things are alive and conscious of their surroundings... but it's a sort of consciousness that we could never relate to.

and when we try to conceive of a universe without consciousness... well, it seems damn near nonsensical. i mean, what good is a universe when there's nothing within it to know that there even IS a universe? the evolution of life is a natural extension of the evolution of galaxies, stars, and planets... and self-awareness is a natural extension of life's inherent property of consciousness. through us (and all other living things) is how the universe ultimately becomes aware of itself. but this is not a fact -- it is mere biased opinion from a biased human. a bias that stems from the natural goal-oriented sense we all tend to interpret events with: that things have a beginning and a middle and that they all ultimately lead to some sort of already-imagined end. the concept that the entire tree already exists within the seed, even if it's just in potentiality. the idea that form follows function -- phrased differently, that purpose precedes all form.

this of course is entirely contrary to what many would have you believe: that all forms are randomly-generated and thus any end result achieved by a form was never truly an end goal to begin with but merely a consequence of chance occurrences. in other words, eyes don't exist because there is light to be perceived -- no... light exists, eyes just happened to form, and creatures just happened to derive a survival benefit from them. i think it's a strange sort of dichotomy that popular evolutionary theory proposes... to insist that healthy living beings are, without exception, driven to act with specific goals in mind (e.g. survival and procreation) but that the 'programming' that is at the core defining and shaping what forms these living beings take is, without exception, not.

---
---
---
---
---

TL;DR: "blah blah blah boring monologue (stuff [brackets] etc etc etc) long-winded ramble"

feel free to disregard :D

[Ericho]

At 1/24/11 07:34 AM, gumOnShoe wrote: I don't understand how it is that I came to exist in this one body? You know. And that's something we'll probably never know. And I'm not a religious man, but its this one thing that probably keeps scientific people coming back to the soul and religion.

Well, from a purely scientific sense, I would say you came to exist in this body by pure chance or perhaps luck.

[Bacchanalian]

At 2/1/11 12:21 PM, Ericho wrote: Well, from a purely scientific sense, I would say you came to exist in this body by pure chance or perhaps luck.

Oh hello there thinly veiled slight toward atheism.

[Ericho]

At 2/1/11 06:51 PM, Bacchanalian wrote: Oh hello there thinly veiled slight toward atheism.

I was just thinking that this is what I would probably think if I was an atheist myself.

[Bacchanalian]

At 2/2/11 01:27 PM, Ericho wrote:

At 2/1/11 06:51 PM, Bacchanalian wrote: Oh hello there thinly veiled slight toward atheism.

I was just thinking that this is what I would probably think if I was an atheist myself.

Wait wait wait... let me get this straight...

This post gets a reply, despite it solely addressing your contempt for atheism... where as... you've neglected countless other posts that actually address far more pertinent issues - and you've neglected them on the basis that they're attacking you and your beliefs.

Did I just step into the twilight zone?

Please don't play off what you said as anything less than a facsimile of that quote from Trey Parker you like to parade around here. What you think of atheism and what you think you'd think of atheism are obviously one in the same.

Much love.

[sharpnova]

Reality and sentience aren't as abstract as you think. Since reality is perceived people have this idea that reality depends more on perception than it really does. Since sentience is a function of the sentient mind, people have this idea that it can't be observed or understood directly by sentience. As though since an eyeball can't look at itself, a brain can't conceive of itself.

First off, self awareness and consciousness are the same thing. When a neural network becomes sufficiently complex, it is able to reference itself.

It's like creating a model of the universe. Obviously you can't create a complete model because that model would have to contain the model ad infinum. But the bigger and more sophisticated your universe is, the better its internal model can be.

I think the central problem with people's understanding is this implicit underlying assumption that there's more to our intelligence, self awareness, sentience, consciousness, perception of the universe, etc. etc. than the perfectly deterministic result of a large functioning neural network.

This idea that a computer program would never be sentient, even if it emulated a human brain down to the neuron is similarly absurd.

We're all basically information processing entities. We have a structure and state, a constant flow of input, and a constant flow of output.

The difference between you if struck deaf, dumb, blind, and bodily paralyzed with your optic nerve tied in to a text input device and your hypoglossal nerve tied into a text output stream, and a software simulation of your brain (accurate down to the necessary resolution (cellular most likely) would be exactly zero. Give the software version of yourself visual and auditory input, auditory output, and robotic mobility and the difference between the it and the original you shrinks rapidly.

The fact that one was made out of human tissue and the other silicon would only be relevant to an outside observer. And then, only if they were aware of the difference.

Sadly, the reason these artificial distinctions are imposed is due to basic human ego. We like to consider our intelligence and creativity and awareness and perception of the universe to be something more than it really is. Something that can't be emulated.

But it can.

And it can and will be emulated far better than our meager intellectual level.

[Nasseus7]

I have always thought what it was live to live a decade before I was born, and I keep wondering to myself why is my conscious put into this body at this certain time. It irritates me.

Another thought that always comes across to me is, is everything I am seeing real, or is this all imaginary?

Mind fucking, isn't it?

[Nasseus7]

At 2/15/11 04:02 PM, Nasseus7 wrote: I have always thought what it was live to live a decade before I was born, and I keep wondering to myself why is my conscious put into this body at this certain time. It irritates me.

Sorry, I meant 'like to live', not 'live to live'.

[gumOnShoe]

At 2/15/11 02:52 PM, sharpnova wrote: Humans are biological "software & hardware" in execution.

Even if all of that is true (and it very well might be). I can't come up with a reasonable explanation for why, as another user put it so .... offly ...., I am me.

That is to say, why does self awareness spawn a level of thought/consciousness/complexity that whatever I am exists. Why doesn't it simply execute its rules, aware of itself as it is and the world around it, without generating *sentience.*

If I write a program that analyzes programs does it manifest an entity for that task? Of course not its too simple. And yet I can tell it to differentiate between small and large programs and it could then put itself into the appropriate grouping. Why is it that complexity then leads to what we are: Not only self acknowledging i/o devices, but i/o devices with *sentience.*

Is it simply a malfunction? A stray line of code? A state resulting from chaos?

Is the human condition so simply wrapped up as I/O?

I don't know. My humanity doesn't want to believe it and so it bothers me. I am not rejecting the idea, but my subconscious wants to. That small disbeliever in me wants to say its not possible. And of course its the hardest thing to explain. What is *me*?

[Ravariel]

At 2/15/11 08:40 PM, gumOnShoe wrote:

At 2/15/11 02:52 PM, sharpnova wrote: Humans are biological "software & hardware" in execution.

Even if all of that is true (and it very well might be). I can't come up with a reasonable explanation for why, as another user put it so .... offly ...., I am me.

Actually, the biology-as-machine or DNA-as-computer program metaphor is faulty and leads toward just these kind of problems.

The issue here is that the biological brain is several orders of magnitude more powerful and complex than any computer we can currently construct. Add to that the layers of complexity in chemical and biological interactions at every level of the body and the computer or program is still in the pee-wee leagues asking why it can't hit a home run like Barry Bonds (yay for more bad metaphors in a post cautioning about bad metaphors).

That is to say, why does self awareness spawn a level of thought/consciousness/complexity that whatever I am exists. Why doesn't it simply execute its rules, aware of itself as it is and the world around it, without generating *sentience.*

Who says they're different things? And who says that Self-awareness spawns the thought? Perhaps the level of execution our program requires also requires sentience. Why can't it, sans incredulity, simply be a function of an intelligent-enough program?

Is it simply a malfunction? A stray line of code? A state resulting from chaos?

Is the human condition so simply wrapped up as I/O?

I think the problem here is that you don't have a good definition of "consciousness" and it's leading to contradictions and cognitive dissonance that confuse the issue.

The idea of an "I" separate from others, individual, as an entity separate from a body, yet tied to it, is a problem that philosophers have struggles with since there were philosophers. Mind/body dualism is one of the oldest arguments there is.

I don't know. My humanity doesn't want to believe it and so it bothers me. I am not rejecting the idea, but my subconscious wants to. That small disbeliever in me wants to say its not possible. And of course its the hardest thing to explain. What is *me*?

"You" is the unique pattern of thought, decision, responses to stimulus, and overall environment that has resulted in your current state of mind. "You" is not a static thing, bu one that is dynamic and cannot be defined, because by the time it has been defined, it has changed (call it the Ravariel Uncertainty Principle of Mind). You define your current "me" as the same as past "me"s, because there is an organic, analogue progression between them that has not been broken, but the current me is different. Both states, that of same and that of different coexist, and the fact that you can observe, and understand, these similarities and differences, and be confused at the apparent contradiction between them, is the proof that "you" as a sentient being exist.

[S4cr3d-Cr4p]

Ok, so we have perceptions. From these perceptions, we infer things about reality, and create a model. Many animals have such models of reality, which enable them to react to their perceptions. We exist in reality. When our model of reality extends to the machinery used for creating the model, we call it consciousness.

The problem with consciousness is that our model needs to include itself and so an infinite regress of models within models occurs. We're not able to hold this kind of infinity within us, so we simplify our model to a point at which we almost lose the key details about consciousness.

And on the argument "well none of the particles that make us up are conscious", this seems to me silly. None of the atoms in a calculator can add up individually. Even the individual parts of which a calculator are composed cannot add up. Are we really going to say then that when we combine the parts, some mysterious entity enters the calculator, enabling it to add up numbers? Atoms are not themselves conscious, but they have the intrinsic qualities required to combine together to create something that is conscious, just as the individual parts of a calculator collectively have the intrinsic qualities required to combine together to create something that can add.

[sharpnova]

I don't think there's anything faulty about it. It's well understood that the human brain would require several iterations of moore's law further beyond what we're looking at now to even have a chance of being simulated accurately.

The fact that it's a complex problem with lots of nuances we haven't thought of yet doesn't make the comparison faulty.

As for questioning the i/o nature of human thought. I can't answer that but only to say that alternative explanations seem more like superstition to me.

[Major-n0ob]

It is because God gave you a soul and that soul is what gives you your self-awareness.

[Al6200]

Yo, GumOnShoe, you might want to read about a philosophical method called "Phenomenology". Namely, look into Ed Husserl and Martin Heidegger. I'd recommend "A very short introduction to Heidegger" as a good starting point.

Basically, in the Cartesian worldview, the world is separated into subjects and objects. Subjects experience objects and objects are experienced. A conscious being exists as both a subject and an object. For example, if I touch my right hand with my left hand then my body is an object that I experience as a subject.

Husserl's Phenomenology comes out of the insight that consciousness is never just "consciousness". Rather, to be conscious I must be conscious of something. So there is no such thing as an isolated subject and no such thing as an isolated object. Thus consciousness always exists in what Husserl calls a "lifeworld", and further he posits that all knowledge is based on the contents of this lifeworld.

Heidegger takes Husserl's phenomenology is a new direction, by arguing that we should disregard the terms consciousness, subject, and object. In Heidegger's writings, these terms are replaced with a concept called "Dasein", which translates to "Being-there or Being-in-the-world". Thus the original concept of a world in which there are subjects and objects is replaced with an integrated concept of Being-there.

This has some interesting implications. Firstly, there is a recognition that there is no such thing as an object in the world that simply exists. Objects only exist as something recognized, and that recognition of an object exists within a world of significations that is unique to each dasein.

So GumOnShoe, if we take this view, than the question of "What is conscious and why" becomes somewhat moot. For each person, life is simply being-there. The question of whether or not others have this experience of being-there is probably unanswerable, but I tend to think that we regard a being as conscious based on our ability to predict the behavior of that being. So for example, we think of other humans as conscious because we can understand their behavior in terms of our own.

[Ravariel]

At 2/20/11 12:00 AM, Al6200 wrote: This has some interesting implications. Firstly, there is a recognition that there is no such thing as an object in the world that simply exists. Objects only exist as something recognized, and that recognition of an object exists within a world of significations that is unique to each dasein.

As I started to read this post, I started typing up a rather extended dismissal of the Cartesian/Modernist view of subject/object separation/purification, but thankfully I read the rest before responding. While I like the fact that this Dasein (which is kind of a pun in German, as it could be a contraction of two different pairs of words Das Ein (the one, or the singular) or Da' Sein (the existence)) blends the subject/object argument back together. I have a quick and dirty breakdown of why Modernism and Postmodernism don't work, and my own social philosophy based on Actor-network theory and enactment here. But it's starting to sound a little too philosophically wishy-washy. It sounds to me like the philosophical argument between the morality of a person being 50/50 at birth or tabula-rasa... where they are explicitly different, but effectively identical. This almost sounds like a postmodern deconstruction of an idea that, much like Hot Topic non-conformists, is actually still conforming to the previous paradigm.

Perhaps it is my unfamiliarity with the details of the writings of these authors, but I'm not sure it gives us any ontological answers to the question of consciousness... or any real solution to the chicken-and-egg problem (from cartesian subject/object duality) it seems to want to solve. Perhaps you can explain in more detail?

[ChainsawNinjaZX]

I believe it's called a soul.

[bcdemon]

"consciousness always bothered me"

Get some DMT

[AreYouSure]

At 2/26/11 07:06 PM, bcdemon wrote: "consciousness always bothered me"

Get some DMT

"to live is to die"

"i am because i was"

"WooOOoommMmMMM"

...something like that?

[Al6200]

At 2/21/11 05:42 PM, Ravariel wrote:

At 2/20/11 12:00 AM, Al6200 wrote: This has some interesting implications. Firstly, there is a recognition that there is no such thing as an object in the world that simply exists. Objects only exist as something recognized, and that recognition of an object exists within a world of significations that is unique to each dasein.

As I started to read this post, I started typing up a rather extended dismissal of the Cartesian/Modernist view of subject/object separation/purification, but thankfully I read the rest before responding. While I like the fact that this Dasein (which is kind of a pun in German, as it could be a contraction of two different pairs of words Das Ein (the one, or the singular) or Da' Sein (the existence)) blends the subject/object argument back together. I have a quick and dirty breakdown of why Modernism and Postmodernism don't work, and my own social philosophy based on Actor-network theory and enactment here.

One of the features of Heidegger's writing is the contraction of several words into nouns: ready-to-hand, present-at-hand, being-toward-death. Traditionally dasein means something close to "existence" or "life" in the German language, but Heidegger uses it to mean "Being-in-the-world". The choice of dasein over the contraction is mostly an aesthetic choice by those who translated the original German into English.

The whole idea here is to remove the cartesian presupposition that the world can be divided into subjects and objects.

But it's starting to sound a little too philosophically wishy-washy. It sounds to me like the philosophical argument between the morality of a person being 50/50 at birth or tabula-rasa... where they are explicitly different, but effectively identical. This almost sounds like a postmodern deconstruction of an idea that, much like Hot Topic non-conformists, is actually still conforming to the previous paradigm.

Not so sure about this. Let's take the example of a table. In the cartesian world view, the table is an object that has certain objective properties. For example, it has a certain color, a certain shape, a certain weight, etc. Subjects experience this object. But here we run into certain problems. How do we know that the table has an objective color? What if what I call red is actually what you call blue and vice versa? We can relate this to Plato's parable of the cave. What if I only see the shadows of an object? Do I know the object or only its appearance? The Hegelian (idealist) solution is that phenomena both reveal and conceal reality as the thing-in-itself. Through history phenomena reveal the concealed truth about objects (note that this is me regurgitating summaries of Hegel, I haven't actually read his major works).

Let's again return to the table from a Heideggerian perspective (which I would call modern). Heidegger begins by rejecting the idea that we can think of the table in terms of its properties. He says that the table does not exist by itself, it only exists as something experienced. If the table is ready-to-hand (that is, if it is being used), we may not be aware of the table or its properties at all. Merleau-Ponty extends the Heideggerian concept by explaining that even when we are simply grasping something, we are actively projecting it into the future and placing it into a world of significance.

Heidegger even questions the concept of properties. He creates a thought experiment in which a person lives in a world where any object moves away from a person if they try to touch it. He says that in a cartesian world view, we would have to accept that the object has properties like hardness. But Heidegger argues that hardness really just means "how something reacts when we come into contact with it", so in this universe the idea of hardness is meaningless. Thus objects don't really have properties, but rather dasein has a particular mode of experience that we call "hardness".

In that sense, Heidegger's writings can be seen as a defense of a holistic approach to thinking. I really don't think that traditional western thought and modern continental philosophy are just two ways of saying the same thing.

Perhaps it is my unfamiliarity with the details of the writings of these authors, but I'm not sure it gives us any ontological answers to the question of consciousness... or any real solution to the chicken-and-egg problem (from cartesian subject/object duality) it seems to want to solve. Perhaps you can explain in more detail?

Here's how I would solve the problem of consciousness. Though I make no claim to originality, I don't believe that this is the view of Husserl or Heidegger. It might be similar to the thoughts of the Jewish existentialist Martin Buber, but I am not so sure of this.

Each individual can describe the whole of their experience. They can call this consciousness. Some modes of experience we can characterize as being-with-a-thing. If I pick up a rock, I characterize my experience with it as being-with-a-thing because it is wholly determined by physical laws that I understand. When I encounter a person, I characterize my experience as "being-with-another" because I recognize my projections as having some similarity to the choices that I would make.

[1Stalker1]

I think you will find this interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere

There are many talks about it in, usually in the religious groups. They also thought about that =)