Consciousness

Always writing something

 

This sort of image and memory is the type that always triggers my lifetime confusion about the nature of consciousness, which has nagged at me and confused me my entire life along with other epistemological questions that for some reason bothered me even before I had turned five.
What is consciousness, what does it mean "to be," what separates us from a flower or a rock or a piece of wood?

I came to believe through thousands of hours of contemplation which was affirmed in most philosophy, psychology, and biology classes that what we call consciousness is simply the biproduct of a bunch of synaptic interactions and connections, enhanced and developed by the various neurotransmitters and neuropathways created by their symbiotic dance.

But it has to be more than that, right? I want it to be more than that.

Here's a picture of Adrianna furtively recording on a piece of paper thoughts and ideas and concepts and notions that had arisen in her consciousness. They got written on a page and were thus frozen in time and place. Somehow these synaptic interactions are able to be translated and encoded by that same brain, the thoughts and ideas now sharable.

But then one day it ends. That brain stops. Why? How? How can the consciousness be there one moment and gone forever the next? Perhaps parts and snippets and portions of that consciousness are not gone if it they were recorded in some manner as illustrated in this photo, but still.

Unfortunately, I don't have this notebook, or her diary. At some point she took them with her to her new apartment.

I want to believe that this consciousness survives what we call death, but my synaptic interactions and connections won't allow me to believe this.

But maybe.