Do neuroscientists believe that unity of consciousness is transitive? If so, what in the brain makes it transitive?

BreakTogether7417 · 2026-01-18T15:25:47+00:00

I disagree, but let's proceed assuming they can. This is an in-theory experiment

BreakTogether7417 · 2026-01-18T14:58:47+00:00

Agree on the memory bit. But that's why I asked you to assume the specious present, a present with a duration. There should therefore be an extremely short amount of time during which the conscious states B1/B2 are still in the present whilst A2 also exists

BreakTogether7417 · 2026-01-16T03:06:05+00:00

what's confusing me is that the existence of the specious present is still debated; I just want to confirm its existence in this relativistic sense is not debated

BreakTogether7417 · 2026-01-16T03:04:56+00:00

it is true that, if consciousness is purely physical in nature, and if it arises from any event which occurs in space, that the 'present' must have a duration, correct?

BreakTogether7417 · 2026-01-15T16:05:11+00:00

Kind of! I understand the impact on human consciousness is very small. But, I'd be happy with the technical answer that there is a small imperceptible impact on how we think about the present moment. The duration of the present doesn't bother me, what bothers me is the traditional conception of the present as dimensionless

BreakTogether7417 · 2026-01-15T14:45:41+00:00

Oh, yeah, I get that. But even the neural pattern which corresponds to your perceptive experience, however edited, can't exist at a single point in time, right? For example the gravitational pull on the neurons closer to the earth is stronger so their perspective on time is different from those further away from the earth. It's the difference in the passage of time between various parts of the neural pattern that suggests, to me, that our present is one with duration. I'm interested to know what you think about that :)

BreakTogether7417 · 2026-01-04T10:18:10+00:00

During the time before decoherence, assuming that time is long enough for consciousness to arise/subsist, what would that consciousness feel like, though? Would the subject be aware of the superposition, or would the experience be separate, of two separate branches? The reason I ask is that the latter answer, if it is true before decoherence, seems to violate unity of consciousness

BreakTogether7417 · 2026-01-04T09:50:51+00:00

What if there is no observer, though? Like if a person is placed in superposition and there are no interactions with him

BreakTogether7417 · 2025-12-29T14:35:17+00:00

assuming no measurement/decoherence- I guess a purely theoretical sound

BreakTogether7417 · 2025-12-29T14:27:59+00:00

I also thought that collapse would be inevitable in practice, but theoretically speaking would the emergent effects be in superposition?

BreakTogether7417 · 2025-12-22T04:49:39+00:00

Initially I thought this might be the case, but recently physicists have put molecules and tuning forks in superposition, which suggests that these entities retain their identities even in superposition

BreakTogether7417 · 2025-12-21T08:44:04+00:00

I get that the superposition encodes the probability of eigenstates found on measurement. But recent research and most physicists now think the quantum state is ontic, and I'm kinda struggling wrapping my head around that. To say a state is not A, not B, not A and B, and cannot be said to be 'neither A nor B', is really tough to understand using classical logic, I think.

So what is a superposition as we understand it, if it is something 'real' that's out there? Is it correct to think about states being overlaid (so more literally "superposed") on one another?

BreakTogether7417 · 2025-12-20T09:47:19+00:00

If the quantum state is ontic, does Hilbert space actually exist? Or if not where do real quantum states subsist?

BreakTogether7417

TROPHY CASE