Talk:Consciousness

C.G. Jung Synchronicity

In the conclusion to Synchronicity Jung provides several pieces of evidence of Consciousness existing independent of the brain, though not necessarily the Physical Unit

We must completely give up the idea of the psyche’s being somehow connected with the brain, and remember instead the “meaningful” or “intelligent” behaviour of the lower organisms, which are without a brain....either there are physical processes which cause psychic happenings, or there is a pre-existent psyche which organizes matter. In the first case it is hard to see how chemical processes can ever produce psychic processes, and in the second case one wonders how an immaterial psyche could ever set matter in motion.

Later on he wonders...

...whether there is some other nervous substrate in us, apart from the cerebrum, that can think and perceive, or whether the psychic processes that go on in us during loss of consciousness are synchronistic phenomena, i.e., events which have no causal connection with organic processes.

This comment is interesting in the context of growing scientific awareness that there are neurons throughout the body, and his example of the "ganglionic system" of Bees, but he also says that we shouldn't "reject out of hand" the notion that psychic phenomenon that have no causal connection with organic phenomenon".

I don't think Jung gets anywhere near an equivalent to The Fabric of Consciousness here. The closest he gets is referring to a "a pattern that exists from all eternity, repeats itself sporadically, and is not derivable from any known antecedents."

What is this "pattern" that Jung is referring to I wonder....