Keith Ward - What Is Consciousness?

Consciousness is what we can know best and explain least. It is the inner subjective experience of what it feels like to see red or smell garlic or hear Beethoven. Consciousness has intrigued and baffled philosophers. To begin, we must define and describe consciousness. What to include in a complete definition and description of consciousness?



Keith Ward is a British philosopher, theologian, pastor and scholar.


Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[leonoradompor]

Why do we only rest in peace, why don’t we live in peace too

[moayadsalih]

What is the outcome of your endless questions Mr Kuhn?? Please stop it. i think if you were genuinely seeking the truth you would have arrived at it long ago

[popeck]

Consciousness is a subjective experience of reality and then we should explore it by ourselves to understand it. There are many level of consciousness to explore thanks to meditation, psychedelics or even NDEs (which prove that consciousness is not created by the brain).
So please interview people who experience these level of consciousness and listen to them instead of scientists who do not have any clue!

[MeRetroGamer]

Nothing is consciousness, that's a biased question from the beginning.

There's nothing, anywhere, anytime that you could point to and say "that's consciousness". Consciousness is about a fact, not about a thing, it's "to be conscious of", the problem is that we've made a noun from a sentence, as well as we make nouns from other verbs, qualities or patterns... Yes, that's the point, it's all just about phenomena.

Phenomena and aliveness that actually comes out from no one, it's just what nature does. It is just what it is, but we're lost in a labrynth of nouns.

[christopherwall]

This gentleman is offering little to the mystery of how 3 lbs of brain matter creates all that is awareness

[adamsawyer]

Nice to hear a professional say what every sane lay person knows: if your theory says consciousness is an illusion then your theory is incorrect and also you're probably nuts 😂

[SpudderR]

Hmm? “I know that i am that I know!” Makes more sense than this guest speaker.

[controllerbrain]

Are we all just atoms arranged in the right way?

[jayjames]

"... thoughts are things ..." please expand.

[hershchat]

“Consciousness is an illusion” is a dumb statement. Maybe you want to say that that which you’re conscious of is an illusion. You THINK you’re a man, but actually you’re a plasmid? Your man’ness is an illusion. That is totally different than saying, “there is no consciousness, we just think we’re conscious”. That is a meaningless statement.

[nowheretobefound]

C G Jung says in volume 8 of CW para 568 "the idea that consciousness is a freak of nature is somehow difficult to we shall luckily never be in a position to prove (any more than we can prove the contrary).It is a question that belongs to the realm of metaphysics, where no criterion of truth exists."

[ahmedmosa]

Consciousness is background of brain, like magnetic field is background of electricity .

[dominicmccrimmon]

What is not made clear in the opening sentence, is that Keith Ward is an esteemed member of the Anglican Church and that his opinion is Church doctrine established hundreds of years before he was born. The purpose of Church teaching is to help people negotiate life with peace in their hearts and minds. It was likely never about equivocating realty. It is unhelpful, or wrong to approach spirituality with systematic and logical reasoning because the purpose of spiritual doctrine is not to explain reality, but to aid people in dealing with reality.

[chayanbosu]

Lord Krishna says our existence consist of 3 levels 1.gross body 2.Subtle body i.e mind, intellect and ego 3.Soul. Now conciousness emarges from soul and mind is the interface between outer world and soul.

[SpudderR]

Consciousness is the Ocean which has all sorts of conditions, including waves, droplets, splashes, And contents!? “Being Content”!?

[haroonaverroes]

someone wrote a book out of my comments here on closer to truth, not only that: she attributed it to herself and to persons who denied that through documented interviews !
many others used patching techniques, not only that ! I have noticed something weird: someone wrote a book about time out of one comment, I posted it on The Michael Shermer Show # 261 YouTube channel, but the weird part is ! I have noticed that he read all my previous comments on closer to truth ! yeah for sure exactly what I have wrote "laterally" complete sentences ! they use scrappers or what ! I pretty sure he read both !
I am pretty sure: the way I think is completely different ! the sentences I wrote are concise, that is why they wrote books out of them !
here The Michael Shermer Show # 275 is literally blunt theft !

[SamCheryl-sq]

Thomas Jeffrey Wilson Thomas Martin Laura

[-by-_Publishing_LLC]

(6:20) *KW: **_"Could there be one cosmic consciousness which is aware of everything that was going on in the universe?"_* ... When you look at consciousness merely as a highly evolved state of information that's able to process all prior forms of information (like a CPU), then the idea of a universal consciousness makes sense. This "universal consciousness" isn't like a god, autonomous authority, or anything capable of rendering its own personal judgements, but rather a benign, totally neutral, nondimensional database of all available information that's being held within Existence.

All of your thoughts, dreams, experiences, prayers, rage, love, hate, and all other information you produce within your finite lifetime is added to this collective database of Existence. Existence then uses all of this human-enacted information to facilitate the next stage of evolution. Just like we do when we reach adulthood, Existence has just entered the self-evaluation stage and is using an increasingly divided humanity to render that evaluation.

All of our individual "value judgments" provide Existence with an unbiased, outside review for determining whether "Existence" is worth the price of admission.

Sorry, ... _no refunds if you determine that it's not!_

[FalseCogs]

We may need to start from the beginning and devise an unambiguous vocabulary before having a meaningful discussion about consciousness, awareness, and mind. I am not merely suggesting giving definitions in words alone, but including other modalities too, when available, such as images and other sensory experiences and tests. Even a simple quale can be divided into apparent aspects. Moreover, and perhaps as important, what is to say that different people are even experiencing the same set of mental happenings? From what I have heard, different people have substantially different dream states. From apparent differences in personality and proclivity, it would seem plausible there being significant differences in base awareness.

[maxwellsimoes]

Guys conscieness definitions are so elementary or superficial. Science or neurociência ignore how figuret it out só far. In this ways conscieness are unpredicted with randon reality. In other words guys minds are out serious conscieness definitions until he explains why conscieness are unpredicted.