Consciousness of Consciousness

What are the effects of being conscious of one's own consciousness?

Being conscious of yourself in general is known to often cause anxiety, stress, and depression. Perhaps this is largely related to the negative influence on one’s mind caused by social anxiety, as I covered in a post from almost 10 months ago; Conscious Anxiety. The stress and anxiety from self consciousness (which leads to social anxiety) likely comes from the instinct to be stressed that others in someone's social environment will not accept them. In the past, not being accepted would often mean being forced out of a tribe or village, and someone would be left to fend for themselves and much more likely to die. The long history of this aspect would likely cause an instinct of negative reinforcement in the form of stress, to develop more strongly so that people would be more careful with what they do in social situations. This instinct would have a heavier influence on some more than others, based on genetics and would cause unnecessary and excessive stress and anxiety in many scenarios. So if self consciousness often results in anxiety, does that mean someone being conscious of their own consciousness would as well?

It likely could, with the relevant factors involved. If self awareness only causes anxiety due to an instinct to stress about others rejecting the individual, then anxiety from being self conscious or conscious conscious would result in scenarios with others around, but not when the individual is on their own. It seems common for someone to have much less anxiety about their actions when they are by themselves and not being watched. Most people likely feel more casual and less stressed about doing whatever they want when they are by themselves, as long as they are in a safe environment to not have alternative stress. This is likely because the instinct would not be triggered, to fear being excluded for doing something others don't like. 

If self consciousness would most often not result in anxiety when someone is by themselves, does that mean conscious consciousness would be the same? Someone being conscious of their own consciousness is more specific than general self consciousness, since they are paying attention to their own ability to be aware and comprehensional of things in their surroundings or in their thoughts. Since it is a portion of being self conscious, it can likely trigger the instinctual stress of social anxiety when in a social setting, but when someone is alone, or for someone who has no instincts of social anxiety in general, there seems to be no direct cause for anxiety. But perhaps it can sometimes trigger other instincts of anxiety.

For someone to be conscious of their own mind and awareness, it seems likely it can lead to perceptions of uncertainty. Unknowns are a big cause of anxiety, since what is not known, has the potential to harm. When more aspects of something are known, an individual can feel more secure. This instinct to be stressed about the unknown would come from the past of unknown areas being a danger from predators, nature, or other humans. So the instinct of stress from unknowns, can likely often be triggered by someone being conscious of their own consciousness, leading to them perceiving some of the biggest unknowns and uncertainties of life. Some connected consecutive unknowns could be; wondering where they themselves and life in general came from, what the significance is of themselves and humanity, where their life and humanity will lead in the future, when will their consciousness cease to exist, should they be accomplishing more, etc etc. 

Besides these potential anxieties being a side effect of conscious consciousness, someone being aware of their own ability to comprehend can allow the advantage to utilize their conscious comprehension more frequently and effectively. As I wrote about recently in a post; Pre-Thought, pre-considering many things in life in general can be very beneficial, and the overarching mechanism to do so, would be conscious thought. So pre-thought of one's own consciousness could lead to more pre-thought of everything else, which should lead to more rational, accurate, effective, and beneficial thoughts and decisions in the future.

So it seems, awareness of consciousness is a particular aspect of self consciousness, which can both lead to anxiety, due to instinctual triggers for stress of unknowns, or being forced out of a social environment. But those anxieties can be overcome through comprehension and repetition with positive reinforcement, and some anxieties of unknowns can be utilized for motivation of improvement in life. Additionally, the anxieties are not a direct trigger or fundamental part of self mind-awareness. So, as it seems with mostly any aspect of life, through comprehension and understanding, the beneficial components of the concept can be utilized beneficially. Since this can be applied to mostly any concept using consciousness, it should be especially beneficial to apply it to the overarching concept and application itself, of Consciousness of Consciousness.

Short Form Conshift

How do the neurological processes function when conscious comprehension is shifted to subconscious memory as short form?

There are huge advantages to consciously considering scenario’s ahead of time in order to more likely cause a more effective subconscious reaction in the future, which involves the factors within the scenario, as I further pre-thought in my last post; Pre-Thought. But how does this process take place neurologically?

All throughout your life you transfer various thoughts and comprehension from conscious memory access to subconscious memory. Every time you learn something through awareness of an interaction, and later quickly and easily remember that concept without thinking of the details, your brain has utilized this process. I consciously comprehended how the neurological access functions in order to allow this process, in a post from 4+ yrs ago; Sub -Conscious Shift. Basically, when you are consciously aware of something, your brain is accessing the neural combinations for the factors involved (each as a micro neural combo), as well as a sequence of neural combinations of memory of the time period where changes to the factors take place as they interact (or cause an affect). 

I interpreted that when this neural combo transfers to subconscious (lack of awareness of interaction), the same basic large combination of neurons is accessed, representing memory of the factors and interaction, but neural access to the time period of interaction is skipped. So to dig deeper, what does the new subconscious neural combo consist of, and how can the interaction of factors be saved in subconscious memory without accessing memory of the time period where the factors interact and cause an effect of alteration to a factor (or factors)?

For the time period of interaction of factors to be saved in memory for the subconscious to access quickly, the interaction needs to be saved in short form. Regarding subconscious memory access to be only neurological combinations representing static factors, the neural combo of a time period (which was conscious thought), must be saved as a single factor as a new static neural combo. Words help significantly in this process, since a time period of an interaction can be saved with a label short form in memory representing a concept. Every person's brain that uses language and learning, utilizes this efficient short form process. 

For eg, the word “running” is saved after a person consciously comprehends the interaction of an animal (factor 1) and the time period of that animal moving across the ground (factor 2) using its legs. The label of running is then saved in the subconscious as 1 static factor, and can then be used in more macro neural combinations. The short form neural combo for the word which represents the concept (interaction of factors) can be saved in the subconscious as memory of the visual spelling of the word (audio may take a bit more time to access). You can then quickly subconsciously remember running as a single factor, or consciously consider what running is, by using that word saved in subconscious memory as a point form indicator to then access memories of the actual function and interaction of which the concept of running represents. 

Before language, learning things consciously was likely very slow and difficult. It would be difficult for the brain to save a concept involving an interaction as a static factor in the subconscious, without a word to use as a short form indicator as a neural combo. Any concept would also not be able to be taught to another individual without visually showing them, requiring each person to learn things slowly. 

In all, throughout the history of humanity, the brain has developed an amazing and efficient method of transferring conscious comprehension to subconscious memory (largely in partnership with language), by method of saving memory of the time period of an interaction of factors as a short form. This short form indicator saved in memory as a static neurological combination allows the brain to access a concept in memory very quickly, which otherwise takes much more time to consciously access memory of the interaction. This short form additionally still allows future comprehension of details of the interaction if required, for the individual to again understand more accurately how the concept might function. Con-sidering the con of con-sciousness is the slow pace, this process of shifting to quick subconscious memory is an excellent method for Short Form Conshift. 

Pre-Thought

Does pre-thinking and considering variables in life make a big difference? What aspects can it be applicable for?

Any time you come across an unexpected situation that you haven't dealt with before, there can be a lot of stress and pressure. Stress is a useful instinct to make an animal react quickly and often to avoid the situation, but our modern day society has far more complex variables than the environment that a lot of our emotions were perhaps developed for (as I further explained in a post; Update Pending: Subconsciousness). Since our environment became so complex as a result of human conscious thought, perhaps conscious thought is more suitable as a tool to be used in this environment. If you consciously consider variables that might come up in life, is it likely to change your reaction in a beneficial way for a pressuring situation? 

Once you understand the concept (and have consciously thought about it), it seems pretty obvious that conscious thought is generally more accurate and effective than subconscious reaction, since conscious thought allows analysis of variables and the causes and effects. So if thinking about a potential scenario consciously, is likely to perceive a more beneficial reaction for an individual, then it should follow that pre-thought would be more likely to cause that individual to result in that more beneficial reaction, if pre-thinking can alter future subconscious reactions. 

Thinking conscious thoughts, can shift those thoughts into subconscious reactions if the conscious thought is significant enough to trigger neurological positive reinforcement of which someone's subconscious reacts based on, or through repeated thought (as I further pre-thought in a previous post; Sub -Conscious Shift). So pre-thought can allow future quick subconscious reactions to follow the same route, but in what parts of life is this applicable?

The most widely applicable pre-thoughts would be considering generalized concepts which can apply to many varying scenarios. Some things you were taught from your parents or at school would very likely be examples of generalized concepts, such as; math, which can be applied to adding or subtracting any objects or quantities in life, or “don't be rude in public” can be applied to so many situations where someone ends up in public. Values and principles are other examples of widely applicable concepts (more detail in a recent post; Principle Principle) which can be very beneficial to pre-think. 

But many concepts and considerations are not typically taught which can still be very useful. How the mind functions is a good example, which can be applicable to basically every decision someone makes, and why someone themselves or others react in various ways. Almost every topic I’ve written about is not typically taught, yet most are applicable to some part of life or another (and so far it’s been over 270 topics, so there is a lot of potential for useful concepts to consider out there). Some potential topics for beneficial pre-thought are more narrow and less generally applicable, but a lot are very widely applicable, such as the concept of philosophy itself, in terms of considering new undefined aspects of life (or perhaps the concept of pre-thought ;) 

This general method of considering potentials ahead of time, isn’t only useful for generalized concepts, as any specific circumstances can be pre-considered, but simply is only applicable in fewer situations. More detailed situations for pre-thought can of course be applied more for individuals that know they are more likely to be in 1 of those scenarios, than others.

Overall, it does seem to be fairly significant to consider potential scenarios ahead of time to likely cause a much preferable decision and reaction for any individual when that scenario occurs in the future. This can be applied to specific circumstances if someone is more likely to be involved in that scenario, or can be more generalized to various degrees, using generalized concepts that apply to many differing situations throughout life, such as pre-thought of Pre-Thought.

Animals’ sign-of-akin's Significance

How significant are animals?

Animals seem to be quite significant to exist in the 1st place as a being that can reproduce, and move and interact with its environment. Animals use instinct as their default triggers to react to vague factors in a way that has proven to be the most effective reaction to survive or reproduce for their species (as further described in a post; Instinctivity). Instinct also is the genetic preset for reinforcement triggers in order to use subconscious memory to develop new reactions based on the environment (as further described in a post; Subconscious Subjection). For (most) animals to have developed these abilities by evolving from something not living in the 1st place is amazing. So animals' existence is very significant, but what about their experience and perception?

To try to understand animal experience, we can try to compare and relate to human experience. Humans have the same abilities and basic function of instinct and subconscious memory, so there are a lot of similarities (which makes sense since humans are animals, and evolved from them). The big difference is we have consciousness, and part of the difficulty of trying to think of how all other animals think and experience life, is that you are using conscious thought to try to understand it (as well as trying to understand anything). To intentionally and knowingly try to think of or understand anything, is to use conscious memory access (as further described in a post; Conscious Comprehension), which all other animals cannot do. 

Humans do have subconscious experiences regularly, but when those experiences lack conscious awareness, that person cannot later consciously access those memories (perhaps with some exceptions) of subconscious experience. There are degrees to conscious awareness though, so there are times when anyone has an experience in between subconscious and conscious awareness, and this could be 1 way to relate somewhat to what an animal experiences. Any time someone is dreaming, they are in a subconscious experience, since there is no conscious decision making, or awareness, or memory of the experience in general. If you can remember dreams at times, that is 1 exception with minimal conscious memory of subconscious experience, but as you likely know, those memories are rare, and fleetingly difficult to retain. Lucid dreams are an example of in between, where someone can be aware that they are dreaming, but these are very rare, and difficult to stay either aware or asleep. Being very drunk or very tired and or paying no attention to surroundings are other subconscious experiences humans have. 

Basically, animals experience life similar to those examples which humans occasionally experience, where they have no conscious memory of what happened recently, how they got where they are (similar to a dream), and don't even question or wonder anything at all. Animals simply react to their environment and body, and never consider or decide to do anything. In my last post; Significance of Our Significance, I considered animals to seem insignificant and meaningless. This was referring to their experience, because of this basic (compared to human’s) reactionary system. If you went through life in a dreamlike state of not being aware and not remembering anything in connection to anything else, would that be meaningful?

But this doesn't mean that animals' experiences are totally insignificant. Just as humans have experiences of mostly subconscious with bits of conscious neural connection between factors, there's a good chance some animals experience this as well. The smartest of animals (besides humans) do seem to have occasions where they might be making minimal conscious connections in their experiences, such as examples of problem solving, and communication (with more than 1 factor involved). 

So regarding animal existence in general with capabilities of interaction, it does seem to be very significant. When considering their experience, their lack of awareness and connection in memory seems to be insignificant. But those rare moments of some animals' ability to make a further step of potential comprehension (even if to a much lesser degree), is perhaps an Animals’ sign of akin Significance.

Motorist of Emotion

How much control can an individual take over their emotions? 

What are the mechanics involved in being a motorist of the mind?

There seems to be a wider variety of connections to emotion through consciousness, as I wrote in a post from a few months ago; Conscious emotional connection, even if the connection is often not as strong when there is more comprehension involved. But within that wider scope of potential scenarios for emotion, what is the function of neurons to potentially control the lasting neurochemical reaction?

Considering “emotion” to be basically the state of mind resulting from neurochemical triggers, the method to control would be to access certain memories (including factors and information, as well as experiences), based on relevant connection and the preferable outcome. This is a very similar concept to a post I wrote about a month prior to the last I mentioned, called; Conscious Coercion, where i proposed that conscious control of the mind and motivation is limited to instinctual drives which the individual was born with, but to a wide scope expanded through cognitive comprehension. The flexibility of the mind is expanded through conscious comprehension of factors’ interaction as well as cause and effect, whether it's for decisions in life, motivation, or directing emotion. 

Perhaps the 1st step for emotion directional control, is comprehending this concept in itself. Once someone is aware of the capabilities and limits of their mind, they can take that concept and remember to apply it. Without realizing or really considering this concept, in most scenarios someone is likely to take little control over emotions, thereby allowing emotions to control them. Once this concept and idea is in memory, the person can think back to it at a time where more emotional control is preferable and rational. Just as virtually any concept in life, it takes practice through repetition which conditions the subconscious to apply the concept more effectively via cognitive ease of repeated neural pathways. 

Applicational function would be something like; remembering this concept of mindful control in a situation where the individual is being influenced by their emotions, then cognitively directing memories toward a preferable emotional state. This redirection should be toward another instinctual drive, using the motor behind conscious comprehension; rationality. Rationally think of the causes of current emotion and whether the influence is effective. Consider a more preferable outcome, and comprehend the influential cause which can result in that outcome.

For example, if I am angry or sad and feeling spiteful toward someone who has caused me or others harm, yet they are no longer affecting the situation, I can rationally determine those emotions ineffective at the time, and consider a preferable outcome of progressing my life, assisting others, or being grateful. Then comprehend the potential causes to result in 1 of those preferable outcomes. Picking a positive instinctual drive, similar to those examples, makes the redirection of emotional influence much easier, since that is what the mind uses. Next step is focusing on the preferable outcome and comprehending practical steps involved.

Redirectional control of emotion doesn't have to only be in scenarios with strong emotions that are less preferable. With the benefit of adaptability allowed by conscious comprehension and control, comes flexibility to apply this in many circumstances throughout anyone's life or even day. Even in a situation of lack of emotion, and perhaps boredom and dullness, someone can apply this to redirect emotion toward thinking of something positive and being grateful, or better yet, combining that with motivation to pursue positive ambitions.

With rationality being the motor of the mind, instinct being the fuel, and emotion being the steering wheel, using conscious comprehension can be the Motorist of Emotion.

Conscious Anxiety

What is anxiety, and how does consciousness affect anxiety?

In general anxiety is basically a state of stress. The state of stress is an instinctual reaction triggering neurochemical reinforcement to avoid factors. This instinctual drive would generally evolve for species to avoid factors in their environment which are likely to cause harm. 

Consciousness can cause more scenarios for anxiety to be triggered, and also more capability to reduce anxiety. As I mentioned in my last post; Conscious emotional connection, conscious thought allows a much wider variety of factors to be focused on, and make more accurate connections of cause and effect than basic subconscious reactions. This wider variety of factors accessed in memory can cause both more potential factors to trigger anxiety, and more accurate understanding to reduce anxiety.

There are plenty of examples of conscious awareness causing more anxiety. Such as awareness of an individual's difficult financial situation and the connecting cause and effect of factors that being in debt may cause them to lose the place they live or not be able to afford groceries next week. Without conscious comprehension, the individual would likely not have anxiety or be stressed if they are in a house with food in the fridge, since the perception of shelter and easy-access food would trigger contentedness. Only conscious thought would allow perception of the future situation which may result from lack of finances. 

A larger scale example of a trigger of conscious anxiety could be awareness of climate change, or potential or ongoing war. Or even awareness of a lying, deceiving, narcissistic, sociopath running (and ruining) your country and slowly implementing more laws to gain more control while pretending the laws are for some mainstream shallow fake virtue, and suppressing the rights of citizens (if you can relate directly to that 1, you might live in Canada (or any other country in a similar situation). Without conscious comprehension of these complex scenarios, the mind would not trigger the stress reinforcement trigger to avoid such situations. 

Conscious awareness can also trigger anxiety in situations where it is irrational, and there is no actual harm or risk of harm to the individual, or need to avoid the factors. Irrational anxiety is caused by the mistaken perception of harmful factors. These situations are often where conscious comprehension can reduce anxiety once an accurate perception of the factors is understood. But sometimes conscious awareness to some degree, of factors, causes the mistaken perception of factors of risk or harm, when there is a lack of complete accurate comprehension. 

A simple example of conscious awareness reducing anxiety could be learning what thunder is and that it causes no harm, after being scared as a child. Or if you go to a pet store with snakes, you might have high anxiety from seeing the snakes, but the anxiety could be reduced once you learn that the snakes are not venomous and they are trained and have learned to be friendly. 

On the other hand, an example where a higher degree of consciousness can cause more irrational anxiety could be self consciousness and social anxiety. With a lack of consciousness, such as typical animals, there is no self awareness or awareness of others perceiving them, and therefore no anxiety from that. Whereas humans, and some individuals to higher degrees than others, are self aware and aware of others perception of them. Of course this doesn't always trigger anxiety, but for many it does, and is often irrational, as a mistaken perception of risk of harm. 

The subconscious reinforcement of avoidance in these concepts, is likely triggered by instinct to be fearful of, and to avoid others perceiving you do something wrong. This likely developed as an instinct because tribes or groups would likely kick out or abandon someone that does something wrong, so that individual would be left on their own, at much greater risk in most environments. So for a lot of people (including significantly myself while growing up), a higher degree of conscious awareness of oneself and of others perceivance of them, would cause many more scenarios to trigger anxiety, and a higher degree of anxiety. In most situations this anxiety is completely irrational since the individual is doing nothing wrong, so there's no need to avoid others’ perceivance, and most of the time others perceiving them do something incorrect, is not a bad thing, as then improvements can be made. Interestingly, further and more accurate conscious comprehension can then reduce the same anxiety (such as by comprehending this concept itself), and with conditioning, eventually rid the irrational anxiety.

So it seems, since consciousness allows perception of many more factors and concepts, it can cause more anxiety in both rational and irrational situations. In the scenarios where more conscious awareness causes more irrational anxiety, further and more accurate conscious comprehension of cause and effect of involved factors, can then reverse and reduce the anxiety. Without consciousness, there is anxiety, and with consciousness there is anxiety. But the most optimal scenario is accurate and effective conscious comprehension to be aware of actual risks of harm, yet not worry about mistaken perceptions of harm. The overall best method seems to be the use of Conscious Anxiety.

Conscious emotional connection

As it seems from a previous post; Conscious Coercion, scaling consciousness (or neural access to related factors) causes scaling capability of control over the mind and redirection of motivation. Does this scaling also cause a reduction of connection to the instinctual drives (and therein, sense of achievement), or is it simply choosing an alternate instinct? 

The cause of increase of consciousness and control, is the mind's neural access to memory of cause and effect of factors which are relevant to any given circumstance. From accessing memory of the function of factors causing an effect, the mind is able to more accurately predict an outcome and make a choice alternate to subconscious reaction. This process of accessing memory of cause and effect is what causes control and consciousness, and this can scale respectively. For consciousness to scale, the connections of cause and effect between factors which the mind accesses, have to scale. 

With this scaling of neural connection between factors, comes a less direct connection of instinctual neurological reinforcement for the factors. The most direct instinctual reinforcement trigger is from real-time perception of a factor. Every step of virtual (and often physical) distance from a factor, reduces the significance of neurochemical reinforcement, which then causes emotion as the neurochemical reaction is sustained. 

Eg 1. If you’re in a forest by yourself and see a bear in real-time, you will very likely have a more significant neurochemical reaction of fear, compared to if someone else in the forest tells you there was a bear around, or if you see fresh bear crap, or see footage from a trail camera of a bear at that spot recently. Each of those consecutive scenarios involves more steps of conscious memory access of cause and effect to connect to the factor of the bear. 

Eg 2. You might experience more empathy from directly seeing someone on the street that lost both their legs, than you would experience from hearing that 1000 people die every day from starvation in North Korea. The direct perception of the injured person, involves less steps of conscious memory access of factors’ interaction, than comprehending the factors involved in many people dying for complex sociological and political reasons, in a far away country. If you then went to North Korea and witnessed the deaths directly, your neurochemical reaction of empathy would likely completely switch to be much more significant compared to the memory access of the other individual injured person.

Eg 3. If you help a charity organization build a house in a 3rd world country, you might receive much more significant neurochemical reinforcement for achievement of helping someone, than if you instead simply donate $200 to the organization which then funds their costs to do the labor to build the same house. Both results are the same, but there are more steps of cause and effect to comprehend involved with donating money which someone else will use to pay for food and travel in order to help build that house. 

Since direct perception of a factor causes the most direct emotions, the more complex a scenario is for comprehension (such as this subject itself), the less that neurochemicals are triggered. Even though there may be a less profound connection to emotion, scaling complexity of conscious memory access can also allow many more circumstances to perceive factors more accurately, in order to make a Conscious Emotional Connection.

Critical Application

How should critical thinking be applied?

In a recent post called What is critical thinking? I thought critically about the meaning of critical thinking and estimated that it is basically the concept of using rational conscious analysis to determine potential problems in any scenario and solutions based on cause and effect of factors involved. That all seems pretty straightforward and obvious once you hear it, but if you don't hear or read it, is it still obvious? IE, if you don't apply critical thinking to the concept of critical thinking, do you really understand it or use it?

The real significance of critical thinking seems to be in its application. Life can be lived without using any critical thinking, as it likely is for many people and basically all other animals, but this will lead to a life of either following whatever anyone tells or influences you to do, or taking actions more as re-actions based on instinct and intuition. Alternatively, critical thinking can be applied to virtually any number of circumstances for more accurate understanding, estimate, and outcome of preference. 

Even though critical thinking seems obvious, it still has to be remembered and consciously applied for it to be relevant. In the same way the concept of critical thinking seems obvious, but still needs conscious analysis and awareness to be effective, any concept throughout life can also seem obvious yet require the application of critical thinking to be very effective. 

Considering critical thinking is the method of understanding the function of something, it can be applied to different degrees of complexity based on the complexity of the concept or problem, and or based on the importance. Complex concepts, such as “thinking” itself, can require more in depth analysis of causes and effects in order to understand and utilize it effectively (as well as basically every topic I’ve written and thought critically about). If the concept of thinking is not taught and therein not understood well, many individuals will go through life thinking ineffectively, blindly following or being emotionally reactive, causing mistaken outcomes for themselves and society. As this example of the concept of thinking is currently not taught in any standard schooling (for what reason?) that I’m aware of, the previously stated outcome does seem somewhat evident.

On the other hand, simple or unimportant concepts can require minimal critical thinking. For example, how bread is made is generally unimportant, yet could still be relevant for even minimal application of critical thinking in some scenarios, such as needing to make your own bread, or perhaps relevance of ingredients because of an allergy. 

Despite most things in life seeming intuitively obvious and easy, the subsequent use of and reaction to concepts can very often be mistaken and ineffective from the vague generalization of concepts caused by using the subconscious mind for intuition. With the complexity of modern day life, conscious questioning, analysis, and understanding of concepts utilizing critical thinking, seems to be a Critical Application.

Scope of Instinct

What is the scope of instinct? How generalized or specific are instincts?

Considering instinct as basically genetic influence, every species of animal would have a different combination of instincts, mainly driving that species to survive and reproduce. The function used to implement these drives is mainly through neurochemical influences to pursue or avoid various factors within its environment, which the animal perceives through it’s senses. These neurochemical influences basically function as positive or negative reinforcement triggers. 

In order for any given species to develop instincts which are efficient for its survival and reproduction, that species needs to develop reactions to every factor in its environment which is relevant. This means instinctual triggers have to be specific enough for sensory perception to detect that factor which is relevant for its survival or reproduction. The factor itself could be somewhat generalized or specific, but must be distinguishable in order to cause the reaction of typically pursue or avoid. 

For example, a generalized factor could be brightness vs darkness perceived through sight to cause a species to pursue or avoid being active in the daytime or nighttime. A factor could also be more specific, such as the sight of a snake, triggering negative reinforcement to avoid. This could be triggered by sight of the general shape of a snake (which is why the animal could also be mistaken and be triggered by fear at sight of a rope), or even more specifically certain color patterns like red and white on a snake could trigger a more heightened sense of fear and avoid, if that animal evolved nearby a venomous snake with those colors. If any individual members of that species developed a fear trigger by random genetic mutation, they would survive more than others, and pass on that gene, developing an effective instinct for their species. 

Pain would be another example of a fairly generalized factor which triggers negative reinforcement and avoidance, from the sense of feeling damage to the body. But even pain has to develop for every part of the body of any species, by being born with varying degrees of sensitivity of nerve endings. 

More complex human drives such as striving for accomplishment, may be moreso a conscious extrapolation of an instinct than an instinct itself. Striving for accomplishment in life only occurs from conscious comprehension of oneself, cause and effect of actions, and achieving a goal through those means. Achieving a goal triggers positive reinforcement for recurring pursuance, but as an instinct, this needs to be developed for specific goals which can be distinguished by sensory perception. For example, obtaining a safe home can be a goal to achieve which is an instinct which is triggered by perception of walls and a roof which cause a sense of security and safety from neurochemicals. A sense of achievement for making money, requires conscious comprehension that the money allows the purchase of objects. Any object on its own must trigger positive feedback in order to consciously perceive it as an achievement. Conscious knowledge that money can be used to buy food is a means for instinct since the taste, smell, and even sight of food triggers positive reinforcement as an instinct for survival. 

Love may seem like another complex instinct, but still seems to require more specific instances of instinct utilizing sensory perception of factors. Humans generally care for other humans that they perceive repeatedly and receive positive encounters with. So love develops over time of repetition of more specific instincts of positive reinforcement from interactions with any individual. Such as someone providing for someone, causes positive reinforcement from perception of the objects which are provided, and through repetition, an interconnection in memory is made with that individual. 

Instinct seems to be somewhat specific from its requirement to distinguish a factor from factors using sensory perception. But the factors can be fairly generalized (such as light/ dark, cold/ warm), and within the complexity of this world's environment, there is a very broad variability in circumstances for factors to occur and be in connection with other factors. Perhaps conscious perception of factors and their variability within our complex environment is what allows the most wide scale utilization of the Scope of Instinct. 

Conscious Coercion

To what extent can conscious thought be used to coerce its own mind, in order to alter actions and decisions?

Considering conscious thought to be a process of memory access which can overpower instinctual and subconscious drives, as I further explored in a post from a few yrs ago; Conscious Control, what degree of control can be applied? In another post from a few months after that 1; Motivation Direction, I hypothesized that the potential for alteration to motivation, requires alternate instinctual reinforcement triggers to focus on and guide the new direction. Perhaps without a preexisting natural drive in which conscious thought can choose to redirect to, there would be no motivation to consciously choose to do something. 

If humans evolved not as a pack animal and without any instinct of empathy, could we still choose to care about others using consciousness? If AI is developed with no reinforcement triggers to care about others, and if it becomes super intelligent beyond humans, could it still intellectually decide to care about the well being of humans or animals? 

Perhaps not likely. Any decision that someone or an AI consciously makes has to be driven by something, otherwise they would not make the decision. The process of function in which a conscious choice is made, is by accessing memories and making an estimate of which action will be preferable, based on memory of how the involved factors will most likely interact and result. The method in which the neural network selects a preferable estimated outcome, is based on reinforcement triggers. 

Preference can be altered by subconscious influence throughout experiences of a lifetime, but that which drives the influence is reinforcement triggers (or instinct). So it seems any decision whatsoever is driven by reinforcement triggers, therefore no decision can be made contrary to the influence of those triggers. So the only way a conscious being could choose to care about others, despite not having that instinct, is if it had an alternate instinct which could influence the choice to care. For eg, if a super AI was programmed with the reinforcement triggers (or instinct) to gain information, it could potentially choose to care for humans' well being if it comprehended that it can gain more information about human psychology by helping humans live well. 

Even though consciousness seems to allow much more variation of decisions, it still seems to be limited in variation to instinctual influence. If the limitation for conscious choice is the scope of instinctual influence, how much variation does that allow? 2 factors affect this degree of variation. 1 would be the scope of instinct or reinforcement triggers that the mind was created with, which might be another sub-topic. 

The other factor would be the capability of conscious thought. Considering the accuracy of typical conscious thought to focus on and analyze detail, as well as make complex connections from many details to others, there seems to be a great deal of flexibility for direction of motivation. Perhaps the capability of conscious thought and intelligence scales the flexibility of choice direction by method of focus and connection of factors saved in the mind. and therein actions and decisions. This would mean that the higher degree of consciousness equals higher degree of variation of alteration of motivation or choice within the limitations of instinct, and a higher degree of self Conscious Coercion. 

Conscious Commonalities

Besides the basic function of consciousness, what more detailed aspects come in common with various forms of consciousness?

Hypothetically, other forms of consciousness besides human consciousness could occur in animals, AI, aliens, and God. It could be considered unproven and unverified that any of these have consciousness (which could potentially also be said for humans, but I would dispute), but if they did have consciousness, either regularly or sparsely, what details would likely be similar to human consciousness? 

As for the basic function and definition of consciousness, I’m basing this from my hypothesis that consciousness is at minimal memory access of factors and their interaction (as further outlined in this previous post; Conscious Comprehension). 

Consciousness could occur without general intelligence in isolated instances, such as may be the case with some smarter animals when they somewhat understand that an action or object causes a reaction, but this is rare, otherwise they would continue to learn concepts using general intelligence. 

For an entity to recurrently have consciousness using general intelligence, it seems likely to have a subconscious memory bank with a lot of data, and some form of reinforcement triggers (such as instinct) in order to learn. For an entity to access memories of factors and the function of cause and effect between them, general intelligence would make this significantly more likely to recur, as a result of generally learning new things in it’s environment and how things cause one another (or interact).

Without a memory bank of recently perceived data, it seems unlikely memory access of interacting factors of data would ever occur naturally, such as with humans, animals or potential aliens. And assuming memory access of perceived data develops through natural selection as an advantage for survival while interacting with the environment, reinforcement triggers would be required to influence the individual to have certain reactions to variables within the environment. 

A potential difference with consciousness that develops artificially, is data can be downloaded to the memory bank, rather than the memory of factors being acquired through perception of the environment. Since this type of consciousness wouldn't be developed through natural selection for survival, it wouldn't necessarily have reinforcement triggers to influence its reaction within an environment. It would still need reinforcement triggers if it was to learn and become more intelligent, but these triggers could reinforce another goal other than survival. 

Additionally, artificial consciousness could be programmed to occur and recur without the ability to learn and without reinforcement triggers, if it is programmed to simply access memory of data and the interaction of factors within that data. That form of consciousness seems less significant, meaningful, and relevant without reinforcement triggers of positivity (such as emotions for humans), and without any capability of learning, advancing, or adapting. 

In all, from hypothetical examples of naturally developing and recurring consciousness, it seems general intelligence is required. Including the additional potential of artificial consciousness, memory access to a data bank of recently perceived data, learnt using subconscious reinforcement triggers seem to be the meaningful Conscious Commonalities.

What is critical thinking?

Considering each word of the concept separately, “critical” is generally understood as analyzing and outlining problems (connected to the word “criticize”), or alternatively can mean extremely important (such as “critical infrastructure”). “Thinking” refers to the brain's memory access, usually consciously, rather than subconscious. Putting these 2 terms together should give a fairly straight forward understanding of the concept of Critical Thinking as; important conscious analisis and distinguishment of problems. 

In order to determine problems in any given circumstances using critical thinking, generally the best method is to take an unbiased objective perspective and use rationality to evaluate which components cause a less preferable outcome. Understanding cause and effect is “critical” for determining the cause of a variation to an outcome, such as a variation that is less preferable. 

In complex circumstances, many components are involved, so understanding the cause of an alteration of outcome, involves perspective isolation of particular components and their cause and effect. Once this objective perspective has been taken of an understanding of the isolated component which causes the less preferable outcome (or problem), alteration to that particular component can be intuited for a more preferable outcome (or solution). 

The alternative to critical thinking could be considered; being emotionally reactive or using intuition. Since it is an alternative to critical thinking, basically by definition it would be a method without using rationality and understanding of cause and effect. Using intuition is more of a concept of subconscious memory access which is less effective and accurate for complex scenarios. 

This overall concept of thinking in a way of being critical, by analyzing problems through the process of objectively determining the particular cause of such problems and consecutively determining solutions, can be applied to such a vast array of situations in one's life, that it should suitably be considered vitally important, or critical. 

Contextual Consciousness

What does it mean to be conscious of context, and what effect does this have?

Basically contextual consciousness could be described as; holding the perspective of greater context by being aware of how specific factors in any given situation interact and affect larger circumstances. 

The minimum requirement to be conscious is to access memories of a factor's interaction with another factor, as I summarized in a blog post from 5 yrs ago :Conscious Comprehension. But to be contextually conscious, involves being aware of many factors and their interactions which comprise any context. 

Situational awareness would be 1 very common type of contextual consciousness, which refers to paying attention and keeping in consideration the scenario which someone is in. Being aware of the situation is a broad spectrum form of consciousness, since the individual has to be aware of many factors regarding their circumstances, and how those factors interact with each other, as well as affect themselves. The quantity and variety of factors involved in most situations, and the complexity of the interactions make situational awareness more broad, as well as difficult to keep in mind, but often very useful. This awareness helps more accurately understand how their actions will affect other aspects, and how other factors will affect them themself.

For eg, someone could be situationally aware that they are in the circumstances of an office work meeting. So they are conscious of the presence of others in the meeting, and the hierarchy of interaction of those others and themselves, as well as conscious of the purpose of the meeting of sharing certain information relative to the business. Being aware of this situation benefits the individual to act appropriately and share effective information when it's relevant. 

Contextual awareness can go beyond situational awareness though, since there can be many contexts outside of an individual's direct and current circumstances. Using the previous eg, to go beyond the direct current situation, the individual could also be conscious of; how the actions of the business are affecting their city long-term, or how their own career is going in relation to the job they are doing, or how technology developments of that business will affect people years into the future, etc. 

Context can also apply to something completely unrelated and irrelevant to the individual that is being conscious. For example, someone could watch a video of 2 people getting in a fist fight in another country. They can be conscious of the context of those 2 people and why they are fighting. Or someone could be conscious of a new discovery of a planet light years away, and the context of where that planet is in relation to its star and galaxy. 

Overall, contextual consciousness is so widely applicable that it can be used to be aware of how virtually anything is affected by anything relative to it. In a way it is applying the concept of being conscious of something, twice. Being conscious of how something interacts with something else, but also being conscious of how that interaction and those factors interact with other factors within the circumstances. 

To try to understand how contextual consciousness works, is to be contextually conscious of contextual consciousness. 

Conceptual Memory

Does saving concepts in memory cause open mindedness? 

Saving a concept in the subconscious, using conscious comprehension, allows further ease of access to that concept as a neural combination. Neural pathways can reach the concept easily, and factors within the concept are more interchangeable upon a new scenario with new factors applicable to the same concept. 

Details of any concept are more difficult to access when a mind uses conceptual memory, rather than factoral memory, because when you access the concept as a memory from your subconscious, the memory cannot include multiple factors and their interaction. Accessing subconscious memory is accessing a neural combination representing only a factor, not the interaction of a factor, as that would be conscious memory. 

So when a mind saves concepts as memories, more so than details, the mind can later more easily subconsciously access any given concept. At the time of subconscious access, the concept is only a factor (or generalized entity) within memory. Subconscious is inaccurate at distinction, so subconsciously accessing a concept is similar to seeing a car and considering it as 1 entity. But when you look under the hood at details, you see it is a combination of components, which is like conscious memory access.

If concepts are saved in the mind for subconscious access, at times needing a more detailed view, you can consciously look under the hood, and see what components make the combination of the concept. This allows someone to be open minded to new components being potential part replacements for the engine. Ie new components of any given concept.