Is it normal to be think that consciousness doesn't exist?

pardon?

Hey! Welcome to the site (if nobody else has welcomed you already). This is the kind of question I love, so you've made a good start already.

I hope people think (or think they are thinking) before they answer because it's a big question. My initial reaction was to fall on the same side as you and say that it's all biochemical and bioelectrical processes (and include some rhetoric about determinism) and, as such, I have the same consciousness as a rock. Which is, strictly, none at all.

But then I thought about it more and, although I agree with what I said, I can't deny that the range of biochemical reactions going on in my body is more complex than in other hotspots (i.e. other life) and other non-hotspots (i.e. a rock) and that, for various reasons, we have to qualify them and that my body's processes as a whole should be called physiology and that my brain should kind of have its own semantic structures for its processes. Consciousness is just one of those but, in the sense most people mean it, it doesn't fit the bill. We don't see, hear, feel, or think. Not really. Although then you get into defining what "we" are.

It's a huge question and I've only given you the tiniest scrap of a partial answer (which itself is only my opinion as opposed to any kind of fact).

P.S. Hope you stick around. IIN has been kind of unbalanced recently and many of the questions aren't really questions at all. There's room for everyone here and you will find yourself filling a gap in the market with interesting questions like this.

If you really think about it you can convince yourself that you dont really exist any more than a bunch thoughts and perceptions at a moment in time. Like a movie playing, but nobody is watching it. Really you are just the pictures on the screen that change moment to moment. Like theres no real 'I'. Theres no 'you' watching the screen. Just thoughts that are somehow aware of themselves.

If you are not conscious you are unconscious which means you are in a coma, or asleep. Thats how it works.

Well you are new and you did your poll correctly! So good job on that. Also how can you not be conscious if you talk and think and have dreams? Would that not require we be conscious? So what do you think makes us act, think and interact? Are you saying that we are robots and we have chips and are actually controlled by computers? This is first I hear of it but I will not believe it till you give me some evidence.

"I think, therefore, I exist."

I use the operative word "I", therefore implying that I have a conscience and am, indeed, conscious. Even if I am asleep, I still exist. Since there is no way to either prove or disprove this, I lean towards the latter.

Since it makes no difference and there is no way to know for certain, I don't care.

I would make the snide comment that your grammar suggests a lack of consciousness, but I'm feeling lazy.

You can't prove you exist as any proof you garner for your existence will be founded in the very thing in question: Physical existence.

It's completely absurd and at the same time totally irrefutable.

One of those "I can't disprove you, but I disapprove" questions.

Bullshit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito_ergo_sum

In a nutshell... The simple meaning of the phrase is that someone wondering whether or not he or she exists is, in and of itself, proof that something, an "I", exists to do the thinking.

I think we're just a bunch of colonies hosted by a bulk of meat.

I Thnk that consciousness exists, because i think that consciousness is just a sum of sensory perceptions and thoughts. But does anyone actually experience it, or is it just the thoughts themselves that give the illusion of I, or someone existing?
...nah wait, I havent got a clue!! lol

Do you mean you think we dont have souls, or that were actually are unable to consciouslly think and we have no thoughts?