A world constructed with sensory organs
In our everyday living, we do not think much about sensory organs such as eyes, ears, nose and skin if no diseases or injuries there. However, without the information from sensory organs we should have considerable inconvenience. Thinking about walking outside, while balancing the body, we can avoid if there are obstacles in our front, if we hear the thunder sound farther away, we walk early thinking that rain will come down. When we feel raindrops on our skin, we think that it has come down at last. Thanks to sensory organs, we can live our everyday life. Moreover, human beings acquired the ability to manipulate thinking and language, invented letters, developed vocal organs and made conversation possible. In addition to receiving information from the outside world by our five senses, we can understand the other person's words and talk something and we can read and write with letters. These abilities further promote collaboration as a group.
We live in the common world with our family, community and society, thinking about various relationships and circumstances. However, the world that we feel has been composed of the information that we see, hear or touch, from our sensory organs. In other words, we are seeing the world as we look at objectively, but our sensory organs and neurons operate there, so we might have re-created the world within ourselves. By the information we got from our sensory organs in daily life, we have built up our own world independently. For example, when seeing and listening to political affairs and economic circumstances, the manner of feeling and way of thinking differ depending on the recipient, and even if you feel nice impression watching the scenery of nature or paintings, the parts that make up the impression are different each other. Each individual is closed and has a personality that is completed, and even if you see the same thing as another person and talk about it, you do not really know what other people think about it. In other words, you are an ordinary person and not abnormal, perhaps you may be looking at the world with a different interpretation with others.
Our lives lie in the species of human kind, which continue from our ancestors through our parents. The basic physiological function as that human should be the same as the surrounding people. However, after birth, we have educated in our specific customary, as discipline of our parents and others, we have become aware of ourselves about our circumferences, and gradually have built our own world while interacting with our friends and colleagues. There, besides the nature that we have as the original human being, each own world is completed by independently accumulating and selecting from the outside circumstances through the sense organs after birth. In other words, we have made the world in everyday life, with experiences of our actions based on information gathered from so-called five senses (visual, auditory, smell, taste, and tactile) as sensory organs, those are accumulated and become composed of our personality.
Physiological structure
Our brain collects various signals received from sensory organs, and then we can recognize the surroundings as accepted information. Our brain does not directly reflect the image of the external world like an image of a picture, but the information visible to the eyes are signalized that light hits on photoreceptor cells in the retina and transmitted electrically to the brain through optic nerves. Complex information collected such as potential differences from photoreceptor cells are integrated via the optic nerve, and then we recognize the visual situation of the outside world in the brain.
To understand what we look at a certain object is to distinguish and identify the object from what our visible field of view shows. When we distinguish from the surroundings and recognize it as our target, in the brain we identify the target referring to our memory and store again the situation with linking emotions, feelings, and so on. In the case of human brains, the object has literally a name, and we can remember it in cooperation with the name and the objective situation. When seeing the same object at the next opportunity, we will remember the memorized information associated with the impressed situation.
In the case of human beings, we identify objects by replacing them with words, including the relationship with the situation. However, in the case of an animal, there may be no word expressing the object, the information obtained from the sensory organ integrate to be patterned and stored in the nerve cells, regarding to the behavior prioritized the life activities of species. In some cases, they may be information that food is safe to obtain or a threat or dangerous pattern to be added, also they may be connected with emotional reaction. Combinations of these signals seem to be composed of complicated intertwining of electrical signals and chemical reactions in the brain, and signals of these entanglements should be stored as neural cell arrangement.
These patterns (neuronal arrangement) from sensory organisms to the behavior express as a combination of increasing and decreasing such as various proteins and amino acid, they are possible to incorporate into genes. However, like a human being, if the object applies to the words and memorizing it, it seems that it will not be into genes. Even in the case of human beings, as a life activity such as autonomic nerves, we are indirectly conscious of them, like animals. There seems to be involvement of identifying and connecting in an important part of “Consciousness of Life”.
(Note: I think here, "Consciousness of Life" is the basic entity of the universe)
The world animals are seeing
For living organisms other than humans, both animals and plants have developed functions as life forms so that their activities can more advantageously maintain over a long period. In the activities necessary for life being, they have added functions or changed the external forms, according to the outside circumstances. In the hidden area of living substances, I think, there operates "Consciousness of Life" to make effective choices for maintaining living organisms according to the kinds of species. Moreover, since "Consciousness of Life" has "Function to Identify" and "Function to Connect", living things identify food, opposite sex and foreign enemies, and connect the suitable actions. Various behaviors of animals compose by these functions, and initially what identified by physical stimuli or chemical reactions only leaded to the direct actions such as obtaining food, but it has become established as instincts or habits during a long period.
The body structure of almost animals has nervous system, to keep the balance of the whole body exchanging information form/to the center and the terminal areas. Animals that cannot make energy by photosynthesis like plants have to behave while lowering the risk of being preyed, and while securing food and reproductive activities. Therefore, depending on sensory organs in various situations they will maintain life activities. Then, animals have developed the structures and functions of the sensory organism independently for that kind, for the necessary food and reproductive. The world animals are seeing will be completely different from what we see as human beings. In the world of each species constructed in the nervous system, it should be necessary that only information such as food, opposite sex and foreign enemies, the preferred information only are acceptable.
Nervous system and sensory organs
Even in a single celled animal without a nervous system, according to the behavioral study in a paramecium, the behavior of its avoidance reaction related with cilia, which accelerate direction change and swimming speed controlled by calcium ions. The control of the cilia by the calcium ions seems the same mechanism in the nervous system and the reaction transferring to the effectors. The movement such as phototaxy towards the direction of light coming off or geotaxis towards the direction of gravity, is controlled by chemical substances or potential difference, so that the behavior is incorporated as a pattern to achieve the purpose such as food intake or danger avoidance. In the development of the nervous system and sensory organs, rather than receiving all the stimulus from the outside world, it should focus on the information necessary for the individual organism depending on the specific condition to maintain life. When the structure of the living organism becomes complicated since the nervous system has formed, a storage area for accumulating the pattern of action may need, and if the patterns are increased, the function of selection to the suitable action may occur. However, the information from sensory organ should have limitation affected by the organ and the pathway, and the received information should have some manipulation as it passes through nerve fibers.
Let us examine the nervous system and sensory organ in animals according to the current research results. The nervous system appears from the form of a neural network in cnidarians (such as sea anemones and jellyfishes). In annular animals such as earthworms, it becomes a ganglion, and in arthropods such as insects, ganglia connect to a pair of central nerves, ganglia of head area form especially the brain. In the developmental process of embryos in vertebrates, three germ layers form after fertilization, and neural tube occurs in the ectoderm. The neural tube divides into three categories, forebrain, midbrain (mesencephalon) and hindbrain, and the optic vesicles extrudes outward from forebrain. The optical vesicle (which will eventually become the optic nerve, retina and iris) forms at the basal plate of the forebrain. The forebrain is a telencephalon and a diencephalon, which turns from hindbrain to the metencephalon and myelencephalon. These correspond to major sensory organs, the telencephalon corresponds to the nose, the eyes correspond to mesencephalon through diencephalon, and the ears correspond to metencephalon. In short, our sense organs have emerged from the early stages (embryos) of individual development in coordination with the formation of the brain.
Identify and Connect
Since almost animals perceive the outside world by sensory organs, they recognize the world within the limited range of the organs. The activities of animals, such as receiving stimuli of food or opposite sex from the outside world have based on the findings of the signaled information from sensory organs. Given the operation of "Consciousness of Life" as the basis of sustaining life in the universe, one function is "Function to Identify", and the other is “Function to Connect”. "Function to identify" works to select the preferred stimulus from signaled information. Then, the living individual can act to follow the related biological response, if that stimulus is valid for living.
Sensory organs signal the information of the outside world to change electricity and chemical reactions, and the signaled information transmit to the brain through the nerve route. A living individual responds to the preferred stimulus coming from the sensory organ, and activates the suitable action. If this process produces an effective outcome repeatedly, that activity has made a typical pattern in the brain. This pattern composed of stimuli and responses connected and memorized in the nerve cells. Moreover, "Function to Connect" associates the pattern with the other stored pattern, and stacks if they can coordinate. For example, when stimulating dangerous sounds with ears, identifying the corresponding object with eyes, and then taking appropriate actions added with fear, those stimuli and responses form one typical pattern in cooperation with the stored patterns.
Progressing functional differentiation in the nervous system and increasing memorized combination of behavior patterns linked with emotion, the brain has become complicated, and the activities of "Function to Connect" that selects and combines increase further. Moreover, when multiple patterns associate and diversify, the arrangement in the related nerve cells will cooperate, combine and become complicated in the brain. Therefore, the process of selecting and combining actions cannot be determined directly to respond and takes time. This situation seems to be the same as what the individual thinks to do. At that time, if that choice is effective and the result are available, it will be stored as a preferred behavior pattern in that situation.
When acting as a group of the same species, individuals act not only to recognize food and foreign enemies as a group, but also they try to imitate themselves by looking at the behavior of colleagues. It is a movement of seeing opponent's behavior and comparing it with own behavior. There must be a sense of consciousness for the individuals to identify as own behavior gradually from what they did not distinct before in the view of the outside world. In other words, a consciousness is rising in an individual to identify as the subject from the mixed pattern of the same species actions. When those experiences accumulate in comparison with the recognized pattern stored in individuals, I think that the consciousness of subject who is moving has developed. Therefore, the nervous system has not only proceeded to form the brain in order to efficiently process the information that complicatedly combines from the sensory organ and the corresponding behavior, but also it has proceeded the direction to rise of consciousness so that humans clearly aware the self as the subject.
Human thoughts and languages
In the cooperation between information from sensory organs and their recognition patterns, many available patterns stack in the bundle of nerve cells. The various functions of the brain should develop in proportion to the complexity of the combination of the patterns. Then the brain will be able to recognize the correlation of accumulated patterns. As a result, an individual should be able to identify own actions against other individuals' behaviors. Since the consciousness of self-aware recognizes internally in the closed individual, we can infer to some extent in some animal cases, from observation such as Mirror test (Mark test) from outside. Moreover, as a human who developed the cerebrum and gained language function, the consciousness of being self- awareness could clearly actualize.
By means of "Connecting" function, "Consciousness of Life" has expanded the development related with language area, enriching vocal organs and making conversation possible. Human beings can not only communicate to others by words but also have the ability to think abstract concepts by creating abundant vocabulary. With this ability, we can express the various information that we gained by perception in conjunction with words. In other words, using language ability, we can transfer information from sensory organs to manipulate patterns with language. As language information becomes more diverse, we will be able to evolve into our culture by creating new words.
The result that the nervous system realized in the human brain is to identify the information from the sensory organs, to stack the patterns in nerve cells, to connect the patterns with the words, and to think and reflect variously using those words. Those activities have realized self-awareness in humans. At the same time, we become aware of the distinction with others, this trend will develop personality. Personality diversifies rather than heading towards uniformity. However, in a group, as we improve ourselves intensively and get effective results by collecting different personalities, human society has developed along with our communication capability.
In addition, sensory organs in humans have been developing beyond physiological limitations by means of scientific technology. In our sight, we can see what we could not see with eyes, using an electron microscope, or telescope like X-ray or infrared. In our hearing, microphones and loudspeakers make it possible to pick up smaller sounds, and we have touch sensors and so on. In our evolution, does the development of physiological sensory organs end in humans in such a case? No, instead, no matter how much the perceptible range expands, the information is meaningless unless it can recognize by humans, so it is only an expansion of the acceptable range.
Then, in the case of humans, individuality tends to diversify into various specialized fields and tend to release from the binding of species, although physiological and anatomical constraints of species other than human beings. Rather, I think that the tendency to consolidate humanity will continue to strengthen. Due to "Function to Connect", efforts to communicate others have developed a vocal organ, and there had been a passage that humans have formed a vocal mechanism in the throat. Connecting consciousness will extend human beings by linking them to groups and bringing together to produce effective results. It is not liberation from bondage. Conversely, we will seek a stronger and broader cooperation.
Summary
Regarding biological evolution, living organisms have taken a long time to improve the organs. They recognized the circumstances of the outside world developing the sensory organs and tried to apply more effective to the corresponding activities. In the case of a human being, the development of scientific technology progresses the invention beyond the limits of sensory organs, so that contemporary technology makes it possible to hear something that we cannot hear, and to see something that we cannot see. In addition, the development of science requires us to engage understanding knowledge more complicatedly. In the daily life, besides the wind hitting the skin, we do not feel the air, but after inventing of high-speed vehicles, we learned that the air has become a considerable resistance depending on the speed. If science further specializes, it is inevitable that the information will become increasingly complicated.
When we try to grasp the precise situation under the basic concept of objective analysis, we know that there is certain limitation to the information that we obtain from sensory organs and our ability. The information received by the individual sensory organs from the outside world is not an exact reflection, but the information we perceived may emphasize our preferred things depending on our individuality, and our emotions may interact with our decision to mix and process. In that case, each activity of individuals is different, so that it is a desirable to judge a correct way from such information collecting each other. In other words, cooperating and aggregating in a group will lead to the right direction. Moreover, we will be able to expect the intensive result from aggregating personality into the center in a group.
Human thinking and reflection has composed of the consciousness to identify and connect, associated with words, linked with the information from outside through sensory organs. When we are acting without considering anything to do, we act according to the patterns that accumulated in our experiences of past time. If there comes any new stimulus, we will be aware of it and need to identify that reason and then create a new pattern. Just as maintaining alive in the given environment as in the case of animals that cannot be aware of own consciousness, there is no choice but to perish if the environment changes significantly. However, human beings think and reflect with language, collaborating with their colleagues, and getting the power to change the future with the approval of everyone. If there is any change, we can think about the causes and reasons related to it, and we can select the response from various experiences. This is the way of life that clearly aware the consciousness of own self as the subject.
Some people feel great impression of the changing scenery of nature, but some people only see it as a change in color. Even if you feel refreshing scent of the forest, the other people may think to analyze the fragrance and produce it to do business. It is certain that what people feel is different each other. However, the information from sensory organs is not the fragmented pieces, and we can identify it as a group of patterns and express it with words. By those words, we can spread empathy and cooperate with our opponents.
When we observe phenomena, sometimes we added any things that were not there by prejudice, and something actually ignored. If any mysterious things affect there, we may not perceive them by our sensory organs. However, as the knowledge becomes abundant and the complexity of the mechanism becomes increase, its limit of our brain has gradually expanded, we should oblige to complicate in line with the complexity of the world. Therefore, about facts scientifically observed, we have to think not that we will understand it simply by explanation of paraphrasing words, but that we should consider some kind of force or energy is acting behind, or create new ideas to explain. I think that it is necessary to pursue what seems to be mysterious there.
