If consciousness is always present, but we don't show signs of it until ~5 months, maybe it's just that we need memories to understand the depths of our own thoughts? Like going from a 2D plane of the now to a 3D plane of the now, before, and after thus birthing more abstract thoughts such as cause and effect?
Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think
101–110 of 191 posts
Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, when it comes to consciousness the alternative is dualism and dualism is the belief in magic. Given how discredited dualism is it is amazing how far people will go to deny hey are dualists whilst spouting all the arguements and beliefs of dualists.
Dualism is the belief there is more than one fundamental substance in the world (mind & matter). There's nothing magical about that, it's just an ontological position. But it does have the problem of how mind & matter interact.
But it does have the problem of how mind & matter interact.
Yes, that is where the magic is.
Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think
#103I find that any discussion of consciousness that doesn't build upon the work of so many other great thinkers (like Daniel Dennett, et al.) is usually a waste of time.
Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be clear, I don't think there is an infinite recursion here, but I do think that consciousness, as we experience it, is several steps beyond merely responding to stimuli. It just crossed my mind that perhaps 'our ability to think about the issue is constrained by our language' and '[consciousness'] workings being inaccessible to introspection' are the same thing.
> .. that perhaps 'our ability to think about the issue is constrained by our language' and '[consciousness] workings being inaccessible to introspection' are the same thing. I like to think about it that way, but it makes the problem feel intractable. The problem is that we want to describe consciousness as "that thing that allows an organism to describe consciousness as 'that thing that allows an organism to descri…
"Consciousness is the ability of an organism to predict the future"
The problem of looking at human consciousness is similar to someone that knows little about computer processors pulling apart an I7 and trying to figure meaningful things about what is going on inside. Without knowing the history of processor design, there will be huge information gaps on why some parts work the way they do.
That said, I believe consciousness is just world modeling, which explains the recursion problem you run into, a good model can simulate itself (nested Turing machines). As creatures evolved the ones that didn't just react, but could predict properly had better survival outcomes. Predictive models competed with each other and the 'best' ones survived, until after millions of years one branch of these models became complex enough to self reference itself.
Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think
#105My best at guess is that the universe itself is conscious, and we'll eventually let go of the idea of individual consciousnesses. An ant hive sees a larger field more clearly than I do, maybe at a slower refresh rate but not by much. Are individual ants conscious? Somewhat. Are we conscious when we're receiving reality through memes beyond our comprehension? Somewhat. Are our rods and cones conscious? Our brain stem?…
No. the universe isn't conscious. The universe is matter. Consciousness is a part of the universe. Therefore consciousness is simply material. Nothing more, nothing less. It's just that our egos are too big to accept that we are nothing more than dirt.
How do you know? Where is your proof?
If matter is all there is, that means either you deny the existence of consciousness (which is an untenable position), or you believe that it arises out of nothing (which requires a "magical" mechanism).
Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. the universe isn't conscious. The universe is matter. Consciousness is a part of the universe. Therefore consciousness is simply material. Nothing more, nothing less. It's just that our egos are too big to accept that we are nothing more than dirt.
It's other way around. The existence of our egos makes the claim that we are more than dirt true.
Consider the possibility that you are underestimating the wonder of dirt.
Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think
#107This article, like most discussions on "consciousness" I encounter reads like little more than word games to me. We could similarly write articles about all the qualities and properties of phlogiston, and we'd have learned just as much. What thing are we actually trying to explain here? What is the extensive meaning of the word "consciousness"? How can I emperically determine if some object/animal/thing possesses con…
> How can I empirically determine if some object/animal/thing possesses consciousness?
You can't, that's just the issue and that's what gives rise to behaviorism, solipsism, etc. etc.
Sure, you could arbitrarily decided that some brain state Y recorded by instruments xzw in the field of neuroscience is a state of 'consciousness' but this is hardly a step up from heuristic methods we've used since the dawn of time, namely duck typing--if the thing looks like its conscious, and acts like its conscious, it is probably conscious.
Consciousness is one of those problems that becomes more problematic once you harp on it but only presents itself as a problem in practice in very rare cases.
Sure you could argue the issue will gain in relevancy as AI + machine learning becomes more sophisticated--but at this point there's still very much an uncanny valley that enables us to easily differentiate between biological and purely computational/mechanical systems.
When it comes to consciousness I think we do well to remember Wittgenstein's advice on doubting--that a doubt is really only worthwhile when it's useful in some fashion. To doubt just for the sake of it, or just because we can is usually not productive and leads us nowhere. Doubts are useful insofar as they are precise and rub up against propositions we hold true with some degree of firmness (actually to be able to doubt at all requires we hold some confident assertions, e.g. one of them in the case of studying consciousness: "no matter what the study says, I'm confident at the very least, that I am conscious").
Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think
#108This article, like most discussions on "consciousness" I encounter reads like little more than word games to me. We could similarly write articles about all the qualities and properties of phlogiston, and we'd have learned just as much. What thing are we actually trying to explain here? What is the extensive meaning of the word "consciousness"? How can I emperically determine if some object/animal/thing possesses con…
Calling 'consciousness' 'soul without an afterlife' is just as much a word game as any other - which is to say that if it is offered as the starting point of a discussion, it is not simply a word game, but if it is declared to be the answer, then it is. I don't think the circularity is there, because while there do not seem to be other animals today with the same sort of consciousness as humans, we can reasonably ass…
Yes, as Daniel Dennett says, groping around trying to find the right questions is what philosophy is. The confusion can be upsetting for both philosophers and non-philosophers. Creating a space for questions and contradictory ideas is a must for any intellectual activity, however.
>18th-century scientists trying to make sense of heat
All that mucking about with the problems of phlogiston could have been a necessary step towards thermodynamics. Similarly, speculations about consciousness could turn out to be a necessary step towards AGI (or vice-versa).
Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think
#109This article, like most discussions on "consciousness" I encounter reads like little more than word games to me. We could similarly write articles about all the qualities and properties of phlogiston, and we'd have learned just as much. What thing are we actually trying to explain here? What is the extensive meaning of the word "consciousness"? How can I emperically determine if some object/animal/thing possesses con…
No, I think consciousness has the role of protecting the life of the organism and reproduction. It's not a "soul" thing, it's a "body" thing, or more exactly, it's a "world+agent+game" thing.
My belief is that consciousness is the ability of an organism to model the world and predict the future. Any organism that doesn't just react is on the consciousness spectrum. When a creature is presented with two or more choices and has to decide which will have the best outcome, it is making a conscious choice.
The problem with starting at human consciousness is our consciousness is to advanced to easily grasp. We can not only internally model our real world very well and make predictions years in advance, we can make up completely coherent 'fake' worlds. The problem with animal consciousness is we have no means of a coherent model of what is occurring in their minds.
Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think
#110My best at guess is that the universe itself is conscious, and we'll eventually let go of the idea of individual consciousnesses. An ant hive sees a larger field more clearly than I do, maybe at a slower refresh rate but not by much. Are individual ants conscious? Somewhat. Are we conscious when we're receiving reality through memes beyond our comprehension? Somewhat. Are our rods and cones conscious? Our brain stem?…
No. the universe isn't conscious. The universe is matter. Consciousness is a part of the universe. Therefore consciousness is simply material. Nothing more, nothing less. It's just that our egos are too big to accept that we are nothing more than dirt.
Take mushrooms.