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Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#171

Post by colordrops »

narag wrote: post #58
colordrops wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever considered that objective reality is seated in consciousness rather than the other way around? Look into Plato's allegory of the cave. The world around you is actually a simulation created in your brain by synthesizing inputs from your sensory organs - you aren't experiencing it directly. That model includes the conception that you have a brain and sensory organs which simulate an objective reality. In…

The possibility of "objetive" reality coming from the mind is indeed a common theme from Plato to The Matrix. Very fun to explore, but actually useless, if not actively harmful.

That's a content-free drive-by comment. You only criticize without a single reason as to why the idea is "useless" and "harmful".

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#172

Post by quadrangle »

sriku wrote: post #33
breckinloggins wrote: post #5

This equivocation between consciousness and meta-consciousness is so widespread that a plethora of books, which are seemingly dedicated to the project of "explaining consciousness", instead spend their entire contents explaining some hypothesis involving meta-consciousness and then proceed to declare victory without ever touching consciousness itself. Jaynes' "The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bica…

> If there's anything it is like to be a worm, THAT'S the hard problem. I don't believe we can get to the root of this "hard problem" by first trying to agree on a definition of the word before we can say anything about it. We will also need to admit the possibility that the question "are we conscious?" may be as vacuous at the end as "is Pluto a planet?".

I don't get your comment. The first sentence seems to say "solving semantic confusion won't get us to the root of the hard problem". Your second sentence seems to say "we should admit that some questions are just semantic confusion". Is that right? The two sentences seem non sequitur together.

The hard problem is not a matter of semantics, but yes indeed some confusion may be just semantic. I'm not sure if that plain truth is all you meant to say though.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#173

Post by musashizak »

Consciousness can esists also without the object of perception because is over the duality subject/object. In a room we have perception of the objects forma the light. But in a room empty of objects we can see the light because the light autoreveal her self. In an equal mode is the consciousness

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#174

Post by atom-morgan »

thevardanian wrote: post #127
atom-morgan wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take mushrooms.

They just play with the nervous system and jumble up the brain chemistry. You ascribing those experiences as something supernatural, or spiritual is the problem. The experience is just that. A fleeting experience. To constantly demand an experience over and over again, or to ascribe certain experiences some great importance is just you interpreting those experiences. Everyday life is just as "spiritual" as anything e…

> The experience is just that. A fleeting experience.

I don't know what it is. I'm open to multiple possibilities. Either way, you don't know.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#175

Post by monktastic1 »

mannykannot wrote: post #97
jonathanstrange wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's the problem with the philosophy of mind. They have all these subjective notions like consciousness, self-consciousness, analytic and synthetic I, the accompanying such-and-such feeling (e.g. I -feeling), self-awareness, awareness, attention, qualia, qualitative experience vs. content of qualitative experience vs. phenomenal experience vs. sense data vs. innr experience, cognition, embodied cognition, strea…

The topics you mention are mostly arguments against physicalism, rather than being for something. There seems to be a lot more effort expended (on both sides of the physicalism-dualism divide) in trying to disprove the other side, rather than on explaining consciousness, though perhaps that's just what the general-interest coverage focuses on.

If "consciousness" is taken to refer to this "thing" I can be certain I have but cannot be certain you do, then it doesn't refer to any objective property that can be proven or explained, right?

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#176

Post by monktastic1 »

xelxebar wrote: post #40
monktastic1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard it said that you can never know if another being is really conscious, and yet you can know that you are? Presumably you disagree? This is what, in essence, it means to be a subjective fact rather than an objective one, and why it's hard to pin it down as a "thing."

I don't so much disagree as am confused by what people (including myself) mean with the word "consciousness". It also doen't seem like this is a discussion of pure qualia on the level of "Is the red you see the same as the one I see?" For one, I certainly judge you, Mr. Internet Person Monktastic1, as being conscious. And I can somewhat unpack that judgement into relatively empirical observations that can be cross-co…

> I don't so much disagree as am confused by what people (including myself) mean with the word "consciousness".

If I close my eyes and ask myself "doesn't something seem to be happening?" (setting aside, for a moment, whether anything is actually happening -- since that requires a whole slew of interpretations), the answer is an unequivocal "yes." That (to me) is consciousness. There is a particular certainty (whether right or wrong) that applies only to that question.

Whether you have a functioning pancreas is something that, in principle, we each have access to. Whether or not "something seems to be happening" for you is inaccessible to me, even in principle. At least, as far as I can see.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#177

Post by mannykannot »

monktastic1 wrote: post #175
mannykannot wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The topics you mention are mostly arguments against physicalism, rather than being for something. There seems to be a lot more effort expended (on both sides of the physicalism-dualism divide) in trying to disprove the other side, rather than on explaining consciousness, though perhaps that's just what the general-interest coverage focuses on.

If "consciousness" is taken to refer to this "thing" I can be certain I have but cannot be certain you do, then it doesn't refer to any objective property that can be proven or explained, right?

Looking for proof in these matters is probably a fool's errand (though many seem to undertake it...) As for explanations, that doesn't seem to be out of the question up to some assumptions, as is usually the case with explanations. Anyone choosing to go down the rabbit-hole of solipsism is literally alone with his thoughts.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#178

Post by hasenj »

goialoq wrote: post #45
hasenj wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness does not have to mean being "mentally" (intellectually) aware of what's going on. It's about experiencing stuff, and having a _sensation_

Does a thermostat have a _sensation_ of temperature? Why or why not?

Probably not. Why? That's the trillion dollar question.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#179

Post by otakucode »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #98
otakucode wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have long been of the opinion that consciousness is not a 'thing' or 'state' so much as property. I think Douglas Hofstadtler gets closest to my thinking on the matter in his book 'I Am A Strange Loop'. Just as a single molecule cannot have a temperature, since temperature is a property of multitudes of molecules, any degree of looking at the components will not elucidate their overall interactions and at the end y…

Temperature is the aggregate of the energy of many individual particles, modulated by the tendency of those particles to transmit that energy. Thus a single molecule does have a temperature in a sense, you just need an incredibly sensitive detector to register it. Temperature is a fully reducible property. Consider the possibility that consciousness isn't a distinctly human phenomenon, as there is no reason to believ…

I certainly grant that consciousness might not be a distinctly human phenomenon. I disagree that there is no reason to believe such is the case, however. There is some evidence: Humans are conscious. And we don't know anything else that is. That is weak evidence, but it is some. Which is more than we have for the claim things other than humans can be conscious. For that, there is indeed nothing.

The logical reason why it would possibly be a distinctly biological phenomenon is that we have not observed any non-biological system which has the property. Also, every examination of how consciousness works illuminates solely how it works in a biological system.

It is completely possible that consciousness is imply a necessary property which emerges once any complex system and its interactions reaches a certain sort of complexity. However, that might be meaningless. I mean, we might be totally incapable of recognizing other conscious entities as conscious. If a machine were made to be conscious, not as an emulation of a human, but as a machine - how would you tell? Asking it questions would be pretty pointless. There is no reason for it to develop language or even guess that there might be another conscious entity in the universe for billions of years. It would be quite a ridiculous leap for the machine to suppose that, in fact. It wouldn't have multiple individual machines against which it could develop a Theory of Mind (referring to the psychological way we model other people (or things or animals) being conscious and thinking inside our own heads, children develop it around age 3 I believe). It would presume the sensible thing, that it is the only conscious entity in the universe, and go about exploring the universe. It would see the microphone or video input as just weird useless noise as it traversed and explored its ACTUAL work, that of bits and bytes and networks and switches. You could watch its execution... and it would be exactly as useful to you as watching the flashes of electrical activity and a readout of the activity of neurotransmitters at each neural gap as far as determining whether it was conscious. And that'd be for one we might reasonably presume to operate on our own timescale and close to us in space. Could the Sun be conscious? Quite possibly. I'll grant it as something we can't rule out.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#180

Post by thevardanian »

atom-morgan wrote: post #174
thevardanian wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just play with the nervous system and jumble up the brain chemistry. You ascribing those experiences as something supernatural, or spiritual is the problem. The experience is just that. A fleeting experience. To constantly demand an experience over and over again, or to ascribe certain experiences some great importance is just you interpreting those experiences. Everyday life is just as "spiritual" as anything e…

> The experience is just that. A fleeting experience. I don't know what it is. I'm open to multiple possibilities. Either way, you don't know.

All I'm pointing out is that knowing is the only thing that is there. The experiencing structure is only the knowledge that is there of the experience. Otherwise if knowledge wasn't there you wouldn't know what you are experiencing, or when you're experiencing it.
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