Is Consciousness Everywhere? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#171

Post by skindoe » Thu, Mar 18, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

morpheos137 wrote: post #127

mehphp wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on consciousness not being a thing? You mean it doesn't exist at all or it isn't a physical thing?

I don't believe consciousness exists in a meaningful way in the real world. It certainly exists as a word in a dictionary and as something for philosophical types to have woo debates over. I think the word is vague term that signifies different somewhat independent things that living organisms have to a greater or lesser extent (memory, emotion, thought, embodiment, etc). I believe attempting to have a scientific deb…

Agreed with the other commentor. In fact as Decartes claimed consciousness is the only thing that you can know that exists.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#172

Post by kkoncevicius » Thu, Mar 18, 2021, 8:57 PM UTC

hntrader wrote: post #113

kkoncevicius wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No no, I disagree, these are very different things. The matter I am made of is nothing special - everything has same kind of matter so I am bound to have some of it. But the consciousness I have is very special - top shelf in all of biology. Say bacteria are conscious. Here is how special this is: the number of bacteria on earth is estimated to be "five million trillion trillion". And there are ~7 billion humans. So…

There's no paradox here. When a lottery is drawn, someone has to win it and be left with the question "what are the odds?". Well, the odds that there will be a lottery winner in a position to ask that question is 1.

If someone wins a lottery we can then say "what are the chances of this specific person winning - they are very low" - that would be Texas sharpshooter fallacy, because the chance of _some_ person winning somewhere is high, we simply drew a target around the winner and restated the question.

But this is not what is happening. What is happening is more like you finding three tickets under your rug in the morning, checking the numbers and finding out that you won jackpots in all three, and then choosing to believe that they are winner tickets by chance (believing in consciousness is everywhere) as opposed to someone planting them there (only humans are conscious or some other similar explanation).

The key difference between the two is that in the second case there are no multiple possibilities - it's about one person - you, you either win or loose, so we cannot select "winners" after the fact in this case.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#173

Post by _y5hn » Thu, Mar 18, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

carapace wrote: post #154

morpheos137 wrote: post #61

Before we can ask intelligent, falsifiable questions about consciousness we need a rigorous definition of what consciousness is. Personally I think the word is a vague term and that a rigorous definition is impossible. Therefore, if my hypothesis is true, we can not not scientifically investigate "consciousness" any more than we can scientifically investigate "divinity" or "spookiness." If you disagree with my hypoth…

There can be no rigorous definition of what consciousness is, just names (experience, subjectivity, awareness, self, you) because it has no qualities. Consciousness is impossible to describe. It is neither hot nor cold, it has no size, and it experiences no passage of time as it is always now, eternal. There are no sides to it and no parts. It has no extent. It cannot be pointed to. It is beyond all possible signific…

There is a quality often associated with conscious consciousness. The ancients called it light, ie. the inner light of perception, reasoning, voice, etc.

Meditation is focus/defocus from even that.

As beings, humans are mostly preoccupied with the changing phenomena however.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#174

Post by kkoncevicius » Thu, Mar 18, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

mr-wendel wrote: post #90

kkoncevicius wrote: post #13

I have one problem with consciousness is everywhere argument. Namely, if everything down to ants is conscious - how lucky are we to end up experiencing the world as humans? The chances are just too small for me to accept it at face value.

Despite other comments dismissing this, I do think this is a compelling and humbling question. I think its best answered with a few related questions to consider what makes us lucky: 1) Longevity clearly matters, but the relativity of it is hard to assess: some sea mammals with emotionally-rich lives live twice as long. 2) Quality of life clearly matters. It's easy to imagine (and hopefully you personally know some!)…

I think this explanation goes a bit sideways - comparing emotional states and happiness, which is not directly related to consciousness.

What I am surprised about is not how sentimentally lucky I am, but how unlikely it is that my consciousness (which by the theory of consciousness being everywhere) ended up in the being that we consider to be "most conscious" (human). Even if I lived a very short life full of terror and pain - I still would be just as surprised that consciousness that could have been "planted" anywhere ended up in me - a human. And so the alternative theory of "only humans have consciousness" would be more attractive.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#175

Post by _y5hn » Thu, Mar 18, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

driggs wrote: post #85

acruns wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be no oblivion if you experienced it. I would suggest reversing the idea that conscience is part of a being and instead suggest that consciousness is inherit in everything because it is everything. Within or without a being.

Pardon my inability to express accurately with words, but I most certainly did not experience oblivion. I am using the word "oblivion" to describe the state of absolutely no experience whatsoever. It was practically religious/mystical/psychedelic in that it truly felt that I had not existed at all during that time. (And, no offense, I get the George Harrison reference, but saying that consciousness "is everything" be…

Separate the blank stage, from the actors and scenery. For something to fill and empty, you know there's a vessel. It is integral and unseparable. Feelings, thought, emotion, drama, will always change and are tools for seeking.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#176

Post by kkoncevicius » Thu, Mar 18, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

captainclam wrote: post #89

kkoncevicius wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No no, I disagree, these are very different things. The matter I am made of is nothing special - everything has same kind of matter so I am bound to have some of it. But the consciousness I have is very special - top shelf in all of biology. Say bacteria are conscious. Here is how special this is: the number of bacteria on earth is estimated to be "five million trillion trillion". And there are ~7 billion humans. So…

It sounds like you're suggesting that you are a "soul" that was "put" in a body. Try to see it from this perspective; your experience as an individual (soul) is a feature of the structure we call Homo sapiens. It's a characteristic of this species' brain structure, in the same way that the colors of a flower are characteristic of its phenotype. It would be silly to ask, "What are the chances that that shade of yellow…

Yes but - I am that consciousness. That makes all the difference between this comparison and the yellow color example.

The fact that I am "seated" in a human body is an argument for only humans having this feature or phenotype called consciousness, and against the "consciousness is everywhere".

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#177

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Thu, Mar 18, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

twobitshifter wrote: post #54

meepmorp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree, and would only point out that the ability to get far on properly calibrated bullshit is a well established phenomenon throughout human history.

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair

I love when I run into this, because I actually took two classes taught by Dr Peter Boghossian, the first was Critical Thinking, the second was Atheism. Checking Portland State's course catalog, he's still teaching those classes.

Oh, and as you might imagine, there was a pretty considerable amount of material that existed in both of those classes.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#178

Post by anthk » Thu, Mar 18, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

morpheos137 wrote: post #116

nynx wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does believing that all things are information differ from believing all things are matter? Those sound just like two sides of the same coin to me.

Materialists see information as deriving (resulting) from a spatial - temporal - state distribution of matter or energy. Informational people see information as giving rise (causing) to matter and energy. I subscribe to the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis more or less and am sympathetic to Cyclic Conformal Cosmology. Thus cause and effect are reversed.

I always was more impressed on why information on the atoms (how interact between themselves) is not as researched as the matter itself, is truly fascinating.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#179

Post by acruns » Thu, Mar 18, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

driggs wrote: post #85

acruns wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be no oblivion if you experienced it. I would suggest reversing the idea that conscience is part of a being and instead suggest that consciousness is inherit in everything because it is everything. Within or without a being.

Pardon my inability to express accurately with words, but I most certainly did not experience oblivion. I am using the word "oblivion" to describe the state of absolutely no experience whatsoever. It was practically religious/mystical/psychedelic in that it truly felt that I had not existed at all during that time. (And, no offense, I get the George Harrison reference, but saying that consciousness "is everything" be…

No offense taken. But isn't nothingness or no experience an experience? It seems you did experience something, that something might equate to nothingness or the void or oblivion but there was an experience? It sounds similar to "experiencing" a thought. It happens and we can all agree they do, but what is it to experience a thought? Can you smell, touch, feel a thought?

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#180

Post by morpheos137 » Thu, Mar 18, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #170

morpheos137 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe consciousness exists in a meaningful way in the real world. It certainly exists as a word in a dictionary and as something for philosophical types to have woo debates over. I think the word is vague term that signifies different somewhat independent things that living organisms have to a greater or lesser extent (memory, emotion, thought, embodiment, etc). I believe attempting to have a scientific deb…

I find that a very strange statement for a supposedly conscious being to make. Consciousness does absolutely objectively exist, or at least I can say it does for me. That its existence is not objectively measurable doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it just means that the philosophy of empiricism is not complete.

>I find that a very strange statement for a supposedly conscious being to make.

I don't claim to be conscious. I am alive and awake and thinking and sensing, etc.

>Consciousness does absolutely objectively exist, or at least I can say it does for me.

This sentence appears to confuse subjective experience with objective reality.

>That its existence is not objectively measurable doesn't mean it doesn't exist

If we can think of something that is not objectively measurable what suggests that it exists objectively as opposed to it being a subjective opinion?

Can you define consciousness without invoking subjective conscious experience? You agree there is not evidence of objective existence and yet you say it objectively exists because you subjectively feel it does. Is this not self-contradictory?