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Is Consciousness Everywhere?

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Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#221

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

morpheos137 wrote: post #180
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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?

No, I'm saying it need not be objectively measurable to be real. This is what I mean by empiricism being an incomplete philosophy.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#222

Post by anoonmoose »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #159
anoonmoose wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can start with the last time Radin's work was savaged in the comments of an HN article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26066233

first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win :)

not everyone who gets ignored, laughed at, or attacked ends up winning

sometimes they just end up ignored and/or laughed at

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#223

Post by anthk »

ivansavz wrote: post #197
anthk wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

prove it.

I'm not sure if it is a "proof" of any sort, but I find the ideas in the माण्डूक्य उपनिषद् (Mandukya Upanishad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandukya_Upanishad ) to be a very interesting point of view. This short text discusses the theory of four states of consciousness: Waking \ Dreaming > Turiya ≝ pure consciousness illuminating these Deep dreamless sleep / These two lectures were very good: - https://www.youtube.c…

That's pseudoscience, sorry.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#224

Post by mr-wendel »

kkoncevicius wrote: post #174
mr-wendel wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sideways indeed! I agree. I think as consciousness grows and expands it becomes increasingly clear that what we call "emotion" is an inseparable quality of being conscious. The more emotion is denied (or suppressed) the more obvious its underlying presence becomes, as it becomes a massive, unconscious (and dangerous) rudder.

Personally, I find it astonishing that anyone could draw a line at humanity. For example, have you never bonded with a dog before? It's so blazingly clear that while there are obvious differences there are even more similarities behind how they think and feel. It's not just dogs: cows, pigs, and rats -- if you spend any time with them -- are obviously high on the spectrum. It's unfathomable that the line of consciousness is anywhere near being at humans alone.

My intent isn't to be insulting, but inviting! There is much splendor in connecting with non-human life, even if it doesn't have all the same qualities as human life :).

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#225

Post by forgotmypw17 »

anoonmoose wrote: post #222
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win :)

not everyone who gets ignored, laughed at, or attacked ends up winning sometimes they just end up ignored and/or laughed at

FWIW, I try not to argue anything I have not personally experienced with my own senses... Thank you for interacting with me.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#226

Post by carapace »

abelaer wrote: post #220
carapace wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

TBF: I'm sure people felt the same way about space and time before good descriptions came around. There are plenty of things that seem way too abstract to allow for a precise description, but I think we should be relatively open to the possibility that there is a good description of consciousness, as it turned out there is for space and time. However, I'm pretty sure IIT is not it.

"TBF"?

> I think we should be relatively open to the possibility that there is a good description of consciousness

I agree but what could that possibly be?

The only reason we know subjective awareness exists is that we "have" or "are" it ourselves.

It's not like electricity where we don't (and can't) know what it "is" but we can describe its behavior and effects mathematically with extraordinary precision because we have instruments to measure it.

We have no instruments that can measure subjective awareness, only self-reports.

Now it's often overlooked that you can investigate consciousness by means of your own consciousness. However, the information evolved that way always remains subjective, and so is of no avail to create objective descriptions of consciousness.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#228

Post by engineer_22 »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #166
engineer_22 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earthworms actually have a well developed nervous system, containing many neurons.

Yeah, but if this (below) is happening inside a single cell, doesn't it seem much easier to model a single worm than to model a single cell? Inner life of a cell: https://youtu.be/wJyUtbn0O5Y

Great animation, thanks for sharing.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#229

Post by n4r9 »

_y5hn wrote: post #169
n4r9 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow... where does this argument fail when you replace "conscious" with "blue"?

The former is universal while the latter is limitation of perception.

There's probably an argument that can be made along those lines, but it's not self-evident.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#230

Post by n4r9 »

morlockabove wrote: post #219
n4r9 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty I think is not in proposing a coherent definition, but in capturing precisely the shared understanding of what people mean when they say something is "alive".

There isn't a shared understanding, people's intuitions disagree.

There's probably an argument that can be made along those lines, but it's not self-evident.
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