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What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

nautil.us

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Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#171

Post by mrkramer »

lisper wrote: post #14

> If you are feeling pain, for example, this gives you very actionable knowledge about what you should do next in order to survive. This seems exactly backwards to me. The visceral sensation of pain exists precisely in order to bypass your conscious decision-making. When you're hurting, your body doesn't want you to start weighing the pros and cons of various courses of action, it wants you to deal with the injury ri…

>When you're hurting, your body doesn't want you to start weighing the pros and cons of various courses of action, it wants you to deal with the injury right now.

This is called instinct. It is evolutionary mechanism so you don't have to think what to do when you are getting hurt and your life is in danger. You react instantaneously.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#172

Post by Layke1123 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #71
misja111 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have neither a feeling nor a rationally logical proof of this idea. It's just an intuitive guess. This intuition, that there is something special and unique about what 'we' are, is baked into our brains by many thousands of years of evolution, and this makes it so extremely difficult for us to believe that there's nothing more to us then a bunch of molecules. This is why people have invented theories about souls,…

It's difficult to believe we are nothing more to us then a bunch of molecules because I still am me if I loose an arm, a memory or any given part of my brain. One can gradually replace every tiny part of his body with prosthetics and the point at which he will stop being them and become an imitation both exists and does not. What's the difference between me and a perfect imitation? I believe I am going to remain wher…

> It's difficult to believe we are nothing more to us then a bunch of molecules because I still am me...

What do you mean by still "me"? If I lose an arm, I would definitely say I have lost a part of "me".

> What's the difference between me and a perfect imitation?

As far as I can tell, there is no difference until you begin to interact with the outside world, at which point the "yous" are no longer the same. Your body is constantly replacing itself with new parts and molecules to keep your brain and body functioning. This effectively means you are building a new copy of yourself all the time.

Why does it bother you if another process does it all at once? Does gradually replacing all of what is "you" make you feel better about "you" versus some ability to make it all at once and see it happening?

> I believe I am going to remain where I was if someone just makes an atom-perfect copy of mine and puts it near so the copy will probably have exactly the same memories I have and believe it is me but will not be me actually.

The other argument is that the "clone" you will very vigorously also try to defend it's "me" status since you are perfect copies, and it will claim that it is it's own "me" brought about not by birth, but by artificial means and claim it has the exact same rights as you would. It didn't choose the path of "birth", but if you are perfect clones, why does it have any less right to the life it believes it has that you do? Because you were "born naturally"? What if you made the clone for spare body parts and through a misstep, the clone woke up. I would argue the clone has the right to your life now for gross human rights violations if it so chooses while you would head off to prison hopefully wihtout parole.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#173

Post by mrkramer »

tremon wrote: post #75
FeepingCreature wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the important part is that you can represent more things in consciousness than just "five-sense data", ie. exotic sense data like emotions, reactions, imagination, memory, impulses, selfhood, and correlate them with the ordinary sensory data. A non-conscious animal may see a predator and get scared, but I don't know if it knows that it's scared because of the predator. I think you need an integrated space for…

A non-conscious animal may see a predator and get scared This is maybe just a matter of definition, but I find it highly unlikely that that scenario exists. "Seeing" a predator already requires so much higher-level processing (not just the visual cues, but the analysis and classification) that I find it unlikely the animal does not have a working distinction between intra-body and outside-world sensations. The proble…

All the things you mentioned are products of evolution invented for the purpose of increasing survival rate. For example emotions serve us mammals to bond with each other, bring us closer together so that we help each other in order to survive.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#174

Post by Layke1123 »

stevofolife wrote: post #147
misja111 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have neither a feeling nor a rationally logical proof of this idea. It's just an intuitive guess. This intuition, that there is something special and unique about what 'we' are, is baked into our brains by many thousands of years of evolution, and this makes it so extremely difficult for us to believe that there's nothing more to us then a bunch of molecules. This is why people have invented theories about souls,…

We are unique as humans if you compare us to any biological being. Saying we are not is a very big understatement.

What do you mean by unique?

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#175

Post by ncmncm »

psyc wrote: post #163
ncmncm wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "some folks just haven't noticed themselves" Some folks don't enjoy tying themselves in knots. You are absolutely welcome to spend your precious seconds of limited life on it, but it doesn't make you superior, however much you would like to think it does. It's just a choice, like between working and playing.

This is such a non-sequitur. I can't tell if you're referring to people choosing not to be conscious (I doubt that's possible) or choosing not to ponder on it (I don't think that's relevant). If people don't want to think about it, that's easily avoided. What we're talking about is people expending serious thought, "tying themselves in knots" as you say, to write essays and sometimes tomes dissuading others from pond…

I am talking about choosing to tie yourself in knots and thereby preventing any further progress toward understanding what you are talking about.

You could also choose not to tie yourself in knots, and then you would not be blocked, and could begin to make sense.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#176

Post by jostmey »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #93

Like Dennett in "Consciousness Explained", both of these authors seem almost entirely focused on what we are conscious of rather than the fact that we are conscious of anything at all. Their descriptions of their work are all centered on the question of what it is that we actually experience. This is is a fascinating question, and entirely worthy of investigation. But it is not the same question as: how is it possibl…

What is consciousness? Self-awareness seems like a good definition that can be explained in the context of artificial intelligence research. What is the experience of consciousness? The experience of an emotion? To me, this seems beyond the reach of our current understanding

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#177

Post by ncmncm »

carapace wrote: post #157
ncmncm wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "some folks just haven't noticed themselves" Some folks don't enjoy tying themselves in knots. You are absolutely welcome to spend your precious seconds of limited life on it, but it doesn't make you superior, however much you would like to think it does. It's just a choice, like between working and playing.

I didn't say anything about "superior". Is being a "P-Zombie" inferior to being self-aware? By what metric could such a comparison be made? Is the water inferior to the wave? Also, "tying themselves in knots" != "noticed themselves", if anything it's the opposite: all knots untie.

All knots can be untied, if that is what you choose to do. But not everybody chooses that. Thus far you have not chosen that.

"Noticing yourself" is something literally everyone does. Not everyone ties themselves in knots. The alternative to tying yourself in knots is to think clearly without inventing falsehoods.

"P-zombies" is just another word for solipsism. The moment somebody proposes either, you know there will be no more clear thought.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#178

Post by psyc »

ncmncm wrote: post #175
psyc wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a non-sequitur. I can't tell if you're referring to people choosing not to be conscious (I doubt that's possible) or choosing not to ponder on it (I don't think that's relevant). If people don't want to think about it, that's easily avoided. What we're talking about is people expending serious thought, "tying themselves in knots" as you say, to write essays and sometimes tomes dissuading others from pond…

I am talking about choosing to tie yourself in knots and thereby preventing any further progress toward understanding what you are talking about. You could also choose not to tie yourself in knots, and then you would not be blocked, and could begin to make sense.

That makes more sense, thanks. But philosophers of mind, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and all could just as well pursue other lines of inquiry without protesting too much that there's no hard problem.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#179

Post by missedthecue »

blueflow wrote: post #65
misja111 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminds me of religious people, whose argument that God exists is similar: that you will realize that He exists as soon as you believe in Him. And that you can't possibly understand it otherwise. Consciousness is a hard problem until you realize that most of it is an illusion. Which is the very reason that it is so hard to understand: there's nothing to understand, because it's not real.

Believing in God is a good coping mechanism if you cant deal with the fact that things, both good and bad, happen for no reason all the time. Knowing "why" gives comfort in the vast chaos that is reality.

Plenty of people believe in God(s) yet don't think that things are controlled or predestined.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#180

Post by felix318 »

bondarchuk wrote: post #151
ed-209 wrote: post #45

Theorizing about the nature of consciousness without having been subjected to it's multitude of altered states is an obvious waste of time. If you can't or won't venture into the "field", then at least have the humility to address the aggregate experiential data of those who have.

The trouble is that the sort of drug-induced insight (or pseudo-insight as some would call it) you refer to is usually accompanied by strong euphoric effects, which impairs your ability to dryly reason about those experiences even a long time after the fact. Nor can I completely shake the impression that those who believe a e.g. a DMT trip offers genuine insight into the nature of consciousness simply had an insuffic…

There are altered states of consciousness that occur naturally and don't lead to a sense of euphoria. Sleep paralysis for example. It happened to me once and it made me see things differently, nothing religious or mystical, just an enhanced perspective.

To give an example, during my episode I had what is usually described as an out-of-body experience. I felt myself walking around my bedroom as if I were awake, only to find out that my body never left the bed. Now if the sense of being "out of the body" is an illusion, how can we be sure that being "in the body" is not just the same illusion? (I'm tempted to think we are not anywhere and that space itself is the illusion, but that is beside the point)

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