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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?

#301

Post by BobbyJo »

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…

> But it is not the same question

This is debatable. If you subscribe to the idea that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, then it makes sense as an avenue to the answer.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#302

Post by browningstreet »

bitexploder wrote: post #204
Osiris wrote: post #196

I do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and a common submission technique is to cut off blood flow to the brain (known as a blood choke). I've lost consciousness twice after being put into a blood choke. The experience of regaining consciousness is visceral. For those that haven't experienced it, it's very much like a turning on a computer. Initially, your brain does not (or cannot) process input like vision, sound, touch, etc. Slo…

I slept once on the mats. I literally remember feeling like I was in a fuzzy and comfortable dream and waking up to my partner shaking me and asking if I am alright. I blurted out something like "What are we doing?" and I was wondering why my partner was sitting next to me and where I was and what was going on. But not in a panicked or concerned way. Like some parts of my brain knew what was happening. But the thinki…

I once woke up in the high school bathroom, laying on the floor. I was alone. I have no idea how I got there, what happened before, and how long the thing had happened. It seemed unlikely that you could be in a high school bathroom THAT LONG without someone else showing up.

It's not happened since. A one-time event. The confusion I woke up with so profound and complete and slow... I think about it often. I think about how the brain, and its consciousness, can have a bug or a crash.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#303

Post by p_noumenon »

alar44 wrote: post #297
p_noumenon wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you just described sounds exactly like waking up from a dream.

It's nothing like that. Your memory is wiped out, you don't know who you are, you don't know when you are. It's like you're in an alien world, nothing looks familiar. Your ears are kind of buzzing and ringing, your visual field is fucked up, etc. The last layers of your neural network aren't turned on yet. It's pretty weird.

...sounds exactly like waking up from a dream.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#304

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

BobbyJo wrote: post #301
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…

> But it is not the same question This is debatable. If you subscribe to the idea that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, then it makes sense as an avenue to the answer.

If your answer to "how can anything be conscious" is "it just can, if the system meets these requirements", then obviously, that's the only answer and you may as well move on to "what are we conscious of?"

At this point, I'm not willing to regard consciousness as something like gravity or the weak force, though I concede that it could turn out that way.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#305

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

visarga wrote: post #231
GonzaloRizzo wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who is the observer who is observing myself?

Let's try to replace "who" with "computer". Who is the computer that observes itself? all of them. A computer is not passive, a brain is not passive. It can observe itself. In other words, the parts communicate.

A city is not passive. The parts communicate. Is there consciousness there?

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#306

Post by ThrustVectoring »

tgv wrote: post #12
xweber wrote: post #2

Thanks for the link. I agree with Seth that consciousness is much like a controlled hallucination - after all, we don't experience reality directly, but through the predictions of our brain. But then the question is, why do you need this hallucination? I suspect that consciousness evolved because it makes an organism more capable than one who doesn't. But what does consciousness offer over just taking in sensory inpu…

> we don't experience reality directly That muddies the water, IMO. We do experience reality directly: our nerve endings do. The next step is processing, which is somewhat mediated by low-level expectations. This takes place at sub-conscious levels. Conscious perception comes much later, and is obviously more filtered. To call it a hallucination is word play.

There are fixed patterns in still images that appear to move when we perceive them. "We don't experience reality directly" and calling it a hallucination seems apt - the thing we experience when we look at things is less "what's actually there" and more "the best guess our brain can construct about what's there".

Additional examples of this include the non-perception of the visual blind spot, how the brain fills in details in the middle of saccades, and how task-specific training causes perceptual differences (eg, thrown baseballs look bigger to professional batters).

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#307

Post by GeorgeKangas »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #269
naasking wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dennett mostly seems to support it, as you note, but more equivocally than Frankish. I believe Dennett is an eliminative materialist, so he would consider qualia to be an illusion. > For those of us who have subjective experience (SE), and are aware of it: SE is the thing, which we know must exist (as noted by Descsartes). Descartes begged the question. Just deconstruct it: " I think therefore I am" presupposes the…

> I believe Dennett is an eliminative materialist, so he would consider qualia to be an illusion. That's correct, mostly, but it also means this position is nonsensical. What is notable about qualia is that it is possible to have them at all. An illusion is definitionally a qualia. You cannot have an illusion without qualia existing. Dennett tries to finesse this, but in my opinion fails. I think he wants it to be po…

Dennett's position makes perfect sense -- if Dennett is a zombie. For a zombie, to whom subjective experience (SE) is not even a thing, the "hard problem" can only mean: why do people talk about SE? So that's what they set about explaining.

However, I don't think Dennett (or any human) is actually a zombie. The difficulty, is getting people to recognize their own SE. Our vocabulary, all about material and mechanisms, can't actually define SE. Instead, we have a few ostensions by which an attentive experiencer might recognize his own SE:

[Descartes] SE is that one thing, which absolutely must exist.

[Nagel] SE is "what it's like, to be...". He adds, that all our science is fully consistent with SE not existing. That's why it makes perfect sense for a zombie to believe it doesn't exist.

[Jackson]: Mary knows what seeing red is like, only when she has seen red.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#308

Post by krapp »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #287
krapp wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That, per definition, is a supernatural observation since we can’t touch the invisible laws. The definition of supernatural is that which exists outside of the order of nature, not that which is only explicitly tangible. Natural laws are human-created abstractions which explain the observed behaviors of the natural world, which by definition makes them natural, not supernatural.

“ The definition of supernatural is that which exists outside of the order of nature.” Natural laws exist without humans, unless one believes the universe disappears without the human to collapse the wave function. Nature follows these laws, so the laws are abstractly outside of nature.

Again, your definitions of "natural" and "supernatural" are not ones that anyone else uses.

Natural laws are observed within nature, which makes them a part of nature. To claim that natural laws are supernatural simply because they're abstractions, and that consciousness is therefore supernatural regardless of its nature, is absurd. It's a rhetorical cheat, not an argument.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#309

Post by abletonlive »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #282
abletonlive wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but see, in your example, I would then say your fingers are conscious, too. Or that there is an experience of being a finger. Who, besides the finger, could say otherwise? Just because you've moved the experience from me having it, to the finger having it, doesn't mean that the experience disappeared. The problem is yet again w/ the definition of having an experience, as I said in my reply to the parent. It's jus…

It's not just language. I doubt that you think it is like anything to be a rock. You do think that it is like something to be a person (or even a finger)! Those are two different states of existence, one with experiences/qualia (i.e. it is like something to be that thing) and one without. How do we explain the difference. ps. interesting user name.

How can you be so sure there is no experience of being a rock? Surely it's wildly different from being a finger or a person, and perhaps, very boring from a human's perspective. I'm not sure why everybody insists you can have qualia or you can't, as if it's a binary thing. Perhaps it's a gradient. I would say there is something like being a plant, or something like being a computer program. Just because we are unable to imagine it as humans does not mean that it doesn't exist.

What makes my experience of seeing red any more special than the experience of a plant reacting to light? The fact that I can type about it on hackernews and the plant can't?

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#310

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

visarga wrote: post #234
Dylan16807 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I have a material that tightens or loosens based on temperature or chemical gradient, does that count as "sensory input"? I wouldn't say so, since nothing is receiving a signal from it to distinguish, and I also wouldn't say it's causing experiences, but it is enough to seek nutrients for a bacteria or a jellyfish-like creature.

You're right, a bacteria would sense and follow chemical gradients and light. And that would be a primitive form of consciousness. A piece of material is not conscious because it doesn't need to. You see, bacterias are self replicators, humans too. And self replication is resource intensive, while resources are limited. So life becomes a competition. That is why agents need to become more attuned to their state and p…

"consciousness" as a philosophical question is not about the ability to detect state in the world (including your own state) and reacting to it. it is not about self-replication.

It is about having subjective experience aka "qualia". It is about "it being like something to be you", contrasted with, e.g. being a rock (which most people agree, it is not like anything to be).

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