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What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

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Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#131

Post by RHSman2 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #32
layer8 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People fundamentally disagree about whether there is anything besides the “of”. My personal introspection tells mere there is only “of”, because what I perceive as my consciousness, is, by virtue of being a perception, in the end just an “of” itself. There is some sort of recursivity involved in the whole construct of consciousness, which makes it hard to get a grasp on. In some sense, consciousness is just that, bei…

The argument you're making is just eliding the "hard problem". We can trivially imagine an electronic circuit that registers different current levels when exposed to red or blue light. Nobody (that I'm aware of) suggests that there is an experience within the electronic circuit, despite the fact that it "senses" different frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. The circuit is qualia-free. You, on the other hand,…

The hard problem is hard because most people don’t get why it is hard.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#132

Post by RHSman2 »

mlsu wrote: post #77
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument you're making is just eliding the "hard problem". We can trivially imagine an electronic circuit that registers different current levels when exposed to red or blue light. Nobody (that I'm aware of) suggests that there is an experience within the electronic circuit, despite the fact that it "senses" different frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. The circuit is qualia-free. You, on the other hand,…

Really? + Human beings + Dogs + Bugs + Plants + Eukaryotes + Viruses + Proteins + Molecules + Atoms + Subatomic Particles + ??? + Pure Information, ones and zeros Here is a line (--------). Place it so that above it, things are conscious, and below it, things are not conscious. It seems very obvious to me that there is nothing special about human beings, (or dogs, or bugs, or plants, or wherever you draw the line), t…

Check out Peter Russell. The person closest to the mark for me. If you know of him the above is that but if not, he is amazing.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#133

Post by otikik »

nicoburns wrote: post #69
otikik wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how it is possible to be conscious of anything at all I ... have always seen that as something obvious. On a high level, isn't consciousness the result of combining a bunch of neurons (a "hardware", of sorts) in certain preexisting configuration (a "software" of sorts) and stimuli (inputs) ?. To me the problem is on the details. The separation between layers is not needed because there's no limited consciousness ne…

I think you're missing the point. A brain could encode "pleasure", and respond appropriately to that and other complex stimuli without there being anyone actually feeling that pleasure. But there is, and that's unexplained. That's not just a defect in our understanding of brains, it's something which we don't understand on the level of physics.

I thought I covered that. Subjective perception is a mental process. There’s nothing there besides an intricate bunch of signals and processing. The signal that says “you Exist” is just hardwired to look Extremely Important to us, so we put it on different category than “you need to pee”, for example. It’s up there with “Intense pain”, and we feel it all the time while we are awake. What I am saying is that we are all “zombies”. Or put it in another way, qualia is completely “simulable” thing.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#134

Post by thenext10years »

If I am God, I will be bored because I am all knowing, all powerful, all present. Is like playing a RPG game with all the cheat codes.

So I created a world that I will not remember who I am, when I reborn, I randomly spawn in a family. This way, I can play the game, without getting bored, forever and ever.

Deep down knowing that if the game eventually ends, I am still omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#135

Post by stoniejohnson »

spoonfeeder006 wrote: post #130
qudat wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is consciousness possible? Here's my naive answer with just a bachelors in neuroscience. There are some "business requirements" as far as I know. We need: - space and time - memory - inputs - decision making models - attention You need space and time because thinking is a verb. Action is required which needs the passage of time. You need memory in order to link past events with current ones. I'm not strictly talk…

What you are describing regarding inputs, brain activity on data stream, and how its just a recursive ETL function and such, is describing behavior and computation though You have some input that goes into the brain, and produces neural firings that trigger actuators to respond to that stimulus What I don't understand is why are we conscious beings instead of extremely complex bio-computation machines exhibiting memo…

Your basically describing the P-Zombie thought experiment posited by David Chalmers.

I always thought it was a bad argument. If you assume consciousness is not required for some of the advanced “bio-computation” that we do, then of course it’s going to be superfluous.

You know at the very least that you feel conscious. And it feels like you are actively participating, guiding your body and mind to do cool and nuanced things everyday. So you probably need to be conscious to do what you do, so the P-Zombie just isn’t possible.

There’s some real philosophy that Chalmers is doing around feasibility when it comes to the P-Zombie argument, though that goes past my head.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#136

Post by zone411 »

qudat wrote: post #121
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like Dennett's book "Consciousness Explained", the Aeon article falls into the category of explaining what we are conscious of , not how it is possible to be conscious of anything at all. It does not really tackle Chalmers "hard problem of consciousness", despite the subtitle.

How is consciousness possible? Here's my naive answer with just a bachelors in neuroscience. There are some "business requirements" as far as I know. We need: - space and time - memory - inputs - decision making models - attention You need space and time because thinking is a verb. Action is required which needs the passage of time. You need memory in order to link past events with current ones. I'm not strictly talk…

This doesn't really address the hard problem of consciousness. https://consc.net/papers/facing.html

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#137

Post by zone411 »

thenext10years wrote: post #134

If I am God, I will be bored because I am all knowing, all powerful, all present. Is like playing a RPG game with all the cheat codes. So I created a world that I will not remember who I am, when I reborn, I randomly spawn in a family. This way, I can play the game, without getting bored, forever and ever. Deep down knowing that if the game eventually ends, I am still omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent

I had the same idea. It might or might not have been under the influence of drugs but I have to say that it is interesting to explore. It's easy to explain to people who played video games.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#138

Post by avgcorrection »

zone411 wrote: post #137
thenext10years wrote: post #134

If I am God, I will be bored because I am all knowing, all powerful, all present. Is like playing a RPG game with all the cheat codes. So I created a world that I will not remember who I am, when I reborn, I randomly spawn in a family. This way, I can play the game, without getting bored, forever and ever. Deep down knowing that if the game eventually ends, I am still omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent

I had the same idea. It might or might not have been under the influence of drugs but I have to say that it is interesting to explore. It's easy to explain to people who played video games.

This idea is a very common alternative spirituality thing.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#139

Post by zone411 »

avgcorrection wrote: post #138
zone411 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same idea. It might or might not have been under the influence of drugs but I have to say that it is interesting to explore. It's easy to explain to people who played video games.

This idea is a very common alternative spirituality thing.

Is there a name for it?
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