As Ramesh Balsekar once said "as long as you believe you have free will, then live your life as if it's true" (otherwise "no freewill" is just a belief and it's doing more harm then good)
What if consciousness is not what drives the human mind?
11–20 of 94 posts
Re: What if consciousness is not what drives the human mind?
#12Interesting! I am not a nueroscientist, but I think about this sort of thing a lot (a very self referencial activity!) One thing I've come to believe is in line with (what this article presents as) the paper's thesis, and that is the following: Consciousness is best described as a highest order observation process that is non-continuous. Somewhat like a serverless or virtual instance, it can pop in and out of use as…
What is the empirical reason to believe it's discrete rather than continuous?
Re: What if consciousness is not what drives the human mind?
#13In philosophy of mind this view is broadly construed as 'Epiphenomenalism'. The idea being that consciousness (any mental activity that shows up for us) is like the steam coming off of a locomotive, just a by product of underlying physical events. Our thoughts have no real impact on the underlying operation of the train (brain). Though this view is certainly odd, I've always struggled to see how it isn't true. How co…
Well, one reason to believe otherwise is the simple fact that we are talking about consciousness. If consciousness were just a by-product (like steam in your example) then there would be no physical drive to talk about it.
I don't see how talking about consciousness is necessarily a limitation to it being a by-product of physical processes.
It could be that consciousness is simply an emergent property (a by-product) of the communication of billions of neurons that are connected in trillions of ways. Where neurons are emergent of chemical phenomena which are emergent of atomic phenomena and so on.
I'm probably greatly simplifying the dependencies of phenomena, but I think that consciousness is most definitely based upon physical processes. The current evidence makes me believe that consciousness is a by-product of evolution, which is a by-product of the conditions on our planet.
So it goes.
Re: What if consciousness is not what drives the human mind?
#14In philosophy of mind this view is broadly construed as 'Epiphenomenalism'. The idea being that consciousness (any mental activity that shows up for us) is like the steam coming off of a locomotive, just a by product of underlying physical events. Our thoughts have no real impact on the underlying operation of the train (brain). Though this view is certainly odd, I've always struggled to see how it isn't true. How co…
But why would the brain be the only factor? What about the rest of your body, and the universe beyond?
Because with very few (important but specific) exceptions, reductionism works, and the explanations for physical behaviors are present locally. The only reasons I've ever heard to look outside the brain to figure out how it functions tend to be motivated by a hopeful dualism.
Re: What if consciousness is not what drives the human mind?
#15There's long been good evidence from various experiments that consciousness is merely the publicity office of the mind; as Robert Trivers said using other words decades ago; but it's always good to see more.
Re: What if consciousness is not what drives the human mind?
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, one reason to believe otherwise is the simple fact that we are talking about consciousness. If consciousness were just a by-product (like steam in your example) then there would be no physical drive to talk about it.
I don't see how talking about consciousness is necessarily a limitation to it being a by-product of physical processes. It could be that consciousness is simply an emergent property (a by-product) of the communication of billions of neurons that are connected in trillions of ways. Where neurons are emergent of chemical phenomena which are emergent of atomic phenomena and so on. I'm probably greatly simplifying the de…
I do agree, but to be fair, Epiphenomenalism makes a slightly stronger point. Not only is consciousness entirely a physical process, but the 'events' of consciousness (any thought, feeling, emotion, sensation you've ever experienced) has absolutely no impact on behavior. There is no feedback loop here. So, instead of
Touch hot flame -> Feel sensation of pain -> Move hand
It's...
Touch hot flame -> brain processes event and sends signals to move hand -> You experience all of this but it had no relevancy to the chain of events.
EDIT: This does beg the question 'why do we have consciousness, then?' or slightly related 'how could we talk about it?'. Which are interesting questions, and probably explained by darwinian processes, but don't really get at the heart of it. My thoughts anyhow.
Re: What if consciousness is not what drives the human mind?
#17In philosophy of mind this view is broadly construed as 'Epiphenomenalism'. The idea being that consciousness (any mental activity that shows up for us) is like the steam coming off of a locomotive, just a by product of underlying physical events. Our thoughts have no real impact on the underlying operation of the train (brain). Though this view is certainly odd, I've always struggled to see how it isn't true. How co…
Another common objection (just to mention), is the distinction between good and bad feelings, suffering and pleasure, etc...
If ephiphenonalism is true, those categorizations should be purely learned: otherwise it is hard to explain why (evolutionary) harmful things usually cause bad experience and suffering, while useful things usually cause pleasure.
For example: I could feel intense pain and suffering eating a cake, it would not count if my unconscious decision was to eat it. So either it is pure luck that I enjoy it, or I learned to enjoy a lot of (otherwise neutral) feelings.
Re: What if consciousness is not what drives the human mind?
#18In philosophy of mind this view is broadly construed as 'Epiphenomenalism'. The idea being that consciousness (any mental activity that shows up for us) is like the steam coming off of a locomotive, just a by product of underlying physical events. Our thoughts have no real impact on the underlying operation of the train (brain). Though this view is certainly odd, I've always struggled to see how it isn't true. How co…
Another common objection (just to mention), is the distinction between good and bad feelings, suffering and pleasure, etc... If ephiphenonalism is true, those categorizations should be purely learned: otherwise it is hard to explain why (evolutionary) harmful things usually cause bad experience and suffering, while useful things usually cause pleasure. For example: I could feel intense pain and suffering eating a cak…
Right, it certainly seems that feelings exist to motivate certain behaviors, if nothing else. Anybody who thinks about their own behaviors should readily confirm this.
Yeah, I just don't have a good answer for it other than to bite the bullet and say its just a crazy coincidence. The incentives of our unconscious brain are roughly aligned with what feels good. But it doesn't seem satisfactory to me either.
Re: What if consciousness is not what drives the human mind?
#19I had an interesting experience once when I regained consciousness after fainting.
My first memory of that experience was a cacophony of noises, specific images, and what I can only describe as colored static. Then, over what subjectively felt like 10 seconds, I realized at some stage that I was ‘awake’ and the various sounds and images sort of faded until I had one coherent thought and then started to get awareness of my surroundings and then finally opened my eyes.
It was a very unsettling, but also very interesting experience and sort of made me curious to investigate if this is what people experience with hallucinagens.
Another time when I had to make a trip to the ER they gave me nitrous oxide when they tried to reset a broken bone and I had very interesting aural hallucination where sounds became chopped up/echoey. When the gas stopped I asked the nurse how long it had been and she said about 5 minutes but it had felt like 30 mins.
Both of experiences left me fascinated how malleable our perceptions are :)
Re: What if consciousness is not what drives the human mind?
#20Reminds me somewhat of the Sankhya school of Indian philosophy, which was strongly dualist but (unlike Cartesian dualism) considered thought processes as part of material reality, and spirit as some sort of "consciousness capability" which worked mostly as an spectator. https://historyofphilosophy.net/samkhya
Right, with 'consciousness' reported behaving as 'sakshin' or 'witness' and the sense of 'I' (and subsequent not 'I') as a synthetic product of the nervous system called 'ahamkara' ('I' maker) supervening within the 'sakshin'. The Vedantin's goal was 'neti neti', or I'm not-that (empirical) and not-this (human-animal cognitive operating system engineered to interact with the empirical), recognition of which purportedly catalyzed a subsequent 'recollection' of a 'transcendent' cognitive operating system. If interested, see 'Advaita Vedanta - A Philosophical Reconstruction' (Deutsch) for a comprehensive overview of the subject.