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Consciousness: Where Are Words?

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Re: Consciousness: Where Are Words?

#11

Post by [deleted] »

empath75 wrote: post #8
vinceguidry wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same reaction, but you have to keep reading. He's building a stack. He's not saying that thoughts and mental images don't actually exist, it's that they don't exist before the game of language is played. And the game of language is turning sensations of physical objects into auditory representations of them. There's no reason to start constructing the abstract objects yet, we're not at that layer of the 'st…

I think it’s obvious that brains can operate without thoughts because animals and insects do it.

[deleted]

Re: Consciousness: Where Are Words?

#12

Post by jjaredsimpson »

EGreg wrote: post #5

How about this question: What is consciousness? What is existence? They seem to be duals of each other. I have found that, if you are careful to state the subject and object of a sentence, then it's really hard to pose any question that doesn't have a trivial and obvious answer. TRY IT! So could many of these things just be an artifact of language?

Consciousness is: what it is like to experience something. Note this is different from self consciousness which is: what is it like to be something which experiences and know you are that thing.

Humans are certainly self conscious. Crabs are certainly conscious. Crystals certainly exist.

Where the boundaries are is an interesting question, but the categories certainly exist even if I can't draw a clean boundary around members.

Re: Consciousness: Where Are Words?

#13

Post by babygoat »

empath75 wrote: post #3

I'm 3 sentences into the interview, and this seems absurd on its face. Does anyone take this seriously? "When we say we are thinking, what we are actually doing is rearranging causal relations with past events, objects that we have encountered before, to see what happens when we combine them. We don’t need a mental sofa to put next to a mental armchair. We allow the sofas and armchairs encountered in our past to exer…

Try starting from the beginning of the conversations. Coming in at the 14th part leaves out a lot of context.

I do take it seriously - it's utterly fascinating. I'm really excited to read Manzotti's new book.

Re: Consciousness: Where Are Words?

#14

Post by ozy »

Meaning and subjectivity come from (machine) learning, or relativity as Riccardo calls it.

I think, consciousness from how our brains learn, namely by having internalized the feedback. Which is another way of saying by modeling the world, and updating those models by constantly monitoring the effectiveness of those models.

We are self-observers, integrating our sensory information into a subjective first-person perspective.

Re: Consciousness: Where Are Words?

#15

Post by [deleted] »

empath75 wrote: post #3

I'm 3 sentences into the interview, and this seems absurd on its face. Does anyone take this seriously? "When we say we are thinking, what we are actually doing is rearranging causal relations with past events, objects that we have encountered before, to see what happens when we combine them. We don’t need a mental sofa to put next to a mental armchair. We allow the sofas and armchairs encountered in our past to exer…

[deleted]

Re: Consciousness: Where Are Words?

#16

Post by rytill »

EGreg wrote: post #5

How about this question: What is consciousness? What is existence? They seem to be duals of each other. I have found that, if you are careful to state the subject and object of a sentence, then it's really hard to pose any question that doesn't have a trivial and obvious answer. TRY IT! So could many of these things just be an artifact of language?

Could you give some examples of stating a subject and object and not being able to ask a non-trivial question?

Re: Consciousness: Where Are Words?

#17

Post by kleer001 »

empath75 wrote: post #8
vinceguidry wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same reaction, but you have to keep reading. He's building a stack. He's not saying that thoughts and mental images don't actually exist, it's that they don't exist before the game of language is played. And the game of language is turning sensations of physical objects into auditory representations of them. There's no reason to start constructing the abstract objects yet, we're not at that layer of the 'st…

I think it’s obvious that brains can operate without thoughts because animals and insects do it.

What makes you think other living beings besides humans don't have thoughts? IMHO we're just a slightly souped up version of everything else, exist along a continuity, and are not 'special' except in contrived and technical ways.

Re: Consciousness: Where Are Words?

#18

Post by chesimov »

pygy_ wrote: post #6
vinceguidry wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same reaction, but you have to keep reading. He's building a stack. He's not saying that thoughts and mental images don't actually exist, it's that they don't exist before the game of language is played. And the game of language is turning sensations of physical objects into auditory representations of them. There's no reason to start constructing the abstract objects yet, we're not at that layer of the 'st…

That reasoning completely falls on its face though. AFAIK, Stroke patients whose language areas have been destroyed are still able to perform complex tasks. You can think visually and procedurally (imagining actions) without putting things into words. IIRC Broca's area (which is responsible for grammar) may be related to the temporal planning of non-verbal actions though, so the above may be limited to Wernike's apha…

What do they mean by putting things into words? When thinking, it seems that the assumption is that we are silently putting our thoughts into words? This is by experience not the case anyway, right?

Re: Consciousness: Where Are Words?

#19

Post by EGreg »

jjaredsimpson wrote: post #12
EGreg wrote: post #5

How about this question: What is consciousness? What is existence? They seem to be duals of each other. I have found that, if you are careful to state the subject and object of a sentence, then it's really hard to pose any question that doesn't have a trivial and obvious answer. TRY IT! So could many of these things just be an artifact of language?

Consciousness is: what it is like to experience something. Note this is different from self consciousness which is: what is it like to be something which experiences and know you are that thing. Humans are certainly self conscious. Crabs are certainly conscious. Crystals certainly exist. Where the boundaries are is an interesting question, but the categories certainly exist even if I can't draw a clean boundary aroun…

Let's translate your sentences to illustrate what I mean.

What it is like? So you are comparing one entity experiencing something to another. Experiencing is a process that takes place inside the entity and among its component parts.

Know you are that thing - every thing is itself, if it has well defined boundaries. Knowing something is just having access to that information and good reasons to believe it to be correct. Here we have a tautology - that a thing is itself - so it doesn't require much to know that. What you are probably more interested in is a mechanism that can take advantge of that knowledge in various ways. Like self preservation.

Humans are self conscious.

Crabs are self conscious too because they act with a purpose of self preservation, which requires knowledge of what is them and what is not them.

Crystals do not have this knowledge or do not have a mechanism to act on it in a way that manipulates semantic symbols.

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