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Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#181

Post by xelxebar »

voidhorse wrote: post #107
xelxebar wrote: post #15

This article, like most discussions on "consciousness" I encounter reads like little more than word games to me. We could similarly write articles about all the qualities and properties of phlogiston, and we'd have learned just as much. What thing are we actually trying to explain here? What is the extensive meaning of the word "consciousness"? How can I emperically determine if some object/animal/thing possesses con…

> How can I empirically determine if some object/animal/thing possesses consciousness? You can't, that's just the issue and that's what gives rise to behaviorism, solipsism, etc. etc. Sure, you could arbitrarily decided that some brain state Y recorded by instruments xzw in the field of neuroscience is a state of 'consciousness' but this is hardly a step up from heuristic methods we've used since the dawn of time, na…

> You can't, that's just the issue...

Do you judge me as a conscious being? If so, then you came to that conclusion by making some empirical observations.

What are those observations?

I'm not trying to explain consciousness here, I'm just trying to identify it.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#182

Post by eivarv »

colordrops wrote: post #154
eivarv wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to nitpick: Wouldn't this by definition make it non-objective? I would think the objective reality in your explanation would be what your sensory organs are reacting to, not what you perceive.

Yes I've thought of this but didn't want to complicate things. My current stance is that reality is dualistic and both subjective and objective are symbiotic and can't exist without the other.

Why do you believe this to be the case?

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#183

Post by sova »

eivarv wrote: post #182
colordrops wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I've thought of this but didn't want to complicate things. My current stance is that reality is dualistic and both subjective and objective are symbiotic and can't exist without the other.

Why do you believe this to be the case?

Just to add to the discussion: Subject would be Perceiver, and Object would be Perceived. Are they actually capable of being separated?

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#184

Post by monktastic1 »

mannykannot wrote: post #177
monktastic1 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "consciousness" is taken to refer to this "thing" I can be certain I have but cannot be certain you do, then it doesn't refer to any objective property that can be proven or explained, right?

Looking for proof in these matters is probably a fool's errand (though many seem to undertake it...) As for explanations, that doesn't seem to be out of the question up to some assumptions, as is usually the case with explanations. Anyone choosing to go down the rabbit-hole of solipsism is literally alone with his thoughts.

I agree. All I mean to say is that the reason it's hard to come to a consensus on what we mean by "consciousness" is that we're trying to unambiguously capture this first-person thing in third-person terms. This is bound to fail for effectively the same reason it's impossible to know (with certainty) that anyone other than myself is conscious. I can at best capture evidence for the objective properties about you that make me believe you're conscious.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#185

Post by eivarv »

sova wrote: post #183
eivarv wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you believe this to be the case?

Just to add to the discussion: Subject would be Perceiver, and Object would be Perceived. Are they actually capable of being separated?

Why should we assume that they are not?

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#186

Post by colordrops »

eivarv wrote: post #182
colordrops wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I've thought of this but didn't want to complicate things. My current stance is that reality is dualistic and both subjective and objective are symbiotic and can't exist without the other.

Why do you believe this to be the case?

It seems to me that there is no evidence for either the subjective or the objective realms being the "real" reality. There is a strong argument for either, and they can both be explored with depth.

The concept of "reality", of a physical universe, of a "you", of order and pattern, of an persistent objective reality outside of you, do not exist per se, but as simulation and models in your mind that you accrued throughout your life.

To be more specific, there is an underlying reality that is neither "objective" nor "subjective", but from which both of these realities emerge once a conscious being appears in it. We cannot directly know the true nature of this underlying reality, as it cannot be directly experienced. What we call objective reality is really the experience of the simulation in our mind synthesized from sensory data, as well as our model of this simulation (science), and not the underlying "true" reality.

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#188

Post by eivarv »

colordrops wrote: post #186
eivarv wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you believe this to be the case?

It seems to me that there is no evidence for either the subjective or the objective realms being the "real" reality. There is a strong argument for either, and they can both be explored with depth. The concept of "reality", of a physical universe, of a "you", of order and pattern, of an persistent objective reality outside of you, do not exist per se, but as simulation and models in your mind that you accrued through…

I'm not sure I follow.

From my understanding of the term, the "real" reality would be the same as the objective realm per definition;

What do you mean when you say "objective" as in "... the subjective or the objective realms"? Some sort of shared definition? If so, wouldn't this also be subjective to a certain degree?

I might just be post-hoc rationalizing my own interpretations here, but doesn't our subjective experiences of reality being based on our sensory organs' interpretation of stimuli from what is presumably the objective reality make fewer assumptions than a concept involving interconnected or "symbiotic" realities?

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#189

Post by sova »

eivarv wrote: post #185
sova wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add to the discussion: Subject would be Perceiver, and Object would be Perceived. Are they actually capable of being separated?

Why should we assume that they are not?

In an instantaneous-clip of all our sensory data (visual field, auditory sphere, tastes, smells, touches/bodily tactility), where do we draw the line between perceiver and perceived ?

Re: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

#190

Post by dontreact »

hasenj wrote: post #16
dontreact wrote: post #14

I lost the thread in the first two paragraphs. Can anyone explain to me why it's so obvious infants are conscious? THis seems to be taken as a given for the rest of the article. Couldn't they be in a state similar to sleepwalking which seems not conscious to me? Perhaps consciousness flashes on as you have your first few "flashbulb memories".

Consciousness does not have to mean being "mentally" (intellectually) aware of what's going on. It's about experiencing stuff, and having a _sensation_

I'm not even experiencing anything when I am sleep walking, and it seems plausible that infants are in a similar state. How do we know that infants are experiencing something?
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