Deconstructing our intuitions of consciousness
Disclaimer: Dont read this if youre sensitive to existential crises.
The previous thread I made, "what could solve the hard problem of consciousness?", aimed to clarify our intuitions about it, and Ill now reply to the intuitions people pointed out.
1) The hard problem of consciousness is specific to consciousness
Quoting wonderer1
Quoting bongo fury
Quoting Apustimelogist
First part of the problem: we can never produce knowledge that perfectly matches reality. This problem isn't specific to consciousness.
Quoting NotAristotle
In any knowledge that we create, we can always generate new "why" questions that we aren't able to answer, this isn't specific to consciousness.
Quoting Relativist
Quoting Philosophim
The second part of the problem, which seems specific to consciousness, is the notion of subjective experience: how a subject experiences the world, which leads to point 2).
2) Intuitively, consciousness is tied to the notion of individual:
But rationally, are they really tied together? Would the experience of consciousness be any different if we werent one soul, one individual?
Imagine that there are balls of energy that are able to travel from one brain to another. They would travel every time consciousness shuts down (for example during deep sleep or coma), and new ones would come back to light up consciousness again when we dream or wake up. When a ball reaches our brain, it accesses all of our previous memories and concepts, and therefore would make us feel like we are the same person, that we have been in this body and mind since it was born, but it would be an illusion since the balls of energy are constantly changing. The notion of individual itself is like a code written in our brain that the ball of energy reads, just like other notions like love, cat, time, table,
So theoretically, if this notion of individual, of one soul living a human life and then dying, was an illusion, it wouldnt change our experience, it wouldnt change consciousness.
Moreover, in altered states of consciousness, someone can have a conscious experience without having the concept of I am. I once woke up from fainting and the first images and sounds were so incoherent that I was not able to formulate a thought like I am experiencing this, only a few moments later when I truly woke up did I realize that I was back to me. I truly felt like I had disappeared and came back to life. But yet, during that in between phase, I lived a conscious experience without realizing that I was an individual. The concept of me came back afterwards, hence the feeling that I had disappeared.
So even though our intuition tells us that consciousness and the notion of individual come together, I think they are two very different things, and that you could very well have one without the other.
In other words, our conscious experience correlates with the notion of individual, since it is present almost all the time, but I dont see any proof of causality, since one can happen without the other.
So the problem is split into two: consciousness and the notion of individual.
A) Consciousness
Intuitively and by definition, the unconscious parts of our brain dont produce some sort of conscious experience.
But rationally, would it be any different for our conscious experience if other parts of our brain experienced something similar as well?
Imagine that any neural network gives rise to this conscious experience. The experiences would be very different from each other since the input they read in the brain would be drastically different (for example, the ones with visual inputs would have a visual experience only, and wouldnt have sounds or concepts like I am). It would be like several altered states of consciousness being triggered simultaneously in our brains. But if this were the case, why wouldnt we be aware of them? There could be one obvious reason: because none of the other conscious states told us that they are conscious (and most of them logically wouldnt have the notion of self and consciousness because its not necessary for treating visual signals for example). And it gets even weirder if you think about people with schizophrenia, who literally experience other parts of their brain talking to them as if they were individuals. Ive known someone with this disorder and the other voice in his head told him things that could simply be his own intuitions. The only difference was that he perceived the intuition as another individual giving him advice, while normal people perceive intuition as a gut feeling. In other words, other conscious neural networks could communicate with the neural network we experience in different forms, whether it is a gut feeling or a voice.
B) The notion of individual
Every time we think, "we" are, it's impossible to formulate a rational explanation of something without realizing we are "we", the notion of subject is there every time we explain something. Therefore, we can consider that this notion is a building block of our reasoning. And explaining what an individual is, is like explaining what a brick is made out of when all you have to do so are bricks that you can't break.
And I said in my previous thread, consciousness and the notion of subject aren't the only things that face this problem. Time, space, simple logic connectors like and cant be explained with a reasoning that doesnt use them as building blocks.
What do you think of this reasoning?
P.S.
Reply to Wayfarer
Even if this thread starts with the hard problem of consciousness, it goes in a completely different direction, I don't see any reasons to merge it :)
The previous thread I made, "what could solve the hard problem of consciousness?", aimed to clarify our intuitions about it, and Ill now reply to the intuitions people pointed out.
1) The hard problem of consciousness is specific to consciousness
Quoting wonderer1
On physicalism there is no reason to think that we could consciously grasp the full details of what occurs in our brains.
Quoting bongo fury
That just leaves unsolved those other, truly hard problems of philosophy that you allude to. Time and so on.
Quoting Apustimelogist
I think consciousness is a place where the natural limits of self-explanation really becoming prominent... the thing is, there is no reason we should be able to explain everything, especially the self (i.e. experience)
First part of the problem: we can never produce knowledge that perfectly matches reality. This problem isn't specific to consciousness.
Quoting NotAristotle
Even if, as you suggest, some waveform of energy is responsible for consciousness, a natural question arises: why does that energy produce consciousness, while some other energy does not produce consciousness?
In any knowledge that we create, we can always generate new "why" questions that we aren't able to answer, this isn't specific to consciousness.
Quoting Relativist
It just doesn't seem possible to account for certain aspects of consciousness through natural means Qualia are the most glaring. We can envision how to program things like belief, deduction, and intentionality - but not the actual experience of pain, sadness, pleasure, etc.
Quoting Philosophim
"What is it like to be a rock?" We understand the atomic make up and composition of the rock. But what it is it like to BE the rock AS the rock?
The second part of the problem, which seems specific to consciousness, is the notion of subjective experience: how a subject experiences the world, which leads to point 2).
2) Intuitively, consciousness is tied to the notion of individual:
But rationally, are they really tied together? Would the experience of consciousness be any different if we werent one soul, one individual?
Imagine that there are balls of energy that are able to travel from one brain to another. They would travel every time consciousness shuts down (for example during deep sleep or coma), and new ones would come back to light up consciousness again when we dream or wake up. When a ball reaches our brain, it accesses all of our previous memories and concepts, and therefore would make us feel like we are the same person, that we have been in this body and mind since it was born, but it would be an illusion since the balls of energy are constantly changing. The notion of individual itself is like a code written in our brain that the ball of energy reads, just like other notions like love, cat, time, table,
So theoretically, if this notion of individual, of one soul living a human life and then dying, was an illusion, it wouldnt change our experience, it wouldnt change consciousness.
Moreover, in altered states of consciousness, someone can have a conscious experience without having the concept of I am. I once woke up from fainting and the first images and sounds were so incoherent that I was not able to formulate a thought like I am experiencing this, only a few moments later when I truly woke up did I realize that I was back to me. I truly felt like I had disappeared and came back to life. But yet, during that in between phase, I lived a conscious experience without realizing that I was an individual. The concept of me came back afterwards, hence the feeling that I had disappeared.
So even though our intuition tells us that consciousness and the notion of individual come together, I think they are two very different things, and that you could very well have one without the other.
In other words, our conscious experience correlates with the notion of individual, since it is present almost all the time, but I dont see any proof of causality, since one can happen without the other.
So the problem is split into two: consciousness and the notion of individual.
A) Consciousness
Intuitively and by definition, the unconscious parts of our brain dont produce some sort of conscious experience.
But rationally, would it be any different for our conscious experience if other parts of our brain experienced something similar as well?
Imagine that any neural network gives rise to this conscious experience. The experiences would be very different from each other since the input they read in the brain would be drastically different (for example, the ones with visual inputs would have a visual experience only, and wouldnt have sounds or concepts like I am). It would be like several altered states of consciousness being triggered simultaneously in our brains. But if this were the case, why wouldnt we be aware of them? There could be one obvious reason: because none of the other conscious states told us that they are conscious (and most of them logically wouldnt have the notion of self and consciousness because its not necessary for treating visual signals for example). And it gets even weirder if you think about people with schizophrenia, who literally experience other parts of their brain talking to them as if they were individuals. Ive known someone with this disorder and the other voice in his head told him things that could simply be his own intuitions. The only difference was that he perceived the intuition as another individual giving him advice, while normal people perceive intuition as a gut feeling. In other words, other conscious neural networks could communicate with the neural network we experience in different forms, whether it is a gut feeling or a voice.
B) The notion of individual
I think therefore I am
Every time we think, "we" are, it's impossible to formulate a rational explanation of something without realizing we are "we", the notion of subject is there every time we explain something. Therefore, we can consider that this notion is a building block of our reasoning. And explaining what an individual is, is like explaining what a brick is made out of when all you have to do so are bricks that you can't break.
And I said in my previous thread, consciousness and the notion of subject aren't the only things that face this problem. Time, space, simple logic connectors like and cant be explained with a reasoning that doesnt use them as building blocks.
What do you think of this reasoning?
P.S.
Reply to Wayfarer
Even if this thread starts with the hard problem of consciousness, it goes in a completely different direction, I don't see any reasons to merge it :)
Comments (100)
Quoting Skalidris
As long as you think reality is something that has to be matched to knowledge youre screwed from the get-go. Assuming consciousness as an in-itself standing over against a world is the basis of the Hard Problem. You can blame it on our subject-predicate grammar.
Quoting Skalidris
[s]This is a mistranslation of "cogito, ergo sum". A more proper translation would be "thought, therefore existence" or "thought exist, therefore existence is proven". However, it never says that I/me/we are proven to exist, just that our thoughts must have an origin.[/s]
Incorrect
That is not accurate, neither is it gramatically correct in English.
Cogit? is the first person singular present indicative of the verb cogitare (to think), ergo means "therefore" or "thus", sum is the person singular present indicative of esse (to be).
The meditations were originally written in Latin and then Descartes translated it to his mother tongue French. In French it says "je pense, donc je suis" which translates to "I think therefore I am".
Quoting Skalidris
As Joshs pointed out, there's an inherent issue in framing it this way. But I will add that you're overlooking the cardinal point of modern science, which is the objectification and quantification of measurable abstractions. It concentrates on what can be described in mathematical and quantitative terms, beginning with the motions of objects and the effects of energy, and then generalises this approach to all manner of phenomena. There is no conceptual space for the role of the subject in that method - or at least there wasn't until the measurement problem in quantum physics forced scientists to reckon with it, hence the Tao of Physics in 1974 and the whole quantum-consciousness connection which has happened since.
Quoting Skalidris
The following section touches on an interesting topic but doesn't do much to advance it. Individuation is indeed a fundamental part of human being, but mystics have long pointed to states of consciousness beyond that of 'me and mine'. It is fundamental to Buddhist philosophy, for instance, where 'all things are devoid of self (anatta).' Jesus Christ said 'he who looses his own self (i.e. consciousness of his separate self) for My sake will be saved (i.e. realises higher consciousness).
Quoting Skalidris
That it's very jumbled. It's full of mixed metaphors and partially-grasped ideas.
Since David Chalmers wrote that original paper, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness in 1996, it launched an entire philosophical movement (and won Chalmers tenure and an international reputation as a celebrity philosopher, a rare breed). The whole Consciousness Studies movement came out of that paper, and they have bi-annual conferences associated with the here]University of Arizona in Tucson[/url]. There was the famous mock Sgt Pepper's Album Cover graphic featuring some of the attending luminaries back in the 20th anniversary edition of the Conference:
Conference poster art for 20 year anniversary conference Toward a Science of Consciousness 2014
Fair, I retract my statement.
Edit. It seems I got it all confused with this:
"One critique of the dictum, first suggested by Pierre Gassendi, is that it presupposes that there is an "I" which must be doing the thinking. According to this line of criticism, the most that Descartes was entitled to say was that "thinking is occurring", not that "I am thinking"!"
While there are a few areas of consciousness that are open to a philosophical lens, they must be done with the knowledge of what has already been discovered to have any bearing in reality.
Quoting Skalidris
I believe you are correct that they are not tied together. One can be conscious but not have any awareness of self as you mentioned. But often times the talk of consciousness has the fallacy of thinking it only applies to humans. If we are to look to animals, we can see other levels of consciousness without an indicator that they see a 'self'.
First there's "The mirror test". This is a test where animals, and even some human children as old as six cannot recognize that the image in the mirror is themselves. Now, I'm not saying that alone means that such subjects do not have a sense of "I". Its just a very visual example of creatures not recognizing 'Themselves". It could be because they have no notion of I, or it could be they simply lack the intellectual capacity to see the mirror as 'themself'.
Of course, there is an argument out there that animals are not truly conscious, only automatons. With the removal of biased hubris and a little thought, we can throw that notion out as ridiculous. You are familiar with the problem that we cannot objectively know what another person's subjective consciousness is like. And its true, we can't. Which means all of our judgements that other people are conscious are based on their behavior, and the fact that they're human. The lesson we can learn is that if something is confirmed to behave consciously, we cannot make an assessment as to whether they have a subjective, or non-subjective experience. Thus they could be conscious, but perhaps not have an "I".
When we get down to the point when a creature recognizes itself as a 'self' we find this much more difficult to determine through behavior. If a creature cannot communicate with us, how do we tell? It might fail the mirror test, but maybe it at some primitive level feels that it is, 'itself'. Considering we cannot know another creature's subjective experience by experiencing it ourselves, it seems extremely difficult for us to posit whether a being that behaves as a conscious entity has a sense of self without its explicit communication, or easily recognizable human behaviors.
Anyway, that's enough musing from me for now, hopefully it sparks some thoughts.
Quoting Skalidris
I think neither of these really reflect the problem of explaining phenomenal experiences. There is something very different about the way experience cannot be described or explained.
Too reliant on folk psychology and seemingly not informed enough by contemporary cognitive neuroscience. "Consciousness" is an empirical problem yet to be solved (i.e. testably explained) and not merely, or even principally, a speculative question ... unless by "consciousness" one means a 'supernatural' or non-empirical entity. :chin:
Quoting Joshs
That is not my opinion, all I said is that knowledge doesn't perfectly match reality... How did you go from that to "reality has to be matched to knowledge"? They're two completely different sentences...
Quoting Wayfarer
Saying this is ignoring philosophy of sciences. And even if we put philosophy aside, there is and there was a place for the subject in sciences long before quantum physics. This is why so many papers get criticized and rejected (and this process is part of the scientific method), we're only humans applying a method that we created, we're biased and make mistakes, and science takes that into account.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think you misunderstood, my opinion is that the notion of subject isn't tied to the notion of consciousness.
Quoting Wayfarer
What do you mean partially-grasped ideas? Who's ideas?
Quoting Apustimelogist
Indeed, they do not, this is why I said they aren't specific to the hard problem of consciousness.
Quoting 180 Proof
Okay, let me understand what you mean by empirical. Is anything "non-empirical" supernatural? What about love for example, is it empirical or supernatural?
And if by empirical you mean scientific, well this is a philosophy forum, not a scientific one. If science is the only field that is allowed to deal with the topic of consciousness, should it be banned from this forum?
Quoting Philosophim
Yes, I always thought the mirror test was really reductive, we are animals that rely heavily on visuals so this test makes sense to us but it doesn't make sense for a lot of other animals. Dogs can recognize their own smell but not themselves in a mirror.
No.
'Empirical' is also a philosophical term (e.g. Kant) so it's not synonymous with "scientific".
No. :roll:
I think my point on is that these aren't really part of the nature of the hard problem, fullstop. And my quote was never intended to directly refer to those things.
Consciousness is not causality.
Perception is causality.
Not at all, I am perfectly familiar with philosophy of science. See the following.
Quoting 180 Proof
Do you think that could be done from some perspective outside of consciousness?
An explanation comprises explanans and explanandum. The explanandum is what it is that is to be explained, and the explanans that which provides the explanation. So in the case of consciousness, as any act of explanation is a conscious act, how could the one capacity, i.e. consciousness, provide both the explanans and explanandum?
When we try to explain consciousness, it becomes the subject of our inquirythe explanandum. We're asking, "What is consciousness?" or "How does consciousness arise?" These are questions about the nature, origin, and mechanisms of consciousness. But any act of explanation, including the explanation of consciousness, is a conscious act. This means that consciousness is also a part of the explanans. When we articulate a theory or a model to explain consciousness, we are doing so using our conscious understanding, reasoning, and cognitive faculties. That immediately puts the question of the nature of consciousness in a different category to objective phenomena. We cannot step outside of our conscious experience to examine it in the same way we can step outside of a physical process or event. We are always 'within' our own consciousness, making it challenging to analyze it as an external, independent entity. It is like the hand, which is perfectly capable of grasping an object, trying to grasp itself. That is specific to this enquiry.
Yes, "thought is occurring now" is the valid inference. I agree with this interpretation.
I'm a p-naturalist¹ and thereby speculatively assume that aspects of nature are only explained within immanently to nature itself by using other aspects of nature, which includes "consciousness" as an attribute of at least one natural species. Atomic structures, genomic evoluntion and human brains, for instance, are each scientifically studied publicly, or "from outside any one conscious perspective", within the horizon limits of culture (e.g. ordinary / narrative & formal languages) that is, again, an attribute of at least one natural species. IMO, Wayfarer, whatever else (individual) "consciousness" may be, it seems to function as a lower-information phenomena always situated within higher-information systems of culture which likewise is always conditioned by the unbounded-information 'strange-looping, fractal-like' structure of nature that I compare analogously to 1-d lines imbedded on surfaces of 2-d planes imbedded in 3-d objects / an N-d manifold, etc.
¹Whatever else reality might consist in, nature is the only aspect of reality with which we natural beings, who are inseparable from encompassed by nature and therefore constrained by our natural capabilities, or attributes, can only finitely observe and thereby asymptotically explain nature itself. (re: Epicurus, Spinoza, Peirce-Dewey, Zapffe-Camus, D. Parfit, P. Foot et al)
What is an example of something non-empirical and natural? And by empirical I mean something that can be observed, not something that has been or is observed now I believe you share this definition.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree with this doubt. For me consciousness explaining itself is like a computer simulating itself not fully doable. And by consciousness I mean subjective experience, which even many physicalist philosophers admit to be an issue for their worldivew, I don't mean a biological or cognitive phenomenon.
(Some) Mathematical structures.
Abstract objects, true. I didn't think about that.
Maybe we can get closer to plausible answers to such enigmas. Folk wisdom has equated Mind with Energy for centuries, and that notion is often the basis of Magical thinking. However, there is now some scientific evidence to suggest that Consciousness is not a material substance, but an energetic process*1. Yet Energy itself is not made of Matter, but is a primordial-essential-causal form of existence that can transform into Matter (E=MC^2), and Mind. So, the Hard Problem of Consciousness may be related to the equally mysterious nature of Energy itself*1b.
In my Enformationism thesis, I equate both Energy & Mind with an even more general & fundamental process in the world : EnFormAction, which is merely a novel spelling of "Information"*2. We typically associate information (power to enform) with Knowledge, or computer Data, but it's also the causal agent of human culture that can put a man on the moon --- not by magic, but by collective communal Intention (mind power to imagine and to execute a plan of action). Unfortunately, the procedural steps by which Information produces Energy, which produces Consciousness, remains a "how" question for Science, and a "why" question for Philosophy. :nerd:
*1. Mind Energy :
a> Is the mind made up of energy?
Yes, there would be no conscious experience without the brain, but experience cannot be reduced to the brain's actions. The mind is energy, and it generates energy through thinking, feeling, and choosing. ___Caroline Leaf, Ph.D., Communication Pathologist and Neuroscientist
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/difference-between-mind-and-brain-neuroscientist
b> Consciousness as a Physical Process Caused by the Organization of Energy in the Brain
Recent neuroscientific evidence can be interpreted in a way that suggests consciousness is a product of the organization of energetic activity in the brain. The nature of energy itself, though, remains largely mysterious, and we do not fully understand how it contributes to brain function or consciousness
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02091/full
c> Consciousness as a Form of Energy
An electromagnetic field is a type of material reality, and so is consciousness. Alternatively, consciousness is one form of energy, along with kinetic energy or electrical energy. If this hypothesis is true, then consciousness is material after allthough not in the Cartesian sense.
https://academic.oup.com/book/1758/chapter-abstract/141408450?redirectedFrom=fulltext
*2. What is Information? :
[i]Linguistically and grammatically the word information is a noun but in actuality it is a process and hence is like a verb. . . .
What is the role of information in the propagation of life? What is the relationship of information to energy and entropy? What is the relationship of information to science?[/i]
___by Robert K Logan, physicist
That is an astute question : why does a particular physical waveform transform into metaphysical (meaningful) awareness? It's easy to imagine that Consciousness is a process caused by some form of Energy. But what specific form (or waveform) causes Awareness instead of Light or Heat or Motion or Gravity? I don't know the answer to that query, but it seems to be a good direction for scientific investigation. One clue to the puzzle of Personal Experience may be that both Consciousness and Energy are special forms of non-specific Generic Information (the power to change form ; to transform ; energy?). And in human experience, Information is also Meaning, Significance, Relevance to Self.
So, if we picture a waveform of Light (for instance), it may function like Morse Code (max-min instead of dot-dash). For a computer analogy, consider the maximum & minimum intensity to be equivalent to a digital code : On & Off, or light & dark, or Positive & Negative, or 1 & 0. With that metaphor in mind, we can imagine that a ray of light is transmitting a message of some kind. If so, then our visual sensing (receiving) apparatus can interpret the quantitative signal as the qualitative experience of Redness. This presumes that evolution equipped the brain with a table of numerical codes & their nominal/symbolic meanings. The physical-to-mental Interpreter is often imagined as a homunculus, but it might be simply a probabilistic computing*1 device with genetic memory*2 trained by eons of evolutionary events (experience?).
Having established Color as one kind of meaning to a Mind, we can carry the metaphor on to greater levels of information complexity, which the brain mechanism can compute-interpret as qualities of experience and properties of the material world. Hence, our senses are like the receiving end of a morse code transmission, and the mental images or impressions are the self-relevant interpretations of that abstract code. The translation may be merely a physical Phase Transition, whose meaning is Metaphysical knowledge. I'm just riffing on a philosophical theme here, and will leave the science to those more qualified. :nerd:
*1. Probabilistic Computing :
an emerging discipline integrating probabilistic programming and generative AI into the building blocks of software and hardware, and using computer science concepts to scale up computations involving uncertain knowledge.
https://medium.com/digital-architecture-lab/what-is-probabilistic-computing-and-how-does-it-work-1efea7d780c9
*2. Genetic memory :
In psychology, genetic memory is a theorized phenomenon in which certain kinds of memories could be inherited, being present at birth in the absence of any associated sensory experience, and that such memories could be incorporated into the genome over long spans of time. ___Wikipedia
LIGHT OSCILLATIONS MAX-MIN = ON-OFF = LIGHT-DARK = 100%-0%
LIGHT OSCILLATIONS AS CODE
MIND IS THE TRANSLATOR OF WAVEFORM CODES
Direct (naive) realism? Perhaps depending on how we use the words 'code' or 'translation' or 'transition'. In any case it is not the process of seeing that one sees but the objects that emit or reflect visible light.
No, informed realism*1. I was merely comparing the Hard Problem --- of how the experiential quality of Consciousness could "abruptly" emerge from the physical properties of Energy or Matter --- to a well-known, yet still mysterious, transformation in Physics.
The experience of seeing is indeed a process of translation of light energy into mental imagery. But scientists still can't explain that transformation in physical terms, because Conception is supervenient (metaphysical*2) upon the physics of sense Perception. Yet we can understand it philosophically by analogy to "mysterious" Phase Transitions*3 in physics. The before & after states are well known, but the intermediate steps remain obscure, despite centuries of attempts to construct an empirical explanation. :smile:
*1. Naïve realism :
In social psychology, naïve realism is the human tendency to believe that we see the world around us objectively, and that people who disagree with us must be uninformed, irrational, or biased.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology)
*2. Metaphysical :
Derived from the Greek meta ta physika ("after the things of nature"); referring to an idea, doctrine, or posited reality outside of human sense perception.
https://www.pbs.org/. . ./gengloss/metaph-body.html
Note --- The "posited reality" is what I call mental Ideality, not supernatural Spirituality.
*3. Mysterious Phase Transition :
Phase transitions, such as ice melting or turning graphite into diamond under intense pressure, are common phenomena. They are abrupt, qualitative changes in the properties of a substance and usually occur when a physical system approaches a specific critical temperature. Many physicists believe that phase transitions happened in the first moments after the Big Bang, when all matter in the universe was an extremely hot and dense plasma. . . . . The physics of these primordial phase transitions go beyond the Standard Model of elementary particles.
https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/footprints-of-phase-transitions-in-the-early-universe/
Granted that little is known of the brain's mechanics, but the seeming obscurity regarding experiential quality is perhaps not so empirical.
As soon as we assume that one never sees things directly but only one's own representation of things (interpreted by the brain etc), then we have a relation between representations and things, and it is primarily this mysterious relation and its supposedly unknown mechanics that has remained obscure for centuries.
One might suspect that its true explanation is not empirical but conceptual. Hence my previous reference to direct realism (the philosophy of perception, recall, not social psychology).
According to direct realism, there is no representation in the brain, because we sense things and their qualities directly. The process in the brain is what constitutes the sensing, and what is sensed are the things and their qualities.
When I see a colour, for instance, the process may evoke something that I can identify (reflexively) as the experiential quality of seeing that colour. So, I see the colour, which in turn has a physiological effect that I can identify as a quality in seeing that colour. Not unlike pinching my arm and feeling its effect. Depending on my sensitivity, previous exposure, habit and so on one and the same pinch can be experienced somewhat differently at different occasions.
How the nerve signals transform to my conscious experience might still be a great challenge for empirical sciences, but it seems less mysterious if we ditch the assumption that the experience is a representation, or model, or translation etc.
Sorry, my previous post was based on the definition of "Direct (naive) Realism" in Wikipedia. Apparently, your definition is more like "Indirect (representational) Realism"*1.
Actually, modern neuroscience has amassed a lot of data about the "brain's mechanics", but the gap between neural Mechanics and mental Experience remains enigmatic. So, perhaps you are correct that the solution to the puzzle is not Empirical, but Philosophical. In the last century, we have learned from Quantum science that the foundations of physical reality are not classically mechanical & certain, but statistical & uncertain : hence, Probabilistic. Since probability is somewhat chaotic, it can confuse logical thinking. Which is why Bayesian Statistics*2a was developed, in order to work around the unpredictablity of non-mechanical systems --- including social systems. Bayes' methods begin with predictive Concepts (beliefs) based on incomplete information, then adjust that subjective credence as more objective data becomes available.
The brain is basically an organic machine for making predictions from current evidence. Like a computer, It works with stored memories, and extrapolates past events into the future. But objective neurons have no Beliefs about those prophesies ; that's the function of the subjective Mind. And Beliefs are basically automatic probability assessments. Unlike a mechanical system, the belief system of the mind can be internally contradictory. Which is why a more deliberate & rational adjustment*2b was deemed necessary to upgrade subjective beliefs into more objective assessments of likelihood. That's also why Quantum theory is not directly objectively Empirical, and requires some statistical manipulations to get Closer to "Truth" --- to the "participatory realism" of rational/emotional humans. :smile:
*1. Indirect Realism :
In the philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, direct or naïve realism, as opposed to indirect or representational realism, are differing models that describe the nature of conscious experiences; out of the metaphysical question of whether the world we see around us is the real world itself or merely an internal perceptual copy of that world generated by our conscious experience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism
*2. Quantum Bayesianism :
[i]a> In QBism, all quantum states are representations of personal probabilities. This interpretation is distinguished by its use of a subjective Bayesian account of probabilities to understand the quantum mechanical Born rule as a normative addition to good decision-making. . . . .
b> For this reason, some philosophers of science have deemed QBism a form of anti-realism. The originators of the interpretation disagree with this characterization, proposing instead that the theory more properly aligns with a kind of realism they call "participatory realism", wherein reality consists of more than can be captured by any putative third-person account of it.[/i]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Bayesianism
On Participatory Realism :
Physics is about the impersonal laws of nature; the "I" never makes an appearance in it. Since the advent of quantum theory, however, there has always been a nagging pressure to insert a first-person perspective into the heart of physics. In incarnations of lesser or greater strength, one may consider the "Copenhagen" views of Bohr, Heisenberg, and Pauli,the observer-participator view of John Wheeler, the informational interpretation of Anton Zeilinger and Caslav Brukner, the relational interpretation of Carlo Rovelli, and, most radically, the QBism of N. David Mermin, Ruediger Schack, and the present author, as acceding to the pressure. These views have lately been termed "participatory realism" to emphasize that rather than relinquishing the idea of reality (as they are often accused of), they are saying that reality is more than any third-person perspective can capture. Thus, far from instances of instrumentalism or antirealism, these views of quantum theory should be regarded as attempts to make a deep statement about the nature of reality. This paper explicates the idea for the case of QBism. As well, it highlights the influence of John Wheeler's "law without law" on QBism's formulation.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.04360
Is that a fair reply or is there something about the question (or your answer) that I am missing?
Are you giving-up on philosophy? Are you no longer interested in "why" questions about Purpose? Will biological histories, speculating into cosmic eons past, satisfy your mild curiosity about impractical questions of "Life, the Universe and Everything"? If that is the case, my proposal for a scientific "how" answer, about mechanisms, may produce too much information for you. But, I don't claim to have THE answer, merely a path to a solution for age-old mysteries of living & thinking matter. Do you know of a settled physical answer to those questions?
This thread is about Mind questions, but Life questions are similar. Life & Mind are observed facts, still waiting for a How or Why explanation. The science of Biology has lots of hypothetical scenarios about how living creatures evolved from non-living matter, but no consensus answer to "how/why is a coyote alive, but rocks are not". Various Abiogenesis*1 theories about warm pools have been postulated, but life-in-a-vat experiments have never produced any living matter. Some modern biologists admit that spontaneous generation of life was disproven long ago by Pasteur. So, they propose stories about Exo-biology, wherein life on Earth was seeded by organisms on crashing comets. But the look-over-there ploy doesn't answer either of the Origin (genesis) questions. To date, there is no empirical evidence of Life emerging from non-life*2. So, instead of trying to answer such vexing questions, most biologists & psychologists today simply take Life & Mind for granted : "it is what it is". Is that what you are recommending? Do you think evading those questions is scientifically or philosophically productive?
This thread raises questions about the scientific history and philosophical status of Consciousness. Physics is focused primarily on Energy & Causation, not Life or Mind. Do you expect physicists to answer those questions "without postulating anything extra"? My Energy-based proposal above suggested an approach that might be able to show how it could conceivably be possible to derive Life & Mind from Energy --- if you take Energy as a given. The only "extra" is the concept of an integrated wholistic state, that is currently being studied under the heading of Systems & Complexity Theories. It also points toward a Why answer to the Purpose of Life & Mind in a mechanical-material world. But I won't get into that on this thread. :smile:
*1. Abiogenesis :
Charles Darwin once theorized that the origin of life known as abiogenesis could have happened as precursor compounds came together in "warm little ponds."
https://www.businessinsider.com/life-origin-abiogenesis-warm-pools-darwin-2017-10
*2. How close is science to achieving artificial abiogenesis in the lab?
Abiogenesis is not a theory. It is a fact that some theory must explain. There was a time when earth had no life, and then a time when there was life. That is a fact disputed by nobody: Something caused life to exist where it had not previously existed. The question that gets so much attention is whether that something must have been supernatural. Typically, abiogenesis is the preferred label for any explanation that does not presuppose supernatural causation. There are several under consideration, but none is sufficiently supported to have achieved consensus.
https://www.quora.com/How-close-is-science-to-achieving-artificial-abiogenesis-in-the-lab
Russel also raises a similar criticism.
And another poster here on TPF raises it here too, which I answer here.
Interesting read and I do not disagree, but I do have a nitpick. If I converse with you, I will differentiate between us by thinking in terms of "I" and "you". In your reasoning, I belive you describe an alternative where both "you" and "I" have the same source, same thinker (like a dreaming god with a split mind). If one would assume this, one would also have to move away from the definition of "you" and "I" that I used earlier.
The "I" has lost some meaning. That is why I still think that the "I" does not belong in "I think, therefore I am" even though I agree with your reasoning.
The word "I" has been bent to fit.
Or like this: When everything is I, nothing is.
I don't say it in those terms, but you could put it that way.
I have to go back to the text written in my language and go over it once again, there are some things missing and pieces not connected. Then I will be able to translate it properly to English. I will come back to this thread once that is done.
Ye, I twisted it in order to explain my problems with it. Sorry
Do you agree that you and I could both share the source of thought? A dreaming super consciousness?
I want to clarify my problem a bit: The meaning of the word "I" is broadened too much.
Scenario: Everything and everyone are all dreamt up by one dreamer. The dreamer is, in this case, "I". The dreamer is also the entirety of "existence". In this scenario you have broadened "I" so much that it equates the entirety of existence (I = existence). At that stage, there would be no point in the term "I" at all, as it is normally used to separate yourself from someone else.
Even though the logic is sound, the meaning of the word "I" is stretched too far in such a scenario.
The information is basic. Metaphorically. Because what is transformed is the physical into the mental, no? Or is it the physical into the physical? Energy, mind what do they have in common? Nothing, and thats the point one must transform into the other by means of a unity that is the(i)re.. informational content. Information is meaning, but it is also wave functions. A graph of reality?
Transformation implies what? that what is transformed becomes what it is not. If I am seeing red, and this is a transformation of an informational content (as I am calling it), then either I am not seeing red or red is not red. Phenomena, nouema, whats the real red, what I see or what is there, a quantative signal -- A mathematical entity?
We interpret the Information. Whose interpretation? The brains I guess. Mine or yours? Too many questions. Excuse me, am I interpreting this correctly? No, although your brain is. Okay, great. Can meaning be physical? I would think it would have to in some sense if it is in this universe. Im a doctor, not a linguist Jim!
There are two senses of a why question. There is the why in the sense of more of a where where did this come from, why is it here. Then there is the purpose sense: why am I doing such and such, for the sake of what. How is a different question, but if youve got answers then Im all ears, metaphorically speaking.
In conclusion, Im not a fan of abiogenesis because I dont see how something that lacks a kind of self-motion can acquire it. And I agree, panspermia has never been much of an answer.
Yes. My Enformationism thesis posits that Information/EnFormAction (EFA -- power to transform) is fundamental ; hence is the precursor of Energy, Matter, and Mind. The thesis is an expansion of physicist John A. Wheeler's visionary & controversial concept of "It from Bit" : material things evolve from elementary information. Since he made that connection, scientists have been finding evidence to expand on Einstein's equation of Energy & Mass to include a role for Information*1. My thesis is merely an amateur conjecture, intended only for the purpose of forum discussions about Physics & Metaphysics. I rely on professional scientists to vett the speculations.
We already accept that Energy can transform into Mass (E=MC^2), which is the mathematical measure of Matter. Scientists have also been stumped by the causal gap between initial & final forms of Physical Phase Transitions*2 (e.g. water to ice). So this thesis postulates that physical & biological Evolution is a series of transformations from the First Cause to EFA to Energy to Matter to Mind to Self-Consciousness. "What is transformed" in each instance is Potential into Actual. Hence, all physical & mental forms in the world can be traced back to a single unitary monistic First Cause (???). Some call that Prime Mover "G*D", but in view of the information function, I call it "The Programmer". Below, I have pasted my own Graphs of Reality*3*4. :smile:
*1. A proposed experimental test for the mass-energy-information equivalence principle
[i]A recent conjecture, called the mass-energy-information equivalence principle, proposed that information is equivalent to mass and energy and exists as a separate state of matter. . . .
The implications of this experimental confirmation are huge, as this would affect all branches of physics, expanding our understanding of the universe, without contradicting or violating any of the existing laws of physics, said Vopson[/i]. ___American Institute of Physics
https://pubs.aip.org/aip/sci/article/2022/9/091111/2849001/A-proposed-experimental-test-for-the-mass-energy
*2. PHASE TRANSITION MYSTERY
*3. GRAPH OF EVOLUTION AS POTENTIAL TO ACTUAL
*4. GRAPH OF INFORMATION EVOLUTION
Right, an informational basis of the universe would seem to hint towards a mind of sorts.
For me, subjective experience is undeniable the intuition passed by "I am here" or "I exist" is a brute fact ; we have to start with that phenomenological fact, which is the "I think". But it could be "I feel", "I seethe", "I see". "I think" is used because it is from there that we can fall into a circular argument that cannot be denied 'I doubt that I doubt'. It is the analysis of that argument, put in words, metaphors of thought, that starts the issues of rationality, while the subjective experience itself is undeniable.
I don't think the brute fact intuition "has a source" because ascribing cause or consequence to it would be rationalising it.
The thing about something thinking me is under the idea of identifying "I" with the thought "I think" that shows up in "I think therefore I am". Like thoughts are attributes of a mind (substance), and attributes are how we perceive substances, it is not problematic to make that identity. If I am a thought however, something must have thought me. That thing is either the outside structure or another thought that caused this thought. The possibility of being thought by another being (or by another thought) would have to imply that thoughts can exist and continue by themselves as a substance outside of a mind which is what the "there are thoughts" people defend unavoidably.
Quoting mentos987
The "I" equates the entirety of existence because we are starting with solipsism, so "I" has not been broadened, "existence" has been constricted to "I".
Quoting mentos987
The "I" is used exactly to name the thing that has a subject experience.
There is no space before a semi-colon or a comma.
Let me see what else I can conjure up.
Scenario 2: You and I are conversing. I say that I think and therefore am. The problem is that I am a figment of your imagination. I am only a small part of you. Would it not, in that case, work just as well to say, "I am, therefore you are". Since I am just a small part of you. If "you" and "I" can be mixed into the same being, does that not dilute the meaning of "I"?
Would such a scenario really mean that I exist, if I am just a lesser part of your mind? Would it not be better to say that, my thinking must have a source?
Something thinks, therefore thought must exist, therefore existence is proven?
Quoting Lionino
With this in mind, it adds up. However, normally when a person would use the word "I" it entails a lot more than just "something that is subjectively experiencing thought".
Replacing "I" with "the thing" would work.
I agree. But, I am agnostic about any divine characteristics beyond the otherwise unexplained chain of causation in evolution, and the mysterious emergence of immaterial noumenal phemomena (Mind & Consciousness) in an otherwise physical universe. Without a direct introduction, the First Cause may forever remain a philosophical enigma. But without such mysteries, what would we have to [s]chat[/s] argue about on this forum? :smile:
Sorry! Does that extra white space bother you? It's a personal quirk of mine ; to make the transitional conjunction mark stand-out. Another eccentricity is the use of smilies as a message-concluding bullet-period. The smile or frown is an implicit part of the message. Are you OK with that? :smile: :wink:
In that case it is just words inside my head. Just because my head is hallucinating someone saying "tree" it does not mean I am experiencing the concept of a tree. If I am in fact conceptualising "I think thus you are", the sentence is meaningless if there is nothing to which "you" refers, and there isn't when we start with solipsism.
Quoting mentos987
Does it though? I would say that that is pretty much the definition of "I".
I'd say a more common definition of "I" refers to the body, mind and potentially the soul of someone, not to the source of their thinking.
Again, I apologize for not following protocol. I have no formal training in Philosophy, so I'm making-up my formatting as seems best to present my informal science-based arguments. My website would jog your noggin. Please feel free to pass-over any of my posts that might "bother" your sensibilities. :smile:
You can check out the thread on Physicalism as well, we all went deep into emergence of consciousness if you need more input on that angle. I firmly stand by physical emergentism in terms of defining consciousness, but I think the question in this thread focuses more on qualia than consciousness.
Leaving the formation of consciousness aside (I've written enough on the subject in the other thread), the question of qualia and our subjective experience as a consciousness is another discussion that fits this thread better.
Fromt the emergence perspective, consciousness is the resulting abstract system that forms out of a combination of systems. Each subsystem handles specific responsibilities, like the visual cortex and so on. Each system in itself does not form any understanding for the individual since there's no context that its "data" is set in relation to. Only when each part forms connections to the others do we form context and consciousness emerges. But these systems aren't bound to a specific location in the brain, recent research has shown it to be more of a bell curve response in a particular part of the brain, so each system stretches out far into a blend of the others, which might explain why people with brain damage in a region that should remove a certain conscious capacity sometimes only suffer minor changes and that the brain through neuroplasticity manage to salvage functions as there are enough neurons to rebuild connections, although at a lesser capacity due to loss of physical space in the cranium.
When all systems work together we form a contextual complexity and it blends together all sense data into a coherent experience. Add to that how our memories form and are always a relationary source of context for all actions and emotions we have. We always act with a memory context guiding us. That also applies to memory of emotions forming instinctual behaviors.
But the main part I'm looking into has to do with the moment to moment function of our consciousness. Why do we act, think and do what we do?
As I wrote in the other thread, consciousness needs to be viewed in relation to evolutionary need. Why did we evolve this trait? What were the evolutionary reason?
Here's a sort of line of events that might be a reason...
If we imagine a pre-homosapiens or rather pre-self-aware-conscious ape trying to survive as a group.
The most effective trait that an animal can develop through evolution is adaptability. The ability to regulate body heat, blend in, fool your pray and fool those who hunt you. If our ancestors developed the evolutionary trait of adaptability through predictions of their surroundings, they were able to predict being attacked, predict how to attack, predict if they were in danger, predict if they needed to move to another location and so on. Prediction seems to be one of the core features of our consciousness.
Prediction exists throughout nature in many forms. The most direct example is Pavlov's dog. We can program behavior through programming an animal's sense of predicting something. An octopus predicts danger and hides in its camouflage. A herd hears a disturbance and everyone moves in accordance. The more advanced an animal can predict their surroundings, the better they survive.
So what happens if an animal gains a highly advanced predictive function? The ability to not only act out of instincts that were programmed by trial and error through evolution in order to adapt to events, but also form basic understanding of causal events into the future and from the past. Instead of instincts, this animal were capable of conceptualize instincts, predict that if they turn that corner there will be a lion waiting, therefore stay put. So they survived.
Extending from that, they could also predict where to get food. Instead of just predicting danger, this trait helped predicting where herds gathered, like seeing a pond of water and predicting that the herd will gather and drink from it. So we wait for the food to come.
And so we developed rudimentary language because if you say the word for "stay here", both are able to predict what that leads to. One stays, the other push the herd towards the one who stays.
But the group also need to grow, sexuality is a driving force that is core to evolution. And emotions relating to that, the chemistry cannot be handled well. So the predictive skills becomes of use within the group as well. Can you lure the one who threaten your position in the group, into a place where you can kill them and be the alpha or the center of attention?
Language evolves to more complex systems, because it's not just your relation to nature that requires predictions, it's the group dynamic as well.
And so the history goes, step by step forming a system that's built on the function of predictions.
When looking at a modern human and its psychology. Is there any action, behavior or thought that isn't rooted in predictive behavior? We have our core emotions, our instincts and uncontrollable drives. But every reason to act seem to come from us trying to predict an outcome and adjust. Increasing the complexity of such a system extends to so much in culture, so much is about moment to moment predictions in relation to emotions, in relation to harm and wellbeing. Our mind produce predictive models for what will happen if we do something, all the time. It uses memories to find sources of context in order to predict an event better and so on.
And in order to predict others in the group, the individual need to have the function to predict another human being's behavior and that individual's own predictions. In order to do so the only source of data is themselves. So in order to predict others the individual self-reflect about their own nature, their own behavior. The mirror in which we see ourselves is used to form understanding of others, empathy is born and we can predict another's behavior.
This stream of perception data, filters through our highly advanced prediction calculations in order to form behaviors and actions in a way that navigates our surroundings in the best possible way for our survival. And the increasing complexity of culture that evolved due to this increasing system of predictions only feedbacked into growing more evolutionary needs for prediction skills. The ones who were able to predict reality the best, survived.
In essence, we believe that we have agency, but we act only in accordance to prediction of our future in order to survive. Which also means that we became aware of death. Not through pain as many other animals do, but conceptually we can predict nonexistence, which formed a feedback loop of emotions in which we predict our death, but that should be avoided, and yet it can't be avoided and the paradox spawned all sorts of strategies based on the prediction of death. How can we avoid it, if not what happens then? And the emotions surrounding death spawns its own complex and growing strategy to handle that paradox.
Wherever we look we can find reasons why prediction spawned behavior and internal thought. This illusion of our subjective experience may only be emotional responses to our surroundings based on our sensory data that produces predictive behaviors trying to handle survival.
Why do I sit here and write this? What drives me to do it? Not what I think is driving me, but what is actually pulling my strings doing this? My emotions surrounding the act of writing all of this. Is my emotions driving me to find survival in a group here? Predicting that if I write something good it will generate connection to the tribe, to the group and put me in a better place for survival? Is it an act against death? Is it about survival?
I think we conceptualize too much around our experience of consciousness, I think there's a very basic reason why our consciousness acts in the way it does and why we experience things as we do, but this basic reason has evolved into such a complex form that we've basically become lost in that complexity and produced this illusion that is our qualia, our inner experience of life.
We are highly advanced prediction machines, driven by emotions that guide our survival. Those are the strings we don't see and which gives us the illusion of complex experience.
I don't think we are as advanced as we think we are, in terms of how we function. The consequences of our consciousness onto the universe is very complex as a result, but we are not that complex in how we function. And our subjective experience may only be an illusion formed out of a basic system that had the ability to take many forms, and has done so and evolved into extreme complexity. But we attribute ourselves more complexity than I think is actually in our heads.
Our experience and ability to self-reflect is something that we evolved into, and so the answer to it lies in why we evolved into it.
Are your notions here based on work by Daniel Dennett or Thomas Metzinger?
:cool:
Actually, no, they're ideas I've developed on my own out of trying to conceptualize the evolutionary reason for consciousness and how we ended up with self-awareness as it seems to be too evolutionary intentional to just be an accidental trait.
But it's not uncommon that people arrive at similar conclusion independent of one another. I will check out their concepts, thanks for the tip :up:
And, if consciousness really is an illusion, why the illusion? Wouldn't we be better equipped evolutionarily speaking to see the truth; reality as it really is.
Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, while failing to provide a persuasive argument against naturalism, can provide some insight into the fact that given evolution and naturalism we have good reason to question the reliability of our cognitive faculties.
Lucky for us, questioning the reliability of our cognitive faculties has the potential to greatly increase their reliability. Or as a Nobel Prize winning physicist put it, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."
Plantinga does believe that we can believe that our cognitive faculties are reliable, because God created them to be so. However it would be a recipe for self-delusion to accept the circular argument that one is justified in believing in God, because otherwise one would have to accept that one's cognitive faculties are unreliable to some degree. The EAAN is a poor rationalization for believing in God, rather than a good argument against naturalism.
But how would that "truthful image" even be distinguishable from one that involves the so-called illusion?
Here, the body is discarded, as we do not know whether our perception of our body reflects reality or not. Mind and soul are considered to be synonymous with the source of thinking.
I think that this is a false proposition. The subject has operative control over the entire space which constitutes the body, and the consciousness assumes responsibility for the actions of that body. If one consciousness assumed many different bodies as a single unity, it would have to assume responsibility for the activities within the entire space between these bodies, as if this was all part of one body.
What is important here is the unity of the body which is the subject, and the fact that the consciousness can only exercise control over, and responsibility for, the activities within the space occupied by the body because of the strength of this unity. The "balls of energy" thought experiment of the op fails fundamentally, from the outset, because it suffers from the relativity of simultaneity which makes distinct subjects into distinct frames of reference, thereby lacking the unity required for consciousness to pervade. In other words, anytime a "ball of energy", supposedly a consciousness, passed from one subject to another, it would find itself completely disoriented, being in a completely different frame of reference, sort of like if you went to sleep in Tokyo and woke up in London, except much more extreme. The discontinuity would be much more severe because there would be nothing apparent to the senses to connect the two, and no one able to provide the story. Even the intellect itself would be completely lost, having applied no transformation formula to change from one frame of reference to another to recognize the new frame of reference. And if such a formula was applied, then this would indicate that the one individual consciousness is changing location, not encompassing the whole space.
Furthermore, all the space in between the distinct bodily subjects would still be apprehended as external to the subjects, being perceive through the senses. However, the consciousness, as one consciousness for many subjects, would have to apprehend this space as internal space. This would produce all sorts of irreconcilable confusion for the consciousness because it would not be able to distinguish forces of change coming from the inside, from forces coming from the outside, leaving it incapable of intentional activity.
Fair, but that still seems to me like you bend the word "I" to fit. The source of our thinking could be wildly different from what most of us think is ourselves ("I"). The thought could be as fabricated as anything else about our reality could. We only know that thought must originate from something. Claiming that this "something" is "I" seems like a stretch, and maybe wishful thinking.
I do not think that the "I" is proven to exist; only that existence itself is proven true.
And I do not think that the general population defines "I" like you do, thus leaving room for misunderstanding.
I agree with the logic, but I think the communication is poor. When you share a thought, you want to form words in such a manner as to elicit the same thought in someone elses mind. I do not think this is happening correctly with "I think, therefore I am".
Which is in line with a highly complex web of prediction actions. What happens when a prediction system starts to predict possible outcomes of actions that are themselves formed by a prediction "algorithm", in this case our emotions? It start to form a value-system in which it balances these predictions towards the best outcome. When culture and civilisation evolved it was advantageous for our survival to adapt to its structure and so we felt emotions that were there to predict outcomes, but those outcomes often led to negative consequences that in nature worked, but in culture and civilisation didn't. And so our new layer of predictions analyzed our own emotional behavior and started to mitigate them when needed. We all act according to what we predict will happen. We all act with very basic needs and how we navigate towards getting those needs is through a range of actions based on highly complex web of predictions that form a plan of action and strategy. But because all of this becomes so extremely complex with maybe thousands of predictions that occur all the time, we don't experience it as such, but instead we experience some emergent phenomena of "being", an illusion that forms out of these basic adaptive functions.
Through this, it looks like we are simple and we are, but the emergent effect out of this simplicity forms a complexity that is highly unique in nature.
Quoting NotAristotle
But that does not have an evolutionary function. Evolution acts on previous abilities and their limitations. We have no reason to "see reality as it is", and in this sense I think you mean to be free from the emotional driving forces and be able to always act without biases to any needs. But wherein lies the reason to evolve like that? We evolved in nature in relation to the environment and our survival, the reason to have the consciousness we have functions out from that existence and not what we could argue would be a detached and more effective overview on reality, far away from any natural animal instincts and forces limiting us.
I think we often forget where we came from, attributing a lot of fantasy onto ourselves because we believe ourselves to be "more than nature". But we aren't. We are just part of any evolutionary tree as any other species and our evolutionary trait of self-reflecting consciousness is a function just as birds ability to fly along the magnetospheric lines of the earth is a remarkable evolutionary trait; or the electric eels able to generate up to 600 volts without hurting themselves. We look at these traits as fascinating and wonder how they developed, but then we look at consciousness and start to produce magical fantasies that promote our own sense of ego.
Since we are animals who act for survival just like everything else in nature, it is understandable that we inflate our own ego in face of nature. To attribute our own consciousness with a magical aura and position it as something greater than nature, we effectively form a survival mentality in which we've taken control over nature by reasoning ourselves into masters of it.
It may be the reason why people who barely survived in nature, astronauts who gazed upon earth from the moon and people who faced death due to their own stupidity; all start to reevaluate their position in nature's hierarchy. Yes, maybe we are at the top, but we are not magically special, we are still part of it all, we come from it, evolved from it and are bound to the reasons why we became who we are.
That is not necessarily what I mean when I speak of "seeing reality as it is." As I am presently using it, I mean seeing reality in contradistinction to the way reality is seen through the lens of an apparent illusion of consciousness.
Still, it seems to me that any sort of illusion of reality would be weeded out by evolution in favor of a more honest interface, seems to me like that would have an evolutionary advantage.
I'm not sure I understand the question; I guess I take it as given that an illusion is necessarily differentiable from non-illusion .
The illusion is what I described here:
Quoting Christoffer
The illusion is our experience of ourselves to be more advanced than what we really are. We don't see the strings that pulls our behavior, wants, needs, thoughts and actions, we only experience the sum of those strings and it makes us feel like we are in control and have agency. Individuality formed out of this complex web through the formation of self-reflection out of the need to predict other individuals within a tribe, group or against another rival group.
Quoting NotAristotle
Seen as much of the mental disorders in our modern life comes from the fact that our psychology still functions similar to that of the psychology of hunter-gatherer groups over 50 000 years ago, we haven't evolved much further. Evolution takes timea lot of time. If we think that the past 100 000 years changed us much, the fact is that it didn't. It may be that the only evolutionary progress we've made is the one I mentioned with better self-control over our emotions as civilisation grew larger, but most modern civilisations didn't begin before 12 000 years ago and that's not really enough time for major evolutionary changes.
It may be that our modern life, like this, using technology, will eventually evolve us into other forms of consciousness, but that will take so long that the risk might be greater that we destroy ourselves before then. Evolution requires a very long time over many generations and under specific conditions in order to form and it's not step by step, but gradually. We might have changes in our consciousness today compared to 5000-10 000 years ago, but those would be miniscule.
But in terms of the weeding out the "illusion", there isn't a replacement for it in evolutionary terms since it's an emergent result out of the underlying functions and it's the functions themselves that are our actual mechanics of consciousness, it's them that would need to change in order to transform the illusion into something else, but so far, where's the need to do so? We don't have a form of living that impose a need for anything other than our predictive and adaptive function and so there's nothing pushing on evolution to change us.
You need to view this from the perspective of evolution and how it progress, not from the perspective of what would seem a logical "better" step towards a superior system of consciousness, that's not how evolution works.
I agree, but how would you differentiate them in this case? What specifically did evolution do to trick you into believing you are conscious?
Indeed I do. I am mostly replying to the arguments that state only "thoughts exist". By equating the thought "I think therefore I am" with "I", I am showing them that if thoughts exist, something else exists too besides just that thought. It is as fair to equate that something else with my personal identity as it is to equate my body with my personal identity.
Quoting mentos987
Well I did use Google translate on an already confusing text. I will rework it eventually.
Quoting mentos987
I don't think the general population even thinks at all, especially in the English speaking world.
Well, if you ever want to communicate with the general population it would be easier to use words as they define them rather than having to preface your statements with your own definition of words.
Quoting Christoffer
Quoting Christoffer
The strings are our emotions - the predictive system; you're saying that's what controls our actions.
But then I'm confused when you say: Quoting Christoffer The predictive system can study itself?
Why not?
I'd put it as... Our cognitive faculties can recognize and logically consider our emotional reactions. No, I wouldn't say our emotions can analyze our emotions, but I don't know what it would mean for emotions to analyze something.
I know, but it seems that from your perspective denial of the reality of consciousness leads to illusionism. Did I at least get that right?
First of all, thank you for reading and actually replying to my thread, unlike most of the replies here.
Replying to your comment, the "ball of energy" would not be disoriented because it would only carry the energy to "light up" some neural network, to give rise to this "conscious experience". It wouldn't carry the content of the thoughts. It could be like electricity: if you change the charger of your computer, or the battery, the data and programs in the computer stay the same.
If you imagine that "you" are the ball of energy, like a battery, like the electrons travelling throughout the electronics of the computer. If you are taken to a unit that says "You are individual and have been living in his body since 50 years", you can't "think" anything else because these units define your trajectory. And if the battery is taken to another computer, it won't "notice" anything.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If we didn't have the notion of individual, this would indeed happen. But if the notion of individual is simply a structure that the ball of energy "reads", this wouldn't happen.
But this is just a thought experiment to challenge this notion of "individual" and show that it could be separated from consciousness. It's to emphasize that this sense of individual could just be a concept in our brain, just like time, numbers,... From the point of view of the thought experiment, there's no reason to think that whenever there's a flow of electron through a circuit, there must be a specific electronic circuit coding for the concept of individual. For living beings, it makes a lot of sense to have this notion and it's hard to imagine that a living being would function without it, but that doesn't make it part of the flow of energy, it doesn't make it necessary for the "conscious experience", they're independent.
Quoting Christoffer
However this is not a generic thread about qualia and our subjective experience as a consciousness, this is, as the title suggests, a thread about challenging our intuitions of consciousness. How is anything that you wrote a reply to my thread? It seems like you are just expressing your opinion about consciousness.
Well I don't see the point then. Consciousness is defined by the thinking activity of the being. If each person continues to have one's own individual thoughts, then you do not avoid the individual nature of consciousness in this way. Having a different ball of energy which charges up the consciousness everyday, does not take away from the individuality of the consciousness. In fact, that is what is the case already, we eat different food every day, constituting a different ball of energy to charge up the consciousness.
Quoting Skalidris
It's not just the notion of individual which matters here, but the fact that each person has distinct and unique thoughts. Having distinct and unique thoughts is what produces the idea of individuality. The supposed "I" which reads these thoughts is already the same for everyone. "I am a human being". When we separated the I from the thoughts, it's called abstraction, and we come up with something general rather than the particular. But that's not how we conceive of an individual, as having a a separate "I", the "I" being something general. The "I" is the complete package of the individual. So you propose a separation of the "I", but it's unrealistic.
Quoting Skalidris
What's the point then? You propose a thought experiment to show that we could conceive of things as being otherwise, but the otherwise which you propose is unrealistic. Sure, the notion of "individual" is just a concept in one's brain, but we want the true concept, not a fictitious one. To propose a fictitious one is to say that things could be otherwise, but since the notion of individual is the true concept what purpose does the fictitious one serve?
It's more complex than that. What we feel as emotions are the strings of intuition and instincts. Emotions are part of evolution training us. Pain over the course of many generations of mutations can produce a behavior or physical restructure to mitigate it. The same goes for pleasure.
But the "strings" in our psychology have become more than just emotions. The construct of meaning could be linked to the pleasure of fulfillment, a grand form of it pushing us towards such reasoning. However, we form ideas about meaning that transcend mere emotional realms but they're still driven by predictive drives. The idea of forming something that generates meaning for grandchildren who would never even think about you can be a sense of prediction for projected survivability. That it's not just direct emotional self-programming that guides us, but that the predictions of navigating reality has become so temporally complex that it forms a higher complex awareness in which our sense of self and individuality is entangled in this web of strings pulling within us. It's such a complex web of different drives that it produces an illusion of ourselves being in control and have agency, but that its essentially a malleable highly advanced prediction machine that's constantly trying to make split-second adjustments to its predictions about everything.
If you were to ask yourself "why?" on every action you make, every minute detail of your behavior, and if the answer is vague continue with another "why?", where does it lead you? Doing so honestly rarely leads anywhere but down into extremely simple forms of basic necessities, emotional or as a plan of action, large or small. Even if the action, behavior or thought seemed complex and cognitively advanced, the reasons are usually simple. The complexity of this system hides the cogs of it so that we attribute more profound meaning to is than it actually has.
Quoting NotAristotle
The predictive system has to do with adaptability. A constant stream of sensory and emotional "data" helps to form better predictions. This is basic cognition on most animals, but we evolved the ability to create categories of data in order to predict events and plan. The emotion in relation to other information does not equal only repeatable actions as in other animals, but will always be contextualized in a constantly adaptable system of prediction. We are constantly able to change our behaviors according to our adaptable system, which leads to us having a more dynamic agency and behavior not bound to repetition in the same way as other animals.
Quoting Skalidris
It is a reply in that it focuses on the formation of consciousness, or rather the formation of qualia and individuality. That's a dimension that needs to be included if we are to break down our intuitions of consciousness. Much of your first post does not adhere to the things we actually know about our brain and consciousness in general, which means you form reasoning out of something other than common knowledge. Deconstruction of something requires the common construct first.
It's also unclear what you are actually arguing for. You ask what we think about your reasoning, but there's no clear conclusion you make. It reads more as a speculative meditation on the subject than deconstruction down to a conclusion.
And if you lift the idea of individual thought or the sense of us within ourselves; the problem with qualia; then I did give a perspective on it. The possible why of what's producing this sense of agency, self-awareness and individuality.
So I'm not sure in what way it doesn't relate because you opened up a discussion on the subject but did not provide a truly clear point or conclusion.
I don't see how the unique part makes sense. If we were to clone two human beings, they wouldn't feel like two different persons anymore because their thoughts wouldn't be unique anymore?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Which "I" are you referring to? The notion we have when we are completely awake and conscious? The cloudy version of "I" we sometimes have in dreams? What about people with mental illness, their notion of "I" is completely different, imagine people with split personality, or people with schizophrenia who hear voices. Which "I" are they? I don't think you realize how complex this "I" is, we feel like ourselves when we can access our memory, our feelings, things that we normally access to when we're conscious and awake. I mentioned waking up from fainting in my thread, and the first images and sounds were really different from reality, yet I didn't experience any feelings of weirdness or fear. If I had the same notion of "I" as I do when I'm conscious, I would have felt disoriented and scared.
To go back to the thought experiment, imagine we make a computer with the notion of "I", that would be vaguely aware of its components etc, like we do. Do you think that would trigger consciousness, that the computer would experience something as soon as the notion of individual is coded? I don't see why this would happen, what relates this notion to the fact that experiences "light up"?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What do you mean it is the true concept? Again, which "I" is the true concept? And it's not about being true or not, it's about assessing its relation to consciousness. How do we know that the notion of "I" is related to consciousness? Why would that be the best theory? It's the most intuitive one, for sure, hence my topic: "deconstructing our intuitions". If we choose not to trust our intuitions, what rational arguments do we have to say that consciousness is always related to this "I" notion?
Quoting Christoffer
It would be needed if I were deconstructing a theory about the formation of consciousness, which I am not. I'm focusing on what consciousness actually is, about explicitly trying to grasp our intuitions about what it is. And you're discussing the how and why, which doesn't make sense in this thread since we didn't even elaborate what it actually is. How can we talk about why and how something was made if we didn't clarify what we're talking about?
Consciousness is an intuitive notion, not a scientific one (it wasn't created by sciences).
Quoting Christoffer
The first conclusion is that there are no rational reasons to believe that consciousness always come with the notion of individual. And that therefore, they should be treated as two different matters. The second derives from the first one: there could be several neural networks experiencing consciousness in our brain.
How can you make a distinct difference between formation and what it is? The formation hints at what it is and how it is for us comes out of how it was formed. How can you clarify what it is without understanding how it was formed? And I'm not talking about the physical formation in the physicalist sense, but instead in terms of our psychology, how it formed into the experience we have. That is what this is about. To elaborate on the formation, our internal perspective of the process of its formation, is to speak of "what it is".
So I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say that you focus on what consciousness "actually is". To "grasp our intuitions about what it is"? Are you talking about a religious perspective? Supernatural? Because if you're focusing on those things, without it being supernatural or religious, then what I added is clearly within the focus of this thread.
It seems more like you just reject the things we already know and just want some "new perspective", but that's like seeing a boulder rolling; giving clues to what will eventually be invented as a wheel, yet reject that observed boulder rolling and instead force everyone to think about some new idea about what constitutes rolling as some abstract new intuition.
Otherwise you need to clarify further what you actually mean.
Quoting Skalidris
All of this I elaborated on. I'm not sure you really engaged with the text I wrote?
The notion of the individual, the "self" the self-awareness is an emergent property out of our type of consciousness. There are speculations of other animals to have a sense of individuality, but consciousness in nature seem to be a gradient rather than some hard cut-off point. Some animals are only functioning as pure machines with sensory inputs, acting on instinct and behavior, sometimes in hives. Mammals and many birds seem to show higher cognitive abilities where some are able to recognize their own image in a mirror and communication behaviors that requires a notion of the self. So it seems like its scientifically clear that individuality and consciousness are not the same and that individuality is an emergent property out of specific forms or levels of consciousness.
Sticking to the science, we already know in neuroscience that we have parts of the brain that acts as subfunctions. They're not as rigid in one place as previously thought, but spreads out from specific positions in the brain. All these functions on their own does nothing but control certain parts of cognition and requires interconnections to form our experience. Evidence of this comes from retellings of people waking up from death (brain being inactive through loss of oxygen). How their experience of the world, if first and only registered through memory, and only a small fraction of other functions "turning on" one after another; their experience is of an utter lack of understanding of anything around them. With surreal events that have no meaning or value, no purpose in the form of identity. Only when all systems comes in sync does the person start to sense themselves "become". A key part of this is due to memory, if memories aren't formed then there's no sense of time and consciousness without the experience of time is just a function that has no sense of existence. That is possibly the experience of each part of the brain, much like insects in a hive.
Hi all,
I added you all to this reply because I think my comments here relate to the discussions that have been had thus far.
I have been rethinking my own intuitions on consciousness. In particular, I have been considering Christoffer's claim that consciousness is an illusion. I ask myself, in what sense could it be thought to be an illusion?
There are at least two ways of thinking about it (that I can presently think of). One way is to say free will is an illusion. I disagree with that assertion. On the other hand, when one says "consciousness is an illusion" they could mean something like -- you are not your thoughts. In that case "I think, therefore, I am" would be kind of a non-sequitur. You think. Yes. You are. Yes. But you are not because you think. After all, I would say we may not have that much control over our thoughts as far as I can tell, so I see no reason to think that our identity should be linked to our thoughts.
Negative thinking, patterns of thought, insofar as we identify these things with consciousness, it is easier to see how consciousness is an illusion; it is an illusion just as negative thinking and patterns of thought are an illusion, they are part of a script so to speak. In addition, a person is not identical to or the same as a mental illness they may have - mental illness does not define anyone.
For the sake of clarity, I do think we have free will and that we are responsible for what we do and what we say, even though I don't think we have control over our emotions and maybe not our thoughts either.
Descartes wrote in French mainly because he wanted his text to be accessible to people who did not master Latin. How many people today, even after mass printing and several translation, read the Discourse or the Metaphysical Meditations? Perhaps communication with the general populations is a pipe dream of humble members of the elite who believe they are closer to the average person than the average person is close to an orangutang and I don't say this as an insult, more as a bitter and unfortunate realisation.
The average global IQ is, contrary to popular belief, not 100; far from that, it is in the 80s.
"I think, therefore I am" is, to me, the best foundation of logic that has ever been written. I am glad he did translate it. I just do not think it is perfectly worded.
Quoting Lionino
We are animals. As long as people what to be good, I see reason to hope. And besides, not everyone has use for this kind of knowledge.
No free will does not mean no responsibility. It only means that you have no responsibility towards the creator.
Its relative. We may be machines, but we then live in a world of machines. Responsibility is just another tool that lets us function in larger groups, and if anyone refuses utilize this tool, they become a problem for the rest to deal with.
However, no free will would mean that we are never "ultimately responsible".
I think we may think of responsibility in relational terms. We are responsible to another for our actions. Responsibility doesn't entail punishment, rather it entails the possibility for reconciliation (a relational "event" that is mediated between persons); at least, that is how I see it.
In the case of us having no free will: Responsibility would be a tool to help tie a person to an outcome. Good or bad.
Quoting NotAristotle
A homicidal murderer running lose is little else but "a problem". There may be more to that person sure, but their defining characteristic in the eyes of society will be: "a problem" to be dealt with.
My wife and I recently came to this conclusion reluctantly. Most people are either not capable, or lack any inherent interest, in 'thinking further'. Makes life kind of hard when you're aware of it, but it instills a certain sympathy for a huge swathe of previously-irking behaviour. Part of my motivation to find this forum, in fact, was the abject failure to find people who want to discuss these things (or at least, are capable of doing so). Facebook seems to be a great aggregator of Dunning-Kruger effects, to the degree that that's an actual thing.
Orangutan* btw ;)
Agreed.
Quoting AmadeusD
And Discord, and Reddit, and Telegram, and Twitter. Quora has a surprising amount of specialists and talented amateurs posting despite the torrents of shit and bots that site has, but it is not a platform for discussing.
Thinking more on it, I believe I was semi wrong. Both free will and responsibility are tied to the level you operate on. And if you are talking about the same level of reality, then responsibility does require free will.
Guess you can say it like this: The characters in a good book I am reading have no responsibilities to me, but they do to each other. They also have free will relative to each other, even though it is my imagination that drives it all.
However, when we talk about free will we often refere to our free will relative to something higher than us (god) and not relative to other humans.
I'd like to hear what your idea of an illusion is for you to conclude that "negative thinking" is illusory. Is positive thinking somehow more real than negative?
Being likable does not make one right.
Look no further than science and the people that perform it. They are the ones who find out what is "illusion" and what is true. There is little correlation, for scientists, between being happy and being good at the job.
Although I agree that there is such a thing as "wallowing in misery" and that this is a delusion of sorts.
Leaving aside how negative or positive thinking affects our judgement, I would have to say your idea of an illusion seems too broad. Not everything that misleads us is an illusion, liars are not illusions for example.
An illusion in my opinion is a kind of appearance. To say that "consciousness is an illusion" is to say that "there appears to be consciousness, but there actually isn't".
Would you define the "consciousness" you say is not an illusion?
I disagree. Identical twins, very similar to clones, obviously feel like two different people. And research on animals shows that clones have different thoughts from each other, and would think of themselves as unique individuals.
Quoting Skalidris
Didn't I say "the 'I' is the complete package"? That means complexities and all.
Quoting Skalidris
Question answered, by yourself. My point was that coming up with a fictitious scenario, your so-called thought experiment, does nothing to deconstruct that intuition.
Quoting Skalidris
If you choose not to trust any intuitions, you cannot make any rational arguments. Rational arguments require premises, and judgement of the premises is based in intuition. If you dismiss all intuitions, then anything might be taken as true or false, and whatever argument you produce would be meaningless, lacking in soundness.
No, a lie is not an illusion. Not everything that misleads is an illusion, anything can be misleading in theory, even the truth.
Quoting NotAristotle
I don't think it's undefinable, it's just a word that's used a bit inconsistently.
Consciousness has a functional component, this is pretty much undisputed, it is the functionality that a person loses when someone whacks them over the head with a mallet and they faint. Obviously this is not an illusion.
But it is also generally taken have a qualitative or phenomenological component. This is the "interesting" part as far as philosophy of mind is concerned, but I think one should keep in mind that it is not the only part.
Quoting NotAristotle
I think illusionism is false and an obstacle to solving major problems in philosophy of mind. It's not like I have a strong emotional stake in the issue though.
Quoting Patterner
Like I've told you, I don't subscribe to illusionism, I'm not going to defend the position.
While we may agree in denouncing illusionism, we clearly have different reasons for doing so. Like I said earlier, there are two tenets to illusionism:
A) Phenomenological consciousness appears to be real
B) Phenomenological consciousness is not real
I reject A while you reject B, that's the difference.