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Consciousness

Tell us which part of the brain "you" access to control which neurons, and fire which muscle motors...since "you" are obviously in control with your "will?

I am obviously in control of my limbs. This can be demonstrated over and over.

I don't know how.

What do you do when you make your arm move?

This is a problem for science to answer, not run away from, or pretend it is impossible.
 
I think I understand what you are trying to say, but I still think that it is a mistake to conflate the focus of attention with general awareness or volition.
It follows logically.

If the brain is going to devote all this energy creating representations for consciousness to experience it makes sense that consciousness can act on those representations. Otherwise it is hard to think of any reason to make them. Why not just act without all this unnecessary expenditure of energy?
Isn't focusing one's attention on an internal representation "acting on" it? Since the brain performs so many acts simultaneously, it makes sense that there is some internal "spotlight" that can prioritize behavior. That's what "attention" is for. Consciousness itself is something more than mere attention, however. Awareness and actuation take place even when attention is focused elsewhere.

Most of our willful behavior is behavior under our control that we don't necessarily focus attention on. For example, you can walk while chewing gum and being engaged in a conversation. That doesn't mean your attention stays focused on any one of those activities in a given moment, but you are doing all three "at will".

All that demonstrates is that if an activity is practiced sufficiently it takes very little focus to control it.

We do not have to think much about walking because we have had so much practice controlling it.

The same is true of chewing and talking.

But none of this demonstrates we cannot control our arm at "will".
I am not denying that we can control body parts "at will". That isn't the issue. The issue is what one could possibly mean by the word "consciousness". What I am saying to you is that focusing attention is part of what we mean by consciousness, but not all of it. Perception and actuation can be relegated to the mental background by shifting attention elsewhere, but they are still going on and can be brought back into focus for conscious attention. Attention is only one component of consciousness.

So the brain can monitor all sorts of bodily sensations with varying levels of awareness. It can also carry out willful activities without paying full attention to those activities. And that is the point that I would like to get across--that there is no clear on/off state when it comes to consciousness but varying levels and degrees of consciousness.

I do not disagree with this.

But if a person just learns how to juggle they still need to concentrate very hard to juggle. And if they juggle every day for a year they eventually will not have to concentrate very hard at all.

Our ability to control our body improves with practice.
OK, but why the "but"? What is it you think I said that you are disagreeing with?

However, neuroscientists can correlate just about any type of mental activity with brain activity...

No they can't. They can only correlate it to location.

The activity itself is not understood at all.
Again, you appear to be struggling to disagree, but you aren't really. All I said was that they could establish a correlation. Then you contradict me and say in the next breath what the correlation is. It is true that we don't know from the location exactly how the brain is doing what it does, but the correlation is there.

Now let's re-examine the part of my post that you failed to quote or comment on--the part that you replaced with an ellipsis:


...You don't seem to dispute that, so it is wrong to say that they don't know anything at all about consciousness. They know that brain activity produces it. It seems fairly obvious that we are "meat robots" in the sense that there is no need to attribute conscious or unconscious thought to anything but that brain activity. Do you agree with that point?
I ask again: Do you agree with that point?
 
It follows logically.

If the brain is going to devote all this energy creating representations for consciousness to experience it makes sense that consciousness can act on those representations. Otherwise it is hard to think of any reason to make them. Why not just act without all this unnecessary expenditure of energy?

Isn't focusing one's attention on an internal representation "acting on" it?

It is another act of "will". The "will" can move the arm. It can examine ideas and decide which to accept and which to reject. It can do things like cause a banana to appear in the "mind", in the imagination. It can form expressions and make expressions with sound.

The "will" can focus vision and alter perceptions:

cube.jpg

It can make you look at the cube one way and then another.

Since the brain performs so many acts simultaneously, it makes sense that there is some internal "spotlight" that can prioritize behavior.

It makes no sense to have something aware of this "spotlight" that can't act on any of it.

What I am saying to you is that focusing attention is part of what we mean by consciousness, but not all of it. Perception and actuation can be relegated to the mental background by shifting attention elsewhere, but they are still going on and can be brought back into focus for conscious attention. Attention is only one component of consciousness.

Attention is that part of consciousness under some control. We direct our attention with our "will". Consciousness and the "will" are interlocked.

OK, but why the "but"? What is it you think I said that you are disagreeing with?

I'm merely pointing out that there is a variation in the need of focus to have control. We can control things like walking very easily.

Again, you appear to be struggling to disagree, but you aren't really. All I said was that they could establish a correlation.

You said a correlation with "activity", which is WRONG. Nothing is known about the activity in the context of the production of consciousness. All that is known is where the activity is taking place.

...You don't seem to dispute that, so it is wrong to say that they don't know anything at all about consciousness. They know that brain activity produces it. It seems fairly obvious that we are "meat robots" in the sense that there is no need to attribute conscious or unconscious thought to anything but that brain activity. Do you agree with that point?

Saying brain activity produces consciousness is a hypothesis.

Not a fact.

When it can be shown that some specific brain activity actually produces consciousness then it becomes a fact.

This is how science works.
 
Tell us which part of the brain "you" access to control which neurons, and fire which muscle motors...since "you" are obviously in control with your "will?

I am obviously in control of my limbs. This can be demonstrated over and over.

I don't know how.

What do you do when you make your arm move?

This is a problem for science to answer, not run away from, or pretend it is impossible.

So you must know exactly which brain region to activate and which nerve pathways to send impulses in order to flex and contract the correct muscle groups so that your arm lifts exactly as you desire....what a joke. :rolleyes:

Obviously we can move our limbs ''at will'' but the issue is about how that is achieved and how conscious will is formed. That is what you completely ignore.

It is not actually our will that moves our limbs but the underlying neural mechanisms that form both conscious will and motor actions such as moving limbs ''at will''
 
I am obviously in control of my limbs. This can be demonstrated over and over.

I don't know how.

What do you do when you make your arm move?

This is a problem for science to answer, not run away from, or pretend it is impossible.

So you must know exactly which brain region to activate and which nerve pathways to send impulses in order to flex and contract the correct muscle groups so that your arm lifts exactly as you desire....what a joke. :rolleyes:

All that must be done is I "will" my arm to move and it does. I do not have to think about anything. I just have to "will" it.

To "will" something is not to think about it. Thinking and willing are not the same thing.

Obviously we can move our limbs ''at will'' but the issue is about how that is achieved and how conscious will is formed. That is what you completely ignore.

I ignore claims about understanding what is happening physiologically, which are nonsense. That is all I ignore.

Pretend knowledge is what I ignore. Religious dogma is what I ignore.

It is not actually our will that moves our limbs but the underlying neural mechanisms that form both conscious will and motor actions such as moving limbs ''at will''

The "will" causes the brain to cause the muscles to move.

The brain does not just move the arm on it's own as if it has some plans that consciousness is unaware of.
 
A serious question.

Would consciousness and awareness be a part of evolution?

In evolution, isn't brain size considered to be an indication of intelligence and so would brain size be an indication of consciousness and awareness?

Even Neanderthals had rock art, used caves for shelters, and buried their dead with items in their graves, I believe.

Raychism I read a couple books that suggest conscious evolution was caused by humans eating psychedelics during famine. I like the idea. Supposedly many years of eating psychedelic substances made brains evolve outside themselves. One author went on about the tree of knowledge and the apple. It is a decent explanation for a dumb fable. The ability contemplate any of this is a burden, and it may come from distant ancestor's psychedelic use. Synthesizing and experimenting with more psychedelics and applying modern science and technology makes sense because there is nowhere left to turn for answers.

Conscious level and conscious content are raised by psychedelics. Greatly raised. That has been proven by University of Sussex. They're dosing people left and right. It is now a fact that psychedelics make your mind function BETTER, not just differently. You can assume that using psychedelics as a main food source for hundreds/thousands of years would permanently raise and move consciousness to new places. OUTSIDE the physical brain in my opinion, but that is a whole other subject. But it isn't. The term "out of your mind" may be more true than people believe. Volunteers for psychedelic experiments are some of the most important people in the world, and people who experiment on their own dime I consider to be very brave.

Oh and jellyfish probably live their lives unable to differentiate between the water and their own bodies. They swim according to the current and magnetic fields. In some ways they may be more aware of their true surroundings than we are. They are the Roomba of the sea aren't they? Humans made the water so dirty that jellyfish cycles are altering. Soon the water will be infested with billions of jellyfish two meters wide. They may be our primary food source someday, which could alter consciousness even further if we eat them for too long. The term "it must have been something I ate" applies to conscious evolution. Imagine how wacked out our ancestors must have been. They probably hallucinated so long that it stuck permanently, and now we are stuck in it, too. Only way out is probably the same way they went in - which for some insane reason is illegal. Whole thing is totally crazy to think about and that may be part of the problem.
 
The thing that most distinguishes human consciousness from the consciousness of other animals is the human language capacity.

Humans think in language. They understand the language of others. They can read the language of the greatest minds.

They have a tool other animals do not have.

Other animals can see better, some can hear better, some have a much better sense of smell, many are faster and stronger.

But none of that is a match for having a language to think and communicate with.

We are kings because we have a human language capacity.
 
Have you ever wondered why you get a feeling that you heard something that later is verified by others? It's an experience of threshold perception. Want to take a guess of which of us studied that phenomenon? Of course not. That wouldn't interest you. It's a study of experience.

I wonder why untermenche never acknowledged this post. Perhaps because it mentions threshold in a study of experience?
 
Have you ever wondered why you get a feeling that you heard something that later is verified by others? It's an experience of threshold perception. Want to take a guess of which of us studied that phenomenon? Of course not. That wouldn't interest you. It's a study of experience.

I wonder why untermenche never acknowledged this post. Perhaps because it mentions threshold in a study of experience?

You're talking about memory of experience, not experience.

The memory systems are complicated. But the "will" is involved.

Once again we are talking about something that is not understood on the physiological level, memory.
 
No it's an analogy. The memory reference is the analogy.

What one experiences when one thinks she may have heard a sound, seen a light, felt a touch is the experience.. That it is verified by others only makes the parallel more like the psychophysical study. One's experience of thresholds varies as does one's state of readiness to hear, see, feel, smell. Yet the thing one reports is an impression of tonality, light, smell, touch. It is never quite the same yet is is always related to the mode sensed as a threshold experience. In psychophysics we're quite advanced in our ability to quantify these experiences which is how we are able to say one has a threshold for sensing this or that that is not stable, it's consistent to the preparation one has for the event anticipated. We have even developed quite god models for how this process works.

What you are doing it trying to deflect because you really don't understand the process of experiencing. In your answer you made my point.
 
No it's an analogy. The memory reference is the analogy.

What one experiences when one thinks she may have heard a sound, seen a light, felt a touch is the experience..

How do you know anything about the "experience" of subjects in studies?

Is it by looking at the physiology of experience?

Or is through subjective reporting?

If it is through subjective reporting you have no more knowledge than anyone.
 
Experience is experience. My experiments were tightly controlled, I knew exactly was coming the observer knew an event could be coming in a time interval. She was instructed to make a choice whether she heard something or she didn't hear something. Tasking her responses and my stimuli I found hearing thresholds and I knew the percentage of positive responses below threshold as above. I also know the behavior of other observers in the same experiment across many different conditions of sound at many duration of signal. So yeas I have an empirical map of their experiences just as I had a subjective map of my experiences over the same conditions. Since we communicate I can also get observer memories of their experiences over the course of the experiments. All this is data for models of experience and experience memory all of which can be put into models that mimic human behavior.

So you can say what you wish to say, but, I'm strong in my view I have a pretty good estimate of their experiences under the conditions of my experiments.

Since I have all six, their data, their reports, my experiences, and my reports my models and their data I'm much more certain of what I'm talking about than are you.

I put down the hammer while you roam as a free range chicken. I have enough data to understand how free range chicken experience. You have no data to validate what you experience.
 
Experience is experience. My experiments were tightly controlled, I knew exactly was coming the observer knew an event could be coming in a time interval. She was instructed to make a choice whether she heard something or she didn't hear something. Tasking her responses and my stimuli I found hearing thresholds and I knew the percentage of positive responses below threshold as above. I also know the behavior of other observers in the same experiment across many different conditions of sound at many duration of signal. So yeas I have an empirical map of their experiences just as I had a subjective map of my experiences over the same conditions. Since we communicate I can also get observer memories of their experiences over the course of the experiments. All this is data for models of experience and experience memory all of which can be put into models that mimic human behavior.

So you can say what you wish to say, but, I'm strong in my view I have a pretty good estimate of their experiences under the conditions of my experiments.

Since I have all six, their data, their reports, my experiences, and my reports my models and their data I'm much more certain of what I'm talking about than are you.

I put down the hammer while you roam as a free range chicken. I have enough data to understand how free range chicken experience. You have no data to validate what you experience.

"Experience is experience"?

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

If all you have in your experiments in terms of experience are subjective reports you do not understand experience any better than anyone. You have no additional knowledge.

We all have the subjective reports of experience from other people.
 
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Not that you'll ever comprehend, but, I collected real time keyed reports, along with the time stamp showing the reports were either concurrent with or immediately after stimulus presentation, from observers on whether there was or was not a sound presented at the time the sound was presented, and I've collected similar data on light sensation, taste sensation, touch sensation and smell sensation. Others have used my procedures to record from selected areas at the time of sensation physiological reports along motor reports of these sensations in animals and humans.

Damn its so tough when you don't have anything to offer but your own subjective, probably contaminated personal belief to counter isn't it. If you check the record you will find that the kind of objective data I've gathered is always more useful than the garbage you self report. In fact the kind of stuff I gathered, empirical data, is at the base of our scientific revolution. To the type of stuff you report we can thank for the dark ages.

In fact much experience has been converted into standards of measure, time, and place in Paris. In fact, as you pointed out, there is no color in light except when it is experienced by a being with light processing equipment. We've examined it and established standards for generation and perception of color which we can reference so we don't need to have silly discussions like red versus the experience of red.

One can argue, successfully I think, that much of our 'experience' is normalized by these standards so we can express what we mean when we say words describing it to those hearing who will understand exquisitely.
 
Not that you'll ever comprehend, but, I collected real time keyed reports, along with the time stamp showing the reports were either concurrent with or immediately after stimulus presentation, from observers on whether there was or was not a sound presented at the time the sound was presented, and I've collected similar data on light sensation, taste sensation, touch sensation and smell sensation. Others have used my procedures to record from selected areas at the time of sensation physiological reports along motor reports of these sensations in animals and humans.

Damn its so tough when you don't have anything to offer but your own subjective, probably contaminated personal belief to counter isn't it. If you check the record you will find that the kind of objective data I've gathered is always more useful than the garbage you self report. In fact the kind of stuff I gathered, empirical data, is at the base of our scientific revolution. To the type of stuff you report we can thank for the dark ages.

In fact much experience has been converted into standards of measure, time, and place in Paris. In fact, as you pointed out, there is no color in light except when it is experienced by a being with light processing equipment. We've examined it and established standards for generation and perception of color which we can reference so we don't need to have silly discussions like red versus the experience of red.

One can argue, successfully I think, that much of our 'experience' is normalized by these standards so we can express what we mean when we say words describing it to those hearing who will understand exquisitely.

Yes you asked for subjective reporting.

Otherwise you had no idea what was experienced.

When you know what is experienced without subjective reports you understand the physiology of experience.

All you are doing here is playing with consciousness. Not understanding it.
 
My asking was validated by other's physiological data using the same techniques, something you can't see in my post for some reason. Probably just oversight in you haste to put a 'subjective' tag on what I wrote.

You on the other hand don't even bother to provide even support for your beliefs.

Time to put your inputs in the circular file. That's saying for your comprehension, there's nothing here to see so we'll presume the wind was blowing.
 
I don't have to support that we move our limbs at "will".

It is as clear as anything in the world.

The only question is how.

You know nothing more about consciousness than anybody who gets a subjective report.

Not one thing.

Looking at how subjective reports relate in time to brain activity is not understanding the activity.

It is not understanding how the activity arose or what about the activity is somehow translated into experience.

Understanding experience is not merely understanding where in the brain some activity related to experience takes place.

That is just knowing about location, not knowing about experience or what is entailed to create it.
 
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