Consciousness

[George S]

Apparently you did not understand what I wrote.

I did not claim to know how an internal combustion engine works just by looking at a car. This called inventing a straw man. How about a straw child.

You are saying a child cannot know what a chair is good for without knowing how it is made?

So you say a child cannot know what consciousness is for without knowing how it is made?

I paralleled the origin of gravity and reality, of which we can have no knowledge other than "apparently," to the origin of consciousness.

I am saying your argument is nonsense.

An analogy to the brain is my example.

And a chair is not something that has activity below the surface that needs to be explained to explain it.

You simply do not know how to make an analogy that fits the case. I wonder why? Some bias?

I see. I invented a straw child and you reacted as if you didn't understand the joke.

Origins of life, the universe and everything are difficult to explain.

If there ever as a state of no spacetime, it apparently was unstable.

During embryology there was a state of no consciousness, it apparently was unstable.

 

[untermensche]

You can claim to know how an internal combustion engine works just by looking at the car?

So we could do an experiment and show people cars and they will be able to tell us how an internal combustion engine works?

The only way to know how an internal combustion works is to know all the parts and know what is happening to cause them to do what they are doing.

In terms of consciousness we don't even know the parts no less understand what is causing them to do what they are doing.

Consciousness, whatever it is, arises during embryology.

Awareness of self arises later.

Awareness of willful control of self arises later still.

We know the answers to what, when, where and why. How? Evolution.

Of course consciousness arises during development.

But that doesn't explain what it is.

We know the brain is a jungle of cells.

But we cannot connect this jungle to consciousness. We can't explain in any way how the activity of these cells results in conscious experience. Which requires both something that can experience and the things it can experience.

 

[George S]

Consciousness, whatever it is, arises during embryology.

Awareness of self arises later.

Awareness of willful control of self arises later still.

We know the answers to what, when, where and why. How? Evolution.

Of course consciousness arises during development.

But that doesn't explain what it is.

We know the brain is a jungle of cells.

But we cannot connect this jungle to consciousness. We can't explain in any way how the activity of these cells results in conscious experience. Which requires both something that can experience and the things it can experience.

The thing that can experience is a portion of the brain. The things it can experience are provided by sense organs, themselves unconscious.

 

[untermensche]

Of course consciousness arises during development.

But that doesn't explain what it is.

We know the brain is a jungle of cells.

But we cannot connect this jungle to consciousness. We can't explain in any way how the activity of these cells results in conscious experience. Which requires both something that can experience and the things it can experience.

The thing that can experience is a portion of the brain. The things it can experience are provided by sense organs, themselves unconscious.

It is not a portion of the brain. It is not a piece of anatomy.

It has to be part of the overall activity. And none of the activity is understood in terms of how it is doing what it does.

Not a part of the brain itself.

 

[George S]

The thing that can experience is a portion of the brain. The things it can experience are provided by sense organs, themselves unconscious.

It is not a portion of the brain. It is not a piece of anatomy.

It has to be part of the overall activity.

Not a part of the brain itself.

The consciousness is a different part of the brain from the autonomic nervous system.

It has to have a connection since breathing, controlled by ANS, can be willfully overridden by consciousness.

 

[untermensche]

It is not a portion of the brain. It is not a piece of anatomy.

It has to be part of the overall activity.

Not a part of the brain itself.

The consciousness is a different part of the brain from the autonomic nervous system.

It has to have a connection since breathing, controlled by ANS, can be willfully overridden by consciousness.

When you say "part of the brain" that means a specific part of the anatomy.

Consciousness is not anatomy. It is activity.

 

[George S]

The thing that can experience is a portion of the brain. The things it can experience are provided by sense organs, themselves unconscious.

It is not a portion of the brain. It is not a piece of anatomy.

It has to be part of the overall activity. And none of the activity is understood in terms of how it is doing what it does.

Not a part of the brain itself.

A point of view is an invented homunculus watching experience. A point from which consciousness emanates.

An imagined being, imagined into existence by a brain, which thinks it owns the body/mind as self.

Or is it the imaginer, the underlying brain, that is conscious.

 

[untermensche]

It is not a portion of the brain. It is not a piece of anatomy.

It has to be part of the overall activity. And none of the activity is understood in terms of how it is doing what it does.

Not a part of the brain itself.

A point of view is an invented homunculus watching experience. A point from which consciousness emanates.

An imagined being, imagined into existence by a brain, which thinks it owns the body/mind as self.

Or is it the imaginer, the underlying brain, that is conscious.

Saying it is some anatomy is claiming it is a little homunculus.

Saying it is some activity is saying it is nothing like a homunculus.

 

[George S]

A point of view is an invented homunculus watching experience. A point from which consciousness emanates.

An imagined being, imagined into existence by a brain, which thinks it owns the body/mind as self.

Or is it the imaginer, the underlying brain, that is conscious.

Saying it is some anatomy is claiming it is a little homunculus.

Saying it is some activity is saying it is nothing like a homunculus.

Consciousness is activity. A pattern of activity in a human brain.

The experience of being conscious, this having a point-of-view thing is what defines a homunculus.

It is often represented as a little man, however it is the point of view. A dimensionless point.

An imagined being (or point), imagined into existence by a brain, which being thinks it owns the body/mind as self.

So which is conscious? The imagined being or the imaginer?

 

[untermensche]

Consciousness is activity. A pattern of activity in a human brain.

Saying any activity is a "pattern" is not limiting it by much. Do you know how many patterns are possible with millions of connections? It is not explaining it.

We have electronics with intricate patterns.

There is no known pattern of electrical activity that results in subjective conscious experience.

The experience of being conscious, this having a point-of-view thing is what defines a homunculus.

A homunculus is the idea that there is a little man in the brain doing something. But since a man is anatomy and consciousness is activity consciousness could never be a homunculus.

 

[fromderinside]

...could never be...

Of course not, However a homunculus could be part of the pattern of a consciousness along with other integrative centers and visual and auditory mapping substrates like the verticality sense center I mentioned a while back. The idea of a pattern of consciousness is coordination of activity from these functional sub centers into an awareness of self and other. Consciousness is less a place or thing in the brain but more of an association of many bits of being aware into a moving target called consciousness.

It's not a thing at all. Rather it is a feeling of interactively being among others in the world as part of one function of the brain which is to put us i a safe place at all times. This is a philosophical discussion after all. If one accepts that consciousness is a feeling rather than a thing then the awareness of how many functions are being performed qualifies as a consciousness.

Again a consistent criticism of your approach of denying anything and insisting on everything. Try discussion, fleshing out, analysis rather than conclusion., Maybe this thing will go somewhere.

Maybe our problem is presuming that since the brain processes one thing at a time in any channel and treats, behaviorally, one activity at a time, that if the brain is responsible for consciousness it must happen at some point in the brain.

That is probably not the case. The one-thing aspect is a behavioral constraint, it not a processing or awareness constraint. We know we are simultaneously attending to different aspects of our surroundings and activities, but only taking this or that into our awareness upon which we act. It make sense to presume that awareness is actually many awarenesses from many sources feeding through our brain to produce generally, but always susceptible to alteration, a pattern of activity related to the situation the individual finds oneself.

So it would be logical to conclude that these awarenesses produce a sense, a feeling of consciousness, of the environment around us. Just as the eyes darting from hither to throe produces a sensation of seeing a field in which it is seeing a very limited part of where what we are looking at at the time. In the case of vision we know there are multiple visual maps producing a summary of what is seen about us in which we make close inspection of particular activities at a particular place. In consciousness it is many different mapping functions being coupled together producing a sense of place and temporal awareness, consciousness.

So instead of we know nothing about consciousness we know much about what appears in consciousness and where it is produced we just have no general field theory of understanding it. That is much different from knowing about the consciousness and the brain's role in producing it..

As an analogy, consider leaving the fixed space and time universe of Newton and entering the coupled time and space bending world of Einstein for brain theory. Nothing has changed. Its just that we consider consciousness in a more realistic model of an evolving brain with many processes working simultaneously rather than than the fixed one-in one-out model suggested by behavior.

 

[ryan]

That does not follow. We can know some things indirectly without knowing everything about it. The consciousness has the property of correlation with certain functions or processes of matter. That is knowing something about it.

Like everything else, we gain more and more insight into what we are trying to understand. The consciousness is just much harder and thus progress is slower.

It most certainly does follow.

If consciousness is merely something generated by the brain then that is what it is, something generated by the brain.

So to claim you know what it is requires showing how it was generated not thinking it is.

You can know lots about an orange even if you don't know how it was produced.

Yes, we don't know how it is generated by the brain, but we do know that it correlates to the brain generally in a one to one fashion. In other words there is generally a unique mental state for every unique brain state.

It's not a lot of knowledge about what it is, but it's a little.

 

[untermensche]

It most certainly does follow.

If consciousness is merely something generated by the brain then that is what it is, something generated by the brain.

So to claim you know what it is requires showing how it was generated not thinking it is.

You can know lots about an orange even if you don't know how it was produced.

Yes, we don't know how it is generated by the brain, but we do know that it correlates to the brain generally in a one to one fashion. In other words there is generally a unique mental state for every unique brain state.

It's not a lot of knowledge about what it is, but it's a little.

You make the same mistake as others.

Understanding an orange is not understanding some underlying activity.

To understand the activity you have to first of all know what it is.

We have no idea what activity in all the activity we see is producing consciousness.

 

[ryan]

You can know lots about an orange even if you don't know how it was produced.

Yes, we don't know how it is generated by the brain, but we do know that it correlates to the brain generally in a one to one fashion. In other words there is generally a unique mental state for every unique brain state.

It's not a lot of knowledge about what it is, but it's a little.

You make the same mistake as others.

Understanding an orange is not understanding some underlying activity.

To understand the activity you have to first of all know what it is.

We have no idea what activity in all the activity we see is producing consciousness.

You are too much in the mindset of all or nothing. Think about an electron. How it behaves with other matter tells us something (not everything) about what it is. For all we know each electron is also a universe with fairies floating around inside, but we know other intrinsic properties of the electron because of how it behaves in the presence of other matter.

 

[untermensche]

You make the same mistake as others.

Understanding an orange is not understanding some underlying activity.

To understand the activity you have to first of all know what it is.

We have no idea what activity in all the activity we see is producing consciousness.

You are too much in the mindset of all or nothing. Think about an electron. How it behaves with other matter tells us something (not everything) about what it is. For all we know each electron is also a universe with fairies floating around inside, but we know other intrinsic properties of the electron because of how it behaves in the presence of other matter.

No. I'm of the mindset of understanding what we are trying to understand.

We are trying to understand how the activity we can observe that is taking place all over the brain somehow becomes conscious experience.

We do not understand that at all.

We do not even have a working hypothesis.

 

[ryan]

You are too much in the mindset of all or nothing. Think about an electron. How it behaves with other matter tells us something (not everything) about what it is. For all we know each electron is also a universe with fairies floating around inside, but we know other intrinsic properties of the electron because of how it behaves in the presence of other matter.

No. I'm of the mindset of understanding what we are trying to understand.

We are trying to understand how the activity we can observe that is taking place all over the brain somehow becomes conscious experience.

We do not understand that at all.

We do not even have a working hypothesis.

I never said we know something about how it comes to be; I said that we know something what it is.

 

[untermensche]

No. I'm of the mindset of understanding what we are trying to understand.

We are trying to understand how the activity we can observe that is taking place all over the brain somehow becomes conscious experience.

We do not understand that at all.

We do not even have a working hypothesis.

I never said we know something about how it comes to be; I said that we know something what it is.

What specifically is consciousness?

Saying "activity" in the brain is an empty worthless explanation.

What specific activity and where in the brain?

Merely pointing to some part of the brain and stimulating it to get a response is not evidence the activity involved in the response was limited to that location.

 

[ryan]

I never said we know something about how it comes to be; I said that we know something what it is.

What specifically is consciousness?

Saying "activity" in the brain is an empty worthless explanation.

What specific activity and where in the brain?

Merely pointing to some part of the brain and stimulating it to get a response is not evidence the activity involved in the response was limited to that location.

I have been saying that we don't know much about what it is. Actually, many philosophies of consciousness don't even give it a position.

But we know that it interacts with matter. That is a property that we can observe it having. That is something about what it is however small.

 

[untermensche]

What specifically is consciousness?

Saying "activity" in the brain is an empty worthless explanation.

What specific activity and where in the brain?

Merely pointing to some part of the brain and stimulating it to get a response is not evidence the activity involved in the response was limited to that location.

I have been saying that we don't know much about what it is. Actually, many philosophies of consciousness don't even give it a position.

But we know that it interacts with matter. That is a property that we can observe it having. That is something about what it is however small.

You are quibbling.

We know nothing about it. Beyond the completely empty phrase "brain activity".

If we don't know the specific activity we don't even know what it is, no less know how it works.

 

[ryan]

I have been saying that we don't know much about what it is. Actually, many philosophies of consciousness don't even give it a position.

But we know that it interacts with matter. That is a property that we can observe it having. That is something about what it is however small.

You are quibbling.

We know nothing about it. Beyond the completely empty phrase "brain activity".

If we don't know the specific activity we don't even know what it is, no less know how it works.

If we knew absolutely nothing about it, we wouldn't even be discussing it. Clearly we know some things about it, like what I mentioned, even though we know very little. That is all I have been saying this whole time.