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Consciousness

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.

We are discussing it because we have a brain, not because we understand something about it.

That is a very poor argument.

I am not saying we know nothing about the brain or nothing about electricity or nothing about rockets.

I am saying we know absolutely nothing about how the activity of cells results in conscious experience.

And if it is the activity of cells doing it that implies we know nothing about what consciousness is.

No less what it can and can't do.
 
We are discussing it because we have a brain, not because we understand something about it.
If we actually are discussing the consciousness, then we know it is "entangled" with matter.
And if it is the activity of cells doing it that implies we know nothing about what consciousness is.

Like I said before, we can know something about an orange and know 0 about how it came to be.
 
If we actually are discussing the consciousness, then we know it is "entangled" with matter.

Is brain activity matter?

And if it is the activity of cells doing it that implies we know nothing about what consciousness is.

Like I said before, we can know something about an orange and know 0 about how it came to be.

An orange is matter.

Again, is brain activity matter?
 
Is brain activity matter?

And if it is the activity of cells doing it that implies we know nothing about what consciousness is.

Like I said before, we can know something about an orange and know 0 about how it came to be.

An orange is matter.

Again, is brain activity matter?

Just because we don't know how doesn't imply that we don't know anything about what it is.

How an orange comes to be is at least in part a different question than what an orange is.
 
Is brain activity matter?



Like I said before, we can know something about an orange and know 0 about how it came to be.

An orange is matter.

Again, is brain activity matter?

Just because we don't know how doesn't imply that we don't know anything about what it is.

How an orange comes to be is at least in part a different question than what an orange is.

Again, is an orange activity?

To understand activity we actually have to know what the activity is.

We know what an orange is.

We have no idea which activity in the brain is resulting in conscious experience.

If we use the example of an orange, can a person know anything about an orange if they don't even know what an orange is?
 
Is brain activity matter?



Like I said before, we can know something about an orange and know 0 about how it came to be.

An orange is matter.

Again, is brain activity matter?

Just because we don't know how doesn't imply that we don't know anything about what it is.

How an orange comes to be is at least in part a different question than what an orange is.

Again, is an orange activity?

To understand activity we actually have to know what the activity is.

We know what an orange is.

We have no idea which activity in the brain is resulting in conscious experience.

If we use the example of an orange, can a person know anything about an orange if they don't even know what an orange is?

An orange is active.

I think that you have it slightly wrong. I think we can know a lot about what something is, if not everything, if we know how it came to be. But the logic does not work the other way. Knowing what something is will not help as much to know how it came to be.

So the how question will probably answer the what question. But the what question is less likely to answer the how question.
 
Again, is an orange activity?

To understand activity we actually have to know what the activity is.

We know what an orange is.

We have no idea which activity in the brain is resulting in conscious experience.

If we use the example of an orange, can a person know anything about an orange if they don't even know what an orange is?

An orange is active.

I think that you have it slightly wrong. I think we can know a lot about what something is, if not everything, if we know how it came to be. But the logic does not work the other way. Knowing what something is will not help as much to know how it came to be.

So the how question will probably answer the what question. But the what question is less likely to answer the how question.

Do me the courtesy of addressing the argument.

Can a person know something about an orange if they do not even know what an orange is?
 
An orange is active.

I think that you have it slightly wrong. I think we can know a lot about what something is, if not everything, if we know how it came to be. But the logic does not work the other way. Knowing what something is will not help as much to know how it came to be.

So the how question will probably answer the what question. But the what question is less likely to answer the how question.

Do me the courtesy of addressing the argument.

Can a person know something about an orange if they do not even know what an orange is?

Yes, that is how we learn about everything.
 
...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.

Yes, the brain takes activity from many places and makes something whole out of it.

Which is why thinking you have located consciousness when you apply an artificial external current to the brain is nonsense.

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.

I don't think anybody is assuming the brain is only doing one thing. It is doing a lot of things at once. Consciousness only being one of them.

Mostly in terms of consciousness is the visual experience. This takes up a lot of brain activity.

But consciousness is not aware of any of this activity. It is only aware of the product of the activity. The visual experience.

So the question is: Which activity in the brain is consciousness and which is not?

On that topic we know nothing.

We see all activity as the same thing. We see it occurring in different places but never know which of the activity we see is consciousness and which is not.

- - - Updated - - -

Do me the courtesy of addressing the argument.

Can a person know something about an orange if they do not even know what an orange is?

Yes, that is how we learn about everything.

Explain the process.

How does the person know about the orange who has never experienced one and there is nobody who can explain one to him?
 
Explain the process.

How does the person know about the orange who has never experienced one and there is nobody who can explain one to him?

For example, maybe 100,000 years ago oranges were not eaten or touched for concerns of, I don't know, poison. But they know a little bit about the orange by its color.

We learn about X property by property. We don't usually learn about something all at once.
 
Explain the process.

How does the person know about the orange who has never experienced one and there is nobody who can explain one to him?

For example, maybe 100,000 years ago oranges were not eaten or touched for concerns of, I don't know, poison. But they know a little bit about the orange by its color.

We learn about X property by property. We don't usually learn about something all at once.

You are not addressing the argument. You are introducing another that does not fit the case of consciousness.
 
For example, maybe 100,000 years ago oranges were not eaten or touched for concerns of, I don't know, poison. But they know a little bit about the orange by its color.

We learn about X property by property. We don't usually learn about something all at once.

You are not addressing the argument. You are introducing another that does not fit the case of consciousness.

All I have been saying is that we know a little about what the consciousness is even though we no nothing about how it came to be.
 
You are not addressing the argument. You are introducing another that does not fit the case of consciousness.

All I have been saying is that we know a little about what the consciousness is even though we no nothing about how it came to be.

We know the experience of consciousness.

But we do not know anything about the activity that produces it because we do not know what activity that is.

It is like trying to know something about an orange when you nor anyone else has ever experienced one.
 
All I have been saying is that we know a little about what the consciousness is even though we no nothing about how it came to be.

We know the experience of consciousness.

But we do not know anything about the activity that produces it because we do not know what activity that is.

Noooo, one thing does not depend on the other. How will answer what, but how is not necessary to answer what.
 
We know the experience of consciousness.

But we do not know anything about the activity that produces it because we do not know what activity that is.

Noooo, one thing does not depend on the other. How will answer what, but how is not necessary to answer what.

We do not know how or what.

We do not know anything about how some unknown activity of cells somehow results in consciousness.

The specific activity is completely unknown. You can't make comments about things that are completely unknown.
 
Noooo, one thing does not depend on the other. How will answer what, but how is not necessary to answer what.

We do not know how or what.

But the what is what we are arguing about. If someone asks me what properties the consciousness has, I would say that it has the property of correlating to certain kinds of matter.

It's a property of the consciousness, no?
 
We don't know how the brain forms conscious experience, but it is abundantly clear that it does...for the numerous reasons already given.

Yes in terms of consciousness you can like a caveman point to the brain and grunt "there consciousness".

But that's as much as you can do.

Which means you know absolutely nothing about what consciousness is or could do.

So you still ignore what is said in favour of your own version of unreality. We know that vision - for example - is related to eyes and eyes are part of the brains sense organs and the eyes transmit information to the visual cortex which propagates, is processed, integrated with memory enabling recognition, achieving readiness potential as a body of information in visual form, the mystery being the latter part...not that the brain isn't doing it, not that this is magic from the heavens....

Quote;
Neuroscientists have repeatedly pointed out that pattern recognition represents the key to understanding cognition in humans. Pattern recognition also forms the very basis by which we predict future events, i e. we are literally forced to make assumptions concerning outcomes,and we do so by relying on sequences of events experienced in the past.

Huettel et al. point out that their study identifies the role various regions of prefrontal cortex play in moment-to-moment processing of mental events in order to make predictions about future events. Thus implicit predictive models are formed which need to be continuously updated, the disruption of sequence would indicate that the PFC is engaged in a novelty response to pattern changes. As a third possible explanation, Ivry and Knight propose that activation of the prefrontal cortex may reflect the generation of hypotheses, since the formulation of an hypothesis is an essential feature of higher-level cognition.
A monitoring of participants awareness during pattern recognition could provide a test of the PFC’s ability to formulate hypotheses concerning future outcomes.''



''This article summarizes psychophysical evidence, arguing that top-down attention and consciousness are distinct phenomena that need not occur together and that can be manipulated using distinct paradigms. Subjects can become conscious of an isolated object or the gist of a scene despite the near absence of top-down attention; conversely, subjects can attend to perceptually invisible objects. Furthermore, top-down attention and consciousness can have opposing effects. Such dissociations are easier to understand when the different functions of these two processes are considered. Untangling their tight relationship is necessary for the scientific elucidation of consciousness and its material substrate.''


Quote;
'' NYU Langone Medical Center researcher Orrin Devinsky, MD, performed an in-depth analysis of patients with certain delusions and brain disorders revealing a consistent pattern of injury to the frontal lobe and right hemisphere of the human brain. The cognitive deficits caused by these injuries to the right hemisphere, leads to the over compensation by the left hemisphere of the brain for the injury, resulting in delusions. The article entitled "Delusional misidentifications and duplications: Right brain lesions, left brain delusions" appears in the latest issue of the journal of Neurology.

''Problems caused by these brain injuries include impairment in monitoring of self, awareness of errors, and incorrectly identifying what is familiar and what is a work of fiction," said Dr. Devinsky, professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Neurosurgery and Director of the NYU Epilepsy Center at NYU Langone Medical Center. "However, delusions result from the loss of these functions as well as the over activation of the left hemisphere and its language structures, that 'create a story', a story which cannot be edited and modified to account for reality. Delusions result from right hemisphere lesions, but it is the left hemisphere that is deluded."
 
You don't seem to understand.

If the claim is that some activity results in consciousness then an understanding involves talking about the nature of specific activity.

Not the location of activity that is not understood.

You keep making the same logical error over and over like a broken record.

You are claiming that knowing where activity occurs is understanding the nature of the activity.

Nonsense.

That's like saying that knowing the moon appears to move across the sky is understanding the nature of gravity.
 
But the what is what we are arguing about. If someone asks me what properties the consciousness has, I would say that it has the property of correlating to certain kinds of matter.

It's a property of the consciousness, no?

Is activity matter?

Yes, why?

Can you answer my question?
 
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