Consciousness

[fromderinside]

Conflating two notions isn't going to get you anywhere. Yes there are gaps, There are gaps in the rate visual information can be acquired due to sensory limitations for instance.

Yes our subjective experience seems continuous else we'd be chickens or deer or other species that stop and start their experiences. Subjective experience is necessarily continuous to permit processing of input determined significant epochs of information primarily for communicating that to others around it.

It susceptible to following dangerous paths which may cause the person harm. If the conscious had many voices it might better arbitrate among them which actually seems to be the case. Incoming information overwhelms one's ability to manage possibilities requiring such as a movie approach to make sense of what is at hand.

If demands induce one to switch attention from one stream to another then information about the first stream is lost. In one form it's called masking which takes place in auditory, touch, and vision perception. At the same time noise can be used to fill in gaps between continuous information coming from one or many senses. these phenomena are call trade-off phenomena which the nervous system employs to continue attending or to switch between threads of information. Which thread is processed is determined by changes in probabilities one or the other is more relevant to the information processing at hand.

A conscious theater does not mean that the choice is made consciously. Choices determine what becomes one's subjective conscious experience. It is usually determined by external factors outside the purview of the individual brain operating on the information leading the brain to go down a path such as that made when one interprets normal motion as an illusion or a movement detected leads one to build the feeling one is moving although one is stationary.

The whole idea above is that there are many possible trains of information that can be connected into a whole. Its not because activity is constant. It is because brains are not privy to all antecedent information. That condition forces it to find ways to arbitrate among what it is fed to make sense out what is being sensed and perceived. A new script is written and consciousness has a new perspective and story to tell. The consciousness does stop and start. It must to make any coherent message come through.

Because these probabilities are true there are many paths one can choose for aware processing including multiple path processing or multiple consciousnesses within a single individual. What science is showing is that we have ways to manage these potential awareness's in such a way as to minimize drastic errors in most situations or to demonstrate dramatic strangeness such as multiple personality.

The constant you appeal to is an illusion. Whether it is arbitration of many simultaneous consciousnesses, a predetermined modulating mechanism adjusting consciousness, or another adjustment strategy permitting continuous evaluation, it is purely subjective not reflecting the actual sensed and perceived state of affairs at all. Consciousness is a tool the brain uses to create a theater relevant only to the single individual primarily for use in defending his social position through language. There is no reality there there.

Your simplistic approach remains something suitable for some Renascence philosopher discussion. Not right, not even probable. Certainly not relevant to understanding the brain or what is consciousness.

 

[untermensche]

So in other words you agree.

We have a continuous experience.

Which means a continuous activity of some kind.

Which includes a continuous activity with imperceptible gaps.

 

[fromderinside]

No I don't agree. It is not continuous, it is not a single stream, it isn't in control, and it isn't very well related to what we do.

Our ability to build a continuous experience is basically an evolutionary perceptual device, primarily attributable to how we see, upon which the brain can, post hoc, build explanations, verify actions, and plan possible outcomes of various scenarios made available by our cataloging of sense information. It is mostly an after the fact processor. We operate based on what has already been sensed and effected.

Consciousness, that fiction, is just an overlay, probably subvocal related, for explaining what we have done and what we believe we understand about others. The reality of it is very open to question. I don't believe it is a thing.

 

[untermensche]

No I don't agree. It is not continuous, it is not a single stream, it isn't in control, and it isn't very well related to what we do.

Our ability to build a continuous experience is basically an evolutionary perceptual device, primarily attributable to how we see, upon which the brain can, post hoc, build explanations, verify actions, and plan possible outcomes of various scenarios made available by our cataloging of sense information. It is mostly an after the fact processor. We operate based on what has already been sensed and effected.

Consciousness, that fiction, is just an overlay, probably subvocal related, for explaining what we have done and what we believe we understand about others. The reality of it is very open to question. I don't believe it is a thing.

My experience is unbroken.

And my control is continual. I am controlling what ideas I type out. Nothing is forcing me.

I am deciding what I will eat later at the same time.

Perhaps I am a different species.

A science of the brain that runs away from experience and doesn't think it has to explain experience is no science. It is frivolous nonsense.

 

[fromderinside]

A science of the brain that runs away from experience and doesn't think it has to explain experience is no science. It is frivolous nonsense.

The only frivolous nonsense is your claiming subjective impressions are to be believed. How's that rod trashing the window frame thinking going for you? How do you explain PTSS/PTSD or work overload or workload fatigue or multiple personality or reports by observers saying things are going one way then without blinking saying they are going in the opposite direction.

The above are all examples of your continuous experience hypothesis being demolished. Your experience should be shouting yes, yes, yes, but instead you're chanting experience is continuous because it is for you. The topic is one for science not for some faith healer like you.

 

[untermensche]

A science of the brain that runs away from experience and doesn't think it has to explain experience is no science. It is frivolous nonsense.

The only frivolous nonsense is your claiming subjective impressions are to be believed. How's that rod trashing the window frame thinking going for you? How do you explain PTSS/PTSD or work overload or workload fatigue or multiple personality or reports by observers saying things are going one way then without blinking saying they are going in the opposite direction.

The above are all examples of your continuous experience hypothesis being demolished. Your experience should be shouting yes, yes, yes, but instead you're chanting experience is continuous because it is for you. The topic is one for science not for some faith healer like you.

I know my experience.

It is what I know best.

Don't try to tell me my experience is not my experience.

I am talking about moving my arm, not flying to another galaxy.

If the science doesn't explain experience it is worthless and not true.

 

[fromderinside]

We've explained the sources and reasons for your subjective experience. Do you deny we are the top predator social animals on this planet? Do you deny it is necessary for us to protect ourselves most every moment among these killers? then you know why we have a subjective process for telling our story to those around us in all forms of place and communication. The basis for that process can be found in our sense and action processes produced and regulated by our brain. We've listed many of them. None of them require we produce the source of our consciousness since there is probably none to explain. there are just theater processes to which we have emotional and signalling access. The details of these processes have been outline many time by many of us who work in the field of human neuroscience.

You keep insisting what you subjectively know is important, yet you can produce no evidence supporting any mechanism driving that experience. Maybe it's time you reanalyzed your position and accepted the process science is traveling to determine how we behave rather that coming back with you nothing statement about nothing is known. Forget the faeries. There are none.

BTW you don't chose to move your arm you report about moving your arm after the fact.

 

[DBT]

The only frivolous nonsense is your claiming subjective impressions are to be believed. How's that rod trashing the window frame thinking going for you? How do you explain PTSS/PTSD or work overload or workload fatigue or multiple personality or reports by observers saying things are going one way then without blinking saying they are going in the opposite direction.

The above are all examples of your continuous experience hypothesis being demolished. Your experience should be shouting yes, yes, yes, but instead you're chanting experience is continuous because it is for you. The topic is one for science not for some faith healer like you.

I know my experience.

It is what I know best.

Don't try to tell me my experience is not my experience.

I am talking about moving my arm, not flying to another galaxy.

If the science doesn't explain experience it is worthless and not true.

Nobody is arguing that it's not your experience. It is your experience. But you and what you experience don't have access to the mechanisms and activity that happens to be producing you and your experience...a mechanism where, when dysfunctional, you find that 'you' and your so called autonomous consciousness don't have the control or agency you now believe you have, at which point it is exposed as the illusion of conscious control.

 

[untermensche]

I know my experience.

It is what I know best.

Don't try to tell me my experience is not my experience.

I am talking about moving my arm, not flying to another galaxy.

If the science doesn't explain experience it is worthless and not true.

Nobody is arguing that it's not your experience. It is your experience. But you and what you experience don't have access to the mechanisms and activity that happens to be producing you and your experience...a mechanism where, when dysfunctional, you find that 'you' and your so called autonomous consciousness don't have the control or agency you now believe you have, at which point it is exposed as the illusion of conscious control.

The point is; We have to explain experience. We cannot run away from it as if it is a demon.

We cannot twist experience to try to fit some undigested hypothesis. That is nonsense.

And conscious experience, when awake, is seamless and continual. There are no breaks.

So whatever activity is creating it has to be continual as well. Which doesn't mean the activity can't have imperceptible breaks, only that the the activity, with the breaks, is continuous.

Consciousness may be like playing a violin. With the violin sound is created when you push and when you pull.

We know from EEG the activity is wave like. Slight rise and fall. So consciousness may be the result of BOTH activity rising AND activity falling. That would explain the continuous nature of experience.

 

[fromderinside]

Oh come on.

I've given you several objective explanations for humans having 'subjective experience'.

EEG activity is gross electrical activity due to ongoing chemical activity. I've often used the analogy of martians placing a microphone above times square for what is revealed by EEG activity. It's apt. We gain knowledge that there is ongoing activity different in each placement. However one doesn't speculate from that that living things on earth do what martians do.

As far as rising and falling explaining anything the answer has to be 'no it doesn't'. You have made no objective connection between consciousness and activity so why should rising and falling activity say anything about consciousness? It shouldn't and it doesn't.

Oh, by the way shit floats.

 

[untermensche]

If only incredulity were an argument.

You have not explained how cellular activity creates anything, no less consciousness.

Pointing to activity that is not understood in any way and saying "consciousness" doesn't actually count.

 

[fromderinside]

Incredulity indeed. Incredulity that you still push your denial. We show that without cellular activity one is dead but with it one can act. You can't even construct such favors for us with your inanities. BTW it is not on us to show anything about how a nonexistent subjective conscious thing. It's on you to show that subjective conscious exists and that it should be demonstrable in brain activity. All you've done is say I, I, I, never everybody anything. Without a witness beyond yourself you have no case. So any case I present that I can find scientific reference to knocks the ball out of that park as far as our discussion is concerned.

But, we've gone much further laddie. We've demonstrated multiple visual and auditory theaters time and frontal cortex linked. We've identified areas and activity appropriate to each of these domains. We've found causal links between each aspect of sense and effect activity. We've demonstrated evolutionary linkages between each of those levels of consciousness and we've traced chemical actuators in structures linked and necessary for the elements of consciousness to come together. We've corroborated behavioral with neural activity.

On the other hand you've produced no evidence, only hand wave after hand wave in denial while insisting we take after the fact subjective conscious as real. Babies can get away with tantrums and no no no acts. Adults nor scientists have that luxury. Subjective experience was fine for Plato. But, it's persuasiveness died with those balls dropped from the leaning tower at the beginning of the scientific era.



Your small child performance is over.

 

[untermensche]

We show that without cellular activity one is dead but with it one can act.

This is not exactly an explanation of any aspect of brain activity.

An explanation is something like: When these specific cells carried out this specific activity there was this specific result. And the result is some aspect clearly recognized as conscious experience.

An explanation actually involves an understanding of what the specific activity is and what it is doing.

You have no such understandings.

All you have are nonspecific regions with some kind of nonspecific cellular activity doing something nonspecific.

I fear you don't even know what an explanation is. You have satisfied yourself with none for so long.

 

[fromderinside]

We show that without cellular activity one is dead but with it one can act.

This is not exactly an explanation of any aspect of brain activity.

First it sets parameter range for brain activity and expected minimum outcomes thereof, all of which is observable.


Remember your comment the next time you are tempted to write "experience is continuous since electrical activity is contninuous" or "electrical activity varies so maybe experience varies too" neither of which is observable.

 

[untermensche]

This is not exactly an explanation of any aspect of brain activity.

First it sets parameter range for brain activity and expected minimum outcomes thereof, all of which is observable.


Remember your comment the next time you are tempted to write "experience is continuous since electrical activity is contninuous" or "electrical activity varies so maybe experience varies too" neither of which is observable.

Do you know the difference between an observation and an explanation?

 

[fromderinside]

First it sets parameter range for brain activity and expected minimum outcomes thereof, all of which is observable.


Remember your comment the next time you are tempted to write "experience is continuous since electrical activity is contninuous" or "electrical activity varies so maybe experience varies too" neither of which is observable.

Do you know the difference between an observation and an explanation?

Let me put it this way. Self explaining and self observation are not empirical observation.

So I return it to you do you know what are observation and explanation?

 

[untermensche]

Do you know the difference between an observation and an explanation?

Let me put it this way. Self explaining and self observation are not empirical observation.

So I return it to you do you know what are observation and explanation?

My observations about the nature of my consciousness are the most trustworthy evidence I have.

Your claims about it are no evidence at all.

The nature of my consciousness is what needs to be explained.

Pretending it's nature is not it's nature is folly.

 

[fromderinside]

The nature of my consciousness is what needs to be explained.

Pretending it's nature is not it's nature is folly.

You wnat the truth? Do you really want the truth. I'll tell you the truth.

1. ... to only you

2. ... for only you



For the rest of those inquiring into the nature of experience we want objective findings so we can build objective explanations.

 

[DBT]

Nobody is arguing that it's not your experience. It is your experience. But you and what you experience don't have access to the mechanisms and activity that happens to be producing you and your experience...a mechanism where, when dysfunctional, you find that 'you' and your so called autonomous consciousness don't have the control or agency you now believe you have, at which point it is exposed as the illusion of conscious control.

The point is; We have to explain experience. We cannot run away from it as if it is a demon.

We cannot twist experience to try to fit some undigested hypothesis. That is nonsense.

And conscious experience, when awake, is seamless and continual. There are no breaks.

So whatever activity is creating it has to be continual as well. Which doesn't mean the activity can't have imperceptible breaks, only that the the activity, with the breaks, is continuous.

Consciousness may be like playing a violin. With the violin sound is created when you push and when you pull.

We know from EEG the activity is wave like. Slight rise and fall. So consciousness may be the result of BOTH activity rising AND activity falling. That would explain the continuous nature of experience.

You need to grasp the fact that we know what happens when memory fails, regardless of not knowing how the mental experience is formed.....consciousness fails.

You need to grasp the fact that we know that chemical changes during conscious activity alter consciousness (in quite specific ways) regardless the fact that we don't know how the brain is forming the mental experience....including structural changes, sense organs, nerve function, connectivity, etc.

Which makes it quite clear that the brain is the agency that shapes and forms consciousness. Which means that your notion of autonomous consciousness is not supported by the evidence and given the evidence that supports brain agency, that your claim is quite absurd

 

[untermensche]

Consciousness is not memory.

Consciousness has access to memory.