Consciousness

[ryan]

Like?

What could possibly exist that is not a thing? It would be no-thing, nothing.

That is not logical by definition.

Patterns have a life beyond that what makes up the pattern.
Waves moves between different media.
The waves have an existence in themselves.

They are still things though.

The point is that subjectivity is real, and it presumably exists with things that aren't subjective. That distinguishes it as something in addition to objects of objectivity.

 

[Juma]

Patterns have a life beyond that what makes up the pattern.
Waves moves between different media.
The waves have an existence in themselves.

They are still things though.

The point is that subjectivity is real, and it presumably exists with things that aren't subjective. That distinguishes it as something in addition to objects of objectivity.

A "thing" is a part of reality that we distinguish and attach a symbol for.
There are no things in reality.

 

[PyramidHead]

Like?

What could possibly exist that is not a thing? It would be no-thing, nothing.

That is not logical by definition.

Patterns have a life beyond that what makes up the pattern.
Waves moves between different media.
The waves have an existence in themselves.

A pattern is just an arrangement of things that makes sense to whoever is observing it. There aren't really patterns in nature, we just see them because we evolved to catch repetitive cues in our environment. I don't think qualia are the same kind of thing as patterns, though. Patterns don't feel like anything from the inside, they are not viscerally and directly experienced by anything.

 

[ryan]

They are still things though.

The point is that subjectivity is real, and it presumably exists with things that aren't subjective. That distinguishes it as something in addition to objects of objectivity.

A "thing" is a part of reality that we distinguish and attach a symbol for.
There are no things in reality.

I agree, and if I remember correctly a few weeks ago I was the one trying to convince you of this. However, I forgot about entanglement; that is such a game-changer. Its whole cannot be predicted by its parts - major problem.

But you are shifting the argument into something else. The conversation with DBT assumes a sort of scientific realism, except with my concern that SR will leave out an important detail of what exists, namely the mind (which is where we convince ourselves that an objective reality exists at all).

 

[DBT]

That's just the limitations of language. I may say 'I am conscious' even though it is the brain is forming both the experience of consciousness and self being conscious, with no substance or entity separation. The wording doesn't mean that a different substance is introduced during conscious activity.

So you are identifying experience as something that is formed by the consciousness but it is not itself a thing that exists. How does this make any sense DBT?

You are twisting what said in order to say it doesn't make sense, thereby hoping to justify your own ideas.

As I've already said too many times, consciousness is the the experience.

Consciousness is not a single thing. The word 'consciousness' refers to a collection of functions, features and attributes, vision, hearing, touch, smell, thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc....not always present at the same time.

It is groundhog day.

 

[DBT]

So you are identifying experience as something that is formed by the consciousness but it is not itself a thing that exists. How does this make any sense DBT?

I was thinking about this too. It sometimes makes sense to refer to things even if don't exist as objects or substances. Like "the well-being of our baseball team" or "the possibility that I will get fired". You could talk about those things, and even say how they are related to the physical world, without committing to them being actual separate entities. It could be that DBT is thinking of consciousness in that way, as something like a concept/idea that only exists as an abstraction. If so, then we are talking about totally different things.

It is not consciousness that forms anything. It is the brain that forms consciousness.

Consciousness, being formed and generated by the brain, is composed of many elements.

 

[DBT]

I don't see that consciousness is in any way separable from the brain and its electrochemical activity of information representation. Consciousness appears to be an evolved function of sufficiently complex brains....working up the scale from rudimentary perception of the world by light sensitive cells transmitting information to small bundles of interconnected neurons providing a sense of light and shadow and movement to respond to (danger, food, shelter, etc), through to the incredibly complex human brain...each producing a representation of world and self in accordance to what its architecture enables.

When two things are inseparable, like twins who never leave each other's side, the fact is that they are still two things. I'll leave out the rest about pattern recognition because it has to to with cognition and not consciousness (which by now I hope you understand I mean subjective experience).

Actually, cognition is a good way to illustrate why I am interested in this. I don't have any problem saying that cognition is a function of the brain, or even just an activity of the brain. It's very much a 'how' question. Once we understand the process of cognition, we will understand cognition.

The subjective experience of the mind, including perhaps the subjective experience of cognition, is a totally separate topic, even though it may in reality be inseparable from whatever the brain is doing--cognition, for instance. I am not asking about how the brain produces consciousness, and I don't disagree that it produces consciousness in its entirety; what I am interested in is the ontological status of what is being produced.

You used the word 'representation'... a representation is always a point-to-able phenomenon, distinct from the procedure that gave rise to it (and distinct from what is being represented!). We can point to a digital display and identify it as representation of some state of the computer, a scoreboard as a representation of the activity of the opposing teams, a ledger as a representation of monetary transactions. It's always something publicly observable. So, if you're being consistent, you can't really say that consciousness is a representation of the world created by the activity of the brain, but also is one and the same thing as the activity of the brain as it represents the world. That's like saying a digital display is both a representation of the computer's internal activity and simultaneously no more than that exact internal activity. Representations are independent from what they represent, even if they can't be separated from it.

None of this goes against what is known about brain agency. I would venture to say the two topics are scarcely related.

When I say 'representation' I mean our internal subjective model of the external world. Trees and buildings, people and the all the things of the world are out there, but our conscious perception of them is internal, a virtual experience of world and self being formed within the brain by the activity of brain matter.

 

[ryan]

So you are identifying experience as something that is formed by the consciousness but it is not itself a thing that exists. How does this make any sense DBT?

You are twisting what said in order to say it doesn't make sense, thereby hoping to justify your own ideas.

As I've already said too many times, consciousness is the the experience.

Consciousness is not a single thing. The word 'consciousness' refers to a collection of functions, features and attributes, vision, hearing, touch, smell, thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc....not always present at the same time.

It is groundhog day.

I am a configuration of a set P of particles with a mind. Putting that same set of particles in a much different configuration will end my mind/subjectivity.

Simplify this to a perfect triangle of 3 particles having subjectivity and right triangle of the same 3 particles not having subjectivity, just like my human configuration. One of them you may want to say has "right-triangleness" while the other doesn't. But something else is missing, its mind/subjectivity.

Whether it be many particles or few particles, the problem of emergence is the same. You can't just hide the subjectivity in new configurations because the new configurations are already accounted for. In configuration A, my experiences exist and are real. But in configuration B, it is not only a new configuration but it will no longer have mind/subjectivity/experiences.

 

[Juma]

You are twisting what said in order to say it doesn't make sense, thereby hoping to justify your own ideas.

As I've already said too many times, consciousness is the the experience.

Consciousness is not a single thing. The word 'consciousness' refers to a collection of functions, features and attributes, vision, hearing, touch, smell, thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc....not always present at the same time.

It is groundhog day.

I am a configuration of a set P of particles with a mind. Putting that same set of particles in a much different configuration will end my mind/subjectivity.

Simplify this to a perfect triangle of 3 particles having subjectivity and right triangle of the same 3 particles not having subjectivity, just like my human configuration. One of them you may want to say has "right-triangleness" while the other doesn't. But something else is missing, its mind/subjectivity.

Whether it be many particles or few particles, the problem of emergence is the same. You can't just hide the subjectivity in new configurations because the new configurations are already accounted for. In configuration A, my experiences exist and are real. But in configuration B, it is not only a new configuration but it will no longer have mind/subjectivity/experiences.

So you make an example where you have removed the complexity that was the interesting thing to be examined....

 

[DBT]

You are twisting what said in order to say it doesn't make sense, thereby hoping to justify your own ideas.

As I've already said too many times, consciousness is the the experience.

Consciousness is not a single thing. The word 'consciousness' refers to a collection of functions, features and attributes, vision, hearing, touch, smell, thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc....not always present at the same time.

It is groundhog day.

I am a configuration of a set P of particles with a mind. Putting that same set of particles in a much different configuration will end my mind/subjectivity.

An organism is in constant flux, as is 'your' mind/consciousness. Your configuration of particles are never precisely the same from moment to moment, yet alone from day to day or week to week or year to year....it's the range of change that counts.

 

[PyramidHead]

I think we are talking past each other. I'm trying to engage the topic on a philosophical level: what are the consequences of acknowledging that the internal experience of something is not identical to the physical functions that cause it to occur, and can never be fully described by an account of those functions? What does that mean for our conception of the universe and the scope of empirical knowledge? Your approach is to stay grounded in the science and move within its perimeter. I respect that, but it reminds me of when people used to wonder if Daniel Dennett is a p-zombie. Sometimes I have the same question in the back of my mind when I talk to eliminative materialists; is it like anything to be DBT? I jest of course.

 

[ryan]

I am a configuration of a set P of particles with a mind. Putting that same set of particles in a much different configuration will end my mind/subjectivity.

An organism is in constant flux, as is 'your' mind/consciousness. Your configuration of particles are never precisely the same from moment to moment, yet alone from day to day or week to week or year to year....it's the range of change that counts.

Hhhhh, it doesn't matter if the particles move around; it still shouldn't emerge something new.

 

[Juma]

An organism is in constant flux, as is 'your' mind/consciousness. Your configuration of particles are never precisely the same from moment to moment, yet alone from day to day or week to week or year to year....it's the range of change that counts.

Hhhhh, it doesn't matter if the particles move around; it still shouldn't emerge something new.

How would you know???

 

[fromderinside]

I think we are talking past each other. I'm trying to engage the topic on a philosophical level: what are the consequences of acknowledging that the internal experience of something is not identical to the physical functions that cause it to occur, and can never be fully described by an account of those functions? What does that mean for our conception of the universe and the scope of empirical knowledge? Your approach is to stay grounded in the science and move within its perimeter. I respect that, but it reminds me of when people used to wonder if Daniel Dennett is a p-zombie. Sometimes I have the same question in the back of my mind when I talk to eliminative materialists; is it like anything to be DBT? I jest of course.

Sorry to break in on this, but what has philosophy of anything have to do with the structure of science? Thinking can be spoken of in both science and philosophy, but does that mean that philosophy becomes the arbiter of thinking. What we articulate as reported thought is not the thought itself. It can't be because it is removed from the science of thought which is what is physically going on as that process, thought. Articulated thought is at least two steps away from that process. It is an imperfect representation and it is not occurring as the process is ongoing, but, it takes place after as a report of sorts.

The so called internal process you seem to point to is not even close to being such. Currently, science understands conscious thought to be about what is important to an individual about the space in which his senses and memory have data and articulate content. That can never become the basis for understanding of either what is science or the internal experience of something.

Science is as it is described is the application of operations to a set of data empirically gathered through which humans can develop models of the structure and function of the universe and what is in it including humans and their behavior.

One needs to keep two notions in hand, separately, science as described above and philosophy which, at best, can be described as feelings about science.

 

[ryan]

Hhhhh, it doesn't matter if the particles move around; it still shouldn't emerge something new.

How would you know???

How would I know what?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I'd say it's more than correlation. If you drink alcohol you reach the point where your cognitive functions are effected. Which alters conscious perception, decision making and response times.

Keep drinking and you pass out. Your consciousness is switched off because the brain is so intoxicated that it's unable to sustain conscious activity.

This is not mere correlation. It is causation. Repeatable. Testable. Confirmable. Alcohol and other chemical substances interfere with brain function, which in turn effects its production/expression of conscious activity.

It shows that normal brain function is associated with consciousness. A CORRELATION exists.

It doesn't say how consciousness is achieved or exclude the possibility that something external to the brain is also involved.

To exclude externalities the phenomena must be understood.

Look at the monitor of your computer. What do you see? You see what the computer is generating. There is nothing being generated on that screen that is not being generated by the computer. There is no external agency producing the picture. Without the computer there can be no image on the monitor, it can't exist without the computer except in your imagination.

I read an article recently on consciousness and they used this analogy. It works for me, consciousness is like that picture..

 

[DBT]

I think we are talking past each other. I'm trying to engage the topic on a philosophical level: what are the consequences of acknowledging that the internal experience of something is not identical to the physical functions that cause it to occur, and can never be fully described by an account of those functions? What does that mean for our conception of the universe and the scope of empirical knowledge? Your approach is to stay grounded in the science and move within its perimeter. I respect that, but it reminds me of when people used to wonder if Daniel Dennett is a p-zombie. Sometimes I have the same question in the back of my mind when I talk to eliminative materialists; is it like anything to be DBT? I jest of course.

For a start, what does ''not identical to the physical functions that cause it to occur'' mean?

Secondly, if not something physical consciousness/mind....what? The emergence of a non material (whatever that means) mind caused by the physical activity of brains?

 

[ryan]

I think we are talking past each other. I'm trying to engage the topic on a philosophical level: what are the consequences of acknowledging that the internal experience of something is not identical to the physical functions that cause it to occur, and can never be fully described by an account of those functions? What does that mean for our conception of the universe and the scope of empirical knowledge? Your approach is to stay grounded in the science and move within its perimeter. I respect that, but it reminds me of when people used to wonder if Daniel Dennett is a p-zombie. Sometimes I have the same question in the back of my mind when I talk to eliminative materialists; is it like anything to be DBT? I jest of course.

For a start, what does ''not identical to the physical functions that cause it to occur'' mean?

Secondly, if not something physical consciousness/mind....what? The emergence of a non material (whatever that means) mind caused by the physical activity of brains?

... , or just as crazy, the emergence of anything

 

[DBT]

For a start, what does ''not identical to the physical functions that cause it to occur'' mean?

Secondly, if not something physical consciousness/mind....what? The emergence of a non material (whatever that means) mind caused by the physical activity of brains?

... , or just as crazy, the emergence of anything

The physical world is one thing, but the claim of non physical ''things'' (non things, undetectable, undefinable, unmeasurable) interacting with the physical world by means of the architecture of brains is something els altogether.

 

[Juma]

How would you know???

How would I know what?

What you stated.