Consciousness

[fromderinside]

Come back when you have stopped playing silly.

Four dots can emerge a square, or straight line, or etc. But nothing was added, and especially nothing as real as a mind.

The silly play continues.

 

[untermensche]

Fromderinside, I read the findings of one of John-Dylan Haynes' papers in 2010 and ironically, he shines a light on just how strange selective awareness is, from the quote,

"This suggests that neural evaluation of products and associated choice-related processing does not necessarily depend on attentional processing of available items.".

By "attention" I think "awareness" was what was meant. Anyways, the very idea that we are aware of certain incoming information and the processes of such but not aware of other incoming information and the processes, really isolate the idea of subjective experiences.

Do you see how being aware of some something versus not being aware of something which results in, say, a decision is quite strange? I mean did we have to be aware of any of it? What is so special about the matter that gave us this awareness versus the matter that did not have the awareness?

Attention is not awareness.

Awareness is passive.

Attention is active.

You point and focus your attention.

 

[ryan]

Haynes: "This suggests that neural evaluation of products and associated choice-related processing does not necessarily depend on attentional processing of available items.".

By "attention" I think "awareness" was what was meant. Anyways, the very idea that we are aware of certain incoming information and the processes of such but not aware of other incoming information and the processes, really isolate the idea of subjective experiences.

Do you see how being aware of some something versus not being aware of something which results in, say, a decision is quite strange? I mean did we have to be aware of any of it? What is so special about the matter that gave us this awareness versus the matter that did not have the awareness?

No ryan. Haynes meant attentional. Attending is the head point in a direction click or flash. Awareness is consciousness. So we attend to everything primed for us to attend, We become aware of stuff that fits ongoing developing scenarios being developed.

Life isn't as complex as you seem want to make it.

He uses "high attention" I presume as awareness, and "low attention" as the more unaware incoming information. In the "discussion" section, he finally uses "conscious awareness". I don't know why he waited until the end use that term, but he did.

 

[ryan]

Fromderinside, I read the findings of one of John-Dylan Haynes' papers in 2010 and ironically, he shines a light on just how strange selective awareness is, from the quote,

"This suggests that neural evaluation of products and associated choice-related processing does not necessarily depend on attentional processing of available items.".

By "attention" I think "awareness" was what was meant. Anyways, the very idea that we are aware of certain incoming information and the processes of such but not aware of other incoming information and the processes, really isolate the idea of subjective experiences.

Do you see how being aware of some something versus not being aware of something which results in, say, a decision is quite strange? I mean did we have to be aware of any of it? What is so special about the matter that gave us this awareness versus the matter that did not have the awareness?

Attention is not awareness.

Awareness is passive.

Attention is active.

You point and focus your attention.

You have it exactly backwards. Awareness is the "subjective experience"; attention can be the incoming information that one is not directly conscious of.

 

[fromderinside]

No ryan. Haynes meant attentional. Attending is the head point in a direction click or flash. Awareness is consciousness. So we attend to everything primed for us to attend, We become aware of stuff that fits ongoing developing scenarios being developed.

Life isn't as complex as you seem want to make it.

He uses "high attention" I presume as awareness, and "low attention" as the more unaware incoming information. In the "discussion" section, he finally uses "conscious awareness". I don't know why he waited until the end use that term, but he did.

He's not a sensory psychologist. I was.

 

[untermensche]

Attention is not awareness.

Awareness is passive.

Attention is active.

You point and focus your attention.

You have it exactly backwards. Awareness is the "subjective experience"; attention can be the incoming information that one is not directly conscious of.

That is a strange understanding.

Attention is actively attending to something. To choose what one will attend to, and it takes effort. If someone attends long enough there will be fatigue.

Although there is reflexive attention. A rush of adrenaline if startled by something.

Awareness is just passively taking in everything. Sitting in the park watching the ducks and the lake and the sky all at once. Feeling the cool breeze and smelling the cool air. Attending to no particular part. Just being aware of it.

 

[ryan]

He uses "high attention" I presume as awareness, and "low attention" as the more unaware incoming information. In the "discussion" section, he finally uses "conscious awareness". I don't know why he waited until the end use that term, but he did.

He's not a sensory psychologist. I was.

You were the one who told me to read his work from 2010. This is the strangest conversation I have ever been in.

 

[ryan]

You have it exactly backwards. Awareness is the "subjective experience"; attention can be the incoming information that one is not directly conscious of.

That is a strange understanding.

It may be strange, but it's the way they defined it.

Attention is actively attending to something. To choose what one will attend to, and it takes effort. If someone attends long enough there will be fatigue.

Although there is reflexive attention. A rush of adrenaline if startled by something.

Awareness is just passively taking in everything. Sitting in the park watching the ducks and the lake and the sky all at once. Feeling the cool breeze and smelling the cool air. Attending to no particular part. Just being aware of it.

Remember when they used to put subliminal smoking adds in the movie theaters? Well they had our attention on some level without us knowing it.

Apparently we can process information that we are not experiencing at the moment to help make decisions, even complex decisions as this paper points out.

This just makes consciousness even more mysterious because they do not know why we experience some information processes and not others.

 

[untermensche]

That is a strange understanding.

It may be strange, but it's the way they defined it.

I'm defining what it is. Attention is an active process. We have to "do" it. It doesn't just happen, except when frightened by a sound and the head turns. Underlying much of the nervous system are reflexes. But we don't use reflexes to walk or to actively attend.

Remember when they used to put subliminal smoking adds in the movie theaters? Well they had our attention on some level without us knowing it.

Not true. There was possibly a very weak awareness. No attention to it at all.

Apparently we can process information that we are not experiencing at the moment to help make decisions, even complex decisions as this paper points out.

That study is explicitly about the difference between attention and awareness.

But it defines attention as I do, as something active.

And awareness as something passive.

They are just saying that passive awareness can affect a future choice. It is not saying that passive awareness is the same thing as attention.

 

[ryan]

It may be strange, but it's the way they defined it.

I'm defining what it is. Attention is an active process. We have to "do" it. It doesn't just happen, except when frightened by a sound and the head turns. Underlying much of the nervous system are reflexes. But we don't use reflexes to walk or to actively attend.

Remember when they used to put subliminal smoking adds in the movie theaters? Well they had our attention on some level without us knowing it.

Not true. There was possibly a very weak awareness. No attention to it at all.

Apparently we can process information that we are not experiencing at the moment to help make decisions, even complex decisions as this paper points out.

That study is explicitly about the difference between attention and awareness.

But it defines attention as I do, as something active.

And awareness as something passive.

They are just saying that passive awareness can affect a future choice. It is not saying that passive awareness is the same thing as attention.

No, you still have it backwards. The consumers distracted from the products' (vehicles) information are the less attentive or "low attention" group as he called them. The "high attention" group was told to focus on the products. There was similar information processing between the two. The passive attention group would be the "low attention" group.

But yeah, he uses "attention" quite loosely. He really means awareness for the "high attention" group.

 

[fromderinside]

He's not a sensory psychologist. I was.

You were the one who told me to read his work from 2010. This is the strangest conversation I have ever been in.

My point in asdking you to read Haynes was to get you to understand where the science of consciousness is at and where it is going. I was asking you to find there was a difference between attending and awareness. Attending is, as I described it, essentially directing one in the direction of appropriate stimulus, while awareness is something that will probably become part of consciousness. That Haynes was a bit loose with his use of the terms can be attributed to his specializations in biology verses my specializations in sensory psychology. He used low and high attention reflecting probabilities of that being flagged for transfer to consciousness

You chose not to focus on what was being accomplished, rather, you chose to interpret his use of attention and awareness a particular way which matches almost no scientific definitions of the two terms. To wit: https://www.psychologicalscience.or...nd-awareness-arent-the-same.html#.WOxWAojyuUk

[FONT=&quot]your brain can pay attention to something without you being aware that it’s there.[/FONT]

 

[untermensche]

I'm defining what it is. Attention is an active process. We have to "do" it. It doesn't just happen, except when frightened by a sound and the head turns. Underlying much of the nervous system are reflexes. But we don't use reflexes to walk or to actively attend.

Remember when they used to put subliminal smoking adds in the movie theaters? Well they had our attention on some level without us knowing it.

Not true. There was possibly a very weak awareness. No attention to it at all.

Apparently we can process information that we are not experiencing at the moment to help make decisions, even complex decisions as this paper points out.

That study is explicitly about the difference between attention and awareness.

But it defines attention as I do, as something active.

And awareness as something passive.

They are just saying that passive awareness can affect a future choice. It is not saying that passive awareness is the same thing as attention.

No, you still have it backwards. The consumers distracted from the products' (vehicles) information are the less attentive or "low attention" group as he called them. The "high attention" group was told to focus on the products. There was similar information processing between the two. The passive attention group would be the "low attention" group.

But yeah, he uses "attention" quite loosely. He really means awareness for the "high attention" group.

No I have nothing backwards.

To attend is an active process.

Nothing you presented says otherwise.

Calling not attending "low attention" is a joke. It is NO attention.

It is minimal awareness. Awareness is passive.

 

[ryan]

You were the one who told me to read his work from 2010. This is the strangest conversation I have ever been in.

My point in asdking you to read Haynes was to get you to understand where the science of consciousness is at and where it is going. I was asking you to find there was a difference between attending and awareness. Attending is, as I described it, essentially directing one in the direction of appropriate stimulus, while awareness is something that will probably become part of consciousness. That Haynes was a bit loose with his use of the terms can be attributed to his specializations in biology verses my specializations in sensory psychology. He used low and high attention reflecting probabilities of that being flagged for transfer to consciousness

You chose not to focus on what was being accomplished, rather, you chose to interpret his use of attention and awareness a particular way which matches almost no scientific definitions of the two terms. To wit: https://www.psychologicalscience.or...nd-awareness-arent-the-same.html#.WOxWAojyuUk

I knew about studies like that. I think almost anyone who is interested in this subject knows about this stuff.

But it also shines a light on conscious awareness versus attention without awareness. The awareness is the big problem. It is like any other matter and other processes, yet it also has the subjective experiences that we all have and know are very real.

[FONT="]your brain can pay attention to something without you being aware that it’s there.[/FONT]

The question becomes, why are we consciously aware of one part of the decision-making process but not the other. Kind of interesting don't you think? Perhaps it is what people have been racking their head over for thousands of years and to this day.

 

[ryan]

I'm defining what it is. Attention is an active process. We have to "do" it. It doesn't just happen, except when frightened by a sound and the head turns. Underlying much of the nervous system are reflexes. But we don't use reflexes to walk or to actively attend.

Remember when they used to put subliminal smoking adds in the movie theaters? Well they had our attention on some level without us knowing it.

Not true. There was possibly a very weak awareness. No attention to it at all.

Apparently we can process information that we are not experiencing at the moment to help make decisions, even complex decisions as this paper points out.

That study is explicitly about the difference between attention and awareness.

But it defines attention as I do, as something active.

And awareness as something passive.

They are just saying that passive awareness can affect a future choice. It is not saying that passive awareness is the same thing as attention.

No, you still have it backwards. The consumers distracted from the products' (vehicles) information are the less attentive or "low attention" group as he called them. The "high attention" group was told to focus on the products. There was similar information processing between the two. The passive attention group would be the "low attention" group.

But yeah, he uses "attention" quite loosely. He really means awareness for the "high attention" group.

No I have nothing backwards.

To attend is an active process.

Nothing you presented says otherwise.

Calling not attending "low attention" is a joke. It is NO attention.

It is minimal awareness. Awareness is passive.

This is what frustrates me about cognitive science and why it is limited. They know damn well they mean awareness but instead they use "high attention" for the aware part of the experiment, and "low attention" for the unaware part. They can't use "awareness" because science hasn't recognized it yet, so they have to come up with "high attention".

 

[fromderinside]

To wit: https://www.psychologicalscience.or...nd-awareness-arent-the-same.html#.WOxWAojyuUk

your brain can pay attention to something without you being aware that it’s there.

The question becomes, why are we consciously aware of one part of the decision-making process but not the other. Kind of interesting don't you think? Perhaps it is what people have been racking their head over for thousands of years and to this day.

Not a question at all. The brain attends and one is aware. Its Sensation and Perception. A subcategory of perception is attention. Awareness like consciousness on the other hand, are still floating around on a philosophical plane. Noqw consciousness is coming under the argot of science. Seems simple enough to me.

Whether something is grouped with consciousness probably relates to how much motivation and emotion is involved. Attention is usually linked to such as Ideal Observer, an physical construct out of electrical engineering, whilst, as I wrote, awareness is usually related to one.

Decision making is another one of those constructs that come out of detection and decision theory, engineering again, which is applied to sensation and perception, again which has a subcategory, decision making.

Its not really difficult for us in the field since we've bumped into all of this for decades usually during our careers.

Philosophy is just as cumbersome if you think about it.

For those of you outside you keep making problems for yourselves by not getting familiar with the topic when you read papers from the discipline.

So no, it isn't really an interesting problem since we see how one must sort out all that one has available to oneself for generation a holistic view, consciousness, with a single speaker, Of course, if you're in abnormal psychology or clinical psychology you are again faced with the science thing versus the person thing.

Really. That's why all this philosophical magic thinking it so tiresome to some of us. Even those of us in Clinical and M and E are beginning to find unscientific approaches to motivated and abnormal behavior getting in the way of advancement of the field.

For instance how would you feel if soft social scientist (history, philosophy, african studies, dietary studies) began yammering about substances used to keep such as immune systems in liquid form for easy use as being dangerous to humans or GMOs, scientific breeding in the lab, as being somehow dangerous when natures way isn't considered as such. When you are tempted to have that thought just consider what we are doing to ourselves with diabetes by just letting nature do it.

 

[DBT]

If consciousness is an electrochemical activity, as it appears to be, then it is identical in composition but different in form, patterns of firings, information recognition processing.

Aye. But if all we can say with any confidence is that consciousness is the result of electrochemical activity, we cannot make that assumption. If we're talking about appearances, the subjective experience of consciousness feels nothing at all like electrochemical activity. It feels like whatever is being experienced at the time. Thus it may be overreaching to say consciousness appears to BE electrochemical activity.

But the result is inseparable from the process. The combination of physical elements and the sequence they fire becomes the mental representation. The specific architecture and its activity forming consciousness from its own matter/energy configurations.

But where are these pixels? In the case of a screen, I can point to them. With the right program, I can even zoom in and distinguish individual pixels. They are tangible, publicly observable entities with a definite location in space.

Conscious activity is detectable. Subjects are able to report their feelings and thought while brain activity is being imaged. Predictions about decisions have been made before the subject becomes aware (readiness potential)

Which is why I have to call bullshit when you say:

Well, you are wrong. There is no evidence for the presence of an agency that is not a part of brain architecture and its electrochemical activity.

I call bullshit to the claim of a non material source or element to consciousness.

Substance dualism is bullshit.

Given the evidence, consciousness appears to be a physical process formed by brain activity.

Proposing 'non material' as a solution is bullshit on several fronts.

1; it doesn't explain anything.
2; it cannot be tested.
3; therefore it cannot be detected.
4; the is no logical way that something non material (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean or be) can interact with material.

1. It's incoherent to say something is 'composed of' activity. Activity isn't a substance. Nothing is made of action.

That's not what I said. I was referring to the physical architecture of a brain, including it electrochemical activity as a component or element of its structure and function.

So if that physical composition and its activity forms and generates consciousness, and there is no substance duality, then consciousness is a part of the brains composition while consciousness is being generated, so is in no way separate from the brain and its composition/ activity.


Abstract
The directness and vivid quality of conscious experience belies the complexity of the underlying neural mechanisms, which remain incompletely understood. Recent work has focused on identifying the brain structures and patterns of neural activity within the primate visual system that are correlated with the content of visual consciousness. Functional neuroimaging in humans and electrophysiology in awake mokeys indicate that there are important differences between striate and extrastriate visual cortex in how well neural activity correlates with consciousness. Moreover, recent neuroimaging studies indicate that, in addition to these ventral areas of visual cortex, dorsal prefrontal and parietal areas might contribute to conscious visual experience.

2. That just leaves brain matter. If you honestly believe that the smell of burning rubber is actually made of neurons and their connective tissues, you should be able to find it somewhere in the brain. You should be able to isolate this slimy object, put it on a microscope slide, and say "here is the smell of burning rubber." Do you not see how ridiculous that sounds?

That's got nothing to do with what I said. You have constructed your own version at which you hurl irrelevant objections.

 

[DBT]

Not necessarily. Mental properties may be something that forms from a combination of complex physical interactions, similar to pixel patterns forming images, therefore there being no substance duality. Certainly not the proposed non physical/physical consciousness duality. Which as I pointed out is even more inexplicable than the thing you are trying to explain.

Pixels forming on a screen is like taking some rocks on the ground and moving them around to form an image. For a new rock arrangement, there is nothing there that wasn't there before. The emergence from these rocks is in our minds because the mind has a mysterious "wholeness" to what it observes. Out there the rocks are always individual; they are never a whole like the holistic projection we get in our mind. This is the "unity problem" which is under the "what" and "how" general questions.

For the life of me, I can't how your comment relates to what I said.

If, as the evidence strongly supports, it is brain activity that forms and generates consciousness, then consciousness is a aspect, feature, attribute or however you care to put it, of an active brain.

Again, proposing non material consciousness as a solution to how consciousness forms is no solution at all.

Non material is inexplicable. It can't be defined, detected or used as an explanatory model for consciousness.

What is this proposed 'non material?' How does it work? How does it interact with material? How does it explain anything?

 

[untermensche]

I'm defining what it is. Attention is an active process. We have to "do" it. It doesn't just happen, except when frightened by a sound and the head turns. Underlying much of the nervous system are reflexes. But we don't use reflexes to walk or to actively attend.

Remember when they used to put subliminal smoking adds in the movie theaters? Well they had our attention on some level without us knowing it.

Not true. There was possibly a very weak awareness. No attention to it at all.

Apparently we can process information that we are not experiencing at the moment to help make decisions, even complex decisions as this paper points out.

That study is explicitly about the difference between attention and awareness.

But it defines attention as I do, as something active.

And awareness as something passive.

They are just saying that passive awareness can affect a future choice. It is not saying that passive awareness is the same thing as attention.

No, you still have it backwards. The consumers distracted from the products' (vehicles) information are the less attentive or "low attention" group as he called them. The "high attention" group was told to focus on the products. There was similar information processing between the two. The passive attention group would be the "low attention" group.

But yeah, he uses "attention" quite loosely. He really means awareness for the "high attention" group.

No I have nothing backwards.

To attend is an active process.

Nothing you presented says otherwise.

Calling not attending "low attention" is a joke. It is NO attention.

It is minimal awareness. Awareness is passive.

This is what frustrates me about cognitive science and why it is limited. They know damn well they mean awareness but instead they use "high attention" for the aware part of the experiment, and "low attention" for the unaware part. They can't use "awareness" because science hasn't recognized it yet, so they have to come up with "high attention".

All they really know about this stuff anyway is subjective reporting. The physiology is not explained, beyond location of unexplained and not understood "activity".

So use your subjective experience.

We know from experience what it is to pay attention to something. We even know what it means to pay "special" attention.

It is an active process.

And we do it at "will". With the "will".

When the "will" is actively involved it is paying attention, otherwise it is merely awareness.

Attention and the "will" are inseparable.

Awareness is not attached to the "will". We can just look out and the brain will create something based on light stimulation. That doesn't mean we have to attend to any of it. We can just "space out" and not pay attention to any of it, even though there is definitely an awareness of it.

One has to be aware that modern day so-called "cognitive science" is filled with myths.

One of them being; the conscious "will" does not exist.

 

[ryan]

For instance how would you feel if soft social scientist (history, philosophy, african studies, dietary studies) began yammering about substances used to keep such as immune systems in liquid form for easy use as being dangerous to humans or GMOs, scientific breeding in the lab, as being somehow dangerous when natures way isn't considered as such. When you are tempted to have that thought just consider what we are doing to ourselves with diabetes by just letting nature do it.

The philosophical side is basically saying that something is not being accounted for with even a full objective account of the brain. The key word is "objective". Science only builds an objective construction of the universe; this will not include something that can only be detected/known by each individual person.

 

[ryan]

Pixels forming on a screen is like taking some rocks on the ground and moving them around to form an image. For a new rock arrangement, there is nothing there that wasn't there before. The emergence from these rocks is in our minds because the mind has a mysterious "wholeness" to what it observes. Out there the rocks are always individual; they are never a whole like the holistic projection we get in our mind. This is the "unity problem" which is under the "what" and "how" general questions.

For the life of me, I can't how your comment relates to what I said.

If, as the evidence strongly supports, it is brain activity that forms and generates consciousness, then consciousness is a aspect, feature, attribute or however you care to put it, of an active brain.

Again, proposing non material consciousness as a solution to how consciousness forms is no solution at all.

Non material is inexplicable. It can't be defined, detected or used as an explanatory model for consciousness.

What is this proposed 'non material?' How does it work? How does it interact with material? How does it explain anything?

Again, the how, what and why questions are unknown. Do you not read my posts?

Subjectivity during brain activity does not necessarily have the typical physical properties. Subjectivity is a localized existence of experiences that probably are cause by the brain. But unlike any other physical property, it doesn't affect anything.