Consciousness

[untermensche]

This is not responsive to the point.

What I am saying is a truism, nothing that can be argued away. One either understands it or one does not.

The act of experience requires TWO things. It requires that which experiences AND the things it can experience.

Saying the brain is doing both doesn't change this.

You are completely lost.

You think that which is aware of the representation of the tree is the same thing as the representation.

You are so wrong you are completely useless in any discussion of consciousness. You have no clue what it even is.

A good cry in the corner may help. It can't hurt. You'll probably feel better after.

That which is aware of the representation of the tree is the very same mechanism that formed the conscious representation of a tree...and that mechanism is in fact the brain, the brain being the only known source of consciousness formation.

There you have, like it or not. Cry about it if you like. It might help.

You know nothing about any mechanisms. You are a joke with your talk of mechanisms.

All you can talk about are crude locations of activity, not the exact same area in every person, and timing of activity. But your only understanding of the activity is through subjective reporting. Without subjective reporting you know nothing.

But this is a philosophical truism you can't argue away. To even think you can shows a deep ignorance, or perhaps stubbornness.

The act of experience requires TWO things.

That which experiences (consciousness).

And the things it can experience (sights, sounds, emotions, sensations, thoughts, and all the rest).

And it is the same singular consciousness aware of it all. Not a separate consciousness for each.

You are completely lost and useless in any discussion of consciousness.

 

[fromderinside]

We'd be closer if you got rid of some wasted words. Awareness is a state in the process perceiving That which is is the state of the process. Whatever is perceived are of which we can be aware. We aren't ever aware of things since things are reserved for the material. We can be aware of aspects of what surrounds us received and passed through the brain of what is received by our receptors.Think of awareness as a particular neuron having just reached threshold and is now transmitting an impulse(s) from axon(s) characterizing our brain's perception of what it has sensed.

Oh, and I didn't say anything about there being only one.

 

[Speakpigeon]

...You could criticise them if you had any beginning of an idea how to tacle the problem of consciousness. But I don't think that's the case....

The first step is defining what you are looking for.

You are not looking for the representations made by the brain.

You are looking for that which is aware of the representations.

As far as qualia, that is a redundant concept.

The idea of experience already has contained within it the idea of experiencing in a certain way.

No other concept besides experience is needed.

How a brain could create something that can experience? That is the question.

Not the hard problem, but A hard problem.

How a brain creates a sound is probably just as hard.

But you do have to explain qualia.

You have to explain the existence of consciousness but also the quality of experience. If we assume for example the existence of a brain, we have to explain qualia in relation to this material brain. Maybe there are no brains but we still have to explain qualia. Although maybe it's not possible at all. Who said it had to be?
EB

 

[fromderinside]

Simple mind here.

What if we started with a simple model, an antecedent. if we observed other animals with backbones, with bilateral symmetry, with a nervous system, and with the ability to distinguish food from other. Isn't it necessary for one to be aware to be aware of food and other than food? If not, why not?

Yes I didn't start at the beginning. I presumed everybody knows humans are bilaterally symmetric, move, have a nervous system, and have the ability to distinguish food from other.

So my question about being aware is moot since we are aware and by similarity others with such attributes as we, we can presume they are aware if they find and eat food, or, what we surmise as food.

What's neat about this form of modelling is we can choose a being with these qualities which we can observe, experiment, and record. I suggest we take one of the simplest with these attributes, the Manta Ray since it has what other scientists describe as all the elements of nervous function required to be conscious. It has structures for memory, association, perceiving, and directing its activity with respect to such as food.

In fact others have already done this work. One, Francis Crick, has observed the manta have a visual system capable of defining edges and olfactory and tactile systems capable of discerning metabolic substances, a memory, and an associative capability in its nervous system.

Together with these capabilities we have measured the manta's capability to detect, move toward and capture food, and that it uses its visual system, olfactory system, and tactile systems to perceive and control its motor system to recover said food. It has been studied to the extent that after finding novel food, it learns to search out that particular food again for its' satisfaction. So we have a nice little model for awareness study.

Remarkably it uses it's analogues to our systems to do what our systems do to accomplish finding and consuming food. What the manta doesn't have is the ability to communicate with us about how it accomplishes what we accomplish and talk about.

I put that problem in the trivial bin since we can record from both and observe both making telling is what's on its mind a minor thing.

Now I could go the recesses of my mind and conjure up some paradigm of proof which would satisfy me and those of like kind, but, it wouldn't generalize to other living things which I find pretty important since it has become overwhelming evident since we do have almost absolute knowledge that they and we are deterministically genetically related.

Which brings me back to the model I just presented that seems to do the same thing, but, without the communication linkage.

In reference to the communication thing I presented a challenge for those who disagree with my approach to try to think when they don't access language. I'm pretty certain we can and do think without language else we couldn't do much of what we do which when we don't articulate it. This puts me in the place of pointing to other species that do things we do without the aid of language.

Let's say we can't say "cogito ergo sum". Does that mean because that is so we can't be? I don't think so. Again I point to our vertebrate cousins and other relatives.

Why am I doing this?

I'm doing this to get people away from framing philosophical questions in terms of well developed and articulated languages. How about a point method or a demonstration method, or Philosophy forbid, and experimental method. Are not experiments and demonstrations rational?

 

[ryan]

Then why aren't we saying all that about curling stones? Did you read my whole post?

What I said applies to any mystery. Are you suggesting that we should be looking for non material explanations for curling stones?

No, I am saying that we are not assuming anything immaterial about the stone because there is no obvious reason to. We know it is purely a physical issue. With the consciousness being a subjective entity, perhaps as a property of matter but a property that only one location in space can detect, there is no detecting it. You need its subjectivity to detect it.

 

[untermensche]

We'd be closer if you got rid of some wasted words. Awareness is a state in the process perceiving That which is is the state of the process. Whatever is perceived are of which we can be aware. We aren't ever aware of things since things are reserved for the material. We can be aware of aspects of what surrounds us received and passed through the brain of what is received by our receptors.Think of awareness as a particular neuron having just reached threshold and is now transmitting an impulse(s) from axon(s) characterizing our brain's perception of what it has sensed.

Oh, and I didn't say anything about there being only one.

What is this "we" you are talking about?

What is aware when you say "we can be aware"?

What is it aware of?

 

[Juma]

What I said applies to any mystery. Are you suggesting that we should be looking for non material explanations for curling stones?

No, I am saying that we are not assuming anything immaterial about the stone because there is no obvious reason to. We know it is purely a physical issue. With the consciousness being a subjective entity, perhaps as a property of matter but a property that only one location in space can detect, there is no detecting it. You need its subjectivity to detect it.

You dont know that.

 

[ryan]

No, I am saying that we are not assuming anything immaterial about the stone because there is no obvious reason to. We know it is purely a physical issue. With the consciousness being a subjective entity, perhaps as a property of matter but a property that only one location in space can detect, there is no detecting it. You need its subjectivity to detect it.

You dont know that.

Assume we somehow detect it. We would detect it with something physical, right? But then the subjectivity's ability to be detected gives it a physical property. Then we are back at the start again where there is a physical correlate to the subjective property.

Subjectivity is just a different kind of thing than any physical thing.

 

[fromderinside]

We'd be closer if you got rid of some wasted words. Awareness is a state in the process perceiving That which is is the state of the process. Whatever is perceived are of which we can be aware. We aren't ever aware of things since things are reserved for the material. We can be aware of aspects of what surrounds us received and passed through the brain of what is received by our receptors.Think of awareness as a particular neuron having just reached threshold and is now transmitting an impulse(s) from axon(s) characterizing our brain's perception of what it has sensed.

Oh, and I didn't say anything about there being only one.

What is this "we" you are talking about?

What is aware when you say "we can be aware"?

What is it aware of?

we are the ones with brains and nervous systems to which I refer.

As stated in the piece anyone of the biological beings on earth with backbones, bilateral symmetry, brains and nervous systems, that are capable of distinguishing food from other and capable of finding and consuming food either as the result of noting aspects of whatever it is that makes in consumable, remembering it, capturing, and consuming it, when it is perceived. We are any beings in that class of animals I described in my piece. Things of which we are able to be aware are food and other than food.

With to ability to perceive food and other it's not much of a stretch to distinguish one kind of food from another kind of food and from other such as shelter and enemy. Now the list begins to get long. What we perceive are combinations of received odor, image, sound, feeling, and tactile induced neural impulse combinations organized by the nature of our nervous systems and feedback from activities we execute into patterns of food and non food signals. The ways these sensed and perceived impulses are interpreted by our nervous systems are individual and species specific. They obey principles of neural organization, transport, and transfer of nervous tissue,

 

[untermensche]

The piece?

Backbones?

I suggest you refill your prescriptions. You are not communicating.

The act of experiencing is not explained by any of your jargon. That is why you use it.

It is to hide your ignorance.

The act of experiencing is explained by no science, understood by no human.

All we can say about it is that the act of experiencing requires TWO things.

That which can experience.

AND the things it can experience.

And there is a divide between the two. There must be.

To experience something you (consciousness) must be separated from it.

 

[fromderinside]

If I can emulate it I have explained it.

...and 50 years ago I emulated acoustic neuron firing in response to a sound by reproducing what was known about processing sound by the middle ear, the ear drum. the organ of corti, and the function of inner hair cells using analog logic modules so you better be prepared to eat your hat when you continue this path.

What you should be saying is you have no idea about experiencing ....

Over the remainder of my career I modeled human behavior for the air force, the department of defense, and civil aviation, finally completing development of one of several Global Operator Modelling Systems. So, yes I have and can emulate experience. Human operator systems are what the military uses to model and predict predict pilot performance without sacrificing pilots. It works the same way my ear model worked. All that need be done is replace humans with performance parameter models so that the model replicates human behavior over a variety of conditions and situations. We, the operator modeling field, have ample information to produce experience of most anything humans experience in most any situations. This modelling effort has been ongoing for over 80 years now.

Here's a buzz for your ear: Skills, Rules, and Knowledge: Signals, Signs, and Symbols, and Other Distinctions in Human Performance Models https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...3848843/SkillsRulesAndKnowledge-Rasmussen.pdf

 

[DBT]

What I said applies to any mystery. Are you suggesting that we should be looking for non material explanations for curling stones?

No, I am saying that we are not assuming anything immaterial about the stone because there is no obvious reason to. We know it is purely a physical issue. With the consciousness being a subjective entity, perhaps as a property of matter but a property that only one location in space can detect, there is no detecting it. You need its subjectivity to detect it.

We currently say ''subjective'' but it may not be what we say it is, or think it is...that being the aspect which we don't yet understand.

It may become possible in the future to hook a brain to a quantum computer, which reads and interprets its flow of information and forms its own virtual/mental representation in its own workspace outside of the brain, thus objectifying the consciousness of the brain being read in as many locations as desired.

The point is; we don't know. What is clear is that conscious mind is specifically related to active brains, thus not to be found anywhere else.

 

[ryan]

No, I am saying that we are not assuming anything immaterial about the stone because there is no obvious reason to. We know it is purely a physical issue. With the consciousness being a subjective entity, perhaps as a property of matter but a property that only one location in space can detect, there is no detecting it. You need its subjectivity to detect it.

We currently say ''subjective'' but it may not be what we say it is, or think it is...that being the aspect which we don't yet understand.

It may become possible in the future to hook a brain to a quantum computer, which reads and interprets its flow of information and forms its own virtual/mental representation in its own workspace outside of the brain, thus objectifying the consciousness of the brain being read in as many locations as desired.

The point is; we don't know. What is clear is that conscious mind is specifically related to active brains, thus not to be found anywhere else.

Yes, they are related, practically parallel.

But the subjectivity is not needed to explain anything physically observable about me. Like I told Juma, if they pinpointed the exact physical correlation to the experience of the color green, then the physical correlate would still have the physical properties and the subjective experience property. It will always be out of reach from our physical instruments.

 

[Juma]

We currently say ''subjective'' but it may not be what we say it is, or think it is...that being the aspect which we don't yet understand.

It may become possible in the future to hook a brain to a quantum computer, which reads and interprets its flow of information and forms its own virtual/mental representation in its own workspace outside of the brain, thus objectifying the consciousness of the brain being read in as many locations as desired.

The point is; we don't know. What is clear is that conscious mind is specifically related to active brains, thus not to be found anywhere else.

Yes, they are related, practically parallel.

But the subjectivity is not needed to explain anything physically observable about me. Like I told Juma, if they pinpointed the exact physical correlation to the experience of the color green, then the physical correlate would still have the physical properties and the subjective experience property. It will always be out of reach from our physical instruments.

Your are acting out (talking about, writing about) your subjective experience thus there must be a causal chain between your subjectivit experience and these physical acts.

 

[ryan]

Yes, they are related, practically parallel.

But the subjectivity is not needed to explain anything physically observable about me. Like I told Juma, if they pinpointed the exact physical correlation to the experience of the color green, then the physical correlate would still have the physical properties and the subjective experience property. It will always be out of reach from our physical instruments.

Your are acting out (talking about, writing about) your subjective experience thus there must be a causal chain between your subjectivit experience and these physical acts.

It would fit nicely that "aboutness" is the filler that unites the consciousness between every discontinuous physical correlate.

 

[DBT]

We currently say ''subjective'' but it may not be what we say it is, or think it is...that being the aspect which we don't yet understand.

It may become possible in the future to hook a brain to a quantum computer, which reads and interprets its flow of information and forms its own virtual/mental representation in its own workspace outside of the brain, thus objectifying the consciousness of the brain being read in as many locations as desired.

The point is; we don't know. What is clear is that conscious mind is specifically related to active brains, thus not to be found anywhere else.

Yes, they are related, practically parallel.

Causal. We can in fact alter perception through the use of mind altering substances, where, while under the influence of the chemical agent you no longer perceive the world as you did in your normal state because brain chemistry has been altered.

But the subjectivity is not needed to explain anything physically observable about me. Like I told Juma, if they pinpointed the exact physical correlation to the experience of the color green, then the physical correlate would still have the physical properties and the subjective experience property. It will always be out of reach from our physical instruments.

You don't know that. As the brain interprets different wavelengths of light in terms of colour, our quantum processor, given the capacity to process information, should also able to detect wavelength and assign a colour value in order to form its own virtual model of the external world in full colour and detail.

 

[ryan]

Yes, they are related, practically parallel.

Causal. We can in fact alter perception through the use of mind altering substances, where, while under the influence of the chemical agent you no longer perceive the world as you did in your normal state because brain chemistry has been altered.

Sure it might emerge from matter, but it seems to pretty much parallel everything its material correlate does. But I wouldn't be surprized if it has a more functional role; that would be very spooky though.

But the subjectivity is not needed to explain anything physically observable about me. Like I told Juma, if they pinpointed the exact physical correlation to the experience of the color green, then the physical correlate would still have the physical properties and the subjective experience property. It will always be out of reach from our physical instruments.

You don't know that. As the brain interprets different wavelengths of light in terms of colour, our quantum processor, given the capacity to process information, should also able to detect wavelength and assign a colour value in order to form its own virtual model of the external world in full colour and detail.

For any physical detection, there will be a physical property. If the mind is also a property, then that is a different property from the physical properties. It is a different kind of thing.

 

[George S]

...<snip>
Together with these capabilities we have measured the manta's capability to detect, move toward and capture food, and that it uses its visual system, olfactory system, and tactile systems to perceive and control its motor system to recover said food. It has been studied to the extent that after finding novel food, it learns to search out that particular food again for its' satisfaction. So we have a nice little model for awareness study.

Remarkably it uses it's [sic] analogues to our systems to do what our systems do to accomplish finding and consuming food. What the manta doesn't have is the ability to communicate with us about how it accomplishes what we accomplish and talk about.
<snip>...

I was 30 feet down in the crystal waters off the Virgin Islands. All the others in the party had surfaced, and there approached a manta ray. As it approached I spread my arms to get an idea of its size. It (I'll use "he") had about a six foot wingspan.
He tilted to his right and so I did, too. We circled each other round and round and then he dove and up through the swirling water we created. It was a ballet with him leading. It turns out it is manta feeding behaviour usually done by two rays. He sure acted conscious.

 

[untermensche]

If I can emulate it I have explained it.

...and 50 years ago I emulated acoustic neuron firing in response to a sound by reproducing what was known about processing sound by the middle ear, the ear drum. the organ of corti, and the function of inner hair cells using analog logic modules so you better be prepared to eat your hat when you continue this path.

What you should be saying is you have no idea about experiencing ....

Over the remainder of my career I modeled human behavior for the air force, the department of defense, and civil aviation, finally completing development of one of several Global Operator Modelling Systems. So, yes I have and can emulate experience. Human operator systems are what the military uses to model and predict predict pilot performance without sacrificing pilots. It works the same way my ear model worked. All that need be done is replace humans with performance parameter models so that the model replicates human behavior over a variety of conditions and situations. We, the operator modeling field, have ample information to produce experience of most anything humans experience in most any situations. This modelling effort has been ongoing for over 80 years now.

Here's a buzz for your ear: Skills, Rules, and Knowledge: Signals, Signs, and Symbols, and Other Distinctions in Human Performance Models https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...3848843/SkillsRulesAndKnowledge-Rasmussen.pdf

Great.

For 25 years I worked to help human beings recover function after suffering a stroke.

You explained nothing about human consciousness with your work and me mine.

Now where are we?

You thinking you can surmount philosophical truisms. Like the truism that to have experience you need both something which can experience and something to experience. You cannot merely have something to experience.

 

[untermensche]

The first step is defining what you are looking for.

You are not looking for the representations made by the brain.

You are looking for that which is aware of the representations.

As far as qualia, that is a redundant concept.

The idea of experience already has contained within it the idea of experiencing in a certain way.

No other concept besides experience is needed.

How a brain could create something that can experience? That is the question.

Not the hard problem, but A hard problem.

How a brain creates a sound is probably just as hard.

But you do have to explain qualia.

You have to explain the existence of consciousness but also the quality of experience. If we assume for example the existence of a brain, we have to explain qualia in relation to this material brain. Maybe there are no brains but we still have to explain qualia. Although maybe it's not possible at all. Who said it had to be?
EB

OK.

So there is that which experiences: consciousness. And to experience always means to experience in a particular way.

And there is that which is experienced: sights, sounds, emotions, thoughts and all the rest.

And there is the quality of these experiences. Which is an emergent property of the combination of the two. Not really something on it's own. Never something existing on it's own.