Consciousness

[untermensche]

How is there an experience if there is nothing that has the experience?

Just answer that.

My explanation makes sense. When there is experience there is both that which can experience AND the things it experiences.

You make no sense.

Explain.

The brain is both. Everything is happening in one place at the same time. What do you imagine is experiencing the representations created by the brain, if not the brain itself? What is this mysterious other party?

The brain might create both.

But both are necessary.

You can't have experience without something that can experience.

And you can't have experience without something to experience.

 

[untermensche]

No they cannot be the same thing. They are not the same thing.

So you are saying that you don't experience yourself?

I wish the rest of us were so fortunate.

No, I don't experience my consciousness. Nor does anybody else.

I experience thoughts and memories and sights and sounds.

But my consciousness is that which experiences. It does not experience itself.

Humans do create a "mental picture" of themselves, based on memories and impressions and hopes, and consciousness is aware of this.

 

[ryan]

So you are saying that you don't experience yourself?

I wish the rest of us were so fortunate.

No, I don't experience my consciousness. Nor does anybody else.

I experience thoughts and memories and sights and sounds.

But my consciousness is that which experiences. It does not experience itself.

Humans do create a "mental picture" of themselves, based on memories and impressions and hopes, and consciousness is aware of this.

He is just trolling you.

 

[fromderinside]

There was no subject there with which to begin. Input is input repeated input is input input again.

There was no brain there to begin with.

But when there is the objects of experience are not the same thing as that which experiences them.

I cannot experience something unless I can make some distinction between it and me.

BS. If you were a machine with a window the machine would experience both the elements crashing upon it and the light pouring into the interior through its window. Since you are a machine with eyes you will experience in similar fashion to the machine I just described. Putting a nice little homunculus in the machine only acts as a repeater. I suggest articulation can be a homunculus repeating much of what is experienced. Forget about the articulation when you think of experience and, wallah, you just experience.

 

[untermensche]

There was no brain there to begin with.

But when there is the objects of experience are not the same thing as that which experiences them.

I cannot experience something unless I can make some distinction between it and me.

BS. If you were a machine with a window the machine would experience both the elements crashing upon it and the light pouring into the interior through its window. Since you are a machine with eyes you will experience in similar fashion to the machine I just described. Putting a nice little homunculus in the machine only acts as a repeater. I suggest articulation can be a homunculus repeating much of what is experienced. Forget about the articulation when you think of experience and, wallah, you just just experience.

If a machine experiences it must have BOTH something that can experience AND something to experience.

The dichotomy of subject and object are always present if there is experience.

 

[Juma]

BS. If you were a machine with a window the machine would experience both the elements crashing upon it and the light pouring into the interior through its window. Since you are a machine with eyes you will experience in similar fashion to the machine I just described. Putting a nice little homunculus in the machine only acts as a repeater. I suggest articulation can be a homunculus repeating much of what is experienced. Forget about the articulation when you think of experience and, wallah, you just just experience.

If a machine experiences it must have BOTH something that can experience AND something to experience.

Yes. And they can be the same thing.

 

[PyramidHead]

If a machine experiences it must have BOTH something that can experience AND something to experience.

Yes. And they can be the same thing.

That's the point I was trying to get across. Subject and object are two functions that need not correspond to two different substances. One substance (the brain) can perform both functions.

 

[untermensche]

If a machine experiences it must have BOTH something that can experience AND something to experience.

Yes. And they can be the same thing.

No they can not.

They must be two "things".

Something that experiences.

And something to experience.

If there is experience it is experience of something by something.

Again this is not language creating the situation. It is language describing the situation.

 

[PyramidHead]

We are now quibbling about the definition of "thing" - time to get back on track

Yes. And they can be the same thing.

No they can not.

This word-mincing is boring and unproductive. Where are we on this topic now?

What does everybody finally believe is true with regards to consciousness and the mind/body problem?

I'll go first.

Does the brain create consciousness? Yes.

How? Nobody knows for sure.

Is consciousness a different substance from the brain that creates it? No, with the caveat: we don't know all there is to know about the substance of the brain, or substance in general.

What's the ontological relationship between consciousness and the brain? Currently, I think anomalous or multiple-aspect monism is the safest bet. There are not different types of things, nor are there really things per se, apart from the way we divide up the universe for convenience. But there is a mental aspect of consciousness that can't be described in terms of what we call its physical aspect. There is still only one substance (call it "phental" if you want), but viewing it from the inside is not reducible to viewing it from the outside.

What are qualia? The subjective, first-person sensations that constitute the mental aspect of the brain when it experiences something via sensory input.

Are qualia causally efficacious? That's a category error, since qualia are not 'made of' a different substance apart from the brain. Qualia are just what the brain is like from the mental perspective, which for reasons we don't yet understand cannot be reduced to what it's like from the physical perspective. But whatever event is happening is just one event, with the accompanying causal powers it may have.

What is the difference between different instances of consciousness? Nothing apart from their location in 4-D spacetime. Nobody is a distinct person that has unchanging dominion over the mental events that take place in their brain during their life. Mental events that are separated by space (my brain vs. another brain) are not a special case compared to mental events separated by time (my brain today vs. my brain tomorrow). In other words, we are all the same consciousness, but not in the Hindu "big self" mystical way, but by virtue of there being no characteristics that could account for dividing consciousness along one dimension and not the other.

Is everything conscious? In light of the above points, I don't see any advantage to adopting panpsychism. To put it in ontological terms, not everything has a mental aspect; not everything can be observed from the first person perspective.

What happens when I die? Everything stored in your brain will be lost. But look at it this way: if you think you are the same consciousness you were yesterday, there's really no sense in which you're a different consciousness from any other self-aware slice of 4-D spacetime. In practice, this is no different from saying you'll be gone forever, since nobody can remember things that are stored in a brain other than their own (yet). But if we somehow came up with a way to link up multiple brains into a super-consciousness that had access to all of their contents, and then unlinked them so they became individual brains again, there is no answer to the question of which consciousness ended up in which brain after the unlinking. This being the case, "your" consciousness, the bare sense of being a subject that experiences things, will exist as long as there are brainlike objects capable of generating consciousness.

 

[fromderinside]

BS. If you were a machine with a window the machine would experience both the elements crashing upon it and the light pouring into the interior through its window. Since you are a machine with eyes you will experience in similar fashion to the machine I just described. Putting a nice little homunculus in the machine only acts as a repeater. I suggest articulation can be a homunculus repeating much of what is experienced. Forget about the articulation when you think of experience and, wallah, you just just experience.

If a machine experiences it must have BOTH something that can experience AND something to experience.

The dichotomy of subject and object are always present if there is experience.

...and on toward reductio .... experience implies something to experience, so formally parsing out subject object is a bit over the top. When one experiences it is presumed there is something to experience else there is no experience so swatting this mote isn't worth the typing, yet, here I am typing a response to one who insists the obvious as if others weren't aware of such necessity. Your point is pointless because your point is required for the existence of the term we discuss.

 

[untermensche]

No they can not.

This word-mincing is boring and unproductive....

What is unproductive is making claims and running away from them.

If you think there is another way for there to be experience without BOTH that which experiences and the things it experiences spell it out.

If not just give up the point.

And it is not a minor point.

When we are looking for consciousness in the brain we are not looking for the representations made by the brain.

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

 

[untermensche]

If a machine experiences it must have BOTH something that can experience AND something to experience.

The dichotomy of subject and object are always present if there is experience.

...and on toward reductio .... experience implies something to experience, so formally parsing out subject object is a bit over the top. When one experiences it is presumed there is something to experience else there is no experience so swatting this mote isn't worth the typing, yet, here I am typing a response to one who insists the obvious as if others weren't aware of such necessity. Your point is pointless because your point is required for the existence of the term we discuss.

You haven't addressed the point.

There is BOTH:

That which can experience.

AND the "things" it can experience.

There is no other way for experience to occur.

When there is experience there is both subject and object. Not just object.

 

[fromderinside]

No they can not.

This word-mincing is boring and unproductive. Where are we on this topic now?

What does everybody finally believe is true with regards to consciousness and the mind/body problem?

I'll go first.

Does the brain create consciousness? No.

How? Nobody has to care since it doesn't exist in the material world.

Is consciousness a different substance from the brain that creates it? No. The elements we attribute to consciousness are compiled state of processes the brain executes

What's the ontological relationship between consciousness and the brain? If there is an ontological relationship between the brain and what we interpret to be consciousness it is in the social context of many brains interacting through behavior of associated organisms. If one were to say what consciousness is one would say it is the experience states of social processes relative to survival of the target brain's processes.

What are qualia? re-representations of experiences usually through articulation or sensory review.

Are qualia causally efficacious? That's a category error, since qualia are not 'made of' a different substance apart from the brain. Qualia are just what the brain is like from the mental perspective, which for reasons we don't yet understand because they are not yet reduced to what it's like from the physical perspective. But whatever event is happening is just one event.

What is the difference between different instances of consciousness? Nothing apart from their location in 4-D spacetime. Nobody is a distinct person that has unchanging dominion over the mental events that take place in their brain during their life. Mental events that are separated by space (my brain vs. another brain) are not a special case compared to mental events separated by time (my brain today vs. my brain tomorrow). In other words, we are all the same consciousness, but not in the Hindu "big self" mystical way, but by virtue of there being no characteristics that could account for dividing consciousness along one dimension and not the other. Not changing this because it's irrelevant and harmless.

Is everything conscious? In light of the above points, I don't see any advantage to adopting panpsychism. To put it in ontological terms, not everything has a mental aspect; not everything can be observed from the first person perspective. Again fitting something that is obviously material into a philosophical frame is unneeded.

What happens when I die? Everything stored in your brain will be lost. But look at it this way: if you think you are the same consciousness you were yesterday, there's really no sense in which you're a different consciousness from any other self-aware slice of 4-D spacetime. In practice, this is no different from saying you'll be gone forever, since nobody can remember things that are stored in a brain other than their own (yet). But if we somehow came up with a way to link up multiple brains into a super-consciousness that had access to all of their contents, and then unlinked them so they became individual brains again, there is no answer to the question of which consciousness ended up in which brain after the unlinking. This being the case, "your" consciousness, the bare sense of being a subject that experiences things, will exist as long as there are brainlike objects capable of generating consciousness. (yada yada yada)

Rewrote above to make it more compliant with state of science

 

[ryan]

How? Nobody has to care since it doesn't exist in the material world.

I for one somehow find my conscious existence kind of interesting, especially an entity that "doesn't exist in the material world" as you put it. The feelings of pain, happiness, love, fear, knowledge etc. and how they came from matter are things that people care about, kind of all there is that matters.

What the sun will do in 5 billion years is fun to know about, but what about the consciousness that brings us into reality? How can you not care about that; after all, you need consciousness to even care about anything.

 

[fromderinside]

Listen to Lewis Black. "It's an ill-llusioonn"

The only thing o may have hit upon in that sweet little screed is "care about anything". Ask yourself "What is motivation" What is Emotion", What is drive" 'What is Desire" Psychologists and neuroscientists go all arms and shoulders up when the rubber needs to hit the road. Yet we eat, have sex, want money, and all that other stuff that goers with having the good life.

All of these are place holders for what actually makes us go which is, at first blush, something to do with the nervous system and endocrine and hormone systems working with other systems to make it though life.

Mantas are conscious of food, seek out food, avoid threats. We basically know how they differentiate between food and other, between other and threats, but we call them instinct driven. When you come up with a way to call what mantas do and what humans do the same thing for the same reasons I may begin to listen.

Do you think I'll have to do that?

Of course not.

 

[DBT]

Thalamocortical, Reticular, and Limbic systems.

''Limbic or emotional networks simultaneously coordinate behavioral, autonomic, and endocrine adjustments are required to maintain cellular homeostasis. Bonding, feeding, reproductive, fightor-flight behaviors are accompanied by specific change in neurohormonal output and autonomic discharge rates to the heart, immune system, and other viscera.

There are two triggering stimuli, which I mentioned earlier, that trigger emotional and visceral reactions. One is social environmental cues. Social environmental cues induce emotional and visceral reactions. And physiological stress, for example, asphyxia triggers visceral and emotional reactions. So in essence, the entire network serves as a large memory bank, learning from memory of previous experiences, and then reacting appropriately or inappropriately.


The insular cortex, orbital frontal, and mesocortex are activated by transient asphyxiation, by hypoglycemia, by hypothermic stress, and by electrolyte volume imbalances; and also by changes in arterial blood pressure. The mesocortex receives its information from the viscera down below the board by way of the thalamus. The thalamus projects information to the mesocortex, which influences development of the cognitive neocortex by virtue of its reciprocity, its reciprocal interconnections. These structures form a closed reciprocally interconnected neurohumerally modulated loop involved in learning, memory, and conditioning''


The mesocortex is the perceptual and coding mechanism. It perceives information, especially information from the internal milieu, by way of connections with the visceral associational areas. The activator of adaptive or maladaptive behaviors.''

 

[PyramidHead]

Listen to Lewis Black. "It's an ill-llusioonn"

The only thing o may have hit upon in that sweet little screed is "care about anything". Ask yourself "What is motivation" What is Emotion", What is drive" 'What is Desire" Psychologists and neuroscientists go all arms and shoulders up when the rubber needs to hit the road. Yet we eat, have sex, want money, and all that other stuff that goers with having the good life.

All of these are place holders for what actually makes us go which is, at first blush, something to do with the nervous system and endocrine and hormone systems working with other systems to make it though life.

Mantas are conscious of food, seek out food, avoid threats. We basically know how they differentiate between food and other, between other and threats, but we call them instinct driven. When you come up with a way to call what mantas do and what humans do the same thing for the same reasons I may begin to listen.

Do you think I'll have to do that?

Of course not.

I have no issue calling it doing the same thing, and for the the same "to make it through life" reasons, broadly speaking. But there are gradients of consciousness that are probably related to self-perception and language, which mantas lack. The topic of discussion is the difference between mantas and humans in that respect. In fits and starts, over millions of years, members of our particular lineage started to notice a little voice in their heads, and everything went downhill from there.

 

[fromderinside]

I have no issue calling it doing the same thing, and for the the same "to make it through life" reasons, broadly speaking. But there are gradients of consciousness that are probably related to self-perception and language, which mantas lack. The topic of discussion is the difference between mantas and humans in that respect. In fits and starts, over millions of years, members of our particular lineage started to notice a little voice in their heads, and everything went downhill from there.

I was hoping someone would address things your way. Just ran a little experiment in bed this morning on that topic. It ws not observed by others or recorded so you have to take it with the proverbial ....

Lay there head propped up head pointed toward lake, berm, ocean beyond, Saw them, heard them, even spelled them since window was open. When I tried to list what I saw without sub vocalizing I froze up, still saw, heard, and smelled, but not thoughts, so began to create a list when I began having trouble keeping images, smells, and sounds in forefront of my whatever. Yes I was able to do more than the manta, do more than any other beast I know about, but, at base of everything was composite experience of nature before me.

Do I think I could have reported what I was seeing if I were hypnotized? Of course. Could I do it under influence of drugs. Yep. ?Would I be able to change the experience, say,. by slowing down the motion of leaves as I was aware of myself walking by? Well I did that right after discharge from navy and return to school about 54 years ago after taking LSD.

Is there a point to all this. Of course. There are multiple dimensions of what I experience when I am aware, but, to a farthing, they all occur after information is integrated within my brain. So I am talking about experience after I've sensed, organized, sorted, and arranged it all and I think I am witnessing here and now.

While I have to use the place marker for what I experience I am convinced it is no more than my brain doing what it has evolved to do, provide stuff I can rehearse, remember, articulate, which I treat as my experiencing. Makes sense that these facilities eventually become part of whatever is making the machine, me, work.

Obviously there are experiments arising out of this casual in bed analysis that I could design and run to illustrate how all this comes together. but, I prefer to read what others have done in this respect since they are obviously much more capable and in position to carry out than am I.

We've come a long way from manta but I don't think we've escaped being a biological machine just because we have facility to review what has past and plan the future from the position of I.

 

[fromderinside]

Thalamocortical, Reticular, and Limbic systems.

''Limbic or emotional networks simultaneously coordinate behavioral, autonomic, and endocrine adjustments are required to maintain cellular homeostasis. Bonding, feeding, reproductive, fightor-flight behaviors are accompanied by specific change in neurohormonal output and autonomic discharge rates to the heart, immune system, and other viscera.

There are two triggering stimuli, which I mentioned earlier, that trigger emotional and visceral reactions. One is social environmental cues. Social environmental cues induce emotional and visceral reactions. And physiological stress, for example, asphyxia triggers visceral and emotional reactions. So in essence, the entire network serves as a large memory bank, learning from memory of previous experiences, and then reacting appropriately or inappropriately.


The insular cortex, orbital frontal, and mesocortex are activated by transient asphyxiation, by hypoglycemia, by hypothermic stress, and by electrolyte volume imbalances; and also by changes in arterial blood pressure. The mesocortex receives its information from the viscera down below the board by way of the thalamus. The thalamus projects information to the mesocortex, which influences development of the cognitive neocortex by virtue of its reciprocity, its reciprocal interconnections. These structures form a closed reciprocally interconnected neurohumerally modulated loop involved in learning, memory, and conditioning''


The mesocortex is the perceptual and coding mechanism. It perceives information, especially information from the internal milieu, by way of connections with the visceral associational areas. The activator of adaptive or maladaptive behaviors.''

DBT finds recitation of magical, mystical, my brain tour. Lots of stuff going on, probably all meaningful in the end, but little insight into why we are deluded by the mind set of me seen as controlling and deciding what and how I do.

 

[PyramidHead]

I have no issue calling it doing the same thing, and for the the same "to make it through life" reasons, broadly speaking. But there are gradients of consciousness that are probably related to self-perception and language, which mantas lack. The topic of discussion is the difference between mantas and humans in that respect. In fits and starts, over millions of years, members of our particular lineage started to notice a little voice in their heads, and everything went downhill from there.

I was hoping someone would address things your way. Just ran a little experiment in bed this morning on that topic. It ws not observed by others or recorded so you have to take it with the proverbial ....

Lay there head propped up head pointed toward lake, berm, ocean beyond, Saw them, heard them, even spelled them since window was open. When I tried to list what I saw without sub vocalizing I froze up, still saw, heard, and smelled, but not thoughts, so began to create a list when I began having trouble keeping images, smells, and sounds in forefront of my whatever. Yes I was able to do more than the manta, do more than any other beast I know about, but, at base of everything was composite experience of nature before me.

Do I think I could have reported what I was seeing if I were hypnotized? Of course. Could I do it under influence of drugs. Yep. ?Would I be able to change the experience, say,. by slowing down the motion of leaves as I was aware of myself walking by? Well I did that right after discharge from navy and return to school about 54 years ago after taking LSD.

Is there a point to all this. Of course. There are multiple dimensions of what I experience when I am aware, but, to a farthing, they all occur after information is integrated within my brain. So I am talking about experience after I've sensed, organized, sorted, and arranged it all and I think I am witnessing here and now.

While I have to use the place marker for what I experience I am convinced it is no more than my brain doing what it has evolved to do, provide stuff I can rehearse, remember, articulate, which I treat as my experiencing. Makes sense that these facilities eventually become part of whatever is making the machine, me, work.

Obviously there are experiments arising out of this casual in bed analysis that I could design and run to illustrate how all this comes together. but, I prefer to read what others have done in this respect since they are obviously much more capable and in position to carry out than am I.

We've come a long way from manta but I don't think we've escaped being a biological machine just because we have facility to review what has past and plan the future from the position of I.

Good post, but why then do you say consciousness doesn't exist or isn't generated by the brain? Even if the conclusions we draw from our subjective states aren't necessarily accurate, there's still the phenomenon of firsthand experience. Illusions aren't what they seem to be, but they are something rather than nothing.