Definitions of Consciousness: The Poll

[Speakpigeon]

I think there are at least many words that can't be defined in terms of other words without losing meaning (perhaps most words are like that)

Definitions are just meant to make what we mean more explicit, if at all possible.

Short of a proper definition, one way to move forward I think is to identify and make explicit some at least of the necessary conditions. You end up with a partial definition. For example, one necessary condition for being a homo sapiens is to be mammal. It's not enough but it's still a helpful indication. My own definition for consciousness as 'knowledge' works like that.

If we get some traction from voters fast enough we should have later an opportunity to offer new definitions or improve the existing ones.
EB

 

[Kharakov]

In general, when I speak of consciousness, I mean awareness of the environment ("internal"/mind/qualia/subjective, "external"/objective, and combinations of the 2).

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Definitions are just meant to make what we mean more explicit, if at all possible.

There are several types of definitions, with different purposes. But when it comes to colloquial terms, often (I'd say usually) the specific purpose you state is not possible. The words are defined ostensively, not in terms of other words, and usually there are no other words that capture the meaning, which is roughly "one of those things" (pointing at one of those things, or something like that if it's not the sort of thing you can literally point to). When you want to make what you mean more explicit, a way to do it is to provide many examples of things that fall into the category you want to talk about, and things that do not. That allows others to grasp the meaning intuitively, if they haven't already.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Yes, but we can point at consciousness as whatever it is that's going on inside our head. If we're all conscious beings, and perhaps crucially, self-conscious beings, then we can all understand what is meant here. In a sense, humanity has been narrowing down its understanding of consciousness over the last thousands of years. Consciousness is just a narrowing down of our notion of mind, and mind of spirit, and spirit of personhood, and personhood of human being.

There are perhaps difficulties if for example we differ substantially from each other in terms of our experience of being conscious beings but maybe we can still get a consensus if there's enough of people with broadly the same sort of experience. I certainly feel I understand what other people report, although perhaps less here on this forum than outside of it.

I accept there's a difficulty in the very nature of consciousness compared to, say, carrots or rivers, but it seems to me history shows we're reasonably well motivated.

And, presumably, most of us are first-class witness to our private experience of consciousness.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

This seems to be going nowhere fast! Sorry!

Ok, I'm sorry to say this post apparently is going nowhere and will remain inconclusive.

Too few voters, and for all I know we're unlikely to attract more people beyond those who have already voted.

As far as I understand, only about 10% of members who visit this forum are even interested in the topic and, obviously, we don't even want to take into account the views of those who don't have any real interest and motivation.

Moving forward would require fewer options, ideally only two options in addition to 'None of the above' and 'Don't know', but the results of this poll aren't good enough as a basis for selecting the options to keep.

Thank you all for your contributions, though.
EB

 

[DBT]

This may be of interest to someone:


Quote;
Two models of consciousness are contrasted with regard to their treatment of subjective timing. The standard Cartesian Theater model postulates a place in the brain where "it all comes together": where the discriminations in all modalities are somehow put into registration and "presented" for subjective judgment.

In particular, the Cartesian Theater model implies that the temporal properties of the content-bearing events occurring within this privileged representational medium determine subjective order. The alternative, Multiple Drafts model holds that whereas the brain events that discriminate various perceptual contents are distributed in both space and time in the brain, and whereas the temporal properties of these various events are determinate, none of these temporal properties determine subjective order, since there is no single, constitutive "stream of consciousness" but rather a parallel stream of conflicting and continuously revised contents.

Four puzzling phenomena that resist explanation by the standard model are analyzed: two results claimed by Libet, an apparent motion phenomenon involving color change (Kolers and von Grunau), and the "cutaneous rabbit" (Geldard and Sherrick) an illusion of evenly spaced series of "hops" produced by two or more widely spaced series of taps delivered to the skin. The unexamined assumptions that have always made the Cartesian Theater model so attractive are exposed and dismantled.

The Multiple Drafts model provides a better account of the puzzling phenomena, avoiding the scientific and metaphysical extravagances of the Cartesian Theater'



''Awareness is something apart from, and different from, all that of which we are aware: thoughts, emotions, images, sensations, desires and memory. Awareness is the ground in which the mind's contents manifest themselves; they appear in it and disappear once again.

I use the word 'awareness' to mean this ground of all experience. Any attempt to describe it ends in a description of what we are aware of. On this basis some argue that awareness per se doesn't exist.

But careful introspection reveals that the objects of awareness sensations, thoughts, memories, images and emotions are constantly changing and superseding each other. In contrast, awareness continues independent of any specific mental contents.

the observer the 'I' is prior to everything else; without it there is no experience of existence. If awareness did not exist in its own right there would be no 'I'. There would be 'me', my personhood, my social and emotional identity but no 'I', no transparent centre of being.'' - Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3 (4), pp. 350-6. Arthur J. Deikman, 1 Department of Psychiatry, University of California

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Yes, but we can point at consciousness as whatever it is that's going on inside our head. If we're all conscious beings, and perhaps crucially, self-conscious beings, then we can all understand what is meant here. In a sense, humanity has been narrowing down its understanding of consciousness over the last thousands of years. Consciousness is just a narrowing down of our notion of mind, and mind of spirit, and spirit of personhood, and personhood of human being.

Sure, that would be an ostensive definition. However, it seems to me that that restricts consciousness to humans or to humans and entities with similar minds. I was thinking about something much more basic, though I would also use our own consciousness to give an example, but also add - say - that different minds count too (dogs, cats, even insects, and even simpler stuff, assuming there is some sort of subjective experience). If I had to give a rough definition to give someone an idea of what consciousness is (not trying to match the meaning, but just to give an idea of what it is), I would say something like.

1. An object X is conscious iff X experiences something, or alternatively iff there is such thing as what's like to be X.
2. The word "consciusness" is just the nominalization of "conscious".

There are perhaps difficulties if for example we differ substantially from each other in terms of our experience of being conscious beings but maybe we can still get a consensus if there's enough of people with broadly the same sort of experience. I certainly feel I understand what other people report, although perhaps less here on this forum than outside of it.

Sure, I think I can understand that too, I think. But we may be thinking about different things.

I accept there's a difficulty in the very nature of consciousness compared to, say, carrots or rivers, but it seems to me history shows we're reasonably well motivated.

And, presumably, most of us are first-class witness to our private experience of consciousness.

Actually, I would have said something similar with regard to carrots, and perhaps, rivers (in terms of how to define the words). But I do agree with have access to our private experience, though there are I think vastly different experiences (e.g., eagles, cane toads, etc.).

 

[ruby sparks]

In general, when I speak of consciousness, I mean awareness of the environment ("internal"/mind/qualia/subjective, "external"/objective, and combinations of the 2).

Or, could one just shorten it to 'awareness'?

- - - Updated - - -

An object X is conscious iff X experiences something, or alternatively iff there is such thing as what's its like to be X.

I like this one too.

It's basically a perception, a sensation.

Anything else is an add-on, imo. I don't think it has to involve a sense of self, for instance.

 

[DBT]

A sense of self (self awareness) not always present in our experience of the world - being absorbed in a book, a movie or an interesting task, etc.....

 

[ruby sparks]

A sense of self (self awareness) not always present in our experience of the world - being absorbed in a book, a movie or an interesting task, etc.....

Yes. Another time is on waking, where it can take a few seconds for the sense of self to 'click into place'. I also doubt if a one minute old baby has it. Or a gerbil. Or someone with advanced dementia.

I think it's reasonable to talk of degrees of robustness for self, so I tend to think of 'bare' consciousness and self consciousness as different, but on a spectrum. Quite possibly the gap between no consciousness and my experience of bare consciousness is on a spectrum too.

Dreams are interesting. Do they involve some degree of consciousness, or self? When we recall them, they often seem to. It seems we can feel fear, for instance.

 

[OLDMAN]

Are not even simple life forms conscious to various degrees? Flowers close up at night, etc. While not mentally conscious, clearly their system can tell the difference between day and night. So they react to their environment.

So to me the best and simplest definition of consciousness is: The ability of living organisms to be aware of the environment in which they live.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Ok, I'm definitely a none of the above.

Once upon a time, there was a soldier whose job was to control a semi autonomous drone over a battlefield. Part of his job was to spot and kill soldiers doing the same job for the other side. One day, he was laying in the middle of a confused and complex battlefield carefully studying the image from the infrared camera in the drone. Suddenly, he spotted the telltale signature of a drone operator (1) and fired a missile at the newly identified and unsuspecting target. Shortly after firing, he realised he was being targeted by a missile. As he desperately tried to scramble out of the way, he noticed that his target was also trying to escape. Suddenly it dawned on him: (2) he had fired a missile at himself.

The difference between (1) and (2) is the difference between seeing yourself and seeing yourself as yourself. Personally I think that this is half of the story of consciousness and, for tediously extensive reasons, this can trick only be managed by creatures that use language or something so like language that you might as well call it language. A zombie, of the philosophical sort, may well be able to recognise and act on the realisation that the entity that has paint on it and the entity that is behaving like it has paint on it are the same entity, but that's not the same thing. Or to put it another way, I hold that a something about which nothing can be said and a nothing about which nothing can be said are not the same thing.

Which brings me to the other half. I don't believe there is a hard problem. Or rather I do: it's how words like, 'I'm sorry, it's terminal', can have the effect they have on our brains. Answers on a postcard please. However, why it feels like something to be something that it feels like something to be, is simple: That's what it feels like to have the sort of biology we have sharing information in the sort of brain we have in the way that we do. We don't get excited about why water is wet, rust is reddy brown or any number of emergent features of stuff. It just happens that this particular emergent feature of stuff can only be noticed from the perspective of a functioning user illusion in a brain. There's nothing odd or mystical about this, it just happens that water is wet and sharing information causes the illusion that the lights are on - and the illusion is quite enough to be real. Don't forget, a correctly simulated rainshower will only cause virtual wetness, but correctly simulated thought can do what thought does inside and outside of the simulation. That's not to say we can simulate consciousness. We can't we can have it but every brain is different, stochastic and chaotic - we all get our own unique show. Even if you could precisely simulate that (and you can't) then all you'd have is two versions of the same problem - you wouldn't get any closer to reading a mind/brain. It's only once our very private inner states are parsed, imperfectly, into language that we can communicate.

Descartes led us astray. The Cogito assumes that the mind and the body are different things to prove that they are different things. Last time I looked, this is a formal fallacy. The fact is that his skeptical argument only 'proves' that the mind cannot be doubted while the body can if you already assume that the mind and the body are different things. That's just one more reason dualism sucks. As a monist (and boy am I one of those) the default assumption has to be that the mind is the body in action. (Or. at the very least, supervenes upon the body). When rather a lot of science shows that there are some pretty compelling correlations between body and mind, it's time to get into that virtuous circle of science informing metaphysics as metaphysics informs science.

So that'll do - there are two consciousnesses. One public and embedded in the conventions of language and one private and embedded in the biology of the brain. The two are a hopeless mare's nest and that makes systematic study a little challenging. Now I have scripts to mark so don't expect a response unless the displacement is strong in this one.

Oh, and just for fun, did the soldier commit suicide?

 

[Speakpigeon]

Are not even simple life forms conscious to various degrees? Flowers close up at night, etc. While not mentally conscious, clearly their system can tell the difference between day and night. So they react to their environment.

So to me the best and simplest definition of consciousness is: The ability of living organisms to be aware of the environment in which they live.

Thank you for this contribution.

I can't add it to the poll, it's coming too late for that.

Why didn't you contribute this in time?

I think it's quite good because it is shorter than those of the definitions we have that are broadly on the same page.

Still, I can do shorter myself: Consciousness is an awareness.

Because, "life" seems irrelevant to me as long as we have awareness. If a machine achieves awareness, then this should count as consciousness. If not, why not?

And then, why specifically awareness of the environment? Anything you're aware of should be good enough. Dreams and imagining your eyes closed are forms of awareness, presumably. If not, why not?

And this put in sharp focus the need to clarify what you all mean by "awareness". Broadly, dictionaries tend to equate awareness with knowledge. So, why not consciousness as knowledge?
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Descartes led us astray. The Cogito assumes that the mind and the body are different things to prove that they are different things. Last time I looked, this is a formal fallacy. The fact is that his skeptical argument only 'proves' that the mind cannot be doubted while the body can if you already assume that the mind and the body are different things. That's just one more reason dualism sucks.

It's not just Descartes. We're all in the same situation whereby we have, and probably can only have, two fundamentally different descriptions, one for what we know as our subjective experience, and another for the material world that we can only believe it exists.

If you wanted to dispute that, please provide a description of our subjective experience in terms of protons, electromagnetic waves, quarks etc.

So that'll do - there are two consciousnesses. One public and embedded in the conventions of language and one private and embedded in the biology of the brain.

Oh, so now you're saying in fact that we can only make the distinction between what's private, i.e. our subjective experience, and what's public, i.e. the objective world we think is, broadly, material? Yes, Descartes would have approved.

did the soldier commit suicide?

Not if your description of the event is not misleading.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Thanks to all those who voted "None of the above" to try and provide some alternative definition of consciousness you find acceptable.
EB

 

[ruby sparks]

Still, I can do shorter myself: Consciousness is an awareness
EB

Hey, that's exactly what I said in post 28. We completely agree, again!

Personally, I would leave it at that and say that everything else comes after, is an add-on.

Perhaps I should have voted 'none of the above'. Instead, I voted for the one that seemed closest, that had the word 'awareness' in it.

That said, I'm rather fond of 'something that it feels like something to be'. However, I think that while that could be taken to mean just 'having awareness' I fear it could have 'self baggage', the idea that the conscious entity has some idea of self, or if not that then that it feels some identity, which of course is not necessary, so I am much happier, I think, with, 'consciousness is awareness'.

 

[ruby sparks]

Are not even simple life forms conscious to various degrees? Flowers close up at night, etc. While not mentally conscious, clearly their system can tell the difference between day and night. So they react to their environment.

So to me the best and simplest definition of consciousness is: The ability of living organisms to be aware of the environment in which they live.

I'm not sure if flowers have any awareness. They may do, in which case they would qualify as conscious, but...it seems unlikely. Not that we can ever know. I can't even know if you or any other human is actually conscious, let alone a plant.

But this needn't affect the definition of consciousness as awareness, which I'm very much in favour of, at this point (subject to being persuaded otherwise).

 

[ruby sparks]

Because, "life" seems irrelevant to me as long as we have awareness. If a machine achieves awareness, then this should count as consciousness. If not, why not?

No reason why not. I agree.

And then, why specifically awareness of the environment? Anything you're aware of should be good enough. Dreams and imagining your eyes closed are forms of awareness, presumably. If not, why not?

And this put in sharp focus the need to clarify what you all mean by "awareness". Broadly, dictionaries tend to equate awareness with knowledge. So, why not consciousness as knowledge?
EB

Whilst knowledge may be one possible part of the definition of awareness, I don't think it's an essential part. The essential part, I think, is just the perceiving. Personally, I would say that perception is a suitable synonym for awareness, but knowledge is not.

But hey, definitons of words are really just agreed or common usages. In theory any word can mean several things. There's overlap. So someone could, I'm sure make a case for awareness involving knowledge. Personally, I equate knowledge with understanding though. A flower, were it to be conscious, would not necessarily know it was. That's getting towards self consciousness (or at least feeling like something that it feels like something to be) which I think is more than bare consciousness.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Still, I can do shorter myself: Consciousness is an awareness
EB

Hey, that's exactly what I said in post 28. We completely agree, again!

I don't think we do. I think this definition should be seen as the bare bones definition many people with either a materialist or a scientific leaning should be comfortable with but personally I don't like it because people using the term 'awareness' here probably use it differently from normal usage, which is broadly takes awareness to be knowledge.

Personally, I would leave it at that and say that everything else comes after, is an add-on.

Perhaps I should have voted 'none of the above'. Instead, I voted for the one that seemed closest, that had the word 'awareness' in it.

A second poll may come up...

That said, I'm rather fond of 'something that it feels like something to be'. However, I think that while that could be taken to mean just 'having awareness' I fear it could have 'self baggage', the idea that the conscious entity has some idea of self, or if not that then that it feels some identity, which of course is not necessary, so I am much happier, I think, with, 'consciousness is awareness'.

It's not necessarily 'self' which is implied. Instead, it's probably a suggestion that the consciousness of a bat, if any, must be largely determined by the specifics of being a bat, whatever they may be.
EB

 

[Subsymbolic]

If I were to be attempting that, I'd actually try it at the appropriate level: one of computation. However, to be explicit, I'm a property dualist. I think there is only one sort of stuff, but that it can have more than one property. In this case, my claim is that the biological and the mental are the same thing seen from different perspectives. Personally I'm less concerned about sceptical problems of correspondence between experience and reality than coherence across and between theories.

Sure, I can sit rocking silently as I disbelieve everything but the raw experience occurring at this precise moment ands fail to trust memory, cognition and reason. Or alternatively I can get off my arse and start from the far more reasonable perspective that the product of several thousand years of flailing and a few hundred years of really systematic, and largely improving, theorising all fits together rather well. Now, that could be a malign demon who has designed the world to systematically bullshit me, but that's even sillier than most religious claims. As such, I'll rely on the assumption that when a lot of theory fits together quite well across quite a lot of science, the odds are spectacularly good that this is because the theories are a pretty good model of a coherent, consistent world that's really out there.

Actually, Wittgenstein would have approved. Descartes certainly wouldn't as I quite explicitly said it is all physical. I'm just pointing out that the problem of other minds is a problem. If you think not then feel free to tell me what red looks like to me. I'm red green colour blind, but can use colour terms pretty well perfectly except in extreme circumstances.

Oh, and I'm curious as to what your definition of 'knowledge' is, because you seem to be applying it to non conceptualised and non procedural states and that's a pretty heterodox way of using it within philosophy of mind.