Definitions of Consciousness: The Poll

[ruby sparks]

Second, I am unclear quite what the formulation ‘consciousness is awareness’ tells us. Perhaps I’m missing something, but it seems to me that two words are synonyms that play precisely the same role. As such, how is this formulation different from saying consciousness is consciousness? Or to put it another way, what do we learn from using this definition?

My answer would be....

I can see where you're coming from, but remember, it is (at least for me it is) just a core definition and is trying to cover all potential bases. Including trees, mountains, solar systems, Chinese Brains and non-physical minds.

Also, I think a synonym is more than a tautology. We can go on to say what we mean by awareness (or perception, or unadorned sentience, since I'm happy with all of them, but prefer awareness). If, for example, we were to add any more words, we'd be having the same problem more times.

So, for example, even extending it to 'what it feels like something to be' could get us into asking what we mean by 'feel' or 'be'. That said, I am pretty fine with that one too. But asking what 'feel' means is no better than having to ask what 'awareness' means. And having to explain what 'feel' and 'be' means is doubling the work. 'Even 'feels like' could arguably be more complicated than just 'feels'.

I'm imagining that I'm starting a book on consciousness. I don't want to rule out anything, if possible, at the outset.

Call me a pedant if you like, but I am following in the footsteps of Descartes in seeking a firm foundation.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Second, I am unclear quite what the formulation ‘consciousness is awareness’ tells us. Perhaps I’m missing something, but it seems to me that two words are synonyms that play precisely the same role. As such, how is this formulation different from saying consciousness is consciousness? Or to put it another way, what do we learn from using this definition?

My answer would be....

I can see where you're coming from, but remember, it is (at least for me it is) just a core definition and is trying to cover all potential bases. Including trees, mountains, solar systems, Chinese Brains and non-physical minds.

Also, I think a synonym is more than a tautology. We can go on to say what we mean by awareness (or perception, or unadorned sentience, since I'm happy with all of them, but prefer awareness). If, for example, we were to add any more words, we'd be having the same problem more times.

So, for example, even extending it to 'what it feels like something to be' could get us into asking what we mean by 'feel' or 'be'. That said, I am pretty fine with that one too. But asking what 'feel' means is no better than having to ask what 'awareness' means. And having to explain what 'feel' and 'be' means is doubling the work. 'Even 'feels like' could arguably be more complicated than just 'feels'.

I'm imagining that I'm starting a book on consciousness. I don't want to rule out anything, if possible, at the outset.

Call me a pedant if you like, but I am following in the footsteps of Descartes in seeking a firm foundation.

No, really, I wasn't trying to say it was wrong. The problem is that all of these formulations feels to be reaching beyond its remit to try and talk about something we can't really talk about. So if awareness adds something to consciousness then I'm with you. I just wasn't sure what it added.

I'm reminded of something I wrote over in The Other Place:

https://www.secularcafe.org/showthread.php?t=23347

Post two

In fact, my Wittgensteinian roots when talking about behaviourism are explicit in a later post (12) That's precisely the issue. Dennett reads W as saying there's nothing I read him as saying there's something about which nothing can be said.

 

[ruby sparks]

No, really, I wasn't trying to say it was wrong.

I didn't get that impression. I am, however, reminded of your having said that in order not to be incorrect, it is only necessary to be sufficiently vague. And I'm ok with that tag, precisely because I'm only doing a starting definition. On second thoughts, I might argue that I'm being precise.

The problem is that all of these formulations feels to be reaching beyond its remit to try and talk about something we can't really talk about.

We can talk about it with authority in the 1st person surely though? I take the point that we can't talk about it in other entities.

And when it comes to 'us' I am just as keen to distinguish a basic, minimal criteria, lest we assume that even our own consciousness does not vary on a spectrum from basic to sophisticated (where self comes in for example). See: general anaesthetic for example or just 'waking up in the morning' (or indeed 'falling asleep' for that matter). So, in a way, I'm saying we can talk about it. With the very important caveat that subjective introspection is flawed. Which leaves us asking can something like science inform even the 1st person subjective 'authority' that we are, in principle, capable of. I'd say yes, but I haven't yet worked out my follow-up to that intuition.

So if awareness adds something to consciousness then I'm with you. I just wasn't sure what it added.

Gotcha. To further elaborate, for you or maybe just anyone else, imagine you are the parent of a small child who has come across the word 'consciousness' for the first time and they are asking you what it means. Starting with a synonym is a good place if the child already understands the synonym. If the child hasn't come across the word 'awareness' either, you may have to use the term 'feels'. Obviously, this will, as any parent will know, involve more questions from the child, afterwards.

The other aspect of a bare definition is that it excludes stuff. This is arguably as useful as what it includes. So if it excludes for example, self, then that's meant to be because a sense of self is deemed (by me) not necessary for consciousness. The reverse may be true, but then we are not defining self here. I hope I'm not mixing up necessary and sufficient here. I'm always doing that.

I'm reminded of something I wrote over in The Other Place:

https://www.secularcafe.org/showthread.php?t=23347

Post two

In fact, my Wittgensteinian roots when talking about behaviourism are explicit in a later post (12) That's precisely the issue. Dennett reads W as saying there's nothing I read him as saying there's something about which nothing can be said.

That looks highly interesting and I will try to look at it later.

 

[Subsymbolic]

I'm trying to get marking done so I'll just comment on one thing:

We can talk about it with authority in the 1st person surely though?

My opinion is that we can talk about what it seems like to us with indefeasibility; no one can tell us we are wrong. I'm nervous about indefeasibility whenever I encounter it. In this case, I can see no good reason to move beyond indefeasibility to authority. When I think of the multiple way that making judgements about how it seems to me can be wildly divergent from how things are when I can get criteria to check my judgement, I don't feel too optimistic about being any more accurate when there are no reliable criteria for checking my errors against.

Yeah, I think it's possible to be sceptical about experience. That we are having an experience can't be doubted, what that experience is... that's another matter.

 

[ruby sparks]

I'm trying to get marking done so I'll just comment on one thing:

We can talk about it with authority in the 1st person surely though?

My opinion is that we can talk about what it seems like to us with indefeasibility; no one can tell us we are wrong. I'm nervous about indefeasibility whenever I encounter it. In this case, I can see no good reason to move beyond indefeasibility to authority. When I think of the multiple way that making judgements about how it seems to me can be wildly divergent from how things are when I can get criteria to check my judgement, I don't feel too optimistic about being any more accurate when there are no reliable criteria for checking my errors against.

Yeah, I think it's possible to be sceptical about experience. That we are having an experience can't be doubted, what that experience is... that's another matter.

All the more reason to limit the definition to its bare bones!

Or as bare as possible, without providing any definition at all.

But I totally agree with what you said. It's partly why I added my caveat about the unreliability of introspection.

 

[ruby sparks]

I'm reminded of something I wrote over in The Other Place:

https://www.secularcafe.org/showthread.php?t=23347

Post two

In fact, my Wittgensteinian roots when talking about behaviourism are explicit in a later post (12) That's precisely the issue. Dennett reads W as saying there's nothing I read him as saying there's something about which nothing can be said.

Having read this now, over lunch, I'm half inclined to say again thank goodness for bare bones definitions.

That said, I don't pretend to understand the core points.

It seems to me that Wittgenstein wouldn't even approve of my minimal definition, as if he thought there's something....below that......and maybe there is. Assumptions about language perhaps. Caveats required, etc. I could accept that. Like when he says that as soon as we start thinking about or trying to describe something, an illusion has already been sprung.

If this amounts to no more than being cautious and sceptical, I'm fine with it. Extreme scepticism is limiting however. One simply would get nowhere if all one did was be sceptical about everything one was considering. But as something to be borne in mind, a warning, it's fine.

Well, anyway, it seems to me that whatever W is on about, he'd hopefully query Descartes' cogito sum as well, so I wouldn't be in poor company.

 

[ruby sparks]

Consciousness is awareness.
Consciousness may include awareness of perception, feelings, sensations, ideas and thoughts, recalled memories, decisions, or willed realisations or actions etc. as well as partially conscious activity such as dreams, delirium etc.
It is the task of science to discover the physical processes allowing awareness and how these processes provide an operational model of the physical world allowing the conscious organism to survive and prosper in it.

Something like that.
EB

To get back to this...

I think I appreciate that you are only doing 'add ons' or things which may but also may not be involved, and I have explained why I'm wary.

But, if part of the problem (and I accept that it could be said to be that) is that my definition is toooo brief, and thus appears to lack explanation, I would be happy to extend it to:

"Consciousness is, in its minimal form, awareness, perception, a sensation, something that feels like something, unadorned basic sentience.

More sophisticated forms of consciousness may or may not have additional properties, such as a sense of self, memories, emotions, etc"

In fact I'm happier with that. Happier to set aside my concerns about adding words in light of the fact that some are asking if I'm saying much at all. Since I'm only using synonyms (or near-synonyms) I think I could stretch my definition a bit.

 

[Subsymbolic]

It seems to me that Wittgenstein wouldn't even approve of my minimal definition, as if he thought there's something....below that......and maybe there is. Assumptions about language perhaps. Caveats required, etc. I could accept that. Like when he says that as soon as we start thinking about or trying to describe something, an illusion has already been sprung.

If this amounts to no more than being cautious and sceptical, I'm fine with it. Extreme scepticism is limiting however. One simply would get nowhere if all one did was be sceptical about everything one was considering. But as something to be borne in mind, a warning, it's fine.

Well, anyway, it seems to me that whatever W is on about, he'd hopefully query Descartes' cogito sum as well, so I wouldn't be in poor company.

I think he's separating out the mental event that is the direct experience of our biology in action and the mental event that is our experience of our judgements (in language games) about the former. We can only communicate what happened in the biology once it has been conceptualised into language. We can't communicate the biology based experience, we can only 'gesture' towards it, with varying degrees of effectiveness.

 

[ruby sparks]

It seems to me that Wittgenstein wouldn't even approve of my minimal definition, as if he thought there's something....below that......and maybe there is. Assumptions about language perhaps. Caveats required, etc. I could accept that. Like when he says that as soon as we start thinking about or trying to describe something, an illusion has already been sprung.

If this amounts to no more than being cautious and sceptical, I'm fine with it. Extreme scepticism is limiting however. One simply would get nowhere if all one did was be sceptical about everything one was considering. But as something to be borne in mind, a warning, it's fine.

Well, anyway, it seems to me that whatever W is on about, he'd hopefully query Descartes' cogito sum as well, so I wouldn't be in poor company.

I think he's separating out the mental event that is the direct experience of our biology in action and the mental event that is our experience of our judgements (in language games) about the former. We can only communicate what happened in the biology once it has been conceptualised into language. We can't communicate the biology based experience, we can only 'gesture' towards it, with varying degrees of effectiveness.

Right. Thanks. That seems fair. I mean, language is both a means of enhanced expression and at the same time a limitation on expression. Almost by default, if you are using language (I suppose I mean human, informal language) then it's all been filtered, or is second-hand reporting.

Or, language is like a really big prison. You have freedom to move around, but you can't get out.


All I might add is that it seems to me that bare consciousness need not involve that (or perhaps any) sort of expression or communication, even internal. That would still leave ineffables. With the caveat that that usually involves something being 'beyond description' as in 'above' whereas I might be suggesting 'below'. Not that a direction or level of complexity is necessarily implied in 'ineffable'. It arguably isn't. But I think it's often used as if it were.

As such, I might consider language an add-on when we get to considering more sophisticated forms of consciousness.

 

[ruby sparks]

Consider this. At some point, either in evolutionary time, or in the extant natural word, or even at a pinch, in our own varied and daily human experience, there is a change from no consciousness to consciousness. I doubt that a sophisticated version just popped or pops into place.

Using the evolutionary timescale, there was probably (barring the possibility of universal consciousness) an entity whose predecessors had none and that entity had only a tiny amount. Perhaps to us an almost unrecognisably tiny amount. Prod a spider and it runs away. But did it feel your prod? There's a joke about this involving pulling the legs of spiders. When Jimmy had pulled off all the legs, and the spider, for the first time, did not move away when he banged the table it was on, he concluded that if you pull all the legs off a spider, it goes completely deaf.

Obviously, we can never know the answer to this question for sure, especially if it involves other entities or non-extant ones.

 

[ruby sparks]

Clumsy In know, but what's down near the very bottom?

 

[Speakpigeon]

I think there's a clear distinction between 'consciousness is awareness' and many of the other definitions here.

Alright. Get it.
EB

 

[Subsymbolic]

Ok here's a soundbite, not that I much like soundbites:

Self consciousness requires the unification of two varieties of consciousness: being something that it is like something to be and being able to conceive of yourself as yourself. The former is a necessary condition for the latter, but both are necessary for self consciousness.

That's my definition. That said, I am strongly of the opinion that intentionality is both more interesting and more challenging than consciousness. If you disagree, then get the centre of two toilet rolls, place an apple and an orange ,in front of you, hold the toilet rolls up to your eyes and arrange them so that you can only see the orange through one eye and the apple through the other. Look at them for, say, twenty seconds, then say the magic words: 'Orange, orange, orange. After a few more seconds, say 'Apple, apple apple'...

Now, what's the hard problem again?

 

[Speakpigeon]

Consciousness is awareness.

Consciousness may include awareness of perception, feelings, sensations, ideas and thoughts, recalled memories, decisions, or willed realisations or actions etc. as well as partially conscious activity such as dreams, delirium etc.

It is the task of science to discover the physical processes allowing awareness and how these processes provide an operational model of the physical world allowing the conscious organism to survive and prosper in it.

EB

Two comments if I may. First, I’d want to argue that it should be physical and logical processes. While all logical processes supervene on the physical, it’s quite clear that not all logical processes lead to the same result as near equivalent physical processes.

Logic may be thought of as involved at very different levels. One is when the subject thinks of logical relations. Another one is the logic of our basic neuronal structures. I suppose you talking about the latter.

If so, I'm sorry to say I don't get your point. Surely, a physical description would exhaust whatever there is to say about the working brain, including by implication, and therefore anything about the logic of our neuronal structures. But maybe I don't get your point?

I suppose it would be up to the science not to miss any significant aspect of whatever the brain really does, at whatever level.

Second, I am unclear quite what the formulation ‘consciousness is awareness’ tells us. Perhaps I’m missing something, but it seems to me that two words are synonyms that play precisely the same role. As such, how is this formulation different from saying consciousness is consciousness? Or to put it another way, what do we learn from using this definition?

I already tried to get those using the term 'awareness' to explain what they mean by it, without much success I think.

The two terms are not exact synonyms, I think.
Appart from the mystical sense of awareness, irrelevant here, it seems to me to be used here to refer usually to a somewhat more narrowly physicalist idea while the semantics of consciousness spreads all over the place.
Personally, I oppose in this respect 'awareness' and 'subjective experience'. I see these terms as expressing the two main senses of consciousness relevant here.
So, saying "Consciousness is awareness" seems to me to effectively narrow the meaning of consciousness to something more physicalist. But that would need to be validated by those who provided the different definitions.
And, ruby sparks' definition may in fact not fit this perspective! This, too, is still entirely unclear to me.
EB

 

[ruby sparks]

Ok here's a soundbite, not that I much like soundbites:

Self consciousness requires the unification of two varieties of consciousness: being something that it is like something to be and being able to conceive of yourself as yourself. The former is a necessary condition for the latter, but both are necessary for self consciousness.

That's my definition.

By and large, yes.

With the caveat, which I'm guessing you'll already have considered and accepted, that splitting into two types is an arbitrary distinction (think spectrums) but is useful for understanding and discussion.

That said, I am strongly of the opinion that intentionality is both more interesting and more challenging than consciousness. If you disagree, then get the centre of two toilet rolls, place an apple and an orange ,in front of you, hold the toilet rolls up to your eyes and arrange them so that you can only see the orange through one eye and the apple through the other. Look at them for, say, twenty seconds, then say the magic words: 'Orange, orange, orange. After a few more seconds, say 'Apple, apple apple'...

Now, what's the hard problem again?

I actually tried that just now. What's supposed to happen?

Intentionality may indeed be the more challenging. Given that I am rarely sure I remember exactly what intentionaility is, I won't comment.

 

[ruby sparks]

So, saying "Consciousness is awareness" seems to me to effectively narrow the meaning of consciousness to something more physicalist. But that would need to be validated by those who provided the different definitions.
And, ruby sparks' definition may in fact not fit this perspective! This, too, is still entirely unclear to me.
EB

I'm fine with including the possibility, as a possibility, of awareness being non-physical:

it is (at least for me it is) just a core definition and is trying to cover all potential bases. Including trees, mountains, solar systems, Chinese Brains and non-physical minds.

 

[ruby sparks]

I already tried to get those using the term 'awareness' to explain what they mean by it, without much success I think.

What did you think of my revised, expanded definition in post 87?

 

[Speakpigeon]

the possibility that we generally see the universe the 'wrong way' in that we see processes (or indeed information) as (secondary) features of substrates, whereas.....what's to say that the universe doesn't ultimately consist of processes (or information) and substrates (matter) are a secondary manifestation of that?

Yes. Something a bit like that.
EB

 

[ruby sparks]

the possibility that we generally see the universe the 'wrong way' in that we see processes (or indeed information) as (secondary) features of substrates, whereas.....what's to say that the universe doesn't ultimately consist of processes (or information) and substrates (matter) are a secondary manifestation of that?

Yes. Something a bit like that.
EB

I find it a mind-bending idea. That matter is a property of information rather than the other way around.

 

[untermensche]

View attachment 13323

Clumsy In know, but what's down near the very bottom?

None of that explains one thing about what consciousness is.

It merely shows it is not one thing.