Thoughts about the Consciousness

[ryan]

I was reading Daniel Dennett's essay (called "Where Am I") about him viewing his own brain. He imagined advanced technology that allows the nerves of his eyes to be stretched so that he can view his own brain in a distant lab.

Anyways, I am imagining the same situation except that they start operating on my brain with my eyes watching. Assume that they find the tissues responsible for my visual experience. I was going to give the argument that my experience in my brain is different from the tissues that people would see. But when I thought about my mobile eyes being fixed close to someone else's view, we would agree on what is there and what we see!

Here's where it gets really weird. I am essentially experiencing my own experience. My experience is my experience.

And if we are our experiences, then the information about me has become me, and I have become the information about me.


Does anyone want to add anything?

 

[DBT]

The experience that is experienced is nothing more than the experience that a brain generates. There is no 'you' as the experiencer of experience....just the experience being generated by a brain that includes a brain constructed self awareness (body/mind map/sense of selfhood), sight, sound, feelings, intended actions as features and attributes of virtual world of mind/subjective consciousness evolutionary adaptive brain interaction with objective external world challenges...

 

[ryan]

The experience that is experienced is nothing more than the experience that a brain generates. There is no 'you' as the experiencer of experience....just the experience being generated by a brain that includes a brain constructed self awareness (body/mind map/sense of selfhood), sight, sound, feelings, intended actions as features and attributes of virtual world of mind/subjective consciousness evolutionary adaptive brain interaction with objective external world challenges...

Then why does experience seem so localized to one body?

 

[bilby]

The experience that is experienced is nothing more than the experience that a brain generates. There is no 'you' as the experiencer of experience....just the experience being generated by a brain that includes a brain constructed self awareness (body/mind map/sense of selfhood), sight, sound, feelings, intended actions as features and attributes of virtual world of mind/subjective consciousness evolutionary adaptive brain interaction with objective external world challenges...

Then why does experience seem so localized to one body?

Er...

Seriously?

If consciousness and experiences are characteristics of brains, why would they NOT be localised to the brain that generates them?

 

[ryan]

Then why does experience seem so localized to one body?

Er...

Seriously?

If consciousness and experiences are characteristics of brains, why would they NOT be localised to the brain that generates them?

DBT says that there is no 'you', just a brain. That is purely objective. If true, then how are experiences isolated from other brains? Why aren't all experiences being experienced at the same time in the same frame of reference? There is something very different about the experience that is going on in Edmonton Canada in the home of the person they call Ryan than anyone else.

The problem seems to be that your side of the argument jumps from subjectivity to objectivity when it is convenient for your argument (I put "seems" in bold italic because I am not sure what exactly is the discrepancy). If you are, you probably don't realize that you're doing this.

 

[bilby]

Er...

Seriously?

If consciousness and experiences are characteristics of brains, why would they NOT be localised to the brain that generates them?

DBT says that there is no 'you', just a brain. That is purely objective. If true, then how are experiences isolated from other brains? Why aren't all experiences being experienced at the same time in the same frame of reference? There is something very different about the experience that is going on in Edmonton Canada in the home of the person they call Ryan than anyone else.

The problem seems to be that your side of the argument jumps from subjectivity to objectivity when it is convenient for your argument (I put "seems" in bold italic because I am not sure what exactly is the discrepancy). If you are, you probably don't realize that you're doing this.

Experiences are isolated from other brains by physical separation in space.

Each brain has its own experiences; each person is his own universe - he has no neural connection to the brains of others, and can only infer that other brains have any experiences at all, via less direct physical connections, such as observing the actions of others.

The 'You' to which DBT refers is not a physical entity; it is what your brain does.

A racing car on the track has velocity. You can't take the velocity and separate it from the car; There is no 'speed' going around the track, just a car.

There is nothing at all surprising about the fact that each car has its own speed, unrelated to the speeds of other cars. If I asked you 'How is speed isolated from other cars?' or 'Why aren't all cars going the same speed at the same time in the same frame of reference?' You would think I was very confused, and making an incomprehensible category error.

I feel the same way about your questions here relating to consciousness. Attributes do not exist separately from objects; and similar objects can have different attributes. Consciousness and experience do not exist separately from brains, and similar brains have differing conscious experiences. There is no mystery here.

 

[ryan]

DBT says that there is no 'you', just a brain. That is purely objective. If true, then how are experiences isolated from other brains? Why aren't all experiences being experienced at the same time in the same frame of reference? There is something very different about the experience that is going on in Edmonton Canada in the home of the person they call Ryan than anyone else.

The problem seems to be that your side of the argument jumps from subjectivity to objectivity when it is convenient for your argument (I put "seems" in bold italic because I am not sure what exactly is the discrepancy). If you are, you probably don't realize that you're doing this.

Experiences are isolated from other brains by physical separation in space.

Each brain has its own experiences; each person is his own universe - he has no neural connection to the brains of others, and can only infer that other brains have any experiences at all, via less direct physical connections, such as observing the actions of others.

What is this "he" you speak of? That seems too subjective for what I think DBT's argument is about. And I am not trying to be facetious.

The 'You' to which DBT refers is not a physical entity; it is what your brain does.

Why is it my brain; shouldn't it just be a brain?

A racing car on the track has velocity. You can't take the velocity and separate it from the car; There is no 'speed' going around the track, just a car.

The velocity needs the environment to exist. The velocity, in a weird way, is global to a reference point.

This is interesting because it helps me understand how we can know that there is something outside of our brains.

There is nothing at all surprising about the fact that each car has its own speed, unrelated to the speeds of other cars. If I asked you 'How is speed isolated from other cars?' or 'Why aren't all cars going the same speed at the same time in the same frame of reference?' You would think I was very confused, and making an incomprehensible category error.

I feel the same way about your questions here relating to consciousness. Attributes do not exist separately from objects; and similar objects can have different attributes. Consciousness and experience do not exist separately from brains, and similar brains have differing conscious experiences. There is no mystery here.

You bring up an interesting point, but I don't see how it helps your argument.

 

[fromderinside]

DBT says that there is no 'you', just a brain. That is purely objective. If true, then how are experiences isolated from other brains? Why aren't all experiences being experienced at the same time in the same frame of reference? There is something very different about the experience that is going on in Edmonton Canada in the home of the person they call Ryan than anyone else.

The problem seems to be that your side of the argument jumps from subjectivity to objectivity when it is convenient for your argument (I put "seems" in bold italic because I am not sure what exactly is the discrepancy). If you are, you probably don't realize that you're doing this.

Experiences are isolated from other brains by physical separation in space.

Each brain has its own experiences; each person is his own universe - he has no neural connection to the brains of others, and can only infer that other brains have any experiences at all, via less direct physical connections, such as observing the actions of others.

The 'You' to which DBT refers is not a physical entity; it is what your brain does.

A racing car on the track has velocity. You can't take the velocity and separate it from the car; There is no 'speed' going around the track, just a car.

There is nothing at all surprising about the fact that each car has its own speed, unrelated to the speeds of other cars. If I asked you 'How is speed isolated from other cars?' or 'Why aren't all cars going the same speed at the same time in the same frame of reference?' You would think I was very confused, and making an incomprehensible category error.

I feel the same way about your questions here relating to consciousness. Attributes do not exist separately from objects; and similar objects can have different attributes. Consciousness and experience do not exist separately from brains, and similar brains have differing conscious experiences. There is no mystery here.

Ryan, a few other thoughts. There are objective explanations for one's subjective consciousness. Its a matter of interpreting how a brain functions as an entity in an organism whose existence depends on the brain keeping it safe from those who might do it harm, other humans, in an environment where some social concert is necessary for humans to even exist.

Humans seem to think they are operating in the present where its clear they are operating after the fact to all stimuli including that of other humans who may hurt them. All that is taking place is the brain coupling attended too events into scenarios that work in the presence of other humans who are reacting similarly. The part we call consciousness is that cobbling together of attended events into a scene where each of us believes she is in control of events.

The fiction works primarily because, as social beings, we have equipment that permits us to gather threat and safe information for others through mostly unconscious processes. These are processes that sit under the very structure of our senses, systems that gather information attuned to social stimuli of body, face, intonation, gesture, data that become the basis for conscious forming scenarios.

As a subjective consciousness it is of that consciousness one is aware. From that perch one cannot get to the basis for having that thing. At a minimum it takes one who understands the basis for having a subjective thing which we believe is capable of deciding and acting then it is not too difficult to understand how such a system works.

Of course it helps to have decades of study of human and other animal behavior and of the processes underlying that behavior to present any semblance of story that holds with brain and behavior and subjective experience. It is just not possible for one unfamiliar with behavior's objective bases to understand how objective behavior can result in an individual having subjective experience unless one has some idea how one behaves and to what one is behaving and how that behaving can be objectively explained.

 

[DBT]

Er...

Seriously?

If consciousness and experiences are characteristics of brains, why would they NOT be localised to the brain that generates them?

DBT says that there is no 'you', just a brain. That is purely objective. If true, then how are experiences isolated from other brains? Why aren't all experiences being experienced at the same time in the same frame of reference? There is something very different about the experience that is going on in Edmonton Canada in the home of the person they call Ryan than anyone else.

The problem seems to be that your side of the argument jumps from subjectivity to objectivity when it is convenient for your argument (I put "seems" in bold italic because I am not sure what exactly is the discrepancy). If you are, you probably don't realize that you're doing this.

I didn't say that there was no you, I said there no you apart from and distinct from what the brain constructs in terms of self identity and self awareness...that without the elecrochemical information processing power of the brain, the attributes of self awareness and self identity would not exist (these attributes being constructs of the brain). In other worlds, conscious self is not an homunculus.

 

[ryan]

Ryan, a few other thoughts. There are objective explanations for one's subjective consciousness. Its a matter of interpreting how a brain functions as an entity in an organism whose existence depends on the brain keeping it safe from those who might do it harm, other humans, in an environment where some social concert is necessary for humans to even exist.

Humans seem to think they are operating in the present where its clear they are operating after the fact to all stimuli including that of other humans who may hurt them. All that is taking place is the brain coupling attended too events into scenarios that work in the presence of other humans who are reacting similarly. The part we call consciousness is that cobbling together of attended events into a scene where each of us believes she is in control of events.

The fiction works primarily because, as social beings, we have equipment that permits us to gather threat and safe information for others through mostly unconscious processes. These are processes that sit under the very structure of our senses, systems that gather information attuned to social stimuli of body, face, intonation, gesture, data that become the basis for conscious forming scenarios.

As a subjective consciousness it is of that consciousness one is aware. From that perch one cannot get to the basis for having that thing. At a minimum it takes one who understands the basis for having a subjective thing which we believe is capable of deciding and acting then it is not too difficult to understand how such a system works.

Of course it helps to have decades of study of human and other animal behavior and of the processes underlying that behavior to present any semblance of story that holds with brain and behavior and subjective experience. It is just not possible for one unfamiliar with behavior's objective bases to understand how objective behavior can result in an individual having subjective experience unless one has some idea how one behaves and to what one is behaving and how that behaving can be objectively explained.

I don't even know what I am doing on here half of he time. Talking about this stuff is like a drug: it's a waste of time, it doesn't help me much and it messes with my brain.

 

[DBT]

You get feedback that you would not have if you did not post your ideas on this forum...

 

[ryan]

DBT says that there is no 'you', just a brain. That is purely objective. If true, then how are experiences isolated from other brains? Why aren't all experiences being experienced at the same time in the same frame of reference? There is something very different about the experience that is going on in Edmonton Canada in the home of the person they call Ryan than anyone else.

The problem seems to be that your side of the argument jumps from subjectivity to objectivity when it is convenient for your argument (I put "seems" in bold italic because I am not sure what exactly is the discrepancy). If you are, you probably don't realize that you're doing this.

I didn't say that there was no you, I said there no you apart from and distinct from what the brain constructs in terms of self identity and self awareness...that without the elecrochemical information processing power of the brain, the attributes of self awareness and self identity would not exist (these attributes being constructs of the brain). In other worlds, conscious self is not an homunculus.

I thought that it was clear what kind of "you" you were referring to; either way I am sorry if it misconstrued your point.

Imagine that they throw me into a blender. There will be much of the same stuff. There will be the same fundamental interactions - mostly electromagnetic - but with differing magnitudes in differing positions. Why is it that putting these very basic interactions in a different order do we get all of this rich phenomena like questioning what subjectivity means versus objectivity or thinking about good versus evil etc?

Our only "thoughts" should just be what these interactions are and nothing else. Language show only be bosons bouncing around with no holistic sense of coherence. In other words, what is tying it all together to formulate a singular meaning of trillions of interactions?

 

[ryan]

You get feedback that you would not have if you did not post your ideas on this forum...

Yeah, I am just tired. Many of you have helped me understand many different things about science and philosophy.

 

[bilby]

Experiences are isolated from other brains by physical separation in space.

Each brain has its own experiences; each person is his own universe - he has no neural connection to the brains of others, and can only infer that other brains have any experiences at all, via less direct physical connections, such as observing the actions of others.

What is this "he" you speak of? That seems too subjective for what I think DBT's argument is about. And I am not trying to be facetious.

'He' is the appropriate pronoun to refer to the 'His' in the previous clause, which refers to the 'each person' which opens the clause. The use of the third person masculine singular is correct English in this situation. Is English not your first language?

The 'You' to which DBT refers is not a physical entity; it is what your brain does.

Why is it my brain; shouldn't it just be a brain?

Both are correct. Experience is internal to a brain; only a particular individual brain has the direct experience of itself; and this is true of all conscious brains.

A racing car on the track has velocity. You can't take the velocity and separate it from the car; There is no 'speed' going around the track, just a car.

The velocity needs the environment to exist. The velocity, in a weird way, is global to a reference point.

WTF is "global to a reference point." supposed to mean? For a race car, velocity is relative to the track; this is true regardless of whether you take the car's frame of reference, and say that the track is northbound at a hundred miles per hour; or you take the track's frame of reference and say that the car is southbound at a hundred miles per hour; or if you take some other frame of reference and say that the component of motion of the track in the northward direction is 100 miles per hour greater than the component of motion of the car in the northward direction, or anything else that is equivalent.

How this is in any way relevant to the point eludes me.

This is interesting because it helps me understand how we can know that there is something outside of our brains.

There is nothing at all surprising about the fact that each car has its own speed, unrelated to the speeds of other cars. If I asked you 'How is speed isolated from other cars?' or 'Why aren't all cars going the same speed at the same time in the same frame of reference?' You would think I was very confused, and making an incomprehensible category error.

I feel the same way about your questions here relating to consciousness. Attributes do not exist separately from objects; and similar objects can have different attributes. Consciousness and experience do not exist separately from brains, and similar brains have differing conscious experiences. There is no mystery here.

You bring up an interesting point, but I don't see how it helps your argument.

I am not so much making an argument as I am pointing out that you are not making one, so there is nothing for me to refute or argue about.

Your objection here:

The experience that is experienced is nothing more than the experience that a brain generates. There is no 'you' as the experiencer of experience....just the experience being generated by a brain that includes a brain constructed self awareness (body/mind map/sense of selfhood), sight, sound, feelings, intended actions as features and attributes of virtual world of mind/subjective consciousness evolutionary adaptive brain interaction with objective external world challenges...

Then why does experience seem so localized to one body?

is meaningless.

Why would we expect experience NOT TO BE localised to one body, unless it somehow has a separate existence from the physical brain?

There is nothing subjective about this; that experience is localised to one brain is true of ALL brains. This objective reality can be mapped to a subjective statement "I experience only the things that happen to my brain", that is true for ALL subjects.

Pick any person at random, and they will experience themselves as the centre of (indeed, as the only known conscious being in) the universe.

Your consciousness is not 'special'; you just happen to be experiencing your consciousness right now; and that is an objective fact; it remains true no matter who 'you' are.

 

[bilby]

I didn't say that there was no you, I said there no you apart from and distinct from what the brain constructs in terms of self identity and self awareness...that without the elecrochemical information processing power of the brain, the attributes of self awareness and self identity would not exist (these attributes being constructs of the brain). In other worlds, conscious self is not an homunculus.

I thought that it was clear what kind of "you" you were referring to; either way I am sorry if it misconstrued your point.

Imagine that they throw me into a blender. There will be much of the same stuff. There will be the same fundamental interactions - mostly electromagnetic - but with differing magnitudes in differing positions. Why is it that putting these very basic interactions in a different order do we get all of this rich phenomena like questioning what subjectivity means versus objectivity or thinking about good versus evil etc?

Our only "thoughts" should just be what these interactions are and nothing else. Language show only be bosons bouncing around with no holistic sense of coherence. In other words, what is tying it all together to formulate a singular meaning of trillions of interactions?

Emergence is counterintuitive, but demonstrably real.

Meaning exists as an emergent result of huge numbers of dynamic interactions between particles; studying the individual particles cannot show us the meaning, despite the fact that they encode meaning when present as a dynamic whole.

There is no part of a car that is the 'speed'; A car's speed comes from the dynamic interaction of all of the parts of the car. There is nothing 'tying it all together' except the dynamic interactions of specific arrangements of the parts; if you disassemble a car and throw the parts in a heap, the heap doesn't have the ability to move. Movement is not inherent to car parts; only to cars. Experience or consciousness are not inherent to neurons; only to brains.

 

[DBT]

Imagine that they throw me into a blender. There will be much of the same stuff. There will be the same fundamental interactions - mostly electromagnetic - but with differing magnitudes in differing positions. Why is it that putting these very basic interactions in a different order do we get all of this rich phenomena like questioning what subjectivity means versus objectivity or thinking about good versus evil etc? Our only "thoughts" should just be what these interactions are and nothing else. Language show only be bosons bouncing around with no holistic sense of coherence. In other words, what is tying it all together to formulate a singular meaning of trillions of interactions?

Our thoughts are just what the interactions between neurons and their structures happen to be doing, architecture (wiring), sensory inputs and memory. Anything else implies a seperate and distinct agency which orchestrates thought independantly of the information processing activity of neural structures.

 

[ryan]

A racing car on the track has velocity. You can't take the velocity and separate it from the car; There is no 'speed' going around the track, just a car.

The velocity needs the environment to exist. The velocity, in a weird way, is global to a reference point.

WTF is "global to a reference point." supposed to mean? For a race car, velocity is relative to the track; this is true regardless of whether you take the car's frame of reference, and say that the track is northbound at a hundred miles per hour; or you take the track's frame of reference and say that the car is southbound at a hundred miles per hour; or if you take some other frame of reference and say that the component of motion of the track in the northward direction is 100 miles per hour greater than the component of motion of the car in the northward direction, or anything else that is equivalent.

Velocity exists because of the points of reference. You compared the consciousness to velocity. This makes sense how we can think outside of the mind. We need reflections for the consciousness to "get outside" of the brain.

 

[ryan]

I thought that it was clear what kind of "you" you were referring to; either way I am sorry if it misconstrued your point.

Imagine that they throw me into a blender. There will be much of the same stuff. There will be the same fundamental interactions - mostly electromagnetic - but with differing magnitudes in differing positions. Why is it that putting these very basic interactions in a different order do we get all of this rich phenomena like questioning what subjectivity means versus objectivity or thinking about good versus evil etc?

Our only "thoughts" should just be what these interactions are and nothing else. Language show only be bosons bouncing around with no holistic sense of coherence. In other words, what is tying it all together to formulate a singular meaning of trillions of interactions?

Emergence is counterintuitive, but demonstrably real.

Meaning exists as an emergent result of huge numbers of dynamic interactions between particles; studying the individual particles cannot show us the meaning, despite the fact that they encode meaning when present as a dynamic whole.

There is no part of a car that is the 'speed'; A car's speed comes from the dynamic interaction of all of the parts of the car. There is nothing 'tying it all together' except the dynamic interactions of specific arrangements of the parts; if you disassemble a car and throw the parts in a heap, the heap doesn't have the ability to move. Movement is not inherent to car parts; only to cars. Experience or consciousness are not inherent to neurons; only to brains.

As wacky as my ideas seem even I hate the idea of irreducibility. Given enough information, we should always be able to predict any emergent property. With this kind of emergence, something like a mind could never be predicted. That just does not happen. We may not be able to predict every emergent property, but we can always look back and see that we could have. I would rather believe that a quanta of mind exists with particles.

 

[bilby]

Emergence is counterintuitive, but demonstrably real.

Meaning exists as an emergent result of huge numbers of dynamic interactions between particles; studying the individual particles cannot show us the meaning, despite the fact that they encode meaning when present as a dynamic whole.

There is no part of a car that is the 'speed'; A car's speed comes from the dynamic interaction of all of the parts of the car. There is nothing 'tying it all together' except the dynamic interactions of specific arrangements of the parts; if you disassemble a car and throw the parts in a heap, the heap doesn't have the ability to move. Movement is not inherent to car parts; only to cars. Experience or consciousness are not inherent to neurons; only to brains.

As wacky as my ideas seem even I hate the idea of irreducibility. Given enough information, we should always be able to predict any emergent property. With this kind of emergence, something like a mind could never be predicted. That just does not happen. We may not be able to predict every emergent property, but we can always look back and see that we could have. I would rather believe that a quanta of mind exists with particles.

I don't think that this is irreducible at all. We just don't (yet) know all of the details.

There are lots of hints about where consciousness comes from; Anaesthesia provides a lot of clues, as it allows us to reversibly switch off consciousness by simply adding a few (often rather simple) molecules to the cell membranes of neurons. A drop of ether, or of ethanol eliminates consciousness, and consciousness returns when the ether or ethanol is purged from the cerebra-spinal fluid.

 

[ryan]

Imagine that they throw me into a blender. There will be much of the same stuff. There will be the same fundamental interactions - mostly electromagnetic - but with differing magnitudes in differing positions. Why is it that putting these very basic interactions in a different order do we get all of this rich phenomena like questioning what subjectivity means versus objectivity or thinking about good versus evil etc? Our only "thoughts" should just be what these interactions are and nothing else. Language show only be bosons bouncing around with no holistic sense of coherence. In other words, what is tying it all together to formulate a singular meaning of trillions of interactions?

Our thoughts are just what the interactions between neurons and their structures happen to be doing, architecture (wiring), sensory inputs and memory. Anything else implies a seperate and distinct agency which orchestrates thought independantly of the information processing activity of neural structures.

That is the objective explanation; I have no problem with it. But what about subjectivity? If there is no subjectivity, then shouldn't all experiences be experienced and not just one? Surely there are other experiences happening now in the same frame of reference. Objectively speaking, there is only one experience happening right now; how can this be?