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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Largo,
search for a mechanism to explain sentience[-awareness] [you sort of throw both these states of mind around synonymously], the Hard Problem will always be there to bedevil them.
And if it is not a mechanism is sentience likely a mind created illusion? And if sentience is a fundamental property of the universe is it a variant of the idea that information is a basic property of the universe. And one could ask is there conservation of awareness-sentience? If these properties are fundamental to the universe they must stick around some how in some kind a conserved form -- like total matter--energy = constant and total charge is conserved.
see below for some ideas on conservation of info & energy
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8734520
I do know that you can know both the input and the output of a process and yet never figure out with 100% certainty [exactly] what the transformation matrix[algorithm if you will] is if it is non-linear. Is Chalmers qualia such a transformation matrix between content and awareness?
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WBraun
climber
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Matter is unconscious.
Only a sentient being can thru their consciousness animate and move matter .....
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Werner,
how do stars move matter? They must be consciousness/animate?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Consciousness, in my view, arises with Demasio's layers of qualia interface with awareness
So the Hard Problem is What is awareness? Hint: its sibling is not electromagnetism.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 1, 2017 - 08:23pm PT
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And if it is not a mechanism is sentience likely a mind created illusion? And if sentience is a fundamental property of the universe is it a variant of the idea that information is a basic property of the universe. And one could ask is there conservation of awareness-sentience? If these properties are fundamental to the universe they must stick around some how in some kind a conserved form -- like total matter--energy = constant and total charge is conserved.
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Good questions. I'll give you my take on them. It's actually a fun and challenging exercise to try and unpack and logically dismantle these lines of thought. It's perhaps the only way to understand the whole arc of a particular argument or hypothesis.
First, Uncle Dennett and others (mostly from the old Behaviorialist camp) have been trotting out the "consciousness is an illusion" shebang since the early 1990s. The problem is that without some qualifications, the charge is nonsense. It's not even wrong. It is not logically coherent.
For example, if you have ever seen Uncle Dennett's faux magic show, he demonstrates how we can so easily be fooled into thinking we see one thing when in fact we see something else. Or nothing. Of course "seeing nothing" is nonsense so this leads to the notion that "we only think we see something." That is, what we imagine we are seeing is "a mind created illusion."
However, the mere appearance of any content, illusory or "real," already postulates awareness of same. Here is an excellent example of conflating awareness with content. An "illusion," as Dennett uses it, is either a mind created phantom or the mind mistaking one qual (a horse, say) for another (a buffalo, for example). Either way, what Dennett is railing against is the verity per the stuff of consciousness, when the real question is not about the reality of qualia, physical or otherwise, but rather the fact that we are aware of anything, including illusions. No awareness. No illusions.
But even Dennett never went so far as to say sentience itself was a mind created illusion. For instance (in an example I've used elsewhere), even Uncle Dennett wouldn't say to the Head Scientist at CERNE that "You only think you are aware of my voice and those atoms smashing in there." Only a psychotic would make such a claim - we can easily see why.
This gets tricky if one claims that our experience of being aware is itself an illusion. It follows to ask what is the difference between experiencing the illusion of BEING aware, and actually BEING aware? And what criteria would have to be met to vouchsafe awareness as "real?"
And what about those sentient machines that are just around the corner? Will they actually be aware, and if so, what will qualify them as such. Or will they simply be programmed to have the illusion of being aware? What would be the point of that?
Anyone can be wrong abut the content of awareness, and we often are. But nobody can be wrong about the experience of being aware in the first instance. You have to appeal to content to doubt awareness, meaning you have to conflate the two, and even an hour of guided mindfulness can expose the folly of that belief. A program or algorithm is never going to have an experience of BEING aware because awareness itself is not mechanistic or hydebound to tasking or inputs/outputs. That's transposing computer processing - which is content - with awareness, which is not.
Information as property of the universe (from information theory) - when conflated with consciousness - is another attempt to posit sentience as a thing, as a form of data (info), as content. So no cigar with that one, since awareness is even more pronounced in the absence of data, or at least our attachment to data.
Same thing with considering sentience as a form, condensed or otherwise. That's still trying to cast awareness as some thing, some quality, some charicteristic, process, modality or function. So IME this too is a dead end.
Too tired to go windbag. But that's the gist of it. Or most of it.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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You guys are never going to get to first base unless you devote years to Zen or similar meditation, see bits and pieces of what you think are points of reality drop away and finally confront what remains: empty awareness. Then you will understand.
Afterwards, you will try to convey what you have experienced to rational human beings but will encounter strong skepticism and when you write up your findings to submit to the Philosophical Reviews, Dennett will be sent your manuscript and he will merely chuckle and toss it into the garbage can, denying you your place in the Sun.
Life is cruel.
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WBraun
climber
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The original source of everything is sentient, conscious, and consciously is controlling everything .......
Not stoopid neurons firing .......
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dingus:
No, Damasio did not undertake a systematic study to tease out what the differences were among defective and normal brains. It’s not that he did not do enough of this or that. He did not set up a proper experiment to compare the two. He didn’t seem to be interested in that. He was interested in what defective brains could not do. It’s a different investigation.
As for how feelings / emotions are necessary—from Damasio’s work—did you read Decartes Error? Cognitively, it’s one of the more important things he has to say there, my friend. What is it that you’ve read from him? (You seem to be a little bit all over the place on topics. Pick one, and let’s drill in.)
Largo’s complaint refers to another set of issues.
DMT,
Anytime one quotes anything, they should be drinking heavily.
I like a well-written screenplay more than I like a well-written novel.
Be well.
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WBraun
climber
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The Mind of the Gross Materialists.
The greatest so called audiophiles all claim they have the bionic ears to hear the most subtle dynamics in sound vibration waves.
They claim that the best silver impregnated oxygen free copper speaker wire to the best speakers makes the difference coming out of the amp to the speakers in the end.
They claim they "hear" the difference between the best audio speaker wire and 10 cents a foot hardware store lamp cord used to drive speakers.
They swear by this, on paper their "data" shows this to be so true.
The impedance of 5 dollars a foot of the most modern advanced speaker wire matched to finest speakers will truly enhance the subtle sound vibrations to their golden ears.
Thus they've led on the audiophiles for years and still doing it to buy that expensive wire bullsh!t audio science.
They all picked 10 cents a foot lamp cord wire in a blind hearing test over the expensive sh!t.
They couldn't distinguish any difference with their so-called golden ears.
There is no God they said, there is no need for God they said, as our superior modern data shows we know.
Know ones knows they said except us audiophiles ...... :-)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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with all due respect, Werner...
it is the cable manufacturers who make the claim about cable quality... the "gross materialists" recognize the subjective issues regarding listening to music...
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WBraun
climber
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I know Ed and DMT.
I'm just having fun with you "gross materialist guys .... :-)
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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As mentioned, so long as people search for a mechanism to explain sentience, the Hard Problem will always be there to bedevil them.
There must be something it is like to feel that The Hard Problem has anything to say about biological exploration. As we learn more about the brain we may well come to a good understanding of how the mental landscape we experience is created, in great detail.
Chalmers has already closed his eyes and put his fingers in his ears:
[We must] take consciousness seriously. … [To] redefine the problem as that of explaining how certain cognitive or behavioural functions are performed is unacceptable.
I prefer Seneca:
Let reason search into external things at the instigation of the senses, and, while it derives from them its first knowledge - for it has no other base from which it may operate, or begin its assault upon the truth - yet let it fall back upon itself.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 1 BCE – CE 65) was born in Cordoba (Spain) and educated—in rhetoric and philosophy—in Rome.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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The greatest so called audiophiles all claim... Know ones knows they said except us audiophiles ...
Hilarious.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 2, 2017 - 10:04am PT
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There must be something it is like to feel that The Hard Problem has anything to say about biological exploration. As we learn more about the brain we may well come to a good understanding of how the mental landscape we experience is created, in great detail.
Chalmers has already closed his eyes and put his fingers in his ears:
[We must] take consciousness seriously. … [To] redefine the problem as that of explaining how certain cognitive or behavioural functions are performed is unacceptable.
--
You need to read and listen to Chalmers a little more, MH2. He's never plugged his fingers into his ears, and that's what makes him such an excellent arbiter of the whole mind game: He listens to everyone.
The way you have it posited is basically the reverse of the way the Hard Problem is normally handled by professionals in the field.
The Hard Problem can be cast in various forms, but one of the more popular angles is to simply wonder how the brain, if viewed as a biomechanism, can "create" consciousness.
At first blush, there seems to be two cognitive culverts that trap most people's thinking (regarding the Hard Problem), and direct that thinking in two basic directions. Both look at consciousness as a kind of product or output, with a favorite model considering consciousness like a kind of software run by the hardware of the brain.
This first take is not about the Hard Problem telling about biological exploration, rather the challenge to show how the brain mechanistically "produces" consciousness. Not WHAT we are conscious of, or the process thereof, but the fact that we are AWARE of that content.
What makes (in my opinion) the Hard Problem a trick question is the impossibility of talking about both objective and subjective at the same time. That is, if you are talking about objective functioning (firing neurons) you are not talking about sentience. If you hold that you are, then sentience must be a fundamental property which is both objective AND subjective. Third options cannot be ruled out, it's just that nobody has ever presented what they might be, so siting them as theoreticals is considered nothing more than a dodge.
The second culvert is the tendency to posit consciousness as a program or some thing that is separate from the brain, some fanciful woo or non-thing thing or ephemeral information existing in some strange realm. This is a strawman argument normally given by those who insist that consciousness lives IN the brain. It's basic common sense.
The challenge is that if the later is true, and it certainly seems to be the case, then you are left with two options: The Hard Problem, whereby you must show how a mechanism creates consciousness, or else you're stuck with a fundamental property at some level.
Usually people opt for the first, the mechanistic option, but invariably they won't be talking about BEING conscious, rather WHAT we are conscious OF. Dennett and others have demonstrated the unreliability of WHAT we are conscious OF, but trying to extend this doubt to being aware in the first place, or anything whatsoever, is logically incoherent.
Another point worth mentioning is that for most of us, there is no question that we have both an inner and external life, a life everyone can see (objective), and a private life (subject) that only we, as subjects, can directly experience. The age old mind-body question concerns the relationship of the two. It has been the western tradition to consider all of this from a 3rd person perspective, though the phenomenon in question is really the experiential world we live in. Efforts to direct people to investigate this realm are usually and vastly misunderstood, also in two basic ways.
First is the belief that subjective investigations are about content, be it religious, mythological, feeling, or whatever.
Second, since we are going inside to discover what content is there, we are left to do so without the advantage of scientific aids, so whatever we find will invariably be wrong or only an "opinion."
Both of these notions are entirely mistaken.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Second, since we are going inside to discover what content is there, we are left to do so without the advantage of scientific aids, so whatever we find will invariably be wrong or only an "opinion."
I didn't think meditation was about "content." Whatever you find is an internal adventure that may or may not relate to physical reality. I found I could fly and walk through walls, but wasn't able to do so outside that peculiar mental state. Apparently what you found has profound implications outside your meditative state. Or so you think.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 2, 2017 - 01:31pm PT
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I found I could fly and walk through walls, but wasn't able to do so outside that peculiar mental state.
It might be interesting to reflect on how awareness itself varied between those times you could fly and, say, right now. My sense is that the constant IS awareness, while what we do or don't do, what we think or imagine, what the tide does and how we feel is ever in flux, as well as our degree of attentiveness owing to our brain state. It all seems like one unified whole, but what happens or doesn't happen within our reality is a variety show.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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You are correct. In both states I was fully aware.
There is that other dimension of awareness devoid of consciousness but not empty. As I explained, recently during oral surgery I obeyed orders to open wider, etc. but was not conscious. Clearly I was aware at some level beyond emptiness and below consciousness.
When you reach emptiness in meditation, on the other hand, you must be conscious if you remember the experience. So your awareness was not entirely empty but displayed a touch of consciousness. Go figure.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 2, 2017 - 04:04pm PT
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You are correct. In both states I was fully aware.
There is that other dimension of awareness devoid of consciousness but not empty. As I explained, recently during oral surgery I obeyed orders to open wider, etc. but was not conscious. Clearly I was aware at some level beyond emptiness and below consciousness.
When you reach emptiness in meditation, on the other hand, you must be conscious if you remember the experience. So your awareness was not entirely empty but displayed a touch of consciousness. Go figure.
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Those are great insights, IMO, and vouchsafe the fact that lest one was monitoring their internal space, AND external reality (even by a 3rd party), aspects of reality go missing.
For example, when I blew up my leg, I had to have emergency surgery to stabilize the open fracture and shattered ankle. I wasn't paying attention and in fact wanted to just zone out. But during the following four surgeries I went in trying to go in and come out of the anesthetic as aware as I could.
The "devoid of consciousness" but responsive state is a tricky one to reckon depending on your model. To me. awareness never "goes" anywhere. Consciousness is the interface of brain and awareness within the unified system of "bodymind."
Sleep disrupts the unity of consciousness by largely cutting us off from external inputs and stimulus, though we may unconsciously swat a fly or move a limb or whatever, never waking up to do so. Likewise, under anesthetic, the unity of consciousness is disrupted and while our motor system can respond to certain stimulus, and our brains can register certain simple inputs (we won't be factoring equations or writing sonnets in this state), conscious awareness is absent.
In this state we are almost if not entirely working from mechanical functioning. We don't have reduced awareness, rather the interface between brain generated content and awareness has been compromised. Somewhat like a signal interrupt between a broadcast center and a media outlet. Neither the radio station, say, or the radio in your car, "goes" anywhere.
When we hold awareness as fundamental, and basically selfsame across all life forms, "levels of consciousness" simply boils down to the brains ability to produce and work up content via feedback loops.
The difference between us humans and a gold fish is that our brains are capable of serving up a much more robust take on reality, so our inner lives are more complex and richer. Attempts to roll awareness into content leave us to try and discuss the whole of consciousness in terms of a sliding scale and introduces insuperable problems, IMO.
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