Consciousness: freaky shit or nbd

consciousness doesn't account for anything. precisely the point of the hard problem is that consciousness describes a set of experiences which seem to be common to almost all human beings, but we have no mechanistic model that accounts for these experiences and not much idea of how a mechanistic model might account for these experiences.

i agree that this is seems relatable to e.g. the concept of religious faith, but consciousness seems to be near-universal in a way that no definition of religious faith can be claimed to be.

i also agree that one of the answers to the hard problem might be "well we are all very mistaken about the nature of consciousness is", but at this point i think you're arguing that abstract data tell us more about what it is to be alive than the experience of being alive does. and that, at least, is a tough sell.

excuse shonky typos

Well I don't think the world is about to stop believing in divinity either so our discussion really shouldn't be predicated on what ppl are likely to agree w

not because it matters whether people are right or wrong so much as because a model for explaining consciousness ought to be convincing, if it's going to explain consciousness. we can imagine that you could conclusively prove that Deity X doesn't exist without destroying the notion or experience of faith per se.

it's also perfectly possible that such a model or such an understanding might be impossible. it's not that anything urgently hangs on understanding what consciousness is, it's just that the dogmatic answers we have now are at the very best unsupportable guesswork. (tbf i'd say much the same of dogmatic theological arguments)

or maybe i wdn't, maybe i would argue that in both cases most arguments are applications of the wrong kinds of ideas to the wrong subjects

I cannot help but wonder whether a physical explanation of consciousness is valuable for anything besides confirming the worldview of those who already expect that consciousness is a physical phenomenon. The major accomplishment would be to increase the conviction of materialists that they are smarter than dualists.

Does anyone think that the inability to imagine thoroughly not existing after death plays a part in forming arguments that say consciousness is much more complex and mysterious than simply the result of the vast and complex physical network of the mind? Like saying "How can all of these layered thoughts/memories/experiences and the resulting personality just vanish?" is similar to saying "consciousness cannot just be the result of mundane physical parts, that doesn't account for how multilayered it is" etc while using the lack of a full scientific understanding of the process to reinforce.

I cannot help but wonder whether a physical explanation of consciousness is valuable for anything besides confirming the worldview of those who already expect that consciousness is a physical phenomenon. The major accomplishment would be to increase the conviction of materialists that they are smarter than dualists.

― Giant Purple Wakerobin (Aimless), Friday, April 10, 2015 2:12 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Isn't having an understanding of anything valuable beyond rubbing it in the face of those who had different theories???

i don't know, you tell me

how is it valuable beyond ideological production

How about helping to advance medical understanding? It's ridiculous to say that striving to learn how the universe works in any way holds no value other than to prove someone else wrong.

if it's all mechanistic then no problem, it'll happen when it's supposed to

Perhaps value is not something you create yourself but something created in collaboration with others. A brick of gold on its own is worthless without a market in which is spend it.

you could construct novel forms of consciousness the same way BLT has been enhanced by sriracha and aioli

Usually the benefit of greater understanding works its way into the betterment of society for all sorts of reasons.

OK. How might a physical explanation of consciousness work for the betterment of society?

Consciousness itself seems to me to be partly built in collaboration. Just as we seem to need other minds to create a theory of mind as a child, we need to learn how to introspect about our feelings and shape our understanding of qualia.

Just having nameless undefinable impulses happening to you in a stream (as, say, a baby does) seems a very basic form of consciousness, at least. And it seems plausible that the interaction we know children need is also a necessary part of the creation of more adult consciousness.

This still leaves me thinking of consciousness (or at least free will, which I know is a separate argument) as a kind of epiphenomenon, though.

As I said, deeper medical understanding. Nobody researching the subject is specifically trying to find out whether it is physical or not, with a thumbs up once they get an answer. They're simply researching how it all works.

xp

as vague and naive as any religious belief i've ever heard.

reliably putting people in hypnotic states would be awesome for eliminating anesthesia issues.

true but i don't think it would solve the problem of billions of people being able to afford it.

a $5 machine would probably be more affordable than a trained anesthesiologist

good 2 know

OK. How might a physical explanation of consciousness work for the betterment of society?

― Giant Purple Wakerobin (Aimless), Friday, April 10, 2015 2:53 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Obviously conjecturing here but I think a physical explanation would be describing the underlying lattice that drives the life of the conscious being. Not the physical matter itself, but in the process that drives it, sustains it, repairs it, regulates it, sees everything working in concert together on the job of Life. For a conscious, living entity to successfully exist over a sustained period of time, each part must work for the good of the whole, at least to a large extent. This kind of selflessness, scaled up on a macro level, could be a huge benefit to society.

also sleeping pills, SSRIs etc... all eliminated by some gysin machine that actually works is totally worth destroying whatever privileged impenetrability of consciousness anyone holds dear.

May I suggest that any ability to reliably manipulate and control the consciousness of others will raise a sufficient number of deeply troubling problems that the possible benefits could not be separated from the potentially severe drawbacks?

Among other things, it would bring new meaning to the idea of owning someone else.

when you're the same collective consciousness that issue goes away.

as vague and naive as any religious belief i've ever heard.

― Epic Verry (mattresslessness), Friday, April 10, 2015 3:00 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Greater scientific understanding in general has resulted in all of the medical equipment and practices we have today. Are you and Aimless saying that we shouldn't try to... learn anything anymore?

If we get to the point where consciousness is understandable and scientifically controllable and ego is a fluid concept not tied to any local geography then what purpose would "ownership" have at all?

It doesn't explain the problems of experience it purports to solve, it isn't measurable or detectable, etc. it's just a mythological model to account for some sensations that humans made up.

the point of the philosophical zombies argument is that imagining a human being without qualia is inherently weird/unacceptable (because it violates universally shared experiences.)

the difference to me between that and the existence of god is that even for those people (like my mom) who believe in god because of some claimed direct experience, that experience of god is not the primary experience and basis for _every_ experience that person has ever had, or ever will have. that's what makes qualia distinctive for me.

Understanding how consciousness works doesn't necessarily mean we'll be able to control people. That's one sci-fi horror worst case scenario, sure.

Understanding how consciousness works doesn't necessarily mean we'll be able to control people.

By the same token, understanding how consciousness works doesn't necessarily mean we'll be able to accomplish any medically meaningful goals or the betterment of society.

Having a better understanding about how the brain works likely brings helpful medical advantages, but not as likely to create slaves through mind control...

Are you against the progression of scientific understanding in general?

Are you and Aimless saying that we shouldn't try to... learn anything anymore?

Far from it. I was only pointing out that I find it difficult to see how arriving at a description of consciousness as a purely mechanistic and externally observable process will be some kind of game-changer for humanity or answer some Eternal Question for All Time. It would just be another turn of the wheel.

To bring in a very personal and personally emotional example, my daughter is wholly unable to communicate her thoughts. If, by some leap of science, it became possible to access her consciousness and project it into a rich and meaningful communication with the world, it would be an answer to one of my most cherished desires. But I am not such a fool as to think that, even as it fulfilled my dreams and solved many thorny practical problems, it would not raise just as many complications, problems and disappointments in its wake. They'd just be a different problem set and just as painful, difficult and intractable as the set we now have.

if we have found logical, materialistic explanations for 9999999999957 of the 1000000000000 phenomena in the universe, it seems likely that there are similar explanations for the remaining 43 phenomena.
given that things like matter/energy exist as well as infinite spacetime, and that some of this matter/energy became trapped on a thing we call a planet, causing it to become denser still, causing it to become more complex, causing it to become what we call "alive", the fact that some of this matter/energy arranged in a a particular way to develop the super cool trick of becoming aware of its awareness requires no magical explanation. the pressure cooker (for matter/energy) of earth's environment caused some of the matter/energy to obtain the ability to fly around with purpose, to use gas venting from the planet's core to sustain certain forms. awareness and then awareness of that awareness...yes, super cool trick but just one of trillions of super cool tricks this pressure cooker crucible has given rise to.

99% certain we are brains in jars at this point tbh

if we have found logical, materialistic explanations for 9999999999957 of the 1000000000000 phenomena in the universe, it seems likely that there are similar explanations for the remaining 43 phenomena.

One interesting thing about those logical, materialistic explanations has been that, as they progress from "if I hit this with a rock, it smashes" into more and more abstruse and deeply fundamental layers of the universe, the less those explanations appear to describe anything normally considered logical or material. It makes the whole process very fun to watch.

Consciousness itself seems to me to be partly built in collaboration. Just as we seem to need other minds to create a theory of mind as a child, we need to learn how to introspect about our feelings and shape our understanding of qualia.

Language is such a huge factor in development of homo sapiens. I don't many people say our ability to create and use language must be supernatural, and yet consciousness seems to be an almost direct result of it.

the extent to which 'consciousness' is a historical concept is another wee complication on top of the points of focus here. if super-detailed philosophical philology is ur thing then http://www.versobooks.com/books/1497-identity-and-difference is a good read

"I was only pointing out that I find it difficult to see how arriving at a description of consciousness as a purely mechanistic and externally observable process will be some kind of game-changer for humanity or answer some Eternal Question for All Time. It would just be another turn of the wheel."

Oh, yeah. I was never really talking about how it would be a game-changer as much as I was merely saying it would be beneficial to have greater understanding of the process, which I am confident is nothing more than a series of physical parts interacting, regardless of it's complexity.

i thought mordy's speculation (on a thread that apparently wasn't this one) that the sensation of consciousness is created by the mind's interpretation+explanation of physically determined actions already taken was compelling + classically dramatic, plus "identity is performance" is nowhere near postmodern enough a notion for 2015 imo when "identity is criticism" is just lying around

^from the Atheism vs. Christianity thread

alternatively consciousness is a contingent process constantly justifying the actions you are already determined to take (and there is some science that suggests this is the case). in which case maybe free will occurs in the creative explanation for why you did what you were already going to do. that would be funny if the only thing we freely controlled were interpretations of our bodies.

― Mordy, Wednesday, April 8, 2015 7:33 PM (3 days ago)

Will have an idle stab at stating my position from another angle, although it's of broadly the same character as what I've said before and neurologically highly speculative, so unlikely to win new converts.

What is extraordinary to me is not just the gap between felt experience and what the physicalist picture tells us, but the diverse nature of experience itself. The sweet and sharp tang of a ripe cherry tomato as it bursts on the tongue; the almost tangible sensation of nails down a blackboard; the raw and raucous sound of an electric guitar which for me seems to inject itself directly into my pleasure centre; the brutal pummelling of a strobe light; the luscious and soothing feel of cashmere. These and thousands more are all, it seems to me, (warning! speculation) broadly primary sensory experiences, likely to involve mechanisms that are highly similar neurologically and functionally. To me it beggars belief that such similar systems could lead to such diverse experiences. You might argue that the inputs should be considered part of the system and that is the source of the diversity. My intuitions about brains in vats and rewired brains tell me different. If you want to dismiss my idle speculation and wait for neuroscience to give us firm answers here then fair enough, but as with the original hard problem I can't conceive of anything it could say in terms of biological or functional organisation that would satisfy me.

part of the problem (and why this thread goes in circles imo) is that the experiences at issue here are things primarily not available to language, to memory (the memory of a sensation is fundamentally not the sensation), and to scientific description. it's not even available to time, but exists in the vanishing point between the past and the future. our sensations are always being re-constructed cognitively in our neurological pathways, a breaking up of wholeness into a system of interlocking mechanical parts.

again, the thing itself, in this case, is fundamentally unavailable to description. all of these sensations, however, are still produced internally by the nervous system. every single one. they are produced by a nervous system interpreting an environment that is not itself in terms of itself. what this means is that, in the language of entropy, there is within the system a certain amount of energy that is not available to the system, it escapes its self-organizing processes and cannot be recuperated. (you might even argue a rudimentary sense of time is at issue here.) it is, quite literally, what we are continually losing in the process of cognitively mapping our world and our memories. I've quoted this bit from peirce a lot on this board but i can get away with it one more time:

The First must therefore be present and immediate, so as not to be second to a representation. It must be initiative, original, spontaneous, and free; otherwise it is second to a determining cause. It is also something vivid and conscious; so only it avoids being the object of some sensation. It precedes all synthesis and all differentiation: it has no unity and no parts. It cannot be articulately thought: assert it, and it has already lost its characteristic innocence; for assertion always implies a denial of something else. Stop to think of it, and it has flown!

“The famous law of increase of entropy describes the world as evolving from order to disorder; still, biological or social evolution shows us the complex emerging from the simple. How is this possible? How can structure arise from disorder? Great progress has been realized in this question. We know now that nonequilibrium, the flow of matter and energy, may be a source of order."

i've always liked niklas luhmann's assertion that even if we were able to describe consciousness all it would look like is utter chaos. to describe "the sweet and sharp tang of a ripe cherry tomato" is to have already imposed order on it. so i guess my challenge to the hard problem partisans is to be a bit more exact in what they think they are describing.

TLDR: sensations are not prior to cognitive activity but produced simultaneously as the dissipative energy unavailable to it.

yet another way to put this is to state that by the time we are talking about "the sweet and sharp tang of a ripe cherry tomato" we are already talking about a linguistic construct. literally every single form of qualia proposed on this thread is already a linguistic construct. we've already passed the problem by in talking about it.

sorry for thread bombing.

i guess my challenge to the hard problem partisans is to be a bit more exact in what they think they are describing.

But you already seem to have decided that whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent! My workmanlike prose is not intended to define, merely to describe enough to produce a glimmer of recognition. Agree with some of yr points about the primacy and pre-linguistic nature of all this but surely the medium in which we are so inescapably immersed can't be so hard to discern.