Philosophy Now Forum

Posted: **Sun Apr 18, 2021 11:06 am**

SteveKlinko wrote: ↑Sat Apr 17, 2021 4:48 pm
Gary Childress wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 3:29 pm Is consciousness necessary for anything other than itself or is it entirely superfluous to an entity that possesses it? In other words, can everything that a human can do be mimicked through unconscious mechanical and computational means, or is there something that consciousness does for us that cannot be replicated mechanically or computationally (other than to experience sensations or whatnot)? To put it yet another way, it seems relatively intuitive to me to say that a computer designed to play chess doesn't experience anything when it plays chess as a human does when s/he plays chess and yet a computer can be very good at chess without being conscious.
From a Systems Engineering point of view it is clear that the Conscious Visual experience is a further Processing stage that comes after the Neural Activity.

This is a puzzling way of putting it - rather like saying that neural activity is a process that "comes after" the interactions between the atoms making up the brain. The neurons and atoms are properly the same amaterial described at different levels in the structural hierarchy of material organization; and in the same way, "Conscious Visual Experience" and "Neural Activity" are the same processes described at different levels of the immense hierarchy of processes.

Posted: **Sun Apr 18, 2021 12:47 pm**

RogerSH wrote: ↑Sun Apr 18, 2021 11:06 am
SteveKlinko wrote: ↑Sat Apr 17, 2021 4:48 pm
Gary Childress wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 3:29 pm Is consciousness necessary for anything other than itself or is it entirely superfluous to an entity that possesses it? In other words, can everything that a human can do be mimicked through unconscious mechanical and computational means, or is there something that consciousness does for us that cannot be replicated mechanically or computationally (other than to experience sensations or whatnot)? To put it yet another way, it seems relatively intuitive to me to say that a computer designed to play chess doesn't experience anything when it plays chess as a human does when s/he plays chess and yet a computer can be very good at chess without being conscious.
From a Systems Engineering point of view it is clear that the Conscious Visual experience is a further Processing stage that comes after the Neural Activity.
This is a puzzling way of putting it - rather like saying that neural activity is a process that "comes after" the interactions between the atoms making up the brain. The neurons and atoms are properly the same amaterial described at different levels in the structural hierarchy of material organization; and in the same way, "Conscious Visual Experience" and "Neural Activity" are the same processes described at different levels of the immense hierarchy of processes.

Conscious Visual Experience is in a whole different Category of Phenomenon than the Category of Phenomenon for Neural Activity. You seem to think that the very firing of Neurons is Consciousness. That was a good Speculation a hundred years ago. But the lack of any Scientific Explanations for how Consciousness could be in the Neurons is telling after all these years. What possible Chemical/Electrical/Feedback/Resonance etc. that the Neurons might participate in, gives rise to for example the Experience of Redness, the Standard A Tone, or the Salty Taste? From the Connection Perspective it is clear that Consciousness is conceptually outside of the Neurons and is the Final Stage in the Perception Process. See https://theintermind.com/#ConnectionPerspective This of course is also a Speculation, but it is a Speculation driven by necessity.

Posted: **Sun Apr 18, 2021 6:10 pm**

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:28 pm
Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:27 pm Like I say, take a philosophy of mind course. It'll explain a lot.
You won't learn a thing about either the mind or consciousness, but after it has destroyed your ability to think you won't care. Philosophy does about the same thing to the mind as drugs do to the brain. The proof is all those who recommend you take a course in something, or anything, so long as they can keep you from thinking for yourself.

Posted: **Sun Apr 18, 2021 6:23 pm**

RogerSH wrote: ↑Sun Apr 18, 2021 10:56 am “Perception” is certainly one of the “capabilities of consciousness” I referred to in my earlier post, provided perception is understood as sensing plus understanding of the sensory input, or to put it another way, relating the sensation to the wider context of everything else that is experienced.

This makes it useful to consider Tononi’s “Phi” theory of consciousness, what he calls “integrated information”;

Nonsense. My cat perceives whatever it sees, hears, feels, smells, or tastes, just as you and I do, without having to perform some kind of mystical, "integration of information." Philosophers and scientists have all become supernaturalist religionists.

Human beings, "integrate," what they have perceived by means of concepts into knowledge (which requires langauge), but no integration is required for perception itself.

Posted: **Sun Apr 18, 2021 6:45 pm**

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 3:29 pm Is consciousness necessary for anything ...

This much is certain: If there were no consciousness, nothing would matter and nothing would be necessary, because there would nothing for anything to matter to.

Nothing matters to the non-living unconscious, like the physical universe, the galaxies, the stars, the planets, the earth, mountains, oceans, rivers, and Skepdick. Nothing is necessary or matters to such things. Nothing matters except to beings capable of having objectives or purposes they are aware (conscious) of. Nothing is necessary except to the achievement of some goal or objective which only living conscious organisms can have. If there are any purposes, if anything matters, consciousness is necessary, because without consciousness nothing matters and there are no purposes.

Posted: **Mon Apr 19, 2021 3:25 am**

RogerSH wrote: ↑Sun Apr 18, 2021 10:56 am ... and I cannot imagine my not having consciousness, since imagination requires consciousness.

Yes, agree, imagination - thinking - requires consciousness.
But what exactly is it that has/owns this consciousness?
As I see it, me/I is a thought (thus also "imagination") and as having me/I thoughts is only possible within consciousness, it is consciousness itself that "has" me/I thoughts. It is not the me/I thought that is thinking thoughts (a thought cannot think thoughts - it can only talk about or refer to other thoughts) - it is consciousness itself that "thinks" these thoughts.
To now suggest that me/I (which is nothing but a thought) owns/has consciousness, is simply not logical - its actually perfectly impossible for a thought to have/own consciousness.

Now you could say that the body, specifically the brain has (or produces) consciousness - but this is equally untrue (at least when basing our investigation on what is actually directly experienced, and not what is purely imagined). There is actually zero scientific proof that consciousness is produced by a body or a brain, it is only an idea which we believe is true as we tend to mistake the process of thinking for consciousness itself (while in reality, thought only arises within consciousness but is not a prerequisite for it).

Posted: **Mon Apr 19, 2021 10:11 am**

AlexW wrote: ↑Mon Apr 19, 2021 3:25 am
RogerSH wrote: ↑Sun Apr 18, 2021 10:56 am ... and I cannot imagine my not having consciousness, since imagination requires consciousness.
But what exactly is it that has/owns this consciousness?
As I see it, me/I is a thought

This all underlines the difficulty of finding language to describe a circular relationship of which the describer is part. (Talking about the nature of language using language is another example.)

I think I would say that me/I is a concept, and that consciousness is another concept. But I don't think of consciousness as a "thing" to be "owned" so much as a property, and I don't see the problem is saying that (very crudely) a thing-concept A has a property-concept B.

There is actually zero scientific proof that consciousness is produced by a body or a brain

Science deals with objective reality, while consciousness as experienced is subjective, so, as far as I can see, can never be properly the subject of scientific enquiry - but that doesn't stop us examining objective correlates or attributes of consciousness, e.g. the capabilities of consciousness.

Posted: **Mon Apr 19, 2021 10:46 am**

RogerSH wrote: ↑Mon Apr 19, 2021 10:11 am This all underlines the difficulty of finding language to describe a circular relationship of which the describer is part. (Talking about the nature of language using language is another example.)

I think I would say that me/I is a concept, and that consciousness is another concept. But I don't think of consciousness as a "thing" to be "owned" so much as a property, and I don't see the problem is saying that (very crudely) a thing-concept A has a property-concept B.

There is actually zero scientific proof that consciousness is produced by a body or a brain
Science deals with objective reality, while consciousness as experienced is subjective, so, as far as I can see, can never be properly the subject of scientific enquiry - but that doesn't stop us examining objective correlates or attributes of consciousness, e.g. the capabilities of consciousness.

You are conflating a bunch of issues here:

1. The (solved or unsolved, depends on your view) problem of "How does language relate to the world?"
2. The arbitrary categorisation/exclusion of "humans" and our cultural artefacts (such as knowledge, language) as NOT being part of reality.
3. The philosophical error of failing to distinguish between circularity and recursion. Circularity self-defeats. Recursion self-affirms.
4. Science doesn't deal with objective reality since no human being can transcend their subjective experiences. Science constructs Mathematical models and taxonomies of reality which sufficiently account for our subjective experiences and interactions with the world.

Ultimately though, our physics knowledge is comes in the form of linguistic expressions in the language of Mathematics. How does Mathematics relate to the world is still problem #1 above.

Away from "objective reality" and onto linguistics computer science already gives us languages that can reflect, objectively talk about and modify themselves. It's called "Reflective programming" precisely for those reasons - because humans reflect.

A language which can describe circular relationships of which the describer is part of are called homoiconic languages.
Programming languages which can interpret their own meaning are called Meta-circular evaluators etc.

And so the problem of "consciousness" becomes trivially an epistemic problem of necessary and sufficient conditions. If all that's required to satisfy "consciousness" is the ability to be self-aware and say true things about yourself then modern programming languages already satisfy this requirement.

And because philosophy I expect you to claim that it may be necessary but insufficient.

Posted: **Mon Apr 19, 2021 11:16 am**

Skepdick, I largely agree with most of this. My point was not that talking about the thing doing the talking is impossible, just that it has particular pitfalls and limitations, especially using ordinary language.

Your point 4 itself conflates a number of issues, and this is not the right forum to go into them at any length. Does it make sense to say this? Scientific knowledge comprises shared, public representations of models of reality, which I would therefore call objective, although the understanding of those representations by individual scientists is necessarily subjective.

Posted: **Wed Apr 21, 2021 12:45 am**

RogerSH wrote: ↑Mon Apr 19, 2021 10:11 am This all underlines the difficulty of finding language to describe a circular relationship of which the describer is part. (Talking about the nature of language using language is another example.)

Well, yes, but this is only part of the "problem".
Conceptual thought, and as a result language (and I am not talking about specific computer programming languages), only operates on the conceptual plane - it is the realm of separate things, of objects that have all sorts of different attributes. And thus, when discussing consciousness we apply the same criteria - we talk about it as if it were a thing. Problem is... it is not. Now how does one talk about a thing that is not a thing..?
With the loss of thing-ness all conventional "logic" is equally lost. When talking about consciousness (or "something" that is not a thing) all that can be said is "that it is neither this nor that" - neither large nor small, neither left nor right, neither up nor down - one can't even say that it exists, as due to its nature it neither exists nor does it not exist - it simply is not "part of" the world of things (which is really all we can properly talk about and thus all conversation about "no-things" like consciousness or eternity or infinity mostly lead to a dead end).

RogerSH wrote: ↑Mon Apr 19, 2021 10:11 am I think I would say that me/I is a concept, and that consciousness is another concept.

Agree
Still, it is interesting to find out what the concepts point at.
In case of "me/I" it simply points at a complex structure of (again) conceptual thought (beliefs, knowledge etc etc) whereas the concept "consciousness" points to reality itself (that's at least how I see it within my own conceptual structure of "I/me"

)

RogerSH wrote: ↑Mon Apr 19, 2021 10:11 am Science deals with objective reality, while consciousness as experienced is subjective, so, as far as I can see, can never be properly the subject of scientific enquiry - but that doesn't stop us examining objective correlates or attributes of consciousness, e.g. the capabilities of consciousness.

Objective reality is not more than an idea - it is a reality made of mind-objects that all have mind-attributes whereas consciousness is the "place", or rather the reality, in which these objective (or rather: virtual) realities arise (are thought into "existence").
Consciousness is not experienced (there is no separate one that could experience it) - all experience arises within it - on the other hand, yes, you are right to a degree, as experience is not separate from consciousness - it simply is an expression of it (just like pictures moving on a screen are not separate from the screen - they rely on the screen to come into existence, but the screen does not rely on the pictures to exist).

When we "examining objective correlates or attributes" then we always examine the pictures on the screen - we identify objects and put them into certain relation with each other, then we define scientific laws based on their movements/behaviours on the screen of consciousness, but this does not mean that we are investigating consciousness itself.
Who would be the one investigating anyway? There is only thought talking about more thought... if at all, it would be consciousness investigating itself (by pretending to be a separate part of itself and then looking for itself in a world of separate things) --- which is exactly what seems to be happing anyway

)

Posted: **Tue May 11, 2021 5:37 pm**

AlexW wrote: ↑Wed Apr 21, 2021 12:45 am Conceptual thought, and as a result language .... only operates on the conceptual plane - it is the realm of separate things, of objects that have all sorts of different attributes. And thus, when discussing consciousness we apply the same criteria - we talk about it as if it were a thing. Problem is... it is not.

Sorry for the delayed response, I have been distracted for a while…
I do agree that it doesn’t seem to be helpful to regard consciousness as a “thing”. I’m not sure why we can’t talk about anything except things, though. “Life” is not a thing, the way I see it, but it is a useful, if fuzzy-edged, category; consciousness, ditto. While neither have material attributes, they both have characteristic capabilities, which is why I think the most useful approach to thinking about consciousness is to think about the capabilities that it enables.

AlexW wrote: ↑Wed Apr 21, 2021 12:45 am Objective reality is not more than an idea - it is a reality made of mind-objects that all have mind-attributes

Of course, you can define reality how you like, but that has always seemed a really clumsy concept to me. It requires, for example, that there was no objective reality before there were minds to think about it. I suggest that "reality" is more usefully the name we give to everything that is the case, and cannot be made otherwise by thinking so. Mind-objects in this context are attempted approximations to reality. You can say if you like that it is impossible to say what reality is like, because as soon as you do so you are replacing the true reality by a representation of it (a “mind-object”). But that doesn’t stop me using “reality” as the name of a place-holder in my picture of how I come to understand the world. (This all belongs in another topic, of course).

Posted: **Sat May 15, 2021 4:51 am**

RogerSH wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 5:37 pm Of course, you can define reality how you like, but that has always seemed a really clumsy concept to me.

I wasn't trying to define reality, I was trying to point out that, what one might call "objective" reality is not more than an idea (which really is the case for everything that can be expressed in any dualistic language).
To me, reality is simply what can be directly experienced - color, sound, smell, touch... as such, reality and consciousness are one and the same (no)thing

I see no difference between the "two" (as they are one and the same).

Of course one can imagine there being another reality "outside" experience - which is exactly what we do when we describe an objective reality (made of separate things) or even go as far as imagining some kind of fundamental/basic-reality which is hidden from our senses...

Posted: **Sat May 15, 2021 4:38 pm**

AlexW wrote: ↑Sat May 15, 2021 4:51 am To me, reality is simply what can be directly experienced - color, sound, smell, touch...

That is certainly a different sense of the word: it corresponds to what I would call subjective reality. Many writers, of course, take the opposite position and say that subjective reality is an illusion, it's just the representation created by our senses of the true reality which is objective reality! I use the word in the wide sense described above, 'everything that is the case', which includes objective reality, subjective realities (one per mind), mathematical realities (one per axiom system), social realities....

More accurately, I should have said that subjective reality is the representation created by the interpretation system that takes the output of our senses as input. When that interpretation doesn't correspond to what I call objective reality - cases such as mirages, optical illusions, clinical confabulation - do you still insist that the illusion is the only reality?

Like Humpty Dumpty, you can use words to mean what you like, but some usages make it much harder to talk about certain kinds of things than others.

Posted: **Mon May 17, 2021 4:14 am**

RogerSH wrote: ↑Sat May 15, 2021 4:38 pm More accurately, I should have said that subjective reality is the representation created by the interpretation system that takes the output of our senses as input. When that interpretation doesn't correspond to what I call objective reality - cases such as mirages, optical illusions, clinical confabulation - do you still insist that the illusion is the only reality?

Sounds very complicated...
To me, reality (what you call "subjective reality") is available to everyone at all times - no matter if one interprets it and thus turns it into "objective" - or should we say: consensus - reality or not.
A baby, just born, knows nothing about subjectivity or objectivity - it doesn't need to agree with the rest of humanity that a certain part of experience is an apple or a pear... it simply experiences what is - it experiences reality - its as simple as that (and: why would anyone - a god? - try to hide or obscure reality behind an illusion? it makes no sense at all...) .

Experience/reality doesn't change the older one gets, what changes are the ideas and interpretations one learns and accumulates about this basic experience, about reality.

Sure, "many writers, of course, take the opposite position and say that subjective reality is an illusion, it's just the representation created by our senses of the true reality which is objective reality" - but this is again only an idea that is a product of thought... it may be true or it may be false... we will never know for certain as all you can actually really know for certain is this direct experience - every interpretation of direct experience is up for discussion, but the experience itself (whatever it may be) is a fact. Interpretations (of reality) change - and will continue to change with science advancing - but the experience of *wind on skin* or *taste of apple* will be unaffected no matter how much we believe we know about it.

Where does all our knowledge come from? There is no other source than direct experience (what you call "subjective reality)" - whatever is perceived via the senses is primary, without this direct experience there would be no thought about it, we would have no idea of any object or even an "objective reality".
Now people attempt to refute the foundation - directly experienced reality - and replace it with an idea that has its basic roots in exactly this directly experienced reality... but they seem to overlook this fact and believe that their ideas and beliefs come from someplace else... some magical land of higher thought and wisdom... it's quite funny, isn't it?

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