proto-consciousness field theory

Belz... said:
That part I understand, but I still don't see the distinction. The 'qualia' that contribute to the experience ARE also an experience, are they not?
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They are.

Belz... said:
Are they something distinct from you that you are experiencing? Are they the consciousness field you were talking about?
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No, they are distortions in the conscious field, as is all experience. Qualia are one element of subjective experience and subjective experience is distortion of the conscious field. In my view.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I've never seen that argument made, nor seen it used in a definition of qualia.







I'm honestly not sure you're different from anybody else on this score.
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Look at even the Wikipedia article and the section with qualia and pzombies.

Close your eyes and imagine a red apple. Do you see a red apple in your mind's eye?
 
JoeMorgue said:
Okay I'm gonna over simplify a little bit of neuro-science a little bit, <snip>

But I do think this "whole cognizant picture" that Left Brain creates, essentially taking all the inputs and decisions making that all the various parts of the brain perform and making the best narrative it can as to why all of it happen is, for most usages of the term "consciousness."
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All this is true, and I posted about it extensively in a thread maybe a couple of years back, but if your final sentence is a conclusion I don't get it.

My theory deals with the split brain phenomenon very simply. Two primary locales of information processing; two instances of consciousness. Each instance believes that it's in control and that manifests physically, such as when the split brain patient does up the buttons on her shirt with one hand only to undo them with the other. It's two 'people' in the same body, each believing that the other is an annoying, mechanical defect.
 
Darat said:
Look at even the Wikipedia article and the section with qualia and pzombies.
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You'll have to be more specific. I don't see anything in the p-zombie section of the Wikipedia article on qualia that suggests that qualia of something currently happening do not count as qualia.

Close your eyes and imagine a red apple. Do you see a red apple in your mind's eye?
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No.

But, having read a couple of articles since this morning, it seems that my experience may not be as universal as I thought, and that I'm in the same 2% of the population as you that cannot consciously call images to mind.
 
Darat said:
Look at even the Wikipedia article and the section with qualia and pzombies.

Close your eyes and imagine a red apple. Do you see a red apple in your mind's eye?
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I think I do, but it's nowhere near as sharp and obvious as if I actually saw one; that's the thing.
 
JoeMorgue said:
This is why they can literally put you into an MRI machine and watch you make decisions a tiny fraction of a second before your conscious mind "decides" to make the decision. Because you don't make the decision consciously.
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I think, in general, too much is made of those experiments. The effect they are describing may be real, but I've not yet read about one experiment of this kind that really has a protocol that I find has a truly satisfactory way to determine exactly when someone made (or thought they made) the conscious decision to move a finger (or whatever other way they're testing the hypothesis). I'm not entirely convinced that the conclusions people draw from these experiments are wholly warranted, and I really don't think that they're as solid as they're usually made out to be.
 
What's even being arguing?

That visualization / memory of something is similar but not identical to direct sensory input of the thing in most cases.

Who's not onboard with that?
 
JoeMorgue said:
What's even being arguing?

That visualization / memory of something is similar but not identical to direct sensory input of the thing in most cases.

Who's not onboard with that?
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When you say it's not identical I presume you exclude the method by which the information stimulates the brain, which is clearly different in each case by definition?
 
I'm saying that closing your eyes and imaging an apple, remembering that time you saw an apple, and actually looking at an apple aren't the same thing.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I'm saying that closing your eyes and imaging an apple, remembering that time you saw an apple, and actually looking at an apple aren't the same thing.
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Well no. In the latter case the information originates externally, in the former it originates internally. I mean, you're right that nobody would dispute this, I just don't understand why you'd make that point.
 
I'm trying with absolute panicked desperation trying to keep this from going down some stupid "Brain in a Jar" rabbit hole.
 
Chanakya said:
Never heard of somthing like this! Although TBH there's plenty I've not heard of, so ...

Have you had this condition diagnosed, then?
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That is a silly question, I can't 'visualize' I can manipulate shapes in my brain, I can remember colors, but I can't just 'visualize' red.
 
Dancing David said:
Qualia is a case of special pleading
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Textbook special pleading.

And not even that it's the "You've explained a hamburger with cheese, now explain a cheeseburger" tactic.

We are our brains. We are not our brains plus something else. Consciousness is a process (well multiple processes probably) not a single definite thing that either exists or doesn't. The mind is not a separate "experience" layered on top of the normal biological process.
 
It's not even that, it's just an extra made up quality put on top of the thing already explained in order to keep pretending there's still a question.

"Science can explain X, but it can't explain Y" when X and Y are the same thing and when we ask the difference between X and Y the answer is going to be "The difference is X is the part that science can explain, Y is the part that science can't explain" repeated a billion time in a million different variations.
 
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Belz... said:
But the experiences are also different.
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Ah, that's what I was trying to establish, but Mr Morgue is too focused on providing a running meta-analysis of the discussion and steering the conversation where he and he alone believes it should go.

Not so much now but when I was young I was able to lucid dream, at will, to an extent where is was impossible to distinguish dream experience from external experience. Indeed, 'actual' experience would often be a pale imitation of dream experience. This was full-on lucid dreaming, in which I was fully conscious, fully aware I was dreaming and lying in bed, yet able to interact with the dream world as if it were external.
 
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