My take on why indeed the study of consciousness may not be as simple

[PixyMisa]

If you can't provide a physical description, that's because it's not a physical property. It's not a matter of it being really complicated to describe. Computation is quite simple when described appropriately - that is, in functional terms. It's not possible to describe it in physical terms because it's not a physical process.

Then neither is gravity.

 

[cyborg]

Then neither is gravity.

Nor anything else.

How can I describe an electron in physical terms without appealing to how it behaves - i.e. what is its function?

 

[quarky]

I think you mean, to study one's own consciousness through introspection (and introspection alone). Certainly you can climb into an FMRI or run TMS experiments on yourself; it's just kind of awkward.

What you're talking about there is the distinction between attention and arousal, something that is found well beyond the sphere of buddhism. Introspection is, as you say, anecdotal; it can provide a starting point for real research, but certainly not an ending point.

Which is clearly not the case.

Which is clearly not the case.


I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean.

True, but certainly not relevant.

New metaphors don't always contribute to our understanding of that which they are a metaphor for.

Doesn't thought rely on metaphor? Don't objects preceed words?
Consciousness, in my experience, is independent of thought, which is dependent on metaphor.

That which "is clearly not the case" is not very clear.

 

[PixyMisa]

Doesn't thought rely on metaphor?

Not metaphor, but symbolic representation, which isn't the same.

Don't objects preceed words?

Well, the question is a big vague, but generally, yeah.

Consciousness, in my experience, is independent of thought, which is dependent on metaphor.

Concsciousness is not independent of thought - it is a system of thought.

And thought is not dependent on metaphor - it is dependent on symbolic representation.

That which "is clearly not the case" is not very clear.

Hope this makes it clearer. You're not completely off the mark, so we might just be arguing about definitions.

 

[!Kaggen]

1. Is there not an element of recall in your previous descrption of 'awareness of thought'? have you now tried to unclearly reframe that?

Thoughts as such being "objects" created from the ever present thinking process.
In other words our awareness of thoughts is always after they are created and as such is related to memory, yes.
In fact the origin of the word memory

Origin:
1275–1325; ME memorie < L memoria, equiv. to memor mindful, remembering + -ia -y 3

from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/memory

indicates the relationship between consciousness, mindful and memory.

2. Is there not awareness in the experience of thought?

Yes, If we could experience thinking without thoughts. I believe this is the goal of meditation as I have pointed out.

Just so you know, I have a long standing practice in spiritual traditions of meditation, shamanism and ceremonial magic. So I am very familiar with many of the concepts and practices. i will have to return to your prior post and then reread this one, I do not think that it has been made clearer to me at all.

That is great, I am looking forward to hearing about your insights into these practices overtime.

 

[PixyMisa]

Thoughts as such being "objects" created from the ever present thinking process.

Thoughts aren't objects, they're processes.

In other words our awareness of thoughts is always after they are created and as such is related to memory, yes.

Well, no, that's not what happens.

Yes, If we could experience thinking without thoughts. I believe this is the goal of meditation as I have pointed out.

This is impossible unless you are using a definition of "thought" that is disconnected from reality.

 

[!Kaggen]

Did you mean to state :
"As I have said before, we can only observe our own consciousness by being aware of our thoughts."

Yes

 

[!Kaggen]

Thoughts aren't objects, they're processes.

I am referring to a thought as the product of thinking.

Well, no, that's not what happens.

Please elaborate.

This is impossible unless you are using a definition of "thought" that is disconnected from reality.

see the definition of a thought above

 

[!Kaggen]

overgeneralization.


Perhaps your academics are very different than the ones I am familira with, I know many agricultural scientists who are directly involved in practical research into agricultural practices.

Sorry, this seems to have been mainly a piece of your personal opinion.

And you need to focus instead on what the scientists who research 'sonsciousness' are doing.

I will gently note that conceptual artifacts seems to dominate some of your posts in that there seem to be some preconceptions about the way things are.

Sure my life experiences do motivate my thinking.

 

[PixyMisa]

I am referring to a thought as the product of thinking.

You mean an idea? That is, a discretely defineable abstract concept?

 

[yy2bggggs]

Whether or not it can be considered digital isn't entirely clear to me.

The information content is the arrangement of atoms in the DNA molecule. Of course that is digital.

 

[PixyMisa]

I'd agree with most of the above. The difference between rabbit and dog is not a matter of how we interact with the rabbit and the dog, it's a well-defined physical process.

There's your problem. You can only identify a well-defined physical process by interacting with it in some way. You think, for some bizarre reason, that this means that computation isn't such, and yet dogs and rabbits are. You are simply wrong.

Whether or not it can be considered digital isn't entirely clear to me. The interaction of the electro-weak force is mediated by (virtual?) photons, but there are no fixed number of such interactions in the operation of chemistry, and other considerations such as distance and time are not discreet, at least at the level of atomic/electrical interaction. This may be merely a semantic point.

No, it's not merely a semantic point, it's merely a wrong point - or at best, completely irrelevant.

How many distinct ways are there to build a specific DNA sequence?

 

[!Kaggen]

You mean an idea? That is, a discretely defineable abstract concept?

Yes. concepts, ideas are thoughts.

 

[PixyMisa]

Yes. concepts, ideas are thoughts.

Okay, well, that's an entirely abstract notion and quite disconnected from what happens in the brain, from the processes of thinking and consciousness, so I'm not sure if what you're saying even makes sense. I'll have to go back and re-read some of your posts in that light.

 

[drkitten]

Any set of state transitions will be equivalent to the actions of a given Turing machine.

Er, wrong.

A simple counterexample -- define a rock as having a unique single state S and all transitions therefore go (equivalently) from S to S. This is NOT Turing-equivalent; in fact, it can't process information at all, because there's no change.

Some sets of state transitions simply do not generate a UTM.

It's not necessary to have a physical tape, any more than a computer needs a tape.

While a physical tape is not necessary, something with the representational capacity of a tape is.

Variations in temperature are quite sufficient to give us an effectively unlimited supply of states and transitions between them.

Effectively unlimited, but the permissible set of transitions is too limited to allow a UTM to be built using temperature variations as "states." In a TM, any state can in theory transition to any state. Similarly, any cell on the tape can be overwritten. This gives us an unlimited number of potential transitions that need to be expressible within the physical system.

Temperature is (physically), a continuous property; if the current temperature is T, the temperature can either go up to T+ or down to T-, but it can't skip all the way down to T0 without transitioning through T-. Thus you see that a TM needs to be able to make more state transitions than the temperature of a rock is capable of.

Of course, this simple argument from physical continuity also ignores the fact that at least one of those transitions is impossible without external energy input that is not part of "a rock just sitting there"; if the rock is warmer than the surrounding area, it will naturally cool and it will not, in fact, transition to a higher temperature. Conversely, if the rock is cooler than the surrounding area, it will naturally heat up. To do otherwise would violate the same laws of physics you keep mangling.

 

[PixyMisa]

I'm not sure what westprog is even trying to argue any more. He has so thoroughly misunderstood everything that his arguments might just as well be written backwards in Sanskrit for all the sense they make.

 

[westprog]

Function isn't physical ? I'm confused.

A physical description says what is in a system. A functional description says what we want it to do. Two processes can have identical functional descriptions and be entirely physically different. It doesn't mean that something with a functional description doesn't act in a physical way.

It's always an error in science to assume that two things that are functionally similar can be classified together. Bats aren't birds.

 

[westprog]

Nor anything else.

How can I describe an electron in physical terms without appealing to how it behaves - i.e. what is its function?

Behaviour is not function. Two very different concepts. An electron has no inherent purpose.

 

[drkitten]

A physical description says what is in a system. A functional description says what we want it to do.

No, a functional description says what it does. Whether we want it to do that or not is irrelevant. For example, I can provide a functional description of how a fire spreads in order to help design a better fire suppression system. I don't want fire to spread at all, typically -- but in order to prevent it from spreading, I should understand how it does spread.

 

[Dancing David]

Thoughts as such being "objects" created from the ever present thinking process.
In other words our awareness of thoughts is always after they are created and as such is related to memory, yes.
In fact the origin of the word memory

Origin:
1275–1325; ME memorie < L memoria, equiv. to memor mindful, remembering + -ia -y 3

from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/memory

indicates the relationship between consciousness, mindful and memory.



Yes, If we could experience thinking without thoughts. I believe this is the goal of meditation as I have pointed out.

That is great, I am looking forward to hearing about your insights into these practices overtime.

Now I am really confused are you labeling all brain events (place holder) as thoughts, there are sensations, perceptions, memory and many, many other things.

technically you can not really have thoughst without thinking.

So some claification might be in order. Do you mean a single thread of verbal cognition or do you mean a lack of verbal cognition?