Consciousness: What is 'Awareness?'

[Piggy]

I find this remarkable.

It is, however, a nice way of maintaining your view in the face of disconfirming evidence.

It's not that.

It's just as if someone were to post that they have no head, their body stops at the neck.

I flatly wouldn't believe that, either.

And I simply do not believe that you don't experience your stomach as down and your feet as farther down, rather than experiencing your stomach as up and your feet as down, which would be the case if the physical orientation of our sense of self were in our hips.

I do not believe that if you raise your arm above your head you don't experience your elbow as up and your hand as farther up.

Why would I believe such a claim?

 

[Piggy]

Well, I haven't lied and I do not feel the same thing you do, or at least what I think you mean. As I mentioned to AlBell, if I have my eyes open and am focusing on an object, I feel as if my "attention" (Yay! Reference to OP!) is centered behind my eyes about 3 inches back into my head. If I close my eyes and listen carefully, I feel as if my "attention" is somewhere just inside the back of my skull between my ears. When I do something active, I am most aware of my core, and all my actions seem to flow from there.

I honestly do not feel a location for this sensation if I just sit still and do nothing or something neutral like breath control meditation.

Is your sensation always located in the same place, or does it drift a bit? Can you deliberately move it around?

We can always move our attention around. We can focus it on our hands, feet, core, wherever.

And it's possible when we meditate, for instance, to put bodily sensations out of our minds.

But as you say, when sitting with eyes closed, we feel the locus of our conscious selves to be in a vague area around the top of the skull.

And even when we do attend to other body parts, we sense their spatial locations from that reference point at the top of our skulls.

But the feeling we get when we think about our left hand, for instance, isn't at all the same thing as the sensation of our locus of awareness. When I focus on the sensations in my hand, I feel it physically. When I stop and sit still, with eyes closed or open, I sense that my body is below "me", that the ceiling is above me, that my ears are on either side. But I don't have any perception of any physical apparatus associated with this kind of sensation, which makes it distinct from what is happening when I focus my attention on various body parts.

 

[Piggy]

Mine is always in that location. I've had no success in attempts to move it around, or even budge it. I've tried.

Piggy: Why would you think every aspect of your perceptual perspective should be universal? What's so surprising about another person's brain being wired a bit differently?

The brain can be wired in surprising ways, but a lack of that particular sense would be more than bizarre.

I don't believe Mercutio is schizophrenic.

 

[Piggy]

It's kind of fun. I can almost feel it moving backwards when I close my eyes.

Mine tends to move downward slightly when I put on a hat, I've noticed.

 

[AlBell]

When I do something active, I am most aware of my core, and all my actions seem to flow from there.

Could you describe this a bit more?

I honestly do not feel a location for this sensation if I just sit still and do nothing or something neutral like breath control meditation.

In that circumstance, mine's dimmed but still there.

Is your sensation always located in the same place, or does it drift a bit? Can you deliberately move it around?

In my case, it does not move.

 

[Bill Thompson]

Awareness or consciousness is a known property that can be transferred from one humanoid to another provided that their DNA matches. Just call up the folks who worked on the Avatar project on Pandora.

 

[Mercutio]

It's not that.

It's just as if someone were to post that they have no head, their body stops at the neck.

I flatly wouldn't believe that, either.

Nor would I.

Would you believe my colleague's report that she saw a purple aura from a patient's liver? She seemed as certain as you seem.

And I simply do not believe that you don't experience your stomach as down and your feet as farther down, rather than experiencing your stomach as up and your feet as down, which would be the case if the physical orientation of our sense of self were in our hips.

I don't have a sense of self in my hips either, so I don't know why you would attribute this to me.

I do not believe that if you raise your arm above your head you don't experience your elbow as up and your hand as farther up.

Another thing I have not claimed, so it doesn't really bother me if you don't believe it.

Why would I believe such a claim?

Well... why should I believe yours? Seriously; you have made a claim, which some agree with, and so have I. Why should either of us be believed?

Of course, I am not the one locating a complex sensation in an area bereft of sensory neurons (or perhaps in the sinuses, it is not quite clear), so perhaps there is less reason to doubt me...

 

[Piggy]

Would you believe my colleague's report that she saw a purple aura from a patient's liver?

I used to date a woman that claimed she saw auras.

She was a nutjob.

Are you?

 

[Mercutio]

I used to date a woman that claimed she saw auras.

She was a nutjob.

Are you?

Please.

Between the two of us, you are the one claiming to feel something where there are no sensory neurons.

At minimum, this suggests that whatever you are feeling, you are not sensing it but constructing it. If so, the movement of this feeling when you put a hat on (was that you, or another poster?), or with open or closed eyes (that was not you, I think) is perfectly understandable.

 

[Piggy]

Please.

Between the two of us, you are the one claiming to feel something where there are no sensory neurons.

And yet, the sensation is there.

Which leaves you as the one who is shoehorning reality into a model of the world.

I don't know of anyone who claims to know how the brain generates consciousness, or how this located sense of self is created and maintained.

But we cannot, for that reason, simply refuse to recognize that it's there.

I am confident that one day, if we don't make ourselves extinct too quickly, we'll figure out the mechanism.

 

[Piggy]

At minimum, this suggests that whatever you are feeling, you are not sensing it but constructing it. If so, the movement of this feeling when you put a hat on (was that you, or another poster?), or with open or closed eyes (that was not you, I think) is perfectly understandable.

So what you're saying is that because we don't yet know how the body does this, it must be imaginary.

Thank goodness there are scientists who don't think this way and are willing to do research to find out what's going on.

 

[Mercutio]

And yet, the sensation is there.

For some of us. Not for all of us. Much like that purple aura.

Which leaves you as the one who is shoehorning reality into a model of the world.

I make no claims about your reports. I cannot know if you are mistaken. You, however, have called me a liar. I don't doubt you feel what you claim.

I don't know of anyone who claims to know how the brain generates consciousness, or how this located sense of self is created and maintained.

I hope you are already aware of the hidden assumptions here. Don't want to go citing the sunrise bit again.

But we cannot, for that reason, simply refuse to recognize that it's there.

There is, however, the "grand illusion" theory of consciousness. It does not say nothing is there; rather, it says that it is not what it seems to be. We know, and have known for roughly a century, that introspective accounts are not terribly trustworthy.

Oh, and what are you doing if not simply refusing to recognize that it's not there... in me, at least.

I am confident that one day, if we don't make ourselves extinct too quickly, we'll figure out the mechanism.

At which point, presumably, we could figure out a difference between me and you. Or, more parsimoniously, that the "sensation" is an illusion (or the lack of sensation is an illusion).

 

[Mercutio]

So what you're saying is that because we don't yet know how the body does this, it must be imaginary.

Thank goodness there are scientists who don't think this way and are willing to do research to find out what's going on.

I am saying that since this sensation would have to work via a different mechanism than all thus far known senses, in a region which has been studied for at least decades (depending on how thoroughly you want to call it "studied"), and since the alleged sensation is not universal, and is described variously by the people who do claim it, and since it is known that suggestion is enough to have therapeutic touch practitioners be able to feel something unless Emily Rosa is testing them... that the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate it is something more than imaginary.

Thank goodness there are scientists who think this way and are not willing to accept any claim that comes down the pike without justification.

 

[blobru]

Well, I haven't lied and I do not feel the same thing you do, or at least what I think you mean. As I mentioned to AlBell, if I have my eyes open and am focusing on an object, I feel as if my "attention" (Yay! Reference to OP!) is centered behind my eyes about 3 inches back into my head. If I close my eyes and listen carefully, I feel as if my "attention" is somewhere just inside the back of my skull between my ears. When I do something active, I am most aware of my core, and all my actions seem to flow from there.

I honestly do not feel a location for this sensation if I just sit still and do nothing or something neutral like breath control meditation. ...

This "locus of awareness" sidetrack got me thinking about Helen Keller's education, described in The Story of My Life. She does have some dim memories before losing her sight and hearing, a sense of being enveloped in silence and darkness now, where one gets the impression she is living very much at the border of her body, as it touches her surroundings.

After she brings her some flowers, Miss Sullivan signs, "I love Helen"...

"What is love?" I asked.

She drew me closer to her and said, "It is here," pointing to my heart, whose beats I was conscious of for the first time. Her words puzzled me very much because I did not then understand anything unless I touched it.

So Miss Sullivan is giving her a locus of awareness for love, about her heart, but Helen hasn't the abstraction to understand it.

Later, Helen is stumped by a mistake she's made stringing beads...

...I concentrated my attention on the lesson and tried to think how I should have arranged the beads. Miss Sullivan touched my forehead and spelled with decided emphasis, "Think."

In a flash I knew that the word was the name of the process that was going on in my head. This was my first conscious perception of an abstract idea.

Now that Helen has a locus for awareness of thought, and abstraction, she returns to her earlier question about love; which Miss Sullivan is able to convey:

"You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. Without love you would not be happy or want to play."

The beautiful truth burst upon my mind–I felt that there were invisible lines stretched between my spirit and the spirits of others.

For Helen, "love" now has a locus in the heart which as "spirit" connects her to others.

The interesting point to me is that even with only dimly-remembered senses of sight and hearing -- the eyes and ears tending to make the head the natural locus for cognitive awareness -- it is still immediately obvious to Helen that thought is something "going on in my head"; while it is natural for her teacher to locate emotional awareness, "love", for her in her beating heart. Some of this is power of suggestion -- but is all of it? Would Helen have understood if Miss Sullivan had pointed to her neck as the locus of thought and shins for love, or navel and elbows, etc.?

It may be that it's more natural to locate thinking in the head, emotion in the heart, etal., than elsewhere, though these locations are just general tendencies; that the locus of awareness is mobile, bound up in what we're doing and how, but within limits, bound by the body's own activity in response.

 

[Hokulele]

Could you describe this a bit more?

I'll do my best.

When mountain biking or surfing, your center of gravity often controls things such as your speed and direction. On a bike or surfboard, you steer more by shifting your weight than by turning the handlebars or tipping the board with your ankles. As part of this, athletes are often taught to focus on their "core", which is usually centered somewhere in the torso, lower for women than men. So although I am watching the trail or wave in front of me using my eyes, I feel as if decisions and, well, awareness is quite a bit lower in my body and I am much less aware of any conscious decision-making process. In addition, I am always looking many feet ahead of what is actually happening at the moment, so what I am seeing has little relevance to what I am doing. If I deliberately look at the trail directly in front of my front wheel or the board under my feet, they look a lot further away than I expect as if I expected "myself" to be a lot lower than my head.

I hope this helps because it isn't something I have ever tried to describe before.

 

[Frank Newgent]

I'll do my best.

When mountain biking or surfing, your center of gravity often controls things such as your speed and direction. On a bike or surfboard, you steer more by shifting your weight than by turning the handlebars or tipping the board with your ankles. As part of this, athletes are often taught to focus on their "core", which is usually centered somewhere in the torso, lower for women than men. So although I am watching the trail or wave in front of me using my eyes, I feel as if decisions and, well, awareness is quite a bit lower in my body and I am much less aware of any conscious decision-making process. In addition, I am always looking many feet ahead of what is actually happening at the moment, so what I am seeing has little relevance to what I am doing. If I deliberately look at the trail directly in front of my front wheel or the board under my feet, they look a lot further away than I expect as if I expected "myself" to be a lot lower than my head.

I hope this helps because it isn't something I have ever tried to describe before.

I'll try to make my own contribution in the spirit of what Hokulele wrote.

I like to hike long-distance backcountry trails. Have been doing some strenuous hikes in the Tucson area recently.

Doing so at a good pace while gaining altitude can be a discipline. To do so while enjoying the experience I find myself concentrating on three areas.

Guess "awareness" is a good word for what I feel in the sternum area... though I find myself regarding breathing as a mechanical function while focusing on my heart rate and inhaling/exhaling... the cardio-vascular act can seem to have a life of its own.

Sometimes you have to remember to keep looking up and around as you trudge up the trail. My awareness in this regard is way outside my body, on whatever it is I'm looking at. Doesn't seem to be in my sinuses, as Mercutio put it, in the moment.

To be able to do this without stumbling and tripping on rocks in the way you have to stay focused in your feet. That is not mechanical in the way the breathing/sternum awareness works. Maybe the hardest to explain... it's definitely not the same as just looking down all the time. You can't be doing that if you are trying to keep an eye out for animals, birds, weird rock formations.

And not the same as just remembering to lift your legs and feet. That's already part of the walking. Guess it's more like experiencing your toes as if they were aware on their own though that may be part of still glancing down occasionally to see what's in the way.

 

[AlBell]

I used to date a woman that claimed she saw auras.

She was a nutjob.

Are you?

Outside the body auras would be objectively testable. EMF scanners could even be implanted if the 'aura' was stated to be at an internal organ.

I.E. Auras are bs.

 

[AlBell]

I used to date a woman that claimed she saw auras.

She was a nutjob.

Are you?

Outside the body auras would be objectively testable. EMF scanners could even be implanted if the 'aura' was stated to be at an internal organ.

 

[Piggy]

The interesting point to me is that even with only dimly-remembered senses of sight and hearing -- the eyes and ears tending to make the head the natural locus for cognitive awareness -- it is still immediately obvious to Helen that thought is something "going on in my head"; while it is natural for her teacher to locate emotional awareness, "love", for her in her beating heart. Some of this is power of suggestion -- but is all of it? Would Helen have understood if Miss Sullivan had pointed to her neck as the locus of thought and shins for love, or navel and elbows, etc.?

Yes, this is quite revealing.

For Keller, touching her chest and speaking of love didn't spark anything, because our association of hearts and love actually has nothing to do with the actual biology.

But when she associated "think" with the top of the head, Keller knew what she was talking about, because she had this sensation that we all do, of our awareness being in our heads.

 

[Piggy]

I am saying that since this sensation would have to work via a different mechanism than all thus far known senses, in a region which has been studied for at least decades (depending on how thoroughly you want to call it "studied"), and since the alleged sensation is not universal, and is described variously by the people who do claim it, and since it is known that suggestion is enough to have therapeutic touch practitioners be able to feel something unless Emily Rosa is testing them... that the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate it is something more than imaginary.

Well that's the point, now, isn't it?

Yes, we've studied the brain for some time, but we still don't know how this sensation is generated. But that's only because it so damn difficult to study the brain. And it is not the same sensation as, say, feeling pain in your hand. It is very different.

There's a reason why we refer to both our stomachs and feet as "down", rather than the stomach as "up" and the feet as "down", which we would if this sensation were located in our hips, which it isn't.

And as I've said, I flatly don't believe that you don't have this same sort of experience.