Are You Conscious?

[Belz...]

IOW….you don’t know what consciousness is.

How did you come to that conclusion ? Westprog, I'd understand, since he refuses to provide even a definition. But me ?

Since this is clearly a fact, does this mean you do not know what your own consciousness is?

My consciousness is what I defined: an awareness of my own functions.

Belz can’t describe what he is. Does that mean…………..anything?

I just DID describe it. Did you even follow ?

The defining feature of consciousness is that it has one: subjective reality.

That's philosophical bullcrap. "Subjective reality" is just the stuff you're aware of. Obviously, your consciousness has limits; this does not imply any special properties.

Consciousness is the ability to know what it is.

"Know" is simply stored perception. How is that any different from what I said?

IOW

What the hell does that mean, anyway ? Can't you type whole words ?

 

[Belz...]

Well then - provide a behavioural definition of pain.

Let us say, for example that I am not an English speaker and don't understand what the word "pain" means - give me your behavioural definition.

Isn't that what I've been doing ? Consciousness is a behaviour, all the way down; more so... because it's behaviour as it relates to behaviour.

 

[Belz...]

No, I'll be asking for a definition of "aware". There's a money word in each of these definitions. I'm not hiding from perfectly sound explanations of exactly what consciousness is. I'm pointing out the big hole in all of the definitions which defines consciousness in terms of some aspect of consciousness, such as awareness, perception, understanding, feeling, knowing etc etc etc.

No, you are purposely adding meaning to those words and then asking for further definitions. "Aware" is simply, to me, what I said it was. Forget about qualia or other such nonsense. A video camera has perceptions. It just isn't self-aware.

 

[tourmaline]

i am totally unaware of my thoughts and actions

 

[Robin]

Isn't that what I've been doing ? Consciousness is a behaviour, all the way down; more so... because it's behaviour as it relates to behaviour.

No, just saying consciousness is a behaviour is not giving a behavioural definition. I am not even sure what you mean by "behaviour" in this context.

But you really didn't answer my question. You claimed to have a behavioural definition of pain, I asked for that behavioural definition.

Like I say, imagine I don't know what the word "pain" means - give me a behavioural definition.

 

[Belz...]

Ok then, I probably don't know what you mean by "behavioral definition". Perhaps you can help me out.

 

[westprog]

But that is true of gravity, we do not know it is there. We can only observe the behavior.
If we define gravity as simply the property possessed by things that act like this, we are merely detecting it, not describing what it is.
Doik.

That's in fact true. Newton had considerable issues with the fact that he could describe laws which dealt with gravity, but he still didn't know what it was. Any definition would have been inadequate, except for the purely behavioural on of what makes apples fall off trees.

With Einstein, we now have some degree of understanding of what gravity is. With consciousness, we have still not reached the Newton stage.

 

[westprog]

No, you are purposely adding meaning to those words and then asking for further definitions. "Aware" is simply, to me, what I said it was. Forget about qualia or other such nonsense. A video camera has perceptions. It just isn't self-aware.

As I've said before, I think that ascribing consciousness and the trappings of consciousness to unconscious objects is something best left in the nursery. Part of the abandonment of childhood is giving up the notion that Vinny the Video camera has a big eye that he looks out of.

Everything is "aware" of everything else in the universe, in that it reacts to it in some way. As a definition, it is too broad to be meaningful.

And around we go again, lap 17 with no end in sight.

 

[westprog]

i am totally unaware of my thoughts and actions

I've had nights like that.

 

[westprog]

Not so in the case of "understanding", in fact quite the reverse is true.

If you are in a mathematics lecture and a concept is being explained and you feel that you understand it - does that guarantee that you understand it?

If someone undergoes some heavy meditation practice and suddenly have the feeling that they have acheived some great understanding, - you know that "everything has been made clear and all my questions have been answered" sort of thing - does that imply that they have understood something?

This sensation we have that we associate with "understanding" is not the same as understanding. It is sometimes, in fact often, quite spurious and can quite obviously be triggered in the absence of any sort of subject matter.

In order to know that you have really understood the concept being explained in the maths lecture you would have to use behavioural method of seeing if you could do the exercises in the text book.

If the meditator is unable to say precisely what was made clear or which questions were answered and what those answers were then it is more likely that the sensation they had of understanding was quite spurious.

So if we reject the feeling of understanding as being what understanding really is, and we reject the behavioural definition - what is left? Nothing.

So if "understanding" is anything it is an ability that can only be defined in behavioural terms - any other sort of definition is meaningless

But I did not say that consciousness could be completely defined in behavioural terms, I said we should separate out the things that can and the things that can't. For the reasons given above I think that "understanding" can only be defined in behavioural terms.

Other things, sensations like pain, depression, elation, can only be defined ostensively (and before anybody gets started, that is not the same as saying that they are not reducible to physical entities).

But if we have a structural definition that made from behavioural and ostensive definitions and which is not circular - then we will have as good a definition of consciousness as we have for anything.

What of the case when somebody listens to the lecture, claims to have understood it, but doesn't do the exercises? Do they only understand it after they've passed the test?

The test may demonstrate that the understanding is there, but taking (and passing) the test is not the understanding. We understand (or don't, even if we think we do) because of the lecture, not the exam.

This is the issue with the behavioural definitions. They indicate the presence of the quality - but the behaviour is not the quality.

One could, for example, imagine a multiple choice exam where one student has noticed that the examiner tends to set particular patterns in the letters he ticks. He manages to get a better mark than someone who actually attended the lecture. We don't see any discrepancy in claiming that the person with the worse mark understands the subject better - because we always regard understanding as being a quality to be revealed by behaviour, not the behaviour.

 

[Belz...]

As I've said before, I think that ascribing consciousness and the trappings of consciousness to unconscious objects is something best left in the nursery. Part of the abandonment of childhood is giving up the notion that Vinny the Video camera has a big eye that he looks out of.

The notion that consciousness is reserved to humans because of some "special" property that you can't define isn't much more mature. And you very well know that this isn't what I was saying.

Everything is "aware" of everything else in the universe

Really ? That is a very interesting claim.

And around we go again, lap 17 with no end in sight.

And again because you refuse to understand the words used.

 

[AlBell]

But that is true of gravity, we do not know it is there. We can only observe the behavior.
If we define gravity as simply the property possessed by things that act like this, we are merely detecting it, not describing what it is.
Doik.

Have care, lest you reincarnate the Goddess, and TLOP.

And the circle does continue; define the easy problem, objective behavior; ignore the Hard Problem, subjectivity.

 

[Dancing David]

Franko!

 

[Robin]

What of the case when somebody listens to the lecture, claims to have understood it, but doesn't do the exercises? Do they only understand it after they've passed the test?

I never suggested that was the case.

The test may demonstrate that the understanding is there, but taking (and passing) the test is not the understanding. We understand (or don't, even if we think we do) because of the lecture, not the exam.

But you don't know that. A student might only start to understand the concept as she starts to do the questions. Or she might start to understand straight away. Or maybe sometime in between. You have no way of knowing which.

This is the issue with the behavioural definitions. They indicate the presence of the quality - but the behaviour is not the quality.

But I am not describing a quality - I am describing an ability.

You and I may understand a particular concept and yet there may be nothing in common in the way our brains have processed the concept - I might understand something in a completely different way to you.

But the one thing in common would be in applying the information. So an ability can only be defined behaviourally.

One could, for example, imagine a multiple choice exam where one student has noticed that the examiner tends to set particular patterns in the letters he ticks. He manages to get a better mark than someone who actually attended the lecture. We don't see any discrepancy in claiming that the person with the worse mark understands the subject better - because we always regard understanding as being a quality to be revealed by behaviour, not the behaviour.

Which is identical to saying that a faulty speedometer will inaccurately measure speed or a badly designed medical procedure will misreport the presence of cancer.

 

[westprog]

I never suggested that was the case.

But you don't know that. A student might only start to understand the concept as she starts to do the questions. Or she might start to understand straight away. Or maybe sometime in between. You have no way of knowing which.

But I am not describing a quality - I am describing an ability.

You and I may understand a particular concept and yet there may be nothing in common in the way our brains have processed the concept - I might understand something in a completely different way to you.

But the one thing in common would be in applying the information. So an ability can only be defined behaviourally.

Which is identical to saying that a faulty speedometer will inaccurately measure speed or a badly designed medical procedure will misreport the presence of cancer.

Which is why we don't claim that speed is a matter of registering on a speedometer. We accept that there is something there that we are trying to measure, and that different measuring techniques are able to get us closer to what we are measuring.

If we defined understanding purely in terms of the ability to pass tests, then it would be meaningless to devise better tests. Whatever tests we set would be sufficient to demonstrate the ability of being able to pass the test - but would always be an inadequate attempt to demonstrate the quality of understanding.

 

[Robin]

If we defined understanding purely in terms of the ability to pass tests, then it would be meaningless to devise better tests.

Nice straw man. I never said that understanding was the ability to pass tests. If you check you will find I said it was the ability to apply to apply information to novel situations.

Tests are one way of testing that ability.

Whatever tests we set would be sufficient to demonstrate the ability of being able to pass the test

No, it would test the ability to apply the information to a particular situation.

- but would always be an inadequate attempt to demonstrate the quality of understanding.

Which would not be a problem since there is not, as far as anyone knows, any such thing as a quality of understanding.

Can you demonstrate the existence of such a thing? Or give me any reason to give credence to the concept?

Everybody seems to think that a definition has to be something that immediately conclusively answers all scientific and metaphysical questions.

It doesn't. It only has to serve as a way of referring to something in a meaningful way.

If you don't have a definition, not even an ostensive one, or at least a definite description and you can find no way of getting to one then the thing you are referring to probably does not exist.

I can give you a meaningful, definition of "understand", one that has wide currency in academia.

If you reject it then I simply have no way of knowing what you are talking about when you use the word "understand", unless you can supply a definition of your own.

 

[soylent]

I'm a conscious p-zombie and I voted no; this is not an oxymoron since when I say I'm conscious I mean that in the trivial every-day sense.

As others have noted you're obviously playing a bait and switch; hoping that people will reply that they are conscious in a casual manner and then jump in and make the switch to any of a large number of dualist nonsense definitions of consciousness.

My brain is ostensibly a physical object that does whatever it does through physical means. If you make an exact copy of it, this brain too will be conscious for the exact same subset of definitions for conscious that my brain can be said to be conscious. In order for a brain that is identical in every physical way to be less conscious(for some definition of conscious) there must be some kind of non-physical difference, a soul or some other dualist twaddle. To whatever extent p-zombies exist, we are them.

 

[Dancing David]

That's in fact true. Newton had considerable issues with the fact that he could describe laws which dealt with gravity, but he still didn't know what it was. Any definition would have been inadequate, except for the purely behavioural on of what makes apples fall off trees.

With Einstein, we now have some degree of understanding of what gravity is. With consciousness, we have still not reached the Newton stage.

You missed the point, none of them describe 'what is', they both are 'possible models of what is', so special pleading on your part.

 

[Robin]

That's in fact true. Newton had considerable issues with the fact that he could describe laws which dealt with gravity, but he still didn't know what it was. Any definition would have been inadequate, except for the purely behavioural on of what makes apples fall off trees.

With Einstein, we now have some degree of understanding of what gravity is. With consciousness, we have still not reached the Newton stage.

Actually I was under the impression that Newton had no issues at all with not knowing what gravity was - that he put it all down to the action of God's will.

In fact it is quite a myth that Newton noticed gravity by seeing an apple falling off a tree (although he told the story himself), in fact at least 1700 years before Newton people were debating whether there was only one direction down or whether people on the other side of the world were upside down with respect to us. This was obviously settled by sea travel and better navigation.

At least three centuries before Newton (to my memory, but probably longer) people were debating whether other cosmological bodies had their own gravity (as I recall they used the term "centres") and whether there was life on them.

And of course there had already been laws of gravity suggested by Galileo.

So this idea that nobody thought about gravity until an apple fell on Newton's head is somewhat wide of the mark.

 

[westprog]

So this idea that nobody thought about gravity until an apple fell on Newton's head is somewhat wide of the mark.

Yes, I know that - Hooke was working on gravitational theory before Newton. Whether "Standing on the shoulders of giants" was a dig at Hooke we probably will never know.

The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson, especially The System Of The World has a lot of fictional discussion about Newtonian scientific philosophy.