Explain consciousness to the layman.

[Piggy]

If you have a symbol system working, it is a brain.

The alphabet is a brain?

 

[Leumas]

I don't want to say that symbolic computation is involved. I want you to say why it isn't.

And there we have it, folks.

Finally.

Even though all our observation points to consciousness being produced by the physical activity of the brain, even though research along those lines is producing results which answer earlier questions, even though the laws of physics demand that all real events have physical-energetic causes....

I'm being asked to prove that a proposal regarding a hypothetical role of symbolic computations is false.

Never mind that any claims of consciousness being caused by symbolic computation make no sense -- because we have no one to establish or read any symbols inside our brains -- never mind that there's no evidence that symbolic computation could cause consciousness, and never mind that all sorts of absurd stuff must be possible if you believe that it does....

Never mind that no one has ever produced any actual hypothesis explaining how this might occur... much less why it occurs in some cases of supposedly "symbolic processing" but not in others....

Nor has anyone used this hypothesis to explain why it should be that the brain appears exactly as if its physical activity were producing consciousness, if in fact it's not....

Nor has anyone explained why we need to abandon the matter-and-energy physics that have worked for everything else in favor of an unproven (and incoherent) metaphysics when it comes to this particular phenomenon....

Nevertheless, I'm asked to prove that it's wrong instead of demanding that anyone provide some shred of evidence that it could possibly be right.

You heard it here, folks.

Finally.

EXACTLY.....yet another EMBLEMATIC logical failure ….. just like when theists Shift The Burden Of Proof and DEMAND that we prove that god does not exist and if we LOGICALLY can't do that they pat themselves on the back and gloat with self-congratulatory IRRATIONALITY that accordingly their CONJECTURES and WISHFUL THINKING are proven to be fact.

Moreover, they employ logical fallacies by the droves and then try to CLAIM that we are the ones committing fallacies that they just recently TRIED to learn about (but failed) and thus falling for yet another DOUBLE fallacy of equivocation by falsely attributing to us fallacies of which they misunderstood the definitions.

But you're begging the question.

Argumentum et silentio.

So you're just arguing from incredulity

Typical theistic mindset of ILLOGICALITY.

But then when we point out their fallacious failings they respond with

Are you so used to railing at theists you feel the need to couch every argument you have in those terms?

Or insist that

it's an analogy. Sheesh.

 

[Piggy]

Unless you can point out the flaw.

The flaw is that you failed to describe anything that would allow us to look at a brain and distinguish the processes involved in conscious experience, and those which are not.

In fact, you made no mention of consciousness at all.

In other words, you did not describe any theory of consciousness, or even a hypothesis.

Meanwhile, biologists researching the brain continue to make progress in solving this riddle with the biological model of consciousness.

Which doesn't make any unfounded claims, like asserting that the interaction of symbols somehow causes real events.

 

[Piggy]

I mean this in the same exact sense that a neuron must be situated in my head, be alive, placed at a particular location, have its axons and synapses aligned in relation to some other neurons, and be of a particular type, in order for it to contribute in a particular way to my consciousness; where said neuron contributes to my conscious experience specifically by responding in particular ways to stimulations which include inputs to other neurons, neurochemical modulations, and stored electropotential differences, and excludes the particulars of a lot of other processes of a neuron.

I mean, specifically, that there's a certain kind of thing that happens that contributes to a process we're interested in. I'm not claiming that the only things of interest in this device must be how it calculates--I'm only claiming that this is a thing of interest, and can be the key factor contributing to what we're building; i.e., a conscious Pixydroid.

And I gather we're interested in consciousness.

No, we're not interested in consciousness (yet) when it comes to the particular discussion we're, well, trying to have about the marble machine.

So let me ask you... taking a God's-eye-view of the system which includes only the machine, having no preference for things which "make sense" to human beings (or any other beings) or which are "meaningful" or "useful" to any particular beings... what is the "given usage" of the marble machine?

(Hint: There ain't one.)

 

[Leumas]

Explain Consciousness to the Layman

Ok, well, I’ll tell you what I know about it, and that should be understandable to the layman, seeing as how I understand it and I’m not a biologist.

[snip]

Well done....


I only have one slight comment..... when you so POETICALLY say

….. the sweetness of the smell of the back of your lover’s neck when you wake up in the middle of the night.

I must pragmatically ask…. What about the acridness of the reek of her morning breath when you wake up in the morning?

Sorry....

 

[Frank Newgent]

So let me ask you... taking a God's-eye-view of the system which includes only the machine, having no preference for things which "make sense" to human beings (or any other beings) or which are "meaningful" or "useful" to any particular beings... what is the "given usage" of the marble machine?

(Hint: There ain't one.)

The problem in making a network the subject in a subject-object relationship is... locating the object.

ie... if everything is a first person subject, well, then there is no object.

Likewise, if everything is a third person object, well, then there is no subject.

 

[Piggy]

By the way, for those who believe that symbolic computations cause consciousness, a few questions....

Given that the outputs of symbolic computations are symbols, if consciousness is a symbol (which it must be if it's the result of symbolic computations), what is it a symbol of, and who reads that symbol?

Also, would you be so kind as to apply your hypothesis to the brain -- the only known object which we can be absolutely sure performs consciousness -- and demonstrate how it works in the brain, and how it accounts for all that we currently know about consciousness?

This description must, at the very least, allow us to distinguish between processes in the brain which are not conscious, and those which are, and this distinction must be verified by field observation or experiment.

This is the minimum that would be necessary for me to take you seriously and consider that your ideas merit a seat at the table next to the biological theory of consciousness.

 

[AlBell]

The neurons in our head are living cells. They have a DNA sequence with particular genes in it. They make proteins; they undergo respiration. They do lots of things. If you want to argue that every last thing the neuron does is responsible for consciousness, then you can speak of every part of this machine as critical.

It's up to you, Pixy, RD, wowb etal to demonstrate otherwise; i.e. that only the switching features are important. And y'all are no where near so doing, here or in any preceding consciousness thread. My mind boggles in that none of you seem capable of separating the physical actions from symbolic meaning.

Otherwise, you're nit picking about irrelevant details. Stay inside your circles.

No-one knows what details are relevant to consciousness or lack thereof.

 

[yy2bggggs]

The flaw is that you failed to describe anything that would allow us to look at a brain and distinguish the processes involved in conscious experience, and those which are not.

In fact, you made no mention of consciousness at all.

In other words, you did not describe any theory of consciousness, or even a hypothesis.

All I did was explain the principle--if you want a full theory, it's PixyMisa's job.

I don't tend to actually do full theories of consciousness anyway, because I don't think of it as a singular thing, or well defined which piece belongs and which doesn't. Any time someone says "conscious awareness" or "conscious experience" I know what they're talking about, but the moment they say "consciousness", anything comes into play. I prefer to talk about all of the pieces, without caring what counts and doesn't. In fact, some of the reasons I do so are the same as some of the observations you yourself make in your theory--we use the same circuits when we're consciously aware of something as we do when we're not.

But let's critique yours.

What is consciousness?

Sounds reasonable, but nothing in this section is your theory of consciousness per se. Not bad, it's just that the title is a tease. Also, nothing in this section violates the Pixydroid model.

I would like to add, though, that there's something else that happens. Patricia Churchland uses an example where you're at a noisy party, and things are going on everywhere. And suddenly someone, mid sentence, mentions your name. At that time, instantly, you're aware of the context of the entire sentence, and you start consciously paying attention to it, and just pick up mid-stream.

I'll refer to this later.

Ok, then what is it?

It turns out that what’s going on is a coordination of activity among different parts of the brain.

Sounds partly reasonable, but the moment you say this:

...
This is important because it explains one of the most salient features of experience – it coordinates events that are going on in many different parts of the brain at once.

I think you're not only speculating, but you're speculating about something that doesn't actually explain anything. All that really must happen to explain the level of coordination you're talking about is collaboration; it need not be all at once. In particular, events merely need to be fed up a chain for higher level analysis--and a particular level of analysis should be analogous to the common experience every one of us has where we have a realm of conscious thoughts, perceptions, and feelings, which we can analyze and compare. Just a simple chain of recognizers is sufficient to account for this.

The theory that it happens all at once has a few basic problems. First, you proposed, and it's an astute observation, that experience takes a while to generate. So this should be a duration, not an event. In particular, if it is merely a coordinated event caused by a wave at a particular frequency, then on occasion, you would get a "synch" in these short-time percepts where it happens to come in at the right time for the next pulse; at least, when the signal reaches a particular threshold of duration. Since we don't (to my knowledge) see this, it should minimally involve a duration of perception, which gives ample opportunity for a machine that simply aggregates percepts to collect data. And if it does involve a duration during which to build the impulse, then you explain nothing in particular by the synchronous signal occurring. Second, there's nothing that the events actually happening at the same time explains, unless you have a homunculus module. If things are slightly later in one part of the brain than they are in another part, nothing is affected; the primary thing to explain, I believe, is how we don't generally tend to initiate mutually exclusive intentions (and by "we", I mean "healthy individuals in the nominal case"). Third, there's the post-hoc stitching together phenomenon like the party conversation, in which case something you were previously not conscious of, merely by the trigger of a signal, you're suddenly honed in on. If things can happen post-hoc on this scale and fold full fledged into consciousness, they can fold in on smaller scales. And indeed, there's evidence that we do--that we, say, change contexts constantly without being aware of it, swapping back and forth between things, as opposed to your fully integrated wave theory. Cognitive neuroscientists are all too aware of this phenomenon, and studies along these lines have played critical roles in the passing of laws against the use of cell phones while driving (and many cognitive scientists hold that you shouldn't even have a conversation with a passenger while driving). I generally prefer a multiple drafts theory to your integrated wave theory precisely for this reason.

Now, mind you, I don't object to the notion that there is a signal involved. To the best of my knowledge, there are regular signals sent by the thalamus through the cerebral cortex that seem to play a critical role in our conscious experiences. There's just nothing explained by a theory that these things need to happen in multiple places in the brain at once.

As for the subjective simultaneity within conscious awareness, we know it's illusory. Intentional binding is an illusion of timing where a person's subjective measure of the distance of events depends on whether or not said person perceives the causation of those events to be driven by an agency--this is the most prominent example. The phenomena of deja vu is believed to be caused by a glitch in the relative timing of memorization with recall when perceiving events, giving the illusion that events you are witnessing have happened before. Also, multiple independent timing studies in conscious experience seem to suggest that there are timing markers used in conscious experience to refer to a particular event, and the latencies can get up to about half a second.

The general data, in my opinion, points to a collaboration of bottom up and top down processes with multiple layers of perception; and when I say multiple layers, I mean we perceive objects, we perceive the percepts, we perceive our body, we perceive a model of reality built around this, and so on. You have an interesting theory involving the role of the electromagnetic waves to coordinate events to happen at the same time in order to produce consciousness, but it appears to me to be entirely speculative, and lacking a reason. I have no problems up to the fact that you speculate that most conscious processing can occur using the same circuits without conscious awareness. Once you break beyond this, however, and posit that there's an electromagnetic wave that's not a noise that pushes it above the barrier, and that this cannot happen with the Pixydroid, I have to just drop my jaw and go, "huh?"

I don't see why a simple increase in the amount of integration cannot accomplish this thing; after all, isn't that what you're using your brain wave for? And if not, what do you think it does that is critical for making something conscious and non-conscious? I simply do not buy that it makes things simultaneous--it just plain doesn't fit the studies I've seen for how those markers work. The closest I'll come is granting that there is a signal flowing through the thalamus into the cerebral cortex which seems to have quite a bit to do with consciousness. But you can get a signal from a clock.

To me, it just sounds like fishing. You have to admit you're speculating. You cannot simply bolster this theory with necessity to breathe life into your speculation.

By the moment of experience, activity that’s going on in different areas of the brain – the patterns of activity that result from hearing, for example, and those resulting from seeing... or those involved with response to motion and those involved with response to temperature – has been merged into a single pattern which consciousness itself cannot untangle.

Still speculation, and I don't think this is necessary at all. It's simply integrated. There are perfectly conscious patients with various cognitive difficulties of particular types; from Capgras syndrome all the way to Alien Hand syndrome; people with disabilities of focus (down to severe ADHD), people who have problems associating their thoughts with themselves (schizophrenics). These people are very likely not unconscious. They're just conscious in different ways. Their conscious experience integrates things differently, or not at all. And again, with deja vu you're conscious, but things integrate out of order (at least per subjective timings); incidentally, the timing markers themselves, along with the actual displacement of the markers based on certain types of perceptions (as in intentional binding), suggests an interpretation-based integration--that is, a perceived simultaneity--and not a corresponding physical integration, such as you suggest. And if you think about this, it makes sense--if we feel something on our foot and see something hit it at the same time, we perceive it to occur at the same time. Yet the signal that comes from our foot takes a lot longer to get into our brains than the signal that goes into our eyes, so they are physically out of synch. The brain reconstructs the timeline from these sensations to give the percept of simultaneity.

If these waves are the mechanism by which binding is accomplished – which allows us to see “our friend James” rather than a barrage of sound, color, motion, and heat – that would explain why we are not conscious whenever they’re not up and running and coherent, and simultaneously why the magnetic disturbances don’t spread when we’re not conscious.

Capgras syndrome is more telling here than speculation. In particular, those with Capgras syndrome actually see an entire person, but still do not perceive that person as being "our friend James". They even admit that the person looks exactly like our friend James... he's just got to be an imposter. Even the feeling that a person is who you recognize him to be is a specific percept that the Capgras syndrome sufferer simply does not integrate.

It would also explain why experience is “temporally granular”, which is to say why there are "blind spots" in our experience of time (if experience is based upon repetition, in which case a deviation in a single sub-wave cycle would have no impact.)

So would a reconstructed time line based collaboration of multiple layers of percepts. And to me this seems more likely.

Of course, it’s possible that these waves are “noise” like the sound made by my truck’s engine or the heat coming out of my computer, but if so, we have to ask “Noise made by what... and what is that thing doing?” At the moment, the waves themselves are our best lead.

Actually, this is easy to explain. Neural signals involve the transmission of a pulse via a wave of electropotential difference. The major influence in this particular mode of signaling is the sodium pump, involving a change in the distribution of sodium and potassium ions. Any time you have a change in charge, you're going to induce an electromagnetic field change. So if we just have regular neural signals, we're going to wind up with regular electromagnetic waves.

The conscious choir
...
Now they mix in all sorts of ways to produce new shapes which did not exist before the air was there, and which will cease to exist if the air is removed.

I'd put my money on the fact that you'll get a lot more response out of the neurons from the direct neural signal resulting from the transmission of pulses using the classic neural signalling mechanism, which is electric in nature (but not the same as electricity), than you would get by an induced current based on the electromagnetic wave that such pulses produce. The latter effect may exist, but the former should be much more prominent. So I don't see a particular reason to believe that the noise produced by neural signals does anything more interesting than just the production of them in the first place.

Induced electromagnetic interference does have effects, but this can easily be explained by the primary impulses and their regularity in timing. Magnetic fields affect charge particles, and those potassium and sodium ions are charged. If they're also timed, then you can interrupt their flows with a particular pulse.

Look around

Stop and look around for a moment.

Look at the color of paint on the wall. Or the color of the leaves of a plant.

Inhale and smell. Listen.

This experience – which, after all, is you, isn’t it? – is somehow performed by those waves in your brain as they are warped by the electrical humming of the various shapes of different parts of your brain.

Well, I wouldn't say so. I would say that I was the planning mechanism, not the experiences per se. I always had a problem with the "I am what I am aware of", because it seems odd to define myself both as the subject and object of awareness. Furthermore, it seems problematic to me--in order to be aware of something, that something needs to be there first, and then it needs to be perceived; even if it is a mental state. "Perception" in this case suggests a measure of integration--in particular, there is that integrated planning mechanism again... which is the major part of a healthy brain that is generated solely because things integrate well with it, piecewise, in such a manner that there is in a nominal case no attempt at simultaneous mutually exclusive intentions.

The place is full of these little pockets, where experiences are happening... and nothing in the light bouncing around the place, or the heat, or the crashing molecules that bounce off our ears and go up our noses... nothing about any of that stuff can predict the smell of hot dogs, or the sound of a shoe hitting a ball, or the taste of a drink, or the emotion of watching your team win (or lose).

All of that is something that the human brain does.

And it's all relating one thing to another thing. Even if there's something else that accommodates it, anything we actually say about it has to be causally effected by a mechanism that just relates one thing to another thing. This was the point I was raising earlier in the thread... if there's something about which I perceive about the color green that I call subjective experience, and I cannot explain what it is, but I am meaningfully referring to it, and know that I have it; then by the very fact that I know that I have it and am meaningfully referring to it, something must actually be there causing that experience of green, and playing a critical role in my description of it as a subjective experience. Otherwise, everything collapses. I would not actually know I have that experience, if it cannot cause me to think I do. And that lends doubt to whether or not it makes sense, which is a prerequisite to being able to claim it even exists.

Questions to be answered

If the brain waves are the air and the electrical shapes formed by brain activity in the various sub-organs are the choir... who’s listening?

(You see, I told you it was only a metaphor!)

That would be an integrated planning unit. That is the thing that is talking about itself, and talking about other things.

We still don’t know why this particular physical arrangement creates experience, much less why it leads to the particular experiences it does.

I know that it is necessary that it involves integration of information. As mysterious as experience is, one thing is for sure--I'm able to use it to navigate my world. Just from seeing this image in front of me, I know that I should put this bowl and fork in the dishwasher. And it's impossible for me to do that very simple task without a lot of complicated things happening which are critical to experience.

And if the interaction of patterns in a medium is the cause, then why isn’t the real air conscious when it is the vehicle of real vocal harmonies?

Well, real air is not a coherently integrated planning unit that uses a collaboration of representations of the internal and external environment in order to carry out intentional actions based on a self model of potential interactions as they relate to a plan, with the ability to learn about such things, including the ability to see the result of its actions being carried out within the environment and adjust its self model accordingly.

At least, not to my knowledge. But if it is, for all I know, maybe it is conscious.

ETA: This was a very long reply... hopefully you'll just take this as information to comment on. Since it's so long, I'm fairly sure I'm making a few mistakes, but there are particular specific reasons in here why I don't like your theory so far.

I do, however, really appreciate your sharing it. I've been begging for this for multiple posts now. And I find it very interesting how many uncommon notions of consciousness you have that I agree with.

 

[yy2bggggs]

EXACTLY.....yet another EMBLEMATIC logical failure ….. just like when theists Shift The Burden Of Proof and DEMAND that we prove that god does not exist and if we LOGICALLY can't do that they pat themselves on the back and gloat with self-congratulatory IRRATIONALITY that accordingly their CONJECTURES and WISHFUL THINKING are proven to be fact.

The only way I could possibly be shifting the burden of proof here is if I ever had it. Here are the possible ways I could have burden of proof:
1. I'm multiplying an entity unnecessarily; i.e., a violation of Ockham's razor. I don't think you're going to be too successful in showing that I'm doing this.
2. I made a specific claim and am refusing to defend this. If this is the case, please show the nature of the claim by quoting the specific post in which I made that claim, and tell me exactly why you believe I have what burden of proof.
3. Something I'm not aware of. Please tell me what it is and elaborate. And don't just pat yourself on the back; I want this to be legitimate, not self flattery. Be rational.

Now, what I think is going on, personally, is that Piggy made a claim that "symbolic machines" cannot produce consciousness--and therefore, you need some special structure of the brain to do it.

Symbolic machines, if we can claim they exist, do exist (1). And I'm not saying they can (so much for 2). What I'm doing, though, is failing to see how Piggy demonstrated his claim.

Now, PixyMisa and rocketdodger are all into their information processing theory of consciousness--their particular form of the computational model which suggests that a machine can, and must, produce consciousness. My personal stance is simply that I see nothing wrong with this view, and it seems adequate, but I'm not pushing it.

 

[yy2bggggs]

But, to my knowledge, neither the law of the conservation of energy nor the calculations of marbles are conscious of what they are doing.

Agreed.

Nor do I see any reason to suppose the events, laws, or processes you are describing ever would ever become conscious. Is that what you are claiming? The act of calculating and the consciousness that you are in fact calculating are two different processes.

I'm claiming that it has not been ruled out. It's a very tempting feeling that strikes deep to our core that dead matter can never produce conscious experience. I find it fascinating that there's an actual perceptual illusion at all that specifically relates to whether or not we perceive an act as caused by an agent, and that this testifies just how deep to the core this feeling goes.

But a different way to picture this is to just take a look around, with the specific awareness that your brain itself is constituted by a bunch of what would otherwise be nothing but the same dead matter, were it not arranged a particular way. And this thing actually is doing what you're doing.

I am nothing if not a layman on the question posed by the OP, but it strikes me you are claiming the fact that certain properties can be described as abstractions and not imaginary bears some relation to the question of how consciousness arises. I don't see it. Could you explain this to a layman?

Basically, everything we think of is a concept. And for every concept based on the real world, there is, in some causal yet abstract way, a direct correlation between what is actually there in the real world, and the concepts we form in our heads. These abstract "things" that we work with, from the general concept of an apple to the model in our heads that is the percept of one, are a sort of "image" of reality projected into our brains through perception and causality; as I referred to it earlier, it's a map. No matter how special experience actually is, this is still true about it.

And we not only map the outside like this, we map ourselves. And we map our possible ways of interacting--think of it as if we're puppets with a bunch of random "puppet strings", and we figure out eventually how exactly we move when we tug on this string, and how we move when we tug on that one. Once we master our body puppetry, we get to manipulate the actual world that we perceive, and suddenly things get really interesting. Because now we have a map of our own ability to interact projected into our map of the world, and that begins to formulate a concept of self. Then we get to reformulate our concept of the world in terms of how things can help us do things, and what things are based on how they can be used, where we point, and so on.

I'm not sure if this answers your question.

 

[PixyMisa]

Which doesn't make any unfounded claims, like asserting that the interaction of symbols somehow causes real events.

The interaction of symbols is a real event.

 

[PixyMisa]

Capgras syndrome is more telling here than speculation. In particular, those with Capgras syndrome actually see an entire person, but still do not perceive that person as being "our friend James". They even admit that the person looks exactly like our friend James... he's just got to be an imposter. Even the feeling that a person is who you recognize him to be is a specific percept that the Capgras syndrome sufferer simply does not integrate.

Right. It's a failure of a specific part of the brain that normally triggers emotional responses to visual stimuli.

An interesting point is that if our Capgras sufferer were to talk to James on the phone, they would recognise him as a friend rather than an imposter - the fault is specific to vision.

There are a lot of such neuropathologies, where people act in extraordinary ways because some specific piece of their brain has been damaged by injury, disease, or genetics. It's now well-understood that the human mind is not a unified system at all, but comprised of many largely independent modular functions.

Anyone interested in this stuff should pick up one of Oliver Sacks' books. Pretty much any of them, in fact.

And the thing is, all of these components of the human mind can be performed by a general-purpose computer.

 

[PixyMisa]

What is consciousness?

When we talk about consciousness, we’re talking about something the brain is doing which everyone can observe.

It’s what happens when you wake up in the morning and your body starts having – or, more accurately, performing -- certain experiences, for example an experience of the color of the ceiling, or an experience of being hungry, or smelling coffee.

This wasn’t happening before.

Unless you were dreaming.

You can examine coffee from top to bottom, and you got no way of knowing what it smells like to a duck... depends on the duck’s brain entirely. Same for your brain.

No. It depends on the duck's brain, the duck's senses, and the chemical formula of coffee.

We know that the brain is causing the experience because we can manipulate experiences by manipulating the brain, and we can observe (or receive reports of observations, depending on whether you’re the patient or the doctor) how brain injury and malformation changes experience, and we’re building an increasing body of observation about precisely how this works.

The brain is not causing the experience. The brain is processing an experience triggered by an external cause.

What we need to explain is this:

1. What is the brain doing when experiences are going on which it is not doing when experiences are not going on?​

Memory formation and reflection.

2. Whatever that turns out to be, why does any particular activity of the brain produce any particular experience (the smell of cinnamon, for example) and not some other experience (like the color of a clear sky) or none at all?

The structure of the brain. And of course, sometimes this isn't true - synaesthesia is a real phenomenon that happens in brains that are wired atypically.
​

The second question is currently beyond our means to answer.

No.

Not only that, but while you’re awake your brain is shifting visual attention all over the place, but that attentional mechanism isn’t part of our experience.

It can be once you know about it.

So we know that consciousness is not the same as attention, memory, learning, or imagination.

Correct.

Ok, then what is it?

Reflection.

These observations have led to the discovery of “signature” brain waves of consciousness.

Brain waves are an indicator of brain function, just as RF noise is an indicator of computer function. They don't do anything.

They can be observed as a brain falls asleep, dreams, wakes up, is anesthetized, comes out of anesthesia, and so forth, and they can be seen to gain coherence as a person wakes up, and they lose coherence and fail (in observably distinct ways) as a person falls asleep or is anesthetized. They also operate when we dream.

They don't operate. Neurons do. Brain waves are the aggregated noise of neural activity.

These brain waves cross many different areas of the brain, and the electrical activity of those areas will affect the overall wave.

No, the brain wave is the electromagnetic radiation produced by the electrochemical activity of the brain.

If these waves are the mechanism by which binding is accomplished

They're not. It's physically impossible.

Brain waves are very weak. If neurons were sensitive enough to be influenced in that way, turning on a fluorescent light would be instantly fatal. If brain waves were strong enough to do the job, you'd be picking it up on every radio in the world.

which allows us to see “our friend James” rather than a barrage of sound, color, motion, and heat – that would explain why we are not conscious whenever they’re not up and running and coherent, and simultaneously why the magnetic disturbances don’t spread when we’re not conscious.

All of that is neural function.

It would also explain why experience is “temporally granular”, which is to say why there are "blind spots" in our experience of time (if experience is based upon repetition, in which case a deviation in a single sub-wave cycle would have no impact.)

Neural function.

Of course, it’s possible that these waves are “noise” like the sound made by my truck’s engine or the heat coming out of my computer, but if so, we have to ask “Noise made by what... and what is that thing doing?”

For God's sake, we know exactly what the noise is produced by. We've known since brain waves were first discovered.

It's produced by neurons. What they're doing is computation.

The waves cutting across the brain are like air in the room for the humming electrical shapes in your skull.

No. That's physically impossible.

You're ignoring the fact that those 100 billion neurons are all wired together. They don't need any other means of communication, nor is there the slightest evidence for any other means of communication.

Now they mix in all sorts of ways to produce new shapes which did not exist before the air was there, and which will cease to exist if the air is removed.

Garbage.

This experience – which, after all, is you, isn’t it? – is somehow performed by those waves in your brain as they are warped by the electrical humming of the various shapes of different parts of your brain.

This statement is almost perfectly wrong. It is contradicted by every single fact learned in the history of neuroscience.

And, of course, the humming of the choir is affected by feedback from the waves.

Physically impossible. We know that this doesn't happen. If it did, we'd all be dead.

Questions to be answered

If the brain waves are the air and the electrical shapes formed by brain activity in the various sub-organs are the choir... who’s listening?

The question is entirely wrong.

It’s tempting to think that the mere fact of interaction does the trick by itself, but as we’ve seen from our examples of non-conscious attention, learning, and imagination, the interaction of brain patterns is happening all the time, including those which we would identify as “representative” of something outside the body or elsewhere in the body, but most of them don’t have an effect on experiences.

Reflection.

And if the interaction of patterns in a medium is the cause, then why isn’t the real air conscious when it is the vehicle of real vocal harmonies?

Structure.

 

[Belz...]

Yes, I saw your opinion. How should I gauge the quality of what I write? On whether you think it's good? It's not as if you've given any indication as to what quality Piggy's posts possess that mine don't.

I'll add that to the long list of ad hom responses to this topic which have substituted for some kind of actual argument.

YOU are the one who brought the number of posts in. I'm just pointing out how vacuous that argument is.

Adn the post you were responding to was not an "ad hom". I'll add you to the long list of people who have no idea what that term means.

 

[Belz...]

What is consciousness?

An interesting list of assertions... any evidence about brain waves generating consciousness ?

 

[Darat]

Explain Consciousness to the Layman

...snip...

Be prepared... this is not a bumper-sticker question, so this post might end up being the length of an article.


What is consciousness?

When we talk about consciousness, we’re talking about something the brain is doing which everyone can observe.


...snip...

Not sniping your interesting post because it doesn't deserve a longer answer but your post ignores the "Layman" part.

In layman's terms I would say conciousness is the label that we learn to apply to a set of behaviours we observe in ourselves and others. It really is no more mysterious than that.

 

[Darat]

...snip...

Now, mind you, I don't object to the notion that there is a signal involved. To the best of my knowledge, there are regular signals sent by the thalamus through the cerebral cortex that seem to play a critical role in our conscious experiences.

...snip....

... The closest I'll come is granting that there is a signal flowing through the thalamus into the cerebral cortex which seems to have quite a bit to do with consciousness. But you can get a signal from a clock. ...snip...

(Very interesting post by the way.)

And we know there are plenty of such timing mechanisms in the body, the classic example being the "pacemaker" of the heart, so such "timing mechanisms" do arise in the body, that the brain would use such a mechanism is well within the realms of possibility. We also know what can happen when the heart's timing mechanism misbehaves and we see similar behaviours when the brain becomes "uncoordinated" i.e. epilepsy and that condition alters "conciousness".

 

[Piggy]

I don't tend to actually do full theories of consciousness anyway, because I don't think of it as a singular thing, or well defined which piece belongs and which doesn't. Any time someone says "conscious awareness" or "conscious experience" I know what they're talking about, but the moment they say "consciousness", anything comes into play. I prefer to talk about all of the pieces, without caring what counts and doesn't.

In other words, you don't know how your hypothesis would distinguish between conscious and non-conscious processes in the brain.

Which, if you don't mind my pointing out, means you don't have a theory, model, or hypothesis of consciousness.

 

[Piggy]

Sounds reasonable, but nothing in this section is your theory of consciousness per se. Not bad, it's just that the title is a tease. Also, nothing in this section violates the Pixydroid model.

I would like to add, though, that there's something else that happens. Patricia Churchland uses an example where you're at a noisy party, and things are going on everywhere. And suddenly someone, mid sentence, mentions your name. At that time, instantly, you're aware of the context of the entire sentence, and you start consciously paying attention to it, and just pick up mid-stream.

Since your droid model did not describe a conscious droid in the first place, it's irrelevant.

As to this phenomenon, it's sometimes call the cocktail party effect, and it is indeed a very interesting little process which does reveal some important things about consciousness, such as the fact that attention is not the same thing as consciousness.