On Consciousness

Is consciousness physical or metaphysical?

  • Consciousness is a kind of data processing and the brain is a machine that can be replicated in othe

    Votes: 81 86.2%

  • Consciousness requires a second substance outside the physical material world, currently undetectabl

    Votes: 3 3.2%

  • On Planet X, unconscious biological beings have perfected conscious machines

    Votes: 10 10.6%
  • Total voters
    94
  • Poll closed .
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Piggy said:
That's like asking how it was decided that colored lights in the northern sky were mandatory elements of the aurora borealis.

There is nothing to consciousness except phenomenology and vice versa.

When you're asleep and not dreaming, there's no phenomenology.

When you wake up, the phenomenology begins, and so does consciousness. There is no difference between them.
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This I interpret as by definition. Maybe the definition is wrong to begin with.

You also say you can have consciousness without input. Describe to us the experience of consciousness that's lacking all input, including input from recalled memories, will you?
 
Piggy said:
That's like asking how it was decided that colored lights in the northern sky were mandatory elements of the aurora borealis.

There is nothing to consciousness except phenomenology and vice versa.

When you're asleep and not dreaming, there's no phenomenology.

When you wake up, the phenomenology begins, and so does consciousness. There is no difference between them.
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General anaethesia is an interesting experience.

Waking after dreamless sleep we're aware that time passed while we slept. General anaesthesia leaves a total void ... you went out then you woke up the next instant as far as your feelings are concerned, even though hours might have passed in reality.

I can only guess that the sleeping brain is watching the clock somehow, but the anaesthetised brain isn't.
 
GlennB said:
General anaethesia is an interesting experience.

Waking after dreamless sleep we're aware that time passed while we slept. General anaesthesia leaves a total void ... you went out then you woke up the next instant as far as your feelings are concerned, even though hours might have passed in reality.

I can only guess that the sleeping brain is watching the clock somehow, but the anaesthetised brain isn't.
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I've experienced real sleep that was like that. Blinked my eyes and it was morning. I've even slept so hard that I couldn't tell if it was morning or evening until I noticed the sun was rising or setting. I don't know if this suggests something profound about consciousness. "Passage of time" is likely a brain module that is inactivated in some situations, like general anesthesia or deep sleep, or sped up or slowed down by some drugs and experiences like Flow (psychology)WP or boredom.

Answers come easy when you're completely confident the brain is a data processing machine.
 
PixyMisa said:
Colours are physical. Sounds are physical. Odours are physical. The brain represents them, models them.
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No, they aren't, and no, it doesn't.

Colors, sounds, and odors are bodily functions. They are things your body -- specifically, your brain -- does.

The brain can't "model" these things because they exist nowhere but in the brain.

It is by producing these things that the brain creates something which allows it to navigate the world. That's the phenomenology.

There's as much color in light as there is pain in a bullet.
 
Pulvinar said:
We wouldn't-- it's the other way around. Our brains correlate and condense data into chunks (effectively, phenomena) in order to produce a compact narrative that we can later recall, and maybe make use of. If we recorded just raw data it would not only be expensive to store but useless for timely decision-making.



Can you give a counter-example?
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To me, the data analogy you're using is too imprecise to be particularly meaningful when talking about consciousness.

As for a counter-example, we simply don't know what the phenomenology of any other being is like. All I'm saying is that I don't see why consciousness of time would be necessary for consciousness.
 
Mr. Scott said:
This I interpret as by definition. Maybe the definition is wrong to begin with.

You also say you can have consciousness without input. Describe to us the experience of consciousness that's lacking all input, including input from recalled memories, will you?
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No, the definition isn't wrong.

When we seek to explain consciousness, we don't seek to explain, say, how our heads can turn in response to air hitting our ear or light hitting our eye or anything like that.

Specifically, what we're seeking to explain is the phenomenology -- colors and sounds and the feeling of emotions, all that.

Our brains were born with the capacity to produce a particular phenomenal palette. For example, to produce red when certain types of light hit our eyes, and to produce certain sounds when our ear drums vibrate in various ways.

Other creatures will have different palettes. For example, birds may very well consciously experience magnetic fields, but if so, we have no way to guess what sort of avian phenomenology would correspond to interaction with magnetic fields.

That's because "knowing" anything means activating the same areas of the brain used for experiencing things, which is why you can't explain to someone born with no sense of smell what a sense of smell is. That person has no areas of the brain to light up in such a way that they could understand it.

But in theory, if evolution can build brains that produce colors and sounds and such, then the same could be done synthetically, in such a way that it's all built in without the need for experience.

What would actually happen in such a brain?

Damned if I know.
 
GlennB said:
General anaethesia is an interesting experience.

Waking after dreamless sleep we're aware that time passed while we slept. General anaesthesia leaves a total void ... you went out then you woke up the next instant as far as your feelings are concerned, even though hours might have passed in reality.

I can only guess that the sleeping brain is watching the clock somehow, but the anaesthetised brain isn't.
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It's quite likely.

Also, consciousness shuts down differently under anesthesia than it does while falling asleep.

In the latter case, the signature brain waves weaken and then lose coherence.

In the former case, they lose coherence suddenly.

In both cases, the signature waves cohere and then strengthen upon waking up.

So there are differences. There very well may be differences in what happens to non-conscious activity in the brain as well.
 
Piggy said:
To me, the data analogy you're using is too imprecise to be particularly meaningful when talking about consciousness.

As for a counter-example, we simply don't know what the phenomenology of any other being is like. All I'm saying is that I don't see why consciousness of time would be necessary for consciousness.
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There's much more to brain operation, but what more precision do you need for fundamental consciousness? Fundamental in that it is common to all periods you would clearly label as being conscious and not present in all periods you would say you aren't conscious. The perception of time fits that bill and is well-defined.

I see that a large part of problem with people's ideas of consciousness is that it isn't separated from brain operations that we may be conscious of-- that the brain records as part of its narrative. Separating the two greatly simplifies consciousness.

You can make these solid deductions about your own experience, and then see what they must say about other people, creatures, and computers. Not liking an answer doesn't make it wrong.
 
Pulvinar said:
There's much more to brain operation, but what more precision do you need for fundamental consciousness? Fundamental in that it is common to all periods you would clearly label as being conscious and not present in all periods you would say you aren't conscious. The perception of time fits that bill and is well-defined.
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It's an interesting point, and one that hasn't been pursued here AFAICR. The perception of time doesn't have to correspond to externally measured time, so in the case of someone unable to form new long-term memories, their perception of time might be based on the static end-point of their long-term memory, repeatedly extended by evanescent short-term memory. I suspect there may also be 'clock' circuits that can provide a sensation of the passage of time regardless of memory.
 
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Piggy said:
No, they aren't, and no, it doesn't.

Colors, sounds, and odors are bodily functions. They are things your body -- specifically, your brain -- does.

The brain can't "model" these things because they exist nowhere but in the brain.

It is by producing these things that the brain creates something which allows it to navigate the world. That's the phenomenology.

There's as much color in light as there is pain in a bullet.
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Does fire exist independently from the brain?
 
Pulvinar said:
There's much more to brain operation, but what more precision do you need for fundamental consciousness? Fundamental in that it is common to all periods you would clearly label as being conscious and not present in all periods you would say you aren't conscious. The perception of time fits that bill and is well-defined.

I see that a large part of problem with people's ideas of consciousness is that it isn't separated from brain operations that we may be conscious of-- that the brain records as part of its narrative. Separating the two greatly simplifies consciousness.

You can make these solid deductions about your own experience, and then see what they must say about other people, creatures, and computers. Not liking an answer doesn't make it wrong.
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I'm having a very hard time applying what you're saying to actual brains.

And btw, the perception of time is not at all well defined, or understood.

And your non-conscious brain is continually imagining the future and recalling the past.
 
PixyMisa said:
Wrong.
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Actually, it's perfectly correct.

I know that your crackpot notions demand that color somehow be an inherent property of light -- because if it's not, then your consciousness-without-a-cause model falls apart -- but we can do a simple thought experiment to illustrate why it can't be.

Suppose you're sitting on your porch with your dog and a couple of friends. One of those friends has tritonopia, and another has just eaten a little psilocybin mushroom.

You're all facing the sky.

Light from the sky is bouncing off your faces.

That light has a certain wavelength, frequency, and amplitude.

That's all you can say.

But when it bounces off the eyes of you and your friends and your dog, that causes an electrochemical reaction inside your heads.

As a result -- at a later point, at which time the light itself is off somewhere else -- your brain performs blue.

Your dog's brain, however, performs a shade of gray.

The brain of your friend with tritanopia performs a dark green.

The brain of your friend who ate the mushroom performs a bright yellow.

It makes no sense to say that somehow one of those brains' responses is somehow an inherent property of the now-distant light that triggered the response, especially -- as if that weren't odd enough -- if you also say that none of the other brains' responses are inherent properties of the light.

Like I said, there's no more color in light than there is pain in a bullet.
 
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