Consciousness: What is 'Awareness?'

[Ichneumonwasp]

To re-iterate from another thread: I have no answer to this question.

Whatever we mean by 'awareness' it seems that it must include attention. But is attention alone necessary or does awareness include other aspects?

I would like to avoid dualism from the outset, so we will need to be careful not to define awareness in terms of a homonculus since to do so would be to lose the game from the outset.

We will obviously need to define attention, but what else is a necessary component of awareness? Is awareness always awareness of something? Need we include intentionality to the notion of awareness?

I think we do. What do others think?

 

[Limbo]

Quick question. Where does the unconscious mind fit in? Is it 'aware'? Is the conscious mind 'aware' of the unconscious mind and its contents?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Quick question. Where does the unconscious mind fit in? Is it 'aware'? Is the conscious mind 'aware' of the unconscious mind and its contents?

Well that's necessarily going to be one of the big issues. If we define consciousness as awareness, then the unconscious mind cannot be aware. I think it true that the unconscious mind must be able to attend to certain things, and part of the structure of the unconscious mind (of all mental activity) is that it is intentional (directed toward something) -- with the rare exception of some emotions, such as generalized fear (but even this is directed outward, simply not at some direct object).

So, right off the bat what I have proposed looks pretty useless. But we have to begin somewhere.

 

[Limbo]

Perhaps defining consciousness as the totality of the psyche could get us somewhere? Part of that totality would be the the ego-consciousness and its awareness.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Perhaps defining consciousness as the totality of the psyche could get us somewhere? Part of that totality would be the the ego-consciousness and its awareness.


[qimg]http://pandc.ca/graphics/psyche.gif[/qimg]

OK, but that moves away from the initial aim. What is awareness? I think we need to answer that question before we can get at 'what is consciousness?'

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Well, first off you need to distinguish between awareness and responsiveness. We need to distinguish between the sort of awareness we associate with car alarms with the sort of awareness we are talking about when we say "consciousness". Awareness of awareness is another thing again - what is usually called "self-consciousness" rather than just consciousness.

The ability to respond is not awareness. Awareness can only really be defined as a contrast term to non-awareness. Non-awareness is when you are dead or have had a general anaesthic (i.e. sleeping/dreaming doesn't count, because this is still awareness, even though it is only awareness of a dreamworld.) Awareness is therefore the ability to subjectively know that something is going on - that something exists and is changing. The car alarm can respond to external stimuli, but is not aware that anything is going on. A severely paralysed human can be fully aware and yet completely incapable of responding to external stimuli.

What is certainly not going to fly is any attempt to define awareness in terms of some sort of response, behaviour or activity. In order to mean what we need that word to mean in order to be able to conduct further debate, "awareness" has to refer to something we can only be directly subjectively aware of - we can only be aware of our own experiences. I can't be aware of yours, in any way, shape or form, and therefore I can't meaningfully define your awareness apart from in terms of my own.

Part of the reason these debates rarely get anywhere is because the materialists don't want to allow this subjective definition of awareness or consciousness because they know that once it has been defined in this way the game is up. So they often make the accusation that this definition on its own "begs the question". My position is that the definition is forced upon us by the very nature of awareness or consciousness, and is thus unavoidable and therefore not a case of begging the question. We have no other way of defining "awareness" and this is not going to change in the future.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Well, first off you need to distinguish between awareness and responsiveness. We need to distinguish between the sort of awareness we associate with car alarms with the sort of awareness we are talking about when we say "consciousness". Awareness of awareness is another thing again - what is usually called "self-consciousness" rather than just consciousness.

The ability to respond is not awareness. Awareness can only really be defined as a contrast term to non-awareness. Non-awareness is when you are dead or have had a general anaesthic (i.e. sleeping/dreaming doesn't count, because this is still awareness, even though it is only awareness of a dreamworld.) Awareness is therefore the ability to subjectively know that something is going on - that something exists and is changing. The car alarm can respond to external stimuli, but is not aware that anything is going on. A severely paralysed human can be fully aware and yet completely incapable of responding to external stimuli.

What is certainly not going to fly is any attempt to define awareness in terms of some sort of response, behaviour or activity. In order to mean what we need that word to mean in order to be able to conduct further debate, "awareness" has to refer to something we can only be directly subjectively aware of - we can only be aware of our own experiences. I can't be aware of yours, in any way, shape or form, and therefore I can't meaningfully define your awareness apart from in terms of my own.

Part of the reason these debates rarely get anywhere is because the materialists don't want to allow this subjective definition of awareness or consciousness because they know that once it has been defined in this way the game is up. So they often make the accusation that this definition on its own "begs the question". My position is that the definition is forced upon us by the very nature of awareness or consciousness, and is thus unavoidable and therefore not a case of begging the question. We have no other way of defining "awareness" and this is not going to change in the future.

I think you for your contribution, but I fear you've just spent a long time saying awareness is awareness, which gets us nowhere.

Awareness as subjectivity means nothing without a clear definition of subjectivity. But I can't complain because I can't say that my initial contribution amounted to anything either. What is subjectivity?

And, again, I'm not interested in displaying that other people don't know what awareness means. I fully admit I don't know a good definition. I am interested in trying to figure it out. We may simply have no words for it.

To remove behavioral definitions from the table from the outset is not helpful. I don't want to remove any definitions sight unseen. I want to find something that works and is not simply circular.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

To re-iterate from another thread: I have no answer to this question.

Whatever we mean by 'awareness' it seems that it must include attention. But is attention alone necessary or does awareness include other aspects?

I would like to avoid dualism from the outset, so we will need to be careful not to define awareness in terms of a homonculus since to do so would be to lose the game from the outset.

We will obviously need to define attention, but what else is a necessary component of awareness? Is awareness always awareness of something? Need we include intentionality to the notion of awareness?

I think we do. What do others think?

Too complicated for any single definition. I think you need to define your terms relative to what you are discussing.

For example, I do not necessarily pay attention to everything in my visual field, but technically a person is aware of the visual field as a whole.

OTOH, brain studies done on brain damaged people demonstrate we are aware of things below the conscious level. A person with one injury for example cannot draw a line matching the slant of a line they are shown and cannot put their hand at the angle of the line. But they can put their hand into an angled slot while at the same time they cannot hold their hand to match the slot angle. For some reason the motion/activity can be done without what we might refer to as the conscious awareness of the angle of the slot.

Then there is the instantaneous knowledge of some things. Is it conscious awareness how it is I know what the letters on this page mean? If you see a tree species you've never encountered before, most people still recognize it is a tree. They did not have to go through some conscious analysis of the components of a tree to know that, yet such brain activity had to have occurred for one to be able to instantly recognize a tree one has never seen before.

 

[Lord Muck oGentry]

To re-iterate from another thread: I have no answer to this question.

Whatever we mean by 'awareness' it seems that it must include attention. But is attention alone necessary or does awareness include other aspects?

I would like to avoid dualism from the outset, so we will need to be careful not to define awareness in terms of a homonculus since to do so would be to lose the game from the outset.

We will obviously need to define attention, but what else is a necessary component of awareness? Is awareness always awareness of something? Need we include intentionality to the notion of awareness?

I think we do. What do others think?

I don't know the context, so I shall have to beg pardon if my chuntering is off the point.

In humdrum talk, awareness is awareness of something-or-other. It makes no sense to say " I'm aware, but I'm not aware of anything".

Awareness does not require attention to what one is aware of. I am, for example, aware of traffic noise outside, but I am not paying any attention to it ( nor am I ignoring it — that's something else again). That, I suppose, is an implicit definition of attention.

 

[Apathia]

Well, first off you need to distinguish between awareness and responsiveness. We need to distinguish between the sort of awareness we associate with car alarms with the sort of awareness we are talking about when we say "consciousness". Awareness of awareness is another thing again - what is usually called "self-consciousness" rather than just consciousness.

The ability to respond is not awareness. Awareness can only really be defined as a contrast term to non-awareness. Non-awareness is when you are dead or have had a general anaesthic (i.e. sleeping/dreaming doesn't count, because this is still awareness, even though it is only awareness of a dreamworld.) Awareness is therefore the ability to subjectively know that something is going on - that something exists and is changing. The car alarm can respond to external stimuli, but is not aware that anything is going on. A severely paralysed human can be fully aware and yet completely incapable of responding to external stimuli.

What is certainly not going to fly is any attempt to define awareness in terms of some sort of response, behaviour or activity. In order to mean what we need that word to mean in order to be able to conduct further debate, "awareness" has to refer to something we can only be directly subjectively aware of - we can only be aware of our own experiences. I can't be aware of yours, in any way, shape or form, and therefore I can't meaningfully define your awareness apart from in terms of my own.

Part of the reason these debates rarely get anywhere is because the materialists don't want to allow this subjective definition of awareness or consciousness because they know that once it has been defined in this way the game is up. So they often make the accusation that this definition on its own "begs the question". My position is that the definition is forced upon us by the very nature of awareness or consciousness, and is thus unavoidable and therefore not a case of begging the question. We have no other way of defining "awareness" and this is not going to change in the future.

I'm with you on this, Geoff.
It's not, of course, what most posters here want or even want to take into consideration.
What's desired is something that can be objectified under an objective definition.

So to get to nowhere as quickly as possible, I'll repeat those mere words that
always serve to dismiss any further discussion:

Awarenes is "self-referential information processing!"

 

[PixyMisa]

I'm with you on this, Geoff.

I'm not. He just said that awareness is magic and he won't accept any definition that takes his magic away. We already know that he feels that way, but it tells us nothing at all about what awareness actually is.

It's not, of course, what most posters here want or even want to take into consideration.

It's drivel.

What's desired is something that can be objectified under an objective definition.

You mean, something meaningful?

So to get to nowhere as quickly as possible, I'll repeat those mere words that
always serve to dismiss any further discussion:

Awarenes is "self-referential information processing!"

No it isn't. It's referential information processing. Or representational, if you prefer. Awareness is the ability to construct and manipulate symbolic representations.

And those words do not "serve to dismiss any further discussion". They are a starting point. They do not explain how the mind works; they explain how minds are possible.

If however by dismiss further discussion you mean dismiss claims of magic - like the magic fairy field theory of quantum consciousness, or the angels-as-qualia model of particle consciousness, or the electrons-are-people-too theory - or any of the other nonsensical claims invariably thrown out in these threads, then yes.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Too complicated for any single definition. I think you need to define your terms relative to what you are discussing.

For example, I do not necessarily pay attention to everything in my visual field, but technically a person is aware of the visual field as a whole.

OTOH, brain studies done on brain damaged people demonstrate we are aware of things below the conscious level. A person with one injury for example cannot draw a line matching the slant of a line they are shown and cannot put their hand at the angle of the line. But they can put their hand into an angled slot while at the same time they cannot hold their hand to match the slot angle. For some reason the motion/activity can be done without what we might refer to as the conscious awareness of the angle of the slot.

Then there is the instantaneous knowledge of some things. Is it conscious awareness how it is I know what the letters on this page mean? If you see a tree species you've never encountered before, most people still recognize it is a tree. They did not have to go through some conscious analysis of the components of a tree to know that, yet such brain activity had to have occurred for one to be able to instantly recognize a tree one has never seen before.

All excellent points. Yes, there is blindsight amongst other entities in which non-conscious awareness must be said to exist.

Is it proper to say that we are aware of things in our visual field to which we do not attend? Many say yes. Others, including what I take William James to have meant, disagree. The information certainly seems to be available to us, for us to attend to it when necessary.

Is there no possible definition of awareness? Is awareness, then, not what is central to consciousness, as is often claimed?

 

[PixyMisa]

I don't know the context, so I shall have to beg pardon if my chuntering is off the point.

In humdrum talk, awareness is awareness of something-or-other. It makes no sense to say " I'm aware, but I'm not aware of anything".

You're absolutely right.

Awareness does not require attention to what one is aware of. I am, for example, aware of traffic noise outside, but I am not paying any attention to it ( nor am I ignoring it — that's something else again). That, I suppose, is an implicit definition of attention.

Hmm. I'll need to brush up on attention before I address that. There are real limits to awareness and attention - as I mentioned in the other thread (in a reply to Westprog, I think, which would almost certainly have been completely ignored).

Change blindness and inattentional blindness, for example. You're aware of what's going on. (Whatever aware means.) You're paying attention. (Whatever attention means.) How can you possibly miss a gorilla wandering through the scene, stopping, and waving at you?! And yet, people do.

That's the kind of detail that tells us what's really going on, and indeed we can map these failings to brain function. If our perceptions worked perfectly, then indeed there would be no way to tell for certain that they had a purely physical basis. But they don't work perfectly. Instead, they fail in all sorts of interesting ways, and in every case the failure is a failure of a physical process.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I'm with you on this, Geoff.
It's not, of course, what most posters here want or even want to take into consideration.
What's desired is something that can be objectified under an objective definition.

So to get to nowhere as quickly as possible, I'll repeat those mere words that
always serve to dismiss any further discussion:

Awarenes is "self-referential information processing!"

I like you Apathia, but that is thoroughly unhelpful and obviously contentious.

 

[PixyMisa]

Then there is the instantaneous knowledge of some things. Is it conscious awareness how it is I know what the letters on this page mean? If you see a tree species you've never encountered before, most people still recognize it is a tree. They did not have to go through some conscious analysis of the components of a tree to know that, yet such brain activity had to have occurred for one to be able to instantly recognize a tree one has never seen before.

Though if it's a weird enough tree, there can be a pause, then a laugh, then my goodness, that's a tree. Pattern matching is usually very quick - it needs to be, so that we don't all suffer horrible accidents on a daily basis - but when the match isn't obvious the search can take a noticeable amount of time.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I don't know the context, so I shall have to beg pardon if my chuntering is off the point.

In humdrum talk, awareness is awareness of something-or-other. It makes no sense to say " I'm aware, but I'm not aware of anything".

Awareness does not require attention to what one is aware of. I am, for example, aware of traffic noise outside, but I am not paying any attention to it ( nor am I ignoring it — that's something else again). That, I suppose, is an implicit definition of attention.

Yes, that is what I meant by including intentionality, but I think intentionality is also unconscious; so it cannot be a dividing line between consciousness and unconsciousness -- which I know was not your point. Yes, I agree that awareness is about something. There are folks who would disagree, however, and who think that non-directed awareness is possible.

As to awareness without attention, yes, point well taken.

 

[quarky]

I'm not sure what awareness is, but I couldn't help notice a lot more of it with the aid of 1/4 milligram of lsd.

Pride in human-ness always flavors these sessions poorly, imho.
It's like we're all racists at heart; except, speciests.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Though if it's a weird enough tree, there can be a pause, then a laugh, then my goodness, that's a tree. Pattern matching is usually very quick - it needs to be, so that we don't all suffer horrible accidents on a daily basis - but when the match isn't obvious the search can take a noticeable amount of time.

Yes, it's an open question as to whether immediate pattern matching reaches anything that we would call consciousness. I tend to think 'no' while the situation in which we have to pause and process is just the sort of thing that I think we would probably call 'conscious'.

 

[PixyMisa]

Just what I was mentioning before about inattentional blindness:

After watching the video the subjects are asked if they saw anything out of the ordinary take place. In most groups, 50% of the subjects did not report seeing the gorilla.

How aware can you be when you can't see a gorilla?

Then there's the Amazing Colour-Changing Card Trick by Richard Wiseman:

 

[PixyMisa]

Yes, it's an open question as to whether immediate pattern matching reaches anything that we would call consciousness. I tend to think 'no' while the situation in which we have to pause and process is just the sort of thing that I think we would probably call 'conscious'.

Yes, I think so. While the process of pattern matching is mostly unconscious, and you can look at something and know what it is without ever really giving it any thought (we'd be kept awfully busy otherwise!), when the pattern search comes up empty something happens in the conscious mind that says wait, what?