Has consciousness been fully explained?

[AlBell]

The "illusion" dodge is especially laughable; what is being deluded by the illusion?
Oh! I remember! Consciousness itself.

 

[Beth]

In this case, 'illusion' simply means something that isn't what it appears to be. We feel our consciousness is thing A, with capacities B, but it turns out not to be the case. Consciousness certainly exists; and we are, to a degree, self-aware, but all is not as it seems.

I think that AkuManiMani has a point in that absent consciousness what does it mean for something to be an illusion? I think the term "illusion" presumes a subjective consciousness that perceives the illusion and is misled by it. If consciousness is the illusion, what entity is perceiving the illusion?

If consciousness is an illusion, it's an illusion is the way a rainbow is an illusion. If a person understands the physics that produce the rainbow, should it still be considered an illusion?

It would be illuminating to me if you could specify what the thing A with capacities B that you are referring to in regards to the illusion of consciousness? What is analogous to the vision of the rainbow we perceive when referring to consciousness as an illusion? And what is analogous to the person doing the perceiving?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I think that AkuManiMani has a point in that absent consciousness what does it mean for something to be an illusion? I think the term "illusion" presumes a subjective consciousness that perceives the illusion and is misled by it. If consciousness is the illusion, what entity is perceiving the illusion?

If consciousness is an illusion, it's an illusion is the way a rainbow is an illusion. If a person understands the physics that produce the rainbow, should it still be considered an illusion?

It would be illuminating to me if you could specify what the thing A with capacities B that you are referring to in regards to the illusion of consciousness? What is analogous to the vision of the rainbow we perceive when referring to consciousness as an illusion? And what is analogous to the person doing the perceiving?

Are you implying that consciousness perceives?

Seems to me that functioning brains perceive and are capable of being fooled by illusions. Functioning brains also 'produce' consciousness. All that anyone means by saying that consciousness is an illusion is that consciousness is not what is appears to be -- such as something that perceives, as in 'a subjective consciousness'.

 

[Malerin]

Are you implying that consciousness perceives?Seems to me that functioning brains perceive and are capable of being fooled by illusions. Functioning brains also 'produce' consciousness. All that anyone means by saying that consciousness is an illusion is that consciousness is not what is appears to be -- such as something that perceives, as in 'a subjective consciousness'.

Can perception take place without consciousness?

 

[AlBell]

Of course. Put your hand on a hot stove. The hand moves long before consciousness kicks in.

Although now I suppose we need to define perception.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Can perception take place without consciousness?

Yes. The prime example is blindsight. But this is different from the proposition that consciousness perceives.

ETA:

I asked Cornsail in another thread if pain perception can be divorced from 'hurting' (or what pain is like). What is your answer to that?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Of course. Put your hand on a hot stove. The hand moves long before consciousness kicks in.

Although now I suppose we need to define perception.

That gets into a sticky situation if we call that perception. I think it might be appropriate, but if I hit your patellar tendon with a hammer and you kick, does that mean that you have perceived the stimulus?

Perception can certainly be defined as sensory input that leads to behavioral response, but that clearly must include reflex actions. The fast pain response is a much more complex polysynaptic reflex compared to the patellar reflex, but the sensory arc can certainly be called perception. We don't really have another good word for it.

 

[AlBell]

That gets into a sticky situation if we call that perception. I think it might be appropriate, but if I hit your patellar tendon with a hammer and you kick, does that mean that you have perceived the stimulus?

In what appears to be after-the-fact, although Libet imo is looking at the same problem.

Perception can certainly be defined as sensory input that leads to behavioral response, but that clearly must include reflex actions. The fast pain response is a much more complex polysynaptic reflex compared to the patellar reflex, but the sensory arc can certainly be called perception. We don't really have another good word for it.

Yup. Hard to say what it is in a living organism when stimulus forces response. Neuron based consciousness usually provides a time-interval where stimulus can be noted and response selected.

I don't know if single-celled life has any capability to evaluate prior to a response.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

In what appears to be after-the-fact, although Libet imo is looking at the same problem.

Not sure what you mean -- that perception occurs after the reflex action? Well there is clearly conscious perception after the fact, but that doesn't tell us about the definition we use.

Don't know what that would have to do with Libet.

Yup. Hard to say what it is in a living organism when stimulus forces response. Neuron based consciousness usually provides a time-interval where stimulus can be noted and response selected.

I don't know if single-celled life has any capability to evaluate prior to a response.

Hard to say, why? The biochemical reactions are fairly clear for simple situations. Complex neuron based systems include many synapses. We even know how the changes occur in Aplysia, an organism with 7000 neurons.

 

[westprog]

Seems to lately be a lot of

"You can't prove it wrong"
"We don't really know for sure"
"For all we know (insert something ridiculous)"

coming from people I regard as very intelligent.

Kinda depressing.

So you prefer "We can prove it wrong" and "We do really know for sure" and "All other hypotheses, stated and otherwise, can be dismissed out of hand" about a subject which can't even be defined properly?

 

[westprog]

So you're just going to take shots at Pixy for the rest of the thread then?

There have been plenty of personal attacks in this thread, but the post you're criticising was a fairly accurate description of the position Pixy has been putting forward on a consistent basis for a long time. I don't think that accurately quoting your opponent's arguments is an unfair debating tactic.

 

[westprog]

A mammal with a relatively small cortex, e.g. a rat, seems to have a correspondingly limited consciousness. As the relative size of cortex increases in mammals, so we seem to see greater levels of consciousness. It's not so much a question of consciousness suddenly appearing when a certain number of neurons are involved, but more a question of levels of complexity of behaviour - which are, of course, related to the complexity and structure of the neural network. The cortical systems we generally ascribe levels of consciousness to contain from millions to billions of neurons, each with thousands of connections to other neurons (in humans, around 110 billion cortical neurons averaging 7000 connections each, in mice around 4 million cortical neurons). Adding or subtracting a few neurons to or from systems like these will have no noticeable effect.

And our assumption that a rat has consciousness based in some way on the connections in the neural network is based on guesswork. Depending on how we define consciousness, a rat's consciousness may not exist at all, or it may be no more different to ours than another person's. We simply don't know. What it's like to be a rat is inaccessible to us. What it's like to be another human being may or may not be accessible to us.

 

[westprog]

What do you mean by 'qualia'?

What do you mean by "you"?

 

[westprog]

I'm not very familiar with the idea so I can't comment on its merit, but again, I don't see why you would bring ethics into this.

There seems to be a conflict in insisting that a belief that ethics are real is unethical. It seems to be entirely self-contradictory.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

What do you mean by "you"?

The poster otherwise known as Democracy Simulator.

 

[PixyMisa]

I think that AkuManiMani has a point in that absent consciousness what does it mean for something to be an illusion? I think the term "illusion" presumes a subjective consciousness that perceives the illusion and is misled by it. If consciousness is the illusion, what entity is perceiving the illusion?

It is. Human consciousness is self-deluded; it presents itself to itself as something other than it is.

It would be illuminating to me if you could specify what the thing A with capacities B that you are referring to in regards to the illusion of consciousness? What is analogous to the vision of the rainbow we perceive when referring to consciousness as an illusion? And what is analogous to the person doing the perceiving?

Human consciousness is not unitary. It's not causally efficaceous in some cases where it claims to be so. Your perceptions are reconstructions rather than representations. And so on.

This is why introspection fails and neurology is critical in understanding the mind.

 

[westprog]

The inability (or refusal) to answer a question like that is indicative of a bankrupt intellectual position.

I find the "consciousness is an illusion" one of the strangest belief systems I've ever encountered. The fundamental nature of a person's experience of the universe is to be ignored as not even needing an explanation.

 

[tsig]

Sure a nuclear bomb is more powerful than a knife. What does that help when you need to clean a fish?


Well here is your problem then.

Ah so you have solved the problem of induction.
I will be waiting for the answer.

This is the exact problem, dismissing what people say as just weird is not only arrogant but unscientific.


Ignorance is bliss....have a nice day.

Yes.

Yes

When did I say science does not work? Preaching scientism is boring, so drop it.

Yes there is.

http://www.natureinstitute.org/nontarget/report_class.php

You sound like a priest selling a religion.

The Reality Religion. I like it. The fact that there are no miracles is the miracle.

 

[westprog]

Because you gave a nonsensical response. You're basing those conclusions on ALL scientific studies? That implies you've read all scientific studies, which obviously isn't true, and also that all scientific studies have bearing on those two specific topics, which is also obviously not true.



I'm not following. How about an example: how did the Milgram experiment provide evidence that qualia does not exist?

I suppose that the next stage is posting a link to all of wikipedia as proof of his theories.

 

[westprog]

Yes, but haven't you simply turned 'experience' into an ism, specifically idealism? I have no reason to believe that my epistemic position in the world, reliant on experience, implies that experience is the most fundamental substance in existence.

It might not be the most fundamental, or most important, but all your beliefs about the universe come through the channel of your experience.