Has consciousness been fully explained?

[AkuManiMani]

ETA: BTW, are you arguing that there is no such thing as purpose, motivation, or intent?

Yes, as it happens, I am. I suggest that these are abstract convenience concepts to maintain a dualistic sense of wilful self (much like the concept of free will).

As I see it, we introspect and evaluate (or confabulate) our most likely and/or desirable course of action, and label this our 'intent', and we call our 'purpose' or 'motivation' the causes (explanations/reasons) we introspect and/or confabulate for this most likely and/or desirable course of action. We can also model the probable actions of others and label them in the same way, but these labels are convenient fictions that overload the underlying semantics.

What I'm really saying is that the wilful self is a convenient fiction (unlike Will Self who, conveniently, writes fiction), and these terms simply bolster that fiction.

You may find this a falsely mechanistic way of looking at the subject, but I hope you won't dismiss it without reasonable consideration.

I'm really not arguing from any ideological grounds; dualistic, mechanistic, or otherwise. I AM curious as to how you can conclude that your motivations and intentions do not exist as such, or why you assume that the recognition of such a reality necessarily implies dualism.

 

[dlorde]

Why?

Why what? Why do I hope you won't dismiss it without due consideration?

 

[Frank Newgent]

ETA: BTW, are you arguing that there is no such thing as purpose, motivation, or intent?

Yes, as it happens, I am. I suggest that these are abstract convenience concepts to maintain a dualistic sense of wilful self (much like the concept of free will).

As I see it, we introspect and evaluate (or confabulate) our most likely and/or desirable course of action, and label this our 'intent', and we call our 'purpose' or 'motivation' the causes (explanations/reasons) we introspect and/or confabulate for this most likely and/or desirable course of action. We can also model the probable actions of others and label them in the same way, but these labels are convenient fictions that overload the underlying semantics.

What I'm really saying is that the wilful self is a convenient fiction (unlike Will Self who, conveniently, writes fiction), and these terms simply bolster that fiction.

You may find this a falsely mechanistic way of looking at the subject, but I hope you won't dismiss it without reasonable consideration.

Why?

Why?

Why what? Why do I hope you won't dismiss it without due consideration?

More than that. Why would you care?

 

[dlorde]

I'm really not arguing from any ideological grounds; dualistic, mechanistic, or otherwise.

I didn't notice you were arguing at all... what is your argument?

I AM curious as to how you can conclude that your motivations and intentions do not exist as such

I thought I explained that. My hypothesis is that the semantics of motivation, purpose and intent are overloaded with the concept of a wilful self, which is a confabulatory construct, a useful abstraction. As a useful abstraction, it's real enough, but it isn't what it seems to be (e.g. executor, or master & commander). IOW, there is no homunculus, no controlling mind-within-a-mind, no dualistic wilful self.

why you assume that the recognition of such a reality necessarily implies dualism.

I'm not assuming anything, I'm suggesting that if these words describe convenient conceptual abstractions that bolster the 'wilful self', and if the wilful self is a dualistic interpretation, then the semantics of these words has a dualistic subtext.

It's a tricky topic to discuss, because there's the undecided question of to what extent the wilful self can be considered 'real', i.e. to what degree our conscious awareness is of self is accurate. From the 50,000ft level, the 'conscious wilful self' seems to be consistent and 'real', but on close examination things get a little vague. It seems to me that there is mounting evidence that the conscious self is partially confabulatory, and it would help to know to what degree. My preference (as I've explained elsewhere) is to start with a hypothetical minimum for the depth & influence of conscious awareness on activity, i.e. start with it as purely interpretive, without feedback, then consider what additional functionality (i.e. feedback) would be necessary to produce the behaviours we observe.

At my starting point, where the conscious awareness of self is minimally effective, 'motivation', 'purpose', and 'intent' are convenient concepts that reinforce the (possibly mistaken) idea that the conscious self is more than a retrospective interpretation of a filtered summary of ongoing subconscious activity.

It also seems to me that, from an evolutionary POV alone, the conscious self must have some useful role to play. I'm curious to know what the minimum level of this feedback might be, consistent with what we already know about the self and the brain.

It's just another POV - start with minimally effective, confabulatory conscious self, and work up to something that fits observed behaviour, rather than assume consciousness is the initiator and executor and try to explain how that all works without introducing dualism.

Ultimately, it may all come to the same thing, depending on which end you start, but we won't know until we get there...

 

[dlorde]

More than that. Why would you care?

Why do I bother to post at all?

In particular, we've been having a discussion of sorts, and it helps if each party understands the other's point or point of view. It's useful to have someone to bounce your ideas off, don't you think?

 

[Frank Newgent]

I do, yes. Thanks.

But don't know why one would care about any of this should these actions be mere "convenient fictions".

Come to think of it why even invoke the sentiment of convenience?

 

[AkuManiMani]

I'm really not arguing from any ideological grounds; dualistic, mechanistic, or otherwise.

I didn't notice you were arguing at all... what is your argument?

Well at the end of your post you said that you suspected I'd find your position "a falsely mechanistic way of looking at the subject". I was just pointing out that I'm not coming from any particular ideological stance

I AM curious as to how you can conclude that your motivations and intentions do not exist as such

I thought I explained that. My hypothesis is that the semantics of motivation, purpose and intent are overloaded with the concept of a wilful self, which is a confabulatory construct, a useful abstraction. As a useful abstraction, it's real enough, but it isn't what it seems to be (e.g. executor, or master & commander). IOW, there is no homunculus, no controlling mind-within-a-mind, no dualistic wilful self.

why you assume that the recognition of such a reality necessarily implies dualism.

I'm not assuming anything, I'm suggesting that if these words describe convenient conceptual abstractions that bolster the 'wilful self', and if the wilful self is a dualistic interpretation, then the semantics of these words has a dualistic subtext.

It's a tricky topic to discuss, because there's the undecided question of to what extent the wilful self can be considered 'real', i.e. to what degree our conscious awareness is of self is accurate. From the 50,000ft level, the 'conscious wilful self' seems to be consistent and 'real', but on close examination things get a little vague. It seems to me that there is mounting evidence that the conscious self is partially confabulatory, and it would help to know to what degree. My preference (as I've explained elsewhere) is to start with a hypothetical minimum for the depth & influence of conscious awareness on activity, i.e. start with it as purely interpretive, without feedback, then consider what additional functionality (i.e. feedback) would be necessary to produce the behaviours we observe.

At my starting point, where the conscious awareness of self is minimally effective, 'motivation', 'purpose', and 'intent' are convenient concepts that reinforce the (possibly mistaken) idea that the conscious self is more than a retrospective interpretation of a filtered summary of ongoing subconscious activity.

It also seems to me that, from an evolutionary POV alone, the conscious self must have some useful role to play. I'm curious to know what the minimum level of this feedback might be, consistent with what we already know about the self and the brain.

It's just another POV - start with minimally effective, confabulatory conscious self, and work up to something that fits observed behaviour, rather than assume consciousness is the initiator and executor and try to explain how that all works without introducing dualism.

Ultimately, it may all come to the same thing, depending on which end you start, but we won't know until we get there...

I think you and I are more than just "useful abstractions". To even speak of 'usefulness' and 'abstractions' begs the question of who is abstracting and who finds them useful. I'd say that "the self" is an individual consciousness. Abstractions and concepts are the tools that a unit of consciousness uses to organize and make sense of it's experiences. Theres no need to imagine some homunculi within homunculi; the buck stops at conscious awareness.

'Motivation', 'intent', and 'purpose' are just words we use to label particular varieties of experiences that are actively directed toward some mental object or imagined scenario to satisfy some subjective need(s) or desire(s). I'm not quite sure how you mean to use the concepts of "illusion" and "confabulation" without the assumption of a real subject perceiving such.

 

[dlorde]

But don't know why one would care about any of this should these actions be mere "convenient fictions".

It's not the actions I'm suggesting may be convenient fictions but the interpretation of their origins.

Come to think of it why even invoke the sentiment of convenience?

Because they are associated with the concept of conscious agency. A possible explanation is that the modelling of complex and uncertain social interaction is greatly simplified by the use of a conscious agency/willful self interpretation, involving concepts of purpose, motivation, intent, etc., in the Theory of Mind. I'm also interested in the underlying reasons for our strong tendency to attribute conscious agency to so many things we interact with, both living and non-living. It strikes me that the conscious agency model may be a convenient, if erroneous, simplification in the face of limited knowledge & understanding of the behaviours observed.

 

[dlorde]

I was just pointing out that I'm not coming from any particular ideological stance

OK.

I think you and I are more than just "useful abstractions".

What makes you think so?

To even speak of 'usefulness' and 'abstractions' begs the question of who is abstracting and who finds them useful.

Not really. I'm using 'useful' in terms of selective advantage. That they are abstractions simply implies a level of generalisation - in this case I'm suggesting that the resulting generalisation is fictional to some degree.

Theres no need to imagine some homunculi within homunculi; the buck stops at conscious awareness.

The whole point of my hypothesis is to avoid the dualistic/recursive homunculus.

I'm not quite sure how you mean to use the concepts of "illusion" and "confabulation" without the assumption of a real subject perceiving such.

Where did I use the concept of 'illusion' in this hypothesis? (although I suppose there is a sense in which the concept of conscious agency and its associates could be considered illusory).

Of course the perceiving subject is real. We are physical entities. My doubt is the extent to which the conscious self is what it perceives itself to be. I am suggesting that the narrative of the self as conscious agent may be a confabulation. It's a fine line to draw, as the components/subsystems are generally well integrated; the indications are easily ignored or overlooked, but there is evidence that conscious agency is, to some extent, a retrospective confabulation. I'm interested to see where the idea leads.

 

[Malerin]

Where's the misquote? Where's the cherry-picking? Does it or does it not say that: The logical equivalence of p and q is sometimes expressed as P IFF Q?




Actually, it says this:

This article does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2009)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_equivalence

Anyway, Pixy, are you telling me you don't know what three lines or a two-line double arrow means in logic?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_logic_symbols

[qimg]http://www.tutornext.com/system/files/u33/im3_1.JPG[/qimg]




I'm not wrong, as I've shown with several other sources. Material equivalence is irreleveant as you're asserting a logical equivalence between SRIP and consciousness. I don't need a "proper interpretation"- you've made your claim of logical equivalence quite clear.

Now please, do you have another source besides Wiki? Wiki is a good starting point, but that's all you seem to have in your bag of tricks. I'll remind you again what it says at the top of your source you keep citing:

This article does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2009)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_equivalence

What kind of skeptic are you? If you can't find anything else to agree with you besides an unsourced unreferenced article in an online encylopedia that can be edited at will, concede the point and let's move on.

Once again, Pixy, are you going to support your claims with anything other than Wikipedia? Even the Wikipedia article doesn't support your claim, but I think its poorly written and we both know it's not even sourced. Now I've provided other sources to support my claim. If you disagree, you must state why you think the sources are wrong or provide sources of your own.

Or we can establish necessary and sufficient condition in modal terms. Please answer the following questions:

1. Is there any possible world where consciousness occurs without SRIP occuring?
If No, then SRIP is a necessary condition for consciousness.
2. Is there a possible world where consciousness occurs if just SRIP occurs?
If Yes, then SRIP is a sufficient condition for consciousness.

If (no) and (yes) to 1 and 2, respectively, then SRIP is a necessary and sufficient condition for consciousness. Just as being an unmarried man is a necessary and sufficient condition for being a bachelor.

If you have different answers for 1 and 2, I think your opponents would be really interested in that.

 

[AkuManiMani]

I think you and I are more than just "useful abstractions".

What makes you think so?

Because abstractions are generalized concepts in one's mind. Conscious minds are concrete things and I am equating the "self" [e.g you and I] with consciousness itself. An individual unit of consciousness' conception of itself is the abstraction, the perceiving consciousness is not.

To even speak of 'usefulness' and 'abstractions' begs the question of who is abstracting and who finds them useful.

Not really. I'm using 'useful' in terms of selective advantage. That they are abstractions simply implies a level of generalisation - in this case I'm suggesting that the resulting generalisation is fictional to some degree.

I agree that one's self-conception is an abstraction, but that abstraction is dependent upon a self to conceive of it to begin with.

Theres no need to imagine some homunculi within homunculi; the buck stops at conscious awareness.

The whole point of my hypothesis is to avoid the dualistic/recursive homunculus.

An active conscious self does not necessarily imply recursion or metaphysical dualism. The raw phenomenality of subjective experience [i.e. consciousness] is clearly congruent with what we identify as physical, else-wise there'd be no basis for interaction of any sort between perceiver and perceived. What we in our culture identify as "physical" is the 'external' world as perceived after being filtered thru our sensory apparatuses and basic mental software. Once the relevant sensory data is filtered and parsed it's fed into the "light" of awareness to produce a spectra of subjective experiences within one's self. The 'homunculus' is a proprioceptive 'internal' model utilized by a subject to relate to and interact with perceived 'external' objects, and the subject is conscious awareness itself.

I'm not quite sure how you mean to use the concepts of "illusion" and "confabulation" without the assumption of a real subject perceiving such.

Where did I use the concept of 'illusion' in this hypothesis? (although I suppose there is a sense in which the concept of conscious agency and its associates could be considered illusory).

Of course the perceiving subject is real. We are physical entities. My doubt is the extent to which the conscious self is what it perceives itself to be. I am suggesting that the narrative of the self as conscious agent may be a confabulation. It's a fine line to draw, as the components/subsystems are generally well integrated; the indications are easily ignored or overlooked, but there is evidence that conscious agency is, to some extent, a retrospective confabulation. I'm interested to see where the idea leads.

IMO, the conscious self is an active agency which works in feedback with unconscious mental impulses. Basic drives and innate urges originate from outside one's stream of awareness and they mostly act as part of an organism's default behavioral programs. The role that consciousness plays is to temper/modify base impulses, initiate 'top-down' responses, or to even generate new behavioral patterns as real time adaptive responses and/or proactive measures.

The "confabulation" is part of a subject's interpretive model of it's raw experiences. For instance, a conscious individual may be subject to a base impulse to eat which, in their awareness, is experienced as the sensation of hunger. Within the stream of awareness the individual may generate a large variety and combinations of interpretive abstractions regarding the raw experience [e.g. "This is bad -- I'm trying to lose weight", or "I'm hungry so I'll stop by Mickey D's on the way home", etc] which they use to filter those impulses into responses of their choosing. The narratives in one's awareness are "confabulated" in the sense that they do no originate from the base level impulses, but are generated BY the conscious agents themselves within their stream of awareness. The subject generates such "narratives" to not only to shape and make sense of "bottom-up" impulses and stimuli, but also as a way to formulate "top-down" courses of action de novo.

 

[dlorde]

...An active conscious self does not necessarily imply recursion or metaphysical dualism.
...

Indeed not. While your overview broadly concurs with mine, the extent of conscious agency remains a point of interest.

 

[Belz...]

The really funny thing about it is that there are living beings with nervous systems who have experiences, and who seem to be unhappy about the fact, and seem to think that being alive and having emotions is some kind of magic trick to be swept under the carpet. Life's dirty little secret.

Nobody said anything about magic. It's the other guys who are positing the existence of something "more" because they somehow need to believe in it.

Qualia isn't defined in a scientific, testable way. In fact not only are they vague, but they are unfalsifiable. This should tell you something.

 

[westprog]

Of course the perceiving subject is real. We are physical entities. My doubt is the extent to which the conscious self is what it perceives itself to be. I am suggesting that the narrative of the self as conscious agent may be a confabulation. It's a fine line to draw, as the components/subsystems are generally well integrated; the indications are easily ignored or overlooked, but there is evidence that conscious agency is, to some extent, a retrospective confabulation. I'm interested to see where the idea leads.

There are two separate issues here.

Firstly, the "free will" concept. This deals with whether the conscious person is, as it seems, actively controlling his actions. If he is not - and it's perfectly possible that he isn't - then we are indeed dealing with an illusion of some kind.

However, that's not the principle element of consciousness, which is experience. Even if we are not exercising free will, we certainly have the sensation that we are. The sensation may be an illusion - the fact that we are having a sensation cannot be.

Even if we entirely discard the concept of free will, we are still left with the issue of subjective experience.

 

[Belz...]

Subjective human experience is a problem for a materialist view of the universe.

No it isn't. It's only problematic if you want "subjective experience" to mean more than "limited experience".

 

[westprog]

Nobody said anything about magic. It's the other guys who are positing the existence of something "more" because they somehow need to believe in it.

Qualia isn't defined in a scientific, testable way. In fact not only are they vague, but they are unfalsifiable. This should tell you something.

Well, there are two ways of looking at it.

I experience things. I have feelings and sensations. I can't falsify this. This is not definable or falsifiable. Should I therefore decide that I don't experience things, and that feelings and sensations do not exist? On what basis? On the dogma that the unfalsifiable must be false? We can't falsify the fact that sensations exist is because we know it to be true.

It may be that qualia cannot be tested, and are not accessible to science. However, to thereby assume that they don't exist, or aren't important, is not based on reason or science, but philosophical preference.

 

[westprog]

No it isn't. It's only problematic if you want "subjective experience" to mean more than "limited experience".

If subjective experience can be incorporated into the materialistic view, I've yet to see how.

 

[AlBell]

"Just neurons firing & emergent property with some SRIP" sounds much more scientific than goddidit.

Duh, we don't have a clue isn't appropriate.

 

[rocketdodger]

Not at all.

Referring to how some mental content, such as adherence to a norm, is dependent in part on the mind's relationship to the external world.




Simply put, that relationship is external to the individual's nervous system.

Looks to me as if computationalism fails at describing this particular aspect of consciousness.

Sorry, you have bad assumptions about "computationalism."

Obviously (to computationalists, anyway) the computations include any needed relationships with the external world.

Obviously (to computationalists, anyway) those computations might need to encompass the full external world if one is strict about the boundaries that can be crossed.

In other words, if there is a strict turing machine brain, obviously the entire world the brain lives in must be computed as part of the same tape on the turing machine. Then the brain is actually only a subset of the total tape and total computations going on.

So what?

Nobody cares about that level of strictness, except those that criticize the model such as westprog, and so it is easy enough to talk about a machine brain that is just "hooked up" to the external world -- kind of like our brains are.

 

[Belz...]

I experience things. I have feelings and sensations. I can't falsify this. This is not definable or falsifiable.

Isn't it ? Well, there's your problem, right there.

On the dogma that the unfalsifiable must be false?

The unfalsified is unverifiable. That should ring alarm bells.

We can't falsify the fact that sensations exist is because we know it to be true.

Replace "sensations" with "god" and hopefully you'll see the problem with your argument.

It may be that qualia cannot be tested, and are not accessible to science. However, to thereby assume that they don't exist, or aren't important, is not based on reason or science, but philosophical preference.

I'm not saying they don't exist because they are unfalsifiable. I'm saying that the very fact that they are unfalsifiable should put huge question marks on the claim that they exist at all. So far we've been able to test for every other thing we've ever posited exists... so what about qualia ? Why can't we even define them properly ?

If subjective experience can be incorporated into the materialistic view, I've yet to see how.

You'll have to explain WHY they are problematic in any way, first.