On Consciousness

[Dancing David]

I have to think abourt it. I've never been good at meditation.

Depending on the form, most meditation is to learn focus or calming.

It would be very hard to actually empty the brain.

 

[Dancing David]

How about "cahcah"?

Two Boston automobiles?

 

[Dancing David]

How tightly linked is unsphexishness with consciousness?

If an entity is sphexish is it necessarily unconscious?

If an entity is unsphexish, is it necessarily conscious?

I wrote a successful anti-sphexishness routine for enemy intelligence in one of my games. Does that mean it had a inkling of consciousness?

The original SA article on sphexishness ended with a joke about how people sometimes behave sphexishly. I guess you could argue that was a blind spot in their consciousness.

Why do we need a new word, is this a variation of modal action patterns.


For some variations of consciousness this might fall into brain stem functions, in some cases.

But the questions don't really make sense (to me). Most creatures don't run on pure MAPs.


The two are often co-occurring.

 

[Belz...]

But are you also saying the inverse (obverse?) is true:- ie "To receive input from X is ' to be aware of X' " ?
Because I think that would be hard to support. The rocks on the beach receive input from the sun and reradiate it. Would you say the rocks are aware of the sun, or the process of heating a rock is aware of the sun? Or what?

Indeed but that would be taking the definition too broadly. Some sort of specific sensing aparatus or response should be part of the definition, bu right now I can't phrase that properly.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Conscious Homunculi

I think the interplay between the conscious parts of the brain and the unconscious parts is really interesting.

When I was a kid I noticed that in a dimly lit room, I might see a monster face on the floor, and after studying it or illuminating it, would find out it was a tossed piece of clothing. After that, I could not bring back the monster face. That part of the brain that interpreted it as a face learned from the smarter part that it was clothing and refused to report it as a face any longer. That type of thing still happens when I approach a mysterious thing beside the road at night.

I used to hypothesize that there were modules of the brain that had their own consciousness, like a lot of humunculi doing little tasks, receiving information from the senses and from my main processor (the conscious mind/me), reconciling them, then issuing their results to me. And, they had an apparent desire to get their job done correctly.

I've discarded that hypothesis and now think much less of the cleverness of such modules (see "optical illusions" LOL). It's still neat that some modules will listen to you (Necker Cube) and some won't (Ames Window).

However, the way evolution works (duplicating existing modules then re-purposing them) it's not outrageous to surmise that the main consciousness module could be duplicated, then the duplicate morphs into it's own uniquely purposed module, highly intelligent (for a brain module) and with anti-sphexish powers.

E.g. the module that identifies animals wants badly to ID an ambiguous animal. You can feel it twitching when you look at, say, a new Pokemon character. The module that reports to us if a person is male or female can get severely anxious about an ambiguous individual.

Anyone hear of research on the possibility of independent conscious modules in the brain?

There are certain parts of my body that clearly have minds of their own. The tongue often seems to have its own intelligence, like the way it studies new dental work for days, sphexing a bit until it's research project is completed.

 

[Zeuzzz]

as much as I dislike quoting a religious leader here, I think that these words from the Dalai Lama are pretty wise words as they relate to science of the mind and brain. I wish the pope and muslim leaders would take a leaf out of the Dalai Lama's book. He loves science. He's constantly reading science books about the brain and neurochemistry, for instance. His religion doesn't even come into the science, he enjoys the science completely separately from his religious views.

http://tinyurl.com/cvwqpyz

The Dalai Lama speaking at Stanford university about science. Start at 42:30 for the main point, the tiny url link below should get you to that point instantly. He loves science. He's constantly reading science books about the brain and neurochemistry, for instance. His religion doesn't even come into the science, he enjoys the science completely separately from his religious views.

 

[Belz...]

I used to hypothesize that there were modules of the brain that had their own consciousness, like a lot of humunculi doing little tasks, receiving information from the senses and from my main processor (the conscious mind/me), reconciling them, then issuing their results to me.

Well, if your corpus callosum was severed, you'd effectively have two consciousnesses.

 

[Clive]

The Universe.

"The Universe"? Woohoo...

Where is the self-reference in the "machine code" that I generated from the source code? You said it was there in the source code. Have you changed your mind?

Why should "the universe" interpret those computations as containing self-reference? Do I have to ask "the universe" or can you answer on its behalf?

 

[Zeuzzz]

I think the interplay between the conscious parts of the brain and the unconscious parts is really interesting.

The subconscious is how most people live their lives. It's the lazy route, and we tend to be installed with the lazy chip in this regard. New thoughts and breaking old habits by the application of conscious thought takes effort.

Bruce Lipton ' The Power Of Consciousness'

 

[Jeff Corey]

Well, if your corpus callosum was severed, you'd effectively have two consciousnesses.

Nope.

 

[Jeff Corey]

The subconscious is how most people live their lives.

Not me. You, maybe.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Not me. You, maybe.

Does
not
compute.

You are wrong.

No.

Conscious effort was not used in this reply.

 

[Frank Newgent]

"The Universe"? Woohoo...

Where is the self-reference in the "machine code" that I generated from the source code? You said it was there in the source code. Have you changed your mind?

Why should "the universe" interpret those computations as containing self-reference? Do I have to ask "the universe" or can you answer on its behalf?

In Pixy's subject-object world... the subject is a network of multiple programs runnning in parallel, the object is a self-referencing information processing.

Such a world is a "constructed" world, not a "given" world based in sense experience.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Nope.

I've seen and read a lot about corpus callosum division, and it really does appear that two conscious personalities emerge when the brain is divided in two.

Explain how you know that a brain divided in two still has only one conscious entity.

 

[PixyMisa]

Nope.

As Mr Scott notes, this certainly seems to be the case given the behaviour of split-brain patients. I too am curious as to your reasoning and evidence on this one.

 

[Dancing David]

I've seen and read a lot about corpus callosum division, and it really does appear that two conscious personalities emerge when the brain is divided in two.

Explain how you know that a brain divided in two still has only one conscious entity.

There is still cross over below the corpus callosum. The integration of information is effected but there is still information transfer.

 

[Dancing David]

As Mr Scott notes, this certainly seems to be the case given the behaviour of split-brain patients. I too am curious as to your reasoning and evidence on this one.

There is still some information transfer, the two separate hemispheres have different potentials when it comes to say verbal expression, but there is still some cross over of information.

 

[PixyMisa]

There is still some information transfer, the two separate hemispheres have different potentials when it comes to say verbal expression, but there is still some cross over of information.

True (and I you couldn't entirely separate the hemispheres without causing permanent crippling harm). Still, though, there are examples where the left and right hemispheres seem to display quite distinct identities and areas of awareness. It's something I'd classify as two distinct consciousnesses - assuming the reports are accurate and I'm not misinterpreting them.

(Currently listening to the audiobook of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.)

 

[Dancing David]

I understand that, yet there is considerable information still passed between the two hemispheres. they are different yet similar in their processing, and we need to remember that we do not really know how much of the alleged analytic thought in the left hemisphere is also shared by the right hemisphere.

So much communication is sent through the language area (between humans) , it would take extensive study to determine how much of certain traits is non-verbal and shared by both hemispheres.

 

[Zeuzzz]

(Currently listening to the audiobook of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.)

Read that years back at uni, Oliver Sachs is a legend. No preconceived bias in his books, it's very 'out of the box' evidence. He finds it hard to explain all the neural phenomenon he has found in his career by traditional methods, but he certainly tries.