What If Consciousness Comes First?

[atanu]

A dead brain does not have active neurons. It is the patterns of neural firing that produce consciousness So, if there is no neural firing, there is no consciousness.

Why? If a dead brain cannot sustain the neuronal firing them what controls the processes? Can you cite a definitive paper instead of mouthing Dennett for once?

Here’s the basic issue: what does it mean to be 'conscious'? How do we test to see if someone else is conscious? Is there a way we can determine this?

Our inner subjective experiences and our behaviours. I see same in you and others. So, I take that you are conscious.

From what I can tell, your basic position is that this is unknowable. My position is that it is knowable by watching the behavior.

No. I will tell you. Materialistic world view entails the following four postions:

1. Your conscious perceptions exist;
2. The conscious perceptions of other living entities, different from your own, also exist;
3. There are things that exist independently of, and outside, conscious perception;
4. Things that exist independently of, and outside, conscious perception generate conscious perception.

Statements 1 and 2 are common to both of us, the materialist and the idealist. Statement 3, which is solely a materialistic view, on the other hand, requires a significant leap of faith, since it postulates things outside conscious perception – for which you can never have any direct evidence. And statement 4 is even worse. It postulates that things you can never know to exist are actually responsible for the only thing you can be absolutely sure to exist: your own consciousness.

This is truly absurd. With given consciousness, we see record processes of brain, an object of consciousness. And then we infer that the object of consciousness is true, but the subject-consciousness is an illusion.

I do not know, if you are an illusion, why should you even try to convince me that your view is correct.

Sure. The information processing *that is consciousness* produces a piece of information that says 'this is all one' even if that information is false.

So. You are be false?

How can you explain perception of unity by equating that with a fragmented material and process? Is there any mechanism?

The irreducible unity of apprehension, without which there will be no perception of anything at all, not even unconscious states within experience. The unity of experience cannot be reduced to some executive material faculty of the brain, as this would itself be a composite reality in need of unification by some still-more-original faculty, and so on forever. And whatever lay at the “end” of that infinite regress would have to possess an inexplicable prior understanding of the diversity of experience that it organizes. This is the problem of understanding and organising the discrete brain events to an analog narrative, and primarily the awareness of “I am” woven through all our experiences.

This seems to be massively wrong. Why does unity need to be assembled by a 'still-more-original' faculty? It is an *illusion* that is helpful for internal modeling, nothing else.

This is a brute assertion and nothing more. How does the the billions of events get connected to a singe self and a unitive apprehension, without a unitive faculty?Kindly be honest that you do not know it. Is it very difficult?

Not even close to the amount of information a brain carries. We are talking factors of billions or trillions here.

Exactly. The brain simply makes available certain sub-sets of conscious experiences. It does not create consciousness. There are several published evidences that indicate that reduced brain activity is indeed correlated to more profound phenomenal experiences.

No, this is NOT my position. My position is that *every* causal description is, ultimately, simply a correlation between two observables and NOTHING else. So, if we can correlate between brain activities and reports of conscious states, we *have* a causal description of consciousness. That is what a causal description *is*.

I must say that this seems foolish. What you say is not logical or scientific. In an audio player, the output monitor/s correlate very well to the music, but we do not say that the output monitors created the music. In a Gas Chromatograph, the recorder faithfully records the signal peaks for separated components. That does not mean that the GC recorder created or separated those compounds.

The mental causation and consciousness cannot simply be reduced to measurable brain states. If you oppose this, please cite one or two papers where the casualty has been established. The mental and phenomenal aspects of experience and cognition are not amenable to quantitative definitions and a relation between brain states and the phenomenal states cannot be linked causally.

What does that even mean? If we can point to certain brain activities and correlate them in a fine enough way to reported conscious states, how is that *not* functionally defining the mental causation?

Simply because sensations, or qualia, resist functional reduction.

You have avoided citing any paper that claims that qualia is reducible to measurable brain state. But please do not cite a philosophical position such as that of Dennett.

And what makes you so sure of this? I am claiming that we can get to the place that if we know the physical state of the brain over time we can then deduce from this what th person is feeling 'internally'.

This is not science. This is vague and promissory. But based on this promise you have already taken a metaphysical position that the third party measured brain states equal the inner subjective experience that is the hallmark of consciousness.

When a man sees a dream, a third party record of his brain does not depict the inner scenes. When the same man sleeps and experiences the bliss and the non dual mind, the third party records do not depict that. The third party records and the first party inner qualia and mental causations, both are not educible to third party records.

The focus on mass, spin, charge, etc seems to be a red-herring simply because even describing how a neuron works at that level is almost impossible. And it is the patterns of neural fire that we are going to be interested in.

Why? If brain is generating consciousness then we should be able to understand the mechanism using the material ultimates and their properties.

Why is it so silly to you? I am not saying consciousness as a whole is an illusion. I am saying certain *aspect* of consciousness (like the feeling of unity) are illusory. But *this* we already know. For example, nobody feels a 'hole' in their visual field. It *seems* uninterrupted and smooth. But, in fact, that is an illusion: we have a blind spot that the brain/mind 'papers over' and *interprets* as continuous.

Are you articulating a united view that I must seriously consider? Or are you articulating, like a zombie, whatever neurons are dictating?

It is the *activity* of the brain that is 'you'. When the brain dies, the chemical reactions for life stop. That means the neurons stop firing. And that means consciousness goes away.

If the brain helplessly dies, ceasing to generate consciousness, then how can you say brain is the generator of consciousness? Something other than brain controls its processes. What is that?

Gold is a chemical element. The brain is not. And consciousness isn't *just* the brain. It is the *patterns of activity* in the brain.

So what? If property of brain is to generate consciousness, then it should not cease to do so at any time. If you say that it is the processes in brain that generate consciousness, then please tell us as to what kick starts and what shuts-off the brain. That must be the master.

it seems to me at some places you are confusing 'life' and 'consciousness'. They are very, very different things. Life is a complex collection of chemical reactions driven by, ultimately, the high reactivity of oxygen. Consciousness, on the other hand, is a process in a living brain that is the result of information processing and memory (keeping track of internal state).

Not at all. Life and consciousness go together. The whole of animal and plant kingdoms provide us the evidence. OTOH, no inert non living thing exhibits subjective consciousness.

 

[Bear Wild]

There is a follow up post to What If Consciousness Comes First? by Sharon Hewitt Rawlette.

How Is Consciousness Related to the Brain?

Near death experiences and psychedelic experiences represent distortions of consciousness as the cognitive component is separated from the sensory input. To place consciousness as an inherent property of the universe has no evidence to support it. This would imply that all life would share the same consciousness which would not explain why a brain is even needed to experience it. That is like saying the brain is an antenna yet there is no structure which can be identified as such in humans or in animals. There are truly amazing sensory structures in animals that can detect things we are not even aware of such as magnetic field detection in birds but even this is signaled back to the brain which integrates the sensory information.

This interpretation also does not make sense in humans with lesions to the thalamus who develop hemi neglect in which one half of their world is lost from their consciousness. In the biological explanation the findings make sense since the thalamus is essential to sensory brain coordination. The creation of something to fill in the explanations not yet understood creates this kind of concept rather than any real evidence for its support.

 

[Bear Wild]

The workings of the universe can't ever be known by a mortal mind's imagination.

The mortal mind can create all kinds of imagination but the workings of the universe has begun to be understood through careful observation. Whether it can be fully understood or just approximated is irrelevant. The process to understand it is being worked out in a slow but careful process. That does not mean you cannot feel connected to the universe without understating all the details because we are connected through our sensory/physical experiences.

 

[sun rise]

There is a follow up post to What If Consciousness Comes First? by Sharon Hewitt Rawlette.

How Is Consciousness Related to the Brain?

That's VERY interesting to me. Thanks.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

The mortal mind can create all kinds of imagination but the workings of the universe has begun to be understood through careful observation. Whether it can be fully understood or just approximated is irrelevant. The process to understand it is being worked out in a slow but careful process. That does not mean you cannot feel connected to the universe without understating all the details because we are connected through our sensory/physical experiences.

Yes, the universe can not be truly understood by using the conceptual mind process.

 

[Bear Wild]

Yes, the universe can not be truly understood by using the conceptual mind process.

Or any process of the mind.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Or any process of the mind.

Depends on what your understanding of mind is, if you mean any mental thought process, yes.

 

[Bear Wild]

So what? If property of brain is to generate consciousness, then it should not cease to do so at any time. If you say that it is the processes in brain that generate consciousness, then please tell us as to what kick starts and what shuts-off the brain. That must be the master.

The brainstem and its sensory input along with its internal clock is what starts (kickstarts) our daily conscious processes in the brain and in particular the rostral dorsolateral pontine tegmentum

(dorsal pons) is​

associated with arousal connecting to the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex both found in the cortex and associated with awareness gives us our full conscious state then interacting with the rest of the brain. I is also the brainstem that induces sleep patterns. These three locations and their connections have been identified through patients in the vegetative state where damage to these locations is associsted with the loss of conciousness. There is no need to look outside of the brain/body interaction. All sensations of connectedness and conscious feeling are all explained in these areas. All other ideas are imaginary and without support. Conscioussness is an evolutionary process selected for in organisms to improve survival.

 

[atanu]

The brainstem and its sensory input along with its internal clock is what starts (kickstarts) our daily conscious processes in the brain and in particular the rostral dorsolateral pontine tegmentum

(dorsal pons) is​

associated with arousal connecting to the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex both found in the cortex and associated with awareness gives us our full conscious state then interacting with the rest of the brain. I is also the brainstem that induces sleep patterns. These three locations and their connections have been identified through patients in the vegetative state where damage to these locations is associsted with the loss of conciousness.

Thank you. But I was talking about departure of breath from the body and vanishing of "I am" from that particular body. If consciousness was the true property of the body-brain, it would never be dead and devoid of consciousness. Gold never loses its true properties.

There is no need to look outside of the brain/body interaction. All sensations of connectedness and conscious feeling are all explained in these areas. All other ideas are imaginary and without support. Conscioussness is an evolutionary process selected for in organisms to improve survival.

I do not know whether you are willing to introspect on what you believe and modify your view or not?

Suppose all our consciousnesses are born of our individual brain processes. Then how are we able to say "There is no need to look outside of the brain/body interaction. All sensations of connectedness and conscious feeling are all explained in these areas.". How
are you competent to know of brain and anything beyond it? Mechanism propels a car to movement. Suppose that movement is associated with consciousness. Will that 'car consciousness' be able to understand the plan of the engineers that created it? You may talk about AI. But in that case, the human consciousness of the programmer/creator is built in.

The materialistic world view is so common because it seems intuitive. A baby takes birth and associates its own "I am" with the body and sees the external world as an objective reality. Language re-inforces this notion throughout life. And in such cases, ego self is tossed like a plastic bottle in an ocean.

OTOH, rarely, in some cases, a vision arises that the body itself is an 'experience' in the field of timeless flow of consciousness, even as the universe is. It is like a whirlpool in a flowing river. A whirlpool is essentially a portion of water of the river, stuck in a localised limited process. It is consciousness experiencing itself in diverse names-forms. In this idealistic model. all brain states are experiential states and there remains no need to explain away the hard problem of consciousness.

You may take time to take absorb what I wrote and if you so wish we can discuss why idealism explains the observations that materialism cannot. Materialistic world view entails the following four postions:

1. Your conscious perceptions exist;
2. The conscious perceptions of other living entities, different from your own, also exist;
3. There are things that exist independently of, and outside, conscious perception;
4. Things that exist independently of, and outside, conscious perception generate conscious perception.

Statements 1 and 2 are common to both of us, the materialist and the idealist. Statement 3, which is solely a materialistic view, on the other hand, requires a significant leap of faith, since it postulates things outside conscious perception – for which you can never have any direct evidence. And statement 4 is even worse. It postulates that things you can never know to exist are actually responsible for the only thing you can be absolutely sure to exist: your own consciousness.

This is truly absurd. With given consciousness, we record processes of brain, an object of consciousness. And then we infer that the records related to the object of consciousness is true, but the subject-consciousness is an illusion.

I do not know, if you are an illusion, why should you even try to convince me that your view is correct?

 

[Bear Wild]

Thank you. But I was talking about departure of breath from the body and vanishing of "I am" from that particular body. If consciousness was the true property of the body-brain, it would never be dead and devoid of consciousness. Gold never loses its true properties.



I do not know whether you are willing to introspect on what you believe and modify your view or not?

Suppose all our consciousnesses are born of our individual brain processes. Then how are we able to say "There is no need to look outside of the brain/body interaction. All sensations of connectedness and conscious feeling are all explained in these areas.". How
are you competent to know of brain and anything beyond it? Mechanism propels a car to movement. Suppose that movement is associated with consciousness. Will that 'car consciousness' be able to understand the plan of the engineers that created it? You may talk about AI. But in that case, the human consciousness of the programmer/creator is built in.

The materialistic world view is so common because it seems intuitive. A baby takes birth and associates its own "I am" with the body and sees the external world as an objective reality. Language re-inforces this notion throughout life. And in such cases, ego self is tossed like a plastic bottle in an ocean.

OTOH, rarely, in some cases, a vision arises that the body itself is an 'experience' in the field of timeless flow of consciousness, even as the universe is. It is like a whirlpool in a flowing river. A whirlpool is essentially a portion of water of the river, stuck in a localised limited process. It is consciousness experiencing itself in diverse names-forms. In this idealistic model. all brain states are experiential states and there remains no need to explain away the hard problem of consciousness.

You may take time to take absorb what I wrote and if you so wish we can discuss why idealism explains the observations that materialism cannot. Materialistic world view entails the following four postions:

1. Your conscious perceptions exist;
2. The conscious perceptions of other living entities, different from your own, also exist;
3. There are things that exist independently of, and outside, conscious perception;
4. Things that exist independently of, and outside, conscious perception generate conscious perception.

Statements 1 and 2 are common to both of us, the materialist and the idealist. Statement 3, which is solely a materialistic view, on the other hand, requires a significant leap of faith, since it postulates things outside conscious perception – for which you can never have any direct evidence. And statement 4 is even worse. It postulates that things you can never know to exist are actually responsible for the only thing you can be absolutely sure to exist: your own consciousness.

This is truly absurd. With given consciousness, we record processes of brain, an object of consciousness. And then we infer that the records related to the object of consciousness is true, but the subject-consciousness is an illusion.

I do not know, if you are an illusion, why should you even try to convince me that your view is correct?

Consciousness is an active process of the brain and body. If that active process stops then consciousness stops. Thus lesions in the brain stop consciousness. We use the brain not only to study consciousness but do develop anything we believe in. We have difficult doing experiments on ourselves but can make observations on animals and other humans which have the same neurologic composition to have the same property.

As for the 4 statements there is no problem with statement 1 and 2. The third statement is true if you are talking about things outside of an individual's perception that have to be detected by indirect evidence. I cannot perceive atoms for instance. The last statement depends what things you are talking about.

I do not expect to convince you to change your perception of consciousness. To me it is the challenges in the exchange of ideas to what we think and the that cause us to discuss a topic. Some times we change our view or at least modify it. At least if we consider different ideas then we can learn. So whether I change my view I have already learned by examining what I know. I would like to believe I am at least open to new ways of thinking. I hope when we leave any exchange of ideas that we at least learned something which makes the discussions worth while even if our opinion has not changed.

 

[Polymath257]

Why? If a dead brain cannot sustain the neuronal firing them what controls the processes? Can you cite a definitive paper instead of mouthing Dennett for once?

What controls the process of neurons firing? Well, the energy reserves, for example. To regenerate the potential in the neuron takes energy and that needs to be done before the neuron can fire again. I can go into the details of the ion channels if you want, but I suspect that isn't what you want.

In a dead brain, the oxygen no longer gets to the mitocho, so they cannot produce ATP, which means the neurons cannot regenerate their potential.

Our inner subjective experiences and our behaviours. I see same in you and others. So, I take that you are conscious.

And you are using physical observables to deduce that, right? You are concluding consciousness from physical observations.

No. I will tell you. Materialistic world view entails the following four postions:

1. Your conscious perceptions exist;
2. The conscious perceptions of other living entities, different from your own, also exist;
3. There are things that exist independently of, and outside, conscious perception;
4. Things that exist independently of, and outside, conscious perception generate conscious perception.

Statements 1 and 2 are common to both of us, the materialist and the idealist. Statement 3, which is solely a materialistic view, on the other hand, requires a significant leap of faith, since it postulates things outside conscious perception – for which you can never have any direct evidence. And statement 4 is even worse. It postulates that things you can never know to exist are actually responsible for the only thing you can be absolutely sure to exist: your own consciousness.

When I leave my room, the chair in that room is not in my conscious perception (or that of anyone else), yet it still exists. When I am in the room, the light bouncing off the chair (which is outside of my perception) and entering my eyes and becomes part of my perception.

This seems completely standard to me.

This is truly absurd. With given consciousness, we see record processes of brain, an object of consciousness. And then we infer that the object of consciousness is true, but the subject-consciousness is an illusion.

I do not know, if you are an illusion, why should you even try to convince me that your view is correct.

So. You are be false?

The idea of 'me' being a unity is false.

How can you explain perception of unity by equating that with a fragmented material and process? Is there any mechanism?

The irreducible unity of apprehension, without which there will be no perception of anything at all, not even unconscious states within experience. The unity of experience cannot be reduced to some executive material faculty of the brain, as this would itself be a composite reality in need of unification by some still-more-original faculty, and so on forever. And whatever lay at the “end” of that infinite regress would have to possess an inexplicable prior understanding of the diversity of experience that it organizes. This is the problem of understanding and organising the discrete brain events to an analog narrative, and primarily the awareness of “I am” woven through all our experiences.

And you are making a blanket statement that some 'executive' is necessary and must be a composite in need of unification. What support do you have for that claim?

This is a brute assertion and nothing more. How does the the billions of events get connected to a singe self and a unitive apprehension, without a unitive faculty?Kindly be honest that you do not know it. Is it very difficult?

Exactly. The brain simply makes available certain sub-sets of conscious experiences. It does not create consciousness. There are several published evidences that indicate that reduced brain activity is indeed correlated to more profound phenomenal experiences.

I must say that this seems foolish. What you say is not logical or scientific. In an audio player, the output monitor/s correlate very well to the music, but we do not say that the output monitors created the music. In a Gas Chromatograph, the recorder faithfully records the signal peaks for separated components. That does not mean that the GC recorder created or separated those compounds.

Well, in these cases, there is a common *physical* cause, right? The correlation is part of the evidence for that cause.

The mental causation and consciousness cannot simply be reduced to measurable brain states. If you oppose this, please cite one or two papers where the casualty has been established. The mental and phenomenal aspects of experience and cognition are not amenable to quantitative definitions and a relation between brain states and the phenomenal states cannot be linked causally.


Simply because sensations, or qualia, resist functional reduction.

I'm not convinced I even know what a quale is. Every time I try to get the concept pinned down, it eludes me. How does it differ from a sensation? How is the quale of 'seeing red' any different than the perception of red? And how is that any different than the brain getting signals from the eye and processing it, identifying the signal as being 'red'?

You have avoided citing any paper that claims that qualia is reducible to measurable brain state. But please do not cite a philosophical position such as that of Dennett.

This is not science. This is vague and promissory. But based on this promise you have already taken a metaphysical position that the third party measured brain states equal the inner subjective experience that is the hallmark of consciousness.

When a man sees a dream, a third party record of his brain does not depict the inner scenes. When the same man sleeps and experiences the bliss and the non dual mind, the third party records do not depict that. The third party records and the first party inner qualia and mental causations, both are not educible to third party records.

I think it *will* be possible to take those third party records and deduce what the dream was about. In other words, I deny your claim that the inner sensations and experiences are not reducible to brain states.

Why? If brain is generating consciousness then we should be able to understand the mechanism using the material ultimates and their properties.

And if we understand which brain states correspond to which conscious states and how the brain arrives at those brain states, I really don't see anything else that requires explanation.

Are you articulating a united view that I must seriously consider? Or are you articulating, like a zombie, whatever neurons are dictating?

Depends on whether you take the view from the level of neurons or from the level of social interactions. I see the two descriptions as being wholly equivalent. The neurons dictate what the united view will be.

If the brain helplessly dies, ceasing to generate consciousness, then how can you say brain is the generator of consciousness? Something other than brain controls its processes. What is that?

The reductive chemistry of oxygen?

When the brain 'helplessly dies', the neurons stop firing because the oxygen no longer induces the reactions that give energy (because it isn't being conveyed to the cells). In fact, it is the cessation of these reactions that *defines* what it means to be dead.

So what? If property of brain is to generate consciousness, then it should not cease to do so at any time. If you say that it is the processes in brain that generate consciousness, then please tell us as to what kick starts and what shuts-off the brain. That must be the master.

Huh? The brain is a living thing. That means it is a complex collection of interlinking chemical reactions, in this case driven by the reductive power of oxygen reacting to carbohydrates. When the raw materials for those reactions are no longer available (no oxygen, for example, or no carbs), then the brain dies.

Not at all. Life and consciousness go together. The whole of animal and plant kingdoms provide us the evidence. OTOH, no inert non living thing exhibits subjective consciousness.

If you consider a bacterium to be conscious in any way that is more than a modern advanced robot, then your definition is too different from or real communication.

I don't consider bacteria to be conscious. I don't consider sponges to be conscious. I don't consider plants to be conscious. If you *do*, then you have a lot of work defining what you mean by 'conscious' that differs from 'being alive'. And we *know* that 'being alive' is a matter of the chemistry of the components of the living thing.

 

[atanu]

In a dead brain, the oxygen no longer gets to the mitocho, so they cannot produce ATP, which means the neurons cannot regenerate their potential.

Huh? The brain is a living thing. That means it is a complex collection of interlinking chemical reactions, in this case driven by the reductive power of oxygen reacting to carbohydrates. When the raw materials for those reactions are no longer available (no oxygen, for example, or no carbs), then the brain dies.

The reductive chemistry of oxygen?

When the brain 'helplessly dies', the neurons stop firing because the oxygen no longer induces the reactions that give energy (because it isn't being conveyed to the cells). In fact, it is the cessation of these reactions that *defines* what it means to be dead.

Reductive chemistry of oxygen? You mean oxygen's power to oxidise? Okay.

You can however, force feed a dead body-brain glucose and ventilate oxygen, but the dead brain will not exhibit sign of consciousness. Because, brain's intrinsic nature is inertness. It is a filter that allows certain aspects of consciousness to flow through and impart a unique personality to a body-mind. Once the life-consciousness is gone, the brain is just a blob of tissue. It goes to earth and mixes with the elements.

Make no mistake.

And you are using physical observables to deduce that, right? You are concluding consciousness from physical observations.

Well, in these cases, there is a common *physical* cause, right? The correlation is part of the evidence for that cause.

Not at all. Correlation with behaviour is just one aspect. I have evidence of subjective feeling of pain and joy in others. Yet. It is true that I can never be privy to your conscious subjective experience.

When I leave my room, the chair in that room is not in my conscious perception (or that of anyone else), yet it still exists. When I am in the room, the light bouncing off the chair (which is outside of my perception) and entering my eyes and becomes part of my perception.

This seems completely standard to me.

No problem at all. Consciousness is not an individual thing. An individual: living or non living, is an instantiation, a mere qualified/constrained image of the non local consciousness. It is akin to reflection of one moon in many water puddles. Or it is like many waves in one ocean. Or an individual is like a whirlpool in a river. So, your or my ego absence or death does not affect the consciousness in any way. Even as destruction of a wave does not destroy the ocean or dying away of a whirlpool does not kill the river.

The idea of 'me' being a unity is false.

And you are making a blanket statement that some 'executive' is necessary and must be a composite in need of unification. What support do you have for that claim?

Depends on whether you take the view from the level of neurons or from the level of social interactions. I see the two descriptions as being wholly equivalent. The neurons dictate what the united view will be.

That is the most illogical claim. False to WHOM? If you lacked unitive self consciousness, we would not have this conversation. And if you are merely a conglomeration of neurones firing all the time, then let us stop this discussion. It is foolish. You are the unitive self.

Many people have imbibed half cooked Buddhist idea about there being 'no self'. You will see immature people shout "I do not exist" or "I am not born". They have not completed the study of Buddhist Parinirvana sutra.

I'm not convinced I even know what a quale is. Every time I try to get the concept pinned down, it eludes me. How does it differ from a sensation? How is the quale of 'seeing red' any different than the perception of red? And how is that any different than the brain getting signals from the eye and processing it, identifying the signal as being 'red'?

I think it *will* be possible to take those third party records and deduce what the dream was about. In other words, I deny your claim that the inner sensations and experiences are not reducible to brain states.

And if we understand which brain states correspond to which conscious states and how the brain arrives at those brain states, I really don't see anything else that requires explanation.

This is another aspect about which, I feel, you are not introspective. First. there is absolutely no explanation of exactly how the correlations are related to consciousness. Second. Toeing the eliminative materialism. you seem to be rehashing Dennett blindly.

Quale does not differ from sensation but it differs from the observable behaviours. For example, suppose @Polymath257 is in pain and I see him wincing and groaning. But I do not have any idea of his subjective sensation of pain. Two aspects of consciousness elude functalisation and they are "the self (consciousness itself) and its subjective experiences and mental causations. Let me illustrate this with an example.

To use correlation data of ‘partly visible and partly subjective first party experience’ versus ‘measurable brain state’ (suppose correlation of ‘pain’ to stimulation of ‘x centre’ in brain), we have to functionalise ‘Pain’. An example is given below:

• Observation: @Polymath257 has his x-centre in brain stimulated at t.
• Established Correlation data: x-centre stimulation (in humans) is caused by tissue damage and it in turn causes winces and groans.
• Functional definition of pain: To be in pain, by definition, is to be in a state which is caused by tissue damage and which in turn causes winces and groans.
• Prediction: Therefore, @Polymath257 must be wincing and groaning due to pain at t.

The third line, a functional definition of pain, does not represent empirical/factual information about pain; it gives us the meaning of “pain”. This way we can predict Polymath’s pain from physical/behavioural information alone. This also answers as to why sensations “accompany the brain’s workings. Here, I assume that we are able to functionalise the behavioural aspects in a foolproof manner, incorporating all aspects that matter. Yet sensations, or qualia, resist functional reduction and there still is no glimmer of an explanation in above. Groans and winces are observable effects. But the inner sense of pain and its intensity are not functionally definable.

We know that in brain, ions move across membranes and cause electrical activity which can be measured. That in turn causes the neuron to turn on its metabolic interface and release of different kinds of neurotransmitters that move across synaptic cleft and activate other neurone/s. So where in all of this does the thought occur? Where is our thought? Where is our experience of the world? When we say we see something, we feel something, we think something where in all of that is that really happening? And so if you give a person a drug or if a person meditates, how do you ultimately link that back to what’s going on in the brain itself and how reductionistic can we ultimately be?​

If you consider a bacterium to be conscious in any way that is more than a modern advanced robot, then your definition is too different from or real communication.

I don't consider bacteria to be conscious. I don't consider sponges to be conscious. I don't consider plants to be conscious. If you *do*, then you have a lot of work defining what you mean by 'conscious' that differs from 'being alive'. And we *know* that 'being alive' is a matter of the chemistry of the components of the living thing.

I think that this is very unfair of you. I had shared with you the scientific papers that establish conscious behaviour in organisms that are devoid of brain, including in unicellular organisms.

Plant Intelligence: An Overview

Scientists Discover That Slime Mold Is Capable of Learning
A single-celled organism capable of learning
Microbial intelligence - Wikipedia
Smart amoebas reveal origins of primitive intelligence
The secrets of intelligence lie within a single cell
Plant perception (physiology) - Wikipedia​

So, please do not claim again in a future post that consciousness is limited to humans. All life is characterised by consciousness-intention, where consciousness is the manifest knowledge and potential to know.
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[Polymath257]

Reductive chemistry of oxygen? You mean oxygen's power to oxidise? Okay.

You can however, force feed a dead body-brain glucose and ventilate oxygen, but the dead brain will not exhibit sign of consciousness. Because, brain's intrinsic nature is inertness. It is a filter that allows certain aspects of consciousness to flow through and impart a unique personality to a body-mind. Once the life-consciousness is gone, the brain is just a blob of tissue. It goes to earth and mixes with the elements.

Make no mistake.

When the brain dies, the chemical reactions going on shift and you get some irreversible changes. So, you are right, simply pumping in oxygen and glucose won't reverse those reactions. Also, 'pumping in' wouldn't work even in a live brain because they need to go to very specific places in the cells.

On the other hand, *if* you could reverse those reactions and *if* you could deliver the required oxygen and glucose to precisely the right places (which the blood does normally).

Not at all. Correlation with behaviour is just one aspect. I have evidence of subjective feeling of pain and joy in others. Yet. It is true that I can never be privy to your conscious subjective experience.

OK, so you can determine consciousness via observation, at least reasonably so. Which means that if we see those same physical events in an artificial construct, we can reasonably say it is conscious.

This is another aspect about which, I feel, you are not introspective. First. there is absolutely no explanation of exactly how the correlations are related to consciousness. Second. Toeing the eliminative materialism. you seem to be rehashing Dennett blindly.

Nope. In fact, while I agree with Dennett, most of my ideas were formed before I started reading him. I read a lot on how the brain functions, I thought a lot about what it means to be conscious, and I looked at the evidence. Dennett helped clear up a couple of sticking points, but I had these views long before I read any of stuff.

Quale does not differ from sensation but it differs from the observable behaviours. For example, suppose @Polymath257 is in pain and I see him wincing and groaning. But I do not have any idea of his subjective sensation of pain.

Of course you do. You see me wincing and have had similar experiences and so can know what it is like.

Two aspects of consciousness elude functalisation and they are "the self (consciousness itself) and its subjective experiences and mental causations. Let me illustrate this with an example.

To use correlation data of ‘partly visible and partly subjective first party experience’ versus ‘measurable brain state’ (suppose correlation of ‘pain’ to stimulation of ‘x centre’ in brain), we have to functionalise ‘Pain’. An example is given below:

• Observation: @Polymath257 has his x-centre in brain stimulated at t.
• Established Correlation data: x-centre stimulation (in humans) is caused by tissue damage and it in turn causes winces and groans.
• Functional definition of pain: To be in pain, by definition, is to be in a state which is caused by tissue damage and which in turn causes winces and groans.
• Prediction: Therefore, @Polymath257 must be wincing and groaning due to pain at t.

The third line, a functional definition of pain, does not represent empirical/factual information about pain; it gives us the meaning of “pain”. This way we can predict Polymath’s pain from physical/behavioural information alone. This also answers as to why sensations “accompany the brain’s workings. Here, I assume that we are able to functionalise the behavioural aspects in a foolproof manner, incorporating all aspects that matter. Yet sensations, or qualia, resist functional reduction and there still is no glimmer of an explanation in above. Groans and winces are observable effects. But the inner sense of pain and its intensity are not functionally definable.
​

I would add one more aspect to the third line: in addition to causing wincing, it also often elicits a statement 'I am in pain'. That is the statement that allows us access to the internal feelings of the subject.

We know that in brain, ions move across membranes and cause electrical activity which can be measured. That in turn causes the neuron to turn on its metabolic interface and release of different kinds of neurotransmitters that move across synaptic cleft and activate other neurone/s. So where in all of this does the thought occur? Where is our thought? Where is our experience of the world? When we say we see something, we feel something, we think something where in all of that is that really happening? And so if you give a person a drug or if a person meditates, how do you ultimately link that back to what’s going on in the brain itself and how reductionistic can we ultimately be?

Well, nerves are the small components of the system. It is the circuits and patterns of neural firing across the brain that determine what the thoughts, emotions, plans, reactions, etc are. But, for example, we can point to (several) locations that process the feeling of pain. And when those areas are stimulated, the person involved reliably describes feeling pain (and vice versa).

When you give someone a drug or they meditate, the patterns of neural fire change because those neurons are ultimately chemical (in the first case) and because it is a self-interactive system (in the second case). And, once again, we can say, in many cases, exactly where in the brain the drug changes things to cause different processing.​

I think that this is very unfair of you. I had shared with you the scientific papers that establish conscious behaviour in organisms that are devoid of brain, including in unicellular organisms.

Plant Intelligence: An Overview

Scientists Discover That Slime Mold Is Capable of Learning
A single-celled organism capable of learning
Microbial intelligence - Wikipedia
Smart amoebas reveal origins of primitive intelligence
The secrets of intelligence lie within a single cell
Plant perception (physiology) - Wikipedia​

So, please do not claim again in a future post that consciousness is limited to humans. All life is characterised by consciousness-intention, where consciousness is the manifest knowledge and potential to know.
...

Is the ability to learn linked to consciousness necessarily? I don't think so.

But, if you go to the level that you consider bacteria conscious because they can respond to their environment in innovative ways, then what is to say that a robot isn't conscious for exactly the same reasons? If you have such a low standard, then you will start including some of our more sophisticated robots in your net.

 

[Polymath257]

[QUOTE="atanu, post: 6269281, member: 25513"Yet sensations, or qualia, resist functional reduction and there still is no glimmer of an explanation in above. Groans and winces are observable effects. But the inner sense of pain and its intensity are not functionally definable.
[/QUOTE]

I'm not convinced they are definable at all.

Let me put it this way. How can I know whether I am a p-zombie or not? I Maybe, like a p-zombie, what I *think* is experience actually is not. Maybe what happens to be is so significantly different than what happens to others that calling what happens to me 'consciousness' is incorrect.

Remember that a p-zombie reacts physically *exactly* the same way as a conscious person. They will wince in pain when hurt. They will wax philosophical about their experiences. They will declare how meditation leads them to great insights. They will describe in detail how they feel. And yet, according to the concept, they won't be conscious.

And, if you ask a p-zombie if they are conscious, they will say yes. They certainly 'think' they are conscious. So, how do *I* know I am not just as deluded as a p-zombie?

Well, I find this whole scenario to be self-contradictory. For the p-zombie to react in *every* way the same as a conscious person *means* they are conscious and have the same feelings as that conscious person.

In other words, the concept of a p-zombie is just incoherent.

But *that* means that consciousness is ultimately a physical process, just like every other process we know about.

 

[atanu]

When the brain dies, the chemical reactions going on shift and you get some irreversible changes. So, you are right, simply pumping in oxygen and glucose won't reverse those reactions. Also, 'pumping in' wouldn't work even in a live brain because they need to go to very specific places in the cells.

On the other hand, *if* you could reverse those reactions and *if* you could deliver the required oxygen and glucose to precisely the right places (which the blood does normally).



OK, so you can determine consciousness via observation, at least reasonably so. Which means that if we see those same physical events in an artificial construct, we can reasonably say it is conscious.




Nope. In fact, while I agree with Dennett, most of my ideas were formed before I started reading him. I read a lot on how the brain functions, I thought a lot about what it means to be conscious, and I looked at the evidence. Dennett helped clear up a couple of sticking points, but I had these views long before I read any of stuff.


Of course you do. You see me wincing and have had similar experiences and so can know what it is like.

I would add one more aspect to the third line: in addition to causing wincing, it also often elicits a statement 'I am in pain'. That is the statement that allows us access to the internal feelings of the subject.



Well, nerves are the small components of the system. It is the circuits and patterns of neural firing across the brain that determine what the thoughts, emotions, plans, reactions, etc are. But, for example, we can point to (several) locations that process the feeling of pain. And when those areas are stimulated, the person involved reliably describes feeling pain (and vice versa).

When you give someone a drug or they meditate, the patterns of neural fire change because those neurons are ultimately chemical (in the first case) and because it is a self-interactive system (in the second case). And, once again, we can say, in many cases, exactly where in the brain the drug changes things to cause different processing.​

Is the ability to learn linked to consciousness necessarily? I don't think so.

But, if you go to the level that you consider bacteria conscious because they can respond to their environment in innovative ways, then what is to say that a robot isn't conscious for exactly the same reasons? If you have such a low standard, then you will start including some of our more sophisticated robots in your net.

In my definition consciousness is the manifest knowledge and the potential for it. It is the fundamental requirement for knowledge and discernment. And this is intrinsic nature of the existence itself.

 

[atanu]

I'm not convinced they are definable at all.

Let me put it this way. How can I know whether I am a p-zombie or not? I Maybe, like a p-zombie, what I *think* is experience actually is not. Maybe what happens to be is so significantly different than what happens to others that calling what happens to me 'consciousness' is incorrect.

Remember that a p-zombie reacts physically *exactly* the same way as a conscious person. They will wince in pain when hurt. They will wax philosophical about their experiences. They will declare how meditation leads them to great insights. They will describe in detail how they feel. And yet, according to the concept, they won't be conscious.

And, if you ask a p-zombie if they are conscious, they will say yes. They certainly 'think' they are conscious. So, how do *I* know I am not just as deluded as a p-zombie?

Well, I find this whole scenario to be self-contradictory. For the p-zombie to react in *every* way the same as a conscious person *means* they are conscious and have the same feelings as that conscious person.

In other words, the concept of a p-zombie is just incoherent.

But *that* means that consciousness is ultimately a physical process, just like every other process we know about.

That is why I say that Philosophical naturalism is most removed from science. How do we test whether p zombie will claim to have inner experience or not? What you say is not falsifiable and you know that.

But I am not going into that. I know that I have inner experiences that cannot be functionalised.

...

 

[Polymath257]

That is why I say that Philosophical naturalism is most removed from science. How do we test whether p zombie will claim to have inner experience or not? What you say is not falsifiable and you know that.

But I am not going into that. I know that I have inner experiences that cannot be functionalised.

...

Well, one of the points of a p-zombie is that it would have *exactly* the same physical reactions as a conscious person. So, whatever happens 'internally', the p-zombie will report having qualia, it will report every 'experience' in exactly the same way as a conscious person.

So, to me that *is* evidence that the p-zombie is conscious. That is, in fact, sufficient evidence for such, as you already admitted exactly the same physical evidence would show a conscious person to be conscious.

In other words, the p-zombie actually is conscious and actually does have qualia and those qualia are exactly the same as those of the conscious person. And, of course, that means the whole concept of a p-zombie is incoherent.

And how, precisely, do you know your inner experiences *cannot* be functionalized? If we can correlate your brain states with your internal states, how is that *not* functionalizing them?

 

[Polymath257]

In my definition consciousness is the manifest knowledge and the potential for it. It is the fundamental requirement for knowledge and discernment. And this is intrinsic nature of the existence itself.

So how are bacteria conscious by this definition? And you made a leap in saying it is intrinsic to 'existence itself'. Is that part of the definition? Or is it a property you conclude somehow?

 

[atanu]

I do not expect to convince you to change your perception of consciousness. To me it is the challenges in the exchange of ideas to what we think and the that cause us to discuss a topic. Some times we change our view or at least modify it. At least if we consider different ideas then we can learn. So whether I change my view I have already learned by examining what I know. I would like to believe I am at least open to new ways of thinking. I hope when we leave any exchange of ideas that we at least learned something which makes the discussions worth while even if our opinion has not changed.

That is nicely written and I agree that discussions should not be solely for ego satisfaction. All concerned should take away something positive. Till 2001, I was an atheist materialist. But I was shown that my world view was flawed. More on that below.

Consciousness is an active process of the brain and body. If that active process stops then consciousness stops.

I agree to some extent. Illuminating a room requires creating resistance on path of a flow of electricity. If a light bulb is smashed, the electricity does not die. So, we need to investigate what actually fuels the body-brain. Science does not claim that it has an answer. But philosophical naturalism imposes its world view and asserts that the consciousness is nothing but neuronal processes. That however does not explain the first party experiences.

Thus lesions in the brain stop consciousness. We use the brain not only to study consciousness but do develop anything we believe in. We have difficult doing experiments on ourselves but can make observations on animals and other humans which have the same neurologic composition to have the same property.

True. But, this can be explained much more parsimoniously from point of view of idealism, that consciousness is the foundational fabric of existence. No physical law is violated. And there remains no need to explain away the qualia.

I can use a metaphor here. Please do not extend the metaphor beyond what it is meant for. It is only a metaphor. Imagine a river as mind -- it flows. On this river there are localised processes that give rise to whirlpools, which have their own separate patterns of consciousnesses but are also linked to and sourced by the global consciousness of the river. Now, any happening at a higher level, in the river, for example, will disturb or destroy the whirlpool (and the temporal consciousness that it represents). But the river goes on.

If you wish we may go much deeper into this discussion. And I assure you that this is not dry academic discussion. This point has revolutionary implication for individual psyche.

As for the 4 statements there is no problem with statement 1 and 2. The third statement is true if you are talking about things outside of an individual's perception that have to be detected by indirect evidence. I cannot perceive atoms for instance. The last statement depends what things you are talking about.

This is a very big discussion. If you wish, I can expand.

Thanks.

 

[paarsurrey]

vanishing

Vanishing of "I am " from a human body at death tells us that consciousness was endowed to the human temporarily by the Absolute Conscious Being. Right, please?
Regards