What If Consciousness Comes First?

[Polymath257]

But that is still side-stepping the 'hard' problem. Is not this amygdala composed of individual pieces of matter. What experiences this activity? You must still be postulating a mysterious step to find an 'experiencer' of this activity.

The 'experience' is the pattern of activity. When the brain shows a pattern of excitation due to sensory input, that *is* 'feeling pain' or 'feeling pleasure'. It isn't something 'else' that is experiencing: the experience *is* the pattern of activity.

Again, I see no 'hard problem' at all. He experience because we sense and have interactions.

 

[Polymath257]

There is morality towards even the animal world. Yes, pest creatures must be dealt with and sometimes killed but there should never be an uncaring disposition to needless suffering. Like a teacher scolding boys on a playground that are picking parts off a live grasshopper for example. Can you envision a similar type of concern for an old computer or something?

Morality is ultimately a cultural construct, although glimpses of it can be seen in other species.

Once again, if the computer has the capabilities that we are talking about, then we, I can see that as morally problematic.

Now, the computers we have now do not have those issues. But I see no reason to think such is impossible. In fact, I think it likely at some point in the future.

 

[cladking]

But that is still side-stepping the 'hard' problem. Is not this amygdala composed of individual pieces of matter. What experiences this activity? You must still be postulating a mysterious step to find an 'experiencer' of this activity.

I don't think it's at all necessary to understand everything about consciousness in order to define and study it.

It wasn't necessary for scientists in the 19th century to understand gravity in order to design counterweights and it's not necessary today to understand gravity in order to measure its speed.

All things start with a simple first baby step and follow apace. This would be obvious if you didn't believe in "intelligence" and probably as well if you could experience consciousness directly.

 

[bobhikes]

I think if we are ever to learn about consciousness and study it we must first define it "that which nature bestows upon all living things to assure the survival of the individual".

We can't see this for a multitude of reasons from our indirect understanding of reality and our own thought to beliefs about "intelligence" and "lower life forms". Despite the fact that no two identical things exist in the universe we believe in "species" and even "consciousnesses". We overlook the individual whether we're counting apples or aliens. The fact that our consciousness is different than that of any squirrel or oak tree is hardly apparent which leaves the oak tree better at understanding consciousness than any human.

Humans are the odd man out. We are too far removed from our own consciousness to understand its nature and simplicity. We must experience the complexity of our beliefs to experience thought. Thought is the complexity of everything we believe but squirrels and oak trees have no beliefs.

My theory is that the only difference between human consciousness and the intelligence of a monkey is the addition of a feedback loop. Animals plants must act on stimulus to their sense's to get a result, they don't process the thought internally they act or don't act on the thought. With humans we are able to loop the thought back through the mind and can add emotion or logic to it and process it as new. We do not need to act on the thought or hold the thought until conditions are met. We can change the conditions internally before acting.

 

[George-ananda]

I don't think it's at all necessary to understand everything about consciousness in order to define and study it.

But in this discussion we are not just trying to define and study it but asking philosophical questions too. What is the nature of consciousness? Is it created by material interactions or is it something mysterious and fundamental, The latter are valid questions too.

 

[Terry Sampson]

OTOH - if we ever did manage to produce a robot that perfectly mimicked human behaviour - how would we know that it was not, in fact, experiencing the world in exactly the same way that a human does?

Perfectly mimicked? Do you suppose that your "robot that perfectly mimics behavior" could be hypnotized?

 

[cladking]

My theory is that the only difference between human consciousness and the intelligence of a monkey is the addition of a feedback loop. Animals plants must act on stimulus to their sense's to get a result, they don't process the thought internally they act or don't act on the thought. With humans we are able to loop the thought back through the mind and can add emotion or logic to it and process it as new. We do not need to act on the thought or hold the thought until conditions are met. We can change the conditions internally before acting.

I'm in general agreement!

But, I believe most forms of life experience reality directly. The organism simply provides several axiomatic truths to consciousness and the most fundamental (and important) is that reality exists independently of senses and consciousness. All life (other than humans) acts on knowledge and experience though behavior can often (or usually) be principally instinctive. Humans act on beliefs and barely have any instincts because most are overruled by consciousness. Humans often don't think before they act (like Congress), but they still act on their beliefs and on the way they think.

Animals must think to build a beaver dam. But just as humans don't need to know how a car works to drive most beavers would not be capable of engineering a dam unless it was taught to them or instinctive. The first beaver dam required thought. And most beavers are "thinking" inasmuch as they are using experience and knowledge to drive most of their behavior. We believe that if we turn a car in the ignition and point the car toward the store we'll probably get their. And if we honk at someone it's because we believe they are misbehaving behind the wheel.

 

[cladking]

But in this discussion we are not just trying to define and study it but asking philosophical questions too. What is the nature of consciousness? Is it created by material interactions or is it something mysterious and fundamental, The latter are valid questions too.

I'm satisfied with not knowing the mechanics of consciousness and merely studying it as a black box problem.

The brain (the individual organism) is simply wired to reflect reality. Just as math is quantified reality the individual is reality incarnate. This reality manifests directly in all individuals (excluding humans) as several simple axioms of which they are well aware and use as a matrix to append their experience and knowledge.

Humans are different because we use confused languages at the very heart of consciousness. Animals have language (simple) as well but their language is a reflection of the individual which is a reflection of reality itself.

There. I suppose I made a little dent in the hard question.

 

[George-ananda]

There. I suppose I made a little dent in the hard question.

Well we are both positing Mysteries we can’t get our rational minds around.

Not that I want to open a new can of worms with you but I am also an avid lay student of so-called paranormal and psychic phenomena and am convinced beyond reasonable doubt of phenomena that can never be made sense of in a brain creates consciousness worldview.

 

[cladking]

Well we are both positing Mysteries we can’t get our rational minds around.

Not that I want to open a new can of worms with you but I am also an avid lay student of so-called paranormal and psychic phenomena and am convinced beyond reasonable doubt of phenomena that can never be made sense of in a brain creates consciousness worldview.

Actually I have no difficulty getting my mind around the concept of "life as reality incarnate". I can even trace every step to get here.

I hardly disbelieve in "paranormal and psychic phenomena". I simply believe there is countless trillions times more to know than what we do know.

In most cases these "paranormal and psychic phenomena" are probably going to be tricks of the mind or something akin to optical illusions but with so much that is unknown it would be the height of hubris to dismiss them all as being able to fit in my or anybody's understandings. It's one mighty big universe and enormous reality of which we have only the tiniest glimpses.

 

[siti]

Perfectly mimicked? Do you suppose that your "robot that perfectly mimics behavior" could be hypnotized?

Just to be clear, the idea of a robot that could mimic human behaviour was not mine - my point was that if such a thing could be achieved, to make a fair comparison between the consciousness of a real human and its robot mimic, the robot would have to be capable of reproducing all human behaviour - including the capacity to be hypnotized - and experience other altered states of consciousness...e.g. they would have to be able to get high smoking weed and experience psilocybin induced hallucinations...etc. etc. - if they were not able to do all that they would not be mimicking human behaviour and if they were able to do it, how would anyone be able to say they were not conscious?

 

[Bear Wild]

This is, to me, an interesting Psychology Today piece It is a discussion of how pure consciousness is a mandatory part of existence.

Despite the success of neuroscience in establishing a wide range of correlations between brain processes and conscious experience, there is at least one question about the relationship between the brain and consciousness that continues to appear unanswerable, even in principle. This is the question of why we have conscious experience at all.


The problem is that there could conceivably be brains that perform all the same sensory and decision-making functions as ours but in which there is no conscious experience. That is, there could be brains that react as though sad but that don’t feel sadness, brains that can discriminate between wavelengths of light but that don’t see red or yellow or blue or any other color, brains that direct their bodies to eat certain foods but that don’t taste them. So why is there nevertheless something that it’s like to be us?
...
The issue is that physical properties are by their nature relational, dispositional properties. That is, they describe the way that something is related to other things and/or has the disposition to affect or be affected by those other things. Most notably, physical properties describe the way that something affects an outside observer of that thing. But there is something going on in conscious experience that goes beyond how that conscious experience affects people looking at it from the outside. For this reason, the “what it’s like” to be a conscious mind can’t be described in the purely relational, dispositional terms accessible to science. There’s just no way to get there from here.

This explanatory gap is what is now commonly referred to as the “hard problem” of consciousness...

if the universe is to actually exist, its properties can’t be exclusively relational/dispositional. Something in the universe has to have some kind of quality in and of itself to give all the other relational/dispositional properties any meaning. Something has to get the ball rolling.

That something (at least in our universe) is consciousness.

There is significant problems with this article. First there is no definition to consciousness as proposed by the editors of in the book “Biophysics of Consciousness A foundational approach" edited by Poznanski et all 2017 they give a working definition of consciousness
“By “consciousness” we mean all of our states of feeling or sentience or awareness". Here we have at least a working definition that can be evaluated.
If you go to Stanford University encyclopedia of philosophy you can a long drawn out verbose description of consciousness from multiple view points. It is an excellent discussion of the different opinions but useless in a article trying to make the point about consciousness before physical proof. Thus the author expresses a nebulous concept of consciousness and the claim that physical properties cannot explain consciousness and that consciousness is needed to explain physical properties. This give a concept that consciousness exists before explanations.
The reality is that physical properties combined to create the conditions of awareness that we call consciousness and using this awareness we discover what allows, at least in animals where we have some understanding of how it can occur, consciousness to exist. Otherwise you have some unexplainable supernatural process that was first created before the natural world could create the capacity for consciousness to exist. This then quickly decorated into the human centric view that we are so special.
Yet if we start with a testable definition as presented above the we do have increasing understanding. First we know that conscious states are cause by lower neuronal process of the brain. As we learn from lesion in the brain and neuostimualtion of aspects of the brain we slowly map out the patterns that create the feelings, sentience or awareness that animals including humans experience.

 

[atanu]

The 'experience' is the pattern of activity. When the brain shows a pattern of excitation due to sensory input, that *is* 'feeling pain' or 'feeling pleasure'. It isn't something 'else' that is experiencing: the experience *is* the pattern of activity.

Again, I see no 'hard problem' at all. He experience because we sense and have interactions.

Patterns are the diverse experiences and the experiencer?

 

[atanu]

This is, to me, an interesting Psychology Today piece It is a discussion of how pure consciousness is a mandatory part of existence.

Despite the success of neuroscience in establishing a wide range of correlations between brain processes and conscious experience, there is at least one question about the relationship between the brain and consciousness that continues to appear unanswerable, even in principle. This is the question of why we have conscious experience at all.


The problem is that there could conceivably be brains that perform all the same sensory and decision-making functions as ours but in which there is no conscious experience. That is, there could be brains that react as though sad but that don’t feel sadness, brains that can discriminate between wavelengths of light but that don’t see red or yellow or blue or any other color, brains that direct their bodies to eat certain foods but that don’t taste them. So why is there nevertheless something that it’s like to be us?
...
The issue is that physical properties are by their nature relational, dispositional properties. That is, they describe the way that something is related to other things and/or has the disposition to affect or be affected by those other things. Most notably, physical properties describe the way that something affects an outside observer of that thing. But there is something going on in conscious experience that goes beyond how that conscious experience affects people looking at it from the outside. For this reason, the “what it’s like” to be a conscious mind can’t be described in the purely relational, dispositional terms accessible to science. There’s just no way to get there from here.

This explanatory gap is what is now commonly referred to as the “hard problem” of consciousness...

if the universe is to actually exist, its properties can’t be exclusively relational/dispositional. Something in the universe has to have some kind of quality in and of itself to give all the other relational/dispositional properties any meaning. Something has to get the ball rolling.

That something (at least in our universe) is consciousness.

One cannot but employ the extant consciousness to theorise about consciousness. People who deny consciousness employ the consciousness given to them. If ever someone demonstrates magical creation of consciousness from inanimate matter, one will need the given consciousness to recognise such a magic.

But probably argumentation is futile. Once it is realised that time-space-objects appear and disappear in awareness only, one can employ the consciousness to know it and attain the ever present peace that is always clouded under thoughts.

One can simply introvert the attention away from the thoughts and into the consciousness itself.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

There is significant problems with this article. First there is no definition to consciousness as proposed by the editors of in the book “Biophysics of Consciousness A foundational approach" edited by Poznanski et all 2017 they give a working definition of consciousness
“By “consciousness” we mean all of our states of feeling or sentience or awareness". Here we have at least a working definition that can be evaluated.
If you go to Stanford University encyclopedia of philosophy you can a long drawn out verbose description of consciousness from multiple view points. It is an excellent discussion of the different opinions but useless in a article trying to make the point about consciousness before physical proof. Thus the author expresses a nebulous concept of consciousness and the claim that physical properties cannot explain consciousness and that consciousness is needed to explain physical properties. This give a concept that consciousness exists before explanations.
The reality is that physical properties combined to create the conditions of awareness that we call consciousness and using this awareness we discover what allows, at least in animals where we have some understanding of how it can occur, consciousness to exist. Otherwise you have some unexplainable supernatural process that was first created before the natural world could create the capacity for consciousness to exist. This then quickly decorated into the human centric view that we are so special.
Yet if we start with a testable definition as presented above the we do have increasing understanding. First we know that conscious states are cause by lower neuronal process of the brain. As we learn from lesion in the brain and neuostimualtion of aspects of the brain we slowly map out the patterns that create the feelings, sentience or awareness that animals including humans experience.

The problem with definitions is that they frame the view and determine what you see.

Now try a neutral approach. Forget what reality really is and don't view physical other than a description of certain processes. Does physical process influences what humans do? Yes, e.g. a blow to the head can change the behavior.
Do chemical process influence what humans do? Yes, e.g alcohol can change the behavior.
Now I will name these external, they are external to the brain itself and can change the behavior in a brain. Can we describe in observational terms, what happens in a brain for at least some external influences? Yes.
Now here is the trick and it revolves around words.
Do all words have referents external to brains? No, the word "no" is such an example.
Are all words about perceptual experiences? No, the word "no" is such an example.
Are all words cases of involving seeing, tasting, hearing, feeling by touch or smelling? No.

Do you begin to see a pattern? There is a class of words, which have no external referents. They are connected to physical, chemical, biochemical and so on processes in a brain, I will give you that.
But there is the problem. Some words have no external natural referent and can't be reduced to or explained using only external referents. Does that mean that they are supernatural? No, it means that there is a limit to natural explanations based on observations.
In technical terms we are playing different version of metaphysics. I.e. non-reductive versus reductive physicalism. Or in empirical terms are all human experiences reducible to external experiences only? No.!

Now it is tied to the problem of methodology. Is it possible to have only one methodology to do everything as a human? Or the approach of explaining the world as only objective reality as having existence independent of the mind?

I have been doing this for many years now and I know that thinking frames, what you understand. So depending on what you take for granted you get different results.
If you take for granted an external model of only explanations back to objective reality, you frame what you look for in certain way. If you start with humans and explain the world as how humans experience it and use words, you get a different result.
So which one is correct? It depends on what you take for granted.
It is here:

Philosophy, (from Greek, by way of Latin, philosophia, “love of wisdom”) the rational, abstract, and methodical consideration of reality as a whole or of fundamental dimensions of human existence and experience.

philosophy | Definition, Systems, Fields, Schools, & Biographies

What you define consciousness as, frames, what you understand. If you then shift the approach you understand it differently.
I have learned to do this as - of fundamental dimensions of human existence and experience.
Some humans do it as reality as a whole and then view it thorough a metaphysical lens.
So what is consciousness? That depends on what you in your mind as concepts take for granted, when you start looking.
Science:

Science, since people must do it, is a socially embedded activity. It progresses by hunch, vision, and intuition. Much of its change through time does not record a closer approach to absolute truth, but the alteration of cultural contexts that influence it so strongly. Facts are not pure and unsullied bits of information; culture also influences what we see and how we see it. Theories, moreover, are not inexorable inductions from facts. The most creative theories are often imaginative visions imposed upon facts; the source of imagination is also strongly cultural. [Stephen Jay Gould, introduction to "The Mismeasure of Man," 1981]

Read it and connect the dots to how I explain it.
Are there parts of the world, which don't depend on humans? Yes. Are there parts of the world, which depend on how humans think and feel? Yes. Can these 2 be reduced down to one and not the other? No, so stop doing metaphysics and what not.
Learn that there is no single methodology for doing everything as a human. It always involve objective elements and subjective elements as limited cognitive, cultural, moral and subjective relativism and nobody have been able to reduce the one to the other. I know this, because I have look in the books and what not of the collective human knowledge of different ways of doing a life and I have learned that in some cases what you take for granted, frames what you understand. That is philosophy. Learn to spot as much as what you take for granted and not just everybody else.

Now can you do this differently that me? Yes, because you can use your brain differently than me. Or dare I say, your mind and consciousness.

 

[Truly Enlightened]

This is, to me, an interesting Psychology Today piece It is a discussion of how pure consciousness is a mandatory part of existence.

Despite the success of neuroscience in establishing a wide range of correlations between brain processes and conscious experience, there is at least one question about the relationship between the brain and consciousness that continues to appear unanswerable, even in principle. This is the question of why we have conscious experience at all.


The problem is that there could conceivably be brains that perform all the same sensory and decision-making functions as ours but in which there is no conscious experience. That is, there could be brains that react as though sad but that don’t feel sadness, brains that can discriminate between wavelengths of light but that don’t see red or yellow or blue or any other color, brains that direct their bodies to eat certain foods but that don’t taste them. So why is there nevertheless something that it’s like to be us?
...
The issue is that physical properties are by their nature relational, dispositional properties. That is, they describe the way that something is related to other things and/or has the disposition to affect or be affected by those other things. Most notably, physical properties describe the way that something affects an outside observer of that thing. But there is something going on in conscious experience that goes beyond how that conscious experience affects people looking at it from the outside. For this reason, the “what it’s like” to be a conscious mind can’t be described in the purely relational, dispositional terms accessible to science. There’s just no way to get there from here.

This explanatory gap is what is now commonly referred to as the “hard problem” of consciousness...

if the universe is to actually exist, its properties can’t be exclusively relational/dispositional. Something in the universe has to have some kind of quality in and of itself to give all the other relational/dispositional properties any meaning. Something has to get the ball rolling.

That something (at least in our universe) is consciousness.

"The conscious you, in effect, is like a not terribly bright CEO, whose subordinates do all of the research, draft all of the documents, then lay them out and say, “Sign here, sir.” The CEO does—and takes the credit.". Only 5% of all cognitive activities is devoted to our consciousness. The rest is done at our subconscious and unconscious levels of awareness. Are newborns born with consciousness, or does it evolve from their language development and their social interactions? Implying this mind body duality may exist, is just nonsense, or an overactive imagination. Consciousness does not exist without a physical brain. But a physical brain can certainly exist without consciousness. Consciousness is not a mandatory part of our existence, it was the inevitable outcome of our existence. Almost 95% of all cognitive activities do not require consciousness. Can you just imagine what would happen if we had to be conscious of all the body's activities. We would quickly become extinct. Thank God for Evolution, and Genes.

Another problem is, that our brain has no sensory organs in the brain itself. Therefore, it can't perceive sensory input, without its sensory organs. Without these external sensory information conscious awareness of our position in spacetime, would never develop. We do have an Autonomic Nervous System, but this system is not apart of our consciousness.

Finally, we are talking about less that 5% of our cognitive activities, a zero-dimensional conceptual representation of physical reality, and its little to no importance in our survival. It is hardly worth a mention. If Consciousness did exist separately from the brain, what would its properties be? What would be its thermodynamics? What would be its origins? This beginning to sound like a Cosmological Boltzmann brain hybrid argument. Or just another begging the question argument from ignorance.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

"The conscious you, in effect, is like a not terribly bright CEO, whose subordinates do all of the research, draft all of the documents, then lay them out and say, “Sign here, sir.” The CEO does—and takes the credit.". Only 5% of all cognitive activities is devoted to our consciousness. The rest is done at our subconscious and unconscious levels of awareness. Are newborns born with consciousness, or does it evolve from their language development and their social interactions? Implying this mind body duality may exist, is just nonsense, or an overactive imagination. Consciousness does not exist without a physical brain. But a physical brain can certainly exist without consciousness. Consciousness is not a mandatory part of our existence, it was the inevitable outcome of our existence. Almost 95% of all cognitive activities do not require consciousness. Can you just imagine what would happen if we had to be conscious of all the body's activities. We would quickly become extinct. Thank God for Evolution, and Genes.

Another problem is, that our brain has no sensory organs in the brain itself. Therefore, it can't perceive sensory input, without its sensory organs. Without these external sensory information conscious awareness of our position in spacetime, would never develop. We do have an Autonomic Nervous System, but this system is not apart of our consciousness.

Finally, we are talking about less that 5% of our cognitive activities, a zero-dimensional conceptual representation of physical reality, and its little to no importance in our survival. It is hardly worth a mention. If Consciousness did exist separately from the brain, what would its properties be? What would be its thermodynamics? What would be its origins? This beginning to sound like a Cosmological Boltzmann brain hybrid argument. Or just another begging the question argument from ignorance.

And there you went subjective. It is fun to read your posts and spot when you go from objective facts to subjective evaluation and interpretation. You seem apparently functionally incapable of spotting that. You take your subjective meaningfulness for granted.
That is because it works for you and you don't have to be self-reflectively aware of it. You haven't learned to use the 5% to spot your subjectivity in this case. I have at least in some cases and I bet you can also do it in other cases. But here you are "blind" to your own subjectivity.
So here are some words for you: Mentalization, meta-cognition and self-reflection. They are also a part of what you speak of and you can learn to spot, who can do that or not, but that requires that you have learned that. You might be able to do this in some cases, but relevant for this you are not capable of it, it would seem.
The 5% can change some behaviors, but that requires that you learn to use them.
That is how cognitive therapy works. You use the 5% to "reprogram" other parts of the 95%. Nice. Now would you please learn that, if you want to claim science.

 

[gnostic]

Perhaps, though consciousness Is central to our "personal universe", ie everything we experience.

And yet, this “personal universe” is only the tiniest fraction of the actual universe, and the universe doesn’t concern itself to your personal experiences or to mine.

I don’t think anyone’s experiences matters to the universe, and we can argue about different philosophies, do a pissing match of which religion is the best, we can be rich or poor, fat or skinny, sane or insane, be dumb as door mat or super-intelligent, and so on, and none of this would change the universe one iota.

Anyone who think they can change the universe (or save it), is a frickingly stupid and arrogant person.

 

[Aupmanyav]

I think it highly likely that there is a continuum.

There is nothing which indicates that it is a continuum.

But I do like the work by Peter Fenwick. He suggests that consciousness occurs in clinically dead brains.

Sure, that is possible because clinically dead does not mean that the brain is dead. The brain continues to work for some time after clinical death utilizing the oxygen already supplied to the brain. When that is finished, the brain is finally and truely dead. To conserve the oxygen, the brain shuts down all pain-centers, all sensory experiences and all motor movements. Only thought remain. It is just like a dream.

 

[Mock Turtle]

There is nothing which indicates that it is a continuum.

Why do you believe this? What do you think is happening in the brains of other primates and all the other species of animals? Especially when they display such a range of behaviours, that were they carried out by humans, they would certainly present much the same as what we would describe as consciousness.