Consciousness: what is it?

Philosophy of Mind
81

For any particular emotion, or feeling, the cause of which is determined by the subject, such determination would necessarily be something of which he is conscious. Problem here is, sometimes the cause cannot be sufficiently determined, in which case the subject is still nonetheless conscious of his shortfall.

As to particular status, and insofar as to think is very different than to feel, the content of consciousness can be divided between those of discursive architecture, re: based on judgement of the relation of conceptions to each other and those of aesthetic, re: based on judgement relative to only to pain or pleasure.

Yea? Nay? If 6 was 9……

82

I’m not sure I fully understand you, as your language is a little complex, but thank you. I tend to base most of my choices and actions on intuition rather than explicit reasoning. When I do reason, however, I’m fairly certain that the reasoning is largely constructed around my affective relationship to the subject matter. In terms of self-awareness or introspection, I don’t really have a strong sense of myself outside of this affective process of attraction and repulsion.

83

As I see it, the problem is reifying consciousness to begin with. To put it aphoristically, consciousness is the “presence” or “being” of the physical. “Being” is not a stuff, though we use a noun to point at “it.”

84

I’m coming to think of it as a capacity. The capacity of matter to subjectively experience. I am sure I don’t think of it as a “stuff”, and I don’t get the impression you do either. But I also don’t see it as something the physical properties of matter can account for.

85

One way to express my own approach to point out the fuzziness of the concept of the physical. People take for granted that this concept is secure. Why ? Because objects that are present for them are also present for others. The “physical” is what we take to be available to all.

My approach ( which is just a paraphrase of my influences ) is that consciousness is the “presence” and the very being(-there) of the physical.

But this “being” is not a stuff. Instead physical objects are perspectively present.

The assumption of the a-perspectival “true” physical object is, for me, a key contributor to the “hard problem of consciousness.”

86

I’ve been trying to understand you for some time, but I just don’t know what you mean. If the physical is not really physical, then what is it that is perspectively present? And why do we (mis)interpret it as physical?

87

I’m sure it’s hard to make sense of what I’m saying without looking into phenomenalism. For me Mach was a crucial influence. I’ll also note that many who understand it may object to its implications about how “the” past exists. So I don’t want to “preach” it as “the truth.” I just want it out there as another option on the menu.

Basically it involves understanding experience as a “neutral phenomenal field.” This field is just there in its quality. I’m saying that consciousness is just the “presence” of this field. Within this field, we may group some “neutral elements” as the side of a passing car. Other elements may be “a daydream.” We tend to divide the field, for practical purposes, into “external” and “internal” objects. This is basically a division between “also-for-others” and “just-for-me.”

We soon learn which “elements” ( neutral sensory-affective “pieces” of the field ) are called “chairs,” for instance. We visually experience “aspects” of the chair. The “same” chair is the unity of many perceptions by ourselves and others. No “manifestation” of the chair is like any other, but we group them together to “enact” the enduring public chair. We don’t have to try to do this.

Inventing a “true physical chair” that is “behind” these perceptions doesn’t explain anything. We might think it does, however, if we inherit the presuppostion that perceptions are internal re-presentations rather than the direct and absolute original presentations of the object.

Colours, sounds, temperatures, pressures, spaces, times, and so forth, are connected with one another in manifold ways; and with them are associated dispositions of mind, feelings, and volitions. Out of this fabric, that which is relatively more fixed and permanent stands prominently forth, engraves itself on the memory, and expresses itself in language. Relatively greater permanency is exhibited, first, by certain complexes of colours, sounds, pressures, and so forth, functionally connected in time and space, which therefore receive special names, and are called bodies. Absolutely permanent such complexes are not.

My table is now brightly, now dimly lighted. Its temperature varies. It may receive an ink stain. One of its legs may be broken. It may be repaired, polished, and replaced part by part. But, for me, it remains the table at which I daily write.

My friend may put on a different coat. His countenance may assume a serious or a cheerful expression. His complexion, under the effects of light or emotion, may change. His shape may be altered by motion, or be definitely changed. Yet the number of the permanent features presented, compared with the number of the gradual alterations, is always so great, that the latter may be overlooked. It is the same friend with whom I take my daily walk.

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88

The non-perspectival object, you say, exists only as superposition or duality of particles in quantum mechanics. Until we look at it, measure it, it can be a particle or a wave, in multiple places at once. Observation makes reality. Could be something like you say.

89

I need baby steps. Can you break this down more?

What does “neutral” mean? In relation to what? When my car is in neutral, it goes where outside forces send it. If it’s on a hill, it rolls down. Somebody pushing it from either end make it go in the direction they want.

Neutral colors lack bright hues. Similar idea to a neutral voice, which doesn’t get loud or soft, and stays on a medium pitch.

Switzerland is always neutral.

In what way is this phenomenal field neutral? Or maybe I would understand if you compared it to a non-neutral phenomenal field.

“Field” also has me wondering. I think of a field as covering an area. A football field. A planet’s gravitational field. A magnetic field.

90

My view is pretty close to the QBism of Chris Fuchs, but I’m making a more general point, while he’s applying a similar attitude in detail to a specialist field.

As I see it, many philosophers try to explicate or spell out how we can share one world from individual points of view. Perception is “personal,” and yet science tries to map the world we shared in a way that is constrained by these personal perceptions.

The dominant way of making sense of this is to assume an “external” reality that “sends messages” to private bubbles of consciousness-stuff. From within this framework, perceptions are not part of the object. The object is other than these perceptions.

For a phenomenalist or an ontological perspectivist, a perception is not “internal stuff” but a genuine piece of the object itself. The object is something like the interpersonal possibility of further perceptions. It’s not reducible to perceptions so far. Rather the object is fundamentally “futural.” In short, I perceive the real object but only an “aspect” or fugitive piece of it. I see it from this side or that, in this light or that, and so on. Others see it from other sides, at other times.

In this second view, consciousness is not an internal stuff but just the “presence” or “quality” of “aspects” or “moments” of interpersonal objects. So consciousness is not a stuff that is in the world but rather the presence (or “being”) of the world.

91

Not mental or physical. The phenomenal field is “just there.” But humans have various ways of categorizing and organizing this field. None of these categories ( like “mental” or “physical”) are taken seriously as ontologically deep. All of that is “ingredient ontology.” As I see it, we need to reconsider the structure of the objects that we share in the world.

Thus the great gulf between physical and psychological research persists only when we acquiesce in our habitual stereotyped conceptions. A colour is a physical object as soon as we consider its dependence, for instance, upon its luminous source, upon other colours, upon temperatures, upon spaces, and so forth. When we consider, however, its dependence upon the retina (the elements K L M. . .), it is a psychological object, a sensation. Not the subject matter, but the direction of our investigation, is different in the two domains. (Cp. also Chapter II., pp. 43, 44.)

92

Existence is fundamentally spatial. At least for me and I think for you, I/you are surrounded by a room in a building. Things are to your left and to your right. Moreover my reality and I think yours is “streaming.” It is not frozen. There is the sound of an AC perhaps. Or the cough of someone in another room.

93

Lots of interesting replies and ideas, I’d like to add another way of seeing it.

For me consciousness is something about a being, or an organism being alive. So in a sense it is another way of saying something is alive.
All living organisms have consciousness as a result of being alive. In more simple organisms it takes a more rudimentary form. For example, if you prod someone, they feel it. If you prod a unicellular organism it also feels it. It is somehow conscious of being prodded. But that consciousness doesn’t take the highly developed sentient form we have as highly evolved organisms with large brains. But it is the same feeling. I can’t really be more specific than this because we as humans can’t understand consciousness as it is in the rudimentary way it is in more simple organisms. For us it is wrapped up with intelligence, emotions and complex activities.

Also we should bear in mind that as multicellular organisms we have consciousness on more than one level. The level of individual cells and as a whole multicellular organism. We are a colony of conscious cells, cooperating and playing different roles to maintain the multicellular being. So without accepting this as the basis for our consciousness we become lost in notions of it being emergent from intelligent activity in the brain, or from our senses, sense of self etc. But these are just aspects of complex organisms with large brains. Our ancestors were conscious before they developed these capacities.

94

Right. In my words, this is liking looking for presence itself among things that are present.

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95

Have you read Sartre or Heidegger by chance ? This reminds me of their work.

If consciousness is the “now,” then the past too , in some sense, is here now. For instance, my familiar puppy rushes into the room, recognized as my puppy rather than some alien if rather adorable intruder.

96

For whoever might enjoy them, I include some passages from Sartre’s Transcendence of the Ego. I think he largely nails it on the issue of consciousness.

The transcendental field, purified of all egological structure, recovers its former limpidity. In one sense, it is a nothing, since all physical, psycho-physical and psychical objects, all truths, and all values are outside it, since the me has, for its part, ceased to be part of it.

…

But this nothing is everything because it is the consciousness of all these objects. There is no longer an ‘inner life’ in the sense in which Brunschvicg contrasts ‘inner life’ and ‘spiritual life’, since there is no longer anything that can be described as an object and can at the same time belong to the intimacy of consciousness.

…

[F]rom this point of view, my feelings and my states, my Ego itself, cease to be my exclusive property. Let me put it more precisely: up until now, a radical distinction has been drawn between the objectivity of the spatio-temporal thing or of an eternal truth and the subjectivity of psychical ‘states’. It seemed that the subject enjoyed a privileged position vis-à-vis its own states. On this view, when two men speak about the same chair, they are speaking about one and the same thing—this chair which the one takes and lifts up is the same as the one which the other sees, there is no mere correspondence of images, there is a single object.

…

But it seemed that when Paul tried to understand one of Peter’s psychical states, he could not reach this state, an intuitive grasp of which belonged to Peter alone. He could merely envisage an equivalent, create empty concepts which attempted vainly to reach a reality that in essence was unavailable to intuition. Psychological understanding took place through analogy. Phenomenology has taught us that states are objects, that a feeling as such (of love or hatred) is a transcendent object and cannot contract into the unity of inwardness of a ‘consciousness’. In consequence, if Peter and Paul are both speaking about Peter’s love, for instance, it is no longer true that the one is speaking blindly and by analogy of what the other grasps fully. They are speaking of the same thing; they doubtless grasp it by different procedures, but these procedures can be equally intuitive. And Peter’s feeling is no more certain for Peter than for Paul. It belongs, as far as both of them are concerned, to the category of objects that can be doubted.

…

But this whole profound and new conception is compromised if the me of Peter, this me that hates or loves, remains an essential structure of consciousness. Feeling, indeed, remains attached to it. This feeling ‘adheres’ to the me. If the me is brought into consciousness, the feeling is brought along with it. I have come to the conclusion, on the contrary, that the me is a transcendent object like the state and that, therefore, it is accessible to two sorts of intuition: an intuitive grasp by the consciousness whose me it is, an intuitive grasp that is less clear, but no less intuitive, if grasped by other consciousnesses. In a word, Peter’s me is accessible to my intuition as it is to Peter’s and in both cases it is the object of inadequate evidence. If this is so, there is nothing ‘impenetrable’ left in Peter, apart from his consciousness itself.

…

But this consciousness is radically impenetrable. By this I mean it is not merely refractory to intuition, but to thought. I cannot conceive Peter’s consciousness without turning it into an object (since I do not conceive it as being my consciousness). I cannot conceive it, since it would need to be conceived as pure inwardness and transcendence at one and the same time, which is impossible. A consciousness can conceive of no other consciousness than itself.

…

As the me is an object, it is obvious that I will never be able to say: my consciousness, i.e. the consciousness of my me (except in a purely designating sense, in the sense in which one says for example ‘The day of my baptism’). The Ego is not the proprietor of consciousness, it is its object.

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97

Regardless of the fact that I see an object from my perspective, that object is what it is. The object remains the same, another observer can look at it from a different angle or from mine, the object is just an object. Our perception of that object differs. From the angle, emotional accompaniment, interpretation. But all emotions and feelings we experience are a product of the self and not of consciousness. In the self are gathered all experiences, all events lived through, all joy and pain. A feeling is just information that the self brings from memory. If we had no prior experience of something, how would we know what it means for us?

98

I agree that different people can look an object from different places in the room, etc. The object is something like the logical unity of all these — and of all further and merely possible —perceptions.

I basically agree here as well. In my view, consciousness is radically simple, more of a nothing than a something, and yet of fundamental importance.

I basically agree, or I agree that much of the affective significance of events is somehow related to what has passed, which we call “the past.”

I think significance or meaning is fundamentally historical. What interests me is how this past “leaps ahead” to show itself in the present as the present. Or rather the past shows up in how what is present manifests to us.

For instance, as familiar or strange.

Or a plumber might recognize a tool right away and know what it is good for. He has used this kind of tool many times. Someone else might recognize only a mysterious tool.

Finally, a Spanish speaker, with a past that includes lots of conversation in Spanish, overhears one side of a phone and knows what it’s about. Someone else, who only speaks English, will recognize human language but mostly not understand what is being said.

99

In your view, are consciousness and alive synonyms to such a degree that we would do just as well with only one of the words? Possibly even better, because the two words make us think we must be talking about two different things, and imagine differences that aren’t really there?

100

That is precisely what I described in my theory of consciousness. Consciousness is a consequence of brains.

There is no reason to believe that any decisions are made by the conscious. Libertarian free will doesn’t exist and it’s a nonsensical idea.

All decisions are done by the subconscious. The conscious becomes aware of some of these decisions and attributes them to itself a posteriori: “I decided to eat tacos for dinner”.

The decision to leave your hand in the hot water will be made by the subconscious, but it would go through several rounds of introspection through the conscious. You (the conscious) will experience that as “thinking” or “considering”, but it’s the subconscious that initiated that process, and it’s the subconscious that will end that process.

At the end of process of thinking, you will become aware of the decision to pull your hand out of the water, and attribute that decision to you “I decided”. It’s a useful delusion, but a delusion nonetheless.