Heck, that’s half the fun of philosophical discourse, ainnit? That some doctrines allow basing actions on intuition, some expressly forbid even its possibility?
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The subconscious chose based on previous experiences and knowledge. I think consciousness still has some form of free will, which is a probability based on previous experiences. If I give an example: The chance that an elderly nun becomes a murderer is not zero, but it is very small given her previous decisions and experiences. The subconscious decides, but the self has the right of veto. Otherwise we would all act on primal urges. Although when I look at the current world, it seems to me that’s exactly what’s happening.
But it doesn’t. The veto is also a decision, and like all decisions it’s made subconsciously. You wouldn’t even be aware that a veto took place, you would only experience the final decision, and you would attribute that decision to yourself.
So basically wishful thinking. “Free will has to exist because I don’t want to live in a world in which it doesn’t”.
But it’s not primal urges. If your primal urges guide your subconscious to read a book on alcohol, and a result of that your subconscious decides to stop drinking alcohol, that decision wasn’t made on primal urges, but on information your subconscious was lucky enough to receive.
Either way, that’s a free will debate. What is undeniable is that the conscious will experience the decision “I will stop drinking aclohol”.
Regarding decision-making specifically—neither consciousness nor self in any pure sense. Decision-making feels more like a tug of war between mutually opposing forces. The self’s ownership of the outcome is retrospective in nature. Whether consciousness is a force in this tug of war or the field it happens in—I truly do not know.
I don’t know enough about your views to know how you mean this. I don’t think there is a self without consciousness. For me, you are asking something like - Is it my legs or my skeletal structure that let me stand?
I see consciousness as a feedback loop between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. The stimulus goes first to the amygdala, where the subconscious response is triggered, and only later arrives in the prefrontal cortex, where the self can decide. In this case, the subconscious has the advantage. But when the prefrontal cortex starts continuously sending stimuli back to the amygdala, the amygdala needs slightly more time to trigger a response. That is exactly what the prefrontal cortex needs for the rational self to decide. The amygdala, the primal part of the brain, enabled us to survive throughout history, but now we also need reason, abstract thinking, emotional intelligence. In my opinion, this feedback loop is consciousness, the moment of the self, our perception of ourselves and our surroundings.
O would say consciousness is biological self-protection. If we didn’t feel ourselves, we would expose ourselves to danger too often and we couldn’t develop emotions. I think this feedback loop is exactly that light. The connection between the self and the subconscious. They are separate, but consciousness connects them.
No, the reason being that we are a complex organism with many overlapping, or overlayed features, capacities etc.
Part of the confusion over this issue is as a result of trying to pin down what is happening in a human body to result in the experiences we are aware of.
Consciousness is a feature, or product of being alive (in organisms). But as you suggest, it might be a feature of existence, more broadly.
You say you don’t feel comfortable attributing consciousness to an atom. Well I find it quite plausible, for example a person might be one atom experiencing things through our body. Rather like our body is an apparatus for the a single atom to experience things.
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A devil’s advocate might point out the tendency of certain randomly generated programs to replicate and survive on the level of pattern.
I don’t think consciousness is an epiphenomenon, but I also don’t think the physical should be taken for granted, as securely established, in order to defend the importance of consciousness. Indeed, I’d say that consciousness is the very presence or being of the physical. And yet I would not accept the label of “idealist,” for I don’t think of consciousness as an internal mind-stuff.
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It’s difficult to explain the theory when part of the explanation is describing what the consciousness of a photon might be. Also, there doesn’t seem to be a way to test it, so the word “theory” is not really correct.
Still, I think photons (and everything else) are conscious, because I don’t see a way around it. And no other theory can be tested, either.
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OK, just to see where it goes…
Why do you believe in photons ? I mean I do too, but why ?
The point I’m making is that “perceptual reality” is what “grounds” science. That and social reality. I have to trust the reports of others. Even getting those reports is something I need perception for. But perception involves “consciousness.” How ? Is consciousness “glued on” to the perception ? Or is consciousness more like the “being there” of the perception ? Of the candle from over here ?
Consciousness is, I suggest, “just” (for instance) the “presence” of that candle, as seen from over here. The “being” of that candle. But that candle is also seeable by others. And this is seems is where things get weird. Is there a “true candle” that “causes” internal representations of the candle ? Or is our taking the perception of the candle as a perception of the candle its “unity” as a collection of actual and possible perceptions at different times by me and others ?
Are we forced into a dualism where consciousness becomes a stuff that sits beside other stuff ?
I can appreciate panpsychism as trying to deal with consciousness as opposed to evading it. Maybe “dualism” isn’t the right word for it. But consciousness-as-stuff-ism might apply.
Is the consciousness of the other less than the being of the entire world from another point of view ?
I can also understand consciousness as the idea that it is a human construct for explaining abstract thinking about oneself and the relationship with reality.
Because I trust the science. Science certainly doesn’t have all the answers, and maybe it never will. But it has been fantastically successful in many ways. Our method of interacting here being a great example.
I don’t know how much science doesn’t know about photons. Brian Greene says he doesn’t know what mass or electric charge are. He only knows what they do. So what photons are can be a mystery. What anything is can be a mystery. Maybe nothing is truly anything like how we think of it. But how we think of it works for our purposes. And if you can’t tell the difference, what difference does it make?
Not in my view. I don’t think consciousness is describable as “stuff”, by any definition of stuff. The best word I can come up with so far, which I’ve only been using in the last couple weeks, is capacity. Everything is conscious because everything has the capacity to subjectively experience. but that capacity is not the result of any of the physical properties. The capacity is of a different nature.
Of course, since there are many things that science can’t tell us, and we can’t be sure of the true nature of anything, we can’t be sure physical properties, or anything physical, are physical as the word is commonly understood. Physical properties might just appear physical to our consciousness. If they are not really what they seem, though, I don’t know why consciousness would interpret them that way. Why not simply understand things as they truly are, rather than come up with an entirely different understanding, which has nothing to do with reality?
If all of that is the case, then maybe the answer is that consciousness is the only thing that actually is physical, and it interprets everything according to its own nature.
Which I think is an extremely amusing idea.
Indeed, any present thing is already evidence that presence is not a thing still to be found.
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Yes, welcome to my world, the world of mysticism. Everything is, or is supported by unfathomable mysteries. Go to the farthest reaches of what science, math, etc can tell us and you find yourself face to face with the unknown.
To go further requires a different way of thinking, or not thinking at all. I tried it and I didn’t disappear in a puff of smoke, Infact it was a release, rather than an abandonment.
Yes, it’s worthwhile considering that consciousness is of a different nature. Or that consciousness is the only real reality out there.
Quite.
Yes, but have you considered that the way things truly are is veiled from us, (for some reason, perhaps) that what we see of the world is reflected in that veil. Also what we are seeing maybe only a reflection of ourselves, our own nature. We might have fallen from heaven* and all we see is what we took with us, ourselves.
- any references to religious iconography is only because it’s an easier way to explain the idea. I’m not religious.
But couldn’t this perfectly well describe a non-conscious, zombie-robot decision maker, with a growing history of non-conscious decisions and experiences?
If your question wasn’t rhetorical, how about the following?
Consciousness is a confused analysis of our thought processes, in which we mistakenly (albeit usefully) compare them to the activity of some kind of internal theatre, with or without an audience, but with sound and pictures?
Perhaps we could apply your theories of evolutionary utility to this very capacity for confused self-analysis?
Ah, you’re one of those mystic weirdos?!
How’s that old saying go?
That’s the panpsychist calling the mystic “weirdo”.
Who are the big names in your field?
Consciousness is the quality of the biological living beings mental state and ability including being alert, think, feel, sense, perceive and interact with the world and other beings in intelligible and coherently expected manner with the bodily gestures or movements and linguistic communication abilities (in case of humans).
That doesn’t mean a conscious being must show all the signs of being conscious at one go, or even need to show any sign at all.
It is the potential capability performed by the self made decision of the being when appropriate in the context of the situation, and able to convince the other beings in interaction that the being is conscious by the self decided and activated response and interaction.
So, it means that a conscious being doesn’t have to show any sign for being conscious at all if it decides not to interact or respond with the world or others, but still it would be conscious because it is awake, thinking or feeling or sensing or perceiving the world or others while not saying anything or showing any sign for being conscious.
Consciousness is not some physical substance or entity generated from brain or neurochemical signals. It is not some immaterial soul type of existence either.
It is the quality or property of the mental state and state of being alert with the intelligible potential verbal and physical interaction and response with the world and other beings.
We’re all weirdo’s here aren’t we?
A receptacle for weirdo’s to congregate.
Well now we’re here and haven’t disappeared in a puff of smoke. Maybe we should put our grist to the wheel and try and answer some of these questions.
Like, is the consciousness we know, are trying to address, universal, i.e, prior to this world?
So if I were to disappear in a puff of smoke, would I still be conscious (still exist as a consciousness), or would I have totally disappeared from existence?
This brings up a whole other suite of questions, such as what does it mean to not exist?
How can something come into existence and then cease to exist? If it previously didn’t exist, how could it come into existence and then go back into non existence?
Maybe what exists, always did and always will exist and things coming and going (from existence) is the real mystery here? How does that happen?
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In my thread on Fasching, I made the case this way.
What does it mean for me to believe that my mom is conscious ?
Do I believe she has an “something” in her cranium ? Granted, I don’t tend to believe that entities are conscious unless they have living brains. But that’s just talking about the type of entities that I tend to believe are conscious.
What do I even mean though ? “My mom is conscious.” Meaning what ?
In my view, it means that the world exists for my dear old ma. The entire world, but from her rather than my perspective.
While we replaced an old rug with a new one, we had to cooperate to move a couch, etc. We discussed the same objects that “manifested” to each of us different, given our points of view in the room.
For each of us, differently, the same room was “there.”
Consciousness is the presence of the physical. Or the “being” of the physical. Or the “thereness” of the physical.
More exactly, it’s the from-a-point-of-view-there-ness of the familiar objects that get classed as “physical.” Precisely because we can all see and talk about them they are “physical.”
That’s the greatness of empirical science. Check with your own eyes. But only someone with consciousness can do that. And science is something we conscious people do together. But only because we presuppose that we share the world and can discuss the same objects.
I could not agree more. I’d just say that IMO people tend to misread the power of technology by adopting an incoherent account of how we share the world.