The Problem of Consciousness

care to let me in on the secret here? My curiosity is overpowering the enjoyment I am getting out of the fact that my not being able to read it supports my argument.

So for example if we take an fMRI machine and hook it up to your brain and see all the different neurons firing via blood flow (hemodynamics) third parties can establish what you are thinking.

Would you have a reference for that?

It seems . . . you are questioning whether or not our mapping of the brain has epistemic justification? (i.e. that when your occipital lobe fires doesnt mean you are having a visual experience) Because if that is the case I can show mounds of examples . . .

While it may not be as straight forward as the wording would often lead one to create an image of;. . . it is being done a little bit, to a less nuanced degree, now. . . I just want to make it clear enough, that we can record neuron activity in action as animals are acting and thinking, even in free motion (in mice). We can see, generally map, and know representation to self-volition of mirror neurons in monkeys--and to a lesser extent in humans even.

I am writing on a computer. You could also probably zoom in on the hard drive and find the actual bytes which represent this particular text, on the drive of a server. But then, if they are not interpreted by the operating system, displayed on a screen, and read by another human, how can they actually [be] said to mean anything?(I went ahead and edited it, this time)

Here, again, we find the matter of translation. What we can say has essentially occured, is a translation of information into another format, which can be translated back out of that format by an understander of it, into the original format once again. Of course, we know that the hard drive system . . .

Ah, but can we? I think this misses the point. The bytes might exist on the hard drive - it is after all just binary code - but the point I was making is that these bytes don’t mean anything at all until they are interpreted. . . The bytes on the hard drive do not convey meaning until they are interpreted, . . . And without the operating system and the subject reading it, nothing meaningful can be said to exist on the hard drive. . . So the analogy of ‘translation’ is not appropriate. (bold and underscore mine)

Here, I fully disagree. The essential event is one of translation, and there is not the circumstance that the 'translated-into-format' has no meaning.

Therefore, it is true that the string of event spaces on the hard drive which an English sentence has been translated into, is, by the very nature of the event (translation from one language into another), an event of translation.

Information, in the form of a linguistical format (English in this case), has been translated into a different linguistical format (one of a non-English character, viz. Hindi). This process is what is called translation, and there is (or should not be) any denial of that fact of understanding. In that the non-first linguistical format does not equal that of the first and original format, is of no concern at all, because it is the meaning that is being translated, not the format.

And on a more general note, I am saying that the meaning of any type of message is dependent upon it being interpreted. Meaning cannot be said to exist without a subject for whom it is intelligible.

If the external world does not really exist, doesn't that make my experiences solipsistic? Nobody else has any real existence outside my consciousness. I exist directly, but everyone else exists only in a kind of derivative sense. Isn't that the implication?

If there is not an objective external reality, how can there be perspectives? A perspective must by definition be of something. On the other hand, if there is an objective external reality, there is a logical contradiction if you maintain that a human's and a chimp's perspectives are different yet both 'accurate', since the same external world would then have to have two conflicting descriptions at the same time. Logically, there can be only one or no completely correct descriptions of external reality (if it exists), not more.

Both creatures using the same organ and biological mechanisms are seeing what is being transmitted on their little tv screens in the back of an organ in the head. I will leave it up to you brainiacs to come up with the proper name for that. Neither are actually seeing the actual tree, nor can they. What they are seeing is the light reflected off of the tree and translated by their brain into an image of what may or may not be in front of them. There is nothing that either of them can do to alter the reality of that tree being there, or what it actually is. Should some mishap cause the brain to interpret the image differently, THAT will be what they will think they see, but the tree will remain exactly what it really is, despite their biological interpretation of it.

A tree is a tree is a tree is a tree! Whether the being looking at it is a man, monkey, mouse or insect. The world is the world with the same determination. We can interact with it by plucking its leaves and fluttering through its atmosphere and sailing across its seas. But what it is, it is!

So the two creatures are biologically observing what is there in front of them. The reality of what is there before them has nothing whatsoever to do with consciousness. The fact that their brain is able to translate light reflection into an image is not consciousness, it is merely a biological ability/ function. The dynamics within that biological process and the details of how it takes place is not consciousness.

Consciousness reveals itself in the fact that, over and above the picture being devised by the brain on the little viewing screen, a being is able to FURTHER interpret that image, and calculate what it might be, and intelligently speculate and theorize about its environment and possible interaction with them and their shared surrounding. It is in that FURTHER ability that consciousness is revealed. So in that definition we see that there is therefore a propensity for varying degrees of consciousness from creature to creature.

Even though the biological brain functions between the man and the chimp are pretty much exactly the same, we cannot say that the consciousness is the same. Both are conscious of it, but certainly not to the same degree. Both are using the brain to see an image inside their heads that shows them a constructed build of reflected light. We call the image we see a tree. Who knows what the chimp calls it in his mind, (Pretty brown and green lights that stand up straight?).

If you believe that such a thing is legitimate, then you must also believe in an infinite number of permutations of consciousness. For instance, there is my individual consciousness, there is the individual consciousness of Pee-Wee Herman, and there is the sum of the experience of me and Pee-Wee Herman. Or there is the summed collective experience of Silvio Berlusconi and the fruit fly in my kitchen.

But I personally have to hold to the belief that consciousness requires a single central-processing agent. And without invoking God or some analagous concept, it's hard for me to accept that all individual consciousnesses can be "summed".

I would like to ask if you tend to agree that your quoted section in that above post, taken just, and only, as it is, in the context of languages, is true?

"Equally remarkable is how bacteria band together and behave like sophisticated, multicellular animals. They sometimes organize into deeply structured "slime cities," or biofilms.

"But scientists are learning that microbes interact with humans in complex and often-useful ways. For starters, humans have one trillion cells of their own, but 10 trillion cells of bacteria. "At best," says Dr. Bassler, "you're only 10% human."

The external world is a sort of a chaos, a lack of order entirely, and it becomes ordered, in all sorts of different ways, only when viewed from a perspective. Order is a product of perspective; there is no 'thing' or 'structure' which exists independently of the perspective through which it's seen. This is difficult to imagine, and that's the point.

and the bicameral thing: I remember the book, but I don't remember making heads or tails of it. Could you review it?

In my own thought experiment, using ideas that I collected from many places including my own observations and experiences, I imagined consciousness, which is most ethereal, turning in on itself (as a baby might look in a womb), and slowing spiraling into itself more and more. As it spirals in, it becomes more dense, more compress, more energetic, and ultimately more physical.

You can start with some very long string and start it spiraling into itself. Denser and denser and denser. Soon, you hav something very hard, like a baseball, even though it started off very light and flexible. So, spiraling motion is the key. Very similar to the Taiji symbol which I often use to demonstrate spiraling as the fundamental motion of nature.

Of course, you can go in both directions. Mass == > Energy. Bohm's quantum force field might be very analogous to consciousness, since at this time it is just an idea and cannot be measured.

... but if that's the case, aren't we back to pure solipsism? ... that is, if there is no objective order in the external world, then the product of my perspective is as arbitrary as the product of your perspective, and we should never agree on anything (let alone be able to communicate) ... it's only when there is some objective order in the external world that intersubjectivity can occur ... and so it seems to me that if it is worth assuming that there is an external world, it is also worth assuming that the external world can contain objective order (even if we can never perceive it directly), and that we can impose objective order upon it, if just to communicate (even if we can never perceive that directly, either) ...

"Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus." --Emerson

I imagine that I was once a fetus. I was born. According to my mother I could speak in complete sentences as 12 months of age. Was I conscious through all of that? I don't think so. I don't think there was any 'me' to be conscious. I can't account for when or how it started, though. Apparently I wasn't conscious of becoming conscious.

From the perspective of every entity there is a unique world, because each entity is structurally unique and his world is a reflection of that structure, in relation to its envrionment. So, this does present problems for communication. However, some entities are more similiar in structureto one another than to others: e.g. you and I relative you and a foot-stool. Our worlds are more similiar than is your world and the world of the foot-stool.

In other words, the fact that we can communicate (imperfectly mind you) does not prove that there is an objective reality that we are both talking about, but rather than the individual, phenomenological worlds we each are talking about are similiar enough that we can talk about most parts of our respective worlds and be understood to some extent by each other. While, on the other hand, the foot-stool seems smugly deaf to our comments...:whistling:

In the event that you may feel any value in answering (and I am not putting pressure here, this is an honest question), jeeprs, I would like to ask if you tend to agree that your quoted section in that above post, taken just, and only, as it is, in the context of languages, is true?

Well, of course I think it is true, which is why I made the point.

First, let me address a methodological issue.


Kielicious, and other materialists in the thread:

If you require scientific/empiric evidence of any claim made, it is impossible for anyone who does not share your materialist conception of consicousness to debate with you. To require that sort of evidence assumes already that consciousness is purely a biological problem.

I do not see how any of us can define consciousness without taking into consideration that, even as we perform the act of thinking on the matter, we are increasing our consciousness of the matter. This immediately brings to our awareness that this consciousness of which we are struggling to define is going through a constant changing process with every consideration of it.

How can such a thing be defined that is one thing at one second, and something else in the next second. It is like trying to define the wind as it changes from breeze to gust and back again. Is the wind to be defined as a breeze or as a gust?

My point is that this continuous alteration of our consciousness must not be left aside when trying to define it because it is crucial to the definition. I am not so sure our definitions are not being flawed for that reason.

As Salima has pointed out, there is certainly a 'degree' of consciousness, as an infant, that would not be anywhere near the same definition of what it becomes in a few years. But is that infant not still the same person? The exact same identity? Is the individual self of that person changed as the consciousness increases in awareness and ability? The identity is Salima the infant, Salima the child, the teen, the adult. All are Salima because that is the person born to the parents, continuing in that body and aging day by day. Nothing of the consciousness changes that identity. It is always Salima

This appears to be even greater a methodological error ! If we were discussing religious belief-system (faith based) matters, it would be understood that no one would need to suppport any and all claims whatsoever, made. However, we are not doing so. We have to go firstly and foremost by what we can see in nature as it has presented itself through time, to the degree that we can. It is not at all a matter of anyone having firstly presupposed that consciousness, as defined in the English language naturally, and as defined in this thread in finer nuances (not the broadest sense which you may have wanted to protect . . . because that is nonsensical in nature much more than anything else) was a natural, material circumstance involved with ganglion tissue--and by extension, brain, but rather that the passage of time and natural conditions and circumstances have taught us that that is the kingpin of understanding anything at all.

If consciousness is the sum of all experience (i.e. purely phenomenological), how can it become condensed and thereby more solid? In what sense of the word can non-physical things become condensed? Furthermore, putting aside the specific process you credit with the feat, how can a non-physical thing (certain experiences) become a physical thing? Where, so to speak, is all this happening? In the external world? In that case, from whence comes the consciousness in the first place? Is it an objective, 'real' object? I'm confused.

On the other hand, I would agree with your description, more or less, if you mean that the more primitive sort of consciousness (visceral sensations, basic thoughts) congeals, or condenses, or become arranged, such that it forms complexes (i.e. more complex thoughts, e.g. 'physical thing').