Theories on Consciousness

I guess this is directed at me Kielicious? :bigsmile: If you'd like to get my theory, give me a bit to gather it all together in a somewhat coherent form so we don't get bogged down in ten pages of confusion. I'll be back..

Note: For anyone else in here, K. and I had bit of a tussle a while back. The quote he has posted is indeed mine, but in it I'm commenting on something he said. That is not a proposition of mine. No need to go into the details of it, if you like check out the original context. K. where did you find that, I don't remember the thread's name?

You might be interested in reading Daniel Dennett's book "Consciousness Explained."

So Im just wondering what you all think are some of the best theories out there right now for understanding the phenomenon of consciousness and why. Some say it may be impossible for us to fully understand the mind/body problem in an ontological sense. However true that may be Im still optimistic about the situation. So shoot...

Both function and representation can be accounted for with models of self-maintenant and recursively self-maintenant systems - of autonomous systems. Crucial to this account are the internally related functional presuppositions of functional dynamics in a system, especially those of interaction indication and anticipation and their presuppositions about the environment.

The interactive model of representation is just the beginning of the need to re-address all phenomena of the mind free of substance metaphysical blinders and of corresponding encodingist assumptions about representation. That is, to re-address mental phenomena in genuinely dynamic, process terms. Adopting a process perspective does not automatically provide correct models of mental phenomena; it 'simply' clears multiple barriers and aporiae out of the way for the attempted construction of such models.

... if we had a decent theory for cognition, then perhaps we would be able to start making some headway with respect to understanding consciousness ... the initial successes of behavioral robotics have a lot of people talking about the "embodied mind" ... but the fact that the behavioral robotics mantra is "the world is its own best model" leaves a lot of people scratching their heads - if the world is its own best model, where then is the "representation" in the mind that allows us to reason about the world?

Mark Bickhard's approach to this conundrum is to say the question "where is the representation" is a result of a flawed metaphysics ... that is, to ask "where is the representation" is to presume that "representation" is some kind of substance ... Bickhard thinks that a switch over from the entrenched doctrine of "substance metaphysics" to an alternative "process metaphysics" may be productive here - that is, thinking of representation-as-process dissolves many of the problems associated with representation-as-substance and allows us to move forward:

(Process and Emergence: Normative Function and Representation. http://www.lehigh.edu/~mhb0/ProcessEmergence.pdf Bickhard - CiteSeerX)

I'd appreciate it though if you didn't use that quote of mine, as it does not express any of my views.

With this subject, it might be best to agree on a foundation of some kind before we go into details, yeah? I'd like to ask what the basis of the processing model is; the physical brain + behavior, individual experience, etc?

Alright, Kielicious, my mistake. I'd appreciate it though if you didn't use that quote of mine, as it does not express any of my views.

Kielicious wrote:

Say pleeeeeeeeease

I understand it's probably meant tongue-in-cheek, but I think you really need to remove that now. It's unfair badgering of a single user here on the forum.

Thanks