What is the use of consciousness?

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Nyx said:
I have to ask first what exactly do you mean by experience? If you mean sensory experiences, yes, you need it in order not only be aware of your environment but " respond" to it. In fact, our brain process every moment sensory information even when we aren’t conscious (as in sleeping, your body will react to changes of temperature, a strong external stimulus, internal stimulus, etc usually by waking you up- because you need to be conscious to solve whatever problem there is). If you want to see how important our sensory experience is for our understanding and awareness of our environment, think of how difficult is for people with a sensory loss to orientate and respond to the environment. And there can be significant difficulties even if only one of our sensory systems is affected.
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By experience I mean both internal and external observation.
 
Vico said:
Yes, you made it part of the question by saying: “our action just depend on external stimulus and how we are programmed to act”
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Yes. But what this has to do with free will?
 
You can’t love without being conscious. Only love that is freely chosen is love. Unconscious Machines can be programmed to perform certain functions but they can not choose to do anything, least of all to love. In order to have personal relationships we need to be conscious persons. In order to love God we have to be aware of both Him and ourselves.

You would rather be unconscious? Is it not better to be conscious? What would the difference between being unconscious and being dead be? It would only be some outside conscious being that could know anything. Without consciousness we could not know anything.

Similarly a computer doesn’t know anything. It may store information, but it doesn’t know that information any more than a rock that has words chiseled on to it. It is just a physical medium that is holding information, and a human conscious mind is still needed to recognize any of it or make any meaning of it.

If all of nature was unconscious then nature could never recognize or even admire itself. Ultimately, God gave us an intellect so we could know and love him. As well as our neighbour.
 
Bahman said:
This question annoyed me for a while.

Consciousness can minimally be defined as ability to experience. It seems to me that we don’t need the experience if we want to be functional because our action just depend on external stimulus and how we are programed to act. So what is the use of consciousness?

Your thought?
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Do we want to just be functional machines simply responding to stimuli with no actual minds? The intentionality of the human mind seems to belie that argument as being true.
 
Bahman said:
By experience I mean both internal and external observation.
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How are you going to respond to a stimuli if you can’t first perceive it (by observation)? From a very simple one- you need to be aware of your surroundings to see the car coming in your direction to more complex ones (most complex automatic skills require first that we learn them consciously. That we are conscious while doing them- you must still be aware of your environment while driving. Also, you do a certain action- like driving- for a certain purpose, that you’ve decided).
Put it this way- you can master driving to the point it becomes an automatic skill (still you need to be aware during driving). But this works as long as the situation is to a certain degree predictable (you do become very conscious of driving if the situation on the road becomes unpredictable). This doesn’t work with learning how to live in a group (and humans didn’t evolve to live alone), or how to plan for the future, or how to take decisions, or in learning (with a purpose, implicit learning being another subject)
 
Science can only give us quantitative descriptions of things. However, our real world experience is mostly qualitative. Would an airplane engineer who is designing a plane capture all that it is to be human simply by knowing the average weight of humans on a plane? Of course not. Yet, science only tells us a small portion of reality. Physics for instance can only give us quantitative values like the constants of nature. But, it can’t tell us things like what are the laws of nature (ie. What is gravity or elementary particles) or where do they come from. We have to turn to philosophy or Revelation to get some of those answers. So science reduces things to numbers. And then we have to use reason colored by our philosophy to make sense of them.

Here, you are also being too reductionist. You are reducing the human person to merely physical processes. You are missing the whole human person.
 
We are and it is good to be conscious that we are…and to live and know and experience living…

above all to be able to come to God - the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit…

…to know* true life *Jesus Christ the Lord here already and then the glory of heaven…and the resurrection! Joy unending. Real life.
 
Bahman said:
This question annoyed me for a while.

Consciousness can minimally be defined as ability to experience. It seems to me that we don’t need the experience if we want to be functional because our action just depend on external stimulus and how we are programed to act. So what is the use of consciousness?

Your thought?
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One use of consciousness is to feed the subconscious with experiences that activate one’s imaginative and intuitive capabilities.
 
When was the last time you were outside? Smelt the fresh air and flowers, saw a sunset, etc? You want to trade all that in for just being functional? You need to get out more.🙂
 
fisherman_carl said:
You can’t love without being conscious. Only love that is freely chosen is love. Unconscious Machines can be programmed to perform certain functions but they can not choose to do anything, least of all to love. In order to have personal relationships we need to be conscious persons. In order to love God we have to be aware of both Him and ourselves.

You would rather be unconscious? Is it not better to be conscious? What would the difference between being unconscious and being dead be? It would only be some outside conscious being that could know anything. Without consciousness we could not know anything.

Similarly a computer doesn’t know anything. It may store information, but it doesn’t know that information any more than a rock that has words chiseled on to it. It is just a physical medium that is holding information, and a human conscious mind is still needed to recognize any of it or make any meaning of it.

If all of nature was unconscious then nature could never recognize or even admire itself. Ultimately, God gave us an intellect so we could know and love him. As well as our neighbour.
Click to expand...
All our emotions are the result of releasing some hormones inside our blood stream. This leads to a specific functioning plus experiencing a specific emotion which there is no use for emotion if we accept the fact that each hormone has its own functioning.
 
Wesrock said:
Do we want to just be functional machines simply responding to stimuli with no actual minds? The intentionality of the human mind seems to belie that argument as being true.
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You need to explain that how intentionality can manifest itself into an action.
 
Nyx said:
How are you going to respond to a stimuli if you can’t first perceive it (by observation)? From a very simple one- you need to be aware of your surroundings to see the car coming in your direction to more complex ones (most complex automatic skills require first that we learn them consciously. That we are conscious while doing them- you must still be aware of your environment while driving. Also, you do a certain action- like driving- for a certain purpose, that you’ve decided).
Put it this way- you can master driving to the point it becomes an automatic skill (still you need to be aware during driving). But this works as long as the situation is to a certain degree predictable (you do become very conscious of driving if the situation on the road becomes unpredictable). This doesn’t work with learning how to live in a group (and humans didn’t evolve to live alone), or how to plan for the future, or how to take decisions, or in learning (with a purpose, implicit learning being another subject)
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How learning is tight to consciousness?
 
fisherman_carl said:
Science can only give us quantitative descriptions of things. However, our real world experience is mostly qualitative. Would an airplane engineer who is designing a plane capture all that it is to be human simply by knowing the average weight of humans on a plane? Of course not. Yet, science only tells us a small portion of reality. Physics for instance can only give us quantitative values like the constants of nature. But, it can’t tell us things like what are the laws of nature (ie. What is gravity or elementary particles) or where do they come from. We have to turn to philosophy or Revelation to get some of those answers. So science reduces things to numbers. And then we have to use reason colored by our philosophy to make sense of them.

Here, you are also being too reductionist. You are reducing the human person to merely physical processes. You are missing the whole human person.
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I don’t see how your argument can explain any use for consciousness. We learn things and act based on what we have learned.
 
Bookcat said:
We are and it is good to be conscious that we are…and to live and know and experience living…

above all to be able to come to God - the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit…

…to know* true life *Jesus Christ the Lord here already and then the glory of heaven…and the resurrection! Joy unending. Real life.
Click to expand...
This doesn’t explain why we are conscious.
 
Bahman said:
This question annoyed me for a while.

Consciousness can minimally be defined as ability to experience. It seems to me that we don’t need the experience if we want to be functional because our action just depend on external stimulus and how we are programed to act. So what is the use of consciousness?

Your thought?
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Bahman:
Yes. But what this has to do with free will?
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vico:
Free will is contrary to being programmed.
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Humans make free will decisions using intuition and sensory experiences. The use of free will allows the human to choose between good and evil. God provides knowledge of what is morally good through the conscience. Also we pray this prayer:
Father, you sent your Word to bring us truth and your Spirit to make us holy. Through them we come to know the mystery of your life. Help us to worship you, one God in three Persons, by proclaiming and living our faith in you.
 
o_mlly said:
One use of consciousness is to feed the subconscious with experiences that activate one’s imaginative and intuitive capabilities.
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All the contents of subconsciousness are unconscious. How experience which is conscious act can manifest itself into something which is unconscious but useful?
 
fisherman_carl said:
When was the last time you were outside? Smelt the fresh air and flowers, saw a sunset, etc? You want to trade all that in for just being functional? You need to get out more.🙂
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All things you mentioned (bold part) have specific function. On top of that we experience but what is the use of experience when any certain stimulus has a separate specific function.
 
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