My computer can do that.
It is not conscious.
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It is not conscious.
You cannot demonstrate consciousness, yet you believe in that.
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Damian
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You can measure the process of consciousness by measuring how people think. Ask them a math question and then measure how long it takes them to solve it. Ask them a logic question and measure how quickly they were able to work it out. Ask them a debate topic and see where they take it (this is a way to measure their familiarity of the topic and reveal what they believe are reliant points to the topic being debated), etc.
Just like running is a process, so the way you measure “running” is recording how fast someone travels from point a to b. This will vary from person to person, just like thought processes will vary person to person, but you are still observing the process of running just like you are observing the process of consciousness for someone. Their running speed can vary and their thought process will vary.
Just like running is a process, so the way you measure “running” is recording how fast someone travels from point a to b. This will vary from person to person, just like thought processes will vary person to person, but you are still observing the process of running just like you are observing the process of consciousness for someone. Their running speed can vary and their thought process will vary.
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Damian
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Ours is the biological process to us as an organism. My blender can break down food just like my mouth can, but the word to describe that process is a form of digestion. Why does a machine doing the same process that a person does matter?
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Damian
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I can demonstrate that I can take (name removed by moderator)ut from reality, process it, and come up with an action to respond to that (name removed by moderator)ut from reality. Such as observing my spouse working hard all week. I’ll process that in relation to what I understand about identities of love, caring, etc. and see where that (name removed by moderator)ut falls into those ideas. That hard work action I observed, as I understand it, falls under one of the identities of her caring for us. So I conclude she loves me for this action she took.
You seem to have a different understanding of consciousness than what I am talking about because I don’t believe what I’ve communicated about what I understand consciousness to be all that hard to understand. So can you tell me what you think consciousness is so I can see what you are talking about instead of this disagreement you have about my position on it.
You seem to have a different understanding of consciousness than what I am talking about because I don’t believe what I’ve communicated about what I understand consciousness to be all that hard to understand. So can you tell me what you think consciousness is so I can see what you are talking about instead of this disagreement you have about my position on it.
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Damian
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Okay what does it mean to you?
I think what the difference is in the terms of “computation” vs “consciousness”, to me as I understand it, is that Computation is no different than Consciousness, just that computation is in reference to what a machine does and consciousness is what a biological organism does. But they are both doing the same thing in different degrees.
I think what the difference is in the terms of “computation” vs “consciousness”, to me as I understand it, is that Computation is no different than Consciousness, just that computation is in reference to what a machine does and consciousness is what a biological organism does. But they are both doing the same thing in different degrees.
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So you are taking evidence and concluding something that cannot be proven in our reality?
This looks like faith to me.
You cannot know at all what she feels.
There is no test in our reality that would tell us what emotions are at play.
There is only anecdote.
I would caution you here.
You are so critical of those that have faith in God for a lack of testable evidence.
Yet continue to use words and phrases that indicate yourself to have a great deal of belief in things that cannot be tested.
I do not believe you have thought through your position completely.
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HarryStotle
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I think you completely missed my point, but I’ll address yours on two levels.
First, that consciousness just is the ability to detect the environment.
The phenomenon of blind sightedness renders this false. Blind sighted individuals have intact visual systems but have no conscious connection to the information that comes into their brains via visual perception. A blind sighted person can maneuver through a room avoiding objects in their path, but having no conscious awareness of those objects. Their body responds at a subconscious level to their environment. This implies consciousness is not biologically required for a living sentient being to take in and process information. That can be done completely reflexively given a sufficiently complex neurology.
Consciousness is an add-on which needs to be explained, and seems to be related to free will more so than to processing information from the environment.
Another point regarding this first response is that high level athletes work very hard to nullify conscious thought by training their neuro-muscular systems to react automatically to a wide range of possibilities, thus removing from their response times the need for conscious interference.
Why would evolution waste expensive resources on developing something like consciousness or conscious awareness when unconscious reactions are far more resource-efficient and waste less time?
The computational resources required to merely take in information from the environment and respond to it would be far more efficient without the add-on of an inefficient consciousness that continually second-guesses the responses that could have been neurologically hard-wired rather than waylaid to a secondary system where a conscious but seemingly inept subject ponderously and clumsily weighs-in with an awareness and response that is apparently out of touch and highly unreliable.
There has to be something else going on here.
Continued…
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HarryStotle
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Second, you seem to have a penchant for not actually considering points made but, instead, redefine the concept in your own terms to explain it away rather than deal with the point being made.
I wasn’t speaking of consciousness in general terms or consciousness as a third-party phenomenon. I was speaking of my own personal experience as a conscious being, where I, as conscious subject, am the loci of my own consciousness here and now.
To speak of consciousness in general is merely to remove the salient features of my own consciousness and pretend as if these don’t exist, thereby treating consciousness on an abstract level rather than what it is in reality.
The only actual experience of consciousness any one of us has is our own. To explain why my own consciousness just happens to have been realized in my body at this time and place rather than in some other body at a different time and place is what you haven’t done.
That feature of consciousness cannot be merely explained away as you have tried to do because if consciousness is merely the result of biochemical processes, there are the very same biochemical processes occurring in other human bodies at a myriad of other places and times that could account for my consciousness in those bodies, at those times and in those places. Yet, I happen to have been realized in this place at this time rather than somewhere else.
You haven’t explained that, you have merely ignored the problem with your attenuated version of what consciousness is.
The first person perspective I currently experience in my body at this moment could have been actuated in some other body at some other time. I could have been ‘me’ a hundred years ago in Spain, but I wasn’t. I am me here and now. Why?
I wasn’t speaking of consciousness in general terms or consciousness as a third-party phenomenon. I was speaking of my own personal experience as a conscious being, where I, as conscious subject, am the loci of my own consciousness here and now.
To speak of consciousness in general is merely to remove the salient features of my own consciousness and pretend as if these don’t exist, thereby treating consciousness on an abstract level rather than what it is in reality.
The only actual experience of consciousness any one of us has is our own. To explain why my own consciousness just happens to have been realized in my body at this time and place rather than in some other body at a different time and place is what you haven’t done.
That feature of consciousness cannot be merely explained away as you have tried to do because if consciousness is merely the result of biochemical processes, there are the very same biochemical processes occurring in other human bodies at a myriad of other places and times that could account for my consciousness in those bodies, at those times and in those places. Yet, I happen to have been realized in this place at this time rather than somewhere else.
You haven’t explained that, you have merely ignored the problem with your attenuated version of what consciousness is.
The first person perspective I currently experience in my body at this moment could have been actuated in some other body at some other time. I could have been ‘me’ a hundred years ago in Spain, but I wasn’t. I am me here and now. Why?
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RealisticCatholic
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“He who is above all else”: The Strongest Argument for the Existence of God
I think that monotheistic religions, having a common reference to a single God, should and must dialogue. The three religions which Abraham inspired have many more common facets than those which di…
ismailignosis.com
@Damian Do you accept that a cat depends on realities outside of itself for its existence?
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Damian
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Love is a term we use to describe someone’s actions towards us in relation to what puts us in a loving state of mind. Love is a state of mind just like anger, confusion, happy, sad, depressed, etc. I’ve communicated enough to her so that she understands what she needs to do to keep me in a loving state of mind, like hard work at her career, sharing our daily chores and responsibilities towards each other, etc. That is part of reality. What makes you think its not? We can demonstrate that the brain is in different states under different emotions and these states can be chemically induced or chemically changed with drugs or visual and audio and textual feedback.
Yes I can. She tell’s me she’s in a loving state of mind and I accept because her actions reflect that as well. Same way we express every other state of mind, verbal ques and actions.
Okay, sorry but you’re just wrong here. Our labels and corresponding actions of whatever emotional state we are in is what we use to communicate that to each other. We all seem to experience these emotional states, as well as animals too. Then, once we were able to perform brain scans, we were able to map these brain states and verify that these brain states are universal to people regardless of culture and race. Just like how we all experience hunger and we all communicate the idea of “hunger” universally the same way, regardless of culture, race, sex, etc.
Sorry but just a cursory google search will educate you on this topic. Just google, “brain scans that indicate emotional states”. Your inability to google seems to be a problem here.
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HarryStotle
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This brings up another problem with your materialistic view of reality. If the complex biochemical entity you refer to as your ‘spouse’ is nothing more than an agglomeration of molecules in a specific location in space and time then to claim you ‘love’ your spouse and that your spouse loves you reduces to a claim that the biochemical activity that occurs within your skin somehow reacts physiologically to the biochemical activity occurring in your spouse’s skin.
Kind of hollows out the notion of what ‘love’ actually is, no?
WHO do you love is more accurately rendered as WHAT, since WHO is a mere chimera or illusion.
This presents an even greater problem for your morality because treating persons morally merely reduces to figuring out and following a maintenance schedule relative to what keeps them ticking. Assuming you have an answer to why they ought to be kept ticking in the first place.
It isn’t an obvious task since you would need to explain why some complex biochemical processes ought to be valued and sustained while others need not be. I mean absent the existence of persons over and above the merely causal material order.
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Damian
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No, consciousness is our ability to react to (name removed by moderator)ut from the environment, not the ability to detect it. Our sensory functions is our ability to detect the environment, but we still need a way to process this (name removed by moderator)ut and do something with it. That process is what I am calling consciousness.
Yes it’s also the same thing that highly trained musicians to when they become “experts” on their instruments. They play it soo well and often, that the processes for playing the instrument are practiced soo well that the pathways for accessing the information for playing the instrument become unconscious. But at the beginning, those pathways are as weak as anything else we are trying to learn.
That’s the great thing about the brain. It has the ability to rewire itself by increasing the communication pathways of processes that we practice over and over again. There’s a story of a stroke victim that lost his ability to walk. But his daughter worked with him from being able to learn how to feed himself, to crawling, to finally being able to walk with a cane. At his death, they performed an autopsy and the brain area that was in charge of his motor functions was still indicated as damaged. His brain rewired itself around that damaged area.
I’m responding as I see the question being asked and what I believe is being addressed. If you think I went a wrong way with it, then give me more feedback for what you are asking about. That’s called having a conversation. Sorry but don’t care that I missed the point you were asking for the first go around. I answered the questions as I saw they were being asked. If you don’t like the response, then you’ll have to give a follow up for what you think I missed. Don’t care that this bothers you, but it’s conversation 101. I can only respond with what I understand is being asked.
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Damian
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Okay so you are talking about the biological being that is able to not only detect the external environment but detect its own thought process as well. The ability to self review the software for processing (name removed by moderator)ut and coming to conclusions for moving forward then? Just seems like a higher functioning process that I’ve been talking about so far to me. Just like how microorganisms communicates through chemical signals in their environment, their level of consciousness is not advanced enough to self review their biological processing software the way that higher primates can. The ability to be conscious of the unconscious decision process that the brain does, just like how a beginner pianist is conscious of their piano practice and the master pianist is playing at an unconscious level. The level of biochemical pathways for the expert level are soo advanced that the brain functions for performing that skill are subconscious.
I think this is what you are getting at. That’s how I see the difference. We can be conscious of decision processes for problems that we are not used to, but unconscious decision processes are going on all the time for problems that we are experts at or that would be detrimental to our survival if we had the conscious power to mess with them, like regulation of heart rates, regulation of hormones and body temperature, etc.
Ask your parents why. Ask a biologist How.
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Damian
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Does understanding how a car works diminish it’s importance to your life? I don’t see why the two are related. One is about how something works so that you have an understanding of reality, the other is how important something is to the betterment of your life. Completely separate issues.
But knowing how something works, teaches you how to care for that item in reality so that you can maximize your use of that item in your life. Like my car. It allows me to have a better job, wider are of travel for opportunities, faster travel for emergency issues, entertainment of taking the family to the beach, etc. I have a richer fuller life with it. But knowing how it is built, will tell me how to maintain it. I know I need to change the oil, keep the gas filled up, change filters, etc. to maximize its life with me.
Not a problem for me. Knowing how my partner is built and what it takes to maintain their psychological and physical health is important to me because that is also a way you show that you love someone. I can understand what it takes to maintain their fundamental needs because I understand what actions create serotonin levels for her. That’s the How. As to the Who, it’s their own version of that biological creature with its own attributes of software that makes them a Who for me. Everyone has the same basic biological software, but its adaptive to their experiences and environment and genetics.
We are social creatures who have evolved a powerful desire to care for our fellow tribe. We’ve evolved beyond being individual reptiles to a biological hive, like a bee colony. We go insane when we don’t have socialization. We are not biologically adapted to be in isolation. That’s just evolutionary drivers. Knowing that truth of reality does not diminish the idea of loving each other, to me, at all.
Sorry that pulling back the curtain of the magic show ruins the show for you, but it doesn’t for me. That seems to be what you are complaining about it seems.
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Damian
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Our actions is what we demonstrate as what we value. Its not any more complicated than that. We need to eat, so we hunt and gather food. We need to procreate, so we look for partners. We need safety from the environment and are social creatures, so we treat our partners with respect so they can have a safe predictive environment with reduced stress levels, etc. All this has a natural explanation. Even if it doesn’t have an explanation that we have discovered yet, the true response is still, “We don’t know”. You are not allowed to just invent a magical realm with magical beings to solve all your unknown problems in this reality because you can not demonstrate that your imagined idea is actually part of reality at all.
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Damian
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Every biological creature is not a self perpetuating machine. It needs energy from an external source to maintain its existence. Advanced social creatures also need community because the group has become a hive that is interdependent upon the other, much like organs are interdependent upon each other for survival. Without socialization, these creatures will go insane.
Interesting presentation, but again, internally logically consistent, but can not demonstrate to be part of reality at all. Same as comic books.
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HarryStotle
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This demonstrates that you haven’t come close to even grasping the point.HarryStotle:
Ask your parents why. Ask a biologist How.
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HarryStotle
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Here you are jumping beyond what is demonstrable.HarryStotle:
No, consciousness is our ability to react to (name removed by moderator)ut from the environment, not the ability to detect it.
Consciousness implies awareness, it doesn’t necessarily imply response nor the capacity to respond.
Just being aware of or conscious of something does not mean nor imply an ability to do anything about that something or to respond to it.
Your problem is a lack of precision that leads you to assume a great deal regarding what can be concluded by your assumption.
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