If you’ve read any attempts at explaining how consciousness arises, like me you’ll have walked away from them disappointed, because all they did was waffle and grope in the dark. Will it always be like this? I believe it will, because:
Fact 1: My world is a representation, a construction. So’s yours. So’s anyone’s who’s a knowing being. A representation of what? We call it “the thing in itself”.
Fact 2: The thing in itself is 100% unknowable, so much so that even naming it is taking a liberty. Nothing whatsoever can be said about it, other than the indirect statement that it exists.
Fact 3: The materialisation of any consciousness is bound up with the thing in itself. In other words, it “springs” from the thing in itself.
I say that facts 2 + 3 prove that we cannot understand how consciousness arises. We should therefore cease all efforts to do so. Instead, we should try to understand it from a “within-the-representation” point of view, so we can have an idea of whether X is conscious (ignoring how it became conscious).
While we don’t understand everything about consciousness we do know more and more about the components which make it up. Theres nothing unsatisfying about explanations of consciousness that evoke domain specific adapted neuromachinery. The reason people give up on consciousness isn’t because theres no science, its because most people are too dumb/lack the serious dedication to study the dozen of scientific fields for years to highlight the subject. I’d be unsatisfied myself, except I don’t expect the full anwser on the back of a cereal box.
Assuming consciousness ‘emerges’ is dumb as huge aspects of what we call ‘consciousness’ solves complex tasks with specialized neuromachinery. As in aspects of consciousness bear every similarity to the EYE, unless you think the eye ‘emerged’ out of our nervous system or was created by nervous system functioning opposed to adaptation, the idea can be given up.
For example the fusiform gyrus has specialized neuromachinery to detect faces, the neuromachinery is just as complicated as an eye just as specialized. The brain is full f that type of specialization. Like we can explain the eye we can describe massive aspects of consciousness including self awareness / the ability to perceive other minds.
It is knowable. 1. we can study brain damage/disease which highlights normal consciousness/function. Thats been practice since Phineas Gage.
cross sex/species comparitive analysis/testing. Real theroies produce testable predictions. For example take men/women and get them to do a task, watch as sometimes 1 sex’s brain activity is different. Depending on the task you can display neuromachinery that one lacks. (adaptation for detecting children based off facial resembelance in males).
I could tell you that false memories in contrast to true memories inspires brain activation closely mirroring the neural correlates of self deception. Now outside of the SUCCESSFUL study of consciousness we wouldn’t know that.
Everything you (Cyrene) have said refers to the processes associated with consciousness. I’m not talking about how the brain works. I’m talking about the reason consciousness arises out of this complex mesh of processes.
Imagine a simple robotic eye tracking a moving object. Light enters the lense, electrical signals are passed to its CPU, it processes the info, and it sends signals to its motors to track the object. This is a process, which can be understood. Does consciousness occur this simple set-up? I think not.
Imagine a man watching the moving object. Comparable (but more complicated) things go on in his brain, and as you say, we can increasingly understand these processes. Does consciousness occur here? Yes. But why here and not with the robot? Is there a critical level of complexity and/or functionality that must be passed? If so, what’s the magic ingredient that enters the equation at this moment?
Sorry, sir,
You have presented nothing here that stands up against the current literature of neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, epigenetics, etc., etc… So why would anyone who reads in these areas want to offer refutation of ignorance of the fields?
Consciousness may be more esoteric than science can perceive. It probably requires thinking out of the box for researchers to be able to quantify or measure this mystery. No doubt electrical impulses are involved in the brain for this human attribute. The brain is computationally more complex than CPU’s are. With it’s biological processing, storage and motor responses built into a compact package, it’s efficieny has had years through DNA and constant use been able coalesce into an ever improving processing unit.
Sorry, sir,
Like the previous poster, your mind is focussed solely on the processes that accompany consciousness. And you too seem ignorant of the whole thing-in-itself, world-as-representation scenario. I can’t believe people can talk about consciousness from first principles without reference to the idea of the world-as-representation. (Cf. scientists who think the laws of physics are absolute truths, like mathematical facts.)
Let me try from another angle. The mass of literature in “neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, epigenetics, etc., etc…” says nothing against the notion of solipsism. This demonstrates its indifference to actual consciousness.
I’d like to add that I’m a fan of those sciences, but that I know their place.
Cyrene has presented an articulate and concise rendering of the issue.
It’s true that the science is incomplete, which science generally is.
It’s also true that we can always ask another “why”, no matter how much science we have. But that additional “why” doesn’t negate the science we have.
The “thing-in-itself” is a phantom. No one knows what that term actually means. We can ask for a “more essential essence” ad infinitum, just as we can ask another “why”. That we ask a question doesn’t mean that there actually is an answer.
Consciousness doesn’t “work in tandem” with the brain. It’s an activity of the brain.
We can go deeper into phenomena, but the “why” I’m talking about lies beneath the science, and represents one layer only. Cf the question of why matter attracts matter.
Yes, we don’t know what it means, but the inference that “it exists” is legitimate. Schopenhauer explains this well (but he then goes on to say things about it, which I disagree with…)
I meant to say “in parallel”; tamper with the brain, you tamper with the mind.
^Like he said, its something the brain does. You don’t find ‘washing’ among the components of a washing machine.
Anyway you’re whole point rests on faulty grounds. We could say that the molecular/cell mechanisms envolved in human disease isn’t the disease itself but only the process and the disease emerges but isn’t reducable to that machinery. Well… it is, theres no reason to assume otherwise.
You cannot begin to know what I think, sir, simply because you are caught in the trap of trying to apply 18th century philosophy to 21st century science. And where is science’s place? Subservient to philosophy or religion? Things in themselves! Wow! That’s an oldie that has no reference to things being or becoming.
I think cyrene is doing a good job of presenting some of the problems of explaining a functioning nervous system. I think we all agree that consciousness has not yet been fully explained. I think to a certain extent we will not be able to have a complete explaination of the mind, just like the eye cannot look into inself the mind cannot look directly into itself. But the science of the mind has much to discover and contribute to our understanding ,but there will always be something more to explain. No doubt, the structual elements of a functioning nervous system will not be explained by just a mere observation of the parts, but probably through some interconcted, interrelated process. that does what the nervous system dose.
To Cyrene:
I don’t have a problem with a disease being a disease.
And no, by solipsism I don’t mean selfishness, but the notion that all humans apart from me (and hell, maybe even including me!) aren’t actually conscious. They’re just zombies whose brains work as per usual, but who have no conscious awareness of the weird and wonderful things their bodies are doing.
The notion of the thing in itself isn’t some old idea that’s past its sell by date, but a profound and ongoing truth. And I’m not applying it to science, because the two are two different things, a bit like science and religion. Science models, it doesn’t explain in an absolute sense. It’s a powerful and amazing thing, but we shouldn’t stretch it beyond its remit.
How do you know this? When I pick up a book on the table and start reading it, I’m not reading a construction or representation of the book. I’m reading the book itself. What else could a book even BE besides the thing I pick up off the table and start reading? I think trying to explain it as a representation versus a thing in itself is incoherent. I mean, if you showed me a picture of the book, or a book on microfiche, I would understand what you mean by a representation of the book. But when I pick up and read the book, exactly what I am picking up is the book in itself. How could it be otherwise?
When I was young, like ages 6-12, I always thought that ‘thinking’ was more of a passive act. I imagined that consciousness were waves of energy and my brain was working like a radar, picking up these signals and interfering with them.