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Thanks for the clarification. I recognize your point about solipsism. I am not certain (except for practical purposes) about anyone else's consciousness. Perh

Thanks for the clarification. I recognize your point about solipsism. I am not certain (except for practical purposes) about anyone else's consciousness. Perhaps it would help if I describe what seem to be phases of belief about consciousness (or perhaps it will merely sound presumptuous and not help at all...). One way this progression can happen is through meditation, which I see as the process of consciousness becoming increasingly aware of itself. 1. I can doubt my own consciousness. How do I know I'm not an automaton? This seems to be naasking's position. From past experience, I trust that it's not merely rhetorical. There is genuine uncertainty about any consciousness, and proofs of its nonexistence can be satisfying. 2. "Oh, THAT!" It is no longer meaningful to doubt my own consciousness. I may be wrong about its details, but the sheer fact of experience is indeed a fact and not an assumption. Attempting to doubt my own consciousness is nonsensical, because I recognize that (my) doubt occurs in consciousness. 3. Various features of conscious experience are exposed as illusory. I've never actually experienced the passage of time; it is always now, and a present memory and anticipation only suggest something called "time." I've never actually experienced a self; it used to seem that monktastic was recognizing consciousness, but now it's clear that consciousness is recognizing monktastic (monktastic is, after all, a conglomeration of memories, bodily textures and sights, etc.; whereas consciousness is that which experiences those). These are not merely intellectual understandings. 4. ... It's remarkably hard to have conversations across these sorts of boundaries. Perhaps naasking is right, and what I am calling a progression is actually a regression. I'll leave that for each to decide for him/herself. All I mean to say is that in (3), it is not satisfying to objectify consciousness. Yes, we may identify (seemingly) flawless correlations between objective phenomena and consciousness, but they do not constitute any sort of "explanation" for consciousness. Perhaps all I am really saying is this: we both recognize that any objective explanation of consciousness is only true "up to solipsism / simulation," but for me, that asterisk is a showstopper and not just a curiosity that we can punt on. Not that we should stop exploring these things (and taking them seriously for practical purposes) -- any more than we should stop painting or dancing.

naasking 9y ago
> Yes, we may identify (seemingly) flawless correlations between objective phenomena and consciousness, but they do not constitute any sort of "explanation" for consciousness. They may perhaps show that our previous expectations for an "explanation" were nonsensical. Compare this debate over consciousness against the history of vitalism. The same progression of ideas posed to justify some special ontological category for life, but where are all the vitalists now? In retrospect, do their arguments seem at all reasonable? How do they compare to present arguments about consciousness? In retrospect, will future people find these perspectives just as wrong?
- monktastic1 9y ago
  No, I think that's quite backward. The only reason you (not "we" as a species) believe in something called "time" is because you think you've experienced it. You may protest and say "no, here's a picture of yesterday," but that picture does not prove anything [1]. Your belief requires a series of (perfectly reasonable) inferences which could nonetheless be wrong. But most of all, it depends on the compelling feeling you have that time is passing. And that is an illusion. You may have a faint sense of what I mean by those words, but without inspecting your experience very precisely, it will probably remain no more than a curiosity. Time, space, matter, objective reality: these are all inferences that rely on your not paying close enough attention to a remarkable sleight of hand your consciousness is pulling on you. Once you manage to do this, it indeed becomes nonsensical to look for "explanations" of consciousness in terms of the very things it abstracted into seeming existence. [1] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Last_Thursdayism http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Last_Thursdayism
  - naasking 9y ago
    Positions like Last Thursdayism, solipsism, brains in vats and other skeptical arguments were already addressed by Moore over a century ago. A rational belief is only justified by considering the ontological commitments it requires of us. So while I can't refute Last Thursdayism, given it's ontological commitments, it has such a low probability on the scale of possible explanations for reality that I need not concern myself with it (see Solomonoff Induction for justifying this logical ordering of hypotheses). As for the "feeling" of time passing being some kind of ontological test, I honestly don't know what you think this proves. This "feeling" is just the competition between signals from your perceptions and signals from your memory of your perceptions. Such a comparison is trivially present in any feedback circuit, which entails that something time-like does indeed exist.
mannykannot 9y ago
> It is not satisfying to objectify consciousness. Yes, we may identify (seemingly) flawless correlations between objective phenomena and consciousness, but they do not constitute any sort of "explanation" for consciousness. If you are truly seeking enlightenment, rather than satisfaction, you probably should avoid a priori positions that rule out a whole class of possible answers from consideration.
- monktastic1 9y ago
  I am not ruling them out. But it is only possible to prove such answers "up to solipsism" (or simulation, or similar metaphysics). Beyond that is a leap of faith. All I am saying is that my practice has decreased my willingness to make that leap. Perhaps it is not so dissimilar to how your practice (whatever it is) makes you unwilling to doubt your own consciousness -- something that you would be hard-pressed to justify to (the apparently many) consciousness deniers. Taking a few steps back in the conversation, the reason it seems so silly to doubt that there's an objective basis for consciousness is that we've found an objective basis to basically everything else we've bothered to investigate. I claim that this is a false analogy. Though I'm apparently not good at communicating why, it amounts basically to this: you can be certain of your own consciousness, but of nothing else. Your consciousness and everything else are not on equal metaphysical footing.

naasking 9y ago

> Yes, we may identify (seemingly) flawless correlations between objective phenomena and consciousness, but they do not constitute any sort of "explanation" for consciousness. They may perhaps show that our previous expectations for an "explanation" were nonsensical. Compare this debate over consciousness against the history of vitalism. The same progression of ideas posed to justify some special ontological category for life, but where are all the vitalists now? In retrospect, do their arguments seem at all reasonable? How do they compare to present arguments about consciousness? In retrospect, will future people find these perspectives just as wrong?

monktastic1 9y ago
No, I think that's quite backward. The only reason you (not "we" as a species) believe in something called "time" is because you think you've experienced it. You may protest and say "no, here's a picture of yesterday," but that picture does not prove anything [1]. Your belief requires a series of (perfectly reasonable) inferences which could nonetheless be wrong. But most of all, it depends on the compelling feeling you have that time is passing. And that is an illusion. You may have a faint sense of what I mean by those words, but without inspecting your experience very precisely, it will probably remain no more than a curiosity. Time, space, matter, objective reality: these are all inferences that rely on your not paying close enough attention to a remarkable sleight of hand your consciousness is pulling on you. Once you manage to do this, it indeed becomes nonsensical to look for "explanations" of consciousness in terms of the very things it abstracted into seeming existence. [1] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Last_Thursdayism http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Last_Thursdayism
- naasking 9y ago
  Positions like Last Thursdayism, solipsism, brains in vats and other skeptical arguments were already addressed by Moore over a century ago. A rational belief is only justified by considering the ontological commitments it requires of us. So while I can't refute Last Thursdayism, given it's ontological commitments, it has such a low probability on the scale of possible explanations for reality that I need not concern myself with it (see Solomonoff Induction for justifying this logical ordering of hypotheses). As for the "feeling" of time passing being some kind of ontological test, I honestly don't know what you think this proves. This "feeling" is just the competition between signals from your perceptions and signals from your memory of your perceptions. Such a comparison is trivially present in any feedback circuit, which entails that something time-like does indeed exist.

mannykannot 9y ago

> It is not satisfying to objectify consciousness. Yes, we may identify (seemingly) flawless correlations between objective phenomena and consciousness, but they do not constitute any sort of "explanation" for consciousness. If you are truly seeking enlightenment, rather than satisfaction, you probably should avoid a priori positions that rule out a whole class of possible answers from consideration.

monktastic1 9y ago
I am not ruling them out. But it is only possible to prove such answers "up to solipsism" (or simulation, or similar metaphysics). Beyond that is a leap of faith. All I am saying is that my practice has decreased my willingness to make that leap. Perhaps it is not so dissimilar to how your practice (whatever it is) makes you unwilling to doubt your own consciousness -- something that you would be hard-pressed to justify to (the apparently many) consciousness deniers. Taking a few steps back in the conversation, the reason it seems so silly to doubt that there's an objective basis for consciousness is that we've found an objective basis to basically everything else we've bothered to investigate. I claim that this is a false analogy. Though I'm apparently not good at communicating why, it amounts basically to this: you can be certain of your own consciousness, but of nothing else. Your consciousness and everything else are not on equal metaphysical footing.