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I've always been more on the materialist side. Reading this, I finally managed to put a finger on something that's been bothering me. Our brain knows it is con

I've always been more on the materialist side. Reading this, I finally managed to put a finger on something that's been bothering me. Our brain knows it is conscious. If consciousness is an immaterial phenomenon, emerging from those processes, how can the brain know it is conscious? What way could a brain possibly have to measure consciousness? When I refer to brain, i mean the physical, scientifically measurable computing system. Several conclusions are possible: 1) The brain is conscious and can accurately measure that it is conscious. -> we should then also be able to measure this consciousness, if we figure out how the brain does. (wouldn't we have found something already?) 2) The brain is conscious and accurately guessed it is conscious. -> problem: why would the brain guess this, especially about something it can not measure? 3) The brain does not produce consciousness but thinks it does. -> Just as the metaphysical zombie, being molecule for molecule identical would assert it is conscious. (but now we're denying consciousness exists, see arguments about eliminativism in the original post) Any thoughts?

kaffeemitsahne 9y ago
> Our brain knows it is conscious. Alas, there's the rub. With sufficiently high-resolution brain scans, it should be possible to backtrace what happens when someone utters, for example, the phrase "I'm conscious", or does some meditative exercise, or something. But I'm really not sure if we could learn anything more from that than we know now. Personally I think the most logical position is panpsychism with respect to information and/or information processing. Disregarding some undiscovered physical phenomenon, this is all that happens in the brain, and I see no fundamental reason why other systems that represent or process information couldn't be conscious, as well. Which leaves us with the problem of how to define "information" in this context, of course.
FeepingCreature 9y ago
Technically there's also "The brain thinks it's conscious, but has no reason to believe that. Separately, it is also conscious." Ie. Epiphenomenalism.
- CuriouslyC 9y ago
  The problem with epiphenomenalism is that we are wired to behave in ways that optimize the pleasure our consciousness experiences. If consciousness was just a byproduct, there wouldn't be such a strong relationship between conscious experience and survival value.
  - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
    We're wired to do a whole lot of things, and hedonic reward-seeking is only one of them. That said, you'd have to do the experiment to see whether a reward can be subconsciously experienced. I'd guess no, but that's just since a few experiments so far have shown that conscious experience seems to accompany the brain's processing of action rather than just passive perception.
newuser3000 9y ago
Without language there is no consciousnesses. That's it. The brain does what it does. We think, occasionally, then imagine that we cause brain to function. All animals are just dandy without complex language, it's not really a miracle that we are conscious, just a different too.
- andrepd 9y ago
  Why do you postulate that? Dogs have no language. Are they conscious? You cannot know, can you?
- CuriouslyC 9y ago
  Language is a learned behavior. Consciousness is a property of the learner. Language may influence conscious experience, but it certainly doesn't create it.
  - 13of40 9y ago
    I think the development of complex language and the internal feedback mechanism it enabled might have led to a higher level of consciousness in humans.
    - CuriouslyC 9y ago
      It is entirely possible that language development created a self-reinforcing feedback loop for the development of intelligence. I don't think intelligence and consciousness are necessarily correlated though.
      - 13of40 9y ago
        Unless you think a shrimp is as conscious as a person, or that a dog is completely lacking in consciousness, you have to accept that consciousness comes in degrees. Unless you believe consciousness is supernatural, you have to accept that it has an organic origin. What that says to me is that humans have evolved brain structures that give us a higher level of consciousness than other animals, and IMO the best candidate for how that happened is we learned how to self-reflect through things like speech and art.
nvch 9y ago
The brain does not know. "Knowing" and "consciousness" are processes in the brain. It's about one process "aware" about another process.
danielbigham 9y ago
In university I wrote an essay arguing that consciousness was something in another dimension of reality and that the brain "projected" it's perceptions into that dimension. I also argued that that other dimension didn't pass any data back to the brain -- it was a one way street. ie. I argued that behavior wasn't influenced by the other dimension. However, like yourself I realized that my theory was false. The very fact that I spent so much time sitting around thinking about consciousness (behaviour) proved my theory false by counterexample. So we know that consciousness, in addition to adding an experiencial aspect to humans also has a computational / behaviour-affecting aspect to it.
- sametmax 9y ago
  The counter exemple assume that the brain produce thoughts but : If everything is perfectly causal there is a possibility that there is no such thing. Another theory is that the brain yo think but is a receiver that gets idea from outside. Also, the brain may be indispensable for thoughts but maybe not the only component.
sametmax 9y ago
You forgot : we are not conscious but our program simulate the believe we are.
- sjeohp 9y ago
  In that case what else is consciousness but the illusion? If the only known example is my subjective experience then what I call conscious experience is identical to the simulation of conscious experience. IE there's no distinction.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    The fact we can't make a distinction doesn't mean there isn't one. Just that we can't know about it.
seanccox 9y ago
You might find Max Tegmark's lecture about 'consciousness as a state of matter' engrossing, given your questions. It's rooted in quantum physics and mathematics, and it's a fairly accessible exploration of hypothesis on the nature of consciousness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjhEtqhUZkY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjhEtqhUZkY

kaffeemitsahne 9y ago

> Our brain knows it is conscious. Alas, there's the rub. With sufficiently high-resolution brain scans, it should be possible to backtrace what happens when someone utters, for example, the phrase "I'm conscious", or does some meditative exercise, or something. But I'm really not sure if we could learn anything more from that than we know now. Personally I think the most logical position is panpsychism with respect to information and/or information processing. Disregarding some undiscovered physical phenomenon, this is all that happens in the brain, and I see no fundamental reason why other systems that represent or process information couldn't be conscious, as well. Which leaves us with the problem of how to define "information" in this context, of course.

FeepingCreature 9y ago

Technically there's also "The brain thinks it's conscious, but has no reason to believe that. Separately, it is also conscious." Ie. Epiphenomenalism.

CuriouslyC 9y ago
The problem with epiphenomenalism is that we are wired to behave in ways that optimize the pleasure our consciousness experiences. If consciousness was just a byproduct, there wouldn't be such a strong relationship between conscious experience and survival value.
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  We're wired to do a whole lot of things, and hedonic reward-seeking is only one of them. That said, you'd have to do the experiment to see whether a reward can be subconsciously experienced. I'd guess no, but that's just since a few experiments so far have shown that conscious experience seems to accompany the brain's processing of action rather than just passive perception.

newuser3000 9y ago

Without language there is no consciousnesses. That's it. The brain does what it does. We think, occasionally, then imagine that we cause brain to function. All animals are just dandy without complex language, it's not really a miracle that we are conscious, just a different too.

andrepd 9y ago
Why do you postulate that? Dogs have no language. Are they conscious? You cannot know, can you?
CuriouslyC 9y ago
Language is a learned behavior. Consciousness is a property of the learner. Language may influence conscious experience, but it certainly doesn't create it.
- 13of40 9y ago
  I think the development of complex language and the internal feedback mechanism it enabled might have led to a higher level of consciousness in humans.
  - CuriouslyC 9y ago
    It is entirely possible that language development created a self-reinforcing feedback loop for the development of intelligence. I don't think intelligence and consciousness are necessarily correlated though.
    - 13of40 9y ago
      Unless you think a shrimp is as conscious as a person, or that a dog is completely lacking in consciousness, you have to accept that consciousness comes in degrees. Unless you believe consciousness is supernatural, you have to accept that it has an organic origin. What that says to me is that humans have evolved brain structures that give us a higher level of consciousness than other animals, and IMO the best candidate for how that happened is we learned how to self-reflect through things like speech and art.

nvch 9y ago

The brain does not know. "Knowing" and "consciousness" are processes in the brain. It's about one process "aware" about another process.

danielbigham 9y ago

In university I wrote an essay arguing that consciousness was something in another dimension of reality and that the brain "projected" it's perceptions into that dimension. I also argued that that other dimension didn't pass any data back to the brain -- it was a one way street. ie. I argued that behavior wasn't influenced by the other dimension. However, like yourself I realized that my theory was false. The very fact that I spent so much time sitting around thinking about consciousness (behaviour) proved my theory false by counterexample. So we know that consciousness, in addition to adding an experiencial aspect to humans also has a computational / behaviour-affecting aspect to it.

sametmax 9y ago
The counter exemple assume that the brain produce thoughts but : If everything is perfectly causal there is a possibility that there is no such thing. Another theory is that the brain yo think but is a receiver that gets idea from outside. Also, the brain may be indispensable for thoughts but maybe not the only component.

sametmax 9y ago

You forgot : we are not conscious but our program simulate the believe we are.

sjeohp 9y ago
In that case what else is consciousness but the illusion? If the only known example is my subjective experience then what I call conscious experience is identical to the simulation of conscious experience. IE there's no distinction.
- sametmax 9y ago
  The fact we can't make a distinction doesn't mean there isn't one. Just that we can't know about it.

seanccox 9y ago

You might find Max Tegmark's lecture about 'consciousness as a state of matter' engrossing, given your questions. It's rooted in quantum physics and mathematics, and it's a fairly accessible exploration of hypothesis on the nature of consciousness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjhEtqhUZkY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjhEtqhUZkY