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This equivocation between consciousness and meta-consciousness is so widespread that a plethora of books, which are seemingly dedicated to the project of "expla

This equivocation between consciousness and meta-consciousness is so widespread that a plethora of books, which are seemingly dedicated to the project of "explaining consciousness", instead spend their entire contents explaining some hypothesis involving meta-consciousness and then proceed to declare victory without ever touching consciousness itself. Jaynes' "The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" is perhaps the most egregious offender. This is especially troubling when you consider that meta-consciousness sells easily to the general public as "the hard problem" (our thorough use of it seemingly being a large part of what makes humans different, after all), while it's likely that it's more of an engineering problem after you've figured out base consciousness. If there's anything it is like to be a worm, THAT'S the hard problem. Implementing recursive phenomenal access seems like an undergraduate research project after that. Yet it's most often the very thing we spend all our time focusing on. Frustrating. We need new words - or wider usage of existing ones.

tpeo 9y ago
No new words are needed. What you need is that people stop conjuring new words to explain the same things over and over again, using and re-using words under different meanings without ever bothering to either listen or read their predecessors properly, which only leads to feelings of ineffectualness and a strange sensation of déjà vu. When authors in the philosophy of mind stops rehashing ideas that could and most likely have occurred to 17th century philosophers for the sake of attaching their names to a publication, then it will see some progress.
- nlknz88 9y ago
  > What you need is that people stop conjuring new words to explain the same things over and over again For a forum of smart people, dumb things get posted a lot. Making up new words is an organic feature of an individuals development. No one is under an obligation to do as you wish. Go work on it if it means that much to you. Stop expecting everyone else to get it done for you. > When authors in the philosophy of mind stops rehashing ideas that could and most likely have occurred to 17th century philosophers You don't even know? Pretty bold assertion then. One would think the genius that is so willing to explain how everyone else is screwing it up would be better acquainted with the situation than "could" and "most likely"
- tr1ck5t3r 9y ago
  >No new words are needed. Probably true. In fact watching the film Avatar where the Na'vi can connect with their environment is perhaps the best example of consciousness in action switching its focus from one part of the body to another, where their environment is their body, and the Na'vi is consciousness itself. Our bodies are largely autonomous with cells communicating via a variety of methods either pumping in/out chemicals to the cell itself or the immune system placing protein markers for other parts of the body (immune cells) to deal with bearing in mind that every cell in the body has a complete copy of the DNA. One thing I have learnt about the body, is there is alot of redundancy built in for it's survival, every cell has a complete copy of the DNA which can be altered leading to cells not functioning properly, and there are a variety of means in which the consciousness can be alerted to problems which need addressing like hormone's or nerve messages. Simply dropping 500Mg of niacin (the non flush variety) on an empty stomach demonstrates how quickly the prostaglandlins can be stimulated into action in many different parts of the body, not just the skin but internal organs like the lungs & liver. How aware you your consciousness is about these changes and effects is perhaps also an indicator of your consciousness, just like some people are more aware of their food cravings. When considering food craving's & how pregnant women can suddenly start craving things like coal when they perhaps have never eaten it before also indicates some sort of memory that may have been passed on by their parents, or maybe there is some other subconscious mechanism which perhaps through the nose enables the body to identify a substance which contains chemicals which the body needs. The fact our taste and enjoyment of food and drink is altered simply by light also indicates our consciousness is easily swayed over the logic or remembered/imagined experience. Ultimately its hard to define what consciousness is exactly because when considering the blood brain barrier and how hard it is for some chemicals to reach the brain but not other's, is our consciousness largely just a collection of learned experiences where nature has utilised cholesterol into a storage medium and consciousness itself is just a memory of chemical & electrical responses in a variety of cells which certain feedback mechanisms like nerves, immune system cells and hormones the brain is able to remember and influence its behaviour as a result?
- Chathamization 9y ago
  > When authors in the philosophy of mind stops rehashing ideas that could and most likely have occurred to 17th century philosophers for the sake of attaching their names to a publication, then it will see some progress. I doubt people involved in philosophy of the mind will ever be useful here. If one keeps up to date on neuroscience, they'll see a lot of progress being made, but none of it is coming from the "philosophy of the mind" people. Not only that, but the "philosophy of the mind" people don't even seem to be aware of much of what's happening in neuroscience. There seems to be a certain "God of the gaps" aspect to how philosophy approaches science, where people pretend that philosophy is fundamental approach to a field which is working on a particularly large and difficult problem. So you see that philosophers often approach things like the human mind and quantum theory quite different from how they approach chemistry or non-mind physiology.
  - freeflight 9y ago
    In that regard I always find it odd how much philosophy and religion seem to have in common. Large parts of most religions basically boil down to convincing people of something for which there's no actual evidence solely by the use of philosophical and rhetorical devices, it's de-facto large scale social engineering. Which basically makes religion something like the original "science of philosophy"?
mannykannot 9y ago
> If there's anything it is like to be a worm, THAT'S the hard problem. I am not convinced - I suspect that there isn't anything to the experience of being like a worm; that the very question presupposes self-awareness of some sort. I suspect the hard problem of consciousness might lie in the self-referentiality of self-aware consciousness (though alternatively or in addition, it might be on account of its workings being inaccessible to introspection.) But our consciousness goes beyond simple self-awareness: having a theory of mind is a step beyond (and is realizing that others have a theory of mind a step beyond that?) Our own experience of our own consciousness is several steps removed from what a worm might experience. > We need new words - or wider usage of existing ones. Yes; I think the words we use are definitely an issue, perhaps because we don't remember what it was like to be an aware, but not self-aware, infant. To some people, anything that responds to external stimuli is conscious, while to others on the other extreme, consciousness entails being able to verbalize it. This might be the only case where the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is actually correct - that our ability to think about the issue is constrained by our language. In short, I think the author of the article made heavy weather of the issue by conflating consciousness with simple awareness, and not recognizing that meta-consciousness, and perhaps even an awareness of meta-consciousness, is an essential part of what distinguishes what is commonly meant by consciousness from mere awareness. In case I haven't made myself clear, I don't think the hard problem of consciousness has been solved by invoking meta-consciousness; on the contrary, I think that is where the difficulty is most apparent.
- language 9y ago
  > But our consciousness goes beyond simple self-awareness: having a theory of mind is a step beyond (and is realizing that others have a theory of mind a step beyond that?) That [and this] whole space [of considerations, here] appears to be fraught with circularities like this: Step 1. Draw a distinction between consciousness and meta-consciousness. Step 2. "From what vantage point, and with what 'machinery' do we make a distinction?" Step 3. Go back to Step 1. > .. that our ability to think about the issue is constrained by our language. I think I agree, otherwise I'm tempted to think that we would have already arrived, trivially, at some clearer kind of agreement about it.
sriku 9y ago
> If there's anything it is like to be a worm, THAT'S the hard problem. I don't believe we can get to the root of this "hard problem" by first trying to agree on a definition of the word before we can say anything about it. We will also need to admit the possibility that the question "are we conscious?" may be as vacuous at the end as "is Pluto a planet?".
- andybak 9y ago
  And yet as I awake for yet another day as me, there's something in need of explanation. Unlike Pluto - this isn't just a debate about labels.
- goatlover 9y ago
  Pluto is a taxonomy problem. Consciousness is reconciling how we explain the world (science & objectivity) versus how we experience the world (subjectivity). Consider that the world looks colored, is full of sounds, smells, tastes and feels. But the scientific explanation leaves all that out. The scientific world is the ghostly world of equations, theories and data. It's Plato's cave inverted.
  - speedplane 9y ago
    Consciousness is at it's heart irrational. Using reason or science to explain it won't work.
    - smaddox 9y ago
      Ironically, you are stating a hypothesis which is fully within the purview of reason and science. While it is in principal possible that the answer is undecidable with existing logical systems, there's certainly no existing proof that it is undecidable.
      - speedplane 9y ago
        Proofs are founded on reason and logic, but reason and logic are themselves a product of consciousness. It would be a tautology.
canoebuilder 9y ago
>Yet it's most often the very thing we spend all our time focusing on. We think. We think about thinking. We think about thinking about thinking.
mmjaa 9y ago
>We need new words - or wider usage of existing ones. Agreed - trouble is, though, whenever you start to enforce this particular aspect of the discussion, you end up either being accused of starting a cult, or following one...
jurasource 9y ago
I found this series on the New York Review of Books website gives an understandable, and readable history of the main threads of discussion on this, http://www.nybooks.com/topics/on-consciousness/ http://www.nybooks.com/topics/on-consciousness/
mrow84 9y ago
> Jaynes' "The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" is perhaps the most egregious offender. Can you expand on this? I am reading this book at the moment, but I don't quite follow your criticism. He doesn't seem to me to be talking about phenomena related to "consciousness of consciousness", but rather about how consciousness arises as a functional process, and as a consequence of our linguistic heritage (though I haven't finished the book yet, and I find it all quite confusing, so I'm not really sure). For reference, I found the entry for "Consciousness, defined" in the index, and the paragraph on the referenced page that most closely corresponds to a definition seems to be this: > Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what is called the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogs of behavior in the physical world. Its reality is of the same order as mathematics. It allows us to shortcut behavioral processes and arrive at more adequate decisions. Like mathematics, it is an operator rather than a thing or repository. And it is intimately bound up with volition and decision.
- CuriouslyC 9y ago
  Note the distinction between: 1. consciousness as "awareness" or "experiencing existence" 2. consciousness as "mind" or what we experience that doesn't seem to correspond to the outside world. The former is certainly not a result of language, and that is what is referred to as consciousness in Buddhist/Hindu philosophy. The latter is definitely influenced by language and seems to be what many modern scientists are referring to when they talk about consciousness. The conflation of the two definitions does a great disservice to understanding what consciousness "is".
  - mrow84 9y ago
    > The former is certainly not a result of language, and that is what is referred to as consciousness in Buddhist/Hindu philosophy. I recommend reading Jaynes' book (assuming you haven't already) before you draw any firm conclusions on the role of language. I really don't think I can do him justice, but his thesis seems to be that humans were, until relatively recently (4000 years ago, perhaps?), non-conscious - they would not have "experienced existence". He goes on to discuss consciousness as a product of metaphor, and thus with decidedly linguistic origins. That is terrible summary, though, so I recommend reading the book and forming your own view - I have found it quite enjoyable so far. As an aside, he starts the book with a list of things that consciousness is not, from his perspective: * Consciousness Not a Copy of Experience * Consciousness Not Necessary for Concepts * Consciousness Not Necessary for Learning * Consciousness Not Necessary for Thinking * Consciousness Not Necessary for Reason
otakucode 9y ago
It seems to me that if you extend 'conscious' to cover things outside a persons attention, you've made the word 'conscious' meaningless. If I take away all of the things that you claim to be 'conscious' of but not actively aware of, would you be comfortable with me saying you were no longer conscious? Sure you actively thinking about things, but you don't have that sensation of the bottom of your big toe in your shoe somewhere in the background, therefore you must be less than conscious. The idea of meta-consciousness I think still has plenty of merit, but extending 'conscious' to everything you are unaware of is useless and also can never stop. Why not include the things that are stimulating your nerves as well as the stimulation of the nerves itself? Why not extend it out to blanket the whole of the universe?
- ghgfhgfhn 9y ago
  "Why not extend it out to blanket the whole of the universe?" Why not? I don't see why not at all.
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
>If there's anything it is like to be a worm, THAT'S the hard problem. Well, the problem is to give some definition of "what it is like to be X" we can cleanly separate from the "mere" sensorimotor statistics of X.
ThomPete 9y ago
I actually think Jaynes approach is the right one. Consciousness isn't a thing in itself anymore than love is. It's a concept but it has no destination. I don't think it's presented as the hard problem it's just hard to think about something which isn't as if it is.
dalbasal 9y ago
I agree. Within the "metaconsiousness" definition provided int he article, I think it very likely that the distinction is more of an illusion than anything else. attention is the key to distinguish between unconscious thought and conscious thought Say we're learning to operate a car... You are very "aware" of steering and pedals and gears. After a while, you start just thinking in terms of forward, this way, stop, faster. The mechanics start to be handled "subconsiously"^ as you go along. Awareness/attention then gets drawn back if something goes wrong, say your gear sticks. A lot of learning seems to be like this. Aware & consious actions repeated until it becomes subconsious. I think this process is gradual. More importantly, the observable outputs are very hard to stack neatly into two piles. On top of that we have the problem of fooling ourselves. If I asked you "why did you change lanes?" you will probably give me an answer, but a lot of expirements suggest that answer is made up after the fact. I think it's more likely that metaconsiousness is made of the same stuff as subconsiousness. It's just the type of consiousness that we notice (tautology?) and consider to be us. TLDR, I agree that the more important breakthroughs will probably be at the worm consiousness level, but that is itself a theory of consiousness. ^As mentioned below, it's a problem using, defining and speculating about these terms simultaneously. I'm doing it anyway, but yeah...
stult 9y ago
>This equivocation between consciousness and meta-consciousness is so widespread that a plethora of books, which are seemingly dedicated to the project of "explaining consciousness", instead spend their entire contents explaining some hypothesis involving meta-consciousness and then proceed to declare victory without ever touching consciousness itself I think this trend is bound up inextricably with our efforts to distinguish ourselves from "lesser" animals. A monkey may be able to reason intelligently, but it cannot communicate to us whether it is aware of itself doing so. We therefore lack evidence of meta-consciousness in animals and tend to attach out-sized significance to it as a potential mark of human superiority. Even though absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. From an evolutionary perspective, consciousness seems to derive from the same mental equipment pre-human hominids developed for handling social interactions. The ability to model and predict the mental states of other hominids provided a survival advantage. Once sufficiently developed, this ability can be applied to itself, so that the hominid is modeling its own thought processes and mental states. To me, this doesn't seem like some sort of deeper, insoluble mystery, but rather the symptom of an unsatisfactorily detailed model of that mental equipment. I think the problem loses its peculiar appeal when we can identify with a reasonable degree of certainty that what we experience as consciousness corresponds to specific neural pathways and configurations. Right now, the philosophical arguments are too abstract to be convincing and the science is too immature to discourage all the useless theorizing.
- smaddox 9y ago
  I couldn't agree more! Furthermore, as also pointed out by others above, all discussions about consiousness tend to conflate what appear to me to be distinct phenomenon. The first could be described as a persistence of thought or "low-level" consiousness, which is likely explained by the evolution of a working memory. The second could be described as self awareness, which is likely a small, nearly-inevitable leap from "low-level" consiousness. The third could be described as meta-consiousness, whos origin is likely explained by your social evolution hypotheses.

tpeo 9y ago

No new words are needed. What you need is that people stop conjuring new words to explain the same things over and over again, using and re-using words under different meanings without ever bothering to either listen or read their predecessors properly, which only leads to feelings of ineffectualness and a strange sensation of déjà vu. When authors in the philosophy of mind stops rehashing ideas that could and most likely have occurred to 17th century philosophers for the sake of attaching their names to a publication, then it will see some progress.

nlknz88 9y ago
> What you need is that people stop conjuring new words to explain the same things over and over again For a forum of smart people, dumb things get posted a lot. Making up new words is an organic feature of an individuals development. No one is under an obligation to do as you wish. Go work on it if it means that much to you. Stop expecting everyone else to get it done for you. > When authors in the philosophy of mind stops rehashing ideas that could and most likely have occurred to 17th century philosophers You don't even know? Pretty bold assertion then. One would think the genius that is so willing to explain how everyone else is screwing it up would be better acquainted with the situation than "could" and "most likely"
tr1ck5t3r 9y ago
>No new words are needed. Probably true. In fact watching the film Avatar where the Na'vi can connect with their environment is perhaps the best example of consciousness in action switching its focus from one part of the body to another, where their environment is their body, and the Na'vi is consciousness itself. Our bodies are largely autonomous with cells communicating via a variety of methods either pumping in/out chemicals to the cell itself or the immune system placing protein markers for other parts of the body (immune cells) to deal with bearing in mind that every cell in the body has a complete copy of the DNA. One thing I have learnt about the body, is there is alot of redundancy built in for it's survival, every cell has a complete copy of the DNA which can be altered leading to cells not functioning properly, and there are a variety of means in which the consciousness can be alerted to problems which need addressing like hormone's or nerve messages. Simply dropping 500Mg of niacin (the non flush variety) on an empty stomach demonstrates how quickly the prostaglandlins can be stimulated into action in many different parts of the body, not just the skin but internal organs like the lungs & liver. How aware you your consciousness is about these changes and effects is perhaps also an indicator of your consciousness, just like some people are more aware of their food cravings. When considering food craving's & how pregnant women can suddenly start craving things like coal when they perhaps have never eaten it before also indicates some sort of memory that may have been passed on by their parents, or maybe there is some other subconscious mechanism which perhaps through the nose enables the body to identify a substance which contains chemicals which the body needs. The fact our taste and enjoyment of food and drink is altered simply by light also indicates our consciousness is easily swayed over the logic or remembered/imagined experience. Ultimately its hard to define what consciousness is exactly because when considering the blood brain barrier and how hard it is for some chemicals to reach the brain but not other's, is our consciousness largely just a collection of learned experiences where nature has utilised cholesterol into a storage medium and consciousness itself is just a memory of chemical & electrical responses in a variety of cells which certain feedback mechanisms like nerves, immune system cells and hormones the brain is able to remember and influence its behaviour as a result?
Chathamization 9y ago
> When authors in the philosophy of mind stops rehashing ideas that could and most likely have occurred to 17th century philosophers for the sake of attaching their names to a publication, then it will see some progress. I doubt people involved in philosophy of the mind will ever be useful here. If one keeps up to date on neuroscience, they'll see a lot of progress being made, but none of it is coming from the "philosophy of the mind" people. Not only that, but the "philosophy of the mind" people don't even seem to be aware of much of what's happening in neuroscience. There seems to be a certain "God of the gaps" aspect to how philosophy approaches science, where people pretend that philosophy is fundamental approach to a field which is working on a particularly large and difficult problem. So you see that philosophers often approach things like the human mind and quantum theory quite different from how they approach chemistry or non-mind physiology.
- freeflight 9y ago
  In that regard I always find it odd how much philosophy and religion seem to have in common. Large parts of most religions basically boil down to convincing people of something for which there's no actual evidence solely by the use of philosophical and rhetorical devices, it's de-facto large scale social engineering. Which basically makes religion something like the original "science of philosophy"?

mannykannot 9y ago

> If there's anything it is like to be a worm, THAT'S the hard problem. I am not convinced - I suspect that there isn't anything to the experience of being like a worm; that the very question presupposes self-awareness of some sort. I suspect the hard problem of consciousness might lie in the self-referentiality of self-aware consciousness (though alternatively or in addition, it might be on account of its workings being inaccessible to introspection.) But our consciousness goes beyond simple self-awareness: having a theory of mind is a step beyond (and is realizing that others have a theory of mind a step beyond that?) Our own experience of our own consciousness is several steps removed from what a worm might experience. > We need new words - or wider usage of existing ones. Yes; I think the words we use are definitely an issue, perhaps because we don't remember what it was like to be an aware, but not self-aware, infant. To some people, anything that responds to external stimuli is conscious, while to others on the other extreme, consciousness entails being able to verbalize it. This might be the only case where the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is actually correct - that our ability to think about the issue is constrained by our language. In short, I think the author of the article made heavy weather of the issue by conflating consciousness with simple awareness, and not recognizing that meta-consciousness, and perhaps even an awareness of meta-consciousness, is an essential part of what distinguishes what is commonly meant by consciousness from mere awareness. In case I haven't made myself clear, I don't think the hard problem of consciousness has been solved by invoking meta-consciousness; on the contrary, I think that is where the difficulty is most apparent.

language 9y ago
> But our consciousness goes beyond simple self-awareness: having a theory of mind is a step beyond (and is realizing that others have a theory of mind a step beyond that?) That [and this] whole space [of considerations, here] appears to be fraught with circularities like this: Step 1. Draw a distinction between consciousness and meta-consciousness. Step 2. "From what vantage point, and with what 'machinery' do we make a distinction?" Step 3. Go back to Step 1. > .. that our ability to think about the issue is constrained by our language. I think I agree, otherwise I'm tempted to think that we would have already arrived, trivially, at some clearer kind of agreement about it.

sriku 9y ago

> If there's anything it is like to be a worm, THAT'S the hard problem. I don't believe we can get to the root of this "hard problem" by first trying to agree on a definition of the word before we can say anything about it. We will also need to admit the possibility that the question "are we conscious?" may be as vacuous at the end as "is Pluto a planet?".

andybak 9y ago
And yet as I awake for yet another day as me, there's something in need of explanation. Unlike Pluto - this isn't just a debate about labels.
goatlover 9y ago
Pluto is a taxonomy problem. Consciousness is reconciling how we explain the world (science & objectivity) versus how we experience the world (subjectivity). Consider that the world looks colored, is full of sounds, smells, tastes and feels. But the scientific explanation leaves all that out. The scientific world is the ghostly world of equations, theories and data. It's Plato's cave inverted.
- speedplane 9y ago
  Consciousness is at it's heart irrational. Using reason or science to explain it won't work.
  - smaddox 9y ago
    Ironically, you are stating a hypothesis which is fully within the purview of reason and science. While it is in principal possible that the answer is undecidable with existing logical systems, there's certainly no existing proof that it is undecidable.
    - speedplane 9y ago
      Proofs are founded on reason and logic, but reason and logic are themselves a product of consciousness. It would be a tautology.

canoebuilder 9y ago

>Yet it's most often the very thing we spend all our time focusing on. We think. We think about thinking. We think about thinking about thinking.

mmjaa 9y ago

>We need new words - or wider usage of existing ones. Agreed - trouble is, though, whenever you start to enforce this particular aspect of the discussion, you end up either being accused of starting a cult, or following one...

jurasource 9y ago

I found this series on the New York Review of Books website gives an understandable, and readable history of the main threads of discussion on this, http://www.nybooks.com/topics/on-consciousness/ http://www.nybooks.com/topics/on-consciousness/

mrow84 9y ago

> Jaynes' "The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" is perhaps the most egregious offender. Can you expand on this? I am reading this book at the moment, but I don't quite follow your criticism. He doesn't seem to me to be talking about phenomena related to "consciousness of consciousness", but rather about how consciousness arises as a functional process, and as a consequence of our linguistic heritage (though I haven't finished the book yet, and I find it all quite confusing, so I'm not really sure). For reference, I found the entry for "Consciousness, defined" in the index, and the paragraph on the referenced page that most closely corresponds to a definition seems to be this: > Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what is called the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogs of behavior in the physical world. Its reality is of the same order as mathematics. It allows us to shortcut behavioral processes and arrive at more adequate decisions. Like mathematics, it is an operator rather than a thing or repository. And it is intimately bound up with volition and decision.

CuriouslyC 9y ago
Note the distinction between: 1. consciousness as "awareness" or "experiencing existence" 2. consciousness as "mind" or what we experience that doesn't seem to correspond to the outside world. The former is certainly not a result of language, and that is what is referred to as consciousness in Buddhist/Hindu philosophy. The latter is definitely influenced by language and seems to be what many modern scientists are referring to when they talk about consciousness. The conflation of the two definitions does a great disservice to understanding what consciousness "is".
- mrow84 9y ago
  > The former is certainly not a result of language, and that is what is referred to as consciousness in Buddhist/Hindu philosophy. I recommend reading Jaynes' book (assuming you haven't already) before you draw any firm conclusions on the role of language. I really don't think I can do him justice, but his thesis seems to be that humans were, until relatively recently (4000 years ago, perhaps?), non-conscious - they would not have "experienced existence". He goes on to discuss consciousness as a product of metaphor, and thus with decidedly linguistic origins. That is terrible summary, though, so I recommend reading the book and forming your own view - I have found it quite enjoyable so far. As an aside, he starts the book with a list of things that consciousness is not, from his perspective: * Consciousness Not a Copy of Experience * Consciousness Not Necessary for Concepts * Consciousness Not Necessary for Learning * Consciousness Not Necessary for Thinking * Consciousness Not Necessary for Reason

otakucode 9y ago

It seems to me that if you extend 'conscious' to cover things outside a persons attention, you've made the word 'conscious' meaningless. If I take away all of the things that you claim to be 'conscious' of but not actively aware of, would you be comfortable with me saying you were no longer conscious? Sure you actively thinking about things, but you don't have that sensation of the bottom of your big toe in your shoe somewhere in the background, therefore you must be less than conscious. The idea of meta-consciousness I think still has plenty of merit, but extending 'conscious' to everything you are unaware of is useless and also can never stop. Why not include the things that are stimulating your nerves as well as the stimulation of the nerves itself? Why not extend it out to blanket the whole of the universe?

ghgfhgfhn 9y ago
"Why not extend it out to blanket the whole of the universe?" Why not? I don't see why not at all.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago

>If there's anything it is like to be a worm, THAT'S the hard problem. Well, the problem is to give some definition of "what it is like to be X" we can cleanly separate from the "mere" sensorimotor statistics of X.

ThomPete 9y ago

I actually think Jaynes approach is the right one. Consciousness isn't a thing in itself anymore than love is. It's a concept but it has no destination. I don't think it's presented as the hard problem it's just hard to think about something which isn't as if it is.

dalbasal 9y ago

I agree. Within the "metaconsiousness" definition provided int he article, I think it very likely that the distinction is more of an illusion than anything else. attention is the key to distinguish between unconscious thought and conscious thought Say we're learning to operate a car... You are very "aware" of steering and pedals and gears. After a while, you start just thinking in terms of forward, this way, stop, faster. The mechanics start to be handled "subconsiously"^ as you go along. Awareness/attention then gets drawn back if something goes wrong, say your gear sticks. A lot of learning seems to be like this. Aware & consious actions repeated until it becomes subconsious. I think this process is gradual. More importantly, the observable outputs are very hard to stack neatly into two piles. On top of that we have the problem of fooling ourselves. If I asked you "why did you change lanes?" you will probably give me an answer, but a lot of expirements suggest that answer is made up after the fact. I think it's more likely that metaconsiousness is made of the same stuff as subconsiousness. It's just the type of consiousness that we notice (tautology?) and consider to be us. TLDR, I agree that the more important breakthroughs will probably be at the worm consiousness level, but that is itself a theory of consiousness. ^As mentioned below, it's a problem using, defining and speculating about these terms simultaneously. I'm doing it anyway, but yeah...

stult 9y ago

>This equivocation between consciousness and meta-consciousness is so widespread that a plethora of books, which are seemingly dedicated to the project of "explaining consciousness", instead spend their entire contents explaining some hypothesis involving meta-consciousness and then proceed to declare victory without ever touching consciousness itself I think this trend is bound up inextricably with our efforts to distinguish ourselves from "lesser" animals. A monkey may be able to reason intelligently, but it cannot communicate to us whether it is aware of itself doing so. We therefore lack evidence of meta-consciousness in animals and tend to attach out-sized significance to it as a potential mark of human superiority. Even though absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. From an evolutionary perspective, consciousness seems to derive from the same mental equipment pre-human hominids developed for handling social interactions. The ability to model and predict the mental states of other hominids provided a survival advantage. Once sufficiently developed, this ability can be applied to itself, so that the hominid is modeling its own thought processes and mental states. To me, this doesn't seem like some sort of deeper, insoluble mystery, but rather the symptom of an unsatisfactorily detailed model of that mental equipment. I think the problem loses its peculiar appeal when we can identify with a reasonable degree of certainty that what we experience as consciousness corresponds to specific neural pathways and configurations. Right now, the philosophical arguments are too abstract to be convincing and the science is too immature to discourage all the useless theorizing.

smaddox 9y ago
I couldn't agree more! Furthermore, as also pointed out by others above, all discussions about consiousness tend to conflate what appear to me to be distinct phenomenon. The first could be described as a persistence of thought or "low-level" consiousness, which is likely explained by the evolution of a working memory. The second could be described as self awareness, which is likely a small, nearly-inevitable leap from "low-level" consiousness. The third could be described as meta-consiousness, whos origin is likely explained by your social evolution hypotheses.