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Have you heard it said that you can never know if another being is really conscious, and yet you can know that you are? Presumably you disagree? This is what, i

Have you heard it said that you can never know if another being is really conscious, and yet you can know that you are? Presumably you disagree? This is what, in essence, it means to be a subjective fact rather than an objective one, and why it's hard to pin it down as a "thing."

xelxebar 9y ago
I don't so much disagree as am confused by what people (including myself) mean with the word "consciousness". It also doen't seem like this is a discussion of pure qualia on the level of "Is the red you see the same as the one I see?" For one, I certainly judge you, Mr. Internet Person Monktastic1, as being conscious. And I can somewhat unpack that judgement into relatively empirical observations that can be cross-compared with someone else. This feels really similar to my judgement of you as possesing the trait "human". On a meta-discussion level, the rhetoric I usually encounter reminds me a lot of the Plato-Diogenes debate on the essence of "human". Can we really reduce the intuitive notion of consciousness to "featherless biped thougts" or some such? For those reasons, I suspect that the intuitive notion of "consciousness" is more a (fuzzy) collection expectations we have on lower level traits. Like, since you are able to engage in this conversation, I judge you as human and therefore this leads me to expect that you also have a functioning pancreas. On the surface though, language ability and pancreas possession don't have any obvious reason to be linked. Taking a bird's-eye view, I do hope that this discussion continues until the questions become sharp and precise enough to be called science instead of philosophy.
- monktastic1 9y ago
  > I don't so much disagree as am confused by what people (including myself) mean with the word "consciousness". If I close my eyes and ask myself "doesn't something seem to be happening?" (setting aside, for a moment, whether anything is actually happening -- since that requires a whole slew of interpretations), the answer is an unequivocal "yes." That (to me) is consciousness. There is a particular certainty (whether right or wrong) that applies only to that question. Whether you have a functioning pancreas is something that, in principle, we each have access to. Whether or not "something seems to be happening" for you is inaccessible to me, even in principle. At least, as far as I can see.
red75prime 9y ago
While it is a curious question about why my consciousness exists instead of not existing (maybe not in the same way as my brain exists), I find it is worth pursuing as much as a question "Why anything exists at all?" Other questions about human consciousness can be formulated in terms of observables.
jonathanstrange 9y ago
But that's the problem with the philosophy of mind. They have all these subjective notions like consciousness, self-consciousness, analytic and synthetic I, the accompanying such-and-such feeling (e.g. I-feeling), self-awareness, awareness, attention, qualia, qualitative experience vs. content of qualitative experience vs. phenomenal experience vs. sense data vs. innr experience, cognition, embodied cognition, stream of consciousness, and so forth. Each of them comes with many fine-grained additional distinctions, but they are all subjective and cannot be measured easily and every author promotes his own vocabulary. Then they wonder why they can't agree on a common theory, quibble endlessly about the adequacy of their various subjective definitions, and most if not all of their arguments are based on 'intuition-pumping'.
- mannykannot 9y ago
  The topics you mention are mostly arguments against physicalism, rather than being for something. There seems to be a lot more effort expended (on both sides of the physicalism-dualism divide) in trying to disprove the other side, rather than on explaining consciousness, though perhaps that's just what the general-interest coverage focuses on.
  - monktastic1 9y ago
    If "consciousness" is taken to refer to this "thing" I can be certain I have but cannot be certain you do, then it doesn't refer to any objective property that can be proven or explained, right?
    - mannykannot 9y ago
      Looking for proof in these matters is probably a fool's errand (though many seem to undertake it...) As for explanations, that doesn't seem to be out of the question up to some assumptions, as is usually the case with explanations. Anyone choosing to go down the rabbit-hole of solipsism is literally alone with his thoughts.
      - 9y ago

xelxebar 9y ago

I don't so much disagree as am confused by what people (including myself) mean with the word "consciousness". It also doen't seem like this is a discussion of pure qualia on the level of "Is the red you see the same as the one I see?" For one, I certainly judge you, Mr. Internet Person Monktastic1, as being conscious. And I can somewhat unpack that judgement into relatively empirical observations that can be cross-compared with someone else. This feels really similar to my judgement of you as possesing the trait "human". On a meta-discussion level, the rhetoric I usually encounter reminds me a lot of the Plato-Diogenes debate on the essence of "human". Can we really reduce the intuitive notion of consciousness to "featherless biped thougts" or some such? For those reasons, I suspect that the intuitive notion of "consciousness" is more a (fuzzy) collection expectations we have on lower level traits. Like, since you are able to engage in this conversation, I judge you as human and therefore this leads me to expect that you also have a functioning pancreas. On the surface though, language ability and pancreas possession don't have any obvious reason to be linked. Taking a bird's-eye view, I do hope that this discussion continues until the questions become sharp and precise enough to be called science instead of philosophy.

monktastic1 9y ago
> I don't so much disagree as am confused by what people (including myself) mean with the word "consciousness". If I close my eyes and ask myself "doesn't something seem to be happening?" (setting aside, for a moment, whether anything is actually happening -- since that requires a whole slew of interpretations), the answer is an unequivocal "yes." That (to me) is consciousness. There is a particular certainty (whether right or wrong) that applies only to that question. Whether you have a functioning pancreas is something that, in principle, we each have access to. Whether or not "something seems to be happening" for you is inaccessible to me, even in principle. At least, as far as I can see.

red75prime 9y ago

While it is a curious question about why my consciousness exists instead of not existing (maybe not in the same way as my brain exists), I find it is worth pursuing as much as a question "Why anything exists at all?" Other questions about human consciousness can be formulated in terms of observables.

jonathanstrange 9y ago

But that's the problem with the philosophy of mind. They have all these subjective notions like consciousness, self-consciousness, analytic and synthetic I, the accompanying such-and-such feeling (e.g. I-feeling), self-awareness, awareness, attention, qualia, qualitative experience vs. content of qualitative experience vs. phenomenal experience vs. sense data vs. innr experience, cognition, embodied cognition, stream of consciousness, and so forth. Each of them comes with many fine-grained additional distinctions, but they are all subjective and cannot be measured easily and every author promotes his own vocabulary. Then they wonder why they can't agree on a common theory, quibble endlessly about the adequacy of their various subjective definitions, and most if not all of their arguments are based on 'intuition-pumping'.

mannykannot 9y ago
The topics you mention are mostly arguments against physicalism, rather than being for something. There seems to be a lot more effort expended (on both sides of the physicalism-dualism divide) in trying to disprove the other side, rather than on explaining consciousness, though perhaps that's just what the general-interest coverage focuses on.
- monktastic1 9y ago
  If "consciousness" is taken to refer to this "thing" I can be certain I have but cannot be certain you do, then it doesn't refer to any objective property that can be proven or explained, right?
  - mannykannot 9y ago
    Looking for proof in these matters is probably a fool's errand (though many seem to undertake it...) As for explanations, that doesn't seem to be out of the question up to some assumptions, as is usually the case with explanations. Anyone choosing to go down the rabbit-hole of solipsism is literally alone with his thoughts.
    - 9y ago