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You're trying to make "consciousness" mean far more than many of the rest of us in this discussion, and then arguing against the definition you're the only one

• saltcured 8y ago
  From what I understand of anesthesia, you can be in a state where you are experiencing (and can even have slow conversation with the doctor) but you don't remember it. If asked, you would say you were unconscious through the procedure, but a video of the interaction would show that you were there with some access to both your memories and the present moment. When dosed properly, the anesthetic blocks the formation of new memories. Somebody very much like you and inhabiting your body was there and experiencing enough to respond verbally. If you interact closely with people having psychotic breaks and other mental disorders, you can witness someone mistaken about the boundary between themselves and the environment. If you can wrap your mind around that level of malfunction, I think you will begin to appreciate that the very statement "the fact that I am experiencing" is begging the question. The abstract concepts of identity, self, perception, and memory are all intertwined and more nebulous than is comfortable to think about.
  • incadenza 8y ago
    My impression here is that intelligent people tend to over complicate this distinction. Consciousness is what separates you from a rock. It’s the fact that you have an inner life at all. That the world shows up for you. The points you make are interesting, but orthogonal to core distinction of what consciousness is. EDIT: as you point out, your examples raise interesting points about personal identity over time, throughout space, etc. These, I argue, are just additional and separate distinctions.
  • rosser 8y ago
    You're still talking about the content of the experience. Remembering it is immaterial. The content is immaterial. That you had an experience of any kind — real, false, remembered, not — is what matters, not what it's an experience of.
    • saltcured 8y ago
      I still claim you are begging the question by assuming there is a clear, binary distinction. If you assume dualism and demand an explanation for duality, I cannot satisfy you when my perspective is that dualism is an illusory concept. It is a bit like asking a biologist to explain postmodernism. Let me borrow a helpful phrase from another reply above: inner life. I recommend some meditation on the possible inner lives of a whole spectrum of creatures. I take the liberty of assuming you would grant humans the richest inner life. What inner life exists in a great ape, dolphin, octopus, monkey, dog, cow, bat, field mouse, tarantula, lobster, honey bee, earthworm, clam, coral, or amoeba? Within any one of those species, how does an inner life vary between a zygote and a fully developed and experienced adult? What about members of those species who have a sensory disability and go their whole lives with a reduced complement of sensory organs or sensory nerves? Consciousness may be merely an abstraction we place on a typical complex of sensory processing and introspective abilities in our minds. People may have more or less experience with alteration of this complex and form other abstractions such as unconsciousness, trance, daydream, hallucination, blackout, or catatonia. Outside weird scenarios I mentioned in my previous post, we can only discuss the subset of these experiences which we remember. We don't even know what other qualitative experiences we may be having throughout our lives which are not normally encoded to memory. At risk of returning to my previous topic which you discard as mere "content" of awareness: I would argue that our introspection is just as vulnerable to mistake, confabulation, and delusion as our awareness of the external world. It may be a convenient fiction, much like our visual system papers over the blind spot in our retinas and the motion blur of rapid eye movements.
      • rosser 8y ago
        Apologies for the delay in responding. This week was my hack week, and I had Life stuff happening, too. > If you assume dualism... Which I don't. My position on this stuff is in the neighborhood of panpsychism or Objective Idealism, but not quite either, and both of which are very much monist notions. If you weren't accusing me of holding a dualist position, could you please clarify what you're saying here? > I recommend some meditation on the possible inner lives of a whole spectrum of creatures. I've actually spent a fair amount of time contemplating the question of the nature of the inner lives of things not-me, thanks. I can't speak to what that experience might be like. Epistemic asymmetry is a thing. What I don't spend much time contemplating is that they have one. It's interesting, though, that you bring that up — bats, specifically. Please read Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?" if you haven't already. It's one of the first papers I'm aware of to meaningfully articulate this question. Dennett, himself — the thinker whose oeuvre, and particularly "Consciousness Explained", frames this discussion — called it "the most widely cited and influential thought experiment about consciousness." So, for clarity, my position goes like this: I have an experience of the thing I mean when I say "consciousness" — this "inner life", which, until I'm convinced is somehow a delusion, I will continue to regard as the only direct experience I have. On the principle that solipsism is bullshit, I assume that the other beings like me with whom I share the world also have this 'inner life' thing going on. Additionally, I see in the world other things which are clearly "beings", but which are, to varying degrees, not like me and the other beings I assume have inner lives. What about them is different, such that they wouldn't have this experience? Is it language? Many have that. Tool use? More than a few. Warm blood? (See: "Do Fish Feel Pain?") It is, I submit, most parsimonious to assume consciousness of some form on their part, as well. When someone suggests otherwise, they're making a positive assertion, not merely that this imaginary line between "conscious" and "not conscious" goes in that specific place, but that there is a line in the first place, and must justify both. > I would argue that our introspection is just as vulnerable to mistake, confabulation, and delusion as our awareness of the external world. Of course it is. I don't think that's even in question. But that's actually my point: when you're introspecting, that's "you", there, in that moment, on that ride. Whether the things you're introspecting about are materially reflective of their antecedents, whether you're thinking clearly or biasedly, whether even your entire narrative in that moment, if not always, is just so much self-serving bullshit, does not matter. You're still introspecting. That's what I mean when I say the content doesn't matter. Whatever I'm experiencing, true or false, I'm still experiencing. The question no-one can answer to my satisfaction — all this hand-wringing about its being irrelevant, or illusory, or even incorrect notwithstanding — is how, if the only "things" that matter are reducible to observable, measurable, falsifiable phenomena, it should feel at all. Because the thing I most want those tools to explain is how I can be here, in existence, having the experience of being here questioning my existence at all. There is precisely nothing in this kind of reductive ontology that can account for the fact that there is a qualitative nature to my being at all. And yet it is the most direct experience I have. Not what I see, that I see. And, yes, the emotional associations I have with what I see, upon seeing it. Of course that comes from a different part of the brain. Yet I feel that too. That's the question I want answered — the very thing being hand-waved away.