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I see absolutely no evidence or suggestion that consciousness is anything else other than the summation of changes that happened in our brain in combination wit
by Madmallard 6y ago
I see absolutely no evidence or suggestion that consciousness is anything else other than the summation of changes that happened in our brain in combination with the input devices we naturally have. You have decades worth of changes that occurred to get you to the point now and it's very clear and easy to see how much _less_ conscious you were when you were younger.
- pontus 6y agoI agree that consciousness is correlated with this, but having a lot of experiences over years does not explain to me why I feel things. Similarly I can definitely see how there would be a mechanistic explanation for intelligence (basically just build a machine that acts intelligently, perhaps even claiming that it's conscious), but there's a distinction between appearing conscious and actually feeling something.
- Madmallard 6y agoGood luck getting to the roots of all your feelings when they can be based on any number of inputs and changes over who knows how long of a time.
- mgamache 6y agoThe subjective feeling is just a brain state. The ‘why’ is due to whatever circumstances resulted in that brain state.
- zozbot234 6y agoBut one can definitely ask how something seemingly as complex as a "brain state" can be directly experienced as phenomenology. How is it that we can so easily describe some things about our brain states, that we'd never realize by physically looking at what brains do and how they behave. That's the "hard problem" of conciousness stated simply, and the answer to it would seemingly have to involve some quite direct access to some part of brain state physics - meaning that the physical properties involved are quite "basic" in some sense.
- wvenable 6y ago> How is it that we can so easily describe some things about our brain states, that we'd never realize by physically looking at what brains do and how they behave. As a software developer, this should be simple. Programs have their own state that you can understand without knowing the exact formulations of electrons in the processor that ultimately make up that state. X = 5 sure but good luck figuring that out looking at the motherboard of a running computer.
- goatlover 6y agoSo why are some brain states conscious and not others?
- mannykannot 6y agoThere is no reason to expect that the self-aware conscious mind has full access to everything that is going on in the brain. In fact, from both an evolutionary and systems perspective, that would be extremely surprising.
- Madmallard 6y agoIt would be impossible for the organism to operate effectively if they were conscious of every single thing going on in their brain at all times. In fact many things you aren't normally conscious of, if you focus, you can become conscious of for the moment.
- ars 6y agoA sleepwalker is not conscious, yet you can converse with them, ask them questions, get answers, you can tell them to do things. In every external way they appear conscious, yet they are not. They are not aware of their own existence. So consciousness is clearly more complicated than just "summation of changes that happened in our brain", there is something extra there, that we don't understand.
- wvenable 6y agoPerhaps they're simply not forming memories of their own existence. Can you ask a particular sleepwalker their own name and get answer? That might imply awareness of their own existence. It seems most people want to make consciousness out to be more complicated in some way.
- Madmallard 6y agoEver heard of amnesia? Works the same way.