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Consciousness Is Just a Feeling
- bitwize 6y agoI think once we figure out what consciousness actually is, we will regard it as more than "just a feeling" but not the be-all and end-all of cognition or intelligence either. My guess: Consciousness is your brain's logging facility. Conscious brains tag their experiences with symbols to help the brain organize and index them for reflection and introspection later.
- ducharmdev 6y agoI would be careful not to take software/CS metaphors too far. I don't mean to say one domain's concepts can never be applied to another domain, but developers hold certain assumptions about our domain that may not apply elsewhere. Even basic observations can rely upon more deep-rooted axioms. I only say this because it's something I've been reflecting on lately - I've found that by being too immersed in the context of software development, I've often fallen victim to this mindset: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument
- cat199 6y ago> Consciousness is your brain's logging facility. this doesn't explain anything at all about the will, active choices, and introspection, all of which are a huge part of one's consciousness, and can even further extend it (for example by integrating the concepts discussed in threads like this to one's own self reflection and experiences)
- SubiculumCode 6y agoFuck Freud. He was a con artist storyteller, not a scientist. Edit: I accept all the downvotes. I refuse to teach Freud in college psychology except to say, Fuck Freud. We are better off without him. psychoanalysis = psychbullshit = painful holiday conversations about my profession.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dorchadas 6y agoJust because Freud wasn't very accurate in psychology doesn't mean he isn't important for other fields of work. His influence has spread far beyond psychology, whether you like it or not.
- jonnycomputer 6y agoI would say that, on the whole, Frued's influence has been more harmful than anything.
- philosopher1234 6y agoCould you be specific?
- SubiculumCode 6y ago"Robert Stickgold: "Psychoanalysis is about as useful to neuroscience as creationism is to evolutionary biology. Freud, who aggressively defended his theories in spite of a lack of evidence, would have been at home in the Trump administration." Freud Is Widely Taught at Universities, Except in the Psychology Department
- philosopher1234 6y agoThis is anything but specific, this is just a reiteration of the point, with no additional detail.
- SubiculumCode 6y agoYes, I've had a long conversation with an English Lit professor about the merits of Freud, but none of those merits involved the mind or the brain!
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- elevenoh 6y agois it "more than a feelaaan" - boston https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4QK8RxCAwo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4QK8RxCAwo "How can it happen that a physical creature comes to have this mysterious, magical stuff called consciousness? You reduce it down to something much more biological, like basic feelings, and then you start building up the complexities. A first step in that direction is “I feel.” Then comes the question, What is the cause of this feeling? What is this feeling about? And then you have the beginnings of cognition. “I feel like this about that.” So feeling gets extended onto perception and other cognitive representations of the organism in the world." Seems to me like: consciousness = a feeling or narrative of 'feelings', which arises out of a function that takes in all perception.
- wombatmobile 6y agoYes - for the origin of consciousness, look at the simplest organisms - protozoans like slime mould on a rock under the sea 4 billion years ago. In the morning, the slime mould colony positions itself on the western side of the rock to maximise exposure to solar energy coming from the east. As the day grows long and the sun moves overhead and then to the western horizon, members of the slime mould colony on the edges detect the variation in radiant solar energy and, at thresholds, issue the command to move. The cells on the south west edge of the rock cannot just move towards the north and then the west, because all the other cells are in their way. So they have to initiate a communication. "Move". The neighbouring cells in the colony begin to move. Eventually, the message propagates to the other edge of the colony and the whole colony moves. It keeps moving until the new position of the centre of the colony reaches equilibrium for the radiant energy of the sun in its then position. We can say in the aggregate that the colony moved because it felt like it. To say that is to ascribe "consciousness" to a blob. But really this was just the result of sensors in individual cells registering a drop in radiant energy reception, followed by a communication to move, followed by a behaviour, terminated by a new homeostasis when the sensors again reached a threshold.
- mdeck_ 6y agoIt galls me every time I see “neuroscientists”/“neuropsychologists” and the like considering themselves to have essentially discovered the problem of mind-brain duality, fundamental questions about what consciousness is, and so forth, as if philosophers haven’t been carefully studying these topics for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years—and as if many were not continuing to study it in philosophy departments to this day. This guy for instance seems not to have read much or any philosophy. The interviewer appropriately poses question regarding Searle and Chalmers, but from his answers he doesn’t seem familiar with these quite important thinkers. I’m genuinely confused—what is it that makes someone who calls themselves a scientist want to avoid having their lit reviews include writings categorized as philosophy?
- titzer 6y agoGalling can go both ways. Why is it that philosophists have gone hundreds or thousands of years thinking on a problem and produced no tangible results and yet Science put a man on the moon? Reproducibility.
- keiferski 6y agoNo tangible results? You live in a world shaped entirely by political philosophy, which itself is almost inseparable from philosophy writ large historically. The modern political Western world is entirely built on Kantian ideals.
- NoOneNew 6y agoI think the biggest problem is the hubris to known knowledge. One thing I liked about the author was the acknowledgment that Freud made mistakes, but shouldn't be 100% dismissed either. I like relating this to modern atom theory. How vital is the understanding of electrons to atoms these days? It's borderline impossible to imagine how atoms work without knowing anything about electrons. Dalton developed modern atom theory in 1804. Electrons weren't discovered until the 1890s. 90 years of people probably saying, "it's impossible to get tangible results from testing atoms". Freud's theories are almost 100 years old now. We've come a long way... but how more advanced is atomic theory an extra 100 years after electrons were discovered? We are still stupid when it comes to psychology, thus unable to really make tangible results... yet. The faster that concept is respected, I truly think the faster advancements can be made because people won't get hung up on bad pop science declarations from innocent studies that are doing to their best to just discover some grain of truth.
- csantini 6y agoFunny, I've been repeating around "Consciousness is just a feeling" for a while. My question is also "why has it evolved at all" ? Keep reading for a hint. Hunger, for example, is just a feeling. Thirstiness is just a feeling. But we don't build complex theories of the world around Thirstiness. Somehow we do with Consciousness, because I suspect it tricks us, playing recursively with our thinking. Consciousness, which nobody really ever defines clearly, it's probably just a name around a bunch of feelings we have. It's clear why Thirstiness has evolved: to get us to find water. Not salty one. Probably Consciousness does something like that. For example, it might be just a feeling of oneness to keep us intact, across peripherals (legs, arms) and time (now is really a continuation or whatever we were doing before, you need a feeling to enforce that).
- klmadfejno 6y agoConsciousness improves adaptability which has second order effects towards solving hunger and thirst
- jonnypotty 6y agoWe don't know what consciousness is OR what it's for. There is no theory of what a brain is capable of with consciousness vs without or if this is even a valid question.
- everdrive 6y agoI don't think this is an accurate statement, and I also do personally have my own theory. I would be quite shocked if NO ONE had a theory of what consciousness is for.
- klmadfejno 6y agoYou can claim non-cognizance on just about anything. The ability to reflect on first order sensory inputs has clear evolutionary advantages. Either that is part of what you're calling consciousness, or it is not. If you fall into the latter camp then you're just debating semantics of an english word.
- gmaster1440 6y agoDecent interview, but surprised no mention or allusion to the hard problem[1]—saying consciousness is "just a feeling" doesn't do much to chip away at the core issue. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
- wombatmobile 6y agoOh? I thought he said clearly that consciousness (your hard problem i.e. the experience of qualia) is just a feeling (from the brainstem). And then he explains that cognition takes place in the cortex, which isn't the seat of consciousness. Cognition is built on top of and relies upon the hard consciousness relayed from the brainstem for "drive". So, with cognition, you can calculate that to satisfy your desire, you need to walk three blocks north and two blocks east to the store to buy food. The drive for this behaviour originates lower in the brainstem through the quality of hunger, which is referred from the body when a sensor in your tank registers empty. Is not his "drive" your "hard consciousness"?
- gmaster1440 6y agoFair question, but my problem (and I could be misunderstanding his position) is that he doesn't provide any cohesive explanation or line of reasoning why there's subjective experience effectively accompanying these "drives" at all. The hard problem would put this in the category of easy problems[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness#Easy_problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness#...
- wombatmobile 6y agoPerhaps I don't understand what the hard problem is? Is it this thing of trying to find the little man inside of your head that is viewing the television screen that displays the images that go in through your eyes? Could you help me to see what the hard problem is?
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- comboy 6y agoOh man, who cares about the article, it's the consciousness thread! ;) I also have my strong opinion, but anytime such heated discussion emerges it's worth remembering that disagreement is often more about mapping between some word and reality, rather than discussing the reality associated with that word.
- jonnypotty 6y agoSo debate becomes arguing about the meaning of words. Frustrating.
- danaliv 6y agoWelcome to philosophy!
- loopz 6y agoI believe philosophers try to penetrate meaning behind words, while science try to define everything precisely. Both miss the hole in the gapless gap! It's like natural remedies cease to exist when they become medicine. But it's also the universal seeking, which takes on all kinds of forms and shapes.
- kaetemi 6y agoConsciousness existing as something within physical reality is already a big assumption to make. It could be the reverse, or symbiotic, just as well.
- lostmsu 6y agoPhysical reality by definition is everything that exists.
- dandanua 6y agoDo numbers exist? I mean really big numbers. How about algorithms? Those that are not yet implemented. I believe consciousness is some kind of algorithm. But consciousness alone doesn't define who we are, inherently.
- jmcqk6 6y agoI think there is a mistake in this dichotomy. Do really big numbers "exist?" Are really big numbers meaningful? Sometimes I think we conflate those two things, and I don't think they are the same.
- lostmsu 6y agoMy interpretation would be that numbers do not exist on their own. Only your thought (as in physical process) of them does.
- ta1234567890 6y agoHow can you be sure is not the same with physical reality? Ie. That only your thought of it exists. After all, the only thing that we can be certain of is our own (subjective) experience.
- lostmsu 6y agoThere is no reason to assume my thought (as in physical process) is self-sustaining. Rather it seems to be powered by the rest of the stuff.
- okareaman 6y agoI'm always surprised in these discussions that the ideas of Tesla, Planck and others don't come up. Someone once tried to convince me that consciousness arose from the brain by saying that if he removed a part, then consciousness would change and diminish. I answered along the lines of Tesla that perhaps the brain is a like a radio receiver and if you remove parts from the receiver it is not going to work. My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists ― Nikola Tesla All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter ― Max Planck
- lostmsu 6y agoIt is known you can remove parts of brain, thus reducing ability to think, sometimes abruptly (but not completely). One of the abruptions will be fatal for ability to stay conscious.
- loopz 6y agoIf your yardstick is in meters, you will be measuring meters.
- nathanfig 6y agoYou can remove the antenna from a radio and remove the ability to hear the ballgame. That does not mean the game was happening in the antenna. Before getting hung up on the idea of transmission, understand this is just an analogy: breaking something by removing a part does not prove much at all.
- lostmsu 6y agoThat theory does not pass Occam's razor.
- miles 6y ago
- cat199 6y ago“Since the cerebral cortex is the seat of intelligence, almost everybody thinks that it is also the seat of consciousness, Solms writes. “I disagree; consciousness is far more primitive than that. It arises from a part of the brain that humans share with fishes. This is the ‘hidden spring’ of the title.”” This is a very cerebral approach (pun intended) not at all shared with many or even the vast majority of non-western philosophical schools. Until science begins to integrate (or reject) these models, we are a long way off from even approaching if mechanisms of consciousness can actually be 'known', let alone making affirmative assertions about it
- antattack 6y agoIt would be worthwhile to pinpoint which definition we are discussing here: the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings (fish, humans) the awareness or perception of something by a person (fish, humans). the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world (humans, ?)
- telmo 6y agoThis is a common attempt to rationalize away the hard problem of consciousness that I find to be an almost textbook example of "begging the question". What is a feeling? Well, it's a type of experience. Does a glass of water have experiences? Probably not, because experiences are phenomena that are relative to conscious entities. Saying that X has experiences or that X is conscious are, in my view, equivalent claims. Saying that "consciousness is just a feeling" is equivalent to saying that "consciousness is just consciousness". It may sound like and explanation, but it is just a tautology.
- wombatmobile 6y agoHow do you know there is a difference between a conscious being and a glass of water? I'm not saying the glass of water is conscious. Let's say it isn't. What tells you that an animal is any different?
- mdeck_ 6y agoThis is yet another philosophical problem: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- GoblinSlayer 6y agoAnother good analogy here is definition of life. What is life and what is a difference between a living being and a glass of water? The difference is that they are different systems that work in different ways, for a system to be conscious, it should work in a certain way, and a glass of water doesn't work in that way, that's why it's not conscious. Consciousness should perceive reality, remember, model and analyze it, maybe even have intelligence, will, abstract thought, attention and reflection, then it can be seen as consciousness.
- kobe_bryant 6y agobecause we have neurons and a glass of water doesnt
- sebringj 6y agoConsciousness is just a feeling <-> Feeling is consciousness? Doesn't this seem like not understanding you are not understanding which is level 0.
- pantelisk 6y agoI believe that consciousness is a simulation our brain is running. Our brain is a computer that runs human simulations. This is why we anthropomorphize everything. Why we buy our dogs a little dog-house that looks like a people house. Dog doesn't care. Why we play such different roles - a cruel boss may be a loving father a few hours later. Likewise, why when people adopt a nickname "What would X do?" they find courage, or get to act differently (common trick in sales). It is why religions made god in man's image. Gods that fit human archetypes, roles or feelings (the father, the mother, lust, war) etc. And of course, why people with multiple personality disorder get to have such vast personality changes and ups and downs. What is the evolutionary benefit? Empathy. If I can simulate what you feel, I get to understand what you are going through, I may be kinder to you. And this way we get to cooperate and build a civilization that is not based on swarm mechanics (like ants, or bees). Consciousness will soon have it's Gallileo moment. And we will be shocked to discover there is nothing special about our current human-centric world of "consciousness".
- Kranar 6y agoCalling consciousness a simulation doesn't resolve anything. A simulation is the imitation of a process, what is the process that consciousness is imitating? Also saying there's nothing special about human-centric world of consciousness is somewhat of a contradiction. Being human-centric is incredibly special; as far as we know the brain is the only structure in the solar system that exhibits consciousness, and may very well be the only structure among a very small percentage of solar systems in the universe. If that isn't special, then nothing is special and the word has no meaning.
- Tenoke 6y agoI'm also sympathetic to explanations in that vein. In particular that one of the main pieces of it is our simulation of ourselves - a recursive mirrored lense.
- pantelisk 6y agoYes, I am with you. I really like Joscha Bach's theory that our brains hallucinate ourselves, almost as a fantasy character that goes through life. (checkout his appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast, mind blowing talk by Joscha)
- sociopathschool 6y agoI’ve found consciousness to be like a muscle and most of us have never done more than step foot in the gym. If I tell you right now to be aware of yourself, you would experience a brief moment of consciousness. Try it right now. See yourself from an outside perspective, sitting in your chair, doing stuff that matters or maybe not so much. Procrastinating, if you’re like me. It’s a powerful “feeling". But as soon as you continue reading, you’re already back to your normal state — in your head, not aware of yourself at all. You have the consciousness-stamina of a 100 pound weakling. It’s extremely difficult to develop yourself so you’re conscious all the time. I’ve been working for years, and still not there. However, I’m more conscious than not. The goal is that the consciousness program is running in the background all the time, and doesn’t require difficult mental work to maintain. The effects and benefits of getting to that point cannot be overstated. I don’t agree that consciousness is a feeling, although it shares some of the same features. Feelings for most people are similarly fleeting and dictated by outside environment. Most people do not have the skill to affect their feelings, or their consciousness, for long.
- TaupeRanger 6y agoI must've read about 100 articles in a similar vein to this over the last 10-15 years. I feel like I've learned literally nothing from any of them. I read Descartes and later David Chalmers, and I feel nothing has been added to our understanding of the fundamental issues at all. And to be honest, I shouldn't be surprised or particularly disappointed. The Mind-Body problem has existed for millennia for good reason.
- cobraetor 6y agoTry eliminating the following assumptions a) Consciousness depends on affect b) Affect is real, and not simply an imagined experience. In other words, question the validity of the above. Are they in fact true? How do we know them to be true? Why is a feeling given more credence than hallucinations? What if all feelings are an imagined experience, one that is "programmed" into birth by the genetic material? Just because an imaginative experience is encoded genetically it shouldn't make it any more real, should it? How would humans look like to some alien species that is capable of cognition and consciousness (without being robotic, as our species' scifi literature imagines) but not affect and identity? Wouldn't they see us all acting as if suffering from some mass delusion?
- TaupeRanger 6y agoYou are using very strange definitions of terminology. Consciousness is just the word we use for the fact that a stream of experiences exists. To say it might be "imagined" is nonsensical - the experiences are there regardless, and their existence is the mystery.
- cobraetor 6y agoYou are misrepresenting my comment, which I wrote only because you said "I feel like I've learned literally nothing from any of them". I indicated that affect, not consciousness, is imagined. Furthermore, I indicated (which you entirely overlooked) that consciousness is independent of affect. Take that as a working theory, and you just might discover something new. Discard whatever you've read in the last 10-15 years, and start afresh; otherwise, you'll just be rehashing the same old same old.
- slibhb 6y agoI think consciousness is being able to do something without knowing how. We can play chess, do math, run, etc but we don't know how we do it. Presumably it has something to do with our brains, something to do with neurons, but we don't have any insight into exactly how we do it...we just do it. If we knew how we do these things, there would be no mystery.
- zengargoyle 6y agoProbably part of a media campaign. The Royal Institution just put up a talk by Mark Solms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmuYrnOVmfk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmuYrnOVmfk "The Source of Consciousness". As pretty usual for Royal Institution talks, it's all a part of a book promotion blitz.
- DanielleMolloy 6y agoIt is astonishing what an obvious phenomenon consciousness is, and how little we know and think about it. It’s a massive scientific mystery, neuroscience can’t even define it well. It sometimes seems science, e.g. neuroscience has not truly left dualism behind. We still seem to talk about and study mind and body as separate entities.
- arafa 6y agoI always thought Hofstadter's argument (I see he's discussed elsewhere in this thread) was that consciousness was a convenient illusion, which is kind of like the idea that it's a feeling here. And that the key insight is that consciousness arises through self-reference in a non-obvious way. It's kind of like bootstrapping an operating system. It's the only explanation I've ever read where it all made sense and you could see all the mechanics of how it worked if they were explained in-depth. Maybe psychoanalysis and philosophical arguments can point you in the right direction or develop your intuitions, though.
- ta1234567890 6y ago> “Since the cerebral cortex is the seat of intelligence, almost everybody thinks that it is also the seat of consciousness,” Solms writes. “I disagree; consciousness is far more primitive than that. It arises from a part of the brain that humans share with fishes. It’s interesting that he says that, but also later on says we are embodied creatures, which can be taken as meaning that consciousness arises from our full body experience, not from one particular specific location of the body.
- highspeedbus 6y agoI'll pose my own naive theory: Consciousness is a type of thought. When we zone out, we stop being conscious to an extent. Bugs don't experience those thoughts about themselves so they're not conscious (just a wild guess). Consciousness ceases when we are focused solving problems. It returns the moment we think about ourselves. So, what is a thought? Why are there some types of thoughts that only humans can have? I do not know.
- imbnwa 6y ago'Consciousness' is one of those viral memes which generates value for its users much like a pump-and-dump scheme, it gets more real and intriguing the more people you get on board, sorta like 'Race'. You can tell because, like Race, the minute you start asking after details, or why its even operative or a term of art in the first place, the coherency reveals itself as brittle spaghetti statements all the way down. Its fascinating that we're kinda okay building a science around a term that isn't simple or exhaustively unpacked in terms of all constraint on its definition, like anything we can describe mathematically. But humans are fascinated by meaning (which is completely tied to notions of providence [I can't think of a human culture that doesn't have an idea of providence/final destination]), truth hiding beneath the surface, possibility lurking just right around the corner. We know by looking at so-called animal life: YAGNI as far meaning goes. Human beings are addicted to revealing, to un-covering. Even though in reality there is nothing hiding, nothing "covered', no truth beneath the surface, no depth to any of the superficiality. But perhaps, if our brains really are 'prediction machines', then perhaps past a certain threshold, it has to start "making meaning", which is to predict truth (at least at a social level, when it no longer has more to process in physical reality. It does this merely by virtue that the machine cannot stop predicting, even when there's nothing more to predict. Hence Nietzsche: "Man would rather will nothingness than nothing at all". The upside for human animal life is that all this meaning-seeking activity makes us super unpredictable in response to inputs, moreso than most if not all animals. And unpredictability creates more possibility, so we simply will reap more rewards than other animals by shear frequency of being batshit, but we equally creates new and different problems for ourselves as well. But its also why the vast majority of people cannot be scientists (or sociopaths, for that matter): their brains have a hard time sticking with utter simplicity; there always has to be more than there is. This is how our form-of-life drifts through the universe. Gorillas sometimes eat their own shit. We don't know why. But is it any more or less valuable than our meaning-making activity? Maybe not.
- NautilusWave 6y agoI couldn't read past the second paragraph, it was so poorly framed. It failed to show how this white man suffered "under apartheid", as he was able to just move to England when things became too inconvenient for him. It talks about him being protest adjacent, but did he actually do anything? He surmounted his obstacle with.... privilege. I don't fault Solms in any way, but I do fault the author for trying to garner sympathy for their subject while failing to explain why he deserves it.