2 ms·
Consciousness vs awareness vs sentience are terms that really need some society-scale effort to nail down what we mean by one or another. The conversation circl
by uoaei 4y ago
Consciousness vs awareness vs sentience are terms that really need some society-scale effort to nail down what we mean by one or another. The conversation circles round and round because many folks talk past each other or interpret discussions in ways that the writer didn't intend. (I'm not saying the answer is available today if only we solve this dialectical issue.)
Philosophers of consciousness define "consciousness" as "phenomenological experience" in the barest, most unqualified sense, ie, the experience of "yellow" when photons of wavelength ~580nm strike a visual sensory organ of some kind of cognitive system.
Note that the above does not automatically imply that the experience is understood or even recognized. A lot of armchair philosophers and intellectual hobbyists conflate the term "consciousness" with the notion of having some kind of mental model through which to comprehend the experience (what I call "awareness"), or an understanding of the dichotomy between self vs environment (what I call "sentience", ie, "self-awareness").
Acting through anthropocentrism, it is easy to assume that the three are inextricable, but I don't think that perspective is the way forward toward understanding of consciousness per se.
- comfypotato 4y agoYou sound like you'd be into the idea of "qualia" if you're not already aware.
- nickmain 4y ago"Metacognition" is a better term for what many refer to as consciousness.
- aeneasmackenzie 4y agoIt is not. That I can think about my thinking doesn’t help at all with the question of why I can think.
- gbro3n 4y agoWhat I rarely see / hear articulated well enough, and am not even sure that I can, are questions around why _I_ have consciousness. I understand the reasons why a body might develop meta cognition, and how it's advantageous for a being to be aware of it's thoughts. But none of this explains why my body is attached to _this_ consciousness and not another. 'Experience' is the key term I feel when the phenomenal aspect of consciousness is discussed, but I feel many don't understand this view point and attempt to explain it away as something reducable or inevitable.
- layer8 4y agoIf you accept that certain bodies have metacognition, then this arguably predicts that each body’s metacognition will perceive itself (the metacognition) and the body as two separate but connected entities. That is, your own perception that “you” are separate from your body would be predicted by the theory. That is, this perception would be predicted by the theory. But it is a mere perception, because the metacognition “machine” (within the brain) is physically part of the body, and hence inherently bound to it, even if its own internal perception differs from that.
- gbro3n 4y agoI also understand this theory, but why is my perception mine, and not that of some other physical being. Why do I experience it. I know what many will answer and I can look at other beings and understand why that being might develop metacognition and see it's self as conscious, but I will never understand why I should inhabit/own/experience a consciousness from my own internal view point.
- barrenko 4y agoIt's maybe the other way around - aka conciousness has you, like fish in a net. What if this conciousness and other ones are exactly the same? But it's hard to think and reason about it really because of our own self-addiction. Kinda like kids high on ice cream can't really care what broccolli tastes like (or the other way around). Also because consciousness doesn't really need you/us to think about it or discover it because it's kinda the only thing that's here.
- dqpb 4y ago> need some society-scale effort to nail down I think a good approach would be for people to build things that exhibit consciousness according to whatever their model is and claim "this is conscious". Then let people debate whether it is or not.
- uoaei 4y agoThere is the notion of panpsychism: that consciousness defined in the basic sense is extant everywhere, all the time, in many varied forms and scopes. By the definitions above, awareness would be restricted to those systems which could reasonably be considered "cognitive", and sentience would belong only to those who can conceptualize "cogito ergo sum".