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While assuming that other human-looking things are conscious is a reasonable starting point, it certainly isn’t a given. There seems to be a wide variety of th

While assuming that other human-looking things are conscious is a reasonable starting point, it certainly isn’t a given. There seems to be a wide variety of thinking processes. Some folks don’t have internal monologues. Some folks can’t visualize images at all, and the ones that do, do it will varying amount of detail. Isn’t it also reasonable that other humans have different degrees of consciousness, including perhaps not having one?

Xenomto 3y ago
What if consciousness doesn't exist?
jrv 3y ago
I think the best argument for that might be that some people don't seem to understand what "consciousness" (in the sense that you are talking about) even means, and how it's different from something that can be explained as an emergent phenomenon of known physics. I then sometimes wonder whether those people are not actually conscious, or whether they just don't get it.
- monktastic1 3y ago
  Indeed. Nagel famously clarified that "an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism." Many found this enlightening. I find it extremely perplexing that this wasn't immediately obvious to everyone. On the other hand, in Tibetan Buddhism there is something called a "pointing-out instruction," where your enlightened nature is pointed out to you. Afterward, you wonder how you could have ever missed it. Perhaps I should treat Nagel's paper as analogous. Like "oh, duh, the lights are on. Thanks for the reminder."
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  Maybe, but the vast majority of people act, whether they intend to or not, as if consciousness is a social fact. The discrepancy between social facts (especially if they have a plurality of groundings),l and the existence of a scientific fact is fundamentally an interesting phenomenon.
haswell 3y ago
One definition or property of consciousness I find interesting is that it encompasses “what it is like to be <entity>”. If there is something that it is like to be <animal>, it is conscious. Intelligence and awareness are separate from consciousness in this framing. And there is arguably a point where we can speculate that extremely simplistic organisms could not be conscious, given the lack of sense organs that seems to predicate experience. From a human point of view, the things you describe are the contents of consciousness. I have Aphantasia, while my brother describes his mind’s eye as CAD software and he can construct and manipulate visualizations at will. The overarching awareness we both have that allows us to compare and contrast these things and make any sense out of those comparisons points to a more fundamental layer. What you describe sounds closer to levels of awareness and one’s ability to recognize the workings of their own mind, e.g. some people remain lost in and identified with thoughts, while some are able to both experience and observe thought as just more contents of conscious experience, but not the actual center of one’s consciousness. And there’s evidence that this can be learned (through mindfulness), which to me points to something like: we’re all conscious whether we realize it or not, and not realizing it doesn’t make it not so.
- cubefox 3y ago
  Somewhat related, there are people who say aphantasia can be cured: https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/i-cured-my-aphantasia-with-a-low https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/i-cured-my-aphantasia-wit...
  - haswell 3y ago
    Thanks for sharing this. I didn't mention this above to avoid going on a tangent, but after starting a mindfulness meditation habit earlier this year, I've noticed what I can only describe as more awareness of the void in my visual field, and some morphing and indistinct visual phenomena like a shimmering nothingness. Not what I would call imagery, but something I had not been aware of before. I've long suspected that the condition might be trauma related, a suspicion my therapist shares, and the clarity that mindfulness has brought for me has led to some serious breakthroughs in processing past events. Only time will tell if this will unlock something more visual. Without going into my life's story, it makes a lot of sense to me that aphantasia could be some kind of protective mechanism of the brain to shield someone from events too big to process.
cubefox 3y ago
Yeah, but the "expected similarity" (the expected value of the degree of similarity) for consciousness should still be high. That is, there are in expectation more people that are very similar to me than people that are very dissimilar. There is a related Bayesian argument: You draw one ball from an urn with an unknown number of black and white balls. The drawn ball is black. This is some evidence that most balls are black, because otherwise it would have been less likely that you have drawn the black ball earlier.

Xenomto 3y ago

What if consciousness doesn't exist?

jrv 3y ago

I think the best argument for that might be that some people don't seem to understand what "consciousness" (in the sense that you are talking about) even means, and how it's different from something that can be explained as an emergent phenomenon of known physics. I then sometimes wonder whether those people are not actually conscious, or whether they just don't get it.

monktastic1 3y ago
Indeed. Nagel famously clarified that "an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism." Many found this enlightening. I find it extremely perplexing that this wasn't immediately obvious to everyone. On the other hand, in Tibetan Buddhism there is something called a "pointing-out instruction," where your enlightened nature is pointed out to you. Afterward, you wonder how you could have ever missed it. Perhaps I should treat Nagel's paper as analogous. Like "oh, duh, the lights are on. Thanks for the reminder."
kelseyfrog 3y ago
Maybe, but the vast majority of people act, whether they intend to or not, as if consciousness is a social fact. The discrepancy between social facts (especially if they have a plurality of groundings),l and the existence of a scientific fact is fundamentally an interesting phenomenon.

haswell 3y ago

One definition or property of consciousness I find interesting is that it encompasses “what it is like to be <entity>”. If there is something that it is like to be <animal>, it is conscious. Intelligence and awareness are separate from consciousness in this framing. And there is arguably a point where we can speculate that extremely simplistic organisms could not be conscious, given the lack of sense organs that seems to predicate experience. From a human point of view, the things you describe are the contents of consciousness. I have Aphantasia, while my brother describes his mind’s eye as CAD software and he can construct and manipulate visualizations at will. The overarching awareness we both have that allows us to compare and contrast these things and make any sense out of those comparisons points to a more fundamental layer. What you describe sounds closer to levels of awareness and one’s ability to recognize the workings of their own mind, e.g. some people remain lost in and identified with thoughts, while some are able to both experience and observe thought as just more contents of conscious experience, but not the actual center of one’s consciousness. And there’s evidence that this can be learned (through mindfulness), which to me points to something like: we’re all conscious whether we realize it or not, and not realizing it doesn’t make it not so.

cubefox 3y ago
Somewhat related, there are people who say aphantasia can be cured: https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/i-cured-my-aphantasia-with-a-low https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/i-cured-my-aphantasia-wit...
- haswell 3y ago
  Thanks for sharing this. I didn't mention this above to avoid going on a tangent, but after starting a mindfulness meditation habit earlier this year, I've noticed what I can only describe as more awareness of the void in my visual field, and some morphing and indistinct visual phenomena like a shimmering nothingness. Not what I would call imagery, but something I had not been aware of before. I've long suspected that the condition might be trauma related, a suspicion my therapist shares, and the clarity that mindfulness has brought for me has led to some serious breakthroughs in processing past events. Only time will tell if this will unlock something more visual. Without going into my life's story, it makes a lot of sense to me that aphantasia could be some kind of protective mechanism of the brain to shield someone from events too big to process.

cubefox 3y ago

Yeah, but the "expected similarity" (the expected value of the degree of similarity) for consciousness should still be high. That is, there are in expectation more people that are very similar to me than people that are very dissimilar. There is a related Bayesian argument: You draw one ball from an urn with an unknown number of black and white balls. The drawn ball is black. This is some evidence that most balls are black, because otherwise it would have been less likely that you have drawn the black ball earlier.