4 ms·

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

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.
- Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
  Interesting. As an aphantasiac myself, I find it surprising that this person has such a negative perspective, wanting to "cure" his aphantasia. As far as I know, aphantasia has never had any meaningful negative impact on my life. We just think without mental images, but we can solve the same kind of problems as the rest. That's why most of us don't even find out that we are different until we read about it somewhere on the Internet (in my case, in my 30s). How can something that has so little real-life impact that neither we nor our close persons can even notice be seen as a disorder to be cured? I can understand being curious about how mental imagery is like. I'm curious, as well. But I think I'd still rather not start a "treatment" as it seems that I'm good at thinking without mental imagery (perhaps it has even made me better at symbolic and linguistic processing, as I seem to be better at that than most), and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Not sure that something that seems to quite fundamentally alter my way of thinking (to use a mental imagery that I would never be good at, I suppose) is a good idea. To each their own, of course.
  - haswell 3y ago
    I do think the “cure” framing is a bit odd, but then started thinking back to my own initial discovery. When I first learned this is a thing and realized that I have it, I initially started feeling like I’d been deprived of something. That this mode of experience was so absent in me that I couldn’t even imagine what other people actually meant when they talked about visualization, and this bothered me. But over time my perspective shifted, and I stopped seeing it as a disability of some kind and instead as a different flavor of experiencing the world. To your point, I have linguistic strengths that are far more attuned than the strong visualizers I know. They come to me when they need something written. I go to them when I need advice about arranging my living room.
  - cubefox 3y ago
    [dead]
PrimeMcFly 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. I think there are problems with this. Take something like the roundworm, with 300 neurons. It has senses, and I assume a base level consciousness to process those senses. It would be something to be like a roundworm. On the other hand, a roundworm likely has no sense of self, no identity, no awareness..no mental self to be able to acknowledge and reflect on those experience, so there is no 'someone'. And isn't that the point that matters?
- grantcas 3y ago
  It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with primary consciousness will probably have to come first. What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing. I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order. My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461 https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461

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.
Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
Interesting. As an aphantasiac myself, I find it surprising that this person has such a negative perspective, wanting to "cure" his aphantasia. As far as I know, aphantasia has never had any meaningful negative impact on my life. We just think without mental images, but we can solve the same kind of problems as the rest. That's why most of us don't even find out that we are different until we read about it somewhere on the Internet (in my case, in my 30s). How can something that has so little real-life impact that neither we nor our close persons can even notice be seen as a disorder to be cured? I can understand being curious about how mental imagery is like. I'm curious, as well. But I think I'd still rather not start a "treatment" as it seems that I'm good at thinking without mental imagery (perhaps it has even made me better at symbolic and linguistic processing, as I seem to be better at that than most), and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Not sure that something that seems to quite fundamentally alter my way of thinking (to use a mental imagery that I would never be good at, I suppose) is a good idea. To each their own, of course.
- haswell 3y ago
  I do think the “cure” framing is a bit odd, but then started thinking back to my own initial discovery. When I first learned this is a thing and realized that I have it, I initially started feeling like I’d been deprived of something. That this mode of experience was so absent in me that I couldn’t even imagine what other people actually meant when they talked about visualization, and this bothered me. But over time my perspective shifted, and I stopped seeing it as a disability of some kind and instead as a different flavor of experiencing the world. To your point, I have linguistic strengths that are far more attuned than the strong visualizers I know. They come to me when they need something written. I go to them when I need advice about arranging my living room.
- cubefox 3y ago
  [dead]

PrimeMcFly 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. I think there are problems with this. Take something like the roundworm, with 300 neurons. It has senses, and I assume a base level consciousness to process those senses. It would be something to be like a roundworm. On the other hand, a roundworm likely has no sense of self, no identity, no awareness..no mental self to be able to acknowledge and reflect on those experience, so there is no 'someone'. And isn't that the point that matters?

grantcas 3y ago
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with primary consciousness will probably have to come first. What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing. I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order. My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461 https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461