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Just to confirm: this paper focuses on the 'awakeness' aspect of consciousness, not self-awareness, correct? My science literacy is lacking. Personally, I fin

Just to confirm: this paper focuses on the 'awakeness' aspect of consciousness, not self-awareness, correct? My science literacy is lacking. Personally, I find self-awareness the more fascinating area of study, but any brain research pretty fascinating.

m3kw9 2y ago
One can be awake and still not be conscious
rytill 2y ago
Why do you find self-awareness to be the more fascinating area of study? It makes complete sense that something could be self-aware if it could be aware of anything at all. What more do you need to research/understand about self-awareness? It is far more interesting to me that there is “awakeness” to experience than that we can be aware of our selves (in the same way we can be aware of anything else). A complete understanding of sentience including its causes would be a far more satisfying and ethically impactful body of knowledge than a complete understanding of self-awareness (assuming they are not inextricably linked somehow).
- DEADMINCE 2y ago
  Awareness is just the basic state of most animal life, it has to be for it to function. It isn't particularly more interesting than a venus fly trap. Self-awareness is something altogether different. The ability to look inward and analyze oneself, to effect the environment rather than just be a part of it...these are massive departures from the norm, responsible for everything that makes humanity great and terrible. How could that not be the more fascinating area to study?
  - rytill 2y ago
    Because while self-awareness may be fertile ground for interesting emergent behavior, it is not mysterious. There is no “hard problem of self-awareness”. We basically know what’s going on at the ground level. Whereas with sentience (awareness), we have no explanation for why any physical state is sentient rather than nonsentient. And since all that exists in our lives is our collection of sentient experiences of reality, this is a pretty big ethical question.
    - DEADMINCE 2y ago
      I think you have that mixed around. Basic awareness/consciousness/awareness is not especially notable or exciting, it's incredibly common and many aspects are well understood. Self-awareness, an actual consciousness and inner voice, is exceedingly rare and poorly understood, and I think it would therefore be significantly more fascination since so much is yet to be discovered and understood. > There is no “hard problem of self-awareness”. Well, there is. The type of consciousness being referred to in "Hard problem of consciousness" is of a type that would require self-awareness as a prerequisite to exist. It's almost synonymous with it. > Whereas with sentience (awareness), we have no explanation for why any physical state is sentient rather than nonsentient. You're using these terms in a way that seems unorthodox, but unless I'm misunderstanding your point, we do understand, the answer is brain development and evolution.
      - rytill 2y ago
        > You’re using these terms in a way that seems unorthodox I don’t think so - see https://chatgpt.com/share/507ca1a4-43a3-4b30-afaf-08273ed54dcd https://chatgpt.com/share/507ca1a4-43a3-4b30-afaf-08273ed54d... (I just tried once) This is of course not meant as proof or knowledge of any kind, but just that the way I’m using the words is what the “average” of how people in books and on the internet would use those words. I don’t understand how “evolution and brain development” cause sensations to arise. What part of our biology is the part directly producing sentience experience? How would you explain why we experience anything instead of nothing? Can we replicate it in a non-biological system?
b800h 2y ago
Yep. It does frustrate me that they use the term this way.
- nicklecompte 2y ago
  In the past we used the word "sentience" for this, but sci-fi confused "sentience" with "sapience," and now we have four terms that are meaningless, causing pointless arguments because different people interpret them in different ways. - consciousness - sentience - self-awareness - sapience (It really doesn't help that 3/4 these are too poorly-understood to even have a good formal definition.)
  - glenstein 2y ago
    I'm okay to live and let live and not litigate differences here as long as usage is meaningful and contributes to precision (although it would be perfectly fair to insist that's exactly what's being lost here). I understand, for instance, that for some people there's an important difference between morality and ethics, but modern scholarship in meta-ethics that is perfectly up to speed on this vocabulary sees no benefit to policing that particular distinction.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
groestl 2y ago
Obligatory book recommendation in that regard "I Am a Strange Loop", by Douglas R. Hofstadter
denton-scratch 2y ago
> Just to confirm: this paper focuses on the 'awakeness' aspect of consciousness, not self-awareness That's how I read it. I'm interested in consciousness, but neither in terms of "self-awareness" or of "awakeness". Awakeness just means you aren't asleep. The term "self-awareness" implies awareness, which might be what's meant by consciousness, and it assumes there's a Self, which is a metaphysical concept, not susceptible to scientific invetigation.
- DEADMINCE 2y ago
  > The term "self-awareness" implies awareness, which might be what's meant by consciousness Well, most animals have awareness, but not self-awareness. > there's a Self, which is a metaphysical concept, not susceptible to scientific invetigation. That doesn't seem to be true at all. The idea of a self is very testable.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >and it assumes there's a Self, which is a metaphysical concept, not susceptible to scientific invetigation. I don't think this is correct. Not only because metaphysical concepts can still be suscpeptible to scientific investigation (as can e.g. time, reality, and so on. For example for reality "do we live in a simulation" could be something some scientists do try to determine), and because some metaphysical concepts just turned into practical concepts this way. But also because self-awareness and the concept of self can be defined in quite practical terms too (e.g. a higher level loop on top of regular thinking referencing the lower level, or similar ideas like in Hofstadter).
  - denton-scratch 2y ago
    > But also because self-awareness and the concept of self can be defined in quite practical terms too (e.g. a higher level loop on top of regular thinking referencing the lower level, or similar ideas like in Hofstadter). I treasure my dog-eared copy of GEB. Having said that, Hofstadter sets out to argue for a "emergent phenomenon" explanation of consciousness, and I don't think his "loops within loops" argument works. It's not really an argument; it's finger-painting. He's trying to point in the direction of an argument (which is fine, even admirable; GEB is almost entirely concerned with allusion and suggestion. It's supposed to make you ask questions). It's quite easy to argue that the idea of a self (or the sense of being a self) is emergent, or an illusion; it's much harder to explain "idea" and "sense" in those terms, unless you resort to non-conscious[0] senses and non-conscious ideas. Basically, I agree that you can explain everything in terms of emergent phenonemena, except the subjectivity of consciousness/awareness. We experience it directly, we know it's real (it's the only thing we know!), and nobody has come up with a way of showing that it's real, or even saying what it is, or how we could show it's real. Dougie's loops are just a distraction. [0] I say "non-conscious" rather than "unconscious" because I don't want Freudian woo to intrude.
Symmetry 2y ago
Right, and not qualia either. I'ts a bit more complicated than just awakeness, though. If you flash an image on a screen for a very short period of time, you won't ever be able to remember what it said or be able to tell someone what it said, but it can still have a slight effect on your behavior for about a second. There is information that are senses are providing to our brain that never makes it to conscious awareness. Sometimes people have brain injuries that prevent the transfer of information from some parts of their brain to their consciousness. Someone with blindsight has an injury that prevents them from being consciously, in this sense, aware of their visual field. They can still pick up items in front of them when asked. But they can't describe what is in front of them, and if the close their eyes they can't remember where something is and still pick it up like a normal person can. I'd highly recommend Consciousness and the Brain for an in-dpeth look at research in this area.
- glenstein 2y ago
  Right, and I think the key here is that we should be ready to see key elements we believe are necessary for conscious to be distributed across numerous systems, rather than uncovering a singular unitary thing. And so it's not a matter of "oh, this study only found XXX but it didn't find consciousness". But it might be that the process of coming to full empirical understanding is that we take an idea that used to be black-boxed, and open it up to find numerous particular mechanisms, numerous layers. Kind of like how originally we thought there was one Vitamin B but then came to learn there were numerous subclasses that were different in important ways.
  - Symmetry 2y ago
    That's true, but its also true that some connections might be reasonably said to be key for sensory information to find its way into working memory so I wouldn't dismiss the title.
glenstein 2y ago
>Personally, I find self-awareness the more fascinating area of study I know what you mean by that, and fundamentally I agree with the basic idea. But (!!!) I don't think the idea of self awareness is nearly so critical as its made out to be, and I think it gets conflated with the other thing, described as the something-its-like-to-be (SILTB) quality. I think outward, worldly awareness is enough, and whether or not a 'self' is among the things that fall into awareness (1) isn't strictly necessary, as that self might be backgrounded and unconscious, and (2) is sometimes just adopted as phrasing to indicate the presence of the SILTB quality even though I don't think it necessarily has anything to do with that.
taneq 2y ago
That’s my reading, arousal/somnolence as opposed to being insensate vs. sentience.

m3kw9 2y ago

One can be awake and still not be conscious

rytill 2y ago

Why do you find self-awareness to be the more fascinating area of study? It makes complete sense that something could be self-aware if it could be aware of anything at all. What more do you need to research/understand about self-awareness? It is far more interesting to me that there is “awakeness” to experience than that we can be aware of our selves (in the same way we can be aware of anything else). A complete understanding of sentience including its causes would be a far more satisfying and ethically impactful body of knowledge than a complete understanding of self-awareness (assuming they are not inextricably linked somehow).

DEADMINCE 2y ago
Awareness is just the basic state of most animal life, it has to be for it to function. It isn't particularly more interesting than a venus fly trap. Self-awareness is something altogether different. The ability to look inward and analyze oneself, to effect the environment rather than just be a part of it...these are massive departures from the norm, responsible for everything that makes humanity great and terrible. How could that not be the more fascinating area to study?
- rytill 2y ago
  Because while self-awareness may be fertile ground for interesting emergent behavior, it is not mysterious. There is no “hard problem of self-awareness”. We basically know what’s going on at the ground level. Whereas with sentience (awareness), we have no explanation for why any physical state is sentient rather than nonsentient. And since all that exists in our lives is our collection of sentient experiences of reality, this is a pretty big ethical question.
  - DEADMINCE 2y ago
    I think you have that mixed around. Basic awareness/consciousness/awareness is not especially notable or exciting, it's incredibly common and many aspects are well understood. Self-awareness, an actual consciousness and inner voice, is exceedingly rare and poorly understood, and I think it would therefore be significantly more fascination since so much is yet to be discovered and understood. > There is no “hard problem of self-awareness”. Well, there is. The type of consciousness being referred to in "Hard problem of consciousness" is of a type that would require self-awareness as a prerequisite to exist. It's almost synonymous with it. > Whereas with sentience (awareness), we have no explanation for why any physical state is sentient rather than nonsentient. You're using these terms in a way that seems unorthodox, but unless I'm misunderstanding your point, we do understand, the answer is brain development and evolution.
    - rytill 2y ago
      > You’re using these terms in a way that seems unorthodox I don’t think so - see https://chatgpt.com/share/507ca1a4-43a3-4b30-afaf-08273ed54dcd https://chatgpt.com/share/507ca1a4-43a3-4b30-afaf-08273ed54d... (I just tried once) This is of course not meant as proof or knowledge of any kind, but just that the way I’m using the words is what the “average” of how people in books and on the internet would use those words. I don’t understand how “evolution and brain development” cause sensations to arise. What part of our biology is the part directly producing sentience experience? How would you explain why we experience anything instead of nothing? Can we replicate it in a non-biological system?

b800h 2y ago

Yep. It does frustrate me that they use the term this way.

nicklecompte 2y ago
In the past we used the word "sentience" for this, but sci-fi confused "sentience" with "sapience," and now we have four terms that are meaningless, causing pointless arguments because different people interpret them in different ways. - consciousness - sentience - self-awareness - sapience (It really doesn't help that 3/4 these are too poorly-understood to even have a good formal definition.)
- glenstein 2y ago
  I'm okay to live and let live and not litigate differences here as long as usage is meaningful and contributes to precision (although it would be perfectly fair to insist that's exactly what's being lost here). I understand, for instance, that for some people there's an important difference between morality and ethics, but modern scholarship in meta-ethics that is perfectly up to speed on this vocabulary sees no benefit to policing that particular distinction.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

groestl 2y ago

Obligatory book recommendation in that regard "I Am a Strange Loop", by Douglas R. Hofstadter

denton-scratch 2y ago

> Just to confirm: this paper focuses on the 'awakeness' aspect of consciousness, not self-awareness That's how I read it. I'm interested in consciousness, but neither in terms of "self-awareness" or of "awakeness". Awakeness just means you aren't asleep. The term "self-awareness" implies awareness, which might be what's meant by consciousness, and it assumes there's a Self, which is a metaphysical concept, not susceptible to scientific invetigation.

DEADMINCE 2y ago
> The term "self-awareness" implies awareness, which might be what's meant by consciousness Well, most animals have awareness, but not self-awareness. > there's a Self, which is a metaphysical concept, not susceptible to scientific invetigation. That doesn't seem to be true at all. The idea of a self is very testable.
coldtea 2y ago
>and it assumes there's a Self, which is a metaphysical concept, not susceptible to scientific invetigation. I don't think this is correct. Not only because metaphysical concepts can still be suscpeptible to scientific investigation (as can e.g. time, reality, and so on. For example for reality "do we live in a simulation" could be something some scientists do try to determine), and because some metaphysical concepts just turned into practical concepts this way. But also because self-awareness and the concept of self can be defined in quite practical terms too (e.g. a higher level loop on top of regular thinking referencing the lower level, or similar ideas like in Hofstadter).
- denton-scratch 2y ago
  > But also because self-awareness and the concept of self can be defined in quite practical terms too (e.g. a higher level loop on top of regular thinking referencing the lower level, or similar ideas like in Hofstadter). I treasure my dog-eared copy of GEB. Having said that, Hofstadter sets out to argue for a "emergent phenomenon" explanation of consciousness, and I don't think his "loops within loops" argument works. It's not really an argument; it's finger-painting. He's trying to point in the direction of an argument (which is fine, even admirable; GEB is almost entirely concerned with allusion and suggestion. It's supposed to make you ask questions). It's quite easy to argue that the idea of a self (or the sense of being a self) is emergent, or an illusion; it's much harder to explain "idea" and "sense" in those terms, unless you resort to non-conscious[0] senses and non-conscious ideas. Basically, I agree that you can explain everything in terms of emergent phenonemena, except the subjectivity of consciousness/awareness. We experience it directly, we know it's real (it's the only thing we know!), and nobody has come up with a way of showing that it's real, or even saying what it is, or how we could show it's real. Dougie's loops are just a distraction. [0] I say "non-conscious" rather than "unconscious" because I don't want Freudian woo to intrude.

Symmetry 2y ago

Right, and not qualia either. I'ts a bit more complicated than just awakeness, though. If you flash an image on a screen for a very short period of time, you won't ever be able to remember what it said or be able to tell someone what it said, but it can still have a slight effect on your behavior for about a second. There is information that are senses are providing to our brain that never makes it to conscious awareness. Sometimes people have brain injuries that prevent the transfer of information from some parts of their brain to their consciousness. Someone with blindsight has an injury that prevents them from being consciously, in this sense, aware of their visual field. They can still pick up items in front of them when asked. But they can't describe what is in front of them, and if the close their eyes they can't remember where something is and still pick it up like a normal person can. I'd highly recommend Consciousness and the Brain for an in-dpeth look at research in this area.

glenstein 2y ago
Right, and I think the key here is that we should be ready to see key elements we believe are necessary for conscious to be distributed across numerous systems, rather than uncovering a singular unitary thing. And so it's not a matter of "oh, this study only found XXX but it didn't find consciousness". But it might be that the process of coming to full empirical understanding is that we take an idea that used to be black-boxed, and open it up to find numerous particular mechanisms, numerous layers. Kind of like how originally we thought there was one Vitamin B but then came to learn there were numerous subclasses that were different in important ways.
- Symmetry 2y ago
  That's true, but its also true that some connections might be reasonably said to be key for sensory information to find its way into working memory so I wouldn't dismiss the title.

glenstein 2y ago

>Personally, I find self-awareness the more fascinating area of study I know what you mean by that, and fundamentally I agree with the basic idea. But (!!!) I don't think the idea of self awareness is nearly so critical as its made out to be, and I think it gets conflated with the other thing, described as the something-its-like-to-be (SILTB) quality. I think outward, worldly awareness is enough, and whether or not a 'self' is among the things that fall into awareness (1) isn't strictly necessary, as that self might be backgrounded and unconscious, and (2) is sometimes just adopted as phrasing to indicate the presence of the SILTB quality even though I don't think it necessarily has anything to do with that.

taneq 2y ago

That’s my reading, arousal/somnolence as opposed to being insensate vs. sentience.