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> 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
by 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.
- glenstein 2y agoMade the point better than I could. Also I would just contribute that a long line of anti-science apologism has taken the form of declaring that certain concepts are beyond the reach of scientific investigation. Evolution, human nature as understood in evolutionary terms, orbital mechanics past a certain point of Newtonian modeling, anaesthesia, etc.
- NayamAmarshe 2y agoTime is not exclusively a metaphysical concept, the perception of time is. Reality, again is a very vague word in physics. One definition is, real is that which always is, not that which is not. Material nature is subject to constant change, there is nothing in the material universe that is immovable, unchanging and eternally static and stable. Eastern philosophy describes the reality as the 'Self', the self is eternally existing without a causation but this Self, the observer, requires an observation and hence the concept of material nature comes into place to justify the existence of the observer but the Self is mutually exclusive to the material nature. The Self is not an manifestation of the material nature, otherwise it would be ever changing, like material nature. For science to explain consciousness, it has to drop the idea of a controlled experiment. You cannot empirically verify certain thing to be true, this is what metaphysics is for.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoObjectively self-awareness is just inner-awareness vs outer-awareness - what you might consider as another sense, but where the sensory inputs are parts of the brain rather than external (eye, ear, etc). So, the watcher and the watched are both the same - the brain. The "self" is just a psychological construct - the actor behind our actions, which in fact is just the brain. This is just the way our brain has evolved to understand/predict an evolutionary landscape full of autonomous agents, who we need to model to predict their behavior. There's no fundamental difference between "self" (my-self) and "you" (your-self) - our brain observes some (inner or outer) entity as a causal entity, and models it.
- raincom 2y agoSelf-awareness = awareness of oneself. The moment one thinks, feels in terms of "I think, I feel, I see, I hear, etc".
- denton-scratch 2y agoYes, of course. I think I was suggesting that "awareness" and "consciousness" could be considered to be synonyms. If that's correct, then you can't use self-awareness as evidence of consciousness, because it begs the question (i.e. circular reasoning).