A solution to the hard problem of consciousness

Is the mind the same as the body? What is consciousness? Can machines have it?

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MozartLink
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A solution to the hard problem of consciousness

Post by MozartLink »

Awareness is the source of experience. You can be pure awareness without any experiences. You can have no thoughts, no feelings, and no sensations and yet still be aware. So you can have awareness without any other experiences, but you cannot have any experience at all without awareness.

When you put a person under anesthesia and they lose their conscious awareness, then if you were to stimulate areas of their brain responsible for smell, taste, etc., then would they experience any of that?

So if awareness is the source of experience and since the brain is a series of billions of neurons all wired together, then awareness itself would have to be wired to all of those neurons so that stimulation of those neurons takes on the form of a certain awareness (i.e. a certain feeling, smell, or sensation).

Going back to my example with the person under anesthesia, if you can stimulate parts of the brain while the person is out, but that person cannot experience any of it, then this would mean that all this stimulation takes on the form of nothing but physical activity in the brain.

But that activity would take on the form of certain awarenesses of touch, smell, taste, etc. when his/her conscious awareness is turned on. The question of the hard problem of consciousness is how the brain generates experience. So my personal answer to that would be through awareness.

If we know how the brain generates awareness, then we can know from there how that awareness gets connected to all the other neurons and generates experience.
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Bill Wiltrack
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Re: A solution to the hard problem of consciousness

Post by Bill Wiltrack »

.





I know a human being cannot exist one second without impressions.


I know you did not use the word impression but experience seems a bit too general for the type of philosophical argument you put forward.


So, I don't think you even came close to any type of solution even if an individual perceived consciousness as a problem.





Just - in a general sense, your original thread was more than a bit confusing or non-focused...IMHO.








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Ginkgo
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Re: A solution to the hard problem of consciousness

Post by Ginkgo »

MozartLink wrote:Awareness is the source of experience. You can be pure awareness without any experiences. You can have no thoughts, no feelings, and no sensations and yet still be aware. So you can have awareness without any other experiences, but you cannot have any experience at all without awareness.
Chalmers would probably say that if we are aware then we must experience our environment.
MozartLink wrote: When you put a person under anesthesia and they lose their conscious awareness, then if you were to stimulate areas of their brain responsible for smell, taste, etc., then would they experience any of that?
We wouldn't experience anything because our consciousness has been taken away
MozartLink wrote: Going back to my example with the person under anesthesia, if you can stimulate parts of the brain while the person is out, but that person cannot experience any of it, then this would mean that all this stimulation takes on the form of nothing but physical activity in the brain.

But that activity would take on the form of certain awarenesses of touch, smell, taste, etc. when his/her conscious awareness is turned on. The question of the hard problem of consciousness is how the brain generates experience. So my personal answer to that would be through awareness.
What you have is pretty much a physicalist/materialist theory of consciousness. The hard problem of conscious is a dualistic theory so it is not compatible with a purely physical explanation for consciousness. The hard problem can simply be stated as, "How and why do we have experience?"
MozartLink wrote: If we know how the brain generates awareness, then we can know from there how that awareness gets connected to all the other neurons and generates experience.
How the brain generates awareness is important for a theory of consciousness. In other words, what kinds of things can enter into experience. Most of what goes on in the brain is unattended. It is when we decide to attend that we are consciously aware.
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Trajk Logik
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Re: A solution to the hard problem of consciousness

Post by Trajk Logik »

MozartLink wrote:Awareness is the source of experience. You can be pure awareness without any experiences. You can have no thoughts, no feelings, and no sensations and yet still be aware. So you can have awareness without any other experiences, but you cannot have any experience at all without awareness.
Right of the bat, you aren't making any sense. If you can have no thoughts, no feelings, and no sensations, yet still be aware, then what would you be aware of? To be aware without being aware of something doesn't make any sense. To be aware means that there must be something to be aware of. What would it be like to be aware but not be aware of anything? To even be aware of your own thoughts means that your thoughts must consist of something in order to aware of them. If not, then how do you even know that you are aware? Consciousness, awareness and experience are all terms with essentially the same meaning.
MozartLink wrote:When you put a person under anesthesia and they lose their conscious awareness, then if you were to stimulate areas of their brain responsible for smell, taste, etc., then would they experience any of that?
Of course not. They also wouldn't be aware of it either. It means the same thing.
MozartLink wrote:So if awareness is the source of experience and since the brain is a series of billions of neurons all wired together, then awareness itself would have to be wired to all of those neurons so that stimulation of those neurons takes on the form of a certain awareness (i.e. a certain feeling, smell, or sensation).

Going back to my example with the person under anesthesia, if you can stimulate parts of the brain while the person is out, but that person cannot experience any of it, then this would mean that all this stimulation takes on the form of nothing but physical activity in the brain.

But that activity would take on the form of certain awarenesses of touch, smell, taste, etc. when his/her conscious awareness is turned on. The question of the hard problem of consciousness is how the brain generates experience. So my personal answer to that would be through awareness.

If we know how the brain generates awareness, then we can know from there how that awareness gets connected to all the other neurons and generates experience.
But a brain under anesthesia is different than a brain that isn't. The "physical" activity in a brain with anesthesia is different than the activity in a brain that has no anesthesia. A brain with anesthesia has no consciousness - or no information architecture made up of sensory symbols for attention (a central executive) to attend to. So many people seem to ignore the attention as a necessary component of consciousness which is the part that directs the focus within consciousness - amplifying certain sensory sensations over others for some purpose (goal-oriented behavior).

I think the hard problem is the result of the failures of dualism. "Physical" and "mental" are categories of different processes, not different substances themselves. If they were different substances then we'd need a fool-proof theory of how theses two distinct substances interact, and no dualist has every been able to come up with a satisfactory answer. There must be one substance (and what we call it doesn't matter as long as we don't call it "physical" nor "mental" as these two are already used to define different kinds of processes, not substances) that interacts and the different ways of interacting is the result of the complexity of the interactions that occur over an enormous amount of space and time. A possible name for this substance is "information". Everything is information.
Scott Mayers
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Re: A solution to the hard problem of consciousness

Post by Scott Mayers »

Beginning with how I interpret 'truth' via a thread on that now at Re: What is truth?,

the extension of 'consciousness' is the simultaneous link of coinciding data of some set of things that are identical in form and present behavior.

The 'feeling' of being AWARE, is actually these distinct identical parts (our neurons) behaving in SYNC....THAT require a common link in space that confirms this.

Oddly, the 'confirmation' part occurs a moment later than the simultaneous events. So the 'confirmation' works BACKWARDS in time. That is, in order to 'feel' aware, it isn't simply enough for these parts to be in sync but to require the real possibility of MEETING UP with each other later in time by some spacial connection.
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Greta
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Re: A solution to the hard problem of consciousness

Post by Greta »

Trajk Logik wrote:
MozartLink wrote:Awareness is the source of experience. You can be pure awareness without any experiences. You can have no thoughts, no feelings, and no sensations and yet still be aware. So you can have awareness without any other experiences, but you cannot have any experience at all without awareness.
Right of the bat, you aren't making any sense. If you can have no thoughts, no feelings, and no sensations, yet still be aware, then what would you be aware of? To be aware without being aware of something doesn't make any sense. To be aware means that there must be something to be aware of. What would it be like to be aware but not be aware of anything?
I think he was referring to the sense of "I am", regardless of external stimuli. Some patients report in near death experiences of feeling like they were in a complete void, with no body, nothing. Just present in a void (seemingly inevitably rescued by a bright light). It's usually reported as a disturbing feeling and it's certainly not sustainable.

If one was in such a state - essentially consciousness within nothing - for any appreciable time (like a more extreme version of spending an extended period in an isolation tank) then the mind would break down, a more extreme version of the mental effects of extended solitary confinement in prisons.

As a mind in a (subjective) void, there would be nothing to motivate or stimulate thought. No point to anything. No new inputs, just the fast-degrading processes of a disappearing mind running in ever more faulty circles until it collapses in on itself. The body, when denied food for extended periods, starts to eat itself (starting with the muscles). Minds appear to do similarly. Without input the only information for the mind to "consume" are its current contents and extrapolations from those contents (perhaps the mental equivalent of ketosis - glucose products produced by the body that are consumed by a brain going into starvation mode).
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Trajk Logik
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Re: A solution to the hard problem of consciousness

Post by Trajk Logik »

Greta wrote:
Trajk Logik wrote:
MozartLink wrote:Awareness is the source of experience. You can be pure awareness without any experiences. You can have no thoughts, no feelings, and no sensations and yet still be aware. So you can have awareness without any other experiences, but you cannot have any experience at all without awareness.
Right of the bat, you aren't making any sense. If you can have no thoughts, no feelings, and no sensations, yet still be aware, then what would you be aware of? To be aware without being aware of something doesn't make any sense. To be aware means that there must be something to be aware of. What would it be like to be aware but not be aware of anything?
I think he was referring to the sense of "I am", regardless of external stimuli. Some patients report in near death experiences of feeling like they were in a complete void, with no body, nothing. Just present in a void (seemingly inevitably rescued by a bright light). It's usually reported as a disturbing feeling and it's certainly not sustainable.
In order to arrive at the notion, "I am" you must be aware of something. If not, then what does "I" and "am" refer to? You are saying that they are aware of a void and then a bright light. So they are having a visual experience which provides them information about where they are (in a void) and what is close by (a bright light). In other words they are aware of something - they are having an experience of being somewhere and seeing a bright light.
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Greta
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Re: A solution to the hard problem of consciousness

Post by Greta »

Trajk Logik wrote:In order to arrive at the notion, "I am" you must be aware of something. If not, then what does "I" and "am" refer to? You are saying that they are aware of a void and then a bright light. So they are having a visual experience which provides them information about where they are (in a void) and what is close by (a bright light). In other words they are aware of something - they are having an experience of being somewhere and seeing a bright light.
It's subjective. Obviously the person is on a hospital bed, but some report being in a complete void for a time, without even a body. If that persisted while a person was in a coma, the mind could not survive anyway. To what end would it even try, aside from perhaps trying to make sense of life in retrospective without distractions before it disappears.
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Jacobsladder
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Re: A solution to the hard problem of consciousness

Post by Jacobsladder »

Hi Greta,

Would you say the coma patient was at least being aware of the void, was experiencing "voidness" of some kind? In any case, memories of the sensations clearly were being registered somewhere as it was reported on later. Memory would imply some signal or symbol to induce the registration.

Not sure why you think coma means "no mind". Are you confusing it perhaps with "brain-dead"? Recovering coma patients have generally lots to report although each case seems different. And there are some levels of coma state as well.

Ideally, for the notion of a complete, pure void to work, no memory of it can be the case. Perhaps the notion time has passed afterwards? That said, we could discuss the void as a level of little disturbance or a lack of all the daily "noise" and chatter. It might feel, relatively, as some utmost quiet and undisturbed state. The question could be: how undisturbed is such state really?
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Terrapin Station
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Re: A solution to the hard problem of consciousness

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MozartLink wrote:You can be pure awareness without any experiences. You can have no thoughts, no feelings, and no sensations and yet still be aware.
I don't buy either of those statements.
if you were to stimulate areas of their brain responsible for smell, taste, etc., then would they experience any of that?
Not if they're not conscious. That doesn't mean that they might not be able to recall that information later. But it wasn't an experience if they weren't conscious.
the brain is a series of billions of neurons all wired together,
The brain isn't just neurons. It's worth reading at least one neuroscience textbook if you're interested in doing philosophy about this topic, by the way.
then awareness itself would have to be wired to all of those neurons so that stimulation of those neurons takes on the form of a certain awareness (i.e. a certain feeling, smell, or sensation).
Consciousness is just brain states, but it doesn't follow from that that any stimulation of parts of the brain amount to awareness or experience. The brain has to be in specific states for awareness/experience to obtain. You could stimulate parts of the brain associated with olfactory recognition, etc., without awareness/experience obtaining. When awareness/experience obtain at a later time, one might be able to access the information gained via stimulation of olfactory centers, but that doesn't imply that the stimulation was sufficient for awareness/experience/consciousness/any-sort-of-mentality.

You could think of it this way. Imagine that an office could be in a state where it broadcasts a TV signal that someone can receive in a distant location (and no, I'm not saying that consciousness works as if broadcasting somewhere else; the analogy is just some overall state that the office can be in). Part of that state can include the contents of a particular filing cabinet--that's often included in the broadcast. However, if the office is NOT in a state where it's broadcasting, we can still access that filing cabinet, we can change its contents, etc. That we're doing that wouldn't imply that the office is in the "broadcasting" state. However, when the office IS later in the "broadcasting" state, the changed contents of that filing cabinet can be part of it.
Going back to my example with the person under anesthesia, if you can stimulate parts of the brain while the person is out, but that person cannot experience any of it, then this would mean that all this stimulation takes on the form of nothing but physical activity in the brain.

But that activity would take on the form of certain awarenesses of touch, smell, taste, etc. when his/her conscious awareness is turned on. The question of the hard problem of consciousness is how the brain generates experience. So my personal answer to that would be through awareness.

If we know how the brain generates awareness, then we can know from there how that awareness gets connected to all the other neurons and generates experience.
It's simply that awareness/experience/consciousness/etc. is a more complex, overall state of the brain that doesn't always obtain. It's like the office overall being in a "broadcast" state rather than just parts of it--like a filing cabinet--being in a particular state. The filing cabinet can be part of the overall state, but the filing cabinet isn't identical to the overall state.
Last edited by Terrapin Station on Sun Oct 30, 2016 1:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: A solution to the hard problem of consciousness

Post by Terrapin Station »

Trajk Logik wrote: "Physical" and "mental" are categories of different processes, not different substances themselves.
I'd say different perspectives or "reference points," not different processes.

It's simply the properties that manifest from a first-person versus a third-person perspective.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: A solution to the hard problem of consciousness

Post by Terrapin Station »

Greta wrote:
Trajk Logik wrote:In order to arrive at the notion, "I am" you must be aware of something. If not, then what does "I" and "am" refer to? You are saying that they are aware of a void and then a bright light. So they are having a visual experience which provides them information about where they are (in a void) and what is close by (a bright light). In other words they are aware of something - they are having an experience of being somewhere and seeing a bright light.
It's subjective. Obviously the person is on a hospital bed, but some report being in a complete void for a time, without even a body. If that persisted while a person was in a coma, the mind could not survive anyway. To what end would it even try, aside from perhaps trying to make sense of life in retrospective without distractions before it disappears.
What I suspect is going on in those cases is that the person has awareness but can't access linguistic abilities, concepts or memory very well, if at all. So basically consciousness is occurring without being able to contextualize it at all--which is quite disorienting and which can be frightening/catalyze feelings of panic. It would be akin to feeling like you're losing your mind/your self/your "grip" on things.
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Greta
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Re: A solution to the hard problem of consciousness

Post by Greta »

Terrapin Station wrote:
Greta wrote:
Trajk Logik wrote:In order to arrive at the notion, "I am" you must be aware of something. If not, then what does "I" and "am" refer to? You are saying that they are aware of a void and then a bright light. So they are having a visual experience which provides them information about where they are (in a void) and what is close by (a bright light). In other words they are aware of something - they are having an experience of being somewhere and seeing a bright light.
It's subjective. Obviously the person is on a hospital bed, but some report being in a complete void for a time, without even a body. If that persisted while a person was in a coma, the mind could not survive anyway. To what end would it even try, aside from perhaps trying to make sense of life in retrospective without distractions before it disappears.
What I suspect is going on in those cases is that the person has awareness but can't access linguistic abilities, concepts or memory very well, if at all. So basically consciousness is occurring without being able to contextualize it at all--which is quite disorienting and which can be frightening/catalyze feelings of panic. It would be akin to feeling like you're losing your mind/your self/your "grip" on things.
I don't know the mechanics of it. My understanding is that they are still thinking, but they are temporarily in absolute blackness and quietness and without sensation. The patients seemingly remember the words in their heads at the time, just that there was no external stimuli at all.

I suppose that's akin to being a theoretical brain in a jar before it's been wired up. Some report this subjective void as comfortable and pleasant, others are afraid, so emotions are also still functioning. Your guess about fading memory seems to accord with fairly common reports of the ilk, "my old life already seemed far away", although that my be an emotional affect from the stark realisation that there's nothing more you can do in your life.
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