The content of your own experience, too, is constructed from inference, as is the ‘you’ who experiences. What we can be certain of is the faculty of consciousness - awareness with. Anything else is inference. — Possibility

I'd like to believe that. It would make my philosophical and psychological position on this question easier to defend. The problem is that I do recognize my own personal experience. There's a movie playing in my head with sound and a script. I'm also here talking to myself about what is going on and what I think about what is going on and what I think about my experience of what is going on.

I sometimes feel that I should be reading Kant and Schopenhauer, and I have read portions of their writings. When I do read the philosophers I try to do so as if I was meeting them as individuals, as great minds to learn from. — Jack Cummins

I want to make clear that I don't deny the value of these writers. I think I used to, but I have met people who were saved by Kant, Dante, or other classical writer. I mean that seriously, if not entirely literally. I find it moving to read about the differences those authors made in people's lives. I recognize the value, it's just not my way.

How important is our reading as the foundation for philosophical explorations? — Jack Cummins

Again, I'll bring out one of my favorite quotes from Franz Kafka:

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

The world is right there for us to see. It's not hiding. We don't necessarily need other people to show us the way. I carry a model of the world around inside me - Whatever was there before I was born plus 69 years of experience, learning, reading, thinking, watching... When a question comes up, it's the model I go to for answers.

That's not to say reading and learning isn't important. I have ideas about how the world works that are wrong, either because I don't have the right information or because I've come to the wrong conclusions. There are also lots of aspects of the world I don't know about. And then there are issues I haven't thought through.

As for reading philosophy, I find that most of it leaves me empty. The experiences and understandings that Kant, Plato, Schopenhauer, and all those guys write about are not the experiences and understandings I have. They take something I see as pretty simple and make it much more convoluted. On the other hand, Lao Tzu speaks to me in a profound way - the universe in 81 verses and 5,000 words.

Doesn’t this destroy the subjectivity of consciousness, the very essence of awareness? — Joshs

I think that subjectivity is the so-called hard problem. I don't see it as a problem. There is only one subjective experience in my universe - mine. Everyone else's is just an inference from observations and analogy. Looking at my own experience, I don't see it as particularly mysterious. It's just what happens when I talk about myself to myself and then talk about talking to myself to myself ....

The only difficulty which I have with your definitions are that they are a bit too precise and rigid. — Jack Cummins

When I start out with a definition, I try to use the common, everyday way a word is used perhaps adding scientific or philosophical shading. In order to do that, I usually take two definitions from on-line dictionaries and one from Wikipedia. You're right, that process tends to leave out some of the nuance. That's what the follow up discussion is for.

I think that you may have made it too neat and tidy, with no blurry or hazy borders at all. We probably would not be able to agree fully on a definition at all on the forum. This is because trying to do so cannot be separated entirely from the questions about the nature of consciousness, which is one of the most central recurrent problems, or themes, within philosophy. — Jack Cummins

I agree completely. I never expected that we would really resolve a definition or even definitions. I just wanted to get the choices out on the table. At least, next time I get involved in a discussion, I'll have an idea of what I'm trying to say. I'll also know some questions to ask about what others are trying to say.

This has been a very satisfying discussion for me and I hope for others.

How does one define behavior — Joshs

Good question. Maybe "behavior" is the wrong word. I guess I mean any observable or measurable act or response that can be used to infer an internal state. Speech, conscious action, reflexive action, autonomic response, PET scan observation, and lots more.

Way back at the beginning I told @Jack Cummins I wanted to talk about the subconscious and unconscious. I am very aware that there are parts of my mind which are not normally connected to my experience of myself. Some of that is not really relevant to this discussion, e.g. the part of my mind that keeps me breathing without me paying attention. Other aspects are directly related to my behavior and experience. I'll start out, as is my wont, with some definitions:

Subconsciousness:

• Of or concerning the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one's actions and feelings
• The totality of mental processes of which the individual is not aware; unreportable mental activities
• In psychology, the subconscious is the part of the mind that is not currently in focal awareness.

Unconsciousness:

• The part of the mind which is inaccessible to the conscious mind but which affects behavior and emotions
• The part of mental life that does not ordinarily enter the individual's awareness yet may influence behavior and perception or be revealed (as in slips of the tongue or in dreams)
• The unconscious mind (or the unconscious) consists of the processes in the mind which occur automatically and are not available to introspection and include thought processes, memories, interests and motivations. Even though these processes exist well under the surface of conscious awareness, they are theorized to exert an effect on behavior.

They seem pretty similar, although the subconscious appears, in general, to be closer to the surface.

The subconscious or unconscious, whichever term we want to use, is important to my understanding of mind and human action. For me, much of human motivation and action comes from a place which is not available to my normal experience of myself. It comes into my awareness from somewhere else. I have described it as a spring where feelings and actions bubble to the surface from below, inside.

I don't want to sidetrack things with this, but I wanted to at least get it down on paper so to speak. No need for this to go any further unless people want to. If there is any further discussion, I'd like to keep it to the main thrust of this thread.

But some materialists seem to argue that because our minds - or the illusion of our minds - rise from solely from matter and are pre-determined by it, there really is no "question or mystery of consciouness" or, even, "real" consciousness or mind at all. How this follows, I don't exactly understand. — hwyl

I believe part of this - I don't think there is any mystery of consciousness. Consciousness is a behavior. I don't think that means that consciousness and mind don't exist. The experience is interesting and important, but I think it's more philosophy than science. Do I really believe that? ..... Yes, I think I do.

But consciousness is recognised by empirical evidence or observations, and more recently defined as a perceived/known capacity or potential - in self and in others. We commonly refer in these instances to an awareness of certain aspects in experience or what is evident, rather than to the faculty itself. — Possibility

I’m just thinking out loud here, and it may not make a lot of sense - but if we try to bring this back to T Clark’s discussion of the ‘experience’ aspect of consciousness, then perhaps the important point becomes how we understand this shift from awareness with to awareness of. — Possibility

I agree with the first statement. I'm trying to work out how to handle the subject of the second. I want to say that the experience is not central, since we mostly know consciousness or awareness by observing behavior. As I noted in an earlier post, there really is only one experience in my universe - mine. Anything else is inference. Maybe even anthropomorphism. Or maybe T Clarkpomorphism.

It sometimes seem to me that trying to parse the idea of consciousness is like trying to understand what Spinoza meant by God. — Tom Storm

All I know is that things are getting more complicated as this thread goes on. Which I guess isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm really enjoying this.

Well, I think they actually are; but given that it is your thread and you are so adamant, i'll let it go for now. — Banno

I was mostly just trying to stop the bicker-battle.

I've considerable sympathy for the method you wish to use, it being not dissimilar to that of J. L. Austin. — Banno

So the term carried with it a mutuality.

Consciousness is not private. — Banno

I think you're the first one in this thread to bring up the fact that consciousness is social. In a recent response I noted that the only way we know that other people have the experience of consciousness is by observing their behavior. That's not the same thing though.

Well, yes, an infant would not hold abstracted ideas regarding their innate awareness of self via which other is discerned. And if that is how one chooses to understand what "consciousness" refers to then infants hold no consciousness. — javra

Joshs has pointed out that my view of infant awareness may be a bit naive:

There has been a fair amount of work in recent years on what has been called a pre-reflective form of minimal self-awareness. Dan Zahavi has made this his central focus, but there is growing concensus that all experience presupposes some primitive sense of self. Infants have been shown to differentiate self from others. — Joshs

ns of "mine", as in what we linguistically address as my thirst, my pleasure or pain, my affinity to familiar voices, and so forth--this even if its associating these personal states of self to stimuli takes time. And, in so doing, I offer that an infant holds an ingrained awareness of self, hence a degree of self-awareness without which it (the infant) would literally perish. — javra

Joshs provided a link to Zahavi's papers. Here it is again

The following are all available free here:

https://ku-dk.academia.edu/DanZahavi

Zhavi: We in Me or Me in We? Collective Intentionality and Selfhood. March 2021 Journal of
Social Ontology

Zahavi: Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective.2005

Zahavi: ‘Is the Self a Social Construct’, Inquiry, Vol. 52, No. 6, 551–573,

Zahavi Consciousness and (minimal) selfhood: Getting clearer on for-me-ness and mineness
U. Kriegel (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness.
Oxford University Press, 2019 — Joshs

I'm going to take a look and see how it changes my thinking.

Take an animal, maybe a bat, maybe a lizard. They likely have experience, they are aware of things in the world: prey, food, shelter and the like. I am skeptical that such creatures would have "self awareness" as opposed to awareness.

What is added by self-awareness that is absent in experience? The apparent fact that one is aware that it is oneself that is having the experience, not another person nor another creature. — Manuel

Yes, this is at the heart of things for me, although I don't think that's true for some other people. If, as you noted before, experience is the important factor, how far down the ladder of neurological complexity does it go? If we go down far enough, it just becomes sentience. I think dogs probably experience things. Have you ever seen a dog dream? Do all mammals? Fish? I don't know. Ants? I guess not but I'm not sure.

Are you familiar with the original paper, which is here http://consc.net/papers/facing.html — Wayfarer

I read the paper. I'm not sure if I would change anything I've said based on what I read, but I do have some thoughts. First - Chalmers is talking about consciousness as an experience, which I did not emphasize in my OP or subsequent posts. @Manuel and @hwyl called me out on that. For Chalmers, the hard problem is experience - what it feels like.

Chalmers also listed what he called the easy problems of consciousness, generally those which can be solved even if they haven't been so far. I thought they were interesting and possibly helpful in our discussion. Here they are:

• the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;
• the integration of information by a cognitive system;
• the reportability of mental states;
• the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
• the focus of attention;
• the deliberate control of behavior;
• the difference between wakefulness and sleep.

This is worth some thought. I must admit I'm not much interested in the experience of consciousness from a scientific or philosophical perspective. It doesn't seem that important to me. For me, consciousness is a behavior. We know it the way we know other human and animal behaviors - by observing it, including what the person says about it when that is available. There really is only one experience of consciousness in my universe - mine. Yes, yes. of course I believe other people experience it too, but that's because I've observed their behavior. This list from Chalmers identifies at least some of the behaviors related to consciousness that we can observe. He acknowledges that.

Thanks for pushing me to read the paper.

The following are all available free here: — Joshs

Thanks. I'll take a look.

The fallacy fallacy: The mistake of thinking/inferring that the conclusion of an argument is false because it contains a fallacy. — TheMadFool

This probably isn't what you were had in mind, but I think many of the arguments identified as logical fallacies are legitimate arguments. Example - appeal to authority. I believe that the general relativity is a correct method for describing gravity because Einstein and many other physicists say so.

So my question is: what makes Tom's justification method to be superior to Sam's justification method? Or in other words, why Tom is more justified to believe "it is called outside" then Sam? — Curious Layman

The level of justification needed by Tom and Sam is very low. I they're wrong, they've dressed conservatively, so they will not be cold. If it's too warm, they can take off their jackets. They can both also easily come back in the house and change if needed. Both Tom and Sam are are adequately justified in their beliefs. For either to put in additional effort to be more sure would probably be a waste of effort.

Dalit — Banno

Daleks? Geez. And they say we have problems.

There has been a fair amount of work in recent years on what has been called a pre-reflective form of minimal self-awareness. Dan Zahavi has made this his central focus, but there is growing concensus that all experience presupposes some primitive sense of self. Infants have been shown to differentiate self from others. — Joshs

Do you have a source for this? A link?

Just tripped across an article in "Discover" - "Can Plants Feel Pain?" Thought people might be interested. Here's a link.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/can-plants-feel-pain

Rather than address specific comments, I'll just say this - the meanings of consciousness @Banno is talking about are not those I intended to discuss in this thread. Here are the meanings Banno identified:

1 aware of and responding to one's surroundings: although I was in pain, I was conscious.

2 having knowledge of something: we are conscious of the extent of the problem.
• [in combination] concerned with or worried about a particular matter: they were growing increasingly security-conscious.

3 (of an action or feeling) deliberate and intentional: a conscious effort to walk properly.
• (of the mind or a thought) directly perceptible to and under the control of the person concerned: when you go to sleep it is only the conscious mind which shuts down.

Again, these meanings are not those this thread were intended to discuss. You say it isn't clear, although no one except Banno and you have had any trouble understanding. Now it should be clear.

It’s an ambiguous term, says Chalmers. This is before he sprinkled in a little experience, feelings, and quality to make it worse. But it becomes more and more apparent that the “consciousness” he speaks of is the organism itself. So when he says “It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience”, he is descending into tautology. — NOS4A2

I haven't read Chalmer's paper. I need to do that.

Not to be glib, but in a word or so, consciousness is a mystery. You know kinda like God, cosmology, mathematics, music, and whole host of other things found in living structures. — 3017amen

I don't think it is a mystery. I think most of the confusion comes from a lack of imagination. People can't help but think that consciousness is something special and that we need to identify special sources for it.

Strict materialists often make the argument that we are essentially machines, that there is very little authentic base for awareness or mind or consciousness (some of this is based on study of brain functions). But thinking of machines, say cars, do they ever wonder if they are basically machines? If we are, we are quite a peculiar kind of machines with tendency to self-doubt and capability for ferocious arguments whether we actually are "just" machines. This would seem somewhat strange behaviour for a car or a hairdryer etc. — hwyl

I don't see that a materialist viewpoint can not be used to address questions of consciousness and self-awareness. We are just machines that manufacture self-awareness. That self-awareness is actually a byproduct we use to achieve our true goal - to manufacturer copies of ourselves.

Self-awareness becomes redundant it is specifies an innate distinction between self and other, an innate awareness of selfhood in this sense. An ameba will hold awareness of this distinction, but we do not say it is self-aware. Lesser vertebrates can become unconscious—e.g., due to sedatives—but when conscious we likewise don’t consider them self-aware in the senses defined in the OP. Defining consciousness by self-awareness, as self-awareness was specified in the OP, constrains “consciousness” strictly to critters that can not only conceptualize information but, additionally, can conceptualize information about (and thereby hold abstract knowledge of) their personal innate awareness of their own selfhood via which other is discerned — javra

I think you're getting to the heart of it. I actually like "self-awareness" more than "consciousness" to describe the phenomena we're talking about, but "consciousness" is the word used most often by others. People don't talk about the hard problem of self-awareness. I wonder if they did it would help get rid of some of the confusion and disagreement.

So, in equating consciousness to self-awareness, one would be forced to state that human infants hold no consciousness. This being something I’m personally very adverse to doing. If, however, consciousness is equated to awareness, then human infants and lesser animals can all be conscious (again, in contrast to being unconscious). But, in so defining, then unicellular organisms can then be deemed conscious as well, since they hold awareness of things, including of that which is other relative to themselves—and, hence, of themselves relative to that which is other. — javra

Human infants are clearly sentient. They have experiences. They have attention and awareness. It is my understanding that young infants have to learn the difference between what is part of them and what is outside. Wouldn't that mean they are not conscious, again, in the sense we are talking about it. As for other animals, as you move down it becomes more and more questionable that what we see is consciousness. In what sense do bacteria have experiences. It's not clear to me they are aware.

So that's what I propose. We use experience in this broad sense to refer to conscious goings-on. Everything else that is not part of experience at this moment (minus other people who one assumes have experience too) would be non-experiential.

I find it useful. Consciousness tends to have a lot of baggage attached. Experience is a bit less ambiguous. — Manuel

Yes, I agree. The aspect of consciousness I set out to examine is the experience. If I had added that to my list of words in the OP, it might have made it easier for us to keep on target.

I have found "experience" a useful term - we have the experience of being in the world. We are not directly in the world, we experience it and thus are at least somewhat removed from it. There is a space there, a distance. This self-understanding of being in the middle of the act of experiencing the world seems like awareness to me. — hwyl

You're right, experience is a good word in the context of this discussion. Perhaps I should have included it in my list. It helps differentiate between different meanings of "consciousness" and focuses on the type of thing consciousness is. "Consciousness" does not only mean an experience, but that's the aspect of the word I want to examine in this thread.

We all know what consciousness “is” because we all experience it (supposedly), but the problem with experience, is that experience is subjective and may not be conveyed to others, outside of the use of abstract language. — Present awareness

And this is why I started this discussion, to help give us common language to discuss this issue.

I do get a bit triggered when people don't respect the OP. Otherwise every thread becomes the same free for all for people's opinions on whatever they want to sound off about. A bit of discipline and focus would be really nice. Then each thread would have a proper subject. Banno knows better and is capable of staying on topic, but chooses not to. — bert1

I try to be considerate in my posts and make sure I am discussing the issues raised in the OP. I appreciate it when others do the same for me. Thank you.

As in, if I say consciousness is to be defined as what-it's-like to be something and someone replies "that's no good, you can't be a rock. Also, can you tell me what it's like to be a bat?" Then we simply get stuck in discussing the definition as opposed to the phenomena. — Manuel

But this thread is specifically intended to discuss the definition as opposed to the phenomena. That way, theoretically, possibly, one hopes, we can avoid focusing on the definition as opposed to the phenomena in future discussions.

I see why you may want to clarify these terms. I'm not sure how useful it's going to be. The simpler the definition the better. Consciousness can be said to be awareness. Self consciousness means awareness of one's being aware. And so on. But defining a term says little about the phenomenon. — Manuel

Yes, there are different meanings of "consciousness," but I think I've been clear. I'm talking about a particular meaning or meanings related to a particular usage, i.e. the discussions we have here on the forum. I'm looking for the language to use in those discussions to make what I am trying to communicate clear to other participants.

Best, not only. It's the one that is clearest; the one with which no one will disagree... — Banno

But, as you are aware, it's not the one I set out to discuss. It is not relevant to the question at hand.

This understanding of consciousness may be the best we have, but I am only saying that I don't think it is helpful to try to exclude all other usages of the term, because some people may be using it differently. — Jack Cummins

Yes, I agree.

It's not about a single definition but about seeing examples of it in practice. The people involved.
The whole human experience. — Amity

Except that it's not. I've tried to be clear. I want to talk about the meaning of "consciousness" in the sense it is used when one says "the hard problem of consciousness."

I'm afraid that I am having a problem with you wishing to narrow down the idea of consciousness to that of a first aid test. — Jack Cummins

I think Banno is being intentionally contrarian.

Neither of them seem to know who the current Prime Minister is. It's not looking good. — bert1

Depends on where the accident is. Here in the US, no one knows who the British Prime Minister is. Is it still Gordon Brown?

Not so much meaningless as wrong. — Banno

I agree, but there are some who believe that inanimate objects are conscious. When we get in those kinds of conversations, I just want to make sure everyone is talking about the same phenomenon.

Thinkers within philosophy and other disciplines may use the term consciousness in differing ways, and surely, thinking about it should not be reduced to one way of seeing it. — Jack Cummins

You're right, there are many meanings for "consciousness," but I am trying to focus in on one particular aspect, which I don't think has anything to do with first aid training. I know you understand that.

At first glance, this can look absurd. — Amity

I think @Banno was being a smarty-pants. Perhaps I was wrong.

‘Oh, too bad. How’s the rock? And the tree?’ — Wayfarer

I used to be an emergency medical technician. When we gave our reports on patients we would say they were "conscious and alert," although we never had to take a rock or tree to the hospital.