At what level of consciousness is this observer produced? — Kev


I don't know. — Banno

Well if you have no feeling about the answer, how do you even know other people are conscious? Saying "I don't know," sounds like you're leaving the door open for solipsism.

I agree with your reply.

The only thing is that "consciousness" is used quite loosely depending on the source. The people who follow Eckart Tolle, or Buddhists in general, like to say things like "pure consciousness" to describe a state of awareness without thought. That is not a useful way of using the term for me, as to me consciousness is awareness + context (which depends on memory: short term, long term, and sensory).

It sorta goes with the OP. — Banno

I see what you mean..
You seem to have a very narrow definition of consciousness.

Presumably you are not an advocate of mind/body dualism.
Emergentism almost always resorts to a (hidden) dualism. Whether weak emergence or strong emergence. There was physical stuff and now there is physical and mental stuff.

Sophisticated forms of panpscyhism aren't saying "matter = consciousness". Most would qualify their panpsycism as describing some sort of relational process between the simples/objects.
This simply bypasses the dualism by attributing the epistemology to a metaphysics. That's why words such as "proto-experientialism" are used.

You are still thinking of objects as things that are perceived by humans. But if objects have relational qualities with other objects, then there is a springboard for more complex relationships to form. The key here is the relationships are their own relationship, not the relationship, you the Banno observer have given it by your own relationship with the object. There are many levels of object-to-object relationship on their own terms, that are nothing to do with the human-to-object terms.

The problem I see with anti-pan-experientialist advocates is that they are looking at the human-to-object terms as if that is the relationships other objects have with each other. They are using their own epistemology to project a metaphysics.

Do you find this "public" definition of consciousness deficient/incorrect/misleading — TheMadFool

I'd say that the 'precritical' public meaning works just fine for getting along in the world but leads to problems (like solipsism) if it is embraced as a foundation for the rest of philosophy.

Here's Aristotle:
*****************************************************************************************************************
Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images.
*****************************************************************************************************************

Is this not an excellent sketch of today's common sense? But Wittgenstein's beetle passage shows (with the rest of his work) that the supposed 'mental experiences' bear no weight.

Arguments are made of words, not otherwise ineffable what-it-was-like.

That's good for us, since objectivity depends on the publicity of meaning.

Aristotle's passage tries to save us from solipsism by assuming such mental experiences are common, but why would one think this if not because of social-linguistic conventions?

Indeed, these 'mental experiences' are caught up in such conventions, so there's something problematic in asserting or denying a 'consciousness' whose role in the game is to point at what can never be checked (in the 'purity' of its concept, as ineffable.)

Returning to Wittgenstein's beetle in a box, none of the people in this scenario can be in error about there being something in the box - this somethingness is what the word "consciousness" refers to. As such "consciousness", the word, lacks details necessary to enable a precise conception of what it actually is. — TheMadFool

I don't disagree. It's just that this not-being-able-to-be-error is the problem. If we want to be 'rational' about consciousness, how can it also be something that we are never wrong about?

I don't deny this somethingness. I remember being awake all night waiting for an emergency dentist appointment for a tooth extraction.The pain was terrible and 'mine.'

But pain and the sense that 'there is a there there' seem to be outside of objectivity, at least inasmuch as they are private (in a 'purity' of their concepts which would put them 'under' or 'behind' social conventions.)

If consciousness is a private somethingness (some beetle in the box), then we can't even check whether we have the same (private) meaning 'in mind' when we use the word 'consciousness.'

If meaning is private, conversation is pointless.

If meaning (a kind of somethingness) is private and yet we are uncritically confident that mental experiences are the same for all, why is that?

Is it because other humans also have human faces? Because our public doings are carefully synchronized? Because humans respond complexly to their environment?

Is a dandelion "not conscious" because we have checked (forgetting for a moment that we can't even know what agreement would mean here, giving the assumptions being challenged)?

Or just because it doesn't respond to its environment (including other dandelions) in a sufficiently complex way?

But what if we zoom in and consider the complicated coding of its DNA? Aren't individual cells staggeringly complex?

I'm not claiming that plants are conscious (or that they aren't).

The issue is figuring out what we are even talking about.

Well if you have no feeling about the answer, how do you even know other people are conscious? — Kev

Slippery slope fallacy.

You seem to have a very narrow definition of consciousness. — schopenhauer1

I'll take that as praise. Compared to those who think rocks are conscious, yes I do.

Metaphysics is where you make stuff up because you don't know what's going on. It's not compulsory. One can simply admit to not knowing.

That, @Kev as well. See @Yellow Horse's replies to @TheMadFool, above. Wittgenstein shows you how to extract yourself from the fly bottle of metaphysics; Of course, if you are having fun in there, well, be my guest. But don't insist that I join you.

brb

f consciousness is a private somethingness (some beetle in the box), then we can't even check whether we have the same (private) meaning 'in mind' when we use the word 'consciousness.'

If meaning is private, conversation is pointless.

If meaning (a kind of somethingness) is private and yet we are uncritically confident that mental experiences are the same for all, why is that?

Is it because other humans also have human faces? Because our public doings are carefully synchronized? Because humans respond complexly to their environment?

Is a dandelion "not conscious" because we have checked (forgetting for a moment that we can't even know what agreement would mean here, giving the assumptions being challenged)?

Or just because it doesn't respond to its environment (including other dandelions) in a sufficiently complex way?

But what if we zoom in and consider the complicated coding of its DNA? Aren't individual cells staggeringly complex?

I'm not claiming that plants are conscious (or that they aren't).

The issue is figuring out what we are even talking about. — Yellow Horse

You make it sound like some people don't have consciessness.

"And consciousness, however small, is an illegitimate birth in
any philosophy that starts without it and yet professes to explain all facts by continuous evolution._______________________________________________________________________ If evolution is to work smoothly, consciousness in some
shape must have been present at the very origins of things." -William James

William James believed in Pan-psychism just as many modern scientists believe in Pan-psychism.

Are there any flaws in the logic of this quote? — turkeyMan


Why do you think consciousness is different from nearly all other properties such that it cannot reasonably be emergent? — bert1

Feeling and Awareness are different from all other properties. All other properties in the universe actually stem from feeling and awareness. How do we accurately measure which particle collisions or wave collisions cause feeling or awareness. Even solid objects are essentially and relatively slow moving particle collisions or wave collisions. It is a huge mistake to assume that feeling and awareness isn't drastically different than nuclear fusion or nuclear fission. There is nothing in the universe stranger than feeling and awareness. Why would you say otherwise?

Metaphysics is where you make stuff up because you don't know what's going on. It's not compulsory. One can simply admit to not knowing. — Banno

Not true. There are things that are absolutely knowable, like the fact that existence exists and consciousness exists. We know that there is a difference between our consciousness and the rest of existence. This is a starting point. From here we can verify our sensory information, because it is not the product of our consciousness, but of the greater reality along with our physiology.

So how do you know other people are conscious? You relate to them, and make the assumption, right? So why isn't that valid when taken to simpler life forms? Of course you can relate to a dog less than you can relate to a chimp, and a mouse less than a dog. But we can deduce that the difference is mainly due to a difference in intelligence.

If consciousness depends on intelligence, but is not just intelligence, what is the rest? The awareness component... can that exist with zero intelligence? Why couldn't it?

existence exists — Kev

Rand. :down: You gonna have to work to get respect now.

So how do you know other people are conscious? You relate to them, and make the assumption, right? So why isn't that valid when taken to simpler life forms? — Kev

So you want I should relate to a rock, and make the assumption that it is conscious.

Nuh.

Metaphysics is where you make stuff up because you don't know what's going on. It's not compulsory. One can simply admit to not knowing. — Banno

Well, it's obvious we don't know. Nothing wrong with speculative metaphysics. You think you Kant do it, and rely on Witt to get you out of thinking about it :razz:.

It's just Spike Milligan, Lewis Carrol, Edward Lear, are better at nonsense than Kant or your namesake. :razz:

Nothing wrong with speculative metaphysics. — schopenhauer1

Even when it convinces you that rocks are conscious? I'm not so sure...

It's just Spike Milligan, Lewis Carrol, Edward Lear, are better at nonsense than Kant or your namesake. :razz: — Banno

But yet you failed to acknowledge what I said:
a) Presumably you are not a mind/body dualist, and thus emergentism fails to satisfy the anti-dualist (physical stuff here, then physical and mental stuff there).
b) Objects relate to each other in some way that isn't Banno's perceptions of how other objects relate to each other.

If you don't acknowledge that and go straight to naysaying and poo pooing.. that's just dodging the argument with I'm just going to call it something like "fallacy of incredulousness"..aka Banno's gorilla picture in the dictionary next to...

a) Presumably you are not a mind/body dualist... — schopenhauer1

I've long argued that the distinction is misleading.

b) Objects relate to each other in some way that isn't Banno's perceptions of how other objects relate to each other. — schopenhauer1

I'm not sure what the word "perception" is doing there. It's unclear what you are claiming, so I'm not sure if I agree, disagree, or defer.

Orangutang, not gorilla.

So you want I should relate to a rock, and make the assumption that it is conscious. — Banno

You're really making me question your reading comprehension.

I've long argued that the distinction is misleading. — Banno

Not really. Body- neural pathways, chemicals, molecules, cells, etc. Mind- seeing, hearing, sensing a food particle (if you're something like a fish), fear, fleeing from pain, finding something funny, etc.

I'm not sure what the word "perception" is doing there. It's unclear what you are claiming, so I'm not sure if I agree, disagree, or defer. — Banno

It's the view without an animal observer. What is reality in itself? You think the persistent image of what you experience? That's naive realism at its finest. Poor naive orangutan Banno.

What is reality in itself? — schopenhauer1

Stoopid question #1.

Stoopid question #1. — Banno

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Contextomy

Not so much. The notion of a reality-in-itself as ineffable is something that philosophers of a certain ilk will talk about ad nauseam, and apparently without seeing the irony.

If it's ineffable, don't try to "eff" it.

That is, don't pretend to use it in your metaphysics.

there's something problematic in asserting or denying a 'consciousness' whose role in the game is to point at what can never be checked (in the 'purity' of its concept, as ineffable.) — Yellow Horse

I don't deny this somethingness. — Yellow Horse

If consciousness is a private somethingness (some beetle in the box), then we can't even check whether we have the same (private) meaning 'in mind' when we use the word 'consciousness — Yellow Horse

The issue is figuring out what we are even talking about — Yellow Horse

So I was correct in thinking you're concerned about the meaning of the word "consciousness" in a Wittgensteinian sense.

Is the idea of language games self-referential? Could it be that Wittgenstein's point of view is itself a language game? I see no reason why not and if so should we be applying the theory of language games so liberally to all conceivable discourse as if the theory itself is immune to its own brand of criticisms?

If Wittgenstein's theory of language games is itself a language game then doesn't that reduce its applicability for the simple reason that being just a language game, it too is restricted, severely so, to its form of life, no?

That out of the way, as I mentioned earlier, the word "consciousness" is more a general outline of the stuff that happens inside our heads than a detailed description of those things and being so, the chances of us being so mistaken about what the word "consciousness" refers to that all discussion become pointless is negligibly small.

You're really making me question your reading comprehension. — Kev

That from one who quotes Rand...

being just a language game, it too is restricted, — TheMadFool

Being a language game is not a bad thing...

Being a language game is not a bad thing... — Banno

Well, I thought it invalidated philosophies built around certain words that lacked an essence, the very thing philosophy seems to be about.

A language game is just a family of rules around a group of words and deeds.

Problems arise with irregularities; such as when the words are moved to a different language game with insufficient care.

That from one who quotes Rand... — Banno

Why don't you try to make an actual point? Otherwise why even comment?

Is anyone saying that consciousness is an emergent property going to deny that we can see a spectrum of consciousness at the top end? Can they explain their reasoning for thinking a dog has experiences, but an insect doesn't? What is the threshold that must be crossed for awareness to "emerge"?

Are rocks conscious?

If not, and yet people are, then at some stage between rocks and people, consciousness emerges.