Thats oddly reassuring. Seeing conciousness as whats lets the self/personal identity exist/experience itself but not self/personal identity itself means that gaps in conciousness is not a problem anymore — AJ88

I guess so but only if one equates the self to experiential memory. What else could be the self?

I would agree that memory, especially Autonoetic memory plays a key roll in what I would see as a self extended in time. Do you have differant views? Or do you see gaps in concious experience as problematic?

Autonoetic memory — AJ88

What be that?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonoetic_consciousness

On level of intuition, for me survival of both the body, brain, and memories seems important, but I dont know if they actually are. — AJ88

I had a thought once that, if things in the external world reached a certain level of noise, like literally a lot of different sounds coming and going in quick succession or layering etc, then one could never be fully certain that one's brain, mind or consciousness did not add a small sound of its own in the midst of that noise without it itself being conscious of it. I was thinking of noise with a lot of moving parts as an auditory hallucination trigger. So my thinking is that if waking life reaches a certain level of noisiness [not just in terms of sound but even images, smells, tastes, thoughts], consciousness/mind adds a small noise of similar form, but itself does not notice its own addition because it is so noisy. During sleep, I again see reality or perception as having noise. Once you close your eyes, you see a fulness of darkness that is like an opaque noise, in a way, and so maybe the mind adds something to it without even noticing that it has done so. My speculative point here is that consciousness or mind does not perish or die at night, but gently adds darkness to the darkness it encounters. So the mind is still active. Now, this is speculative [there being no scientific evidence that the mind adds a noise in a noisy place!], but still worth maybe a quick thought.

It is probably safer to say that if you are asking the question of “what is consciousness?”, you are already making a rookie mistake. Most of the “theories” are chasing the explanatory phantoms left by Cartesian dualism.

But studying neurobiology and psychology gives you a good sense of how brains actually model worlds. And the logic of that can be found in systems theories.

What do neurobiology and psychology say is the causal mechanism for how brains produce consciousness?

What do neurobiology and psychology say is the causal mechanism for how brains produce consciousness? — RogueAI

Again, they would say if you ask the question that way, it already locks in the wrong perspective.

Is causality a "mechanism" as such? Would an organ "produce" an "effect"? Is consciousness the effect of a mechanical cause? Is consciousness even a thing?

So it is true that we are trained to think of the world in terms of machine-like cause and effect - Newton's impressed forces, or a finite state automaton like a clock or computer.

That works when we want to describe - or build - very simple things. Like physical machines. Or computing machines.

But a biologist is concerned with "machines" that are irreducibly complex. It's a whole different ballgame in terms of its causality.

So a big part of the answer is just learn to accept that causality itself is a concept that needs proper revision to make sense of biology, and thus neurobiology and psychology. You have to understand the world in terms of a complex adaptive systems' causality. A holistic approach instead of a reductionist approach (where consciousness is being reduced to some kind of psychic substance or material property.)

And then the kind of answer you get at the other end is that consciousness is what it feels like for the organism and its nervous system to be in an active modelling relation with the world.

The brain is interpreting sensory signs and making some kind of map of reality so that it can navigate it in practical ways for survival purposes. That is the guts of the causality. The act of interpreting the world as some set of signs which then coordinate our actions.

And if that is happening - with "us" as the point of view that stands in opposition to "the world being experienced" - then why wouldn't it feel like something? The causal question can be inverted.

The issue is the reverse one of having to provide some good reason why a running model of the world in our heads shouldn't feel exactly like having a running model of the world in our heads. Is there something particular you can point to that would cause that not to be the case?

The more you understand about neurobiology especially, the more you can see of the way the brain constructs its reality model. And the more you are then moved to ask what else could be the result than that we seem to have this movie of the world - a movie with "us" in it as the active agent - running through our heads?

And also, we will begin to appreciate that this "movie" is in no way a literal representation of the world either. It is constructed of signs we employ.

Light doesn't come in different colours, only different wavelengths. Organic molecules aren't sweet or bitter, that is just a response we construct by the way identifying corners of a molecule latch on to some receptor cell.

The world we experience is thus a "semiotic umwelt" - a model of the world with us in it.

Jakob von Uexküll coined the term and tried to illustrate it in terms of the "conscious experience" of a honey bee. On the left, the world as it "objectively" is - full of unnecessary detail. On the right, the world seen by the bee in terms which give it agency within a meaningful subjective model (given its job is to find flowers with nectar in the confusion of a meadow).

Again, they would say if you ask the question that way, it already locks in the wrong perspective.

No it doesn't. I asked "What do neurobiology and psychology say is the causal mechanism for how brains produce consciousness?" Now, repalce a few words: "What does biology say is the causal mechanism for how livers produce bile"? That can be asked and answered. Why can't that be asked and answered about brains and consciousness?

And there's an implicit assumption in your response that brains exist. They might, they might not. I don't assume materialism/physicalism to be the case. Why do you and what justifies that assumption?

Now, repalce a few words: "What do biologists say is the causal mechanism for how livers produce bile"? That can be asked and answered. — RogueAI

So answer it. Let's see how that goes. Let's see what you leave out in terms of the full "four causes" model of systems causality that Aristotle first identified and modern systems science refines.

And there's an implicit assumption in your response that brains exist. They might, they might not. — RogueAI

Yeah. I mean why do we need to consider anything that these crazy neuroscientists might be saying about those "brain" thingys? That's just one of their unwarranted assumptions. The idea that brains exist. :roll:

I don't assume materialism/physicalism to be the case. Why do you and what warrants that assumption? — RogueAI

I just carefully explained how "the physical world" is actually a semiotic construct. The umwelt is internal to the modelling. We don't have direct access to the Kantian "thing in itself".

So I assume nothing in that regard. In just the same way I don't take an idealist notion of "the mind" for granted either. The modelling relations story challenges both so as to cut deeper.

http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/liver/bile.html

Now, why isn't there a similar link for "how do brains produce consciousness?"

Also: you seem to assume brains exist. Do you assume that?

So what is the first bolded thing that link says? "There are two fundamentally important functions of bile in all species...".

The analysis in terms of causes is, "Well, let's start by highlighting the purposes of digestion as a process....".

Now, why isn't there a similar link for "how do brains produce consciousness?" — RogueAI

Because asking a question along the lines of "how does the liver produce bile?" is quite different to the larger question of asking "why does digestion as a functional process result in bile production?".

And you don't seem to understand that difference.

Also: you seem to assume brains exist. Do you assume that? — RogueAI

Why would I not assume that? Do you have evidence to the contrary. :chin: