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Neri » September 28th, 2020, 3:16 pm wrote:Neuro,
You seem to be saying that self-centredness (a focus upon the ego) is the seed of consciousness. If this is so, unconsciously driven selflessness cannot yield consciousness. After all, they are polar opposites.
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We necessarily express ourselves by means of words and we usually think in terms of space. That is to say, language requires us to establish between our ideas the same sharp and precise distinctions, the same discontinuity, as between material objects. This assimilation of thought to things is useful in practical life and necessary in most of the sciences. But it may be asked whether the insurmountable difficulties presented by certain philosophical problems do not arise from our placing side by side in space phenomena which do not occupy space, and whether, by merely getting rid of the clumsy symbols round which we are fighting, we might not bring the fight to an end. When an illegitimate translation of the unextended into the extended, of quality into quantity, has introduced contradiction into the very heart of the question, contradiction must, of course, recur in the answer.
The problem which I have chosen is one which is common to metaphysics and psychology, the problem of free will. What I attempt to prove is that all discussion between the determinists and their opponents implies a previous confusion[Pg xx] of duration with extensity, of succession with simultaneity, of quality with quantity: this confusion once dispelled, we may perhaps witness the disappearance of the objections raised against free will, of the definitions given of it, and, in a certain sense, of the problem of free will itself. To prove this is the object of the third part of the present volume: the first two chapters, which treat of the conceptions of intensity and duration, have been written as an introduction to the third.
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I totally agree that consciousness does not exclude selfishness; simply, you cannot see or experience things from a perspective other than your own (this is what I mean in saying that the brain processes information in a self-centred way).
you cannot see or experience things from a perspective other than your own (this is what I mean in saying that the brain processes information in a self-centred way)
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Neri » September 29th, 2020, 10:37 pm wrote:Neuro,
I now understand you to say, for example, that the behavior a particular cockroach is subjective, because it is caused by its own neurons and not those of any other cockroach. Surely, this is a statement of the bloody obvious adding nothing to our understanding of human consciousness--except to make the trivial observation that it is limited to the spatial extent of one’s head.
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I now understand you to say, for example, that the behavior a particular cockroach is subjective, because it is caused by its own neurons and not those of any other cockroach. Surely, this is a statement of the bloody obvious adding nothing to our understanding of human consciousness--except to make the trivial observation that it is limited to the spatial extent of one’s head.
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This thread is strictly an attempt to provide a definition of phenomenal consciousness. My goal here is only to produce a definition that people can understand, agree on and refer back to.
What's extraordinary is that after 5 pages we're still struggling with common or garden definitions. Why don't they just google it?
it seems there is this striking awareness that reductive science simply cannot access what it is to have an emotional feeling or be a bat or admire a pretty sunset.
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Why do they want to do it? How do they believe it might be possible? In what sort of terms do they want to capture it?
Can anyone answer that? That would be interesting.
I can sum this up easily.
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Do we even have such a function here?
Why all those neural operations can emerge, in the subjective eye, as holistic felt experiences is beyond the purview of science.
(it's certainly possible, in a logical sense, that some brilliant chain of philosophical reasoning could lead someone, at some point, to come up with a persuasive proof that consciousness is just inherent in matter, i.e. panpsychism)
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Yes, I know about the neuro-pathways, etc, but couldn't see the relevance to felt experience. This is why I kept referring it back to ourselves. We ourselves are the closest thing to a lab.
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neurophenomenology is one aspect of the hard science approach to moving closer to what you’re interested in.
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charon » October 2nd, 2020, 5:53 pm wrote:I've already suggested it, start with oneself and then state it. There's no proof of inward feelings. As I said, if one day they can scan the brain and be quite sure that a particular blip means you're tasting a strawberry, then fine.
But if you mean Phenomenology as a philosophy then I've no idea. It doesn't seem very relevant to me. It's certainly not about a scientific understanding of the brain.
We're always looking 'out there' for answers to inward things and I don't see much point in that.
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charon » October 2nd, 2020, 6:28 pm wrote:Not at all, it's a philosophy, not the study of oneself. The study of oneself is as practical as any scientific endeavour even if it can't be put in a peer-reviewed paper. It's direct, simple, and reveals all the answers if done diligently.
You're pushing the river on this. It can't be done scientifically and philosophising about it also gets nowhere. It might have got Chalmers a job but he's a fool anyway.
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Dave_C » February 1st, 2015, 10:36 pm wrote:The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism.
...
In his book “The Conscious Mind”, Chalmers instead of breaking up consciousness into easy and hard phenomena, he calls them psychological consciousness and phenomenal consciousness (p-consciousness for short) respectively.
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neuro » October 9th, 2020, 12:48 pm wrote:This is the reason why I thought that noting that subjectivity (self-centredness) precedes consciousness - obvious as that may be - might be relevant to the discussion.
When you add the unexplained but trivial capability of feeling pain (which a computer cannot do and science cannot explain) or any other emotions, then subjective experience becomes personal experience and what we normally call consciousness - and all the qualia we can speculate about - come into existence.
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capability of feeling pain (which a computer cannot do and science cannot explain)
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2. How can the phenomenal/subjective 'I' be explained? How does the fact of 'being this person' arise?
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