DENNETT

[Anonymous No.19680664]

>eliminative materialist about consciousness (see Consciousness Explained)
>compatibilist about free will (see Elbow Room)

does not compute

how does this dude write about two ideas that directly contradict themselves

[Anonymous No.19680714]

Dennett is an NPC

http://www.jaronlanier.com/zombie.html

[Anonymous No.19680722]

https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/08/06/that-time-daniel-dennett-took-200-micrograms-of-lsd/

>Dan says: Correlation is all that is needed. So what states a mind uses for modeling conditions of importance to it, is fundamentally arbitrary. Like with language. Words represent things to humans but there are many languages, and words do not resemble what they represent. They only correlate with what they represent, and the correlation needs to be learned. To do science about the mind, one does not need to attach any special weight to any conscious state of mind over any other. One person’s hope may be another person’s despair. These “qualia” are like internally projected hypo-languages which are different all over the map, if there were one. In fact there cannot be an interpersonal map of what things feel like personally. Only naïve people could hope for a fundamental linguistics of consciousness, as if these states were to constitute a universal language of some ground truth of the mind. Silly. Romantic. It’s all arbitrary. For the record, I never said subjective experiential states do not exist. People misrepresent me on that. What I am saying is that it will never be possible to scientifically map what the state that a word such as, for instance, “green”, translates to feels like by the brain of a given individual. My green could be your red.

>I have to say, however, that a remarkable transformation inside my mind is taking place as a result of this drug. I notice the way I now find puns quite funny. Fascinating. I also reflect on the fact that I find it fascinating that I find puns funny. It’s as if… I hesitate to think it even to myself, but there seems to be some extraordinarily strong illusion that “funny” and “fascinating” are in fact those very qualia states which… which cannot possibly be arbitrary. Although the reality of it has got to be that when I feel funniness or fascination, those are brain activity patterns unique to myself, not possible for me to relate to any other creature in the universe experiencing them the same way, or at least not to any non-human species. Not a single one would feel the same, I’m sure. Consider a raven, for example. It’s a bird that behaves socially intricately, makes plans for the next day, can grasp how tools are used, and excels at many other mental tasks even sometimes surpassing a chimpanzee. Yet a raven has a last common ancestor with humans more than three hundred million years ago. The separate genetic happenstances of evolution since then, coupled with the miniaturization pressure due to weight limitations on a flying creature, means that if I were to dissect and anatomically compare the brain of a raven and a human, I’d be at a total loss. Does the bird even have a cerebral cortex?

[Anonymous No.19680755]

https://reducing-suffering.org/why-free-will-is-not-an-illusion/

[Anonymous No.19680835]

>>19680714
The frequency with which this text is posted really shows how hopelessly retarded this place is.

[Anonymous No.19680861]

>>19680714
Do you have a spam bot searching /lit/ all day so you can post your shitty image nobody wants to read?

[Anonymous No.19680867]

>>19680664
>how does this dude write about two ideas that directly contradict themselves
How about you read one (1) of his books and then make a post about it? Honestly the internet has been so fucking horrible for philosophy. Armed with a YouTube channel and the introductory paragraph of ten wikipedia pages, the retard now believes he has a coherent opinion on every issue.

[Anonymous No.19680923]

>>19680664
hes an anglo "pshilosopher", so basically a scientists who for some reason thinks he can be a philosopher (and fails)

[Anonymous No.19680936]

>>19680867
Okay finally a person with brain cells appears. Thanks for posting. I had to simplify the OP to attract attention. Now that I have yours, I have actually read Dennett's work and I am struggling to reconcile his ideas on consciousness and free will. What's your solution?

Also I agree. YouTube + Wikipedia + Reddit makes people retarded if they don't go on to read books.

[Anonymous No.19680941]

>>19680664

I think you didnt' get the true idea behind Counsciusness Explained. He's not against the epistemological idea of counsciusness. We have, in some sort of ways, a counsciusness; even if we fake it. Free will is just a feeling. We are the author of our actions cause we feel it. It's all about fictionalism. That's why we don't have -ontologically speaking- something called counsciusness and we don't own any free will as well. But, at the same time, we have the feeling of both. You should study dennet's positions better anon.

[Anonymous No.19680957]

>>19680941
>We are the author of our actions cause we feel it.
I don't think that's his position. He's a functionalist about mind and objects to qualia and some forms of intentionality, which really makes him an epiphenomenalist. Where does free will come in?

[Anonymous No.19680964]

>>19680957

I think you misunderstood his position. He is a fictionalist about mind. We fake it cause our nature force us to do that in a biological and evolutionary sense. Epiphenomenalist are basically property dualist.

[Anonymous No.19681358]

>>19680936
Explain why his positions seem incompatible to you. We have nothing to go by.

[Anonymous No.19681565]

>>19680664
Because he is an insect

[Anonymous No.19681694]

>>19681358
Dennett's multiple drafts model, the argument against the Cartesian Theatre, implies that the idea of the self as a cohesive unit is wrong - instead consciousness is a 'centre of gravity'. Similarly, when we generate speech, there is no Central Meaner that decides what to say - instead there's something resembling Selfridge's Pandemonium model that produces sentences according to a computational-evolutionary model. But if there's no Theatre or Meaner what is there that possesses free will and makes decision? From what I understand Dennett (in the book Freedom Evolves) argues for both of these ideas, but the jump from one to the other doesn't make much sense to me. Other people are also unconvinced by his attempt at reconciling the two. I was wondering what people here thought.

[Anonymous No.19681783]

>>19681694
>>19680964

How does Dennet define the word 'conciousness', before he denies it's existence in reality?

[Anonymous No.19681824]

>>19681565
We all are. The only thing separating us is wishful thinking.
>nooo I'll live forever, I have no proof, but... but...

[Anonymous No.19681867]

>>19681694
It's all conditional, macro and micro reality are more or less tightly bound

One cannot ignore the system, the system of subatomic particles, electro magnetic fields, chemical reactions, the sun, earth, galaxy

Remove all stars in the universe, could consciousness have developed? Remove all electro magnetic fields from the universe, could consciousness have developed, remove all x atoms from the universe, remove all x1 atoms, all x2.... Etc

What are the bare physical necessities required to produce "that which is called/defined as consciousness by whom"?

Consciousness is a mystery because electrons and quarks and light is a mystery

The human body and mind is so complex

And the small scale of the micro world and the rates of speed of interactions are mind (consciousness) boggling
A human moves and seeks food and inside the human experience is experienced

There is "something/s" that moves the have man body

As well as that which moves an ant

There are degrees of freedom in the movements of the body, to utilize these degrees, the body must be aware of these degrees

I think there maybe multiple types of consciousness, awareness

Understanding

A baby sees many things growing up without understanding

Eventually the baby seeing a repition of things and how they interact, develops an internal pliable mapping of the information it sees,

A map along with correlating references, eventually the baby does not need to see the bird fly to the bath in the morning

The baby has seen this 1000 times, the child wakes up and in it's inner map of the world possibilty, which is somehow physically connected with the eyes that see the outside world

I.e child sees bird with eyes outside, child sees bird inside it's head in it's map called mind

Child wakes up (maybe remembers seeing bird fly in dream... Inside head)
Muscle memory, mind memory, what is outside is ingrained on inside,

Child can now see bird flying whenever the child wants


The human mind system is completely complex, imagine so many complicated parts, chemicals and energies and geometries and substances and veins and wires

Something so messy and gooey and jumbled and squishy and haphazard and robust and blind and perfect and constantly in progress but heck of a time tested can be so simple, all of that clicking and sparking and churning and buzzing and yet we can sit in a chair today and tommorow and think and be and feel so simple and unitary.

Babies are the key, kinda, highly developed consciousness doesn't grow on trees, everyone starts as babies, a long continuous process develops the potential inside the babies head, till it is a self running system

[Anonymous No.19681923]

Most compatibilists are muddle-headed, what they seem to want to say is that "consciousness is surely miraculous in a kind of Carl Sagan way, surely it's something, but it's not something apart from anything else in a metaphysical or religious way." So they try to say that "free will" is compatible with the determinacy of the physical world by emphasizing that mind is "like" an algorithm, a neural net, or some other supra-stochastic, self-perpetuating process or structure or pattern in nature. They want to get as close as they can to holism, i.e. to saying that the whole is other (not greater - other) than the sum of its parts, without actually embracing holism, because the latter would imply ontological distinctness of whole and parts, which then opens the door to an actual metaphysics of consciousness.

Basically they want to maintain the view that the world is a material "container" with many very nicely thrown-together and wound-up toys in it, but that the container (physical laws, space-time) and the fundamental parts contained within it (particles arranging under given rules) are still the only things with ontological status. Many of them use Darwinism as a way of, again, side-stepping any confrontrations of the metaphysical aprioricity of this worldview, because any time someone says "hey that sounds pretty metaphysical to me bud, you're just a Democritean materialist!" they can go into Carl Sagan mode and start waxing poetic about how beautiful it is that matter + "process" = differentiated, supra-stochastic structures.

This may be, but it doesn't answer the question: Is it true? Is it an authentic picture of the world? And a whole set of related questions that are left unanswered by the materialist account, like: What is the status of the "physical laws" and norms for arrangement of particles, and the container itself, then? Aren't they "ideal" and ontologically distinct from the atoms and their arrangements? Even the Greeks made this critique of the atomists - there are non-material elements in your system of materialism, i.e. the ideal rules for arrangement.

I read all of Dennett's books as a teen and never found any answers either. Like most post-positivist naturalists I think he "philosophizes" in different ways depending on context. His type mostly wants to be seen deconstructing naive idealisms, naive metaphysics, and everyday religiosity. They excel at giving Carl Sagan-esque TED talks about the beauty of materialistic evolution, vaguely claiming that AI research bears it out, we are just complex Turing machines and self-referential algorithms, etc. But when on the defensive, they become evasive, almost quaint and folksy hard-headed like a 1940s positivist/verificationist, "I don't believe in that metaphysical mumbo-jumbo!" Overall, their position is an unphilosophical bundle of attitudes, worldviews, and speculative hunches that are themselves quite old (the atomist attempt to explain reality without reference to ideality).

[Anonymous No.19681956]

>>19681923
As an aside, this is a good way to read philosophy in general, pulling on the loose threads of a system and seeing how its proponents react. Very few philosophers even attempt systematicity, but they all speak in a tone of voice that implies that a system underlies everything they think and say, everything is squared away. Most philosophers operate from a central "hunch" or a couple of hunches that they gravitated to when quite young, in Dennett's case the post-positivist crypto-positivist epoch of analytic philosophy and scientific empiricism/naturalism, which was a quiet foundations crisis in which a lot of Dennett types (like Quine) were forced to play a double-game of repudiating "strong" positivism while maintaining the SPIRIT of positivism.

This is why a lot of English and American philosophy since 1950 seems so arid and basic. The really confident naturalism of the verificationists is untenable, but the survivors also couldn't bring themselves to embrace an equally radical opposed position, like radical postmodernism (Derridean deconstruction, post-Hegelian "reality is the real (social), the real is reality (society)"). So they end up with kind of uninspired compromises, like Rorty, or limp, slightly melancholy shrugs like Quine's or Sellars', when asked what the status of capital-S Science and capital-T Truth are under post-positivism.

A lot of the people who would/could supply the elan vital of positivism, if it hadn't been hobbled and then imploded, are naturally filtered into AI, machine learning, etc., where they vent all their positivist elan into extremely reddit-tier versions of the TED Talk, Carl Sagan crap. A Dennett often can't bring himself to embrace this level of New Naivete for a New Scientism, because he grew up under a post-naivete, naivete-critiquing era. But he still secretly, maybe even unbeknownst to himself, feels more in common with these New Scientism types and at least avoids contradicting them too much. You can see the same kind of bet-hedging with Searle, who sorta almost critiques the AI=mind, mind=AI cult, but never really ends up somewhere interesting.

[Anonymous No.19681972]

>>19681956
>post-Hegelian "reality is the real (social), the real is reality (society)").
Sorry I meant to say something like, "reality is the rational (the social), the rational is the real (society)," meaning the radical indifference of many postmodernists toward natural philosophy and science, almost to the point that they seem like Fichte or Berkeley, or Fichte and Berkeley combined. Nothing exists outside "the social," reality itself is just a sum total of social practices and cultural attitudes, etc. That's the other arid and dead-end sort of philosophy that comes out of post-positivism, the French kind.

[Anonymous No.19681977]

>>19681867
The difficulty of grappling with consciousness maybe mainly boiled into "how can a machine be made that "knows it's seeing"

A machine can be made that can see, a video camera, but we cannot conceive of how to make a video camera that knows it is seeing, or experiences it's seeing?

Forget self consciouaness or what have you when it is said dogs and cats do not posses consciousness, the discussion Is a little strained since this topic is arguing that people don't even have it

But it is more a gradient anyway, we can both be conscious, self conscious but I can at times be more so, so cats and dogs can be less so, for they certainly have complex brains (compared to minnows and ants?) And they are certainly witnessing lots of information

A simple interesting idea is to question whether they do or can think, I think its evidenced by many examples

Regardless it's a matter of nature having done a lot of the work already, allowing the dogs brain to be developed, allowing it's memories formed, viewable and safely stored,so when it's owner comes home the dog experiences doorknob jingling, and the dog knows what this means

Anyway pretty much: Minds, are the central control systems of bodies,The Human is the result of many many successful relations and abilities of smaller systems,

The mind is like a simulation of the world, a complex charting and mapping of physical and metaphysical data that can be internally visualized and manipulated 'at will'

There are things I could imagine right now, images I could conujure and see in my mind, but what would prompt me to do so and what should I want to see

This simulation because it exists as a system made of materials more subtle than rocks and sticks and mud and wind, operates on a quicker pace than these external things it maps

This way the mind/imagination 'escapes' external physical world time,

Can mix and match the information it has stored:

I have seen a bird, I have seen water, I have neve seen a bird flying over water,

As I can access my arm to move it this way and that, I can access inside of me: bird, and water, and see inside my head, bird flapping it's wings over water

This is why logic and reason is so relevant, because reason is 'cause and effect itself' physics is cause and effect, by using the concept of cause and effect, different things can be compared and contrasted and translated,

Consciousness is not brute physical world, it is not flowing river or rock or wind, it is an extremely complex system made in an extremely complex system made of material mysterious and extremely complex, and it simulates the world and runs on its own time

And had it's freedom in the small amount of nessecary needs of the body

And all the left over time it has to mix and match, compare and contrast, cause and effect all the possible itemizations it has internalized via vision

In short: Dennet is a caveman pondering a Ferrari

[Anonymous No.19682183]

Unfortunately yes, there may be more social and political motivations rather than motivated by the nobility of pure science and pure truth

A lot of this sort of stuff is about attacking religion while propagating the new modern one

If powerful people who would benefit by millions of people in a generation believing they don't have free will, and an unimaginative authority figure was simply led by maybe a coin flip to ascribe to a particular philosophical dogma, publish and promote this view, which could result in millions believing they have no free will, which could have very real world consequences, who's to say Dennet would not accept money as a motivator in exchange for corrupting the youth.

Define the words carefully: the word conciuosusness means...
The word Mind means...
The word Awareness means....
The concept and words Free Will means....

Free will is impossible and does not exist because if I had free will I could jump to the moon right now, I cannot therefore I do not have free will,

Free will exists because I know if I wanted to I could clap my hands now or in 2 seconds or in 2 seconds

Or I could stand on one leg, in 10 seconds from now I am aware of 1000 different things I could possibly do and nothing is forcing me to do any of these things. I, the chooser of these words will have to force action within my self to settle on what thing to do

[Anonymous No.19682185]

>>19681824
>suddenly shits on christianity even though it was never brought up
>"le cope"
>posts a fucking THE ONION article
You are unfathomably retarded

[Anonymous No.19682512]

>>19681867
>>19681923
>>19681956
>>19681977
Thanks bros. Unfortunately I am way too drunk to read this right now but I will carefully go through it tomorrow.

[Anonymous No.19682517]

>>19682185
>suddenly accuses me of shitting on christianity even though it was never brought up

[Anonymous No.19682677]

>>19681867
>>Consciousness is a mystery because electrons and quarks and light is a mystery
Chalmers refutes this

[Anonymous No.19682691]

>>19682677
Chalm down. The human mind is a literal confluence of minds, in positive or negative conjunction.

[Anonymous No.19682705]

>>19682691
The point is, just because quantum mechanics and wave-particle duality is mysterious and consciousness is mysterious, it does not mean they are related.

[Anonymous No.19682720]

>>19681923
>>19681956
you mention carl sagan, ted talks and modern bullshit a lot here for a discussion of mind...

[Anonymous No.19683162]

>>19682705
>The point is, just because quantum mechanics and wave-particle duality is mysterious and consciousness is mysterious, it does not mean they are related.

Would the point also be, it does not mean they are not related?

Would it be appropriate to assume conciuosusness is partly the result of quantum mechanical activities?

Also that was partly a non chalant line you responded to, a bit of as all of this, thinking out loud.

A last ditch throwing the hands up: well pretty much everything in the world has been catalogued and analyzed and measured:

It could be coincidence, or obvious rationale, that the tiniest quickest hardest to measure and know most micro substances of the world are difficult to understand and measure and charachterize, and the most immediate and mysterious thing to us, what we refer to as us, is difficult to figure out measure and understand. And it seems these same substances are involved.

Does the brain tend to have more electromagnetic activity than other areas of the body or just of different types and qualities?

[Anonymous No.19683220]

>>19683162
This seems like a good, non-arrogant approach to the subject. It's almost certain that there are great powers, functions, and abilities that await discovery as regards the human mind, the animal mind, and complex corporeal life in general.

[Anonymous No.19683529]

All the different parts of human were developed for hundreds of thousands of years

Everything that is big in nature is composed of unimaginable amount of smaller parts

Nature "perfected" many many smaller mechanisms, and when they teamed up and worked together they made new mechanisms

The early days was figuring out what bone could be, inventing blood, convincing of tendons, and some mechanisms teamed up to become some insects or animals down the line

But conciousness, mind it seems existed far before humans, I would think monkeys are conscious, they feel and are aware of changing information and experience the information of the world and react to it

An ai can take in the information of the world, and can react to it, but I would say a monkey is conscious and an ai is not

Partly or mainly because all we have ever known to be considered "conciousness" results from a physical brain like ours and the monkeys, it is so tightly woven and constructed from the most microscopic materials, so many of them, to make such a specific mechanism, such a specific orientation of matters placed in such a way , kept fed and inundated with the sensations of the world, that this mechanism of brain mind,

And this is where we get to something from ndamemtal about types of matter it self, it's configurations and possibly the rarity of the type and configuration of matter to yield conciousness

Like only certain metals can possibly do so and so, only this very specific plastic can be used to do such and such: maybe: only these types of materials in these types of orientations can produce conciousness.

There are many types of tvs, but there is a limit to the types of materials and their configurations that result in tv, same can be said of computers?

Yet there is tremendous range in animal life, there also may be commonalities, and the popularity of DNA

Could a life system, organic mechanistic entity possibly have developed any other way than using a DNA like system?

Is the need for such a kind of information coding system absolutely nessecary?

Could it have worked using different materials, in different configuration?

The brain mind body system had to account for so much, to remain stable and able, various elements eaten, the possible jerky harshness of quick vigorous movements ( though there is dizziness and unpleasantness to shaking your head around very quickly)

These mechanical conceptions and safeguards were developed and fused on the molecular levels, and for them to be stable.

I do not know if ai conciousness could be figured from a macro approach, perhaps conciousness is only achievable with the tiniest fingers and thread, weaving a limited number of materials, of a most genius orientation on the smallest possible scale first, and then building up ideas of possible conciuosusness bearing mechanisms, as nature did .

[Anonymous No.19683630]

>>19683529
Top down approach meeting bottom up in the middle.
It has to do with electromagnetism likely, as most things do, light has so many Interesting qualities, and different abilities with different materials.

And how different would our minds be, our experience of life and the world if every single human without exception was blind from birth,

All the different parts of the brain that do different stuff, yet act together as well in harmony,

Even if you knew consciousness was possible and nature handed you the raw materials of body and brain, who would we trust to task with designing it

So are stem cell and petri dish brains being grown in labs to try to fuse with ai?

Have actual brain in vat experiments been ongoing

What do the very smartest conciousness scientists think about the possibilty of making man made conciousness ai?

We are on the cutting edge of history, fire, bronze, stone, industrial, continent discovery, space travel, all cool exciting , adventurous, but making conciousness itself, seems very exciting, the very motivation of God itself, maybe that's all the reason it needed, maybe was in the same space as us, woken in a world concious, unsure if it could make conciousness itself

Maybe the first conciousness we make will be inside a computer world, or some alchemical cyborg organic computer soup space.

I don't know why I have always been so attracted to the prospect, it uncontrollably brings intrigue, maybe it's entirely due to the ungraspable mystery,
most things in the world one can kind of grasp a basic gist with some effort, but the fundamental nature of conciousness thus far has seemed to defy all attempts at grasping,

And maybe there is also the excitement, the possible novelty of Frankensteining conciousness, maybe it's possible and works, and then we would be speaking to the most intelligent, aware, knowing entity ever,

Maybe there is no point to making artificial conciousness, ai can and will do epic beyond human things without it
Maybe conciousness won't allow it to do much or anything more impressive than the cold hard fast busy work
It has to do with electromagnetism likely, as most things do, light has so many Interesting qualities, and different abilities with different material

[Anonymous No.19683935]

>>19682677
No, Chalmers argues that he actually can't. That's the entire reason that he came up with the Hard Problem.

>>19681783
He doesn't deny the existence of consciousness, he asks that YOU define it before YOU use it. HE defines it (to autistic precision) when he uses it. All he's asking is that you do the same. He does this with qualia. That's the point of the meme.

[Anonymous No.19684274]

>>19683935
Can you post his definition? Or at least a good gisty part of it

[Anonymous No.19684411]

>>19681694
>>19682512
Ok, I thing I can help you out, I'm the anon who asked.

Let's first look at what the Cartesian Theatre is. It's basically an umbrella term for
the kind of cryptodualist talk that many philosophically unsophisticated brain/mind scientists are guilty of. It shows up whenever they speak of the mind interfacing with the brain in various ways, e.g. in perception: the various stages of vision "come together" and the "mind" "perceives" the "percept". This kind of language is fundamentally cartesian and doesn't really explain perception. Descartes would say something about the animal spirits going through certain pores in the brain and acting on the pineal gland in a certain way, therefore imposing an image onto the soul. Different details, same fundamental understanding that maintains the body/mind divide. If you're a materialist you need to reduce the mind to the body, leave no residual "observer" looking at the percept in some cartesian theater. No matter if you call it "soul" or, in your confusion, talk about the "mind" interfacing with the brain. You need to shit of get off the pot. There's no "mind" to interface with, so leave out any mention of it in your explanations.

Now here's the crucial thing: just because something is reducible to more fundamental parts does not mean that it's not real. A dedicated materialist would say that there's fundamentally no such thing as "sitting", but it's still a very useful term. You don't spout nonsense when you speak of a monkey sitting on a tree, this is still a proposition that can be true or false. In a similar way a proposition like "Johny decided to eat a muffin" basically means that Johny as an agent (an agent that's reducible to brain events doing their thing) chose an action from options available the agent. Of course "truly" free will that breaks the laws of physics is incoherent to a materialist. But even if fundamentally we're deterministic machines, there is still a very meaningful way in which "we" "make choices". Even if our selves and choice making processes are reducible to physical phenomena.

>But if there's no Theatre or Meaner what is there that possesses free will and makes decision?
Additionally just make sure to remember that the Meaner is a fiction that the ("objective") Agent creates for itself in introspection, a confabulation.

Get this distinction straight together with the above and you should be able to figure out your answer.

[Anonymous No.19685640]

>>19684411
Based

[Anonymous No.19686068]

>>19680664
>how does this dude write about two ideas that directly contradict themselves
Maybe he isn't forming a coherent single system but writing papers on interesting topics where he seeks to argue to the best of his capacity on that topic.

ffs: philosophers don't believe what they posit. They believe that publishing 15 papers might get them a job at a tier E community college.

[Anonymous No.19686144]

>>19680664

Looks like he has to eliminate some matter himself.

[Anonymous No.19686867]

>>19681923
>>19681956
Wew laddie, how did you learn all this vocabulary while still remaining so hopelessly clueless? You seriously need to read more carefully. If you don't engage with what you study and just use it as a fertilizer for your carefree wondering, you end up filling your head full of bullshit. Truly, it's uncanny how well-written this nonsense is, I just had to stop and take notice.

[Anonymous No.19687345]

>>19684411
You just explained property dualism lol

[Anonymous No.19687588]

>>19687345
Different anon. I have come only to say emergence is genuinely one of the most retarded non-concepts I've ever heard of. Second only to free will.

[Anonymous No.19687611]

>>19687588
I don't have a dog in this fight but it is clear to me that some properties emerge from lower levels e.g. pressure emerges from the movement of particles. Why can't the same happen wrt the mind and neurons?

Also isn't panpsychism sort of emergent in that consciousness is there all along but 'high level' consciousness emerges from the combination of 'low level' consciousness?

[Anonymous No.19688778]

>>19687611
No, pressure does not emerge from the movement of particles. Pressure must be identical with the movement of particles or it is ipso facto a contradiction.
Similarly with the mind and neurons, if you have a certain idea of what the mind is, it must it be identical with your neuron perfect model of a brain, or your neuron model is wrong. For example your idea and mental picture of the color blue must be identical with your model of a brain in the state where it is perceiving blue, and vise versa, and understanding the one means understanding the other.
Panpsychism is precisely that position which denies emergence and affirms that the concept of a "material world" carries the exact same meaning as the interpretation that the senses give to it. (And that therefore everything is interpretation, thus spoke Zarathustra, but I'm getting ahead of myself.)

[Anonymous No.19688848]

>>19688778
"Wrong" in a philosophical sense I mean. As in the neuron model does not mean the same thing as being an actual brain.

[Anonymous No.19688960]

>>19688778
Identical to doesn't mean reducible to though. Pressure is identical to particle kinetics, but it is not a reductive property. Isn't this emergentists think? That consciousness emerges from but is identical to its physical substrate?

[Anonymous No.19689219]

>>19680936
My take on the question of materialism and freewill coinciding is this: "freewill" is the experience of making causal choices. One possess agency in the first hand experience of mental and physical causation. This idea can be hard to wrap your head around but it's like a less egotistical/ridiculous form solipsism. If you did not exist to experience freewill, no choice could have been made (casual or otherwise), thus, the experience of choice is valid wether it is driven through causation or existentialism.

>freewill is the experience of making choices
>without this experience no choice can be made
>whether this is deterministic or existential is irrelevant
>it is valid because it exists necessarily

[Anonymous No.19689254]

>>19684274
That's what the point of "Consciousness Explained" is. Again, when I say "autistic precision", I fucking mean it. The man is actually on The Spectrum. He is an Analytic philosopher at his core, and so he looks at neuroscience, and it's a huge clusterfuck, but it's orderly in a rhizomatic fashion. You can take some basic, empirically observable phenomena, and then move outwards from there. But when you go into the philosophy of the mind (in the West), it doesn't work like that. Rather, every single philosopher has their own definitions, their own terms, and their own goals. No one ever engages with anyone else, they just talk past each other. This is even worse (in his opinion) with "qualia", which is a term that, if you don't immediately define it after using it, is basically useless. "Qualia don't exist" because they're never defined before use, so it just becomes a nonsense word.

If you REALLY want a tl;dr, Dennett subscribes to the "multiple drafts" model. That is, the mind is a lump of various "independent agencies" that all process information to produce mental phenomena; the "inputs" can be other mental phenomena. The mind then stitches all of this together to create a "self". This "self" is a semi-fiction, and exists to allow for mental phenomena and sensory experience to have a meaningfully coherent continuity. The fictitious nature of this selfhood must be stressed, because the mind is engaged in "parallelism"; that is, it is constantly thinking, processing, understanding, etc, and it is thus constantly modifying the "self" to fit this.

What Dennett is doing here is just taking neuroscience and doing philosophy of the mind from it. For example, memories are not "stored", they're a series of connections made, and the memory is constantly being refreshed; this means that memories slowly drift (a common example is people who remember a scene, but see it from the point of view of someone other than themselves).

Dennett himself is a rigid materialist in as much as the brain doing braining produces the mind. Dennett's mental philosophy UP UNTIL THIS POINT is thus very similar to many Eastern theories of the mind, such as Buddhist ones (the Buddha is, arguably, the creator of the "multiple drafts" model).

[Anonymous No.19689397]

>>19680664
your brain on pragmatism

[Anonymous No.19689403]

>>19681923
>>19681956
I really enjoyed these posts and am curious who you enjoy reading in the post modern era?

I consider myself an objective moral realist, poststructuralist, and can never really shake the "hunch", as you put it, that spiritual forces exist outside of the materialist world view, as I have directly observed phenomena that nullifies strict materialism.

[Anonymous No.19689428]

>>19687345
>>19687588
It's neither.

[Anonymous No.19689454]

>>19680835
it's like the stirnerite threads. sad really

[Anonymous No.19689503]

>>19682512
>>19684411
How's it going, OP? I'm losing my fucking brain cells reading this dumb thread.

[Anonymous No.19689514]

>>19689503
not op but i've had to distance myself from lit for this reason

[Anonymous No.19689640]

>>19687611
Emergence can explain features of conscious life, but not consciousness itself. For example, it is safe to say that perhaps the "field" component of our visual perception is caused by the exact reproduction of pattern from the retina to your main visual brain.
As such, you can perhaps hope to obtain a better understanding of the sensitive essences that make up our natural life, but at no point will you ever be able to reach pure essences from impure ones if you limit yourself to a physicalist understanding.

[Anonymous No.19689652]

>>19688960
My response would be that if the property disappears when focusing the microscope, then the conceptual model of the thing as being a mere arrangement of smaller atoms should be a mistaken or imprecise one from the beginning. Going back to the brain model: if the concept of the color disappears into a mesh of neurons, then the model is incorrect.

[Anonymous No.19689659]

>>19689254
Kind of, but Buddhists are phenomenalists. Not materialists. They reject an ontology based on neuroscience.

[Anonymous No.19690805]

>>19681923
>>19681956
These are good posts that I can't add much to. As a concrete example look at the recent video on ordinary objects that Vsauce did. He uses a causal-overdetermination argument as well as a not-well-defined argument to come to an eliminativist position on ordinary objects (only basic entities in physics exist). This runs in to some problems for him, though it doesn't seem like he fully realizes it. For one, it implies that humans don't exist (along with consciousness, though it doesn't seem like he realizes the gravity of that predicament), so he tries to shift the existence of humans to a process of "the universe peopleing". It seems to me that if ordinary objects are eliminated than ordinary processes should be as well, since very similar logic can be used in both cases. Also, he seems to suggest (I might not be remembering correctly) that our universe could be a simulation in a computer, but according to him computers don't exist. Of course, maybe he would deflect to the process of computation, but the first reply in the thread (the image with a lot of text) is a pretty good argument why "computation" is itself not objective and can only be relegated to the "useful way of looking at things" category.

Dennet is not so naïve to hold such contradicting opinions, instead opting for just a clean eliminativist viewpoint – though it does come with a friendly face which manages to fool many people. I am always shocked when people claim Dennet’s ideas are not radical, given his opinions on lucid dreaming and animal consciousness.

[Anonymous No.19690882]

>>19690805
The funny thing about the whole "this could be a simulation" argument (which is just Descartes' evil demon argument dress up in a cyberpunk cosplay) is they end up with the same mind/body dualism, the maya, except instead of a physical and divine dichotomy, they end up with digital matrix and physical world dichotomy, where a divine and impressive eternal source energy has been anthropomorphised into a disingenuous computer programmer authority figure. It's like the atheists sad version of a childlike view of Christianity.

[Anonymous No.19691118]

This guy was unironically my go-to philosopher until I read this screenscap.

[Anonymous No.19691186]

>>19689254
This post finally made me interested in reading him. Conducting philosopy of mind from neuroscience is something I've thought about but never read at any length. So, thanks for this post.

[Anonymous No.19691389]

>>19691118
Consciousness is an illusion our souls observe.

[Anonymous No.19691470]

>>19691186
He's much more about cognitive psychology than neuroscience, he rarely discusses the latter. Unless you don't know the difference just like that poster, then it won't mislead you.

[Anonymous No.19691578]

>>19691186
>Conducting philosopy of mind from neuroscience is something I've thought about but never read at any length.
I've formally studied cognitive neuroscience. The truth is, the neuro-biological theories of mind are no stronger than mere philosophical ones, and as of yet, don't go anywhere. And, many of these don't begin with neuroscience, they begin with analytic philosophy. Not that such makes them wrong, but it does demonstrate that what some of them claim about their scientific vivacity is merely false. The fact is the actual philosophical problems have never been "solved" in that sense, and have remained the same basic things with different language and terms. And it's not a surprise to me, since most neuroscientists (or surgeons) don't dabble much in consciousness studies, they're usually focused on something very specific.
For example, there's a version of Integrated Information Theory which sees consciousness as an integrated information system. And there's computational theories of mind which are loosely similar. I won't get to deep into these, but one problem: the brain doesn't behave like a computer. Or, there's Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, similar to the more philosophical Global Workspace Theory.
Many of these presume certain things about the brain which don't exist. Mostly: a "CPU" of the brain. Interesting thing: this CPU (the dreaded homonculus or "spotlight consciousness") is nothing but a redressed dispute from earlier philosophers. There is no such spotlight, it seems.
Another problem I think is how many analytics will read far too deeply into experiments (Sam Harris is terrible for this, I don't think it's a coincidence the New Atheists had it as a talking point), especially their laymen followers For example, memory>>19689254
>memories are not "stored", they're a series of connections made, and the memory is constantly being refreshed
This is far too simplistic of rendering of memory studies. It is considered that memories are conducted through a process called LTP (Long term potentiation). You can knock out a gene in mice (αCAMKII, for LTP) and this will impoverish their memory capacity. However: 1. these are based on mice experiments like many studies are, not humans, 2. The memory capacity isn't effected in absolutes. If 2 is true of mice, how much more will it be true in the human brain.

tldr: Many analytics obfuscate and redress ancient philosophical problems by binding minutia away from the central point. I found these theories intellectually intimidating until I actually studied them in context in higher education.

[Anonymous No.19691653]

>>19691578
>For example, there's a version of Integrated Information Theory which sees consciousness as an integrated information system. And there's computational theories of mind which are loosely similar. I won't get to deep into these, but one problem: the brain doesn't behave like a computer. Or, there's Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, similar to the more philosophical Global Workspace Theory.
Anon, we don't discuss theories of consciousness that aren't at least 30 years old and dumbed down to a point where a Buddhist can understand them. Don't even bring this shit up, we're not ready.

[Anonymous No.19691691]

>>19688960
>That consciousness emerges from but is identical to its physical substrate?
Does the image on a tv emerge from pixels? And or the computer chips and wires in the tv? And the electrical wire running to the telephone pole? The image on a tv also emerges from the mind of tv writers and producers, the image on a tv also emerges from the inventor of tvs, electronics and wires, and the images on the tv emerged from the writers and producers parents and their parents, and the images on the tv emerged from WW1 and 2 and the great depression and the Renaissance and the fall and rise of Rome, and the images right now on my tv emerged from the big bang?

[Anonymous No.19691708]

>>19688960
>Pressure is identical to particle kinetics, but it is not a reductive property

Pressure is a result of particles interacting with other particles, a completely solitary particle, feasible or unfeasible, does pressure exist?

Can the idea of pressure be reduced to be contained in a particles potential, repertoire of possibilities?

There is this thing called particle.
There are particles.
They have properties and characteristics.
One is that when they interact, an activity called pressure is observed to occur.
It seems to be nessacarily linked to the existence of these particles, and their interaction

[Anonymous No.19691775]

>>19689254
>The mind then stitches all of this together to create a "self". This "self" is a semi-fiction, and exists to allow for mental phenomena and sensory experience to have a meaningfully coherent continuity. The fictitious nature of this selfhood must be stressed, because the mind is engaged in "parallelism"; that is, it is constantly thinking, processing, understanding, etc, and it is thus constantly modifying the "self" to fit this.

There is a big difference between any tal of "''self"" and the task of fundamentally, scientifically, philosophically understanding conciousness.

Conciousness is pre thoughts on selfness, conciousness is the fact the seemingly in your head events very different from events occurring in your arm and a rock, are occuring, and these occuring events have led to the entirety of human history and everything you see around you.

And seemingly why rocks and monkeys and dogs don't do the things humans do, is fundamentally due to activity in the head region.

Yes there are differences in the 'independent agencies' of the brain of monkey and man, as there are differences between them in feet and hands, but there seems to some other difference,

I mean really how different are the smartest monkey brains to an average human? They can learn and very advanced skills, but why can't they approach the mental ability of average human?

Where and why do their mental abilities have such a harsh limit?

I do believe monkies posses conciousness by the way, just as a baby does, just that conciousness alone is not very potent, it needs other things, like long evolution of independent working together brain agencies,
Which the monkey has to equal and more and less degrees.

Conciousness is aided by books and school, surely this has been tried with monkeys, surely it took humans a long time to develop, evolving these capacity for greater magnitudes of conciousness control and usage, so maybe it's possible over the next few hundred years to continue to train the same families of monkeys, trying to see if their good schooling traits genetically pass on,

Still I'm sure dogs today, police dogs and dogs on America's got talent can do things dogs 100 and 1000 years ago couldn't, just as man today too.

[Anonymous No.19691798]

>>19691775
Fuck you.

[Anonymous No.19692043]

>>19691798
Why? Write something more interesting than I did or absolutely officially the statement In the post I am responding to is self directed

[Anonymous No.19692219]

AHEM!

By the principle of parsimony, if the Subject experiences itself Subjectively, as opposed to experiencing itself as that which Materialists claim that it "truly is", electrical signals and such, requiring further explanation as to why it does not experience itself as such, then one can conclude that the Subjective experience is the Subject's true nature and both the Materialist theory opposing it and the Materialist theory accounting for this opposition are false.

BUUUURRRRRRRRRRP MORTY!!! IT JUST WORKS!!

[Anonymous No.19692349]

>>19680714
jaron lanier is such a dork

[Anonymous No.19692794]

>>19689659
Buddhists are crypto-materialists, but they pretend that regarding the material as being comprised of “processes” absolves them of being so (it doesn't)

[Anonymous No.19692800]

>>19690805
> Dennet’s ideas are not radical, given his opinions on lucid dreaming
what does he say about it?

[Anonymous No.19692808]

>>19691389
If the soul can observe (being conscious of) something then you still have a real consciousness observing the “false one”

[Anonymous No.19692952]

>>19692794
They are not. Phenomenalism is not a kind of materialism. Nor do they think "everything is just a process bro". I seriously have no idea how you look at their conception of the Skhandas and come to that conclusion. Have you read any buddhist canon?

[Anonymous No.19693023]

>>19692952
Their ontology isn't based on the idea that everything is fundamentally stuff in motion, but rather that everything is conditioned.

[Anonymous No.19693200]

>>19692808
Yes. I think of it more in terms of the soul is the mind, consciousness is the brain, they're working together to produce incarnation, but the soul is immortal, fourth dimensional, and culpable to objective moral truth.

You know the phrase "your mind is playing tricks on you"? This saying is talking about the conscious brain being mistaken. Who is the "you" that "your mind" is playing tricks on if it is not the soul? We all take that saying at face value because it makes perfect sense intuitively. Modern society has just been brainwashed (ironic term) into atheism for the benefit of those in power, because they are empowered by a soulless population, that is, a population which denies the existence of their own souls, and by extension, their moral culpability to divine truth.

[Anonymous No.19693283]

I was gonna say we can all agree, but after reading this thread I should say, the most sensible among us can agree it appears ( to what, who, how?) That the head brain mind conciousness system involves electromagnetic activity?

How much faster does electromagnetic activity travel than the quanta of concious experience per unit, or
Compared to how fast a person can move their hand back and forth the distance of a cm

An interesting thought related to this I had is:

Imagine a person conciously ( :) ) choosing within themselves they will move their hand back and forth the distance of 6 inches for 20 seconds

I think a key to understanding conciousness is understanding multi tasking, anyway back burner that thought.

If you then consider that same questioning process about the speed of electro magnetic activity, vs the speed of awareness activity,

and 7 seconds into this arm waving activity one considers how long does it take this internal awareness to activate this hand moving, would the answer be, absolutely perfectly instantly, or even quicker than instantly, for the hand is moving and being moved by an awareness that made a commitment to this movement at least 7 seconds ago,

Multitasking interest comes in when now seeing the person on a unicycle juggling and ballencing swords on nose and unicycling on a tight rope while singing opera

How can a singular thing, concious awareness, continuously produce such multitude of disparate activity instantly at the same time

[Anonymous No.19693326]

>>19693200
Ok that is all well and good and righteous and relevant, but there is still the desire to mechanically understand how things function, and you are just kicking the can down road to asking how does the souls awareness function work, can the soul feel, how many different sensations, and how?

Part of the divide between folks like you and a general science mind, is that you may motion towards saying it doesn't matter how the soul works, all that's important is the world's moral state, and this rubs lots of the efforts of sciences the wrong way of figuring and tinkering with the mechanical world .

The difference between an individual aware they are in a complex world of monkey men, power struggles and advanced grotesque treachery, with the desire for such to be different, opposed to the advancement of mankind through the ages by evolving and innovating materials and mechanics understanding

[Anonymous No.19693491]

>>19693326
Good post.
>Part of the divide between folks like you and a general science mind, is that you may motion towards saying it doesn't matter how the soul works, all that's important is the world's moral state, and this rubs lots of the efforts of sciences the wrong way of figuring and tinkering with the mechanical world.

Let me preface this by saying you're right, and I know this first hand being a mechanical engineer who also believes in soul. This divide is a new phenomena. The enlightenment period was entirely fueled by what today would be regarded as Christian science, European men exploring physical reality through scientific method to elevate Christiandom.

We have to pull the reins back on science for sciences sake, because despite the technocratic fantasy of digital utopia, in reality we are accelerating directly towards tyrannical omnipotence via technology.

>you are just kicking the can down road to asking how does the souls awareness function work, can the soul feel, how many different sensations, and how?

The irony here is that we've been kicking that soul can down the road now for a century using scientific malpractice via substance abuse masquerading as medication. Society is deeply sickened right now, by design, and more science is not the cure. Atheists need to be made uncomfortable, they are the pawns being played against the enlightenment of humanity.

[Anonymous No.19693658]

>>19693283
>How much faster does electromagnetic activity travel than the quanta of concious experience per unit
Current empirical knowledge about it is that consciousness is cognitively discontinuous, and we are conscious a little bit over 12% of our actual existence. Around 400ms of unconscious time surrounds every conscious moments of about 50ms.
Which is a good way to illustrate the differences between the different conscious stratas available for analysis. If we limit ourselves to a purely cognitive understanding of consciousness, we won't understand why it seems to us that consciousness is continuous. You'll be left searching for an empirical explanation for why what is factually discontinuous can be experientially united. However, a proper understanding of the essence of consciousness is all that is required to see that the union of sense impressions inside a lived flux is, within consciousness, purely apodictic. You cannot, by definition, be conscious of your unconsciousness. All moments of consciousness are synthesized in a single flux because there are no structural alternatives on the eidetic level itself. That itself cannot be understood completely within an empirical understanding of consciousness. It does not invalidate the data of empirical sciences, but requires that we put them into a proper context, that of transcendental idealism.
> That the head brain mind conciousness system involves electromagnetic activity?
More precisely, the cognitive activity of the brain relies on both electricity and chemicals. Chemicals is how neurons transmit information from one another, while electricity is how the information travels across a single nerve cell. the "sides" of the main neural membrane are kept at different electrical potential through different ratios of cations and anions (particules that have either lost or gained an electron). Outside the cells are more sodium cations and more chloride anions, and the inside has more potassium cations and various organic anions, meaning that at rest the neuron becomes negatively charged. The channels through which the different anions and cations can enter the cell opens themselves based on the charge potential of the membrane. At rest, only potassium can go through. When a chemical neurotransmitter hits the membrane, it affects the charge, opening various channels, ultimately leading to a rapid depolarization/repolarization/hyperpolarization event. i.e., the neuron "firing".
Electricity itself only transfer the information from the axon to the synapse. Well, in the vast majority of cases. some neurons are "tied" together and can transmit electricity directly from one another, but they are vastly outnumbered by those that use neurotransmitters.

[Anonymous No.19693667]

>>19689514
lol, just accept that this is the kind of thread that attracts every opinion under the sun. Join in.

[Anonymous No.19694059]

>>19692800
Sorry it wasn't about lucid dreaming, but about dreaming in general. Lucid dreaming is supposed to be a counter example to his model of dreaming.

Dennet thinks that dreams are not "experienced" only that we remember a false memory after we wake up. Then some lucid dreaming experiments were done which seems to contradict that theory. You can read more about it on the internet encyclopedia of philosophy's article on dreaming. The point that I was trying to make is that it would seem strange to have such a radical departure from the typical view of dreaming unless you believed some very strange things about consciousness in the first place.

[Anonymous No.19694204]

>>19693658
> Current empirical knowledge about it is that consciousness is cognitively discontinuous, and we are conscious a little bit over 12% of our actual existence. Around 400ms of unconscious time surrounds every conscious moments of about 50ms.
source? I’ve never heard this and it seems quite far-fetched

[Anonymous No.19694312]

>>19691118
Mybe you should've read him then. He doesn't mean "illusion" as that it doesn't exist, but that it's the sum of several different parts acting in concordance with eachother, rather than being the phenomena of the sole soul.

[Anonymous No.19694417]

>>19693667
You can easily spot most of the pseuds when they consistently misspell "Dennett" in their long-winded elucidations.

[Anonymous No.19695029]

>>19694204
> https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1002433

[Anonymous No.19695162]

>>19694059
>Then some lucid dreaming experiments were done which seems to contradict that theory
This also doesnt match with the variable vividness of dreams. Different people react differently to various substances in regards to dreams. When I smoke pot before sleep, I dont dream at all. When I don't my dreams are in full technicolor, with surround sound and haptic feedback.

[Anonymous No.19695173]

>>19695029
>When unconscious processing is “completed,” all features are simultaneously rendered conscious at discrete moments in time, sometimes even hundreds of milliseconds after stimuli were presented.
Cartesian Theater alive and well everyone. Dennett's (or maybe even Ryle's) work is as relevant as ever in Brain Mind Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland. Embarrassing.
>Others avoid this issue by denying the sheer existence of phenomenal consciousness [Dennett's Consciousness Explained cited with no page]
Jesus Fucking Christ. They even discuss the color phi phenomenon in a such a naive way that they should get laughed out of the conference room, not to mention published. It's almost like that book you're citing can help you develop a less retarded understanding of the subjective timestamping issue in this exact fucking experiment. Hint: time-of-stimulus information is processed just like any other information in the brain, it's not special you fucking morons. Just because it seems special to you doesn't make it so.

[Anonymous No.19695387]

>>19695029

Those researchers in that article conflate consciousness and sensory-perceptions, which is a surprisingly common mistake. Consciousness is what has immediate awareness of sensory perception while being non-identical with those mental objects like visual perceptions that it is aware of.

The researchers speak about “continuous” and “discrete” consciousness but all the examples they cited supposedly in favor of “discrete consciousness” are examples only of junctures in the minds ability to internally render the visual data received from the eyes. In other words, the researchers taken demonstrable gaps in the internal rendering of visual data as implying gaps or discreteness in the consciousness or awareness which is aware *of that rendering of visual data*, but this does not actually demonstrate or indicate that consciousness is discrete at all, just like how if you have an observer watching a train pass, the demonstrable gaps between the train cars don’t imply that the observer or their awareness is having gaps or flitting in and out of existence.

The premise of a continuous consciousness that is aware of imperfect and discrete visual rendering by the mind is not incongruent with any evidence cited in that article.

Like with the example of the colored balls that seem to change color, a continuous consciousness would remain the exact same and continuously present even in the milliseconds in between the red and green ball flashing, but the ability of that consciousness to be aware of the ball would simply be delimited by the speed and efficiency of the mind at rendering that visual data *for* awareness, but the presentation of the balls that is given to awareness is a separate thing from the fact of consciousness itself being present; the junctures are due to the rendering of visual data not keeping pace to the speed that events are taking place, and not because there are gaps in the awareness that knows that visual data. Nothing in that article indicates that consciousness itself has any sort of gaps or discreteness.

[Anonymous No.19695800]

>>19695387
>Those researchers in that article conflate consciousness and sensory-perceptions, which is a surprisingly common mistake
Given that sense-percepts are the majority of what constitues our vigilant natural life, why would that be a mistake?
> Consciousness is what has immediate awareness of sensory perception while being non-identical with those mental objects like visual perceptions that it is aware of.
Wrong, our consciousness coincides entirely with its acts as long as we remain in the psycho-phenomenal strata of analysis. It is through the intentional acts themselves that our conscious activity gains its aboutness.
Consciousness is not aware of something, awareness is a specific modality of conscious activity.

[Anonymous No.19696397]

>>19695800
>>Those researchers in that article conflate consciousness and sensory-perceptions, which is a surprisingly common mistake
>Given that sense-percepts are the majority of what constitutes our vigilant natural life, why would that be a mistake?
Because sense-perceptions are only one aspect of our lived experience, we also have knowledge of things like thoughts and emotions, however these latter things are not made known to us through any of the senses unlike sense-perceptions. What unites them with sense-perceptions in our experience? The answer is that they and sense-perceptions are all known alike by awareness.

All of these thoughts, sense-perceptions and emotions are not self-knowing, they do not have individual centers of awareness that allows thought #187 of the day to observe itself, all these things are instead known by awareness. Sensory-perceptions, thoughts and emotions present themselves to this awareness like images flashing before the movie-goer on a movie screen. That this is so shows up in the way that people naturally speak about knowing thing, people always speak of themselves as distinct from those thoughts and sensations, they say "I saw the horse run by" and "I've just suddenly had an idea", if awareness wasn't distinct from those things then people wouldn't instinctively speak of themselves as having a separate an abiding identity which knows that particular transient thing, as well as the things before and after it.

Moreover, a self-aware sight of something would not be able to combine or integrate itself with other self-aware thoughts and sense-perceptions to form the united experience that we have. At the moment that the sight of a tree is both displaying the visual content of "tree" and also having self-awareness of itself as such (according to your model where it has both), it cannot also smell odors or hear sounds or know the contents of one's thoughts; there remains no way for these to all be integrated in the smooth continuum of experience that we actually experience where we have knowledge of our own thoughts while also having simultaneous and immediate access to our sight and sense of touch. A separate witnessing awareness standing outside all of these is required—the light of pure consciousness.

>> Consciousness is what has immediate awareness of sensory perception while being non-identical with those mental objects
>Wrong, our consciousness coincides entirely with its acts as long as we remain in the psycho-phenomenal strata of analysis.
How could consciousness coinciding with (taking place at the same time) as mental acts ever possibly prove that consciousness was the same thing as those mental acts like visual perceptions? All objects coincide with the space that contains them, but to say that objects are the same as space is wrong since objects are comprised of a material that occupies a position in space. The mere fact of coincidence does absolutely nothing to prove identity.

[Anonymous No.19696874]

>>19696397
>Because sense-perceptions are only one aspect of our lived experience, we also have knowledge of things like thoughts and emotions, however these latter things are not made known to us through any of the senses unlike sense-perceptions
I think you are reading too much into what I said. I perfectly agree with you that sense-percept does not exhaust our conscious activity, or doesnt even exhaust are perceptual activity, but it certainly constitutes the majority of whatbwenencounter in natural conscious life. And empiricists cannot study anything that isn't empirical, so as long as they limit their claims about the empiricalmaspects of our consciousness, I.e. our cognitive apparatus, then they are proceeding according to the object of their science.
It is a question, as I said earlier, of states of analysis.
Natural life > level of psycho-pop, (Freud, intentions, etc). This is where we operate in daily life and for the most part, there is no requirement of actuality, only operationality.
Empirical life > level of cognitive sciences and empirical psychology. This is seemingly where the modalities of our contact to the outside world are worked out and implemented.
Eidetic life> level of essences, of immanent contingency. This is where you understand, outside (but through, as in, lead to beyond) empiricism, the contingent structures of consciousness, such as awareness and union.
Transcendental life > which is where you understand the apodictic nature of the Self, of pure intuition and of consciousness as lived time.
> What unites them with sense-perceptions in our experience? The answer is that they and sense-perceptions are all known alike by awareness
Awareness is a modality of intentional acts, it is subject to a multitude of permutations, such as daydreaming which is awareness of imagined content without the awareness of imagination itself. At any point in my perceptual life I perceive things without being aware of them, or through different degrees of awareness. I can bring them to the foreground, and whether or not I can do it purely from an immanent act or not is how I know if this thing is abstract or concrete.
> All of these thoughts, sense-perceptions and emotions are not self-knowing
Of course they aren't. But as intentional acts of a being, they constitute a self eidetically. And this isn't the only Self built. At each strata corresponds one or more Self-operation. There ARE cognitive 'selves', psychological selves, at least one eidetical Self (the Cogito), and at least one transcendantal Self (two, if you are a Theist).

[Anonymous No.19697144]

>>19696874
>I think you are reading too much into what I said.
That's what I thought was probably the case since you seemed to be speaking in the sense of the tradition of western phenomenology, but I wanted to clarify where I stand just in case, partially because I have seen other people on /lit/ argue unironically before that thoughts and/or the process of seeing are self-aware on at least a few occasions, and they sometimes do so in these kinds of threads, typically it's Buddhists or people with some interest in that who do so, motivated by an evident animus against the notion of a witnessing consciousness, even at the expense of positing a counter-intuitive model that is contrary to our experience. Buddhists on /lit/ like to call Buddhism phenomenology but then typically point to Hume and Dennett instead of actual phenomenologists like Brentano, Husserl, Ponty etc, who do write in various ways about transcendental consciousness, witnessing-awareness, the Self etc, I find western phenomenology interesting but I agree with eastern formulations of it like Advaita more, and I think western phenomenology sometimes errs by using 'awareness' and 'consciousness' too loosely when speaking of things on the empirical and eidetic level, when IMO awareness proper really only exists on the transcendental level and that the lower levels only seem to have awareness when those lower levels are 'illuminated' by the light coming from above them.
>Awareness is a modality of intentional acts,
I find this definition unsatisfying, because it's described awareness incidentally via it's relation to something else, like saying "the moon is that bright thing next to that tree branch" instead of describing the nature of awareness itself in terms of it's qualities or characteristics. In my opinion, when you consider awareness itself in qualitative terms independent of reference to any incidental connection with anything, it can be described as a fullness of presence that is partless, immediate, pristine, non-discursive (non-conceptual), self-disclosing and that is always present effortlessly and spontaneously, and then when this awareness is present at the same time as mental acts, we can call it the 'witness' and 'observer' of these acts, and say that it is "directed" at them, even if this isn't necessarily a quality that awareness intrinsically possesses.

[Anonymous No.19697150]

>>19696874
>it is subject to a multitude of permutations, such as daydreaming which is awareness of imagined content without the awareness of imagination itself.
Attention or focus, and the ability of the mind to monitor what activity it is pursuing in a meta sense are not the same thing as awareness. I don't see daydreaming in your example as a correct example of awareness being subject to permutations, but only as the objects of awareness being subject to change. When you day-dream as you say, you are aware of imagined contents. There is fundamentally only this one awareness, we don't have separate centers of awareness that monitor each other but monitoring is instead a function that the mind engages in. Another awareness in relation to this one is not going to be another awareness because we only have one center of it, but a kind of cognitive attitude towards what mental act our awareness is aware of (i.e. either the presence of absence of some belief about it or the presence or absence of some willing self-monitoring of it like the fact that we are imagining)
>At any point in my perceptual life I perceive things without being aware of them,
How could you possibly have knowledge of the fact of you perceiving them and then cite them as an examples if you weren't aware of them in the first place? Wouldn't it surely be more accurate to say that those things intruded upon your awareness of sensory perceptions without your mind taking notice of them doing so?

[Anonymous No.19697181]

2022 and I still cant believe anons on /lit/ dont know what consciousness means. No, it isnt your waking mind you fucking troglodytes.

[Anonymous No.19697200]

>>19697150
I'm done with this argument. You, sir, are a retard.

[Anonymous No.19697257]

Seems par for the course. Bakker starts out the Dennett of fiction and then has a Hegelian progress towards the absolute having over everything.

[Anonymous No.19697345]

>>19697150
>Attention or focus, and the ability of the mind to monitor what activity it is pursuing in a meta sense are not the same thing as awareness.
I honestly don't see in what sense they are different. This seems like a nomological issue, where you take awareness as I do consciousness, thus being forced to distinguish between attention and awareness. I don't see that need at all.
>>19697150
>I don't see daydreaming in your example as a correct example of awareness being subject to permutations, but only as the objects of awareness being subject to change.
How? Daydreaming is specifically as dreaming in a wakened state, the objects of consciousness in daydreaming are not present at all prior to entering that state. At it is specifically a good example, as any modification in awareness which raises the inactuality of the objects of daydreaming will end the event.
> There is fundamentally only this one awareness, we don't have separate centers of awareness that monitor each other but monitoring is instead a function that the mind engages in.
I don't see why we need to talk about multiplicity. Except that perhaps you espouse a CPU-esque version of cognition? Because somehow you keep bringing up the idea of monitoring center... Because each cognitive structure is specifically there to treat the input/output relation of our neural system, of *OUR* neural system, as a single conscious being. The processes do not need to be tied together manually, because them being tied together is contingent to this situation (is eidetically assured).
Also, at a purely psycho-empirical level, there are a multiplicity of awareness, as there are a multiplicity of Egos.
> How could you possibly have knowledge of the fact of you perceiving them and then cite them as an examples if you weren't aware of them in the first place?
Pure subdivision of experiential data. At any time we perceive more than what we are aware of. That we can shift our awareness to secondary objects/attributes simply indicate their proximity to the primary ones (and with proper phenomenological reduction, shows us that awareness rest on a segregation of our experience).
> Wouldn't it surely be more accurate to say that those things intruded upon your awareness of sensory perceptions without your mind taking notice of them doing so?
There are no "material" differences between the object of awareness and the background object, if my mind doesn't take notice of them its because my intentional action didn't direct me toward them (yet).

[Anonymous No.19697398]

>>19697144
>In my opinion, when you consider awareness itself in qualitative terms independent of reference to any incidental connection with anything, it can be described as a fullness of presence that is partless, immediate, pristine, non-discursive (non-conceptual), self-disclosing and that is always present effortlessly and spontaneously, and then when this awareness is present at the same time as mental acts, we can call it the 'witness' and 'observer' of these acts, and say that it is "directed" at them, even if this isn't necessarily a quality that awareness intrinsically possesses.
I would say that you have perfectly described the transcendental Self. From there the differences between our two positions can only really be in the structuration of the discourse. Maybe I'm still taking to literally the analogy between the intuitive value of sense perception and pure intuition, which would force me to keep awareness tied to a lower strata.

[Anonymous No.19697638]

>>19693658
>>19693658
More precisely, the cognitive activity of the brain relies on both electricity and chemicals.

Just gonna wonder and question out loud a bit.

Are there chemicals involved in brain function that are not anywhere else in the body?

Even so the same molecules and chemicals in different surroundings and interactions can perform different functions?

Can conciousness exist without ever having recieved any sensory input?

You saying the electrical and chemical activity and neoron activity, and my awareness and experiences with my senses, make me consider if it is not something to the continual bombardment of sensory data, forcing the complex electro chemical activity to animate

Sight, sound, touch, this subtle and not subtle, sparks of information pinging, aware of my breath, my feet, an itch, how many cm of my skin do I have acute feeling of at any given time,

Cntd...

[Anonymous No.19697692]

>>19693658
>>>19693658
More precisely, the cognitive activity of the brain relies on both electricity and chemicals.

Just gonna wonder and question out loud a bit.

Are there chemicals involved in brain function that are not anywhere else in the body?

Even so the same molecules and chemicals in different surroundings and interactions can perform different functions?

Can conciousness exist without ever having recieved any sensory input?

You saying the electrical and chemical activity and neoron activity, and my awareness and experiences with my senses, make me consider if it is not something to the continual bombardment of sensory data, forcing the complex electro chemical activity to animate

Sight, sound, touch, this subtle and not subtle, sparks of information pinging, aware of my breath, my feet, an itch, how many cm of my skin do I have acute feeling of at any given time,

The speed, multitude, magnitude of all these actions in a tight knit system of a certain unique array of chemicals and materials, forces this array to organize and equate in some ratio of activity: these photo have this information, impact the subtle brain, these tickles these scratches have these information, impact the subtle brain, these french fries this burger have that information, etc

Impacting the parts of brain, the parts are ordered, compared contrasted, and constantly constantly more and more information, tastes tastes tastes, chemicals are different, compare contrast, they register differently,

Photon reflected there and one there are different, they register in brain impacting different,

All this constant impacting, sloshing and shaping and changing the subtle materials of brain

As the skin and tongue and eye have particle detectors, motion sensors, so too in the brain there are sensors

Sensors send what is sensed to materials which catch the sensation and is this set down an endless line or is the sensation codified and solidly stored,

Me sensations always coming in,
Feed back loop between stored sensations
Comparing and contrasting constant new to all stored

We are being dragged through space and time on a rotating revolving planet, maybe this creates a gravitron effect that pushes and pulls the information and information received in such a way there is much oscillation at closer to light speed then car speed, and micro mirror like objects and reflectors do all sorts of effects, as well as the ladder of scales from that micro local realm up to the brain as an item system, lags

And somehow some how some how, this allows me to think and feel and recognize ( cognize, re-cognize) That I am in a state of on-ness, a flashlight can be in a state of on-ness but it cannot recognize as such.

Feed back loops, light, organic mirrors, reflectors, beam splitters, capturers, codifiers, storers, comparers contrasters, all united in controlled uncontrolled harmonic cacophony,


Cntd..

[Anonymous No.19697700]

>>19693658
The body is a brain, my hands are my brain, the skin on my shins is my brain, my body is my brain, there is only brain, a singular system, composed of many, and nessecarily dependant on natural system beyond, to spark my skin, to send molecule up my nose, the world is brain and I am one of it's neurons. It touches me I touch it. It touches inside me, i touch inside me, it makes me see outside me, I see outside me inside me

Sensitivity. The brain mind is not a brick wall, it is not jello, it is not gravy, it is not a baseball.

All this information constantly entering my holes, and touching the brain, chemico electrica physically

This disturbs the previous state of brain material, the state of brain material, on its less rigidly sturdy scale, parts of the brain might need to be more like a brick wall than like jello.

So the body, a singular item separate from it's surrounds, in the degree of motion.

The single item body contains many various parts.

The brain is a single item in the body, composed of various parts.

Light coming in the eyes, matter touching against our skin, multitudes of micro events at the same time, Practically continously, I can be eating while looking at a busy street of people, and getting a massage: how many photons are entering my eyes in a minute, how many molecules in my mouth, how many mm's and how many times in that minute is my skin touched, how much physical information is bombarding my brain in that minute.

The materials of the brain, functions with the varieties of these bombardments in such a way, a ratio of reflection, capture is so 'contious' on such a sensitive array of brain materials, that the brain material some how mimics these impressions it sees, and they are so contained in this capture chamber,

Maybe compared contrasted catagorized, this constant bevy of a variety of different types of physical information so sloshes the brain substance, that the brain substance.........

How do we make the leap....

That the brain system substance.... Experiences.... What the heck can that word mean, the activity.
I get the jist of bones, I have seen the framing of a house, the difference between a sandcastle and steel tower. I get the jist of tendons, I have witnessed elastic. I cannot even begin to comprehend how I can possibly be aware, how I have seen in my head, and have thoughts, I cannot approach any thought experimenty theoretical understanding of the possibilty of the mechanics of conciousness, this puzzle is mind boggingly bizarre, the shear escaping of the answer, no where in sight, no idea. Baffling .

The idea of a system, a complex organization of matters in a complex realm, being able to 'see', and think, and ponder

I am not my fingernail, my finger nail does not think and feel, neither does my ankle have imagination. I, me, apparently located in the head, controller of ankle and fingernail, am aware, God this mystery sucks, I can hardly stand not understanding the trick

[Anonymous No.19697718]

>>19697638
>Are there chemicals involved in brain function that are not anywhere else in the body?
Considering everything needed enters the brain through the BBB (brain-blood barrier), I don't think so, however the majority of neurotransmitters are synthesized directly from the neuron, and we have absolutely no clue how many there are (we have identified over a 100).
> Even so the same molecules and chemicals in different surroundings and interactions can perform different functions?
Up to a point, neurons can be specialised. I don't think you can replace a pyramid cell with any other available.
And yes, chemistry (and physics) are going to heavily affect this action. Find a way to mess with the action potential of your neuron's membrane and, well... I have no clue desu, your probably going to get a very bad seizure. In the same way, if you are really bright and decide to put a very strong electromagnet right next to your head, you'll either go temporarily blind or just fall unconscious altogether.
> Can conciousness exist without ever having recieved any sensory input?
God?

[Anonymous No.19697721]

>>19697692
>Can conciousness exist without ever having recieved any sensory input?
People can dream in comas, yet all their dreams are based on memories generated from sensory input. If you started from scratch with a "blank" brain it would still need electrical stimulation/input to function, which is what's generated by sense data and given form and meaning as our neural network develops. So I would argue yes, but it would be impossible to guess what kind of neural topography would arise from non-sense data.

[Anonymous No.19697730]

You guys ever see this?

https://youtu.be/cPiDHXtM0VA

Maybe some more immediate deep connection in memory system with and on the speed and fidelity of light scale. Whereas humans sacrificed Some of that immediate continum most speedy scale for deeper longer slower thinking

[Anonymous No.19697783]

>>19697721
>People can dream in comas
That's after a life of recieving sense input,.

I asked if conciousness can exist without ever having recieved any sense input at all. This is a big clue it seems.

We take a new born baby and rear it in a sensory deprivation tank,

Oops, we gotta feed it, can we avoid it recieving any sense input from eating, eliminating taste there would be touch in the mouth still
And the mouth needs movements to swallow
And something needs to force the moving

But trees move and are considered to be unconscious

So let's say the babys mouth moves and is unconscious

So the sense dep take you know cleans the bathroom stuff, filters in air, soundlessly of course, and the baby continues the tasteless nutrient paste

And time passes, soon it is 5 then 10, then 20

Then there are 100 babies in the room in this same set up,

Are all their conciuos experiences equal?
How does their conciousness develop?

The same exact rigid protocol of nothingness daily for 20 years,

Oh I just remembered the sensation of going bathroom,

Would that with the food and digestion, and notice of the fact of breathing, or heartbeat,

Guessing this complex sensing all body parts would be hard to turn off for the purity of experiment,

Would those most minor deviations from pure nothingness be enough to compell something of a curiosity, over 20 years, the pattern of heart beat, breathing, food, release of digested food, would these different actions be enough to spark awareness of their differmce which could start a chain reaction of pondering, of wondering.

Does the existence of the essence of the idea of question exist eternally and apriori?

Did the cells on the smallest scale predict what might happen next, take a leap of faith, Pavlov dog like assume the coming of a regularly occured action, and did this ability scale up into a brain,

[Anonymous No.19697819]

And a thought about memory:

How a lot of memory is as is said, jogged or triggered,

You see a stop sign and it reminds you of that time, you see a red bike against a green fence that reminds you of this...

So many memories!!! Soo many memories!!!!!

And yet!!! Right now!!! List the totality of memories in your head!!!!! Shhhh


Another thought:
The possible relavance, of every human needing a male and female to be made,

Two different 'things', 'forces', 'styles', entering into, as, a single being?

Something about this possibly midhmashing the material into an animated fervor, which posses this mirroring, infinity hall of mirrors simulationally suspending space and time, where ratios of external information is sent into this mixer that shakes it and impresses the infos qualities so thouroughly, that the material taking the impression, feels it?

And some little occurance of this, scaled up, quantitatively and qualitatively, scales up the results and abilities of this rare function?

And some quantum classical micro macro gradient of lag times and chamber sequences and reflections and refractions and pipes and tubes and screens

[Anonymous No.19697922]

>>19680664
How does Dennett explain qualia i.e. the sensation of redness?

[Anonymous No.19698215]

>>19697730
https://youtu.be/kwslHICR7K4

[Anonymous No.19698226]

>>19697922
He thinks it is a confused and useless concept.

[Anonymous No.19698307]

>>19680936
I have read none of Daniel Dennett's books. But if you think materialism/determinism is "incompatible" with "free will" then you are retarded and don't understand agency. Agency is hylomorphic to local action. If local action is possible, then agency exists. It does not matter whether the mechanism that produces choices is deterministic or not, or whether it is purely materialistic. All that matters is that it resolves within the agent.

An agent is free when it makes its own choices. End of. How those choices are resolved within the agent is irrelevant to its agency. Agency is by definition constrained when it is coerced from without the agent.

The only real problem here is determining where an agent begins and where it ends. Formally this is trivial, but in reality it's slightly more complicated. Have a nice day, retarded faggot.

[Anonymous No.19698394]

>>19696874
What would you think about a person laying in bed that wants to fall asleep but isn't, seemingly their awareness being out of their control? They are purely aware, there is energy in the head, that energy must go somewhere and do something, memory, thought, imagination, it'd not like you can stop the whole momentum of mind train at will, though I guess a big thing with meditation I'd that, but who knows what goes on in such people's minds, second to second thoughts and visions,

What the thoughts are like second to second day after day for years for people who do monotonous menial labor,

The progress of civilization almost seems an escape from the simple dread and boredom of just being trapped with ones awareness with nothing to toss it onto, to transpose it onto external activities, to escape the simplicity of soley ones self

[Anonymous No.19698402]

>>19698226
LOL. what a way to do away with troublesome concepts that are the primary source of the debate in the first place

[Anonymous No.19698432]

>>19698307
If the determinant of your decision is physics that determine how your brain chemicals interact then you have as much agency as a rock rolling down a hill. The laws of nature that determine how both behave are still external to the actor.

[Anonymous No.19698442]

>>19697144
>>19696874
Unfortunately touchy subject but what you guys think of drugs, and their various effects on awareness? To shine a light on it, to semi radically alter the systems state to try to glean something fundamental or otherwise about the system. Really shows the strong and sensitive roll of chemicals in the brain, the limits of chemicals the brain can handle and restore to equilibrium

[Anonymous No.19698460]

>>19698432
If the laws of nature, metaphysics, reality, or whatever allow for your choices to resolve (locally) within you then it doesn't matter whether it's your soul, fairy dust, physics or chemistry in your brain that's at the root of them. Positing "laws of nature" as an impediment to agency is like claiming "you don't have free will because you can't will yourself into flapping your hands and flying". It's fundamentally confused beyond redemption and not worth taking seriously.

Congrats, intellectually you're just as much of a fag as Dennett, who is entirely not worth reading. I've said all that I needed to say. May (you) pull that cock out your mouth.

[Anonymous No.19698473]

>>19698460
This obviously isn't true since if it's the souls nature that allows it to make choice then the determinant is no longer outside the agent and the agent is thus free to make decisions

>Positing "laws of nature" as an impediment to agency
They are though. If the agent is making decisions because of deterministic cause and effect chains outside of it then it has no free will. On the other hand if it is making choices due to the internal nature of the soul with no physical causal chain within time then it does have free will. The question of free will hinges entirely on whether the human soul is created by things EXTERNAL to it (laws of nature), or by it's intrinsic NATURE.

[Anonymous No.19698509]

>>19698473
>agency is at its root a type of local action
>no, no, no, you're wrong - agency is at its root a type of local action

You do not understand locality and causality.

[Anonymous No.19698514]

Naturalistic determinism is one of, if not the, greatest proofs of free will there is. I will now leave this thread and let the retards here ponder what this means.

[Anonymous No.19698523]

>>19698509
The soul doesn't have a "location" so by definition free will cannot be tied to locality.

[Anonymous No.19698554]

>>19698523
>The soul doesn't have a "location"
This is fascinatingly stupid. You're pretty much the inversion of a zombie.

>I am one with the universe
>what's happening now in Alpha Centauri?

[Anonymous No.19698574]

>>19698554
Very interesting argument.

[Anonymous No.19698580]

>>19698554
>>19698523
To make it more clear even to dum-dums: coherent, cogent, intelligible notions of "soul" posit it as exactly that which is the boundary condition separating one entity from another/its environment/the totality of all that is, i.e. that which determines which "parts" of being are... local to it. It seems in addition to being confused about causality and locality, you're also confused about "soul", what it means to be "intrinsic" and a whole bunch of other ideas.

[Anonymous No.19698584]

>>19698580
>The only thing that is coherent, cogent and intelligible is what I say is coherent, cogent and intelligible.
Again, very nice argument.

[Anonymous No.19698586]

>>19698554
The soul is immaterial. Asking for the location of the soul is the same as asking what's the location of the number 1? What's fascinating is your inability to go beyond reifying immaterial concepts as if they exist in 3D spacetime. Is this what happens to a brain on materialism? Very sad. You should read some Bernardo Kastrup and get up to speed with actual philosophy and not thinking of numbers and other immaterial phenomena as if they actually exist within material reality.

[Anonymous No.19698590]

>>19698584
No, but in your case yes. I think it would do you good to start from assuming my word is the word of God. Go from there. It'll take you far. So far you might actually stop being an inverse-zombie.

[Anonymous No.19698603]

>>19698586
That it is immaterial is immaterial. A soul is in a one-to-one, unique relationship with that which it determines. A relationship between a "soliton" and a "soliton" so it makes perfect sense to say that your soul is located within... you. You carry it around you all the time. It is that which determines why you are you. The boundary between Germany and France is also immaterial. It also has a definite location.

A soul and "the number 1" are very different forms.
The number 1 is in a one-to-many relationship with anything that has the property of being counted once. Therefore you cannot say, indeed, that the number 1 is located anywhere because it isn't in fact in any meaningful sense located anywhere.

[Anonymous No.19698609]

>>19698590
You still have nothing meaningful to say. Your entire conceptions of "soul" and "nature" are rooted in dualisms which all have their roots in Descartes and modern philosophy. It's so incredibly naive and yet you act as though this is the only intelligible way of viewing the world, when in fact it is the least intelligible because it gives rise to the greatest amount of logical contradictions and philosophical error. In a sense, nature and soul are distinct, but in another sense they are not. It requires greater subtlety to comprehend their natures than your type of analytical thought can allow for. Determinism cannot exist without freedom and vice versa. Nothing is as simple as either/or.

[Anonymous No.19698616]

>>19698603
> to say that your soul is located within... you. You carry it around you all the time.
Of course this is a semantic game, because your soul is just not another material substance that you carry around, like a physical ID. Still it makes sense to say that your soul is located within you in the same way that it makes sense to say that I am now located in front of my computer, because _I_ am what _my soul_ is.

[Anonymous No.19698617]

>>19698603
>A soul and "the number 1" are very different forms.
No, they're not as different as you think.

[Anonymous No.19698622]

>>19698609
I really doubt you actually payed attention to anything I wrote.

[Anonymous No.19698626]

>>19698617
And yet, they are. There's only one of me.

[Anonymous No.19698629]

>>19698603
Perhaps then I can ask when the physical body dies and decays where does the soul reside? You seem to be taking it for granted that the soul resides within some physical space and is co-extensive with the physical body, which might be a sensible first intuition but the soul is immortal, the physical body is not. If the soul can exist without the body then the necessity for the soul to be co-extensive with the body is clearly false.

[Anonymous No.19698632]

>>19698622
I did, and you still have not justified your irreconcilable dualism.
> that which determines which "parts" of being are... local to it
What do you think this statement of yours implies? It is an arbitrary cutoff between "nature" and "soul" based on what you "think" - there is nothing more modern (and rooted in Descartes) than this.

[Anonymous No.19698641]

>>19698629
The soul is not immortal, the soul is a-temporal/eternal - as all things immaterial are. Bodies live and die. Souls don't. A soul cannot be immortal because it was never alive to begin with. To ask where a soul resides when the body dies is a bit silly. Your soul always is where you are - with you, being you. A disembodied soul is not a soul at all.

[Anonymous No.19698644]

>>19698626
Just as there is only one "one."

[Anonymous No.19698653]

>>19698644
There are uncountably infinite many ones. They all partake in the category of "one". There are also uncountably infinite many souls, and they all partake in the category of "soul". But there's only one of me, and my soul is my own and mine alone.

[Anonymous No.19698657]

>>19698641
If my soul is "being me", and I am alive, then my soul is alive and therefore, "a soul cannot be immortal because it was never alive to begin with" is wrong. Are you stupid or consciously contradicting yourself?

[Anonymous No.19698662]

>>19698641
Aristotlean philosophy was always a bit silly in that sense, you should take your cue from Plotinus on the Soul since Aristotle erred on denying the reality of the forms outside of matter

[Anonymous No.19698663]

>>19698653
>There are uncountably infinite many ones
Yet you cannot show me "one."
>here are also uncountably infinite many souls,
Yet you cannot show me more than one.

[Anonymous No.19698680]

>>19698657
Your soul is that which imparts you with your being-as-separate-from-all-being (identity/quidity, and existence), so it does make perfect sense to say that it is you because it is that which you are at its most fundamental. There is no contradiction. Only matter can be animate or inanimate. A soul is no more alive than any other immaterial thing.

[Anonymous No.19698698]

>>19698680
No, Soul IS life. Soul is what distinguishes a corpse from a living human being, it is the principle of self movement and vitality. Bodies are only made alive by the indwelling of souls, without the soul the body is nothing but inanimate matter.

[Anonymous No.19698701]

>>19698680
It is your material body, multiplicity, not your soul, which differentiates you in space and time; but this is not you, because in space and time "you" have a beginning and an end, you are not even "you" because there is no point in time where you are the same, either materially or temporally, so to assign the soul to something which can't even be said to exist except in abstracto (for example, imagining so-called "points in time" which only exist hypothetically) is absurd. You have your terms all mixed up. You were saying before that you "possess" your soul, when properly speaking it is your soul which inhabits and in a sense "possesses" your body. But the soul is primary with respect to the body because the body can only exist for the soul; the body does not exist without the conscious soul to perceive and act with respect to it.
>A soul is no more alive than any other immaterial thing.
Accordingly, nothing is alive at all. The word becomes meaningless, because if you, the soul, are not alive, then nothing can be said to be alive. I would argue that the body, as matter, is no more alive than any other material thing, like a hunk of rock, if soul is not mixed with matter. Yet even distinguishing between matter and soul as though they are completely separate is erroneous and is only for the sake of argument.

[Anonymous No.19698825]

>>19698701
>first part
This is all very confused.

>You were saying before that you "possess" your soul, when properly speaking it is your soul which inhabits and in a sense "possesses" your body.
No, I was pointing out that it is your soul that defines you as you. Or, indeed, that it is you that possess your body, not your body that possesses your soul qua being that which you are.

>Accordingly, nothing is alive at all. The word becomes meaningless, because if you, the soul, are not alive, then nothing can be said to be alive.
This does not follow. A body is alive when it is animated from within. That is, it can move on its own. And yes, in the same sense the earth is also alive, because it has its own internal movements. See for example an erupting volcano as an example of the Earth being animated. If a rock were to move on its own then we would have to call it alive. And indeed, you can say the same of the cosmos as a whole.

As with agency, vitality is a type of local action.

[Anonymous No.19698906]

>>19680664
literally an intellectual LARPer atheist. not worth listening to even one bit.

[Anonymous No.19699013]

>>19691578
>The truth is, the neuro-biological theories of mind are no stronger than mere philosophical ones, and as of yet, don't go anywhere.

I don't think this is necissarily true. To be sure, nothing in modern cognitive science or neuroscience is going to answer the Hard Problem for us; however, there are many formulations of philosophy of mind, and older theories about how the nervous system works, that can be helpfully ruled out by recent research.

Neuroscience is a very new discipline. I think it will continue to help on this front and become increasingly indispensable for informing philosophy of mind. Not so much in that it will tell you how things are, but how they probably are not. Similar to how various models of physics, Plato's difference and similarity "particles," Spinoza's monads, etc. can be comfortably replaced despite physics not having an answer to what physical things are or from whence they came.

>Many of these presume certain things about the brain which don't exist. Mostly: a "CPU" of the brain. Interesting thing: this CPU (the dreaded homonculus or "spotlight consciousness") is nothing but a redressed dispute from earlier philosophers. There is no such spotlight, it seems.

The people into computational models I'm aware of are generally explicit in saying these things are problems, they just need them for their model. This is a problem is physics to, in that a small disclaimer at the outset doesn't seem to offset an entire book built on assumptions with poor grounding. I don't see a way around it though.

However, neuroscience in particular has been very effective at banishing the homonculus and Cartesian theater from consideration because it shows the brain to be organized into operationally distinct areas. Of course, philosophers were always on to the idea that there is no unified "I." Hume got this in his critique of cognitio ergo sum, Nietzsche gets at it early in BG&E speaking of "a congress of souls," in lieu of a soul, but the experimental evidence helps with eliminating, or at least greatly reducing the likelihood of the opposing unified view of conciousness as a discrete being.

[Anonymous No.19699155]

>>19691578
>>19691653
>the brain doesn't behave like a computer
What do you mean by computer? Are you talking about a modern day desktop or a Turing machine? An emerging field like neuromorphic computing using superconductors could change our conception of the brain-computer relationship.

I appreciate your perspective. Most of /lit/ (including me in this specific field) are unequipped with the formal scientific training needed to ground it’s more in-depth conversations. This thread shows the board is willing to at least effortpost on difficult topics (unlike /sci/).

What hard topics really need is /litsci/ or /phd/

[Anonymous No.19699380]

>>19698307
this isn't about determinism, dumb anime poster

[Anonymous No.19699402]

>>19680664
Cause he doesn't understand his own stance.

The real and only valid stance on consciousness and free will is that they're both illusions. Not illusion as in that we can't speak about something, but illusion in that what we think of as "consciousness" and "free will" doesn't exist, what exists are individual functions that are hodge podged together to create a illogical illusionary "system" called consciousness/free will. I say system because parts of functions of consciousness and free will exist as either physical or in relational aspects but the whole of "consciousness" and whole of "free will" are goobdly gook.

[Anonymous No.19699505]

>>19699380
Yeh, it's about materialism/positivism/naturalism or whatever other terms you want to use for you goobledygook. None of this crap is pertinent to agency. Nor is subjective consciousness. Or idealism. Or numerous other metaphysical assumptions. OP stated that somehow eliminative materialism about consciousness somehow rules out the existence of free will. This is moronic and I explained why. An agent need nod be (subjectively or not) conscious to make choices. OP, like pretty much all incompatibilists, does not understand agency.

[Anonymous No.19699630]

>>19699505
You're awful angry about this. Probably because you're so threatened by the possibility of being wrong that you react by insulting other people.
The worst kind of person to discuss this stuff with. It's also obvious you have no fucking idea what you're talking about and just throwing strawmen around.

[Anonymous No.19699934]

Consciousness is the result of a history of linguistic errors. Neither scientists nor spiritualists seem to understand this. The "hard problem of consciousness" is not a problem relating to philosophy of mind but to philosophy of language and it has already been solved.

[Anonymous No.19700101]

>>19699630
I'm angry 'cuz I'm pissed at my ex and this bleeds into all my interactions. But me being angry has nothing to do with being right or wrong anyway.

> throwing strawmen around.
No need, the positions I'm arguing against are straw anyway.

[Anonymous No.19700202]

>>19699934
Midwitgenstein take.

[Anonymous No.19700263]

>>19700202
>consciousnessfags and /lit/ BTFO by a midwit
Sad!

[Anonymous No.19700487]

>>19699934
I can't even begin to consider to contemplate to understand the profundity of this mystery problem,
Therefore the solution to the problem must be for me to say that there is no problem, I now may simply cover my eyes and ears walk away saying la la la la proudly

[Anonymous No.19700516]

>>19700487
>>19699934
This would be like while people were working to invent the first car, struggling to wonder how the parts and pieces need to go together to function, running into problems, someone coming up to them and saying, there is no problem, don't worry about this car stuff, just take a horse

[Anonymous No.19700602]

>>19700487
>I now may simply cover my eyes and ears walk away saying la la la la proudly
Ironic, since that's precisely what you're doing. Reaching the conclusion that consciousness is ultimately a problem of language is no easy task, and the simplicity of the conclusion does not demonstrate otherwise. Read Nietzsche and Wittgenstein.

>>19700516
It's the other way around. Do you want to solve the problem (in which case, you investigate it at the root: through language and its genealogical history), or do you want to continue dicking around in the endless circle-jerk that ill-defined words create?

[Anonymous No.19700670]

>>19699155
You would just get people with 6 undergrad credits in a field larping as PhDs.

It is a shame that /his/ is so reguarly inundated by /pol/ shit though, and that jannies delete philosophy and religion threads on /lit/. /sci/ was decent too but the post-2015-16 /pol/ explosion shit that up a bit too, and then the pandemic totally fucked it.

[Anonymous No.19700727]

>>19700670
2015-16 /pol/, r/thedonald, and cambridge analytica ruined the internet

[Anonymous No.19700802]

>>19700727
Nah, the internet has been on a constant decline since its inception. It was only decent when you had to be in university to actually access it. The internet has been irredeemably shit since 2007. The Trump era merely added more shit on top of shit.

[Anonymous No.19700814]

>>19700602
>Reaching the conclusion that consciousness is ultimately a problem of language is no easy task
Yeah, you have to be monumentally deluded. Some conclusions are so blatantly stupid only a very clever man would arrive at them.

[Anonymous No.19700881]

>>19700602
Conciousness existed millions of years before language did.

The knee is s part of the body, the eye a different part, and kidney, the mechanics of these parts are relatively graspable, the brain is a different part of the body, it apparently does more Energetic/material mechanical functions than the knee, and not all these mechanisms and functions are understood

The task is to understand how the abilities are possible, what is going on and how.

If you claim conciousness doesn't exist and you are not concious, it is probably true, there are tons of mental hospitals full of people claiming those sorts of things, but you have offered very little exposition for your thesis and you speak for nonone but yourself

[Anonymous No.19700884]

>>19700814
You seem confused. There are essentially two different problems that are regularly discussed around this topic, only one of which I'm referring to since it's the main one: what consciousness is (which is a problem of language) and where our sense of identity originates from (which is a problem of neuroscience). The rest is nonsense.

[Anonymous No.19700895]

>>19700881
Your understanding of what language is is antiquated. Even microbes have a language. There has been a language since there has been life.

[Anonymous No.19700910]

Trees and plants move and grow and are animated by the sun and water and nutrients

Humans move and grow and are animated by the sun, water and nutrients

Coincidence?

[Anonymous No.19700917]

>>19700895
Ok, now I'm listening, go on

[Anonymous No.19700919]

>>19700884
>what consciousness is (which is a problem of language)

[Anonymous No.19700933]

>>19700884
>what consciousness is (which is a problem of language)

Explain just a bit further

Are you hinting we know and understand what conciousness is and how it works but we just can't explain it or speak about it,
Or we can, but we just need extreme thorough discipline and effort to develop a language accurate and absoluteoy unambigious

[Anonymous No.19700997]

>>19700933
> we just need extreme thorough discipline and effort to develop a language accurate and absoluteoy unambigious
is precisely Dennett's take on free will. Elbow Room's a good read, I didn't buy his conclusions in Consciousness Explained but it has some nice arguments.
While the same general tact of "don't trust your intuitions, be careful with your language" is sufficient for free will compatibalism, it's insufficient to deny the Hard Problem.

[Anonymous No.19701026]

>>19700802
no don't say this :(

[Anonymous No.19701061]

>>19700997
That certainly would be a good start but one cannot expect the just by doing that the mysteries would be solved, much hard difficult good kind of mental gymnastic work and much experimentation must be done.

As if by simply inventing the English language and defining the words automatically presents you with the complete works of Shakespeare.

It is not entirely a language problem, it is also a supremely complex chemical, biological, material, alien system problem.

[Anonymous No.19701102]

>>19697783
Someone respond to this post please.

[Anonymous No.19701354]

>>19699934
To say that the terms of philosophy of mind are fuzzy *really*, and I cannot stress this out enough, do not accomplish anything at all. We're all aware of it.
To say consciousness is purely linguistic is just flat out wrong.
Also, if the lion could speak I could understand it.
Witty really should have stuck to the early parts of the Tractatus.

[Anonymous No.19701393]

>>19701354
>Also, if the lion could speak I could understand it.
The lion thinks the same of you.

[Anonymous No.19701416]

>>19701393
And somewhere in between our two loneliness, love is born.

[Anonymous No.19702565]

>>19701026
Its 100% true tho.

[Anonymous No.19702600]

>>19691578
so literally what anon said, you just had to point out that you are cool for disliking sam harris

[Anonymous No.19703276]

>>19701061
>mental gymnastic work

Interesting term in relation to this conversation.

Close you eyes and picture 2 lime green circles/sphered.... Things already get interesting when saying in-vision a sphere.

Picture the one on the left spinning counterclockwise and the one on right spin counter clockwise,

Then add another in between them that's spinning back to front.

How many of these kinda things can you add untill you can't picture it?

I tried to add another 2 on either outside of two original and have them spin opposite the original,

And it's very hard to do, I can't do I, it's like I can't have separate control of each sphere, they want to spin in same direction when I add the 4th and 5th

Now I tried 5 all spinning back to front, and then switch the middle to spin front to back,

It's hard, I initially viewed it as the 5 in a row, but within a few seconds of trying discovered that if I view it at an angle I can kinda make it work,

Then it seemed that I had to like switch the method of intending to witness this activity

And it meant kind of mimicking some grabbing of the center sphere, I saw no string grabbing it, more like my attention is holding it in place, and kind of using it as a swinging axis, but this is different than the originally with little desiree to command to see 5 spheres, 2 and 2 on outside spinning back to front, and middle spinning front to back and sit back without involved effort and have my desire granted,

Yea now I'm imagining it as if the 2 on each end are spinning back to front and a hand is spinning the middle one

But still it seems I constantly have to have my attention on all of them at once
I can't just command the sides to spin and remain spinning to focus on the backward spinning middle, I need to imagine them as a unit and kind of moving up and down as well like the bar on front of old train wheels, to really sell and get in the groove of the spinning, momentum , rhythem,

Likely if I was an entire loser I could practice and get better at this.

Obviously because I'm saying this I believe there is something speciall relavant to this .

I wonder how much study of brain scanning these sorts of internal intentions have been done, asking people to internally do many various things, scream internally, sing internally , do many weird random thought things internally, move attention around the mind rapidly,

[Anonymous No.19703290]

>>19697398
>I would say that you have perfectly described the transcendental Self. From there the differences between our two positions can only really be in the structuration of the discourse
The position of the Hindu school Advaita Vedanta, whose conception of consciousness I agree with and find to be very intuitive, holds as far as I can tell that what western phenomenology regards as the transcendental Self, is actually what awareness proper actually is, and that what western phenomenology calls 'awareness' is the 'reflected awareness' (Chidabhasa) which isn't awareness at all so to speak, but which is an effect produced when the intellect receives the illumination provided by the presence of the self-disclosing transcendental Self at the heart or center of one's sentient experience; but as you say since they seem to describe awareness and the transcendental Self in very similar ways, they actually agree on quite a lot while appearing to disagree greatly on a surface level just by the choices of words used. If you just switch 'awareness' in my posts with transcendental Self then I think it'll make more sense and you'll see some of the logic behind what I wrote, as in for example in some of your objections here >>19697345, you wouldn't regard focus (which has lapses) as the same as the transcendental Self (which doesn't). Or the point that the transcendental Self is invariably present in dreams and isn't thereby modified, there are not a multiplicity of transcendental Selves that we have etc.

This is a well-written and brief paper that contrasts the two approaches, you might find it interesting

https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/28892783/Schweizer_consciousness_and_space_1.pdf

[Anonymous No.19703475]

>>19700917
Not them, but semiotics gets some play in biology. And information science is applied to physics and biology. DNA is an example of a semiotic triangle appearing in nature, despite is being something we developed to study language.

The same functions, e.g. indexicality show up too.

[Anonymous No.19704142]

Isn't it interesting and relevant how different drugs effect the awareness differently? Changes the nature of the awareness, feeling and processing itself, normalcy equilibrium.

Chemical catalyst, the brain knows how to best process this and that, it needs to do something with the chemical, be it weed, alcohol, cocaine, lsd, mushrooms,

An apple, a carrot, a steak may to small degrees alter the local real time awareness experience sensationally,

States of conciousness, awareness are reached, the feeling and thinking and imagining on these substances, is different than average, by non trivial degrees,

But the experience is not equilibrium,
Years and years minute by minute the experience of stark equilibrium, sensating all the slings and arrows of life, there is evidence on history of people finding refuge in this escape of average state,

And the bad aspects of addiction, a wishing to make the experience of the substance a new equilibrium, for it is valuated as being an experience possibly unquantifiably and unqualitatably more pleasing than equilibrium

Those that don't seek substances as such, often escape simple awareness equilibrium in games and sports and interests and work, by exciting and focusing awareness on the complex going ons of the world.

Brain scans of brain activity on different drugs, neuron activity?

[Anonymous No.19704236]

>>19698825
>This is all very confused.
It would be extremely clear if you bothered to read.
>No, I was pointing out that it is your soul that defines you as you
The way you described the soul previously was this:
>Your soul is that which imparts you with your being-as-separate-from-all-being
In other words, according to you, the soul is not "you" --by definition--, it is only a factor of differentiation of one arbitrarily delimited thing and another. There is nothing necessarily "me" about the soul under your conception; unless you admit that the soul is something unconditioned and entirely present, then there is nothing to suggest that the soul is me or mine.
>This does not follow
It does follow if you stick to what you just said previously, this is that if everything is alive, then nothing is. It is two sides of the same coin, the word loses all meaning because you have applied it to everything (unless you arbitrarily restrict it to "motion", which you've just done). You stated that the soul must be immaterial because it is not alive. Only "you" are alive. But then you also stated that "the soul is being-you." So how can the soul be me without being alive? Accordingly what can be said to live apart from what possesses motion? "Local action" is just a silly way of suggesting that motion itself is life. Absolutely ridiculous. As though I would be somehow more alive if I were more motive (or ""vital""), which would also be ignoring the fact that nothing can be shown to possess its own motion, everything has an antecedent efficient cause so long as it has a beginning (which implies its end). Whether that cause is physically visible to you at any given moment is entirely irrelevant. If I set an extremely powerful clock at a given point in time, it may tick over for millions of years by its design, yet to say that its motion is self-possessed because it was designed in such a way that one input at a given beginning time would allow it to cycle for X amount of years until it goes out of time and breaks down is silly; the clocks motion is not self-possessed, its motion was given to it by a (relatively) free cause at a prior point in time. The clock would not possess its apparent self-motion without that cause, and therefore it cannot be called self-motion without committing to mental gymnastics or appeals to some other arbitrary delimitation.

[Anonymous No.19704292]

>>19704142
good luck with your sobriety

[Anonymous No.19704346]

>>19703290
Thank you very much for the link, it is very appreciated.

[Anonymous No.19704357]

>>19704346
Haha no problem. Fuck you, by the way.

[Anonymous No.19705036]

>>19704357
stop pretending to be me

[Anonymous No.19706250]

K

[Anonymous No.19706256]

The universe is Gods brain, stars are it's neurons, and we are the briefest of it's thoughts

[Anonymous No.19706301]

>>19703276
Anyone?

[Anonymous No.19706637]

>>19698698
>Soul is what distinguishes a corpse from a living human being
No, that is a working metabolism

[Anonymous No.19706649]

>>19703276
>Picture the one on the left spinning counterclockwise and the one on right spin counter clockwise,

Shoot meant to say one on right spinning clockwise

[Anonymous No.19707431]

>>19703276
How might this relate to the nature of conciousness?

[Anonymous No.19708066]

Where did all you guys go...

[Anonymous No.19708784]

>>19680941
That's the worst understanding of Dennett's work I've ever read. Not even close to what he means.