Long post about fractal-like consciousness

[Anonymous No.1589375]

Hey /sci/, I can't tell if I'm going mad. I've been studying consciousness for awhile, and my friend, awhile back, claimed subjectivity arises from the recursive nature of self-awareness. Well, I didn't buy this argument, but I felt like recording it for future reference. Well, recently I found a neuroscientific paper that elaborated on this possibility:

http://www.wwwconsciousness.com/Consciousness_PDF.pdf

It puts the the notion of a recursive self-awareness as the origin of subjectivity in an evolutionary perspective and uses empirical neuroscientific arguments to vouch for its validity... I recommend reading it before criticizing this notion.

My friend, during our debate, claimed our neural structure is such that we are capable of observing our own mental experience with our brains. Our brain is capable of looking into itself and viewing itself having experiences. This brings subjectivity into the picture because, even though there was always technically an individual, there was nothing to observe it, so this observational capacity gives us self-awareness. Since phenomenal experience is what creates the boundaries between an otherwise unified objective existence, the first thing to be generated is the self, since it is the first thing to truly be observed. Self-awareness is different than physical awareness (i.g., body maps in neuroscience) because while physical senses are external processes, self-awareness internal.

[Anonymous No.1589378]

It creates a closed loop that is separate from the rest of reality, its own pocket-infinity. The physical embodiment of it, though, continues to remain in connected space, so we get this experience of time and space passing by us, despite the fact that our mental existence would otherwise be separate from all of that. This gives rise to another boundary, since we have a new internal observation, that of spacetime. So we now have the distinction between the "I" of a specific space and time (i.g., spatiotemporality), but we also have the distinction between our metatemporal closed-loop system as well.


Each one of our conscious identities with the space-time awareness modifier is contained within the overall causal chain that embodies the metatemporal system. This is why I term them differently, the part of us bound by physical laws is experienced as the "mind" whereas the metatemporal one is experienced as the "self", a unifying identity which has no reference in space or time, which is why we identify as being the same person regardless of the fact that we are different physically today than we were yesterday. If a huge leap occurs in our physical experience, we might recategorize ourselves, but this is because we are always experiencing the physically bound version of us at all times since the closed-loop system is by nature inexperiencable and incomprehensible. When this occurs we may define ourselves by a different set of causal sequences, but overall since ALL causal chains are interconnected, we are essentially taking part in a massive group-self which is merely tapped into by various physical formes. A shard of the cosmos looking in a mirror and seeing itself.

What is uncanny is how the universe is also comprised of fractals... In fractals there's infinite regression & progression, but depending on one's interpretation it could be an analogy of nothing or the vastness of our cosmos.

[Anonymous No.1589385]

Here is the abstract of the paper I linked... Sorry for the long post:

At the phenomenal level, consciousness arises in a consistently coherent fashion as a singular, unified field of recursive self-awareness (subjectivity) with explicitly orientational characteristics—that of a subject located both spatially and temporally in an egocentrically-extended domain. Understanding these twin elements of consciousness begins with the recognition that ultimately (and most primitively), cognitive systems serve the biological self-regulatory regime in which they subsist. The psychological structures supporting self-located subjectivity involve an evolutionary elaboration of the two basic elements necessary for extending self-regulation into behavioral interaction with the environment: an orientative reference frame which consistently structures ongoing interaction in terms of controllable spatiotemporal parameters, and processing architecture that relates behavior to homeostatic needs via feedback. Over time, constant evolutionary pressures for energy eYciency have encouraged the emergence of anticipative feedforward processing mechanisms, and the elaboration, at the apex of the sensorimotor processing hierarchy, of self-activating, highly attenuated recursively-feedforward circuitry processing the basic orientational schema independent of external action output. As the primary reference frame of active waking cognition, this recursive self-locational schema processing generates a zone of subjective self-awareness in terms of which it feels like something to be oneself here and now. This is consciousness-as-subjectivity.

[Anonymous No.1589408]

still using causality, are we?

[Anonymous No.1589419]

>>1589408

You should... read the entire post and some of the article I linked before you criticize this notion, dude.

It's actually better than Metzinger and Churchland's theory... Maybe consciousness and subjectivity will finally be solved?

[Anonymous No.1589454]

Intresting post. I will read through the paper you linked.

You might get a better response from /x/.

[fascist goldfish !Rrxa7zePwI No.1589490]

you are assuming cosnciousness arises from consciousness.

[Anonymous No.1589533]

fascinating
Seems plausible to me.

[Anonymous No.1589643]

I think that my mind just got blown.

[Anonymous No.1589725]

You should read some Douglas Hofstadter

In particular, "I am a Strange Loop"