Thought Club

[Faust]

I am disappearing up my own ass:

What separates consciousness  from any other process system of inputs / transformations / and outputs?
We have an input sensory array feeding in external data, internal sensation and diagnostics, which feeds into a system of data manipulation and control
These are systems that interact with each other, a certain part of that system has direct control and actuation of external outputs (moving limbs to perform actions) with feedback to those, and some are happening autonomously  (your body isn't giving continuous consious sensational update on your heartbeat unless it thinks you need to know about it right now).

The part of me thinking about and writing about this message, isn't the same part of me that is receiving feedback information on what my digestive system is doing. In fact that back end system that continuously monitors the rest of me has the harder job, it just has to send the important stuff to this part of me that I need to act on (the barstool in motion towards my head)

How much reflex is done by that silent part, how much can it override what I want to do, if I want a specific action and it wants one, what is the mechanism for conflict resolution between what it wants and what I want, how does that work?
Is there only a single monolithic back end process that handles all that part, or multiple (spontaneous thoughts or memories triggered by a smell or sound might not be coming from the part of me that handles bodily function)
Is consciousness a set of processes interacting with each other with limited knowledge of what each other are doing, as in, is my mind or the conscious part of me, the sum of several systems interacting, are those parts considered conscious too but silent, can they perform introspection or creative thought independent of what this part of me is doing?

[LMNO]

Currently taking bets as to when this thread begins to resemble "I <3 Huckabees".

[altered]

My opinion: consciousness is the interaction of multiple systems. There is an "executive" decision maker that is probably not obviously deterministic (see PRNGs) that links these systems together. The phenomenon of consciousness-as-experienced is the feeling of the executive in action. Consciousness as a phenomenon cannot arise in the absence of the executive OR the absence of multiple systems. That is to say, both are necessary. I don't think both are sufficient, but I don't know what would constitute necessary and sufficient conditions for the phenomenon of consciousness, and we would need to create a strong AI iteratively and ask it when it woke up to be able to figure it out.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

My opinion: consciousness is the interaction of multiple systems. There is an "executive" decision maker that is probably not obviously deterministic (see PRNGs) that links these systems together. The phenomenon of consciousness-as-experienced is the feeling of the executive in action. Consciousness as a phenomenon cannot arise in the absence of the executive OR the absence of multiple systems. That is to say, both are necessary. I don't think both are sufficient, but I don't know what would constitute necessary and sufficient conditions for the phenomenon of consciousness, and we would need to create a strong AI iteratively and ask it when it woke up to be able to figure it out.

I'd object to this interpretation on the grounds that "the feeling of x" is meaningless without something doing the feeling. Consciousness per se can't be, simply, "a feeling" or "an illusion". Against what backdrop does this feeling or illusion appear? How can an illusion be anything at all without someone falling for it?

With detailed real-time brain scans, neurologists are able to observe with surprising accuracy not only the moment a decision is made, but which decision has been made, up to 7 seconds before the person being monitored is consciously aware of having made any decision. What does this say about consciousness? One interpretation is that conscious experience arises as an artifact of brain activity, and our conscious experience has little or nothing to do with the actual functioning of our minds and it probably has no real relationship to our executive function.

As a person who (probably) has a brain and has spent some time fighting it and learning from it, but almost no education in real neuroscience or psychiatry, my opinions here are likely to be vacant musings. But I would prefer an explanation that says that the apparent gap between making a decision and our "conscious awareness" of having made it is really several seconds of egotistical verification, re-verification, double-checking, and self-reassurance that occur in response to an event that arises more spontaneously than we think it does, and we really are aware of that decision at the moment it occurs but we don't let it into the gates until we are satisfied that we Really Do For Sure Know That We Know It.

That is, a large amount of what we think is conscious experience is just circular thoughts puttering around in our heads to give ourselves the security of thinking we're somehow in control of something. But conscious awareness isn't an executive, it's an observer. There is only what is happening, and the mental distance between that and our awareness is just a tangle of insecurity and doubt.

As to "Cosmic Consciousness", I think it's probably a thing in some way. It's just a useless thing to consider as such, because it's the kind of thing that we can only talk or think about in terms of concepts, and concepts don't defy categorization like such consciousness does by definition.

[Doktor Howl]

With detailed real-time brain scans, neurologists are able to observe with surprising accuracy not only the moment a decision is made, but which decision has been made, up to 7 seconds before the person being monitored is consciously aware of having made any decision. What does this say about consciousness? One interpretation is that conscious experience arises as an artifact of brain activity, and our conscious experience has little or nothing to do with the actual functioning of our minds and it probably has no real relationship to our executive function.

This is all crap.  I don't have to take orders from my brain.

[Doktor Howl]

IT WAS A DATABASE GLITCH.


Why does no one believe me when I say that?

You forget that I've seen you in the throes of an Excel frenzy.

[LMNO]

[Doktor Howl]

Great.  Now we've all been tainted with forbidden knowledge. 

[Doktor Howl]

I was hoping Cram would take up the question of, "what do we mean when we say, 'consciousness'?"

I have a simple answer:  The knowledge that you are going to die.

It can also be expressed as "the capacity to ask what consciousness is."

I like both of those


the knowledge that you're going to die has a special meaning in the Gurdjieff work -- in his batshit allegorical history of humanity, he says that in ancient times, humans had this special organ implanted in them by dumbass "middle mananger" angels. The organ was called the Kundabuffer, and it caused them to "see the world upside down". One of its purposes was to block them from being continually aware of their own deaths. This made them more useful to the big cosmic machine, discouraging them from succumbing to nihilism and rebelling against it. It also created things like vanity, egocentrism, greed, lack of self awareness, lack of empathy... Later, the organ would be removed from humans, but these behaviors had already "crystalized". They were present in culture now, and so kids learned them from culture. Now they're basically perpetual.

It suggests that if we were more in touch with our own mortality, maybe we wouldn't be such shits.

Sometimes systems are messy and become self-referential.  Doesn't mean they aren't true.

[altered]

My opinion: consciousness is the interaction of multiple systems. There is an "executive" decision maker that is probably not obviously deterministic (see PRNGs) that links these systems together. The phenomenon of consciousness-as-experienced is the feeling of the executive in action. Consciousness as a phenomenon cannot arise in the absence of the executive OR the absence of multiple systems. That is to say, both are necessary. I don't think both are sufficient, but I don't know what would constitute necessary and sufficient conditions for the phenomenon of consciousness, and we would need to create a strong AI iteratively and ask it when it woke up to be able to figure it out.

I'd object to this interpretation on the grounds that "the feeling of x" is meaningless without something doing the feeling. Consciousness per se can't be, simply, "a feeling" or "an illusion". Against what backdrop does this feeling or illusion appear? How can an illusion be anything at all without someone falling for it?

With detailed real-time brain scans, neurologists are able to observe with surprising accuracy not only the moment a decision is made, but which decision has been made, up to 7 seconds before the person being monitored is consciously aware of having made any decision. What does this say about consciousness? One interpretation is that conscious experience arises as an artifact of brain activity, and our conscious experience has little or nothing to do with the actual functioning of our minds and it probably has no real relationship to our executive function.

As a person who (probably) has a brain and has spent some time fighting it and learning from it, but almost no education in real neuroscience or psychiatry, my opinions here are likely to be vacant musings. But I would prefer an explanation that says that the apparent gap between making a decision and our "conscious awareness" of having made it is really several seconds of egotistical verification, re-verification, double-checking, and self-reassurance that occur in response to an event that arises more spontaneously than we think it does, and we really are aware of that decision at the moment it occurs but we don't let it into the gates until we are satisfied that we Really Do For Sure Know That We Know It.

That is, a large amount of what we think is conscious experience is just circular thoughts puttering around in our heads to give ourselves the security of thinking we're somehow in control of something. But conscious awareness isn't an executive, it's an observer. There is only what is happening, and the mental distance between that and our awareness is just a tangle of insecurity and doubt.

As to "Cosmic Consciousness", I think it's probably a thing in some way. It's just a useless thing to consider as such, because it's the kind of thing that we can only talk or think about in terms of concepts, and concepts don't defy categorization like such consciousness does by definition.

I believe the executive is doing the feeling. It has to process data and make decisions, after all. But just as a running engine creates more kinds of motion than the one it was designed to (proof: a rotary engine in a car will vibrate while running!) the executive doesn't just feel external stuff: it also senses itself at work. Consciousness as we experience it is just that feeling of the executive working.

And to be clear, the executive is deterministic. It is not obviously deterministic in that there are (I believe necessarily) non-trivial heuristics and decision paths, but in the end it still ticks like a clock, as does everything.

The inefficiency and bad signal is the point of consciousness, people say. I agree, just from the other direction: slushy meat is not known for running programs correctly, let alone running them well.

[altered]

I should also say that the executive is not the "seat of consciousness". There is no such beast. Consciousness is the whole system put together: subsystems plus executive. The executive "feels". Qualia belong to the executive, it figures out "what this is like" and helps decide "what do I do now". But the actual "I am experiencing a thing!" is not located there or in any other subsystem, it's emergent from the whole system.

There is probably some sort of unknown special sauce in there too, but I do not and can not tell you what it might be.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

It's probably 2 ways of talking about the same thing, but I both agree and disagree. I don't think we will ever find some "special sauce" that "is" the seat of consciousness, or enables it in any real way. After all, conscious experience is qualia. If we can point to something that generates it, then we're still just pointing at some stuff that has popped up in conscious experience. So I take back what I said in my previous wall of text because I was bad at expressing it. There can be feeling without a feeler, because when you get down to it, the feeling is the feeler. My sense of awareness isn't a byproduct of brain activity, it is that it is. Cue spooky music.

[altered]

The special sauce I mean will never be the seat of consciousness, nor would I ever suggest something "unknown". More like "unexpected". We are going to find some kind of highly particular subsystem is necessary to have something we would define as conscious and it will make no fucking sense. "Without the ass center of the brain, people simply slump over and become automatons, directed easily by anyone who speaks to them" or something. I'm pretty sure of this, on account of that seems to be THE ONLY rule regarding intelligence, neurology, etc: stupid bullshit ends up becoming central and vital.


Edit because I'm a dipshit: I miscommunicated in my last post before this, said unknown, then contradicted myself categorically here.

In that post, I meant "unknown what it is that is special sauce" not "the special sauce will be previously unknown to science". In this post, I meant "previously unknown to science".

The distinction: it would be SURPRISING if we needed the autonomic nervous system or equivalent in order to be conscious, we would not be able to predict that, but we would be able to model it well enough after accepting it.

It would be STUPID if we needed the soul to be conscious, because come onnnnnn.

[minuspace]

How do you escape the Absurdist pitfall, where "meaning" is an arbitrary value consciousness places upon the random, stochastic behavior of the universe?  In this scenario, "Meaning" becomes the Aneristic Delusion.

I don't tell myself the patterns I recognize correspond to a fundamental order, of any consequence, other than the one that permits me this process of discovery. This is surprising because I would then seem to somehow recognize something not presented to me in the first place. Absurdity and Aneristic Delusion become Miracle and Erisian Wonderment.

[The Wizard Joseph]

I REALLY look forward to seeing what you all said here, but don't at the moment have the time or will to COMMIT to it now.

So with the utmost respect...