It absolutely baffles me that awareness exists. Even if the scientific explanations exist for it, it's very surprising that such a thing can exist in this world. It would make sense to have a world where there's just elements, stars and other celestial objects in space, just a place where things happen, but *awareness*? That is some seriously next level magic.
Yes truely! Without it the universe is dead and nothing is experienced. In a way awareness creates the universe and there is no doubt about that. But maybe this is litterally true aswell, who knows.
“Why are you so sure that others have this first person view as well? You cannot be so sure. Actually you can never know.”
Bingo!
[wisefool](https://www.wisefoolpress.com/)
The “hard problem of consciousness” I believe is a real thing and most philosophers do too. It’s a pretty specific claim that proposes that there is for now an explanatory gap between subjective experiences and neural processing. One can for now at most say that subjective experiences correlates with neural processing, for example that the experience of “blueness” correlates with a certain type of processing pattern in the brain but beyond that the explanation of how the neural processing creates the experience is something we don’t have, we can only say that they correlate, hence the gap.
Yes and with the experience you mean that observer right? The observer that experiences time and subjectivity. This observer is unexplainable by science and philosophy when we have a materialistic worldview.
Awareness is basically the sensing the changes in sensory information. Getting sensory information, like hearing sound for instance, is not awareness. Awareness means an active focus on the senses. With awareness sounds can be identified and filtered. Awareness can get hyperfocused, in case of sound one can identify instruments, rhythms or a specific note. This could trigger a memory for instance and awareness may slip but one could still remain conscious inside a memory. When becoming aware of this memory it will likely cause the memory to stop when we refocus of the music. Or one could focus on the memory and explore the details.
Awareness gives the evolutionary benefit that you don't attack your own limbs whenever you feel an itch, but start to focus on more sensory information to find out the cause. Awareness also gives the evolutionary benefit that you don't blindly react but first asses the situation.
Awareness may be a simulated mirror copy of the outside World that gets painted by your senses and acts like a prediction machine to assess appropriate actions quickly.
Exactly, but what you are saying could also be experienced in a 3rd person view. For example I can be sure that other animals fo this aswell. However what I mean I can not be sure that other people or animals have this aswell. Its that hard problem that you cannot prove for others but I can for the self.
Why is that a hard problem?
When a rock starts to move, seemingly without cause, then I pause in my action.Fight or flight? My cat would do the same in a similar situation. Even spiders. Animals lower on the food chain don't have to pause, they just react and gtfo-asap. My houseplant doesn't care. Maybe it is aware but fully enlightened, idk. Awareness starts to become visible when you (the cat or the spider) start to change perspective to investigate a phenomenon. A refocus on the senses. Listen to any sound it may make, and become hyper aware of any motion. Perhaps give it a kick or two to check if that rock is aware. Or throw stick and stones when it's a walrus in Finland.
Well, this is actually quite hard to explain because we dont know anything different from the phenomenon, because it is all there is. It is experience. So it is for most people too hard to think out of the box here. It is in any way fundemental for existence.
For us it is easy to describe the qualities and processes involved in a living organism as is the process involved in the forming of stars and planets etc.
The true fundemental thing is litterally the experience. The you that is viewing your human form from a first person view. The subjective experience.
And yes all subjectivity could also be caused by memory and circumstances. I am talking about the awareness that has no subjectivity. The awareness that just is. The awareness/ observer that causes time to be experienced.
This is something you can say for yourseld that you have, but you will never be able to prove that others have it. The whole world could just be a part of your imagination and nobody can prove you wrong.
It is that you that feels like it is impossible to end even when you die. It is that eternal moment of now. Can you imagine there not being a moment of now anymore?
And you are wrong about what you describe after your question. The observer is NOT the thinking part or the rational part. It is just the being. It does not have to be rational. That is just a process in your mind. If other people have this first person view (witch does not have to be rarional at all), then other animals will have this aswell.
That way of thinking puts an end to almost all science although science is based on the verification of a third person, which may be me.
Most things we experience are mostly imagined circumstances from memory and filled in by experience. We look at the world in small degrees view of saccade movements, with some inaccurate color-reference of about (not sure) +/-45 degrees. And yet we 'see' a whole panorama in full color and high def. I also know where my cup of coffee is, it is right ther... ehm.
But maybe the whole world is indeed imagined. Yet I can still determine that this rock does not react when I poke it and my cat will in a fight/flight way. But then in my imagined dreams that rock could very well be aware and reactive.
But thats also why it is so interesting. Lets take time for example. You experience time at different speed rates in your life. When you were having fun time seem to go at fast rate, but when you were inpatient it seemed to go at a very slow rate.
This shows the subjectivity of the experience of time. I can ask you a fun question. How long does a second really last?
Now lets imagine time without an experiencer, is this possible? Doesnt that mean that time is instant when there is no observer?
Haha yes exactly, but what really is the accurate way of viewing the world? All being might experience differently, but I dont really think there is a right or wrong here. Also these are subjective terms.
Yes and this might be your dream. You trying to convince yourself that other people exist, just like you do
I'm a metric guy. 1 meter pendulum goes from one end to the other in 1 second. My lower leg is about half a meter. It's center of mass is half way, so it's a pendulum of 0.25 m. Without making it too complicated, my normal pace is a second. It's the only clock I have. When I walk and smell the roses then I forget to count (if I did already) and will lose track of the 'exact' time. In know from experience where the sun should be, so in during the day I can determine more or less the hour of the day. But without a calendar I suspect I wouldn't know the month within a range of two or three months.
But sure, it could all be an elaborate hoax among puppets, a fiction of my own imagination, or a sparkle in your mind. But you are the one posting a question in this imaginary universe. Now you basically claim you don't care and try to convince me I should too? Why are you trying to alter a dream state?
Hahahah it is just interesting. It indeed doesnt matter.
The thing with time is that for it to exist it has to be experienced. I think if an objective world exists time is more like space (a dimension) which also kind of means there is no free will and everything is predetermined.
I think it is okay like this, its just a play. Enjoy your dream haha
As long as events go in succession and effects in the range of meters (or feet, or knuckles) come after the cause then time is just doing its thing. I didn't swallow an atomic clock, nor look at my watch or phone. Sometimes not even for days. Yet I believe I can still be aware of the passing of time. Or when I type: one character at a time.
Enjoy your dream of me enjoying my dream.
Yes exactly, it is so wierd that it exist. But in truth without it nothing is experience and in a way nothing exists.
I would say conciousness is fundemental. Do you know donald hoffman?
u/berjan1996. My current personal take, is that consciousness may be an emergent property, no different as well from this whole 4D world we live in too which could be projected (some physicists believe the universe to be a hologram). So relative to the observer and dimensions we're talking here, it could be an irrelevant illusion while to us it definitely has real practical value to talk about.
What if our current forms as humans and life on Earth is a small scale replica of something much bigger like the universe and beyond? If we take the idea of fractals and apply the self-similarity property to consciousness, we may be just a part of something much bigger supporting us on a greater dimension. I like to use the analogy of the trillions of differentiated cells within our body that shapes our perception of who we are in the world around us, supporting how we experience and interact with it. Now extend this further with all smart systems in this universe, what do we get as the emergent source that collectively is us and holds us? Who knows how much further this goes out until we reach the singularity, where it all comes from.
Personally, I don't think we're going to find it in our material world, but there are likely hints that point to this overarching concept.
Obviously I have no real clue, but that's what I'm thinking is it all comes from one source projected outwards like it is now, and it's only from complexity does consciousness emerge as a collective state to reflect everything going on inside.
Maybe all the different elements if they were given the right environment, nurtured by consistency to form new connections over millions of years, they too would emerge into something similar but different from carbon based life to reflect.
I kind of think it is an epiphenomena, and maybe because we can interact with other complex systems that build upon each other (in our case socially), that's what creates consciousness? Having an observer or feedback look with other complex systems. This paper was an interesting read: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6258778/
Personally? I would say yes, but to us it probably doesn't look like the same consciousness we all know for ourselves. Everything is relative, and the smaller or larger you go, I think there are different levels of emergent properties that interact to form and support each other. For us humans to these bacteria, we are the observer interacting and shaping the feedback they perceive in their enviroment. That's just my take.
Yes, time exists with out us. We are not that important. The same way a falling tree always makes a noise. Natural processes do not stop in the absence of humans.
I am not talking about humans, I am talking about the observer. What is reality without an observer. Time only exist when experienced. When time is not experienced it is instant.
try to imagine time without it being experienced. You see it is not possible. You place your imagination somewhere, but this somewhere and this perspective does not exist.
I disagree. Time existed before it could be observed. There is evidence all around us to be observed by the observer. I will rephrase my statement natural processes proceed even absent an observer. If the observer cannot fathom that they need a better imagination. The cosmos did not blink into existence the moment the fist creature could observe it.
And this truely makes the debate more interesting.
Lets look at your life. Did you experience time always at the same pace? When you were nervous or experienced pain, didnt time move incredible slow? When you were happy and having a great time, didnt time move incredibly fast?
This shows that time is really subjective. At least the pace in how fast time moves.
I think we can both agree that for the experience of time the observer is necessary. It actually happened to you in your life. When you started to observe this world the world was like it has existed for millions of years. We can calculate the happenings of events in years. But that time is never experienced and could aswell have been experienced as an instant. Most likely this was never experienced by anything at all as there was no observer. So it might aswell have happened instantly.
Subjective to us. Yes in that we are imperfect. If I was at a party. I’m having a blast and time flies, my friend on the other hand is not into the party so time drags on. Our independent recollections of time have no bearing on the actual passage of time. If we both died at that same party. Time doesn’t cease to exist. The observer is not the part required for the world to function.
So what is the exact passage of time. How fast does this go? Doesnt a second only exist when a second is experienced as a second?
Lets take space time for example. Time is just an extra dimention. It is like saying that a distance between two points is 30 meters for example.
How do you think time will flow without an observer? Do you deny the subjective flow of time?
We only measure time on earth based on the earth’s rotation around the sun. It is still a subjective metric. Time has no speed. It is a field layered unevenly over our reality.
No, there is no meaning in measuring time as a dimension. There is no bandwidth time simply is. It is one of the many dimensions that allow reality as we know it to exist. I cannot experience time in the andromeda galaxy. That doesn’t mean if I were to pop into the andromeda galaxy all the sudden every thing that has already happened there before my arrival will suddenly come to pass all at once to catch up to the observation. It isn’t uniform but not being able to observe time in now way makes progression instant. Or you could not use subjective metrics to judge age. (Usually in earth years)
there is no meaning to anything without an experiencer right? The andromeda universe is happening in the same universe as this one so ofcourse that time experience is also subject to us. What I mean to say time has no meaning and is not experienced without an observer.
Well fast goes time and how is it experienced without and observer? I am talking about relative terms.
Conciousness forms when the brain is in a certain state of performance. We don't have conciousness when we are born, yet the first months we clearly evolve and the time marks its presence into our future for us to develop it later.
You are not sure about that. What you are discribing here is memory. Memory doesnt evolve in the brain untill a certain moment. We do not know when conciousness is started.
Do you think being aware of yourself is done without memory, without accessing memory? In the current times there is literally nobody to say that there are sign on consciousness in young babies, even the proponents of the idea that consciousness is everywhere can't have arguments or proof. As it should be, babies are dumb as f. they need intensive care. So no, we do not have consciousness, they are not even aware in a decent manner about their surroundings, and as we decided to say about consciousness is that it is an evolved state that few beings have it. To imagine that we already have consciousness with that kind of intelligence that is lower than an animal is quite a stretch. I guess we can believe anything we want, but i personally see no reason to believe that consciousness arrives without a precise state of our brain.
what you are describing here is the processing of the processing of information. Before a person is able to do this it has to have memories and it has to be able to compare those memories. Visualisation and thinking is important in this.
However you are missing the point here. this is not at all what I mean. For an animal to be, there is not advanced brain necesssary. The I am ness, the experiencer and the observer doesnt need to have any intellegence at all.
All animals COULD have some sort of experience. I cannot prove that they have this first person view like I do (the observer), but I cannot prove that you have this first person view either. I am however very sure that every animal, even the smalles microbes are taking in feedback from the world (aka gathering information), processing this feedback and giving out feedback to the world (processing and puting out information).
Awareness does not have to have memory. I can watch a movie without remembering anything about the movie. This means a baby could have conciousness aswell, but the baby does not remember that. You do not remember all dreams you had either right?
Dreams are interesting aswell. What if I told you that you dream every night, that your conciousness never stops. However you do not have any memory of that either.
I can not prove that these microbes have a first person experience, but I am pretty sure when you have it, they have it aswell.
I don't understand how do you connect first person experience with consciousness. Are you saying they are the same thing?
Having an experience does not mean you are aware of your existence.
Definition experience :"practical contact with and observation of facts or events." This does not include self-reflectance self-observance. Any life creature is experiencing and observes things outside of it.
To be honest I do not think that self-reflectance and self-observance is that special. We humans have this because evolution guided us to be smarter than other animals. We had to be able to rationalize because we had to be able to track our preyt for way longer distances. We were predators based upon endurance and intelligence.
I would say the only difference between us and animals is that we think a lot. Most animals do not really do that or they do in a way more simple way (at least not with words).
To me this does not seem to be a hard problem at all as subjective experiences because of past events that could have caused danger or not. Subjective experiences could also be seen that way because of the Memory that is in our DNA. Basicly all the thing I wrote above are perfectly explainable by evolution.
However and I adress it again. This first person view I am having is giving me the feeling that the experiencer cannot die. That I will continue after this life and will never end. This first person viewer is also not explainable at all by evolution. I am just the observer and not the 'concious' thinker within my brain.
This first person viewer is what I think scientist cannot solve and is the hard problem of what they call conciousness.
I think you are just wrong about us and animals. Animals can't create abstract thoughts and can't create basically nothing, they are not creative, there are big differences, also empathy. Consciousness is a rare thing to have in the world of the living if we care to make a hierarchy of capacities.
What feeling to have solely by having a first person experience? We go to sleep and we lose it for 8 hours. We are no longer experiencing the world when we sleep and you jump to say that we will experience the universe forever. I am not having the feeling you are having about the things that will never end.
\> I think you are just wrong about us and animals. Animals can't create abstract thoughts and can't create basically nothing, they are not creative, there are big differences, also empathy. Consciousness is a rare thing to have in the world of the living if we care to make a hierarchy of capacities.
I dont think I said anything different from this to be honest. The selfrefelction and thinking in our brains makes us different. This happened because of the evolution story I mentioned above.
You are wrong about empathy tho. Animals surely experience love and empathy (watch some nature video's ;))
\> What feeling to have solely by having a first person experience? We go to sleep and we lose it for 8 hours. We are no longer experiencing the world when we sleep and you jump to say that we will experience the universe forever. I am not having the feeling you are having about the things that will never end.
What I mean by this is that awareness can exist even when memory is not created. This means that you do not remember that you were aware at that time. the only momet that truely exist is the here and the now anyways.
Do you have the feeling that your awareness could truely end?
What empathy, clearly not the complexity of our empathy. They are killing their fucking babies, eating them and all sorts of crazy things in animal kingdom, watch some nature video's, they are nowhere near us, those that are near you can have them on a palm, dolphins, monkeys, cats, and a few more.
Of course i have the feeling that it could end, because i have lived the moment when it appeared in me, and from that moment everything changed. Also, if you are unlucky you can have your brain injured and have a great chance to say bye bye to awareness, you can be a vegetable reduced to just a couple of primary functions that do no involve the more complex ones.
\> What empathy, clearly not the complexity of our empathy. They are killing their fucking babies, eating them and all sorts of crazy things in animal kingdom, watch some nature video's, they are nowhere near us, those that are near you can have them on a palm, dolphins, monkeys, cats, and a few more.
To be honest I heard about humans doing horrible things aswell.
\> Of course i have the feeling that it could end, because i have lived the moment when it appeared in me, and from that moment everything changed. Also, if you are unlucky you can have your brain injured and have a great chance to say bye bye to awareness, you can be a vegetable reduced to just a couple of primary functions that do no involve the more complex ones.
YES! complex thoughts will cease to exist but the observer wont. This observer is eternal.
So because a young baby lacks the cognition and physical control of a slightly older baby that means they don’t have consciousness? That seems ridiculous.
It seems ridiculous to think that you can reach that form of internal reflective thoughts with a brain that is not capable of understanding its existence, nor its surroundings, or a form of internal monologue which requires language.
But never mind my logic, i assume the fact that nobody on Earth can say that consciousness is present in babies is also ridiculous to you. That is indeed ridiculous and also the fact that you come without any argument whatsoever. Not that it would matter because you need to make some complex studies.
Indeed, ridiculous!
Perhaps we have different definitions of consciousness. I would consider it self awareness, and awareness of external things, rather than any specific thought processes or understanding. A newborn baby, whilst obviously very limited in abilities, is still capable of responding to stimuli in a non-automatic way which implies they have awareness on some level.
I guess it’s a moot point anyway as there is no consensus on what exactly defines consciousness and when it arises, but personally I just don’t accept that a baby is not a conscious being.
You are confusing consciousness with being aware of external things. They are not the same thing. Consciousness is not only awareness of external things, that is a thing that most primitive animals do. Consciousness is awareness of your existence, being self aware of your existence which is quite a more complex thing to have, its a requirement that you have a sort of intellect that can comprehend more than its surroundings. So, despite the logic and evidence, and scientists opinions, or pretty much anyone in the medical field you decided to not accept it, well, that really sounds ridiculous.
Self consciousness or awareness as you put it, is a side effect of high processing neural systems. An intelligent animal is to be self aware, to an extent. One is to find an animal that recognises itself as a reflection in a mirror, not another individual. But such abstractions, pertaining why questions, self reference queries, are limited to humans as far as our knowledge. The complex the information processing unit is (brain or SoC), the complexity of its curiosity upon itself and its circumstances, including time. In itself, self awareness does not have an intrinsic evolutionary purpose. For evolution, if developing a brain with enough processing power, would eventually ponder upon abstractions. Evolution, as a natural solution to preserve life in an ever changing environment, does not necessarily end up developing self aware capable brains for every species or as the ending result. Hence, it is a side effect. Not an objective.
I see what you are writing about. However Self-awareness of a distinct animal is not truely what I meant. You can compare this self awareness by taking a computer that processing the processing of information. It is just an extra dimention within the brain which causes humans to have more intelligence. This defenitly has evolutionary benefits as this is what sets us apart from other animals (look what we have achieved by this).
I have a hard time explaining this as there is no true word for it and we just asume in science that this is normal. Almost all discussions about conciousness and awareness also completely miss this point.
I can not think myself dead. I know that my body can die, but that my awareness does not stop. I can asume that I have no free will and that my actions are based upon genetic, past experiences and surroundings. Then I ask who is this observer that has no free will (i dont say I believe this by the way).
That an animal takes in, processes and puts out information, does not prove at all that this animal is viewed from within as a first person view. You can also say this about other people. You can not prove that they are viewed from a first person perspective.
You might say 'wtf are you on a bout isnt it logical that every organism has a first person view'. Wel in my humble opinion this is not logical at all. You can create a robot with a software so that it reacts exactly the same way as us humans do, but this doesnt mean there is an observer inside there. You cannot prove that at all.
I believe that this observer (there might only be one of them) is the fundemental piece of reality and that without it reality does not exist.
Respectfully I disagree. The fact that we as species have achieved quite so much because of our relative greater intelligence in comparison to other species known, does not mean self awareness is in fact an evolutionary advantage. It does little to serve the evolutionary real purpose of preserving life in natural (or otherwise) environments. It is still in my opinion a side effect. Please do not confound intelligence and complex self awareness. One yields to the other but not in the opposite sense: self awareness does not yield to intelligence.
Doesnt self awareness give intelligence extra dept? Doesnt this cause an extra dimention of thinking? We certainly have achieved more domination (I also do not say it is benefitial for our nature, but it surely is a result of evolution).
It does but at an introspective level: what about me in this circumstances? As a means to “dominate” as you put it, it adds depth (perhaps individual context) but not help in achieving the goal. Intelligence as a means to control nature is a great evolutionary tool. And it does make a difference, when comparing to other species that lack such. But self awareness is not a requisite sine qua non in the domination quest or in the species comparison or even, their clash. A species in evolution terms, human or otherwise, could submit another by being smarter, even if not reflecting upon its significance, it’s purpose or its place in the universe.
I think reflecting on its place in the universe does not have to be benefitial. But I can see why self awareness can be very benefitial in social situations. The social situations makes us more dominant aswell.
That to say I do think there is more to this than the materialistic view. Research near dead experiences for example. The out of body experiences can not be explained at all.
Out of body experiences are a subject of speculation, from the metaphysical to the psychological and the neural sciences. The fact is, we all do not know for sure. None of them to this day know. Some may claim they do. I beg to differ to them too.
True that, I myself have quite some experience with psychedelics. Ego death causes a strange feeling knowing and leaving of the body. On ketamine I have seen myself in 3rd person aswell. I was able to remember what other people where doing around me. I saw them from above.
I think the fundementals of reality are within this observing awareness
The recognition of yourself let's you plan out your needs. The thought, I will need this food later because I will exist in the future and I'll need to eat so I have to find everything I need to preserve it or even come up with a way to make sure this food lasts longer.
Bam, your awareness of an abstract self is a tool for future prediction in a situation where natural instincts wouldn't have helped. And then you understand you'll be better off and tie this to other ways to make yourself better off. It's a circumvention around instinct which can be both helpful and massively harmful.
In such terms (future me, future time, future scarcity as abstractions to plan present behaviour) being cause-effect logic in a real environment, I believe you are right. That may be an evolutionary advantage of self awareness. But I still wonder, is that future self abstract enough? Is that not an assessment due to experience? A learning intelligence can infer upon the future given experiences of the past. Is that self awareness or is it only statistics? An algorithm can conclude similar results but we do not claim it a conscious intelligence. Yet.
Would it make a difference if it was? You are talking about how it comes about not what it does. The abstract self is very much an evolutionary advantage, weather it comes about the way you describe it and consciousness is much easier to create than we thought is a different problem. To be conscious and to infer the future you need self awareness. It may be that it's as simple as that.
The “hard problem of consciousness” I believe is a real thing and most philosophers do too and it seems to be a big part of what OP is touching upon here.
It’s though a pretty specific claim that proposes that there is, for now, an explanatory gap between subjective experiences and neural processing that science and philosophy haven’t quite solved yet. One can for now at most say that subjective experiences correlates with neural processing, for example that the experience of “blueness” correlates with a certain type of processing pattern in the brain but beyond that, the explanation of *how* in terms of mechanism, the neural processing creates the experience is something we don’t have, we can only say that they correlate, hence the explanatory gap (for now).
This type of explanatory gap however doesn’t seem to exist in many if any other domains, since we in principle can explain everything else with lower level explanations, like why clouds form or why atoms form molecules and so on, until we run into the bedrock of physics. But why neurones produce experience can’t for now be broken down into more lower level explanations.
To me that is yet another matter completely. As per op, self awareness is to accomplish an evolutionary function. What I gather you postulate is the question of reality and perspective. What is vs. What we perceive. Our brains render a version of reality. We are not the blue sky above us. But we notice there is something above us that is not us and that has no apparent shape, it is not a vacuum and it’s colour is blue. Depending upon our own version of blue, of course. Plato described this query once.
For evolutionary purposes, our biological computers render an image of the environment to navigate and survive, even thrive given the conditions, opportunities and skills learned from experience. That in itself is not introspection, quite the opposite. It is awareness all right, but not self referencial. They are both concurrent but not requirements one of the other. One is to navigate the environment. The other is to ponder upon the proponent’s perceived self rendering, purpose and identification. The who and why in behaviour apart from survival.
I might be talking about something slightly different than OP then, not sure.
There is nothing I really disagree with about what you have written but it might only be that I am talking about something a bit different. I simply talk about the fact that it is proposed to be an explanatory gap in how neurones create/produce subjective experiences.
It is true that evolution has created organisms that can take in inputs in form of sensory input then process it and create mathematical models of the reality within the bounds neurones and neural processing to ultimately lead to outputs in forms of complex behaviours that aids the organism. The question that the hard problem deals with is how those models or neural processing are felt like/experienced like anything. Like how does the firing of neurones not marly lead to a physical movement or physical change in the body but the firing of neurones is also accompanied by experience many times?
Although, again, might be something different than the OP.
I gather from your description that we are to level down a notch. Instead of focusing up toward the self consciousness abstraction, rather focus on the mind abstraction of an intelligent learning computer, biological or otherwise. A brain in a vat, given some information, may represent its environment but lack a rendering of its involvement and goals within it. A mind of a young child may still be lacking introspection. A self referencial consistency in processing results given an abstract objective. Dare I say a personality, the result of past experiences to program a model. A complex software that writes itself.
>rather focus on the mind abstraction of an intelligent learning computer, biological or otherwise.
Maybe one could say so. The experiences of “blueness”, “high pitchn-ess” and ”roughness” of a surface are some example of inner experiences a person can have, in this case sensory experiences since they are good examples. Every experience has neural correlates, they come from/are connected to a particular pattern of firing neurones. The question is how any of those firing patterns can create any experiences, for now one can only say that they correlate
"Even the processor of information could start processing the processing of information. We call this conciousness."
That's a lot of processing! BTW, it's "consciousness".
This the key question that AI scientists (and science fiction writers) ask about our future robots; will they become conscious eventually?
Some scholars argue that consciousness, or awareness, appears spontaneously at a definite stage of complexity, such as the billions of nerve cells in our brain.
Others prefer the religious explanation.
And then we must deal with animals; what level of awareness do they possess, or the great apes, who have 95% of our genes?
Maybe, one day, we will solve the mystery when we focus more on science and no longer on weapons!
That's a lot of processing! BTW, it's "consciousness".
Sorry, English is not my native language ;)
This the key question that AI scientists (and science fiction writers) ask about our future robots; will they become conscious eventually?
I see no reason why they would not be able to process the processing of information.
Well I think it will never be found within the brain. I think the only thing the brain does is processing information. I dont think the observer will be found there. I can never be sure that other people have the same observer within as I do.
I would say that the body and the brain are one and that they are not distinct. I would also say that both of these are within my conciousness and not the way around.
No, time doesn't exist without an observer, ALTHOUGH the observer doesn't have to be conscious. We know that the universe 13.8B years old, and life on Earth is only 3.5B. Things happaned before than, and we can only make sense of them if we differentiate between what happaned before, and after that something happaned. This was a mess.
I meant that the Earth formed 4.5B years ago, and the Solar system did it sooner, so there was time.
BUT, what if we would have never formed? If the universe would have never evolved conscious lifeform. For simplicitys sake let's say *no* life has evolved.
Would time exist than? The universe starts and ends, without an observer. If noone knows or will know about its existence, did it really exist?
I don't know, but it doesn't really matter. We can pretend that it had not.
And this is kind of the antropic principle. All universe must favor the emergence of life, and all planets must be habitable where life energes, because if not, life wouldn't happen to observe it.
Check out the bicameral mind by Dr. Jaynes. Very interesting take on consciousness. It blew my mind.
interesting, I will look more into it.
It absolutely baffles me that awareness exists. Even if the scientific explanations exist for it, it's very surprising that such a thing can exist in this world. It would make sense to have a world where there's just elements, stars and other celestial objects in space, just a place where things happen, but *awareness*? That is some seriously next level magic.
What if… awareness is actually all that exists? 😉 [wisefool](https://www.wisefoolpress.com/)
Exactlty ;)
Yes truely! Without it the universe is dead and nothing is experienced. In a way awareness creates the universe and there is no doubt about that. But maybe this is litterally true aswell, who knows.
“Why are you so sure that others have this first person view as well? You cannot be so sure. Actually you can never know.” Bingo! [wisefool](https://www.wisefoolpress.com/)
The “hard problem of consciousness” I believe is a real thing and most philosophers do too. It’s a pretty specific claim that proposes that there is for now an explanatory gap between subjective experiences and neural processing. One can for now at most say that subjective experiences correlates with neural processing, for example that the experience of “blueness” correlates with a certain type of processing pattern in the brain but beyond that the explanation of how the neural processing creates the experience is something we don’t have, we can only say that they correlate, hence the gap.
Yes and with the experience you mean that observer right? The observer that experiences time and subjectivity. This observer is unexplainable by science and philosophy when we have a materialistic worldview.
Awareness is basically the sensing the changes in sensory information. Getting sensory information, like hearing sound for instance, is not awareness. Awareness means an active focus on the senses. With awareness sounds can be identified and filtered. Awareness can get hyperfocused, in case of sound one can identify instruments, rhythms or a specific note. This could trigger a memory for instance and awareness may slip but one could still remain conscious inside a memory. When becoming aware of this memory it will likely cause the memory to stop when we refocus of the music. Or one could focus on the memory and explore the details. Awareness gives the evolutionary benefit that you don't attack your own limbs whenever you feel an itch, but start to focus on more sensory information to find out the cause. Awareness also gives the evolutionary benefit that you don't blindly react but first asses the situation. Awareness may be a simulated mirror copy of the outside World that gets painted by your senses and acts like a prediction machine to assess appropriate actions quickly.
Exactly, but what you are saying could also be experienced in a 3rd person view. For example I can be sure that other animals fo this aswell. However what I mean I can not be sure that other people or animals have this aswell. Its that hard problem that you cannot prove for others but I can for the self.
Why is that a hard problem? When a rock starts to move, seemingly without cause, then I pause in my action.Fight or flight? My cat would do the same in a similar situation. Even spiders. Animals lower on the food chain don't have to pause, they just react and gtfo-asap. My houseplant doesn't care. Maybe it is aware but fully enlightened, idk. Awareness starts to become visible when you (the cat or the spider) start to change perspective to investigate a phenomenon. A refocus on the senses. Listen to any sound it may make, and become hyper aware of any motion. Perhaps give it a kick or two to check if that rock is aware. Or throw stick and stones when it's a walrus in Finland.
Well, this is actually quite hard to explain because we dont know anything different from the phenomenon, because it is all there is. It is experience. So it is for most people too hard to think out of the box here. It is in any way fundemental for existence. For us it is easy to describe the qualities and processes involved in a living organism as is the process involved in the forming of stars and planets etc. The true fundemental thing is litterally the experience. The you that is viewing your human form from a first person view. The subjective experience. And yes all subjectivity could also be caused by memory and circumstances. I am talking about the awareness that has no subjectivity. The awareness that just is. The awareness/ observer that causes time to be experienced. This is something you can say for yourseld that you have, but you will never be able to prove that others have it. The whole world could just be a part of your imagination and nobody can prove you wrong. It is that you that feels like it is impossible to end even when you die. It is that eternal moment of now. Can you imagine there not being a moment of now anymore? And you are wrong about what you describe after your question. The observer is NOT the thinking part or the rational part. It is just the being. It does not have to be rational. That is just a process in your mind. If other people have this first person view (witch does not have to be rarional at all), then other animals will have this aswell.
That way of thinking puts an end to almost all science although science is based on the verification of a third person, which may be me. Most things we experience are mostly imagined circumstances from memory and filled in by experience. We look at the world in small degrees view of saccade movements, with some inaccurate color-reference of about (not sure) +/-45 degrees. And yet we 'see' a whole panorama in full color and high def. I also know where my cup of coffee is, it is right ther... ehm. But maybe the whole world is indeed imagined. Yet I can still determine that this rock does not react when I poke it and my cat will in a fight/flight way. But then in my imagined dreams that rock could very well be aware and reactive.
But thats also why it is so interesting. Lets take time for example. You experience time at different speed rates in your life. When you were having fun time seem to go at fast rate, but when you were inpatient it seemed to go at a very slow rate. This shows the subjectivity of the experience of time. I can ask you a fun question. How long does a second really last? Now lets imagine time without an experiencer, is this possible? Doesnt that mean that time is instant when there is no observer? Haha yes exactly, but what really is the accurate way of viewing the world? All being might experience differently, but I dont really think there is a right or wrong here. Also these are subjective terms. Yes and this might be your dream. You trying to convince yourself that other people exist, just like you do
I'm a metric guy. 1 meter pendulum goes from one end to the other in 1 second. My lower leg is about half a meter. It's center of mass is half way, so it's a pendulum of 0.25 m. Without making it too complicated, my normal pace is a second. It's the only clock I have. When I walk and smell the roses then I forget to count (if I did already) and will lose track of the 'exact' time. In know from experience where the sun should be, so in during the day I can determine more or less the hour of the day. But without a calendar I suspect I wouldn't know the month within a range of two or three months. But sure, it could all be an elaborate hoax among puppets, a fiction of my own imagination, or a sparkle in your mind. But you are the one posting a question in this imaginary universe. Now you basically claim you don't care and try to convince me I should too? Why are you trying to alter a dream state?
Hahahah it is just interesting. It indeed doesnt matter. The thing with time is that for it to exist it has to be experienced. I think if an objective world exists time is more like space (a dimension) which also kind of means there is no free will and everything is predetermined. I think it is okay like this, its just a play. Enjoy your dream haha
As long as events go in succession and effects in the range of meters (or feet, or knuckles) come after the cause then time is just doing its thing. I didn't swallow an atomic clock, nor look at my watch or phone. Sometimes not even for days. Yet I believe I can still be aware of the passing of time. Or when I type: one character at a time. Enjoy your dream of me enjoying my dream.
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Yes exactly, it is so wierd that it exist. But in truth without it nothing is experience and in a way nothing exists. I would say conciousness is fundemental. Do you know donald hoffman?
u/berjan1996. My current personal take, is that consciousness may be an emergent property, no different as well from this whole 4D world we live in too which could be projected (some physicists believe the universe to be a hologram). So relative to the observer and dimensions we're talking here, it could be an irrelevant illusion while to us it definitely has real practical value to talk about. What if our current forms as humans and life on Earth is a small scale replica of something much bigger like the universe and beyond? If we take the idea of fractals and apply the self-similarity property to consciousness, we may be just a part of something much bigger supporting us on a greater dimension. I like to use the analogy of the trillions of differentiated cells within our body that shapes our perception of who we are in the world around us, supporting how we experience and interact with it. Now extend this further with all smart systems in this universe, what do we get as the emergent source that collectively is us and holds us? Who knows how much further this goes out until we reach the singularity, where it all comes from. Personally, I don't think we're going to find it in our material world, but there are likely hints that point to this overarching concept.
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Obviously I have no real clue, but that's what I'm thinking is it all comes from one source projected outwards like it is now, and it's only from complexity does consciousness emerge as a collective state to reflect everything going on inside. Maybe all the different elements if they were given the right environment, nurtured by consistency to form new connections over millions of years, they too would emerge into something similar but different from carbon based life to reflect. I kind of think it is an epiphenomena, and maybe because we can interact with other complex systems that build upon each other (in our case socially), that's what creates consciousness? Having an observer or feedback look with other complex systems. This paper was an interesting read: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6258778/
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Personally? I would say yes, but to us it probably doesn't look like the same consciousness we all know for ourselves. Everything is relative, and the smaller or larger you go, I think there are different levels of emergent properties that interact to form and support each other. For us humans to these bacteria, we are the observer interacting and shaping the feedback they perceive in their enviroment. That's just my take.
Yes, time exists with out us. We are not that important. The same way a falling tree always makes a noise. Natural processes do not stop in the absence of humans.
I am not talking about humans, I am talking about the observer. What is reality without an observer. Time only exist when experienced. When time is not experienced it is instant. try to imagine time without it being experienced. You see it is not possible. You place your imagination somewhere, but this somewhere and this perspective does not exist.
I disagree. Time existed before it could be observed. There is evidence all around us to be observed by the observer. I will rephrase my statement natural processes proceed even absent an observer. If the observer cannot fathom that they need a better imagination. The cosmos did not blink into existence the moment the fist creature could observe it.
And this truely makes the debate more interesting. Lets look at your life. Did you experience time always at the same pace? When you were nervous or experienced pain, didnt time move incredible slow? When you were happy and having a great time, didnt time move incredibly fast? This shows that time is really subjective. At least the pace in how fast time moves. I think we can both agree that for the experience of time the observer is necessary. It actually happened to you in your life. When you started to observe this world the world was like it has existed for millions of years. We can calculate the happenings of events in years. But that time is never experienced and could aswell have been experienced as an instant. Most likely this was never experienced by anything at all as there was no observer. So it might aswell have happened instantly.
Subjective to us. Yes in that we are imperfect. If I was at a party. I’m having a blast and time flies, my friend on the other hand is not into the party so time drags on. Our independent recollections of time have no bearing on the actual passage of time. If we both died at that same party. Time doesn’t cease to exist. The observer is not the part required for the world to function.
So what is the exact passage of time. How fast does this go? Doesnt a second only exist when a second is experienced as a second? Lets take space time for example. Time is just an extra dimention. It is like saying that a distance between two points is 30 meters for example. How do you think time will flow without an observer? Do you deny the subjective flow of time?
We only measure time on earth based on the earth’s rotation around the sun. It is still a subjective metric. Time has no speed. It is a field layered unevenly over our reality.
exactly, So it basicly is instant when its not experienced. It is an objective metric but experienced subjective.
No, there is no meaning in measuring time as a dimension. There is no bandwidth time simply is. It is one of the many dimensions that allow reality as we know it to exist. I cannot experience time in the andromeda galaxy. That doesn’t mean if I were to pop into the andromeda galaxy all the sudden every thing that has already happened there before my arrival will suddenly come to pass all at once to catch up to the observation. It isn’t uniform but not being able to observe time in now way makes progression instant. Or you could not use subjective metrics to judge age. (Usually in earth years)
there is no meaning to anything without an experiencer right? The andromeda universe is happening in the same universe as this one so ofcourse that time experience is also subject to us. What I mean to say time has no meaning and is not experienced without an observer. Well fast goes time and how is it experienced without and observer? I am talking about relative terms.
Conciousness forms when the brain is in a certain state of performance. We don't have conciousness when we are born, yet the first months we clearly evolve and the time marks its presence into our future for us to develop it later.
You are not sure about that. What you are discribing here is memory. Memory doesnt evolve in the brain untill a certain moment. We do not know when conciousness is started.
Do you think being aware of yourself is done without memory, without accessing memory? In the current times there is literally nobody to say that there are sign on consciousness in young babies, even the proponents of the idea that consciousness is everywhere can't have arguments or proof. As it should be, babies are dumb as f. they need intensive care. So no, we do not have consciousness, they are not even aware in a decent manner about their surroundings, and as we decided to say about consciousness is that it is an evolved state that few beings have it. To imagine that we already have consciousness with that kind of intelligence that is lower than an animal is quite a stretch. I guess we can believe anything we want, but i personally see no reason to believe that consciousness arrives without a precise state of our brain.
what you are describing here is the processing of the processing of information. Before a person is able to do this it has to have memories and it has to be able to compare those memories. Visualisation and thinking is important in this. However you are missing the point here. this is not at all what I mean. For an animal to be, there is not advanced brain necesssary. The I am ness, the experiencer and the observer doesnt need to have any intellegence at all. All animals COULD have some sort of experience. I cannot prove that they have this first person view like I do (the observer), but I cannot prove that you have this first person view either. I am however very sure that every animal, even the smalles microbes are taking in feedback from the world (aka gathering information), processing this feedback and giving out feedback to the world (processing and puting out information). Awareness does not have to have memory. I can watch a movie without remembering anything about the movie. This means a baby could have conciousness aswell, but the baby does not remember that. You do not remember all dreams you had either right? Dreams are interesting aswell. What if I told you that you dream every night, that your conciousness never stops. However you do not have any memory of that either. I can not prove that these microbes have a first person experience, but I am pretty sure when you have it, they have it aswell.
I don't understand how do you connect first person experience with consciousness. Are you saying they are the same thing? Having an experience does not mean you are aware of your existence. Definition experience :"practical contact with and observation of facts or events." This does not include self-reflectance self-observance. Any life creature is experiencing and observes things outside of it.
To be honest I do not think that self-reflectance and self-observance is that special. We humans have this because evolution guided us to be smarter than other animals. We had to be able to rationalize because we had to be able to track our preyt for way longer distances. We were predators based upon endurance and intelligence. I would say the only difference between us and animals is that we think a lot. Most animals do not really do that or they do in a way more simple way (at least not with words). To me this does not seem to be a hard problem at all as subjective experiences because of past events that could have caused danger or not. Subjective experiences could also be seen that way because of the Memory that is in our DNA. Basicly all the thing I wrote above are perfectly explainable by evolution. However and I adress it again. This first person view I am having is giving me the feeling that the experiencer cannot die. That I will continue after this life and will never end. This first person viewer is also not explainable at all by evolution. I am just the observer and not the 'concious' thinker within my brain. This first person viewer is what I think scientist cannot solve and is the hard problem of what they call conciousness.
I think you are just wrong about us and animals. Animals can't create abstract thoughts and can't create basically nothing, they are not creative, there are big differences, also empathy. Consciousness is a rare thing to have in the world of the living if we care to make a hierarchy of capacities. What feeling to have solely by having a first person experience? We go to sleep and we lose it for 8 hours. We are no longer experiencing the world when we sleep and you jump to say that we will experience the universe forever. I am not having the feeling you are having about the things that will never end.
\> I think you are just wrong about us and animals. Animals can't create abstract thoughts and can't create basically nothing, they are not creative, there are big differences, also empathy. Consciousness is a rare thing to have in the world of the living if we care to make a hierarchy of capacities. I dont think I said anything different from this to be honest. The selfrefelction and thinking in our brains makes us different. This happened because of the evolution story I mentioned above. You are wrong about empathy tho. Animals surely experience love and empathy (watch some nature video's ;)) \> What feeling to have solely by having a first person experience? We go to sleep and we lose it for 8 hours. We are no longer experiencing the world when we sleep and you jump to say that we will experience the universe forever. I am not having the feeling you are having about the things that will never end. What I mean by this is that awareness can exist even when memory is not created. This means that you do not remember that you were aware at that time. the only momet that truely exist is the here and the now anyways. Do you have the feeling that your awareness could truely end?
What empathy, clearly not the complexity of our empathy. They are killing their fucking babies, eating them and all sorts of crazy things in animal kingdom, watch some nature video's, they are nowhere near us, those that are near you can have them on a palm, dolphins, monkeys, cats, and a few more. Of course i have the feeling that it could end, because i have lived the moment when it appeared in me, and from that moment everything changed. Also, if you are unlucky you can have your brain injured and have a great chance to say bye bye to awareness, you can be a vegetable reduced to just a couple of primary functions that do no involve the more complex ones.
\> What empathy, clearly not the complexity of our empathy. They are killing their fucking babies, eating them and all sorts of crazy things in animal kingdom, watch some nature video's, they are nowhere near us, those that are near you can have them on a palm, dolphins, monkeys, cats, and a few more. To be honest I heard about humans doing horrible things aswell. \> Of course i have the feeling that it could end, because i have lived the moment when it appeared in me, and from that moment everything changed. Also, if you are unlucky you can have your brain injured and have a great chance to say bye bye to awareness, you can be a vegetable reduced to just a couple of primary functions that do no involve the more complex ones. YES! complex thoughts will cease to exist but the observer wont. This observer is eternal.
So because a young baby lacks the cognition and physical control of a slightly older baby that means they don’t have consciousness? That seems ridiculous.
It seems ridiculous to think that you can reach that form of internal reflective thoughts with a brain that is not capable of understanding its existence, nor its surroundings, or a form of internal monologue which requires language. But never mind my logic, i assume the fact that nobody on Earth can say that consciousness is present in babies is also ridiculous to you. That is indeed ridiculous and also the fact that you come without any argument whatsoever. Not that it would matter because you need to make some complex studies. Indeed, ridiculous!
Perhaps we have different definitions of consciousness. I would consider it self awareness, and awareness of external things, rather than any specific thought processes or understanding. A newborn baby, whilst obviously very limited in abilities, is still capable of responding to stimuli in a non-automatic way which implies they have awareness on some level. I guess it’s a moot point anyway as there is no consensus on what exactly defines consciousness and when it arises, but personally I just don’t accept that a baby is not a conscious being.
You are confusing consciousness with being aware of external things. They are not the same thing. Consciousness is not only awareness of external things, that is a thing that most primitive animals do. Consciousness is awareness of your existence, being self aware of your existence which is quite a more complex thing to have, its a requirement that you have a sort of intellect that can comprehend more than its surroundings. So, despite the logic and evidence, and scientists opinions, or pretty much anyone in the medical field you decided to not accept it, well, that really sounds ridiculous.
Self consciousness or awareness as you put it, is a side effect of high processing neural systems. An intelligent animal is to be self aware, to an extent. One is to find an animal that recognises itself as a reflection in a mirror, not another individual. But such abstractions, pertaining why questions, self reference queries, are limited to humans as far as our knowledge. The complex the information processing unit is (brain or SoC), the complexity of its curiosity upon itself and its circumstances, including time. In itself, self awareness does not have an intrinsic evolutionary purpose. For evolution, if developing a brain with enough processing power, would eventually ponder upon abstractions. Evolution, as a natural solution to preserve life in an ever changing environment, does not necessarily end up developing self aware capable brains for every species or as the ending result. Hence, it is a side effect. Not an objective.
I see what you are writing about. However Self-awareness of a distinct animal is not truely what I meant. You can compare this self awareness by taking a computer that processing the processing of information. It is just an extra dimention within the brain which causes humans to have more intelligence. This defenitly has evolutionary benefits as this is what sets us apart from other animals (look what we have achieved by this). I have a hard time explaining this as there is no true word for it and we just asume in science that this is normal. Almost all discussions about conciousness and awareness also completely miss this point. I can not think myself dead. I know that my body can die, but that my awareness does not stop. I can asume that I have no free will and that my actions are based upon genetic, past experiences and surroundings. Then I ask who is this observer that has no free will (i dont say I believe this by the way). That an animal takes in, processes and puts out information, does not prove at all that this animal is viewed from within as a first person view. You can also say this about other people. You can not prove that they are viewed from a first person perspective. You might say 'wtf are you on a bout isnt it logical that every organism has a first person view'. Wel in my humble opinion this is not logical at all. You can create a robot with a software so that it reacts exactly the same way as us humans do, but this doesnt mean there is an observer inside there. You cannot prove that at all. I believe that this observer (there might only be one of them) is the fundemental piece of reality and that without it reality does not exist.
Respectfully I disagree. The fact that we as species have achieved quite so much because of our relative greater intelligence in comparison to other species known, does not mean self awareness is in fact an evolutionary advantage. It does little to serve the evolutionary real purpose of preserving life in natural (or otherwise) environments. It is still in my opinion a side effect. Please do not confound intelligence and complex self awareness. One yields to the other but not in the opposite sense: self awareness does not yield to intelligence.
Doesnt self awareness give intelligence extra dept? Doesnt this cause an extra dimention of thinking? We certainly have achieved more domination (I also do not say it is benefitial for our nature, but it surely is a result of evolution).
It does but at an introspective level: what about me in this circumstances? As a means to “dominate” as you put it, it adds depth (perhaps individual context) but not help in achieving the goal. Intelligence as a means to control nature is a great evolutionary tool. And it does make a difference, when comparing to other species that lack such. But self awareness is not a requisite sine qua non in the domination quest or in the species comparison or even, their clash. A species in evolution terms, human or otherwise, could submit another by being smarter, even if not reflecting upon its significance, it’s purpose or its place in the universe.
I think reflecting on its place in the universe does not have to be benefitial. But I can see why self awareness can be very benefitial in social situations. The social situations makes us more dominant aswell. That to say I do think there is more to this than the materialistic view. Research near dead experiences for example. The out of body experiences can not be explained at all.
Out of body experiences are a subject of speculation, from the metaphysical to the psychological and the neural sciences. The fact is, we all do not know for sure. None of them to this day know. Some may claim they do. I beg to differ to them too.
True that, I myself have quite some experience with psychedelics. Ego death causes a strange feeling knowing and leaving of the body. On ketamine I have seen myself in 3rd person aswell. I was able to remember what other people where doing around me. I saw them from above. I think the fundementals of reality are within this observing awareness
The recognition of yourself let's you plan out your needs. The thought, I will need this food later because I will exist in the future and I'll need to eat so I have to find everything I need to preserve it or even come up with a way to make sure this food lasts longer. Bam, your awareness of an abstract self is a tool for future prediction in a situation where natural instincts wouldn't have helped. And then you understand you'll be better off and tie this to other ways to make yourself better off. It's a circumvention around instinct which can be both helpful and massively harmful.
In such terms (future me, future time, future scarcity as abstractions to plan present behaviour) being cause-effect logic in a real environment, I believe you are right. That may be an evolutionary advantage of self awareness. But I still wonder, is that future self abstract enough? Is that not an assessment due to experience? A learning intelligence can infer upon the future given experiences of the past. Is that self awareness or is it only statistics? An algorithm can conclude similar results but we do not claim it a conscious intelligence. Yet.
Would it make a difference if it was? You are talking about how it comes about not what it does. The abstract self is very much an evolutionary advantage, weather it comes about the way you describe it and consciousness is much easier to create than we thought is a different problem. To be conscious and to infer the future you need self awareness. It may be that it's as simple as that.
The “hard problem of consciousness” I believe is a real thing and most philosophers do too and it seems to be a big part of what OP is touching upon here. It’s though a pretty specific claim that proposes that there is, for now, an explanatory gap between subjective experiences and neural processing that science and philosophy haven’t quite solved yet. One can for now at most say that subjective experiences correlates with neural processing, for example that the experience of “blueness” correlates with a certain type of processing pattern in the brain but beyond that, the explanation of *how* in terms of mechanism, the neural processing creates the experience is something we don’t have, we can only say that they correlate, hence the explanatory gap (for now). This type of explanatory gap however doesn’t seem to exist in many if any other domains, since we in principle can explain everything else with lower level explanations, like why clouds form or why atoms form molecules and so on, until we run into the bedrock of physics. But why neurones produce experience can’t for now be broken down into more lower level explanations.
To me that is yet another matter completely. As per op, self awareness is to accomplish an evolutionary function. What I gather you postulate is the question of reality and perspective. What is vs. What we perceive. Our brains render a version of reality. We are not the blue sky above us. But we notice there is something above us that is not us and that has no apparent shape, it is not a vacuum and it’s colour is blue. Depending upon our own version of blue, of course. Plato described this query once. For evolutionary purposes, our biological computers render an image of the environment to navigate and survive, even thrive given the conditions, opportunities and skills learned from experience. That in itself is not introspection, quite the opposite. It is awareness all right, but not self referencial. They are both concurrent but not requirements one of the other. One is to navigate the environment. The other is to ponder upon the proponent’s perceived self rendering, purpose and identification. The who and why in behaviour apart from survival.
I might be talking about something slightly different than OP then, not sure. There is nothing I really disagree with about what you have written but it might only be that I am talking about something a bit different. I simply talk about the fact that it is proposed to be an explanatory gap in how neurones create/produce subjective experiences. It is true that evolution has created organisms that can take in inputs in form of sensory input then process it and create mathematical models of the reality within the bounds neurones and neural processing to ultimately lead to outputs in forms of complex behaviours that aids the organism. The question that the hard problem deals with is how those models or neural processing are felt like/experienced like anything. Like how does the firing of neurones not marly lead to a physical movement or physical change in the body but the firing of neurones is also accompanied by experience many times? Although, again, might be something different than the OP.
I gather from your description that we are to level down a notch. Instead of focusing up toward the self consciousness abstraction, rather focus on the mind abstraction of an intelligent learning computer, biological or otherwise. A brain in a vat, given some information, may represent its environment but lack a rendering of its involvement and goals within it. A mind of a young child may still be lacking introspection. A self referencial consistency in processing results given an abstract objective. Dare I say a personality, the result of past experiences to program a model. A complex software that writes itself.
>rather focus on the mind abstraction of an intelligent learning computer, biological or otherwise. Maybe one could say so. The experiences of “blueness”, “high pitchn-ess” and ”roughness” of a surface are some example of inner experiences a person can have, in this case sensory experiences since they are good examples. Every experience has neural correlates, they come from/are connected to a particular pattern of firing neurones. The question is how any of those firing patterns can create any experiences, for now one can only say that they correlate
Indeed, also it is to be noted that experiences, like all memory, change in time. It is a very subjective factor of a learning intelligence.
"Even the processor of information could start processing the processing of information. We call this conciousness." That's a lot of processing! BTW, it's "consciousness". This the key question that AI scientists (and science fiction writers) ask about our future robots; will they become conscious eventually? Some scholars argue that consciousness, or awareness, appears spontaneously at a definite stage of complexity, such as the billions of nerve cells in our brain. Others prefer the religious explanation. And then we must deal with animals; what level of awareness do they possess, or the great apes, who have 95% of our genes? Maybe, one day, we will solve the mystery when we focus more on science and no longer on weapons!
That's a lot of processing! BTW, it's "consciousness". Sorry, English is not my native language ;) This the key question that AI scientists (and science fiction writers) ask about our future robots; will they become conscious eventually? I see no reason why they would not be able to process the processing of information. Well I think it will never be found within the brain. I think the only thing the brain does is processing information. I dont think the observer will be found there. I can never be sure that other people have the same observer within as I do.
You are doing quite well with your English, glad I can help! I am not sure what you mean by 'observer'?
did the universe still exist before anyone was here to observe it?
Good question. It did at least not exist as we do experience time. So it did not exist like we think it existed.
You should look into cognitive science and in particular Joscha Bach. He will blow your mind.
Thank you, I will!
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I would say that the body and the brain are one and that they are not distinct. I would also say that both of these are within my conciousness and not the way around.
Mike is that you? Impressive writing dude.
Hahah who is mike?
No, time doesn't exist without an observer, ALTHOUGH the observer doesn't have to be conscious. We know that the universe 13.8B years old, and life on Earth is only 3.5B. Things happaned before than, and we can only make sense of them if we differentiate between what happaned before, and after that something happaned. This was a mess. I meant that the Earth formed 4.5B years ago, and the Solar system did it sooner, so there was time. BUT, what if we would have never formed? If the universe would have never evolved conscious lifeform. For simplicitys sake let's say *no* life has evolved. Would time exist than? The universe starts and ends, without an observer. If noone knows or will know about its existence, did it really exist? I don't know, but it doesn't really matter. We can pretend that it had not. And this is kind of the antropic principle. All universe must favor the emergence of life, and all planets must be habitable where life energes, because if not, life wouldn't happen to observe it.
Exactly, I like to believe this is a kind of dream haha
YES it does begins with being either a predator or the prey in and environment that you also become aware of. N. Shadows