Consider seeing an apple. One neural state represents not only the apple acting on our neural state, but also the fact that our neural/sensory state is modified. There are two concepts here, but only one physical representation. — Dfpolis
You write, "what do I mean by the use of the word consciousness and of its derivative, conscious? In simple terms, I am referring to the internal subjective awareness of self that is lost during sleep and regained upon waking."
I think you are confusing two concepts here. One is subjective awareness of contents, the other, what might be called "medical consciousness," which is full realized in a responsive wakeful state. Medical consciousness is objectively observable, and, I would suggest, part of Chalmers' easy problem. Subjective awareness is found also in sleep, in our awareness of dreams, and its modeling is Chalmers' hard problem. — Dfpolis
While my body may be asleep, my consciousness could be awake. — Malcolm Lett
Hi, Your theory states that some animals are conscious, but not others. I wonder where you drew the line? How and why ? I also have a theory of consciousness, but could not draw this line. So I'm interested in your reasons for doing this. — Pop
But biology-inspired computation - the kind that Stephen Grossberg in particular pioneered - flips this around. The brain is instead an input-filtering device. It is set up to predict its inputs with the intent of being able to ignore as much of the world as it can. So the goal is to be able to handle all the challenges the world can throw at it in an automatic, unthinking and involuntary fashion. When that fails, then attentional responses have to kick in and do their best. — apokrisis
I may be misunderstanding which particular kind of neural network you're referring to, but sounds like artificial neural networks such as the "deep learning" models used in modern AI. Some in the field think that these are or will plateau. We have no way to extend them to the capability of artificial general intelligence. Examples like AlphaGo and AlphaZero are amazing feats of computational engineering, but at the end of the day they're just party tricks.As I say, this is a well developed field of computational science now - forward modelling or generative neural networks. So even if you want to be computational, you haven't focused on the actually relevant area of computer science - the one that founded itself on claims of greater biological realism. — apokrisis
I'm curious about one thing. What's your stance on the hard problem of phenomenal experience? If I'm understanding you correctly, you're suggesting an explanation that is just as materialist as my own (ie: no metaphysical). So it should suffer the same hard problem. You suggested in another post that a "triadic" model somehow avoids both the hard problem and the need to resort to metaphysics, but it isn't clear to me how that works.My claim here is that the only foundationally correct approach would be - broadly - biosemiotic. Both life and mind are about informational constraints imposed on dynamical instability. Organisms exist because they can regulate the physics of their environment in ways that produce "a stable self". — apokrisis
How come, when you are consciously or actively recalling that girl's face, the dress she wore also features in your mental picture, without you having to consciously recall it? — SaugB
Perhaps a bit outrageously, I am suggesting that the divide between conscious and not-conscious, intentional and unintentional, is difficult to actually define — SaugB
So the question is why you would even pursue a mechanistic theory in this day and age? Why would you not root your theory in biology? — apokrisis
We are very different as we evolved a capacity for syntactic speech. And that new level of semiosis is what allows a socially-constructed sense of self-awareness — apokrisis
A computation approach builds in this basic problem. A neurobiological approach never starts with it. — apokrisis
Would it be possible to add a short summary in the form of bullet points? Oh, that's right. Yes. It is. Could you please do so? Thanks! — Outlander
I don't think so, though I shouldn't answer for someone else. I'm almost finished with this intricate paper. It would be very hard to reduce what he has here to bullet points because the argument builds on itself stage by stage. — JerseyFlight
The key thing to understand here is that semiosis - as I am using the term - is all about information regulating physics. — apokrisis
But I feel strongly that what is at stake here is of fundamental philosophical importance. — Wayfarer
So, how could the meaning of a state of being be something that is ever going to be revealed in an fMRI scan? — Wayfarer
What I'd like to know is what you mean by: the problem is the assumption that 'understanding' is binary? — TheMadFool
As I understand it, action comes before perception. If this is the case consciousness is not merely an image but an inter-working and synthesis of environment... it also means more than this, I cannot draw it all out. But think of this for a moment, there is no such thing as a computer without a long historical material process, the fact that one wants to separate the quality of the computer from this process, gathering of raw materials, creation, assembly, etc., only serves to manifest the limitations and distortions (obliviousness) of the one who artificiates the divisions. We are not talking about the fully developed being of a thing that miraculously popped into existence, we are, whether one likes it or not, talking about a historical process, social activity. Therefore, the mechanisms that account for this process are both historical and material. To say we are confined to representations seems to overlook the very real material process. I am not dogmatic here, but this seems like a gigantic, ignorant gap in the thinking. — JerseyFlight
As I suggested, there is an intrinsic difficulty with attempting to treat the subject - the thinker, the agent who is writing and speaking - as an object of scientific analysis. — Wayfarer
However, in this case, the object of analysis is also the subject doing the examining. It's precisely because you can't stand outside or, or 'objectify', the object of analysis that is the cause of both the 'hard problem' and 'the explanatory gap'. This is why it is in principle outside the scope of empirical analysis — Wayfarer
Whereas you're suggesting that nothing is outside its jurisdiction. — Wayfarer
Superb job on expressing your ideas friend. — JerseyFlight
Modern science has tended to want to see 'everything in the universe' as physical, because physical objects are amenable to the precise objectification and quantification that is central to its method. That was part of the conceptual revolution introduced by Galileo, Newton, and Descartes, among others, at the advent of modern science. — Wayfarer
The best general theory of mind and life is that it is a semiotic process. A modelling relation. — apokrisis
We're certain that X understands Chinese. It must be then that the Chinese Room understands Chinese — TheMadFool
Well, the way I see it, all that needs to be done is, like the brain, we need to have in place hardware capable of logic and memory. After that, consciousness is simply a matter of feeding such a system with data. — TheMadFool
Artefact - an object made by a human being, typically one of cultural or historical interest.
"gold and silver artefacts"
2.
something observed in a scientific investigation or experiment that is not naturally present but occurs as a result of the preparative or investigative procedure. — Wayfarer
The point about the Buddhist approach is that it never refines ‘consciousness’ as some kind of mystical whatever
the broad options are monism, dualism and triadicism