It seems to me that consciousness and perception is innately solipsistic.

Why? It seems to me that we only become who we are by way of others.

I don't know what you mean. You will have to explain more. If you mean our personality can be shaped by others that maybe true but that is not consciousness.

If I am conscious of the moon that does not need the presence of anyone else to happen and that is my only access to the moon or anyone else (personal consciousness).

Our belief in other peoples existence is based on person experience and could be fabricated and indeed when people communicate with us we interpret it. We can draw false conclusions about what they believe about us.

What is solipsistic to me is reflected in the main theories of perception which is that our own brain is responsible for constructing a mental reality for us.

How can we access other people or reality without personal consciousness? The reason solipsism exists an idea is because of this realisation about the deeply subjective nature of experience (along with the potential for skepticism about experiences)

The reason it is hard to imagine being a bat is because whatever experiences they may have are private and directly inaccessible. The issue here is how you become that entity experiencing what it is like to be you.

On the other aspect of the location issue... Imagine someone phoned you but you had no idea where they were phoning from and they were actually phoning from the other side of the world. This is an example of how you can communicate with someone and gather valuable information about them without being certain of their location.

Correlations of our mental life with brains states is based on verbal reports most often not on finding consciousness at a particular spot. Anyhow even if we explained how the brain produce experience that is a different issue to explaining the subject of experiences.

I don't understand the lack of study into subjectivity and location compared to qualia and neural correlates etc.

I don't think so. You were raised by some one and they told you who your are, sure you are conscious but only because there are others that you have mimicked that's all.

The question already has biases built in, so you're on your own answering it. I struggled for quite some time figuring out this one until I identified the bias and the source of it. I found myself to be an improbable thing to be since there are so many other things (a bird, a stick, the duration of a flame), but here I am a well-off member of the species at the top of the food chain during the 2nd gilded age, pretty much the perfect thing to be. Baffling until I removed that bias.
So instead, don't assume that there is an 'I' that got to be 'me', or got to be 'here', and the problem vanishes.

As Thomas Nagel says "Objectivity is a view from nowhere" — Andrew4Handel

Well, an objective viewpoint is a view from nowhere and thus not really a viewpoint, but an objective description need not be precluded, and it often yields answers that elude a subjective description. You're going to need it for answers like this one.

I cannot render a 'view' (a drawing say) of a car without choosing a perspective, but I can describe one in full detail without the necessity of selection of a perspective.

sure you are conscious but only because there are others that you have mimicked that's all. — Cavacava

Is this your actual theory of consciousness? I have not heard a theory of consciousness arising because of mimicry. I don't see how mimicry is a causal explanation for consciousness or the conscious experience.

So instead, don't assume that there is an 'I' that got to be 'me', or got to be 'here', and the problem vanishes. — noAxioms

I think there for I am am. As soon as I experience I am aware that I am and can reflect on my own existence along with the content of a a thought or perception.

There is no way to talk about something without knowing that you or someone else was conscious of it or imagined it.

There is no realistic way of taking the "I" out of any theory because that raises the question of who is talking and what they are talking about.

If we speculate that something exists that is based on prior conspicuous experience. So if speculate about something underlying my experience such as quantum entities I am doing so to try and understand my current experiences.

I think most reasonable theorist who are not trying to fudge the issue of consciousness because of metaphysical ideology, accept there is a subjective experiencing perspective.

When I am deeply unconscious I have no awareness or concern about reality existing. It does not somehow objectively reveal it self in a scenario where there is no consciousness in the universe.

With Some things like sounds, thought, pain,colours and concepts it is unclear how they could exist in the absence of minds.

I have never known a problem in philosophy to vanish.

There is no realistic way of taking the "I" out of any theory because that raises the question of who is talking and what they are talking about. — Andrew4Handel

Fine. I have never heard of anybody that was somebody else. Why am I me? Well, who else could I be?

More your wording:

inhabit this conscious location of having experiences of a reality and how this subjective location arises — Andrew4Handel

'Inhabit'. OK, I see the path you want. Never mind at all what I say then. Religion has better answers to this one than I do.

But concerning location, I've also never know a person to be conscious at a different location than where they were. Both questions seem absurd to me, because there is only me, not two things paired by an 'inhabit' relationship.

So no one raised you? You didn't learn how to be a person on your own, sure consciousness but you learnt how to be conscious by studying what others were doing, realizing that you are also an person.

Never said I wasn't a person. I said I'm not two of them.

Why am I me? Well, who else could I be? — noAxioms

You could not be anyone else now but you could have been someone else and been born in another body or era or gender.

I am one of 6 children I am conscious of being the fourth child but why not the first or sixth?

So no one raised you? You didn't learn how to be a person on your own, sure consciousness but you learnt how to be conscious by studying what others were doing, realizing that you are also an person — Cavacava

I have no idea how I became conscious and that is the mystery.

Are you saying we are unconscious until we interact with people?

A dog, a mouse, and so on are all conscious but none of them are persons. What I am saying is that to be a person is to be self consciously aware of one's self among others and that this is learnt from others in the sense of a differentation. The 'I' is only possible because of the 'We', the "I" is derivative of the We.

You could not be anyone else now but you could have been someone else and been born in another body or era or gender. — Andrew4Handel

Yes, that's the second guy I'm referring to. I say it doesn't exist. There is nothing that could have been somebody else until being born in this specific body. Mind you (pun intended), I am not asserting this. I'm just saying that the question you pose goes away with my answer. If this dualistic view is one you prefer, fine. As I said, religion has a lot of answers to how you got to be the fourth of six siblings, or how you got to be human at all for that matter.

I am one of 6 children I am conscious of being the fourth child but why not the first or sixth?

My answer is that it would seem absurd for the 4th child to be conscious of being the second child. That's what monism says. I think a lot of people that claim to be monists actually don't understand it and cannot accept that simple answer. It sure took me a long time.

That's why my first post dove into that 'objective' rant. The whole thing is easier to grasp from the outside in. Don't propose reasons P why I experience such and such. Ask instead that if proposal P is true, what would be the experience of person X? Same question, but more in 3rd person, and it yields different answers given the different assumptions built into the different perspective.

There is nothing that could have been somebody else until being born in this specific body. — noAxioms

Before you are born is the period I am referring to. If I start to exist there is the question of how I start to exist as that person.

Bodily there is a continuum because I can trace my genetic lineage causally, but not for my mind. At some stage you emerge into consciousness of being you and I don't think it has anything to do with linguistics.

There are ways for a materialistic/physical dualism for example a disc can be put into different machines or maybe there will be brain transplants or implanted memories.

So if there was a physical dualistic separation of brain and mind then your mind could be uploaded to someone else body. Some theorist advocate mind uploads as a form of trans humanism reincarnation or longevity tool. So I don't think dualism is not hypothetically illogical or anti physicalist.

The point I making about location is that everything is filtered through your own perspective even if these perceptions are illusory or influenced by others. So for example you could be a depressed single African mother in 2090 thinking about The causes of WW2 or you could be someone in 1920 in France thinking about WW2. So the content of your thoughts can be similar while your identity is not.

I think there is distinction between consciousness and the contents of consciousness.

I find consciousness of non humans puzzling because I think consciousness requires a self/subject to be subject to experience but can't imagine an animals self. (Partly because they lack language I suppose)

The main thing I am looking at here though is the subjective perspective and the location of that.

You could say the brain is the source of subjectivity but the brain it self is an objectively/collectively observable thing where as things like sensations and thought aren't (other than indirectly)

Perhaps the continual coherent processing of the subject's common sense data has no exact pin-pointable location beyond the human body, as its locus. The external body is one big sense organ for the most part. Most of what I have read suggest that perception is a two stage process, in which we are subconsciously aware of sense data, then we classify or identify that data by our facility of judgement all typically in less than 500 milliseconds. A continual process of our organism's sense organs informing our understanding and reason, by way way of judgement where our ability to judge includes our continual ability to conceptualize sense data.

Before you are born is the period I am referring to. If I start to exist there is the question of how I start to exist as that person. — Andrew4Handel

Well as I said, I think I am the wrong person to give answers to questions about a view that I do not hold.

When does combustion start to exist as a specific flame? Strange way to word it...

So no one raised you? You didn't learn how to be a person on your own, sure consciousness but you learnt how to be conscious by studying what others were doing, realizing that you are also an person. — Cavacava

Isn't this a vicious circle? Don't you need to be conscious to be able to study what others are doing? So you seem to imply that one must already be conscious in order to become conscious.

A dog, a mouse, and so on are all conscious but none of them are persons. What I am saying is that to be a person is to be self consciously aware of one's self among others and that this is learnt from others in the sense of a differentation. The 'I' is only possible because of the 'We', the "I" is derivative of the We. — Cavacava

I don't see how this is possible. You seem to be arguing that a plurality (we) is prior to the individual (I). Don't you believe in a first? How are two, three, and four possible without there first being one? I think that you have this backwards.

A plurality is made up of a group of individuals, so the individual is a necessary component of the plurality. However, the existence of an individual does not require the existence of a plurality, so a plurality is not necessary for the existence of an individual. Therefore it is impossible that the plurality is prior to the individual, yet possible that the individual is prior to the plurality. Furthermore, arguments can be made which indicate that it is probable that the individual is prior to plurality, as one is prior to two.

Isn't this a vicious circle? Don't you need to be conscious to be able to study what others are doing? So you seem to imply that one must already be conscious in order to become conscious

Meta levels...we become self aware, we are not born that way, and we are able to make ourselves an object of our own thought. We do it, you want to call it vicious, but I don't think so, it is handy, pragmatic and ongoing.

I don't see how this is possible. You seem to be arguing that a plurality (we) is prior to the individual (I). Don't you believe in a first? How are two, three, and four possible without there first being one? I think that you have this backwards.

I believe in parents, caregivers, the people who teach you that the fire truck is red. The people teach you to speak and to help make you who you are....and you are not possible without them.

the existence of an individual does not require the existence of a plurality

If consciousness is just "in the brain" how do you come to be the subject of that brains experiences? — Andrew4Handel

That's the trick though, consciousness isn't just "in the brain." The brain is at the end of a whole bunch of impinging causal chains, consciousness is all those causal chains, or rather, to be more precise, it's those causal chains plus the brain's internal processing (what it does with the impinging data).

The scam, the trick we all fall for, is thinking that we are a conscious thing trapped inside our body peeping out at the world from somewhere behind the eyes. It seems like this inexplicable nonesuch is the bearer of consciousness, the thing-that-is-conscious.

This is all illusory - as people who do meditation and other forms of practice that induce what's called a "non-dual" vision discover. There is no thing inside us that's conscious, there is no hidden subject (over and above, or "inside" the identifiable rational animal) that's the bearer or haver of consciousness; in reality, just plain existence is the same as consciousness; IOW the existence of a perceived tree, its actual existence, is the very "stuff" of consciousness, it's not that the tree has some sort of doubled representation inside a supposedly conscious ghost in the machine (think of the Magritte painting of the view outside the window).

The bit to get one's head around is that the way the tree exists for us is like a special gift it has just for us, the way it meshes with us causally in that moment, at that place, is a unique way it has of existing when causally interacting with our particular structure. Its manner of appearing with just that shade, that colour, that texture, is a manner of existing that it can only manifest at just that time and place, in interaction with us. Our presence affords it an opportunity to show a side of itself that never existed until that moment. (Rainbows are a good example to think about in this context.)

And when you extend the non-dual vision to its fullest, consciousness becomes really an impersonal, cosmic process that's merely anchored at one end in a limited, physical entity. One's thoughts are cosmic events quite on a par with a flight of geese across the sky, and all that jazz.

A quick and dirty way of thinking about it is to imagine a ball that extrudes eyestalks. The consciousness of the eyestalks is the ball's consciousness refracted in different locations. Every consciousness is God's consciousness, enjoying (and sometimes not enjoying, but still registering) a tiny portion of His infinite possibilities. (Or you can not use the God concept and cast it in a pantheistic, or Spinozistic, or panentheistic way - or even a purely materialistic way, as matter/energy - it doesn't actually matter, these are all just chew toys for the mind.)

I believe in parents, caregivers, the people who teach you that the fire truck is red. The people teach you to speak and to help make you who you are....and you are not possible without them. — Cavacava

So you've gone from a vicious circle to an infinite regress. Each person requires parents, ad infinitum. Do you believe that there was an infinite number of people before you?

A human infant cannot survive without a caregiver that's a fact and all children by definition have parents. People are not numbers, and logic alone cannot explain the fact of our existence.

But that doesn't mean that what makes a person a person is the caregiver. A human being cannot survive without food either, but this doesn't mean that food is what makes a person a person. A human being cannot survive without oxygen, either. There are many things which we need, to make us what we are, but not one of them can be cited as the cause of a person being a person.

There is no way to know what exists in reality without consciousness, perception and sensation.

All theories of reality are based on someone's personal awareness. As Thomas Nagel says "Objectivity is a view from nowhere" — Andrew4Handel

The point about scientific objectivity is that it averages and quantifies experiences across subjects, and so reaches 'inter-subjective certainty' with respect to those things which can be measured. We all agree on common units of measurement, and what constitutes a valid observation - and away we go.

We have many common units of measurement and agreed definitions with which to proceed. These aren't solipsistic in the least; you don't have your own version of numbers or words, or your own language. We have shared experiences and conventions, clearly.

And as we're all members of the same species and have many common cultural traits, arriving at a consensus understanding of phenomenon is eminently possible by this means.

Nagel's 'View from Nowhere' is about reconciling that objective, impersonal view with the reality of subjective experience. I think the point of his critique, is to remember what it is that eludes quantitative analysis and scientific objectivity. And that is something very important, and habitually overlooked in our 'scientistic' culture. But that doesn't mitigate against the effectiveness of science in its domain of application.

The infant child does not identify itself apart from its parents until it becomes self aware of itself as an independent agent, this is what Freud is all on about. The child has no structured psyche until it has experience, and these experiences are shaped by its caregivers....the child's desires are the desires of the mother, and in a similar manner our desires are the desires of others.

The 'I' is derivative of the 'We'.

The infant child does not identify itself apart from its parents until it becomes self aware of itself as an independent agent, this is what Freud is all on about. — Cavacava

I don't know Freud very well but I know that a lot of his principles are debatable, if not completely discredited.

The child has no structured psyche until it has experience, and these experiences are shaped by its caregivers....the child's desires are the desires of the mother, and in a similar manner our desires are the desires of others. — Cavacava

This is surely wrong. A baby has the desire to eat, and though the mother may shape this desire through timing and substance in an effort to create habit, the desire is not the mother's desire. Nor is the desire derived from the mother. The desire is that of the baby, as an independent agent. Even within the womb, the need for nutrition is a need of the foetus, not a need of the mother.

The 'I' is derivative of the 'We'. — Cavacava

You didn't reply to my description of the logical relationship between "one" and "plurality". So I take this as a hollow assertion which is contrary to logic and ought to be rejected.

You didn't reply to my description of the logical relationship between "one" and "plurality". So I take this as a hollow assertion which is contrary to logic and ought to be rejected.

I tried to indicate that such logical assertions can't begin to explain people. Your description also didn't sound very logical for that matter.

This is surely wrong. A baby has the desire to eat, and though the mother may shape this desire through timing and substance in an effort to create habit, the desire is not the mother's desire. Nor is the desire derived from the mother. The desire is that of the baby, as an independent agent. Even within the womb, the need for nutrition is a need of the foetus, not a need of the mother.

Lacan's conception explained as follows:

Yet right from the start language has begun to work. The child is spoken to and named, and therefore it has a place in the discourse of the other, the words of its mother. As the child begins to become aware of itself as separate from its mother, as a distinct psychic entity, it does so only by taking itself to be its mother. There is a mirror effect, Lacan argues, in which the image the child has of itself is in fact the image of its mother. Hence the child's early ego, or pre-ego--Lacan calls it the ideal ego--takes shape as a misrecognition: the child understands itself not as itself but as the other, as its mother. From the beginning the ego is constituted as an illusory incorporation of the other; when it names itself it is only naming the other, or, in linguistic terms, its place is defined by the discourse of the other.

Lacan also conceptualized the mirror stage in relation to Hegel's concept of recognition and desire. The infant has a sensuous relation with its mother. Its needs are fulfilled by her and she is in tactile relation with it. In addition to needs, and quite distinct from them, the child has desires (libido) and, as Hegel says, the prime desire is to be recognized by the other's desire. The desire of the mother and the desire of the child thus enter into a complex, confused relation.

But that doesn't mitigate against the effectiveness of science in its domain of application. — Wayfarer

Is science describing world with or without consciousness in it.

I feel like facts are undermined until we can locate consciousness and know how we are accessing reality and how veridical our perceptions.

I am not saying facts don't exist just that lack of explanation for consciousness leads to scepticism like solipsism or elaborate consciousness derived paradigms like panpsychism or idealism. Indeed some physicist have been and are supporters of idealism.

The infant child does not identify itself apart from its parents until it becomes self aware of itself as an independent agent — Cavacava

When I am around young children and babies I see no evidence that they are relying on me for a sense of identity or perception or volition.

I don't see how one can prove claims about babies mental states because they cannot speak and so it is all an interpretation which has been challenged. All sorts of attitudes have been attributed to babies including extreme egotism which I find disturbing.

I think we usual can trace our own consciousness back to our most early memories before that we have amnesia. I cannot trace my consciousness back to any one emergent moment.

Nevertheless at whatever stage personal consciousness emerges it is private and subjective and everything you experience is channelled through yourself. You do learn things from other (bad things) and that can damage your identity or shape parts of it. But that is not the same as creating ones subjectivity.

I think some peoples lack of strong personal identity is due to over conformity and a lack of personal reflection. I am well aware of this having grown up in a religious cult.