• Yadoula
    22
    Why do we subjectively experience life? Why are we not just emotionless robots?

    Before developing an imagination beings are unable make decisions based on the future. Without an imagination you can’t plan an offensive, or calculate strategies to avoid potential dangers. To do this you literally need the ability to imagine potential future scenarios. All creatures without an imagination develop emotions which enable them to react to potential futures without the ability to imagine futures, using only information they have gathered in the past.

    For example:

    In the form of instincts, the spiders body has learnt that when big moving shapes are close, they will often get hurt. When the spiders eyes see these big moving shapes, the spider has developed the instinctual bodily response that we would experience as fear. The spider can then react to the potential threat without the brain functions that enable them to calculate potential futures.

    Calculating one defensive move after another can be achieved with emotions, but without an imagination the creature can’t: design complex strategies. Can’t percieve how it’s own actions will effect external phenomenon. It can’t comprehend how to effect the actions of other decision making beings.

    On the day this spider evolves to have an imagination, it will be able to plan the future and so will have no essential need for emotions, but the emotions don’t just disappear instantly. The body still tries to communicate all the lessons it’s learnt over the eons to the conscious mind.

    Are beings without an imagination conscious?

    No. Conscious beings are able to select whether or not to take actions.

    Lower tier decision makers, like spiders, trees, and robots, are all aware but they are not conscious.

    If a girl spends her whole life in a black and white room, and then experiences colour she is overjoyed. Why is this?

    Her body remembers colour from her ancestors past lives. The body has many lessons it’s been ready to teach the conscious mind about colour. Like: Red is scary. Anytime a being consciously understands things their body already knows the body grants the being a congratulatory pleasant feeling to communicate that they are performing the function for which they were created.

    You could say that the whole reason we have a conscious mind is TEACH the body how to better strategise. Before we can do this we first need to consciously LEARN all the things the body already knows. As usual, to show us we are doing something good for the body, every time we learn a piece of this puzzle we are granted a feeling of enlightenment by the body.

    To teach the body means that the mind and body will often disagree, whenever this happens it is uncomfortable for the mind. If the conscious mind pushes through the pain and continues on its course the body accepts that this is a lesson worth learning and so tries to adapt. The body builder will push his muscles through the pain, the body then adjusts by building more muscle.

    As a person learns to unconsciously take actions they are directly teaching the body which strategies to use. Problems can occur when the conscious mind teaches the body an unconscious strategy that doesn’t make sense in certain situations. When facing those situations the ever loyal body follows the lessons the conscious mind taught it, and so tries to make the wrong move. If the conscious mind tries to interfere the negative emotion is again experienced, this time so that it can block the conscious mind calculating a strategy rather than stopping the bodybuilder taking an action. The only way to avoid this negative feeling is to find the perfect way to strategise...

    ... That is the goal of the body. Finding this strategy and teaching the body is what we evolved an imagination for. But this is completely wrong. This is a mistake of the body. The body makes decisions only based on the past, it only strategises using memory, and so it thinks you need to memorise some perfect strategy. It cannot comprehend the true path to perfection -

    The best solution for a particular situation doesn’t exist, because no two situations are the same. The body has sent you in search of the wrong thing. Instead of learning strategies, we must only learn how to strategise. This information is already known to the body. It taught the brain how to do it. And so all we actually have to do to advance in strategic ability is remove all our bodies trust for all strategies.

    This means we have to face all our negative feelings. We have to ‘overcome’ all our physical ‘weaknesses’. We don’t have to unteach the body every strategy its learned, we just need to remove the trust in said strategy, so that we can make all our decisions in real-time. With no strategies pre-programmed into the body, the body needs communicate no lessons to the brain so you will experience perfect peace.

    Trust for strategies stack up on a being from when their very first ancestors first glanced at the light. Billions of years worth of memorising strategies later and the being is able to imagine future scenarios. Once you can imagine things, you develop yourself by deleting all the trust in alll the strategies your body has learnt over the eons, replacing all the automatic functions with conscious functions.

    ... Shall I go on? It all starts to get a little “out-there” now. I’d start talking about decision makers becoming Gods.

    (I really don’t know what I’m meant to do with this information. Its probably obvious that I never studied psychology or anything. I’m just a poker player from the streets who mapped out the mind. Any advice be much appreciated?)
  • Pantagruel
    3.4k
    Before developing an imagination beings are unable make decisions based on the future.Yadoula
    Are you equating "imagination" with "comparing alternate possibilities"? Because computers and lots of lower animals can do that.
  • Pantagruel
    3.4k
    (I really don’t know what I’m meant to do with this information. Its probably obvious that I never studied psychology or anything. I’m just a poker player from the streets who mapped out the mind. Any advice be much appreciated?)Yadoula

    I think it is an extremely interesting effort, only I don't think it does exactly what you think it does. The term "conscious" has a lot of technical history. I think your observations on the body-mind interface are promising.
  • 3017amen
    3.1k
    If a girl spends her whole life in a black and white room, and then experiences colour she is overjoyed. Why is this?

    Her body remembers colour from her ancestors past lives. The body has many lessons it’s been ready to teach the conscious mind about colour. Like: Red is scary.
    Yadoula

    Question: under what circumstance could one imagine, that she would not be able to understand the color red?

    Bonus questions: have you solved the hard problem of consciousness and subconscious working together? Or how about the phenomena of Love? For example, when someone looks at someone (or some thing) else and they feel love, what is that? How do we quantify or describe that?

    Just food for thought....I like your thoughts about sentient beings though... .
  • OmniscientNihilist
    171


    intelligence and consciousness are two different things

    dont get them mixed up

    explaining intelligence still doesnt explain consciousness at all

    dont mix up the easy problem with the hard problem

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
  • SophistiCat
    2.2k
    You are attempting to explain why people have consciousness from the evolutionary psychology standpoint. That's not the "hard problem of consciousness" - that's one of the "easy" problems.

    And of course this question has already been taken up and developed long before you ever thought of it, so you might want to start by reading up on what's already been done in this area.
  • Serving Zion
    162
    Without an imagination you can’t plan an offensive, or calculate strategies to avoid potential dangers.Yadoula

    This is interesting!
    All creatures without an imagination [are lacking] the ability to imagine potential future scenariosYadoula

    I'm looking for an example of such a creature, so that I can consider the validity of this claim. As it is, of the examples you have given, I do not agree that a spider or a tree are lacking imagination, but rather you probably have arrived at that idea through having not empathised with their reasonings. I have worked with trees a fair bit, so I know their ability to reason for optimum growth. Similarly I have observed the personality in spiders when we make eye contact and they come to have comfort and intrigue about why a human is speaking to them. Also, have you ever observed their activity of feeding? In fact, it quite resembles the mentality of a hunter that is human.

    without an imagination the creature can’t: design complex strategies. Can’t percieve how it’s own actions will effect external phenomenon. It can’t comprehend how to effect the actions of other decision making beings.Yadoula

    That is really interesting too, but it also shows that imagination grows. Children, as an example, begin as babies who simply observe. Then as they begin to learn functional differences, they begin to create with those elements. So imagination draws upon experience and knowledge as it is motivated by desire. But does that constitute consciousness? .. I have a hard time accepting that, because the word "conscious" describes a mind that is self-aware, and we need to accept that a baby may be conscious even before having developed imagination.

    On the day this spider evolves to have an imagination, it will be able to plan the futureYadoula

    .. I just need to make sure that you haven't got the wrong idea about this, (because the moral rights of life in all forms is a core value to my philosophy that I cannot bear to compromise), so when you see a spider sitting on his web, do you think he hasn't reckoned that it is a good idea to put the web there because a, b or c, and that he should sit right in the middle of it because then he is best positioned in optimal proximity to any incidents across its breadth?

    .. and furthermore, have you ever seen his heartbreak when his web is broken? .. do you understand why it is so traumatic to him?

    You could say that the whole reason we have a conscious mind is TEACH the body how to better strategise.Yadoula

    That's interesting too! (Three's a charm ;)). I do think though, that consciousness is purely consequential of life and that it doesn't necessarily have a purpose. So I go even further at that, to say all living things are conscious, because they are aware of their self. Therefore, to be aware is not enough, because that would include a robot. Thus, it needs to have an awareness of it's own existence, with an intellect that is useful to it for managing the preservation of it's life. That is why the sleeping or concust brain is named "unconscious", - that is to say that it is not aware of itself in a capacity such that it can exercise intelligence.
  • I like sushi
    4.8k
    The OP seems to have read Damasio ;) I suggest the rest of you follow suit if you haven’t done so already.
  • Joshs
    5.7k
    Any explanation of intelligence that doesnt understand conscioussness is not an explanation, only a superficial description.
  • OmniscientNihilist
    171
    Any explanation of intelligence that doesnt understand conscioussness is not an explanation, only a superficial description.Joshs

    intelligence does not require consciousness

    and consciousness does not require intelligence

    they are completely separate things

    dont muddle them
  • Joshs
    5.7k
    In order to understand consciousness, it is necessary to recognize the inextricable interdependence of subjective and objective aspects of all experiencing of a world. All understanding takes place and organizes itself relative to a background field. There is no meaning without this relational structure of figure-ground and this is the meaning of consciousness. Intelligence has no sense without meaning and meaning has no senses outside of conscious processes of relationality. We can talk about dispositions, capacities ad potentialities that are latent in a person, but intelligence is only discerned via meaningful , intentional behavior. Intelligence has to manifest itself via the constructions of conscious intentions. Otherwise it remains a latent potentiality.
  • OmniscientNihilist
    171
    In order to understand consciousness, it is necessary to recognize the inextricable interdependence of subjective and objective aspects of all experiencing of a world. All understanding takes place and organizes itself relative to a background field. There is no meaning without this relational structure of figure-ground and this is the meaning of consciousness. Intelligence has no sense without meaning and meaning has no senses outside of conscious processes of relationality. We can talk about dispositions, capacities ad potentialities that are latent in a person, but intelligence is only discerned via meaningful , intentional behavior. Intelligence has to manifest itself via the constructions of conscious intentions. Otherwise it remains a latent potentiality.Joshs

    relativity, relation, meaning, are all illusions

    dont exist in reality

    and intelligence and consciousness do not require each other
  • Banno
    25k
    Not only have you not solved the hard problem, you have not understood it.
  • Yadoula
    22


    The subjective nature of consciousness is just the result of self-Awareness.

    The only reason it feels like something “special” to you is because you are suffering from cognitive dissonance and your subconscious mind is exploiting your arrogance to stop you understanding something very simple.

    If you make a computer self aware it will view the world from a subjective perspective.
  • Yadoula
    22


    Lol, I do understand it. So, you want me to tell you why there is something special about consciousness. You want me to tell you why you are so special.

    You think “A conscious observer gives structure to very essence of everything, it must be special”. But that’s not even true. An aware being that is unconscious, like a tree, will also give substance to the universe.

    We decision makers are special. Especially self-aware creatures like humans. As we can one day realise that we are God.
  • Yadoula
    22
    It’s disappointing that you guys clearly have this same cognitive dissonance stopping you from understanding how the mind works.

    Either that, or I’m crazy. One of us is defo mental lol.

    I’d think it was me if I wasn’t the most advanced poker theorist in the world. If I hadn’t already spent years dealing with this same problem in relation to a game I know like the back of my hand.

    We will find out how crazy I am at Christmas. When my new exchange system is launched. A website that rewards charity... I think it will sweep the globe quickly bringing paradise to earth, if it does, you guys will all be wishing id finished that post lol.
  • Yadoula
    22


    By imagination, I do not mean they are able to decide on alternative options...

    To understand what I mean by imagination you have to understand that to the spider the future is completely incomprehensible. The way they make decisions is by analysing current information via senses, then remembering the value of strategies for each situation. This is a two step process for the mind.

    1- The spider weighs the strength of the attributes of the external phenomenon...
    ... against ...
    2- the strength of its own attributes.

    This enables them to estimate whether or not an action will be successful. Whether they will gain value or lose value from trying to capture the fly.

    By imagination, I mean the ability to create a fake version of that calculation in your mind. This enables you to imagine situations you are not directly involved in. It enables you to image what you look like from the outside. It enables you to imagine how your actions will be perceived.

    This process has three steps.
    1 - Your perceived self, or future self, effects...
    2- The external phenomenon, changing its strength, which we then...
    3 - weigh up against our strength.

    The extra step is actually a mirror in the mind. This is the second mirror in the mind. If you understand the mirrors, you understand the mind.
  • Deletedmemberzc
    2.5k
    You know a lot more about spiders than you know you know.
  • Pantagruel
    3.4k
    It sounds ...very...cybernetic-computational to me!
  • Yadoula
    22
    Lol I honestly do think I could teach those AI guys to program a conscious mind. It shouldn’t be difficult, the only problem until now has been that the people who try to design an artificial mind have a subconscious mind that blocks thier ability to consciously recognise how the mind works.

    ... (does make sense of you think about it)
  • Banno
    25k
    Its probably obvious that I never studied psychology or anything.Yadoula
  • Yadoula
    22
    I made hundreds of thousands in profit over 2 years playing online poker professionally, and then I spent 5 years mapping out the most efficient way to consider 1 poker decision. That must be worth something.

    (Upon completing my task, I realised beginners use the perfect thought process naturally. I realised then that this CogD effects everyone)
  • Yadoula
    22
    Language is obviously a barrier here. But I have solved this problem. I hope one of you stick with it until you realise.
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