Fine, this gels with what I just said. Even if your semantics reduces plausibly to syntax and is thus made automatable, you will doubtless impose a wealth of extraneous meaning. Including, as you say, correlating voltage events with written numerals.

:grin:

Well, that was my question: how do minds exist "inside" brains? — Harry Hindu

"Inside" isn't really the right word. The mind is constituted by the state of the brain.

You mean in the same way that the human being is conscious? No way. Here's why:
1 - Man is the only animal species that knows all the others. They only know the ones immediately accessible.
2 - Man can even know the perception of other animals. A chimpanzee or a rooster cannot have a clue how a human eye works.
3 - Man is therefore the only one for whom "nature" exists. For other animals there is only their immediate environment.
4 - Man can watch over other animals and they cannot watch over him, in fact, not even for each other. Animals do not practice veterinary medicine.
5 - Man can discuss this issue, other animals cannot.
6 - If there is still any doubt, do not try to ask for clarification from a goose or an ant.

All that is true and interesting, but the human capacities you mention are not criteria for consciousness. Other creatures are conscious, like my dog, he hears things, sees things, smells things. A human baby doesn't know how a human eye works, but it is conscious, it can hear, see, smell.

It’s about the logical contradictions of materialism. Logic is important for some. — Olivier5

And you think those taking an alternative position to you don't think they're being entirely logically consistent? So you think their position has logical contradictions...they obviously don't. What now? You point out the logical contradictions, they say "no, they're not logical contradictions because...".

This is exactly the discussion that's been happening in the field for hundreds of years. The discussion that Dennett and Chalmers et al are still having, that their respective works are part of. It's not only naive, but unbelievable arrogant to think you're the first one to suggest we use logical contradiction to analyse the positions. It's not as if either side have just written a three line syllogism that can be just put into a truth table or something. Even just parsing the two arguments into formal logic would be fiendishly difficult and prone to error, let alone the task of then comparing the two for logical errors

But then by 'logic' you don't really mean Logic do you? As with most people like you here, when you use 'logic' you just mean 'what seems to me to be the case'.

But surely reflective awareness must come into the picture. You speak of 'images of the world and the self', but I am not sure that we can divide self and world so easily. Surely this distinction of it is made is itself dependent on consciousness. — Jack Cummins

Suits me. Truth be told, insofar as all that we have in, what we call, our minds - a mental image - is concerned, there's no difference between the self and the not-self; both are, all things considered, mental images. The contents of the mental images are not the same but both are mental images.

The problem is that you are still aware when asleep. You wake up suddenly to loud noises. How could you do that unless you were at least partially aware? Are you conscious while dreaming?

Is consciousness just an experience, or does the experience have to have some causal connection with the world outside of the mind, i.e, the experience is in some sense about the world? — Harry Hindu

Well, it may make sense to describe sleep as a state of partial awareness but the fact remains that there's a difference between sleep and awake states. When awake, we're aware of the outer world and of the inner world of, what people call, the self at a level (sleep is partial awareness) not seen in sleep. All I can say at the moment is that this difference in level of awareness between being asleep and being awake can't be ignored or should be given the attention/importance due to it.

You inquired whether "...the experience (of consciousness) is in some sense about the world"? and, as Dr. Lanning in the movie I, Robot (2004) says, "That, my friend, is the right question".

Consciousness is, at the end of the day, awareness - this awareness has myriad forms, from awareness of awareness to simply awareness of a fly buzzing around in the room. The bottomline is that consciousness is awareness whatever form that awareness may take. The catch is that to be aware, there has to be something we can be aware to, right. This is where the world and, let's not forget, the self, comes in - the world and the self are, as we all know from experience, legitimate objects of awareness. Ergo, I can say with a fair degree of confidence that "...the experience (of consciousness) is in some sense in part about the world"

Returning now to sleep as it seems relevant to your question, it's quite clear that when we fall asleep the sensitivity of our senses are reduced - as you mentioned only loud noises arouse us - and that amounts to basically blocking all sensations from the world and no sensations translates into nothing to be aware of.

Hand in hand with this sensationless state comes the shutting down of all thought processes (dreamless sleep phase) and what this means is nothing about the self to be aware of. Thus, the sensationless and thoughtless states in sleep, together, become the occasion in which, even if there exists something that's, capable of awareness, there's, quite literally, nothing to be aware of and there's no consciousness, or if that seems difficult to swallow, at least no consciousness comparable to that of the waking state.

When you think of it a bit more, you realize that what the camera and microphone record are just bits. 0/1. Those bits are recorded so that the images and sounds can be recreated for someone to experience them.

0’s and 1’s are very different from what I see — Olivier5

The difference you're alluding to here is contingent and not necessary. There's no necessity that the mental image of the world and ourselves not be in binary code (1's & 0's). If you don't believe me, look at an object with your eyes and then look at a digitial picture of that object. Can you tell the difference between the object's image in your eyes and the digitial picture? Our eyes are essentially cameras but, of course, you knew that. By mental image I mean the finished product as it were - the final output of all the processing if there's any processing involved to begin with because that's what we're aware of and consciousness is all about awareness.

Ah, how wonderful it is to be a self-assured fool. Everything is crystal-clear, and no question requires more than two seconds of contemplation. — SophistiCat

I'll take this as one of the best pieces of advice I've heard in a long time. It strikes a chord in me because mea culpa! Thanks! :up:

To all of the above-mentioned folks:

After turning things over in my head, I've come to the conclusion that there are three important aspects to consciousness (awareness of the world & the self):

1. X, the thing that can be aware [Us]
2. Y, the thing we can be aware of [The world or even X]
3. X and Y meet, Image in the eye. X's awareness of Y

Consider now a camera,

4. C, the camera that can capture an image
5. P, the object which can be photographed [The world or even C using a mirror or a fancy flexible lens]
6. C and P meet, Image on the image sensor. C's awareness of P

I'd like to request that the reader kindly remain within the confines of visual experience for the sake of simplicity and too, experiencing the world and the self with all senses can be extrapolated to.

Suppose X looks at a flower (F) and C take a picture of it. The image that forms in X's eye [X meets F] is identical to the image that forms in C's image sensor [C meets F]. Yet, we say that X meets Y [X's awareness of F] is consciousness and C meets F [C's awareness of F] isn't consciousness. There's no difference at all between X meets F and C meets F - both are identical images - and so, if one believes X meets F is consciousness and C meets F is not, consciousness isn't real. A difference between identical objects, here consciousness, must be an illusion for to be identical means there are no differences. Hence, consciousness is an illusion.

If consciousness is an illusion, who is the illusionist and who is the audience?

I don't know what consciousness is either, but calling it an illusion doesn't do much for me.

And you think those taking an alternative position to you don't think they're being entirely logically consistent? So you think their position has logical contradictions...they obviously don't. What now? You point out the logical contradictions, they say "no, they're not logical contradictions because...". — Isaac

No, they would rather avoid having to face the fundamental contradiction in their thinking, because they are afraid to look like fools. You for instance, you keep avoiding the issue.

It's not only naive, but unbelievable arrogant to think you're the first one to suggest we use logical contradiction to analyse the positions. It's not as if either side have just written a three line syllogism that can be just put into a truth table or something. Even just parsing the two arguments into formal logic would be fiendishly difficult and prone to error, let alone the task of then comparing the two for logical errors — Isaac

I never said I was the first one. The point that eliminative materialism is self-contradictory has been made by countless people before me, starting with Descartes himself. He said: I think therefore I am, not I think and therefore I am an illusion... But materialists are like communists of old, you cannot talk them out of their ideology. It is a very strong belief, a form of religion, which provides believers with much comfort. Hence there will always be eliminative materialists, they will always be wrong, and most of them will never be able to realize it.

See here

If consciousness is an illusion, who is the illusionist and who is the audience? — Bitter Crank

If I may offer my views...
The brain is being fooled into thinking that there's something more to the mental image, image in the broadest sense of that word, in our minds, an additional factor as ir were, over and above the image. If this weren't true then why would the brain think a camera's awareness of the world and itself in the form of an image is not conscious? However, there are no two ways about images being nothing more than images. In other words, images, mental or camera-based, are identical. The notion of consciousness is, at its heart, claiming there's a difference between mental images and camera-images but we know there's none. Ergo, consciousness - the purported difference in identicals - can't be real. Consciousness is an illusion.

The notion of consciousness is, at its heart, claiming there's a difference between mental images and camera-images but we know there's none. Ergo, consciousness - the purported difference in identicals - can't be real. Consciousness is an illusion. — TheMadFool

Even if we say this is the case for vision, it doesn't work for pain and other conscious sensations. The massive focus on vision in these discussions can be misleading. Consciousness is more than seeing a red apple.

0’s and 1’s are very different from what I see
— Olivier5

The difference you're alluding to here is contingent and not necessary. — TheMadFool

I doubt it. I couldn’t decipher the source code of a jpg file if my life depended on it. A cellphone couldn’t see anything or hear anything around it; it just records bits in a way that can help reconstruct images and sound.

“It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.”
— James Baldwin

Baldwin said this in a different context but it resonates here. Imagine a teacher who doesn’t believe in independent minds, and then imagine the damage that this teacher can do to his students. You cannot educate independent minds unless you believe in independent minds.

I doubt it. I couldn’t decipher the source code of a jpg file if my life depended on it. A cellphone couldn’t see anything or hear anything around it; it just records bits in a way that can help reconstruct images and sound. — Olivier5

You'll hopefully forgive me for using what are loaded terms but unfortunately it can't be avoided. It appears the first people to have made contact with the mind came to certain conclusions that somehow found their way into the words they used to describe the mind and what goes on with it.

Two things I want to say

1. I'm talking about the finished product - the final output - of whatever processing that goes on wherever it does go on. The image of the world in our eyes is identical to the image of the world in a camera's. If that were false, a camera wouldn't be a camera. A camera records events and that's another way of saying the image in the camera should be a faithful reproduction of actual events/places.

2. The fact that you can't decipher the 1's and 0's in a digital image is irrelevant. The camera can't do the same in re your eyes too. Does that mean the images are different? No! That's all.

Even if we say this is the case for vision, it doesn't work for pain and other conscious sensations. The massive focus on vision in these discussions can be misleading. Consciousness is more than seeing a red apple. — Marchesk

What's different about pain? Pain is essentially temperatures, pressures, and chemical concentrations that go beyond the threshold of tolerance. This means that they too are, all said and done, "images" of the world taken using other sensory modalities. The point is it's not the character of the awareness that's important, it's awareness, by itself, alone, that's the key to consciousness.

The image of the world in our eyes is identical to the image of the world in a camera's. If that were false, a camera wouldn't be a camera. A camera records events and that's another way of saying the image in the camera should be a faithful reproduction of actual events/places. — TheMadFool

The camera has been designed on purpose to capture an image close to what your eyes would capture. The colors, the focale, etc. are designed to render faithfully human vision. But the cellphone doesn’t actually perceive anything by itself. Otherwise it would comment on what it sees, like you can do.

The camera has been designed on purpose to capture an image close to what your eyes would capture. The colors, the focale, etc. are designed to render faithfully human vision. But the cellphone doesn’t actually perceive anything by itself. Otherwise it would comment on what it sees, like you can do. — Olivier5

I fear you're missing the point of what consciousness is. Consciousness is all about awareness - a certain entity is conscious if and only if it's aware of its environment and itself and what we call awareness is simply the formation of mental images in our minds, and that's precisely what happens inside a camera. To then say we're conscious and the camera not can mean only one thing - consciousness isn't real or, as Dennett puts it, consciousness is an illusion for the simple reason that to say so is to see a difference in what are identical things - such differences can't be real. Consciousness is an illusion.

As for passing comments, a standard issue desktop can be installed with a program that can do that. Does that mean the desktop is now conscious? We have three choices here:

1. The desktop and we aren't conscious
2. Both the desktop and we are conscious
3. The desktop is not conscious but we are conscious

Since both the desktop and I can make comments, the correct choices are 1 or 2 - either both or neither are conscious. It can't be that we are but the desktop not - to think this would be to see a difference that isn't there. The received opinion is that this difference is consciousness but, as I said, this difference isn't there, isn't real - consciousness is an illusion.

Desktops don't feel pain, and the data computers store about images is encoded. The encoding only has meaning as an image, because that's how we've programmed computers to handle such bit patterns, and output them for us in a form we see as an image.

So #3 it is.

The point is it's not the character of the awareness that's important, it's awareness, by itself, alone, that's the key to consciousness. — TheMadFool

Awareness of colored objects which make sounds and have smells/tastes. But also can be painful when you mishandle them. Those objects don't have those properties. That's just how our biology interacts with the world in order to survive.

How about 4: I'm conscious, I don't know about the desktop

As for passing comments, a standard issue desktop can be installed with a program that can do that. — TheMadFool

Sure, a human being or several could encode in the computer a capacity to emulate human speech, like Siri. But Siri can’t pass for a human being. It cannot pass the Turing test.

How about 4: I'm conscious, I don't know about the desktop — khaled

That would be the following:

2. Both you and the desktop are conscious

OR

3. You're conscious and the desktop is not conscious

Desktops don't feel pain, — Marchesk

As I said, what it is that we're aware of is of zero importance. All that matters for consciousness is awareness.

Sure, a human being or several could encode in the computer a capacity to emulate human speech, like Siri. But Siri can’t pass for a human being. It cannot pass the Turing test. — Olivier5

You underestimate Siri.

You underestimate Siri. — TheMadFool

What human has been tricked by Siri into thinking it was a person? I find Siri to be a useful assistant for certain things, but a lousy conversationalist in general.

What human has been tricked by Siri into thinking it was person? — Marchesk

The point isn't whether anyone has been tricked or not but that all that's necessary is to be tricked.

An amoeba also has sensory abilities, does that mean it is conscious because of that? Does your dog happen to be capable of an infinite hypothesis, of philosophy and metaphysics? The environment your dog lives in is for him the whole world.

Haha yes, potentially. When implemented as automation. Then the reference of each symbol token becomes a matter of mechanical fact. As when a machine translates a phonetic symbol into a sound. When considered apart from such automation, the syntactic connections may well be made semantically, so that we acknowledge a pretended connection between, say, a written letter and a phoneme, or between one written token of the letter and another. — bongo fury

The reference to each "symbol" becomes a matter of causal fact. Effects "symbolize" their causes. The tree rings in a tree stump don't pretend to be about the age of the tree. The tree rings are about the age of the tree because of how the tree grows through out the year - cause and effect.

Words and letters are slightly different in that their use is arbitrary. We could use any scribble or sound that we make to refer to any other sensory impression, which may include other scribbles or sounds. In this sense, it is the syntax/semantics that is pretend, or arbitrary.

The same causes lead to the same effects, and that is the syntax (the rule). The semantics is the relationship between cause and effect.

Neither is correct. These ideas are based on Cartesian Dualism, whereby the world is divided into exactly two realms, the physical and the mental, the material and the immaterial. But that's a mistake. We live in one world. — Daemon

Yes. For discussions of "Consciousness", I prefer Spinoza's Substance Monism, in which the "universal substance" is Generic (all-inclusive) Information, as defined below. :smile:

What is Information? : http://bothandblog4.enformationism.info/page26.html

Substance Monism : The most distinctive aspect of Spinoza's system is his substance monism; that is, his claim that one infinite substance—God or Nature—is the only substance that exists.
https://iep.utm.edu/spinoz-m/

Attributes of Substance : Early in The Ethics Spinoza argues that there is only one Substance, which is absolutely infinite, self-caused, and eternal. Substance causes an infinite number of attributes (the intellect perceiving an abstract concept or essence) and modes (things following from attributes and modes).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinozism

Substance : "In European thought the notion of substance received different interpretations : ... concrete individual ... single foundation ... ontological reality ... logical subject ... spiritual principle ... material substratum ... self-identical essence ... law of change ... "
https://simplyphilosophy.org/study/substance-definition/
Note : Generic Information is all of the above.

I don't know what consciousness is either, but calling it an illusion doesn't do much for me. — Bitter Crank

Yes. Dennett's term of derision (illusion) seems to be an indirect dismissal of Consciousness, because of its association with the religious term "Soul". Illusions are the stuff of Magic and Delusion. So, I prefer to use a more modern term to describe the immaterial-but-effective functions of the human brain : "Information". The brain is an Information Processor, and one of its outputs is Awareness of both the internal milieu and the external environment. :smile:

Is Consciousness an Illusion? : http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page66.html

No, the amoeba isn't conscious. I was reading the other day about how a bacterium can swim towards a source of nutrition. It can tell when the concentration of the nutrient is getting higher. That means it has a memory for what the concentration was before. But the whole of this process is known in detail, and it involves only chemical reactions, there isn't anything there that we need to explain with consciousness.

My dog's brain and body all work like mine, that's the machinery that provides my consciousness and his.

Nobody knows when consciousness first appeared on earth, when the first organism could feel something. Maybe it was a worm, or an insect.

The same causes lead to the same effects, and that is the syntax (the rule). The semantics is the relationship between cause and effect. — Harry Hindu

Please clarify, if possible. If not possible, no worries.