Consciousness is a feature of an entity capable of — Pantagruel
More intelligent, maybe. But more conscious - I don't know. Something is either conscius or it's not. Birds, bees, humans are conscious - unless they're not - but one is not 'more conscious' than the other. But I'm sure that birds are more intelligent than bees, and humans more than birds. — Wayfarer
... mistaking its thoughts for pictures. — bongo fury
If you say so. (An app can't make mistakes?) — bongo fury
Ok. Then I can offer: referring (as a semantically competent speaker) to its thoughts as pictures.
To be honest, a proper (contra Chinese Room) semantics is the whole of it. Confusing thoughts and pictures is just the hard problem that isn't really. — bongo fury
More intelligent, maybe. But more conscious - I don't know. Something is either conscius or it's not. Birds, bees, humans are conscious - unless they're not - but one is not 'more conscious' than the other. But I'm sure that birds are more intelligent than bees, and humans more than birds. — Wayfarer
I agree with Wayfarer ( :yikes: ), it's binary not "a matter of degree" like a dimmer. Why think this? I understand things this way:How is degree of consciousness quantified? — Pantagruel
I agree with Wayfarer ( :yikes: ), it's binary not "a matter of degree" like a dimmer. — 180 Proof
This confuses "consciousness" with experience (or form with content); like an empty balloon, "consciousness" stretches as one grows from childhood to adulthood as the accumulation of experiences fill and shape it like being blown-up with air. We gain experiences, consciousness, as you say, "expands"; my consciousness becomes more experienced, not "more conscious".I'd counter that the universal experience of being a child versus being an adult is exemplary of a difference of degree of consciousness. Speaking from personal experience, the "horizon" of my awareness now extends much further. — Pantagruel
This confuses "consciousness" with experience or form with content; like an empty balloon, "consciousness" stretches as one grows from childhood to adulthood as the accumulation of experience fills and shapes it like being blowing up with air. We gain experiences, consciousness, as you say, expands; my consciousness becomes more experienced, not "more conscious". — 180 Proof
I remember when I was little, and still in elementary school and even into my teens, there were adults, including some teachers, who held that view -- that I am less conscious than they are. I still remember how one teacher said about me to someone else, in my presence, "It doesn't feel anything".I'd counter that the universal experience of being a child versus being an adult is exemplary of a difference of degree of consciousness. — Pantagruel
assuming different beings have different degrees of consciousness serves a particular ideology -- such as that it's okay to treat children like cattle, or that animals don't feel pain or much of anything — baker
As I pointed out alread, "awareness" (like "self-awareness") is not "consciousness"; so yeah, I agree, "awareness" is gained, but not "consciousness". — 180 Proof
Should. Doesn't mean that it does. Look at arguments for antisemitism, racism, meat-eating: many of them are based on the idea that some beings are lesser beings and that it is therefore okay to treat them in ways that would be unacceptable to our peers.If anything, partaking by degrees of the same consciousness as us should afford rights, not subject to ignomies. — Pantagruel
What do you think is the maxim behind that?Buddhists don't step on insects.
What do you think is the maxim behind that? — baker
So the 'shape' of the mind in the world is a product of its own mental operations (in a physical context) and not merely a physical product. — Pantagruel
Speaking from personal experience, the "horizon" of my awareness now extends much further, encompassing not only places I've been, different types of new things I have encountered, but, most importantly, awareness of ongoing patterns of things about which I have gained knowledge. — Pantagruel
So we are the origin point formed by having so many "shapes" of action or states of intent available to one coherently integrated neural system. Or as humans, the origin point for the space of actions available to a suitably encultured and economically enabled creature. — apokrisis
:up: Yep. So, we create our own reality? We create ourselves? - within physical constraints, including the constraint of being a node in a lineage of life. — Pop
If consciousness is understood as a pragmatic modelling relation "we" have with "the world", then this ever-larger ability to anticipate the actions and reactions of our environment are what we would mean by a "deepening" consciousness. — apokrisis
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