We use consciousness... — Manuel

Oooo I have a problem with that.

Perhaps we are conscious before saying anything...

Consciousness isn't used; it is what uses...


Edit: Or "We use 'consciousness'..." Quotative, so as to indicate that what we use is the word...

There has been a fair amount of work in recent years on what has been called a pre-reflective form of minimal self-awareness. Dan Zahavi has made this his central focus, but there is growing concensus that all experience presupposes some primitive sense of self. Infants have been shown to differentiate self from others. — Joshs

Do you have a source for this? A link?

The following are all available free here:

https://ku-dk.academia.edu/DanZahavi

Zhavi: We in Me or Me in We? Collective Intentionality and Selfhood. March 2021 Journal of
Social Ontology

Zahavi: Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective.2005

Zahavi: ‘Is the Self a Social Construct’, Inquiry, Vol. 52, No. 6, 551–573,

Zahavi Consciousness and (minimal) selfhood: Getting clearer on for-me-ness and mineness
U. Kriegel (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness.
Oxford University Press, 2019

The following are all available free here: — Joshs

Thanks. I'll take a look.

We use consciousness...
— Manuel

Oooo I have a problem with that.

Perhaps we are conscious before saying anything...

Consciousness isn't used; it is what uses... — Banno

I think perhaps the notion of knowing or being aware with rather than of is being overlooked here. Being aware of refers to using consciousness, but being aware with refers to what uses.

It seems to me that the meaning of ‘conscious’ or ‘consciousness’ originally referred to the qualitative idea or faculty of awareness.

But consciousness is recognised by empirical evidence or observations, and more recently defined as a perceived/known capacity or potential - in self and in others. We commonly refer in these instances to an awareness of certain aspects in experience or what is evident, rather than to the faculty itself.

We use the terms ‘conscious’ and ‘consciousness’ in reference to all three levels, and we struggle in our discussions because our prediction of consciousness based on observations doesn’t always align with reality. A human being is ‘conscious’ in the sense that we recognise the faculty, but we each have a limited ‘consciousness’ in that our capacity for awareness is developed (or limited) by the complexity of our experience. Plus, we are not always recognisably ‘conscious’ in the sense that we can be observed as evidently aware from moment to moment, which takes nothing away from either our current capacity or overall faculty of awareness.

We know that organisms are further limited in their capacity for awareness by their physical and cognitive evolutionary development, and we have recognised this through empirical evidence or observations. And although a rock clearly has no capacity for awareness, there is nevertheless some empirical evidence of awareness occurring at a molecular level. All of this relates to the unconsolidated idea or faculty of being aware meant by ‘consciousness’, but is limited by any definition of ‘conscious’ as an arbitrarily consolidated minimum value in one’s perceived capacity for awareness.

I’m just thinking out loud here, and it may not make a lot of sense - but if we try to bring this back to @T Clark’s discussion of the ‘experience’ aspect of consciousness, then perhaps the important point becomes how we understand this shift from awareness with to awareness of.

Well, it appears to me that we are very different kind of machines then, so as to make the analogy rather tenuous. But some materialists seem to argue that because our minds - or the illusion of our minds - rise from solely from matter and are pre-determined by it, there really is no "question or mystery of consciouness" or, even, "real" consciousness or mind at all. How this follows, I don't exactly understand.

Btw, I kind of doubt we would have "a true goal" here, surely there are biological and evolutionary impulses, but why would they constitute "a true goal"?

Trees and rocks have consciousness - but it's the consciousness of the dead.

Don't point at an interesting looking tree because the spirit within might follow you home...

It seems to me that the meaning of ‘conscious’ or ‘consciousness’ originally referred to the qualitative idea or faculty of awareness. — Possibility

Perhaps so.

The Contents of the SEP article on 'Consciousness' starts with 1. History of the issue.
This links back to what @Banno discussed re the etymology of 'conscious' and 'conscience'.
Here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/532902

Although the words “conscious” and “conscience” are used quite differently today, it is likely that the Reformation emphasis on the latter as an inner source of truth played some role in the inward turn so characteristic of the modern reflective view of self. The Hamlet who walked the stage in 1600 already saw his world and self with profoundly modern eyes. — SEP article by Robert Van Gulick

It continues with, and expands on types, here:

2. Concepts of Consciousness
2.1 Creature Consciousness
2.2 State consciousness
2.3 Consciousness as an entity

3. Problems of Consciousness
The Questions of Consciousness are explained individually but are inter-related.
The What, How and Why.
The Descriptive, the Explanatory, the Functional.

The Descriptive Question: What is consciousness? What are its principal features? And by what means can they be best discovered, described and modeled?

The Explanatory Question: How does consciousness of the relevant sort come to exist? Is it a primitive aspect of reality, and if not how does (or could) consciousness in the relevant respect arise from or be caused by nonconscious entities or processes?

The Functional Question: Why does consciousness of the relevant sort exist? Does it have a function, and if so what is it? Does it act causally and if so with what sorts of effects? Does it make a difference to the operation of systems in which it is present, and if so why and how?

The three questions focus respectively on describing the features of consciousness, explaining its underlying basis or cause, and explicating its role or value. The divisions among the three are of course somewhat artificial, and in practice the answers one gives to each will depend in part on what one says about the others. — As above

Sections 4,5 and 6 expand on the 3 Questions.
From 4:

A comprehensive descriptive account of consciousness would need to deal with more than just these seven features, but having a clear account of each of them would take us a long way toward answering the “What is consciousness?” question. — As above

I don't follow. Can you explain a bit?

My own thought is that one’s own consciousness is perhaps defined by being that which includes everything else explicitly or directly implicitly (e.g. that which is not immediately mentally present). This includes objective reality. Objective reality then indirectly implicitly contains consciousness itself (through a mental representation of itself), and the ‘system’ therefore tessellates. The consciousness of other people is also indirectly implied through mental representations.

bothers me when people who start discussions don’t define their terms at the beginning of the thread — T Clark

T Clark!

Happy Saturday!

Is consciousness logical?

Are you familiar with the original paper, which is here http://consc.net/papers/facing.html — Wayfarer

I read the paper. I'm not sure if I would change anything I've said based on what I read, but I do have some thoughts. First - Chalmers is talking about consciousness as an experience, which I did not emphasize in my OP or subsequent posts. @Manuel and @hwyl called me out on that. For Chalmers, the hard problem is experience - what it feels like.

Chalmers also listed what he called the easy problems of consciousness, generally those which can be solved even if they haven't been so far. I thought they were interesting and possibly helpful in our discussion. Here they are:

• the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;
• the integration of information by a cognitive system;
• the reportability of mental states;
• the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
• the focus of attention;
• the deliberate control of behavior;
• the difference between wakefulness and sleep.

This is worth some thought. I must admit I'm not much interested in the experience of consciousness from a scientific or philosophical perspective. It doesn't seem that important to me. For me, consciousness is a behavior. We know it the way we know other human and animal behaviors - by observing it, including what the person says about it when that is available. There really is only one experience of consciousness in my universe - mine. Yes, yes. of course I believe other people experience it too, but that's because I've observed their behavior. This list from Chalmers identifies at least some of the behaviors related to consciousness that we can observe. He acknowledges that.

Thanks for pushing me to read the paper.

Take an animal, maybe a bat, maybe a lizard. They likely have experience, they are aware of things in the world: prey, food, shelter and the like. I am skeptical that such creatures would have "self awareness" as opposed to awareness.

What is added by self-awareness that is absent in experience? The apparent fact that one is aware that it is oneself that is having the experience, not another person nor another creature. — Manuel

Yes, this is at the heart of things for me, although I don't think that's true for some other people. If, as you noted before, experience is the important factor, how far down the ladder of neurological complexity does it go? If we go down far enough, it just becomes sentience. I think dogs probably experience things. Have you ever seen a dog dream? Do all mammals? Fish? I don't know. Ants? I guess not but I'm not sure.

Well, yes, an infant would not hold abstracted ideas regarding their innate awareness of self via which other is discerned. And if that is how one chooses to understand what "consciousness" refers to then infants hold no consciousness. — javra

Joshs has pointed out that my view of infant awareness may be a bit naive:

There has been a fair amount of work in recent years on what has been called a pre-reflective form of minimal self-awareness. Dan Zahavi has made this his central focus, but there is growing concensus that all experience presupposes some primitive sense of self. Infants have been shown to differentiate self from others. — Joshs

ns of "mine", as in what we linguistically address as my thirst, my pleasure or pain, my affinity to familiar voices, and so forth--this even if its associating these personal states of self to stimuli takes time. And, in so doing, I offer that an infant holds an ingrained awareness of self, hence a degree of self-awareness without which it (the infant) would literally perish. — javra

Joshs provided a link to Zahavi's papers. Here it is again

The following are all available free here:

https://ku-dk.academia.edu/DanZahavi

Zhavi: We in Me or Me in We? Collective Intentionality and Selfhood. March 2021 Journal of
Social Ontology

Zahavi: Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective.2005

Zahavi: ‘Is the Self a Social Construct’, Inquiry, Vol. 52, No. 6, 551–573,

Zahavi Consciousness and (minimal) selfhood: Getting clearer on for-me-ness and mineness
U. Kriegel (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness.
Oxford University Press, 2019 — Joshs

I'm going to take a look and see how it changes my thinking.

Well, I think they actually are; but given that it is your thread and you are so adamant, i'll let it go for now. — Banno

I was mostly just trying to stop the bicker-battle.

I've considerable sympathy for the method you wish to use, it being not dissimilar to that of J. L. Austin. — Banno

So the term carried with it a mutuality.

Consciousness is not private. — Banno

I think you're the first one in this thread to bring up the fact that consciousness is social. In a recent response I noted that the only way we know that other people have the experience of consciousness is by observing their behavior. That's not the same thing though.

It sometimes seem to me that trying to parse the idea of consciousness is like trying to understand what Spinoza meant by God. — Tom Storm

All I know is that things are getting more complicated as this thread goes on. Which I guess isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm really enjoying this.

But consciousness is recognised by empirical evidence or observations, and more recently defined as a perceived/known capacity or potential - in self and in others. We commonly refer in these instances to an awareness of certain aspects in experience or what is evident, rather than to the faculty itself. — Possibility

I’m just thinking out loud here, and it may not make a lot of sense - but if we try to bring this back to T Clark’s discussion of the ‘experience’ aspect of consciousness, then perhaps the important point becomes how we understand this shift from awareness with to awareness of. — Possibility

I agree with the first statement. I'm trying to work out how to handle the subject of the second. I want to say that the experience is not central, since we mostly know consciousness or awareness by observing behavior. As I noted in an earlier post, there really is only one experience in my universe - mine. Anything else is inference. Maybe even anthropomorphism. Or maybe T Clarkpomorphism.

You're right, we can't know. We can only work with our intuitions. I assume our intuitions about dogs and monkeys are more or less correct. It may even be richer than what we may think. "Below" that, as it were, I don't trust my intuitions anymore. It looks unlikely that animals have an issue with experience, but they may.

In this instance I think we just have to approach the subject as we do in real life, the way we treat cats or dogs as opposed to butterflies or lizards. I don't see any alternative for the time being. Maybe sometime in the future we may learn something more than changes this.

But some materialists seem to argue that because our minds - or the illusion of our minds - rise from solely from matter and are pre-determined by it, there really is no "question or mystery of consciouness" or, even, "real" consciousness or mind at all. How this follows, I don't exactly understand. — hwyl

I believe part of this - I don't think there is any mystery of consciousness. Consciousness is a behavior. I don't think that means that consciousness and mind don't exist. The experience is interesting and important, but I think it's more philosophy than science. Do I really believe that? ..... Yes, I think I do.

Way back at the beginning I told @Jack Cummins I wanted to talk about the subconscious and unconscious. I am very aware that there are parts of my mind which are not normally connected to my experience of myself. Some of that is not really relevant to this discussion, e.g. the part of my mind that keeps me breathing without me paying attention. Other aspects are directly related to my behavior and experience. I'll start out, as is my wont, with some definitions:

Subconsciousness:

• Of or concerning the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one's actions and feelings
• The totality of mental processes of which the individual is not aware; unreportable mental activities
• In psychology, the subconscious is the part of the mind that is not currently in focal awareness.

Unconsciousness:

• The part of the mind which is inaccessible to the conscious mind but which affects behavior and emotions
• The part of mental life that does not ordinarily enter the individual's awareness yet may influence behavior and perception or be revealed (as in slips of the tongue or in dreams)
• The unconscious mind (or the unconscious) consists of the processes in the mind which occur automatically and are not available to introspection and include thought processes, memories, interests and motivations. Even though these processes exist well under the surface of conscious awareness, they are theorized to exert an effect on behavior.

They seem pretty similar, although the subconscious appears, in general, to be closer to the surface.

The subconscious or unconscious, whichever term we want to use, is important to my understanding of mind and human action. For me, much of human motivation and action comes from a place which is not available to my normal experience of myself. It comes into my awareness from somewhere else. I have described it as a spring where feelings and actions bubble to the surface from below, inside.

I don't want to sidetrack things with this, but I wanted to at least get it down on paper so to speak. No need for this to go any further unless people want to. If there is any further discussion, I'd like to keep it to the main thrust of this thread.

I don't think there is any mystery of consciousness. Consciousness is a behavior. — T Clark

How does one define behavior, as change in space-time of an observed object? Is there a notion of behavior joe that cannot be defined in terms of movement of an object in space? Is change of the sense of a meaning a behavior?

The only difficulty which I have with your definitions are that they are a bit too precise and rigid. I understand that consciousness is a understood in different ways, ranging from the medical to far reaching ones, like Bucke's 'Cosmic Consciousness'.Even though you are wishing to establish a way of seeing it more clearly as a concept, I think that you may have made it too neat and tidy, with no blurry or hazy borders at all. We probably would not be able to agree fully on a definition at all on the forum. This is because trying to do so cannot be separated entirely from the questions about the nature of consciousness, which is one of the most central recurrent problems, or themes, within philosophy.

How does one define behavior — Joshs

Good question. Maybe "behavior" is the wrong word. I guess I mean any observable or measurable act or response that can be used to infer an internal state. Speech, conscious action, reflexive action, autonomic response, PET scan observation, and lots more.

. I guess I mean any observable or measurable act or response that can be used to infer an internal state. — T Clark

Doesn’t this destroy the subjectivity of consciousness, the very essence of awareness? From cognitive science there are suggestions for a ‘mutual enlightenment’, between 1st person subjective , second person intersubjective and third person empirical methods.

http://www.neurohumanitiestudies.eu/archivio/gallagher97.pdf

Evan Thompson wants to go back and forth between phenomenology , mindfulness practices and cognitive
neuroscience, believing that none of these by themselves will fully explain consciousness.

The only difficulty which I have with your definitions are that they are a bit too precise and rigid. — Jack Cummins

When I start out with a definition, I try to use the common, everyday way a word is used perhaps adding scientific or philosophical shading. In order to do that, I usually take two definitions from on-line dictionaries and one from Wikipedia. You're right, that process tends to leave out some of the nuance. That's what the follow up discussion is for.

I think that you may have made it too neat and tidy, with no blurry or hazy borders at all. We probably would not be able to agree fully on a definition at all on the forum. This is because trying to do so cannot be separated entirely from the questions about the nature of consciousness, which is one of the most central recurrent problems, or themes, within philosophy. — Jack Cummins

I agree completely. I never expected that we would really resolve a definition or even definitions. I just wanted to get the choices out on the table. At least, next time I get involved in a discussion, I'll have an idea of what I'm trying to say. I'll also know some questions to ask about what others are trying to say.

This has been a very satisfying discussion for me and I hope for others.

Doesn’t this destroy the subjectivity of consciousness, the very essence of awareness? — Joshs

I think that subjectivity is the so-called hard problem. I don't see it as a problem. There is only one subjective experience in my universe - mine. Everyone else's is just an inference from observations and analogy. Looking at my own experience, I don't see it as particularly mysterious. It's just what happens when I talk about myself to myself and then talk about talking to myself to myself ....

There is only one subjective experience in my universe - mine. — T Clark

Yes, but is this subjective experience not at the same time an objective experience? What I mean is this: I can think of myself in relation or opposition to other people. That’s a developed notion of self.But Husserl says, what if we bracket off our knowledge of ourselves as a human among other humans. Instead, imagine that other people, ourselves included, are reduced to unidentified phenomena. In that situation, what is left of your subjectivity as ‘yours’? Husserl says that there is still an ‘I’ but as mere center of activity. But one can still speak of a ‘ mine ness’ to experience, because all of my intnetional experiences of objects are correlated and assimilated to my previous experience in terms of
dimensions of similarity and difference. I guess what I’m saying is that you can construct and explain the basis of a whole world of nature, science and culture on the basis of what appears to a unique subjectivity. But this subjectivity , by virtue of being exposed every minute to changes in the objects it intends , is born anew in every new experience. So your very own unique subjectivity is always a slightly different subjectivity over time, The subject is changed by its objects.

Once you realize that the ‘you’ who experiences is always a slightly different ‘you’ , you can recognize other persons as having their own constantly changing subjectivity. If your own subjectivity is not a pure in-itself because of
its constant contamination from its world , then the barrier between your own subjectivity and that of other people no longer seems so impermeable.

I think that it has been a very useful discussion because consciousness is used so frequently on the forum and we all come from our own understanding of the idea, pand such different angles. I have found it really useful to read in this way.Of course, I think it would be far too much for you to put this all together in one thread. It would probably end up at creating a volume like Hegel's
'Phenomenology of Mind'. Besides, if the nature of consciousness was summed up in one thread, it would perhaps mean that the scope for it to be explored in many more might be lost..

perhaps the important point becomes how we understand this shift from awareness with to awareness of.
— Possibility

I want to say that the experience is not central, since we mostly know consciousness or awareness by observing behavior. As I noted in an earlier post, there really is only one experience in my universe - mine. Anything else is inference. Maybe even anthropomorphism. Or maybe T Clarkpomorphism. — T Clark

The content of your own experience, too, is constructed from inference, as is the ‘you’ who experiences. What we can be certain of is the faculty of consciousness - awareness with. Anything else is inference.

Once you realize that the ‘you’ who experiences is always a slightly different ‘you’ , you can recognize other persons as having their own constantly changing subjectivity. If your own subjectivity is not a pure in-itself because of its constant contamination from its world , then the barrier between your own subjectivity and that of other people no longer seems so impermeable. — Joshs

:up:

I think one of the problems we tend to have we trying to understand experience, is that our intuition tells us that most things are non-experiential. We seem rocks, rivers, land, the sky, tables and so forth and even (some) planets to be solid objects.

It's a powerful intuition.

Then we have this thing, this simultaneously abstract and concrete aspect to us, experience, which appears to be completely different from "solid" rocks and rivers. But we now know, relatively recently actually, that deep down, these solid things we see are inherently much stranger than we could have ever guessed. We no longer think of particles even, but of waves and ultimately, fields.

Once we take this into account, this strange thing experience, is comparatively less strange to assimilate relative to everything else.

But it took thousands of years to discover these strange aspects of matter. So our intuitions lead us astray...