I am in no way suggesting that physical processes are an illusion. — Brock Harding
Yes. Even devout materialists use different words for Qualia (Mind, Consciousness, etc) and Quanta (Brain, Neural Nets). Their explanation for the implicit recognition of immaterial Qualia is that such ghostly invisible entities are merely epi-phenomena (functions) of underlying physical mechanisms. Hence, Qualia are caused by physical processes, but have no causal powers of their own. So, Matter is primary & fundamental, while Mind is secondary & useless (illusory).My citing of consciousness, mind etc is in the context of the dualistic view which I understand is why those terms were created. I guess the term consciousness etc is so ingrained into our modern vocabulary/concepts that it means different things to different people. — Brock Harding
Strawman. :roll:In short, all the problems of philosophy are dissolved by physicalist reductionism. — Wayfarer
I do not mean 'not real' by "illusion"; rather I mean something seeming to be something else. — 180 Proof
"Consciousness" (mind), IME, is simply [ ... ] — 180 Proof
• pre-awareness = attention (orientation)
• awareness = perception (experience)
• adaptivity = intelligence (optimizing heuristic error-correction)
• self-awareness = [re: phenomenal-self modeling ...]
• awareness of self-awareness = consciousness — 180 Proof
The explanatory gap is a scientific problem, not a philosophical aporia, because [ ... ] — 180 Proof
'Consciousness is secondary – much more veto than volo – and confabulatory', perhaps selected for as a beneficial social-coordination adaptation which functions as the 'phenomenal complement' to natural language usage. — 180 Proof
Perhaps you could explain to our new friend the significance of the term 'explanatory gap', he says he doesn't know of it.
I should have probably been clearer in my post, but I also introduced time-variant systems mechanics to the mix of things that our brain does which, in my opinion, fills the 'qualia' gap between the physical and non-physical subjective insubstantial-seeming mental world.
Your "paraphrase" itself is the strawman – caricature – of what Brock Harding wrote. — 180 Proof
I believe that nowadays, with the benefit of modern science and an understanding that the source ancient ‘thinking’ that led to dualism was relatively uninformed, we can dispense with the illusion of consciousness. — Brock Harding
Perhaps you could explain to our new friend the significance of the term 'explanatory gap', he says he doesn't know of it.
Thanks, I have looked into it and now understand the term. — Brock Harding
Could we reword the claim "consciousness is an illusion" as "consciousness is created by neural activity in the brain"? — pfirefry
Good! As you're claiming that science has now dispensed with the 'ancient thinking' that posits an 'uninformed dualism', then perhaps you might say how that same science tackles the explanatory gap or the 'hard problem of consciousness' that was the subject of David Chalmer's well-known paper.
Could we reword the claim "consciousness is an illusion" as "consciousness is created by neural activity in the brain"?
It is all about perspective. — Brock Harding
I think describing the brain as having a 'consciousness' is kind of like saying your car has 'driverness' — Brock Harding
Without a driver in it? Consciousness implies something like conscious. "Mindfulness": something like mindful. Or possession thereof. Greatness: being great. Consciousness: being conscious. Driverness: being driver?
Thinking is not an illusion, the concept that you need a non-physical entity to think is. — Brock Harding
Could we reword the claim "consciousness is an illusion" as "consciousness is created by neural activity in the brain"? — pfirefry
Sure we do. Our experiences are what it is like to feel light entering the eye and the chemical changes in the brain. An experience is not the thing experienced but is about the thing experienced. Every thing is a consequence of prior causes. Things are not their causes.We are not conscious of these dynamic, complex and layered processes. We are only aware of their consequence. For example, when we pat a dog, we may experience seeing the dogs tail wag and feeling the texture of its coat.
We do not experience the light meeting our retina, travelling to our optic nerve as an electrical signal and into the brain structure and IT cortex where 16 million neurons activate in different patterns and register seeing a dog.
Nor do we experience the simultaneous chemical changes in the brain that may alter our mood and the firing of neurons in the somatosensory cortex that create a response that registers as ‘feeling dog hair’.
When we think about the dog, we do not experience the electrical activity of neurons in the visual and auditory cortexes, the prefrontal cortex or the activation of the motor cortex in preparation for saying ‘good dog’. — Brock Harding
Where is the illusion? Is there not really a dog wagging its tail when i experience a dog wagging its tail? — Harry Hindu
Does a verb exist in the same sense as a noun? Can I say walking exists? If I can, does it exist in the same sense as legs do? To the extent nouns and verbs have been mixed up, consciousness is an illusion. — Agent Smith
I was not familiar with the term "phenomenal consciousness", so I Googled it. After a brief review, I can see that the theory is more complex & technical than a cursory overlook could suffice for understanding. But the key concept seems to be based on Holistic Emergence. So, on the face of it, their hypothesis sounds compatible with my own notion of Consciousness as an Emergent phenomenon of Information processing in the Brain."Consciousness" is phenomenal awareness of mind. Mind(ing) tracks and resolves 'discontinuities' between memories & expections or expections & predictions in order to adaptively coordinate behavior with(in) social / natural environment(s). — 180 Proof
I can agree with this assertion. But not necessarily with its implication that Consciousness is a second-class phenomenon in the material world. Astronomers are eagerly searching for signs of Life ex-terra, but ultimately what they seek is creatures like humans, that are aware of what's going on. To discover a Mindless world may be even more disappointing than a Lifeless planet.'Consciousness is secondary – much more veto than volo – and confabulatory', perhaps selected for as a beneficial social-coordination adaptation which functions as the 'phenomenal complement' to natural language usage. — 180 Proof
Right. So preliminary perceptions can lead to a misinterpretation of those perceptions. Only after you do a double-take and look more closely do you see that it's a shaking bush, and not a tail-wagging dog and the illusion is dispelled, yet you still experience something. So it seems to me that consciousness and its contents (qualia) are not illusions. As you said, the experience is real. It is the misinterpretation of the experience that is the illusion.Sometimes it's not really a dog, but a bush shaking in the wind that you momentarily mistaken for a dog. Your experience was real, and it matched the experience that you would have if there was a dog, but there wasn't a dog.
I think there is always an element of illusion in everything we perceive. E.g. does the dog have a color in your experience? We know that the color perception in humans is somewhat arbitrary. It only ties to a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The things in the universe are not inherently colorful, but it's the human brain that perceives them as such. Is it not reasonable to say that color is kind of an illusion? Would this necessarily undermine our experience and knowledge about colors? — pfirefry
That's if you are incorrectly projecting joy and fear onto the dog. In this case it would be an illusion if you interpreted your joy or fear as being part of the dog and not part of your self, just as we create an illusion by interpreting the bentness as part of the straw in the water and not to the light that reflects off it and into our eyes.Is your experience joyful when you're seeing a dog wagging its tail? Perhaps a person next to you experiences fear because they're afraid of dogs. Don't we call it an illusion when things appear differently in our experience from what they actually are? Do we ever perceive things exactly the way they are? Can an experience exist without containing at least some illusion in it? — pfirefry
Mind emerges not just from a Material Brain, but ultimately from the Immaterial Information that is knitted-together into novel patterns of inter-relationships, which humans interpret as Meaning. — Gnomon
I do not mean 'not real' by "illusion"; rather I mean something seeming to be something else. — 180 Proof
I have a feeling that we're confusing verbs with nouns here. The mind is, at the end of the day, a verb (thinking/thoughts), but we seem to mislabeling it as a noun (a mind which allegedly thinks). — Agent Smith
Yes, but Information is also an immaterial function. In my thesis, Information is the fundamental "substance" (Aristotle : essence) of the world. So, Matter, Energy, & Mind are various forms of shape-shifting Information. That's why I noted that "Mind emerges not just from a Material Brain, but ultimately from the Immaterial Information". :smile:Information is a material notion. It describes the spatial relationships between particles. — Raymond
This is literally an explicitly false statement. The word "mind" is a noun unless it is referring to caring (a shepherd minds their flock, or "I don't mind if you smoke"). "Think" is absolutely a verb (thought is also a noun). "Think" and "mind" are not synonyms.
If one's approach leads to a need to reinvent the English language in fundamental ways in order to make sense of one's conclusions, I'd suggest that approach is flawed. — Reformed Nihilist
There's nothing in walking that we could consider ontologically equivalent to kidney or a heart. A mind is not an 0bject like the brain, it's simply an activity that something (the brain?) conducts. — Agent Smith
A mind is not an object (sp) like the brain, it's simply an activity that something (the brain?) conducts. — Agent Smith
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