I also asked you for a relatively theory-free definition, but you ignored that question as well.

So, back on topic: — bert1

Look at you. Ducking and diving like mad.

C'mon. Where is the evidence or the logic that says that consciousness can exist in the absence of a content?

I also asked you for a relatively theory-free definition, but you ignored that question as well.

Why would I be in interested in aping your fact-free, theory-free, model-free, content-free, approach to an important question?

You still haven't said why modelling, selective attention, and all the other things you take as hallmarks of consciousness cannot also happen without consciousness. — bert1

:lol:

Are we incapable of having a conversation Apo?

Look at you. Ducking and diving like mad.

C'mon. Where is the evidence or the logic that says that consciousness can exist in the absence of a content? — apokrisis

I can't help butting in here. If I am interpreting him correctly, Bert is asking why the kinds of behavior you observe, and capacities you attribute, to the jumping spider, your example, could not exist, for example, in an unconscious robot.

Is there any need for the kind of defensiveness you are manifesting?

If that's the question you mean to ask me when you say 'the same question', I would say a couple of things. First, I don't think that the existence of life is something that can necessarily be explained. One of the other really useful essays on I read on biosemiosis What is Information?, refers to the work of Hubert Yockey who attempted to apply Claude Shannon's information theory to living organisms. — Wayfarer

Thanks that looks interesting. I was vaguely hoping you understood Apo's position so you could explain it to me, but It's a big ask.

it is your choice to assert but not support the position that consciousness is something that can exist without a content.

And if I have failed to provide the support you seek for that position, then so be it.

You won’t do it, and I can’t imagine how to do it. That just leaves us with my semiotic approach I guess.

Bert is asking why the kinds of behavior you observe, and capacities you attribute, to the jumping spider, your example, could not exist, for example, in an unconscious robot. — Janus

Why would an entity doing all the semiotic things an organism like a jumping spider does be unconscious. Or even a robot?

The shortcomings of computational analogies is in fact instructive here. Semiosis is something quite different.

See for instance: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2520546_Artificial_Life_Needs_a_Real_Epistemology

it is your choice to assert but not support the position that consciousness is something that can exist without a content. — apokrisis

It's off topic Apo. If you want, start another thread entitled 'Why bert1 is a cunt' and you can ask me all the questions you want and I'll try to answer them. But this thread is about neurology-based accounts of consciousness.

I didn't even say that it was possible for consciousness to exist without content. I'm not sure about the answer to that anyway. It's a difficult question. The distinction I was attempting to make, apparently without clarity, was between being conscious of something in particular (like the experience of being drunk) and the possibility of consciousness of anything at all. To have the experience of being drunk, you have to be capable of experience at all. And that latter is what I can't find an explanation for.

And if I have failed to provide the support you seek for that position, then so be it.

I'm not asking you to support my position! I just want to know why the functions you identify, and no others, necessitate/generate/instantiate/constitute/exemplify (pick you verb) consciousness. If you don't know, that's OK, there's no shame in that. If you can't be arsed to explain it, that's fine too. If you need more time to consider it, that's OK. If you don't understand the question, that's fine. Just let me know.

Why would an entity doing all the semiotic things an organism like a jumper spider does be unconscious. Or even a robot? — apokrisis

Because everything else in the universe is unconscious, according to the emergentist.

It's off topic Apo. — bert1

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Panpsychism isn't funny. Of COURSE electrons are self-aware. You just don't have the brain to figure how.

Semiosis doesn't seem like the sort of thing that could produce a mind. Semiosis seems like a product of the mind. — Daemon

Correct. To attribute semiosis to anything other than a mind is category error. So, terms like "biosemiosis" are misnomers.

And using the word "information" in a variety of descriptions at different levels of abstraction, without providing a unifying general definition, is equivocation.

Consciousness is a word with Cartesian dualism baked into it. And that is why those who bang on about "consciousness" find that its usage leads to a feeling there is some unbridged explanatory gap. — apokrisis

Only by rejecting Cartesian dualism does the explanatory gap even arise. I also reject the Cartesian Theater, I believe we as conscious beings are the "images", and that the images arise from the physical brain. There is a dualism, between conscious and unconscious processes in the brain. We are aware, by definition, only of the conscious parts, the parts which have representation as "images".

And yet, I cannot account for how these images arise from physical processes, despite knowing that they do. The explanatory gap results from the collapse of Cartesian dualism as a respectable philosophical position.. If Cartesian Dualism were allowed, there would be no gap, matter would be one kind of thing, mind another.

We can conclude very easily from the evidence that changes in brain function in humans alters the content of experience in humans. Of course it does. No one is denying that, not even the most extreme substance dualists. — bert1

I thought that is the very thing you are questioning Apo on - how a brain alters, influences or causes changes in experience - essentially why there is an experience to be had at all given the states of brains.

I've moved on from the part of the emergentist claiming that certain physical states begat experiencing states. Now I'm asking how exactly does a mass of neurons create an experience or model of the world that is not a mass of neurons? Neurons only appear in my experience when observing other people's experiences. That must mean there is a distinction between my view of my own mental processes vs. a view of other people's mental processes - of how my modeling models other people's experiences.

Do brains cause experiences - if so then you're left with the task if explaining how that happens. If it has nothing to do with causation but with views, then there is no need to explain how brains cause experiences. Brains and minds are just different views of the same thing - not much different than looking at a macro-scale object only with your eyes vs looking at it through a microscope - different views of the same thing makes it appear like we are talking about two different things.

The fact that consciousness arises from brain processes is utterly uncontroversial. The philosophically interesting question that remains is how can it be that such a thing can arise from brain processes... A question to which science remains largely silent. — hypericin

If it were uncontroversial then how is it you are questioning how it happens? I'm with you on the questioning it, just not with you in saying it's uncontroversial.

It is what people think they mean when they say "consciousness" that is the controversial bit. What they usually mean is that somehow the world is "represented" as an "image" in some kind of Cartesian theatre. — apokrisis

But a Cartesian theater is what you are implying in talking about models that are attended.

Can't we turn our attention back on itself in attending the attention? If not how is it that you can even talk about attention if that isn't what you are attending? It's why we can know that we know and think about thinking.

And using the word "information" in a variety of descriptions at different levels of abstraction, without providing a unifying general definition, is equivocation. — Galuchat

Information is the relationship between cause and effect. The mind is information in that it is the relationship between body and environment.

You're the fourth person I've asked in this discussion. The other three have simply ignored the question. I think that's because they don't have an answer. Can you do any better? — Daemon

I see you've been ignored again. When I read your post the first thing that popped into my mind was the word 'reductionism'. Correct me if I'm wrong, but basically what you're claiming is that the level of description that includes concepts like 'information' is superfluous. We don't need it in order to 'understand' anything. As such, we are not committed to the existence of the entities posited therein (e.g. 'information', 'encodings', 'symbols', etc.).

I guess my response to this would be that I don't agree that we can understand everything perfectly well without reference to 'information'. Theories of information, semiotics, etc. are useful heuristics. They appear to be indispensable within the fields of biology and cognitive science (and probably other sciences too). By 'indispensable' I mean that much of the research being done in those fields simply could not be done without them. In other words, I think it is reasonable to say that these theories are 'real patterns'. They are useful 'algorithmic compressions' of the information contained within the more granular theories (e.g. biochemistry, biophysics, etc.). They may be 'lossy' compressions, but that's ok. It doesn't imply that the abstractions invoked at this level of description are simply fictions.

Thoughts?

I think that the:
1) Process of informing, is becoming (particular definition acquisition).
2) Product of informing, is information (particular definition).

And that in both cases it is the effect of Aristotle's Four Causes (material, formal, efficient, and final).

If it were uncontroversial then how us it you are questioning how it happens? I'm with you on the questioning it, just not with you in saying it's uncontroversial. — Harry Hindu

It is uncontroversial that it happens from physical processes. Those who dispute that are properly marginalized.

The controversial part is how.

It is uncontroversial that it happens from physical processes. Those who dispute that are properly marginalized.

The controversial part is how. — hypericin

If you can't explain how it happens then there is a problem with the theory that says that it does happen. Until you've explained how it does happen then it's still quite possible that you have a problem of correlation and not causation.

And yet, I cannot account for how these images arise from physical processes, despite knowing that they do. It is uncontroversial that it happens from physical processes. Those who dispute that are properly marginalized. The explanatory gap results from the collapse of Cartesian dualism as a respectable philosophical position.. If Cartesian Dualism were allowed, there would be no gap, matter would be one kind of thing, mind another. — hypericin

“One way of formulating the hard problem is to ask: if we had a complete, canonical, objective, physicalist account of the natural world, including all the physical facts of the brain and the organism, would it conceptually or logically entail the subjective facts of consciousness? If this account would not entail these facts, then consciousness must be an additional, non-natural property of the world.

One problem with this whole way of setting up the issue, however, is that it presupposes we can make sense of the very notion of a single, canonical, physicalist description of the world, which is highly doubtful, and that in arriving (or at any rate approaching) such a description, we are attaining a viewpoint that does not in any way presuppose our own cognition and lived experience. In other words, the hard problem seems to depend for its very formulation on the philosophical position known as transcendental or metaphysical realism. From the phenomenological perspective explored here, however — but also from the perspective of pragmatism à la Charles Saunders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, as well as its contemporary inheritors such as Hilary Putnam (1999) — this transcendental or metaphysical realist position is the paradigm of a nonsensical or incoherent metaphysical viewpoint, for (among other problems) it fails to acknowledge its own reflexive dependence on the intersubjectivity and reciprocal empathy of the human life-world.

Another way to make this point, one which is phenomenological, but also resonates with William James's thought (see Taylor, 1996), is to assert the primacy of the personalistic perspective over the naturalistic perspective. What the naturalistic perspective fails to take into account is that the mind as a scientific object has to be constituted as such from the personalistic perspective in the empathic co-determination of self and other. The upshot of this line of thought with respect to the hard problem is that this problem should not be made the foundational problem for consciousness studies. The problem cannot be ‘How do we go from mind-independent nature to subjectivity and consciousness?' because, to use the language of yet another philosophical tradition, that of Madhyamika Buddhism (Wallace, this volume), natural objects and properties are not intrinsically identifiable (svalaksana); they are identifiable only in relation to the ‘conceptual imputations' of intersubjective experience.” (Evan Thompson, Empathy and Consciousness)

“Knowledge is taken to consist in a faithful mirroring of a mind-independent reality. It is taken to be of a reality which exists independently of that knowledge, and indeed independently of any thought and experience (Williams 2005, 48). If we want to know true reality, we should aim at describing the way the world is, not just independently of its being believed to be that way, but independently of all the ways in which it happens to present itself to us human beings. An absolute conception would be a dehumanized conception, a conception from which all traces of ourselves had been removed. Nothing would remain that would indicate whose conception it is, how those who form or possess that conception experience the world, and when or where they find themselves in it.

It would be as impersonal, impartial, and objective a picture of the world as we could possibly achieve (Stroud 2000, 30). How are we supposed to reach this conception? Metaphysical realism assumes that everyday experience combines subjective and objective features and that we can reach an objective picture of what the world is really like by stripping away the subjective. It consequently argues that there is a clear distinction to be drawn between the properties things have “in themselves” and the properties which are “projected by us”. Whereas the world of appearance, the world as it is for us in daily life, combines subjective and objective features, science captures the objective world, the world as it is in itself.

But to think that science can provide us with an absolute description of reality, that is, a description from a view from nowhere; to think that science is the only road to metaphysical truth, and that science simply mirrors the way in which Nature classifies itself, is – according to Putnam – illusory. It is an illusion to think that the notions of “object” or “reality” or “world” have any sense outside of and independently of our conceptual schemes.”( Dan Zahavi)

It is uncontroversial that it happens from physical processes. Those who dispute that are properly marginalized. — hypercin

Inductive evidence in terms of physiological correlates, and criterial evidence in terms of observed behaviour, establish that mind exists, and the relations which obtain between body, mind, and behaviour.

Corporeal and mental events are mutually dependent, but incommensurable because:
1) Corporeal and mental data are accessed at different levels of abstraction.
2) While neuroscience provides evidence of correlation between mental activity and neurophysiology, it does not provide evidence of causation.

For example, neural activation patterns can be predicted given thought, but thought cannot be predicted from neural activation patterns.
cf. Jing Wang, Vladimir L. Cherkassky, and Marcel Adam Just. 2017. Predicting the Brain Activation Pattern Associated With the Propositional Content of a Sentence: Modeling Neural Representations of Events and States. Human Brain Mapping 38:4865-4881 (2017).

So, does neurophysiology cause mental activity, or does mental activity cause neurophysiology? Properly marginalise me if you like.

I think that information, as the:
1) process of informing, is becoming (being acquisition).
2) product of informing, is being (actuality and/or potentiality).

And that in both cases it is the effect of Aristotle's Four Causes (material, formal, efficient, and final). — Galuchat

I consider Aristotle's Four Causes different facets of the same thing - information. Information is the relationship between cause and effect. Effects are also causes and causes effects of prior causes, therefore any example of Aristotle's four causes are really effects of prior causes themselves, all of which is information. Information, or relationships, or process is fundamental - not physical particles, like atoms, neurons and brains.

If you can't explain how it happens then there is a problem with the theory that says that it does happen. Until you've explained how it does happen then it's still quite possible that you have a problem of correlation and not causation. — Harry Hindu

Incorrect. Do you know how your car works? And yet, you know the car works because of the things in the car, not because of an intangible non-physical process. If we studied the brain and found things that were non-physical, then we could state, "maybe its this non-physical stuff that causes consciousness."

There is none. There is nothing non-physical interacting with the brain. If you say, "Well the physical can't detect the non-physical," then you're making up a magical fantasy unicorn, and can be dismissed.

There is no detection of anything non-physical in the brain, or dealing with consciousness. Period. Unarguable. Uncontroversial.

Then you're a naive realist?

What does it mean to be physical?

How are brains perceived if not via consciousness? How is it that when I observe your mental processes I experience a brain but when I observe my own I experience a mind? When I look at you walking I see legs moving, and when I look at me walking I see legs moving. Why is it so different when looking at other's mental processes vs our own as opposed to looking at our running process? How does a "physical" brain create the feeling of empty space and visual depth?

In saying that brain processes correlate with, instead of cause, consciousness, I am saying that brain processes are conscious processes, just from different views.

When looking at a drop of blood in a microscope, it isn't the cells that cause the drop of blood to exist. They are the drop of blood just from a different view.

Correct. To attribute semiosis to anything other than a mind is category error. So, terms like "biosemiosis" are misnomers. — Galuchat

Or biological scientists showing that they see life and mind as the same essential kind of mechanism.

And Peirce saw semiosis as the logic organising the Cosmos.

But a Cartesian theater is what you are implying in talking about models that are attended. — Harry Hindu

Base level consciousness is the neurosemiosis. The modelling is the attending. Then humans structure their own relationship with themselves with language. We can attend to the fact of our attending as a socially constructed habit. We can learn to adopt a third person point of view on the first person experiential facts. We learn to give a phenomenological account of our selves as selves with perceptions, intentions, feelings, memories, images, etc.

Through the socially externalised means of linguistic semiosis we can model ourselves as modellers. We can take an objective view of the fact we are subjective beings.