Cheers. I don't see specific reference to it in the links from .

There's the odd phrasing that there is "a direct isomorphism between certain physically embodied information spaces and certain phenomenal (or experiential) information spaces... we can find the same abstract information space embedded in physical processing and in conscious experience." (in the article in 7.3)

What ever is going on here is more than 's difference between first and third person.

We are aware of an imaginary yellow and blue disks — hypericin

Then it's unclear what 'aware of' could possibly mean here. We know nothing of their properties, but are 'aware of' them?

We can measure neural activity that correlates with reported states of awareness, and which are absent when the subject is not aware. — hypericin

Can we?

We don't definitely know that the camera is not aware, just as we don't know the camera is not inhabited by a malignant spirit. We just have no evidence pointing to either case. — hypericin

Then why did you say that the camera wasn't aware. We're trying to pin down the meaning of 'aware' here. So if a camera might be aware, is there anything which definitely isn't? Or is 'awareness' a property literally anything might have, or might not have?

This is not just "some theory" this is central to human experience and self-understanding — Janus

So? Again, I'm not seeing how that prevents us from being mistaken about it. Deities (of various sorts) were equally central at one point, we're clearly wrong about (at least some of) them.

Humans generally experience themselves as being aware — Janus

I don't even know what that means. What kind of experience is 'experiencing myself as being aware'. What would experiencing myself as being unaware consist of?

If you are not able to be conscious of your own awareness, then that says something about you, not about others or humans in general. — Janus

Ah. Back to the "If you disagree with Chalmers you must have a brain defect" argument. I appreciate your concern, rest assured I will get the possibility checked out forthwith.

What is generally disagreeable hereabouts is the thinking that begins with subject or introspection or private sensations. — Banno

Yes. The same people who consider their qualia to be private and ineffable seem to be no less adamant that neuroscience's failure to 'eff' them in a public unitary theory is a mortal blow to the field.

All discourse is just stories; so what? — Janus

It's not about discourse. The 'story-telling' is a mental event prior to rendering it into any discourse. The point I'm making is that your own understanding of what's happening in your mental world is...

a) constructed after the event and so no less prone to error than any other third party trying to reconstruct it.

b) constructed from socially mediated concepts, a joint effort between you and the rest of your language community, not private, not fixed.

c) therefore not something which one would ever expect any physical science to show a one-to-one causal correspondence with the objects of that field. Neuronal activity and 'objects of conversation' are in two different worlds. The latter is constrained by the former, but not dictated by it.

Although I'm a bit more modest than Descartes; I would say we know that thinking (and feeling and awareness) are going on; the self is a more problematic proposition. — Janus

"We" means a collection of "I"... It's telling that you couldn't express your idea here without using a personnal pronoun.

If one doubts that there is a self, who is doing the doubting? A doubt implies a person having it, a "mind" rejecting a belief. It can't be an independent doubt, free-floating in the universe.

And again I would pick you up on assuming that everyone is the same. What you find yourself able to do is not necessarily representative of human capacities in general. — Janus

Thanks for bringing us back to the original point.

We could both be right, because in life, great diversity can emerge from a very severe economy of means.

There is amazing diversity in life. Millions of species and plenty of genetic variability within species. However when biologists study the anatomy and biochemistry of different species, they find astonishing sameness: the same DNA code, the same fundamental proteins and processes eg respiration and the cycle of Kreps, etc.

All the bright and shinny feathers of all the birds in the world are composed of the same material as your hair and your nails: keratin.

So life produces an explosion of diversity out of a very severe economy of means. Life recycles constantly. This is one of its fundamental characteristics.

It's probably similar in the biological process of thinking: we all use the same basic elements of thoughts. My "I" and your "I" cannot be very different. What you do with it, where you invest your neuronal power, is up to you though.

"We" means a collection of "I"... It's telling that you couldn't express your idea here without using a personnal pronoun.

If one doubts that there is a self, who is doing the doubting? A doubt implies a person having it, a "mind" rejecting a belief. It can't be an independent doubt, free-floating in the universe. — Olivier5

Just because our language is a certain way, doesn't provide cause to believe the world must conform to it. The fact that we use words like "I" and "we" means that we have these concepts as foundational parts of our communication. It doesn't tell us anything about the way things 'must be', only how things are.

You've no grounds to say "It can't be an independent doubt, free-floating in the universe", just because we don't use words that way. We could. We just don't.

It doesn't tell us anything about the way things 'must be', only how things are. — Isaac

I don't mind how things must be, I care for how they are.

There's no view from no where. No seeming without a seer. No knowledge without a knower. No doubt free floating in the universe, without a doubter.

That's the essence of the cogito as I understand it.

Husserl's version goes a bit like this:

There's no view without a viewer and something being viewed. No knowledge without a knower and something being known. No doubt free floating in the universe, without a doubter and something being doubted.

We are persons, selves, agencies and we are at the world. In the world, busy working on it. That's the given, the fundamental intuition defining our being, our existence, and the point of departure of any philosophy of life. Anything else is escapism.

Then it's unclear what 'aware of' could possibly mean here. We know nothing of their properties, but are 'aware of' them? — Isaac

Who said we know nothing of their properties? Their properties just do not match their physical counterparts. In fact, we know everything of their properties, since unlike physical objects their properties exactly match what is subjectively disclosed. They are yellow and blue, they are round, their shape and size do not hold steady in my case. That is all. You cannot peer behind an imaginary object to examine additional properties you were not aware of initially; this is confabulation, not examination.

Can we? — Isaac

Can't we?

Then why did you say that the camera wasn't aware. We're trying to pin down the meaning of 'aware' here. So if a camera might be aware, is there anything which definitely isn't? Or is 'awareness' a property literally anything might have, or might not have? — Isaac

Not according to the theory that awareness is a property of brains, a consequence of a certain kind of information processing that is definitely absent in a camera. Of course that is just a theory, panpsychism in principle might be true. Awareness is only "observed" directly by an aware subject of itself, all other observations of it are inferred. Since there is no observation that can conclusively disprove awareness, anything in principle might be aware. But, lacking any compelling evidence that they are aware, these claims can be discarded, just like I can discard the claim that there is a bearded giant living on a planet orbiting alpha centauri.

Qualia are fine, until folk say absurd things about them. Red and smooth and sour and so on - all good. But then folk will claim that they are private, ineffable, and it all loses coherence. — Banno

If you don't understand that qualia are private and ineffable, then you don't understand qualia.

Is this the concept you say I don't have? — Banno

Yes

Are we doing qualia?

If you don't understand that qualia are private and ineffable, then you don't understand qualia. — hypericin

I quite agree. I don't understand qualia.

Here's my question for those who would have us talk of qualia: what is added to the conversation by their introduction? If a qual is the taste of milk here, now, why not just talk of the taste of milk here, now? — Banno

If qualia are private and ineffable, then how can they have a place in the discussion?

So what exactly am I missing?

So what exactly am I missing? — Banno

I'm not sure. I don't really know why some people have the concept and some don't.

Soo... this "..phenomenal consciousness..." - what is it?

phenomenal consciousness — Banno

Awareness

phenomenal consciousness..." - what is it? — Banno

Equivalently:

- sentience
- the capacity to feel
- the capacity to know
- that in X whereby there is 'something it is like' to be X

These are all abiguous though, they can be construed in a way that avoids the concept. And sure enough, that's what you have done many times. I don't think that's you being deliberately obtuse, I think you genuinely don't get it.

The issue is that consciousness can only be defined by appeal to someone's consciousness of their own consciousness.

But I am aware of your post; so that's not right.

What is it that you think I am missing?

Even people like 180 Proof and Banno, who are well educated and sophistacated thinkers in many ways, genuinely don't seem to have the concept. — bert1

Are you saying @180 proof and I lack awareness, or lack the concept of awareness, or what? And how do you know this? What basis do you have for your claim?

Because it doesn't seem right.

Equivalently:

- sentience
- the capacity to feel
- the capacity to know
- that in X whereby there is 'something it is like' to be X — bert1

Well, knowing and feeling and sentience are not each equivalent to the others.

That last one... what is it?

Are you saying 180 proof and I lack awareness, or lack the concept of awareness, or what? And how do you know this? What basis do you have for your claim? — Banno

I'm saying, reluctantly, that you lack the concept of awareness. But I don't know this for sure. I think you are aware. You both seem to avoid the concept. One explanation for this is that you don't have it. You don't avoid the word, but you seem to construe it in its non-phenomenal senses, at least when going into detail.

My old tutor at university, Stephen Priest, once said to me "Some of my colleagues haven't noticed they are conscious." I didn't take him seriously at the time. I thought it was absurd, these guys were smart guys. But I'm reluctantly coming to the view that he was right. It seems like the only realistic explanation for what is happening. There has been some papers on this. Off the top of my head, I think it's Max Velmans who wrote "How not to define consciousness", if I remember correctly. It might be interesting to do a thread on one of these papers about definition.

That last one... what is it? — Banno

Probably an unhelpful addition, it causes a lot of confusion

Well, knowing and feeling and sentience are not each equivalent to the others. — Banno

They can be equivalent, in this sense I'm trying to talk about.

I don't mind how things must be, I care for how they are. — Olivier5

You said...

A doubt implies a person having it, a "mind" rejecting a belief. It can't be an independent doubt, free-floating in the universe. — Olivier5

That's a claim about how things must be (or this this case, must not be). It uses the term 'can't'.

If all you're interested in is how things are then the the claim is "A doubt implies a person having it, a "mind" rejecting a belief. It isn't an independent doubt, free-floating in the universe.

we know everything of their properties, since unlike physical objects their properties exactly match what is subjectively disclosed. — hypericin

Disclosed to whom, from where? This terminology is obtuse. If we are making up the properties, then in what way can they possibly be 'disclosed'. They were never 'closed' in the first place.

They are yellow and blue — hypericin

They aren't. If they were yellow and blue they would make either green or black when passed over one another (depending on additive or subtractive mixing). Since they don't, they aren't blue and yellow.

Can we? — Isaac


Can't we? — hypericin

The article is about neural correlates of consciousness. You were referring to awareness.

Awareness is only "observed" directly by an aware subject of itself, all other observations of it are inferred. — hypericin

What? So we're aware of being aware? Are we aware of being aware of being aware?

If there are, as you say, neural correlates of awareness, then what system is involved in being aware of our being aware?

there is no observation that can conclusively disprove awareness, anything in principle might be aware. But, lacking any compelling evidence that they are aware — hypericin

But the compelling evidence that you're aware is only that you think you are. So if I think the camera is aware, that's exactly the same quality of evidence.

If all you're interested in is how things are then the the claim is "A doubt implies a person having it, a "mind" rejecting a belief. It isn't an independent doubt, free-floating in the universe. — Isaac

Fair enough.

I'm saying, reluctantly, that you lack the concept of awareness. I think you are aware. But I don't know this for sure. You both seem to avoid the concept. — bert1

You're misrtaken, bert. I don't avoid the concept when it's relevant to clarifying or examining another concept. Unlike you, bert, folk psychological terms like "awareness" or "consciousness" are neither fundamental nor a priori in my understand of myself, others or nature; such concepts refer to emergent properties or processes. An example from an old post that just popped-up in a TPF search. A definitional sketch to somewhat disambiguate these fuzzy folk concepts:

• pre-awareness = attention (orientation)
• awareness = perception (experience)
• adaptivity = intelligence (error-correcting heurstic problem-solving)
• self-awareness = [re: phenomenal-self modeling ]
• awareness of self-awareness = consciousness — 180 Proof

We are embodied phenomenal-selves (i.e. metacognitive agents), riders on the storm :fire:

I think you've just illustrated my point.

Banno and 180,

What do you think I mean by the word 'consciousness'?

Elaborate on that.

No. It's a perfectly simple question. If you have the same concept I have, even if you think it's incoherent or whatever, you should be able to explain, in your words, the concept I have.

These are all abiguous though, they can be construed in a way that avoids the concept. — bert1

If so, then in what sense is the concept necessarily so?

You seem quite adamant that the concept is there, but some are 'missing' it, yet you don't seem to be able to provide the necessity that would set it apart from, say, ether, or humours, or phlem...loads of concepts which we made use of at one time, but turned out just not to refer to anything at all.

If you have the same concept I have .. — bert1

If that's what you mean, bert, I admitted that I don't. in the preface to that old post where I disuss my understanding of awareness. So what I or @Banno don't "have the same" conceotion of awareness as you – probably because we find "your concept" unsatisfactory for one reason or another. If that's all you're saying, it's a fairly trivial, unphilosophical statement. I'm prepared to make the most reasonable case I can for my concept of awareness. Are you prepared to do tthe same? It doesn't seem to me you are, bert. :chin:

What do you think I mean by the word 'consciousness'? — bert1

I'm not a mind reader. Spell it out, sir.

What is my concept?