People who have dead nerves in certain places of their body cannot feel anything there. — Philosophim

What about phantom limb pain?

People who have dead nerves in certain places of their body cannot feel anything there.
— Philosophim

What about phantom limb pain? — RogueAI

Good point. Even 20% of people born without limbs have phantom limb syndrome. What this tells us is the brain actively fires looking for limbs to use. Makes sense since even babies use their limbs all the time. The locus of thought is from the mind to the limb, not from the limb to the mind.

What sort of embodied cognition would you say you're defending? — frank

Nerve communication to the brain.

Yes, but it is oriented around a more 'expansive' understanding of what consciousness is. There is a long tradition of consciousness as an interior movie, an interior monologue, things going on "in the head." The whole layer of intelligence involved in the micro-coordination of our overt actions and behaviours is ignored by many people. — Pantagruel

I don't disagree with the notion that there is intelligence involved in the automation of our motor skills, but it seems likely to result in confusion to refer to that automation as consciousness. I think there is no avoiding a degree of fuzziness, in trying to consider consciousness in isolation from the rest of the causal web, but nonetheless it is still worthwhile considering how our brains instantiate consciousness. There is certainly no shortage of things to be learned in doing so.

Some proponents of embodied cognition would argue that the environment provides the body with all the stimulus necessary for navigation to food and shelter. So there's no need to assign inference to this navigation. — frank

That doesn't sound like a very well thought out way of modeling things to me.

Good point. Even 20% of people born without limbs have phantom limb syndrome. What this tells us is the brain actively fires looking for limbs to use. Makes sense since even babies use their limbs all the time. The locus of thought is from the mind to the limb, not from the limb to the mind. — Philosophim

It seems that if sensory input isn't coming in to the brain, the brain will create it's own hallucinatory input to compensate. People in sensory deprivation tanks hallucinate fairly quickly when deprived of external stimuli. What is the evolutionary benefit of this?

It seems that if sensory input isn't coming in to the brain, the brain will create it's own hallucinatory input to compensate. People in sensory deprivation tanks hallucinate fairly quickly when deprived of external stimuli. What is the evolutionary benefit of this? — RogueAI

I'm not an evolutionary cognitive scientist, so what I say is as worthwhile as any other person's opinion here. If I had to guess from my limited knowledge, the human brain requires constant work to not be bored. Those cells in your brain need something to do, and like a muscle that hasn't moved in a while, it will atrophy otherwise. Further it could also be a stepping stone to imagining how to get out of your situation, like if you were buried somewhere for example.

It seems that if sensory input isn't coming in to the brain, the brain will create it's own hallucinatory input to compensate. People in sensory deprivation tanks hallucinate fairly quickly when deprived of external stimuli. What is the evolutionary benefit of this? — RogueAI

Sensory deprivation tanks weren't part of the environment our ancestors were exposed to. There is no reason to think that there is an evolutionary benefit to how we respond, to an environment that played no role in the natural selection of our ancestors.

Frank, the chart is interesting. Can you provide a link to the IIT project?

Can you have consciousness without any content? — frank

We can see consciousness remains when the objects of consciousness change. I have a thought, then experience an emotion, then see a tree, then hear a song, then another thought. The contents change but consciousness remains. So, (for me, at least) it's easy to believe consciousness without content is possible. And, as TheMadMan points out, consciousness without content (i.e., pure consciousness) is a goal of meditation.

Here is the IEP entry.

Sensory deprivation tanks weren't part of the environment our ancestors were exposed to. There is no reason to think that there is an evolutionary benefit to how we respond, to an environment that played no role in the natural selection of our ancestors. — wonderer1

What is the evolutionary benefit of consciousness?

What is the evolutionary benefit of consciousness? — RogueAI

See here. (Although that may require a subscription. If so, Google is your friend. I used "the evolutionary adaptiveness of consciousness".)

That's an interesting article. This stood out:

"then consciousness evolved gradually over the past half billion years and is present in a range of vertebrate species."

No conscious invertebrates? Don't they have to deal with lots of information flowing in?

No conscious invertebrates? Don't they have to deal with lots of information flowing in? — RogueAI

The article also says...

The arthropod eye, on the other hand, has one of the best-studied examples of selective signal enhancement. It sharpens the signals related to visual edges and suppresses other visual signals, generating an outline sketch of the world.

To expand on that, it's a way of saying that visual data is processed in the eye of arthropod to yield a relatively low data output stream, but data reduced in a way that preserves salient features of the visual field.

So, in the case of those arthropods and vision, their brains don't have to deal with nearly as much data as vertebrate species do. Information processing is expensive in terms of energy consumption. There are lots of niches in which an energy efficient 'design' can hold it's own against more intelligent but less energy efficient designs.

An octopus is as smart as a three-year old. Don't you think they're conscious?

Isn't it past your bedtime?

I'm sorry, am I questioning the orthodoxy too much? You were the one who linked the article. Don't you want to talk about it?

between science and Mwrleau-Ponty, it is because the particular brand of naturalism that a science is in thrall to makes no room for Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. Varela, Thompson, Gallagher, Petitot and others claim phenomenology can be naturalized
once we transform and update our thinking about scientific naturalism so as to accommodate it. — Joshs

Merleau-Ponty's aim is of course to draw phenomenology closer to history and culture rather than neurophysiology. That is, when one endeavors to relativize, still further from the intersubjectivity, the Husserlian dimension of eidetics constituted in the (naturalistically) pure ego. Transcendental receives then a new meaning. In naturalism, for instance in physiology, the idea of transcendental is not possible.

And transcendental means here philosophically explicated realm of being which makes empirical e.g. neurophysiological observations and generalizations possible. All the data is still there but under the phenomenological suspension which means that the reflection is not guided by that data as already being reality. The existing data has become something that represents something from a certain viewpoint. Neurophysiological concepts are possibilities, not natural necessities, which means that they are results of acts where certain subjectivity has corresponding objectivities or realities. And through the idea of, always relative, freedom which is involved here the transcendental can be linked "essentially" to history and culture as well?

There's little reason to doubt that consciousness is influenced to some degree by the whole body. — frank

You could even say "it is obvious". A large --if not the largest-- part of consciousness depends on perception. And our perception depends on our senses.

As a starting point, consider the features of consciousness identified by the IIT project. One of them is point of view, or intrinsic perspective. — frank

Right. Integrated Information Theory --it always helps if you give the full name-- is only a perspective. Which ignores the hard problem of consciousness.

even if a person experiences a state of disembodiment, as when under the influence of mind altering substances, there's still a sense of engaging the world from a point of view, so this would qualify as a kind of embodiment. — frank

One does not have to take mind altering drugs to feel or be in a state of "disembodiment". One does not even need to be disembodied to feel and know that he is something more than his body and that his consciousness is only in part dependent on his body. One has only be aware of his body and that he is aware of himself and aware of being aware. One needs not take mind altering drugs or be in any kind of state of hallucination for that.

A challenge to going further and saying that consciousness is entirely arising from the whole body starts with observing one of the ways that humans differ from other animals. — frank

Exactly. This is how humans differ from (other) animals: Humans can be aware of themselves and aware of being aware, as I said above.

If consciousness is strictly a bodily function, we'd have to explain how it is that the body doesn't adapt, but the mind does. — frank

Exactly. Doesn't this alone create a problem to the perspective that consciousness arises from the body?
But of course there are many more ...
Even neuroscientists today admit that consciousness cannot simply be reduced to neural activity alone ...
Only a stubborn and insincere scientist will insist that consciousness is created and exists in the brain, without having to provide the least evidence (not theory) for that. Scientists who are claiming that personal experience alone is not trustworthy evidence of mental phenomena. And consciousness is something that can only be experienced!