The asymmetry arises as soon as the banana becomes this banana. — SophistiCat

I don't see the asymmetry.

Banno, did you miss out Paul's first person experience B?

Rather, you are asking: why this banana is this banana. This means that this banana is somehow special, compared to the others, because it has the property of "this". — SophistiCat

But unless the banana is conscious, there is no asymmetry (that is relevant to this issue anyway) between one banana and another, and this banana can happily be self-identical without raising any philosophical issues. If a banana is conscious however, then there is an asymmetry, and it would make sense for the banana to ask of itself, why am I this banana, and not my yellow friend over there.

I think you are answering the question: "What makes someone the way they are?"

I don't think that is the question @bizso09 is asking. I think the question @bizso09 is asking is:

"Out of all the possible perspectives in the universe, why do I have this perspective? Out of all the pairs of eyes that people look out of, why am I looking out of these ones, and not some other ones?"

Is that right bizso09? Do correct me if I am wrong. Tim Wood may be right and I may have missed your point.

What I am suggesting is that we are mistaken when we claim that consciousness exists because we are aware of it. — Graeme M

What does the word 'aware' in this sentence mean? It can't mean 'conscious' because you're implying that awareness exists but saying that consciousness does not exist.

What determines who I am? The question of the OP. Short answer, or rather very long answer in very short form: DNA. — tim wood

This is not a trivial question, I am not asking why a banana is a banana. — bizso09

Human experience requires a functioning intact human brain. — prothero

Yes, human experience requires a functioning human, just as canine experience requires a functioning dog, snail experience requires a functioning snail, and rock experience requires a functioning rock.

That is why panpsychism seems so untenable - it's explaining some claimed quality of the world that doesn't seem to be there. I can't for the life of me see why anyone would want to say that a rock has some kind of awareness, at least not in the sense we typically mean. — Graeme M

They'd want to say it because they think it's true, presumably what you mean is that you can't think why anyone would think it was true that a rock was aware.

I think saying things like "electrons are conscious" loses a great number of any audience that might be listening. — prothero

Yes, but there is little value in saying things that people can interpret to fit their own view if what you intend to do is disagree with them. But maybe you are a more agreeable person that I am, and maybe you will keep people interested long enough to have a conversation with them that I will miss out on.

Why is it important for some people to apply these and similar words removed from a context of living beings? — jgill

Because they think it is true, presumably. Things that seem strange sometimes turn out to be true. Then after a while it doesn't seem strange any more.

Rocks as simple aggregates would not be expected to have any unified experience. I think calling a rock "conscious" is part of what makes "panpsychism" seem silly to a lot of people. Asserting the individual constiuents of rocks "quantum events" have some form of non-conscious proto-experience is an entirely different matter. — prothero

There are different versions of panpsychism. You're a micropsychist (only constituents of rocks are conscious), I'm something else (not sure what to call it). I think any object at all, however defined, has a unitary experience. My view is much weirder than yours.

I think language is important and I try to avoid using terms like “consciousness” in ways that violate the common uses and understandings of the term. Language is imprecise and it is important to try to agree on definitions lest discussions become more disputes about usage of words than about ideas. — prothero

I agree. However, I think philosophers of mind, including me, do use the word 'consciousness' in a perfectly normal sense. Indeed, it is the sense often first listed in a dictionary.

Basically if what we ‘experience’ - our ‘experiencing’ - is what we call consciousness, — I like sushi

That's not what I would call consciousness. I'd call what we experience the content of consciousness, i.e. what we are conscious of.

But all of those still follow a nothing to something jump. A good example of the confusion might be the following. Dichromatic vision to Trichromatic vision is not a step up in the gradient of chromatics. It is dichromatic or not dichromatic, or trichromatic and not trichromatic. — Jonathan Hardy

That's interesting. Let's say that's true, that phenomenologically, there is a sharp distinction between dichromatic and trichromatic experience. And let's also assume that these phenomenologies are closely correlated with biological systems. I don't really know the biology of sight at all, but can we find a similarly sharp distinction in the biology with which to correlate the phenomenology? Or can we find borderline cases of the physical biology?

Can we state that awareness is not self-awareness if we do not yet understand what awareness is? — Jonathan Hardy

No, I don't think we can. But we (or at least I) do understand what awareness is.

I too think it's a good question. So does Stephen Priest in this lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z10_6uaqVQc&list=PLCdW3jMJiDFAYG5-VFQy0eLyHqdGnstnB&index=3

There's been some good threads on it in the past. The best one was on the old forum unfortunately. I wonder if I saved it somewhere? I might have done, I'll have a look.

My short answer: this problem is a real one, indexicals can't in principle be done away with (but they probably can in practice if you work hard), this is metaphysically significant, and I don't know the answer.

prothero

What is the difference between protoconsciousness and consciousness?

doublespeak — Marchesk

newspeak or doublethink iirc

Thanks. Could you give an example of the usefulness of consciousness?

It is definitely evolved. — ttjordy

Why definitely?

I voted "no" because I don't think it appropriate to speak of "rights" that are unenforceable. or the violation of which is without recorse. — Ciceronianus the White

Yes, intuitively that is my view.

I dont expect more discussion there as you have hijacked my thread. — ernestm

Yeah, sorry about that. I just wanted a show of hands on the issue. Feel free to delete this thread any mods who are looking.

Thanks for your answers. You've all obviously thought about this a lot more than I have. Turns out my question glossed over a load of distinctions. I must admit I'm a bit surprised so many voted 'yes', although the 'no's have it by a small margin so far.

Are we conscious? If so what we call ‘consciousness’ is in fact just ourselves being aware of ourselves as ‘conscious’. — I like sushi

I don't understand this at all. Can you elaborate?

So awareness is being judged by consciousness' seeming premonitory ability to react to a threat? — neonspectraltoast

I don't think so, but jgill might.

I don't think awareness implies self-awareness, i.e. awareness of awareness.

I don't know what a rock might feel. Nothing very interesting I suspect.

I'm not sure what you mean, but if you mean aware that they are aware of being aware, then I doubt it.

EDIT: I said the opposite of what I meant to say. Fixed.

Consciousness is frequently conflated with awareness. I recall psychological experiments that illustrate someone being conscious of an impending threat, but unaware of it. — jgill

OK, so in your terms, I am talking about awareness in this thread. I mean by 'consciousness' what you mean by 'awareness'. I'm a panpsychist in the sense that I think everything is aware, including flowers and rocks.

There are many degrees of seeing, hearing, smelling and tasting. — jgill

I heartily agree, and you are right to point out this contradiction between me and Block (at least in this bit you quoted, I can't find the original article off hand). I apologise, it is a long time since I read Block and I did not realise he had defined consciousness in this way. Block does indeed explicitly identify consciousness with experience, and I think this is a mistake. For me, the accurate way to think about this is to say that experience is an amalgam of consciousness plus content. Block defines consciousness here by listing examples of experiences, rather than identifying consciousness with what all the experiences have in common, by virtue of which they are experiences. I should perhaps not use the term 'phenomenal consciousness' after all as it is likely to cause this confusion.

So, to clarify, there are infinite degrees of what we experience (content), but no degrees between not being able to experience at all (i.e. the condition most people think rocks are in) and being able to experience something.

↪bert1 The argument for this? — Banno

I can't think of any examples of borderline cases of consciousness. If one thinks that consciousness emerges, say in the development of an embryo, then there is a change from the embryo not experiencing anything at all (not conscious), to the embryo experiencing something (conscious). But the distinction between nothing and something in this context must be sharp, no? What could a middle ground between something and nothing possibly be? If you can think of an example, please let me know.

Why? — Banno

Because phenomenal consciousness does not admit of degree.

What I'm really interested in is how you personally have arrived at your belief. As javra answered earlier "for me, it’s not a fundamental axiomatic belief, but a fundamental known regarding what is. The "how is it so" is tangential to its so being.". That's the sort of thing I'm looking for. Is it axiomatic for you or is it derived from some other belief? How certain are you of it? etc. I may have poked about a bit to get at the meat of your beliefs, but it's those I'm interested in, not the persuasion either way. If that's OK with you.

This distinction @Pfhorrest made of 'phenomenal consciousness' seems very useful to this end. It's exactly that that I want to understand your beliefs about. It's not a distinction which makes any sense to me, not something distinct which requires a name, so I'd like to know how it seems that way to you. As I said, I shan't reply, but I will read with interest at some point. — Isaac

I've always been fine with the distinction between 'phenomenal consciousness' and other concepts of consciousness. The term has a very clear and straightforward meaning for me. The concept of consciousness in this sense is a given for me, at least I have no reason to question it. It has been pointed out many times that this idea of consciousness might just be illusory, i.e. it seems that we have consciousness in this sense, but in fact, we don't. However any 'seeming' at all about anything is sufficient for consciousness, as that is its very definition: that 'something seems to be the case', something appears in consciousness, there is a phenomenon I am aware of. The existence of an illusion of any kind is proof of the reality of phenomenal consciousness. So I am sure about what the word means, and the concept is simple and clear, at least to me.

The philosophy of phenomenal consciousness is in part about the problem of other minds. I know I have experiences, but I can't be sure if other things do, because I am not them. The possibilities are:
1) that nothing else has it (I am in a lonely world of Australian zombies)
or
2) that some things have it and others don't (lets say things with some kind of nervous system have it, but not, say, single-celled organisms. This is some kind of emergentism.)
or
3) that everything has it in some sense (panpsychism).

There are several routes to panpsychism, but the one I think is the most persuasive is probably the argument from non-vagueness. If you are unfamiliar with the topic of vagueness in logic, look up stuff on the Sorites Paradox, the Paradox of the Heap and you should find plenty of stuff. It's easy enough. Anyway, it has struck me, and also a number of other philosophers (Goff and Antony, for example) that phenomenal consciousness is one of the very few concepts that is is NOT vague. It does not admit of degree. There is no 'grey area' between consciousness and non-consciousness. And indeed this is a good way of determining if you share the same concept with someone, as others will often say "Yes, but there are degrees of consciousness, like when you are waking up. You start off asleep, then you have vague fuzzy impressions, and eventually you have clear thoughts and perceptions when you are fully awake." This is a clear indication that people are talking about the content of consciousness, rather than phenomenal consciousness itself. The idea of phenomenal consciousness is that no matter how vague and insubstantial your content of consciousness is, you are still conscious, because you are aware of something, whatever it is. And that is all that is needed to fulfil the definition, so you are fully conscious in the phenomenal sense. (NOT in the medical sense like Banno keeps returning to - that sense indeed admits of any number of degrees.) So the idea is that anything is either phenomenally conscious or not, there is no middle ground, there is no partial consciousness, there are no borderline cases, there exist no states, functions, configurations or whatever in which it is indeterminate as to whether a thing is conscious or not.

So, if we accept that this concept is non-vague, what implications does this have for a theory of phenomenal consciousness? If we think some things are conscious and others not (either in the case of my solipsism, or in the case that I think some other things are conscious as well as me) then I need to find a plausible break in nature which I can point to and say "Consciousness is on one side of that break, but not the other." It's got to be an absolutely sharp break, because consciousness cannot emerge gradually as physical systems change. It has to emerge suddenly, if it is to emerge at all. But here is the punchline: there are no sharp breaks in nature at which consciousness can plausibly emerge. In the development of an embryo, there are a million million tiny changes. The development of any macro characteristics, like a nervous system or a brain or the creation of a protein or whatever, at any relevant scale, is vague. There are borderline cases of each of these structures and any function that depends on them. Arguably, the only sharp break in nature is a jump in energy levels in an atom. Picking ONE single one of those in an evolving organism to place the emergence of consciousness would be absurdly arbitrary, and a million miles from something any emergentist is likely to want to claim. Given the absence of sharp distinctions in nature, if consciousness is somewhere, it has to be everywhere, because consciousness is not a vague concept.

This thread does not strike its participants as a misuse of language?

Here's a scale for assessing consciousness...
The AVPU scale has four possible outcomes for recording (as opposed to the 13 possible outcomes on the Glasgow Coma Scale). The assessor should always work from best (A) to worst (U) to avoid unnecessary tests on patients who are clearly conscious. The four possible recordable outcomes are:[2]

Alert: The patient is fully awake (although not necessarily oriented). This patient will have spontaneously open eyes, will respond to voice (although may be confused) and will have bodily motor function.
Verbal: The patient makes some kind of response when you talk to them, which could be in any of the three component measures of eyes, voice or motor - e.g. patient's eyes open on being asked "Are you OK?". The response could be as little as a grunt, moan, or slight move of a limb when prompted by the voice of the rescuer.
Pain: The patient makes a response on any of the three component measures on the application of pain stimulus, such as a central pain stimulus like a sternal rub or a peripheral stimulus such as squeezing the fingers. A patient with some level of consciousness (a fully conscious patient would not require a pain stimulus) may respond by using their voice, moving their eyes, or moving part of their body (including abnormal posturing).
Unresponsive: Sometimes seen noted as 'unconscious', this outcome is recorded if the patient does not give any eye, voice or motor response to voice or pain.

Where do atoms rate?

Are you going to classify their participation in, say, oxidation, as proof of their responsiveness to stimuli?

You sure 'bout that?

Or is this thread a neat example of philosophy as language on holiday? — Banno

This is just trolling. Obviously medical usage is not the only usage.

So, what is this different sort of consciousness? — Banno

That aspect, property, function (or whatever) whereby its possessor is the subject of experiences.

That sense is listed in most dictionaries in some form or another.

Here I get stuck. How do I know I've successfully attended to this 'awareness of the object' if I don't know what it is I'm looking for? I could be attending to absolutely anything, how do I know it's an 'awareness of the object'? I can convert the properties of the object into words, recall images of similar objects, I get a desire to act sometimes (if the object is desirable or offensive), sometimes I perceive changes in my physiology in response to it. Pretty much all of these things can also be observed (in a rudimentary way) in the brain. I'm not getting anything particularly difficult to explain yet. Is any of that what you're calling 'awareness'? — Isaac

I don't think so. This is a huge difficulty that impedes conversations about consciousness - agreeing what the subject of enquiry is. My reply to @ernestm might help, not sure.

When we interfere in any way with one we get a corresponding effect in the other. It's not conclusive but I think it's pretty sound theory as to why we might consider the two are the same. It's either that they're the same, or that they're linked intricately.

The tight correlations would indeed be neatly explained by their being identical. This is what Block and Pfhorrest are calling 'access consciousness' though, rather than 'phenomenal consciousness' which is what I'm trying to talk about, and what panpsychism is a theory of.

The former theory can exist within the rest of science, the latter requires a whole universe of forms, concepts and features which would otherwise not be required. What would possibly stop us from presuming the simpler explanation for now?

Because it's not a theory of phenomenal consciousness. I should probably expand on that, but I'm too tired tonight. Briefly, the difficulty is caused by two things (in my view - and I don't know if I'm correctly guessing your view or not, sorry if I've got it wrong): (1) the idea of 'consciousness' as a collective noun to cover lots of different examples, tasting an apple, making an inference, feeling sad, and so on, and (2) that brain function is both necessary and sufficient for any one of these, so for example, whenever a certain brain function happens, we taste apple, and whenever we taste apple, that brain function is happening. Therefore, tasting an apple just is that brain function, that's the obvious straightforward conclusion to draw. And that's the same with any example under the collective noun 'consciousness'. Therefore, it's reasonable to generalise and say that consciousness is just the name we give to these kinds of brain function. All straightforward and extremely persuasive. What's wrong with it is that 'consciousness', in the phenomenal sense, is not a collective noun in this way. And that also undermines the validity of the generalisation. I'll try and explain it better another day.

Just wanted to say bert1 has been doing a great job in this thread. — Pfhorrest

Thank you!

I have to say, bert1 is doing a good job laying out the problems and basically point to his arguments. — schopenhauer1

Thank you!

It has been so long since I have felt this appreciated. My father used to politely look at my childhood paintings and compliment them. Unfortunately he fell through the ice over the river Cam while jumping up and down and showing off. I watched his body slowly shut down as he slid under the ice. He was still grinning like a buffoon even as he clutched vainly at the slippery edges, trying to pretend it was all part of the act. Hmm. I can't really respond appropriately to people being nice to me. I have to make it all weird.

EDIT: For the avoidance of doubt and any embarrassment (apart from my own), that story about my dad is totally untrue. My social skills are desperately bad.

EDIT 2: I've just realised I might be likening my fans to buffoons in the above story. That was not my intention in the slightest. This is getting worse.

A good behaviourist would NOT define consciousness as behaviour, as that would be begging the question.
— bert1

Right.. I was pointing out to Isaac the circular reasoning explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument — schopenhauer1

That's interesting, I hadn't thought of the homunculus fallacy as being identical to begging the question, but maybe it is.

↪bert1 I think it’s important in many philosophical contexts not to argue over what the “correct” definition is, but to explore the relevant questions about each definition as separate questions. — Pfhorrest

I heartily agree. Sometimes it's really hard to get people to accept that there are different definitions, and even if you do, to get them to talk about the one you want them to talk about.

In that light, I see phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness not as two different ways of thinking about the same thing, but two separate things. Access consciousness is trivially accounted for by functionalism, and is weakly emergent from simpler mechanical functions. Phenomenal consciousness is not a different take on that same thing, but a different thing entirely, and it is with regards to that only that I am a panpsychist. — Pfhorrest

Yes, I think I agree with you. I think functionalism may well be a good way to account for the content of consciousness, and what our identity is. When people talk about 'losing consciousness' due to head malfunction what has disappeared is not actually consciousness, but content and identity.

Everything has phenomenal consciousness, it doesn’t emerge from anything that doesn’t have it, and it doesn’t just not exist, though it’s pretty trivial and unimportant. — Pfhorrest

I know what you mean, but in a way it is supremely important. If there were no consciousness, it might be the case that nothing at all would ever happen, and there could be no function. I do what I do because of how I feel. If that is extrapolated all the way down, as some panpsychists will want to do, that means substance does what it does because of how it feels. And we can be thankful that consciousness is present at that fundamental level in order that we have the world that we have (if indeed we want it). Without consciousness, nothing could matter. Nothing would be important.

Perhaps you can help me on this? On the one hand, I feel your answer is intuitively correct, and it surprises me so many people continue to state that behavioralism actually defines experience. Even psychologists state behavioralism is a black-box model.

On the other hand, when I start thinking something intuitively right, after so many decades of learning how wrong intuitions can be, I get suspicious Im missing something and I dont know what. — ernestm

I'll try. Clearly many intuitions, often derived from introspection, do turn out to be wrong. For example:

I'm really angry with my wife because she didn't fill the car up with petrol because she is inconsiderate and didn't care that I needed to do a long drive in a hurry.

This contains a lot of content. It could pretty much all be wrong. His wife may have been in a hurry herself and was trying to get the car back in time. It might be that she did fill the car up with petrol but the fuel gauge is faulty. It might be that he isn't really angry with anything, he is hungry, and this is making him cranky. Or he is angry about something else and blaming his wife. Etc etc. In general, the more content an intuition has, the more susceptible it is to mistakes. So lets remove some of the content, or make the content more general and less specific:

I'm really angry about the car not having a full tank.

It could still be wrong, but there's less things to be wrong about, and therefore it's more reliable as a piece of introspection. Lets go further:

I'm not feeling right about something.

This is really general, and highly unlikely to be a mistake. If you feel unsettled in some way, well, you feel unsettled in some way.

Remove as much content as possible, and we end up with maximally reliable introspections, things like:

I feel something
or
Sometimes something happens in my mind
or
I sense something
or
I am having an experience
or
There is something it is like to be me

This is pretty much the introspection I was trying to get at when offering a definition in terms of attending to one's own subjectivity. It seems to me that this is essentially infallible. You can't be mistaken about these things, as they are devoid of anything to be wrong. So while some intuitions are most certainly fallible, this particular one we appeal to to define 'consciousness' is not one of them.

EDIT: an NDE would have been a better example to use.

these behaviours are not the definition (unless you are a behaviourist) of thoughts and experiences.
— bert1

Right. So why not adopt a behaviourist position as the simplest model? — Isaac

Sorry, I made a mistake here which is worth correcting as it is confusing otherwise. A good behaviourist would NOT define consciousness as behaviour, as that would be begging the question. The behaviourist would accept the agreed definition (whatever that is) and say that the best theory of this phenomenon is to equate it to behaviour, or tendencies to behave. In this case, the behaviourist theory of consciousness, subjectivity, awareness etc (if they accepted that concept with it synonyms), would be just that being aware is nothing other than a tendency to behave in such-and-such way. (Sorry if that's not very good, I'm not a behaviourist.)

So, if a good behaviourist doesn't beg the question by messing with the definition, shouldn't substance dualists, panpsychists and anyone else with a theory of consciousness also not build their theory into their definition? Absolutely not, on pain of being horrible hypocrites.

The trouble is, if we start with a particular definition, it may very well make one theory much more tenable than another. And I think that's the case with the concept of consciousness. (I think a concept and the meaning of a word are more or less the same thing in this context). And a definition that appeals to one's own subjectivity that does not refer to any observable function or behaviour at all, does indeed prejudice the theory in favour of some kind of non-reductivist or non-emergentist position. All I can say is that's not my fault! Definitions are what they are. I didn't invent the concept of subjectivity just so I could be a panpsychist. One way theorists resist intuitive dualisms, panpsychisms and other non-reductive theories is to attack the definition. Perhaps saying we have got the definition wrong, or we shouldn't use words in ways that suggest unacceptable conclusions: words like 'consciousness' and 'awareness' denote folk-concepts which should be abandoned, much like how 'life' referring to 'elan vital' (or some kind of inner soul or spirit) is outdated, and now 'life' should be thought of as nothing other than a set of observable behaviours and functions. That's been partially successful with the word 'life', it largely does now mean that set of behaviours, depending on who you talk to. I wonder if 'consciousness' will go the same way.