Of course the suggestion of this thread is part of the postmodern neomarxist conspiracy, as Psychology Today reveals. Don't say You weren't warned!

We all like to think we are the same. We call ourselves humans, or philosophers, or 'we'.

I wouldn't be the first to say that. But it is a bit misleading, as slogans tend to be. The past is recorded in rock sediments the deep past in the microwave background, so I cannot say that time is not physical in the sense that the past leaves a clear trace on the present world. And it is the same kind of trace that the past leaves in our memories and on our hard drives.

But psychologically, it is the entrance of memory actively into present thought that gives us a sense of time. There is a peculiar, rare illness where the ability to lay down new long term memories is lost quite suddenly. In such cases psychological time stops on the day the ability is lost, and although they retain the earlier memories, and short term memory, so that they can talk, as far as they are aware, no time has passed or will ever pass. They think forever, that it is June 5th 1973, or whatever, and if you explain to them, they do not remember you or what you said five minutes later.

So in that sense thought is time, but also geology is time regardless of thought.

(I do hope people can make sense of the way I am playing with the different senses of 'sense' in this thread.)

When I fall asleep, psychological time stops, but physiological time continues. When I awaken, I have to look at the clock, or where the sun is in the sky to reconnect the two times. And then there are those occasions when I'm not sure what day it is.

Sometimes I might use "conscious of" to include all those stories I have been told, without even questioning the truth of some of them. But other times I might use "conscious of" to refer strictly to things which I am immediately aware of through my senses. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well in this context, we want to be very general and inclusive, and that presents a problem, that we are trying to account for life the universe and everything in a way. Certainly I want to include the immediacy of the senses, but even there, they are bound up with memory. The green verticality I see over there - memory and understanding is involved in being able to say 'it is a poplar tree reflected in a lake'.

Without memory and interpretation, the visual sensation is meaningless; it acquires meaning in relation to remembered experience, learned stories, models of world and self. I have been emphasising the sensory, because philosophy tends to neglect it's importance, and because my claim is that it is prior to what one might call the inner life, because all these stories, including the one we are building here, must enter through the senses.

I hope my story makes sense. I've been told it is nonsense in this thread.

It is nonsense if it does not accord with the senses. If it does not accord with other stories we might have heard, then it might be that those stories don't quite make sense. So if it is non-story, I don't mind too much, but if it is non-sense I'm in trouble. So immediately, most of my senses slot easily into a story of my familiar home my laptop, my favourite site, and my focus is on this new post that is trickling out as I type. All the background readily 'fits' the story of my life - the story makes sense of the senses. Where I have to pay attention, is to making sure if I can that the story I am telling of the nature of consciousness also makes sense of the senses.

All day long, I'm seeing, hearing, touching, etc, and importantly, acting -typing, walking, carrying, eating, etc. At the end of the day, I seek out a place that is dark, quiet, and lie down for preference on something soft enough that I can hardly feel my own weight. And just to be on the safe side, I close my eyes. Then, if the stories don't insist on telling themselves, I go to sleep.

And of course, that little story is told from memory, because actually, I'm still typing.

I think that this is an over simplification now, to say "the present is consciousness". If we look back to what you were saying about modeling reality, I think that "the present" within consciousness is part of a model. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is where we get into the realm of strange loops. I'm going to stick by my story, that the immediacy of the senses is the present, and is at least the constant companion of consciousness, without which it becomes at best, weird and dreamlike. But of course I am presenting a model to you in which "the present" plays a prominent part. But "the present" is not the present. Perhaps I can illustrate this, by projecting my story forwards.

I am still typing, but when I have finished this post, and my glass of wine, I will go to bed as described above, and sleep. I will get up tomorrow about 8AM, and have a coffee and...

I roll the story forward into the future, based on memories of other days. The train timetable does the same thing, and when there is unforeseen snow, or a crash, or a terror alert, the timetable becomes wrong. The future is always a story that becomes true or false - later - when the senses confirm or disconfirm it. That's my story, anyway. I think the same process, non-verbally, accounts for the anticipation involved in, say, catching a ball. One learns, and gets better at it.

There is also the principle of "The less there is at stake the more vicious is the internecine warfare." — Bitter Crank

If anyone should doubt it, let them consider this latest UK scandal.

How is it that I can know about a whole lot of internal parts, like intestines and such, yet I can't really say that I am consciously aware of them? It seems strangely contradictory that I could say I know about my duodenum, but I am not conscious of it. Am I using "conscious" in a bad way? Or am I really conscious of my duodenum, but not directly conscious of it? — Metaphysician Undercover

Well it's all hearsay isn't it? I have no direct evidence that I have a brain and not a spaghetti monster in my head. But then it is only hearsay that Australia exists. I just assume people are not making up all this stuff. So the candle of consciousness doesn't even light up the whole candle, and certainly not the whole of the inside of the candle, let alone the rest of the world. And all the rest is stories... All I know about the duodenum is that it gets ulcers. I assume I have one because the story is that we all have the same complement of bits, but if you cut me open and fished it out, I wouldn't recognise it, and if I did feel it, I would have no idea that that is what I was feeling.

All of which goes to say that to a huge extent, what I think I am is a story I have been told.

When I scroll back, I am not really seeing the posts in the past, I am seeing the past posts in the present. I cannot see the future posts in the present, so you think that this amounts to a substantial difference between past and future. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, exactly. I am not seeing the past, I am seeing in the present the marks of the past. The thread I can see now is a (transform by electro-magic of a) record on some hard drive created by our interactions in the past, and the memories I have of our interactions are similarly a (rather vaguer) record in my alleged brain. This all being 'received wisdom'.

You think that consciousness is "in the present", and I think that the present is "in consciousness". It appears like we would need to determine where the future is to resolve this. — Metaphysician Undercover

When you put it that way, It seems not so much of a disagreement. Especially because I would rather say, 'The present is consciousness, consciousness is the present'. It is the 'place' where all posts are created. I think this perspective works for most of the theories of time; presentism, obviously, but even a fully determined block universe, in which life is read-only. The future is there and the past is there in the book/block, but I (and the remote hard drive) haven't read the future and have read the past, at any arbitrary 'present' moment.

I wouldn't say "I am consciousness" because I recognize that there is a significant part of my being which doesn't appear to be part of my consciousness. There are activities of my being which do not seem to enter into my consciousness, the unconscious part of me. — Metaphysician Undercover

Are you talking about unconscious thought, or more bodily processes? Usually, as you seem to suggest, people talk about self-consciousness in terms of being aware of thoughts, but do not talk about self-consciousness in terms of being aware of having an erection or a sore thumb. They identify as having a body, and being a mind. This is largely unchanged by the idea that the mind extends beyond what is conscious. And in such case, I would expect you to say, if not 'I am consciousness', then something like 'I am the mind of which I am incompletely conscious'. Which is to locate oneself as an inner world, in the body but other than it.

So the experiment, or demonstration which would settle this would be a demonstration which would indicate whether or not there is a real difference between past and future in the physical world. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then a glance at this thread should convince you. You can readily scroll back and look at all the past posts, but where the future posts will be is blank.

Well, isn't this the point? You are talking about consciousness. What is consciousness other than "the thought world"? You dismiss my description of consciousness by saying that I am talking about the thought world. What sense does that make? Consciousness is the thought world. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I think this is the point of disagreement. I say I am conscious of the thought world, and I am conscious of the physical world, you say you are the thought world, and (I presume,) are conscious of the physical world. I'm not sure there is anywhere much left to go with this. Is there an experiment or an argument that would decide it?

I have to confess I am struggling to relate this to my experience at all.

Consciousness is really composed of elements which are related to the past, and elements which are related to the future. So I think consciousness is "in" the past and "in" the future, both at the same time. — Metaphysician Undercover

The first sentence makes perfect sense to me, the second seems bizarre. Elements related to the past are memories and knowledge, and these I associate with things I encounter - the overflowing bin I didn't empty yesterday, the tree I remember standing last time I passed, that has or hasn't blown down in a storm, the photo of the kids when they were little, those amazing dinosaur footprints. Sometimes I 'relive the past' and sometimes it is very vivid - lifelike. But it is never as lifelike as living; memories of hot summers in the South of France do not keep me warm in the Welsh winter. All these things are related to the past, but all are present to me, and that is why I can talk about the past at all.

The idea of consciousness being in the future is even more odd. I am tempted to ask, if yours is there, if you could let me have next week's lottery numbers. Memories and knowledge of the past lead me to model the future - the daffodils are in flower, spring is coming again. My pension is due next week, the government is usually pretty reliable. But I do not become conscious of these things themselves ( as distinct from the ideas that I have relayed here), before they happen. I cannot spend next week's pension today, or bathe in the spring sunshine.

The best sense I can make of it is that you are speaking as thought and in a thought world, because in the thought world, the model world, time has exactly that property, the model can be run forwards or backwards, restarted, altered, relived, and so on. One has equal access to every moment at any moment. But the painful frustrating world I live in does not afford that freedom; the compensation though is that it is real, not thought.

Well we all like to start with agreeable premises, don't we. My agreeable premise enables me to explain why other people's agreeable premises, such as these:-

We all know that men and women are different. — Purple Pond

There should be equality, — René Descartes

... are somewhat conflictual. We are in the process of changing human nurture to conform with the new needs of the economy. Housewifery has been industrialised through white goods, ready meals, nurseries, and old folks homes, and your morality reflects this, but Purple Pond articulates the lag that remains in social attitudes.

I think history is quite a big influence. I mentioned elsewhere that my mother had to give up her job at the bank when she married. It was normal policy before WW2, and considered moral and appropriate that married women should stay at home and look after the house, the husband, and the children. Women were not expected to be in the workplace in any great number at all. Even a working class man could earn enough to keep a family in an acceptable level of poverty.

After the war, there was a labour shortage in the UK, and attitudes magically began to change. These days 'housewife' hardly counts as an occupation at all, it is the same as being unemployed. But the change is not complete. The good life is still gendered, by which I mean that the image of a good woman is still slanted in most people's (both sexes) minds towards caring, nurturing, serving, beautifying, as compared to the hard working, strong persistent competitive good man. Action man and decorative Barbie. It takes more than a generation for society to adapt its morality to the economic requirements that arise in that single generation, and the result is a generation brought up confused and conflicted morally; old fashioned conservative notions fighting modern radical - dare I say 'postmodern'? - ideals both of which seem self-evidently right to their adherents.

Meanwhile, the economy seems to be changing its needs again, such that it needs neither men nor women, and the appropriate good life to that economy is a short one with no offspring. All hail the pessimists, the anti-natalists the singularity apostles, harbingers of the post human economy.

What if I say your model of consciousness is wrong? There is no such thing as the present, so it is impossible that consciousness is located in the present. The present is an imaginary division which separates the temporal duration of the past from the temporal duration of the future. This is just an artificial boundary, a point which separates two contiguous durations of time, like "noon" separates morning from afternoon. But there could be absolutely nothing there, so it's impossible that consciousness is there. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then I would be anxious to hear your account.

Emergence is a kind of answer to the main question of dualism, "How do these two substances relate?" --but without a real answer other than "Well, this one makes the other one somehow" — Moliere

Well there is potential for it to be more than complete hand-waving; we understand how solidity and liquidity emerge from the mass behaviours of molecules under certain conditions, and we know not to look inside molecules or atoms for these properties, but rather to their relations to each other. So a theory of emergence would likewise tend to suggest that it is relations between brains, bodies, and conditions as I would have it, or between neurons as neuroscience has it, from which consciousness arises.

I sort of wonder which way you're leaning. Nothing is conscious or everything is. Or there is this thing called consciousness and there is also the world. — Moliere

Well so far, I cannot eliminate the possibility of a full-blown spirit/matter dualism, but it seems like an unfruitful model in which the spiritual is either invented or left blank. Eliminativism and panpsychism I have also ruled out as not explaining the thing that wants explaining, that I am not a rock. So until @Harry Hindu or someone else sets forth the alternatives that I haven't thought of, I am left with emergentism, but emergence from "brainy-bodies-in-environments". When a blind man feels his way with a stick, his consciousness is in the curb he feels, at the end of the stick, in the hand holding the stick, in the brain modelling the environment, and the feet propelling him and confirming his model. When an earthbound astronomer uses the Hubble telescope his consciousness is amongst the stars just as much as it is in his head. Or to put it better - consciousness is not located, because it is virtual.

But here is one consideration that might move one in the direction of dualist woo. Physics seems to have no account of the uniqueness of now. It treats time as a dimension which is given direction by entropy, but does not privilege any place on the dimension as the present. Consciousness does. Physics has the film 'in the can', but consciousness is watching and acting in that same film. Perhaps physics is missing something.

Cheers! :smile:

Got any particular recommendations for the average newcomer?

I was considering drawing a diagram, but decided to manage without.

I locate consciousness in the present; it is presence, it is the now. I can describe the contents from the senses, the computer is on my lap, a cup of coffee steaming to the right, the armchair is red, and I am typing with two fingers. Also, the contents are memories, that I just made the coffee, that I made a post yesterday, and models, that if I scroll up I can read it, that I am intending to continue an exploration in this thread.

This gives rise quite naturally to the idea of a distinction between internal and external; sight, sound, touch present to consciousness the external world, and memory, thought, modelling, present the internal world. Now it is fairly uncontroversial to say that the external world - the coffee, the armchair, etc is not conscious, not the location of awareness, but only the content, the provocation.

It is rather more radical though to claim that the internal world, memories, models, thoughts, are not conscious either, but are also only more contents and provocations. I mentioned earlier that model time is not real time. You can probably replay the events of yesterday in a few minutes at most, and re-present the past to consciousness. Re-membering, re-presenting is now, all of it is present, or else it is absent. Memories might be 'there' in the brain, just as there is crap behind the sofa that I cannot see, but these things are not 'here' in consciousness.

And then, there is action. And let's include inaction, let's include internal action - building a new model, meditating, calculating, exploring an idea. This internal action goes on while I am away from the computer, as well as while I am typing. Consciousness acts in the world, and also in the brain.

Again, the way I am describing things sounds a bit like inputs and outputs, and it is a bit misleading. Seeing the coffee cup is an action and drinking the coffee is a sensation, there are not really inputs and outputs that are different kinds, but everything is both and neither, everything is integral, in the same way that a response integrates the creative initiative with what is already there as provocation.

Know your enemies.

http://www.openculture.com/2018/03/the-entire-archives-of-radical-philosophy-go-online.html

In the meantime, I still think that responsiveness is a component at least of anything I want to dignify with the term 'conscious'. This is one of those places where I think ad hominem is a legitimate focus of argument, so I will with some hesitation put forth the hypothesis that to participate in a discussion here is to subject oneself to something of a Turing test by one's interlocutors, and one of the ways I personally mark these on-going tests to distinguish a bare pass from a distinction as it were, by how responsive they are. Some posters seem to trot out the same responses over and over as if, like modbot, they are triggered by a word or a phrase. Others manage to convince me that they have read the whole post and created a new response that relates to that post.

This exemplifies the distinction between responding, and what I will call 'reacting'; or sometimes I might call it 'overreacting'.

Anyway I'm trying to clarify a bit without being too formal at this stage, what it takes to be responsive, and again a certain presence is a feature - a here and now aspect that is particular to the occasion. Having said that, the ignore button is also a response, somewhat generic, but particular to a poster, unless it becomes a habit. Are you still awake at the back there?

I mentioned time a long time back, and I think next post or soon, anyway, I'll try and go into that a bit more, but I see consciousness as always and only present.

Edit:

Take the example you gave, telling us to imagine a poplar tree by the lake. I would classify this action of yours as initiative rather than responsive. I perceive you starting this thread as an initiative rather than as a response.

It may be the case that you perceive these conscious actions as responses rather than as initiatives, but I'm not privy to this information, which makes you view the op as responsive rather than as initiative. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ah, I think I understand your point and hopefully I have at least started to answer it above. If I push a non-conscious vase off the mantelpiece, it reacts by falling onto the hearth, and probably breaking. By contrast, if I push the cat off the mantlepiece, it responds, turning itself in midair and landing on its feet, and then stalking off indignantly. A response includes an element of initiative, as you put it, or as I put it earlier an element of imagination. So my op is hopefully a creative response to various bits and pieces that I have come across and most of the responses at least have been similarly creative, at the same time as they are relevant to the op. Hopefully, we are not reciting dogma to each other but thinking about what has been said and moving, if we are lucky, towards a new conception of things. So it is not responses rather than initiatives, but responses are initiatives in relation to what has gone before, (because there is no limit to the possible responses) and thoughts are indeed creations of brains, but also reflections/models of the world.

I'm not sure if this relates to Pierce at all, but I see consciousness as in the first place a response to the immediacy of sensation - a connection with the world, but that response is informed, modified, extended, liberated into creativity, by memory and thought.

Well it's possible we are talking about different things, or that it is somehow the same thing seen from the other side. You haven't really said what it is other than not responsiveness. But I understand it is difficult; I wonder if it is something then that is in someway covered over, swamped, by the business of responding - a space - as it were - that is filled by responding but is there as a space when one is quiet? Am I somewhere near?

I apprehend my own consciousness in a way different from the way I apprehend another's. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well I have described how I apprehend another's consciousness. Can you describe how you apprehend your own otherwise than by your responsiveness?

Obviously not, because to check is already to be responding; so I never need to check. The nearest I can get to that is that I occasionally suffer from sleep paralysis; typically, I will try to get out of bed to piss and be unable to move, and after a while, it wears off and I can get up. And afterwards, I find it hard to say whether I was conscious or dreaming. If someone else was there watching, I don't know what they would see - it hasn't happened.

Do you notice a difference between what you "see" as consciousness within your self, and what you "see" as consciousness within others? — Metaphysician Undercover

When I did my first aid course, more or less the first thing you are taught to do is to establish whether the casualty is conscious or unconscious. First you talk to them, and if there is no response you shake them and almost shout, and if there is still no response you pinch their ear hard enough to hurt. And if there is still no response, you take them to be unconscious. There are rare exceptional cases where someone might be conscious in just this sense of being responsive to stimuli, but paralysed such that their response is blocked and ineffective. In such 'locked in' cases it is very hard to tell. But even in these cases I would say, to be conscious consists, in being responsive - brain is responsive even if muscles are not. So I don't see that my own case is any different at all.

But you probably won't like this response, because you used the word 'within', and responses are not generally confined to 'within'.

This is the either/or fallacy. There are more options. You are just ignoring them because they don't fit the presumptions you've made in this thread. — Harry Hindu

Feel free to bring them up and I'll consider them.

If instead you are saying panpsychism and eliminative materialism are pretty equivalent in their degree of essential incoherency, then maybe yes — apokrisis

Well that's what I am saying anyway, because what I want to mean by 'consciousness', whatever else I want to say about it, is that it is something that I see in myself when I am awake, and definitely don't see when I am on the operating table, thank anaesthetics, and see in other people and to varying degrees in animals, and not at all in rocks and plastic spoons.

Accordingly, I think I have only two options left; either some version of incarnation of soul from a spiritual realm, or some version of emergence from particular structures of matter and energy - so far at least, universally structures of living matter. The theory of evolution seems to speak for the latter option, but my approach here is to leave that question open for the moment, and just look at what I can see and anyone can see, and try to describe it as carefully as I can.

I agree, although I would say that we first need the model in order to intelligently construct the living, working system. — Janus

Oh absolutely. The architect draws a non-existent house and then the builders build it.

So iff I say I don't think I fully understand your post; that's not accurate, because I'm not my post? — JJJJS

I suspect you are some dude typing, and your post is an honest expression of your thoughts. So reading your post I get some experience of you, but it is more like a footprint than an encounter. "That looks like the post of someone who is reading and trying to understand and getting a little confused", I might think, the way a bushman reads the trail of an antelope. The trail is not the antelope, but it is a sign of the antelope.

Time for a quick recap. I started with an analogy of brain to mirror, and mind to reflected virtual image, thereby suggesting that looking for mind in the substance of brain is a bit like looking for the reflected image behind the mirror. Doomed to disappointment, that is.

Now I have suggested that the brain functions in two distinct ways, probably both at the same time in most cases.

One is a sensory and motor engagement with the world that is immediately present, physical, pressing keys, walking round lakes, banging into things seeing trees and reflections - all things sensing and acting.

Two is disengaged from the present world and engaged with thought, model, making, imagination, memory, that sort of thing. (This is a model that I am presenting here for you to play with and pull apart or decorate as you wish. You can put it in prominent position in your model of the world, or you can chuck it straight in the bin. )

But the question is, where are you and your perspective? — unenlightened

I am sat in an armchair in North Wales, typing on my laptop. That is to say I am present in the world, sensing and interacting and - inevitably - making models of the world, or adapting, playing with a model.
I am not in the model, which is what is in my head; only a model of me is in the model.

But here's a problem; I am not present to you. Everything I present to you in the previous paragraph is not me, but the model of me that forms part of the model of the world I am offering for you to use as you wish or chuck in the bin. So I am inscribing on this model, 'the model is not the world, the word is not the thing, I am not my post'. Lest I be accused of nonsense.

And outside the forest as well, you just said that. I can only hope then for your sake, that you live in a world of your own. Otherwise you are nowhere.

From my perspective the contents of your brain/mind are just as external to me as the tree in the forest. — Harry Hindu

I very glad to hear it. But the question is, where are you and your perspective?

Externalism tells only one half of the story. It is interesting that people feel compelled to choose one or other side of the internalism/ externalism dichotomy. It's as if there is a prejudice which dictates 'it can't be both'. — Janus

Well the reason for that is probably an aversion to dualism, and the attendant spiritual woo. I more or less dismiss panpsychism, not on the grounds of woo, but on the grounds that it doesn't explain anything. It is like claiming that everything reflects light, and thinking that that explains mirrors. but dualism in general at least has the merit of covering the ground, and you have pre-empted me in a way by suggesting that a combination of internalism and externalism will do the same job. But I want to keep the internal in its place as a model on a par, at best, with the creations of a model railway enthusiast; wonderfully complex and ingenious, but no substitute for as decent public transport system.

One can spend a deal of time absorbed in one's model railway, or in one's philosophical theory, but one cannot live there.

Ah right. Ok, I suppose that's about right. I think of it more as exploring. Looking at the various ways philosophers think, and trying to find a way that most of them can be mostly right. So far, it has been a sort of eliminativism/externalism, but using the old old mirror of the soul trope. But now I want to look at imagination, where there does not seem to be anything 'outside' to anchor thought.

if I knew what a poplar is — Agustino

Google images can help you out with that. They are quite varied, but the ones 'I had in mind', are the tall fast growing ones of narrow habit with upward pointing branches, that you often see in France in single file used as a windbreak. Just the thing to reflect in a lake.

Externalism is better: the key mistake is to think of consciousness as something (that "mirrors" a world "out there") locked inside the skull. Actually it's something out and abroad in the world, it's the name of a a process that threads between things and the brain, and takes in the actual physical objects as part of its process. — gurugeorge

Yes, Externalism gives a very good account of immediate experience, sensation and perception and it is the absence of an inner world that I have been emphasising so far. But it does not immediately account for acts of imagination such as those proposed in my previous post, that do not seem to be interactions with the external world in the same way. Has anyone given such an account that you know of, or shall I try and continue to think it through?

Moving on...

When I see a tree, I see it over there, where the tree is, and if there is any doubt, I can go over there and bang my head on it until I am convinced. But right now, I am not seeing a tree, but imagining seeing a tree, and imagining going over to it and imagining banging my head. I find it very useful to be able to distinguish the world I see and touch etc from the world of imagination, because weirdness results when I try to bang a real head on an imagined tree.

An imagined tree is rather less substantial than a reflected tree, because when I see the reflected tree, as I mentioned before, I am seeing the real tree displaced. The imagined tree is, let's say for the moment, some compound of memory, language, concepts, stuff going on in the brain anyway, that does not directly relate to what's going on in the world, where I am sitting in my chair typing on the laptop.

So I invite you to imagine you are standing by a lake, and opposite you is a solitary tree right by the edge, reflected in the still water. And imagine walking round the lake to the tree, and gently banging your head on it.

My guess is that as soon as you have read it, you have imagined it. Now you might be able to tell me all sorts of details that you have imagined, or you might not. What species of tree, whether the margin of the lake is muddy or stoney, how long it took you to walk round. People vary.

Now I tell you it was a poplar tree, and it took you a good 15 minutes to reach the tree. And again, as soon as you read the words, the adjustments or additions are made in your imagination.

Did you have to start the imaginary walk again, or did you just stretch or compress, or 'solidify' the walk you had already imagined? It doesn't really matter.

What matters for my purposes is that brains do two very distinct, but not necessarily separate things:
1. They interact directly and immediately with the world via the body and senses.
2. They construct and run models of varying degrees of abstraction.

One particular thing I want to emphasise, because I think it is going to be important later; it does not take 15 minutes to imagine walking for 15 minutes - model time is very different to body time.

I'll stop here for a bit, so Ag can say 'so what?' and Harry can say I'm making it all up, and Street can say something I don't quite understand, and others can say things I can't even imagine.

I'm still a bit fuzzy on the specifics of what the mirror analogy is meant to explain though, — StreetlightX

It's not meant to explain anything; it's intended to make a conceptual space in the mind (ha ha) for 'the virtual' which is not where it seems to be, and not what it seems to be, yet is not something else or somewhere else, and again yet is perfectly intelligible and real. I'm having to work harder than I expected to do even this simple thing; people will insist that the mirror has an inside, or else that the image is on the surface like a painting (see below).

I would say the image is not "in" the mirror, but on the surface of the mirror. — Janus

One can readily demonstrate that the image is not on the surface of the mirror by moving one's point of view, and noticing that the image is not the same; this is parallax that I mentioned before. The image can be demonstrated to be exactly where the ray diagram shows it to be and where one sees it to be, despite that the rays do not come from there. We can arrange a mirror such that I can see you in it, and you can see me in it. If an image was on the surface, we should both be able to see it the same. In fact the blankness of the mirror is an essential feature, as soon as someone writes on the mirror with their lipstick, we can both see it, and it obscures both our images.

So, the brain is analogous to the mirror. In your understanding of this metaphor is consciousness analogous to the reflections or to the reflectance? — Janus

Consciousness, by analogy, is the reflected image that has an apparent location 'in one's head'. The idea I'm wanting to convey is that it can be the case that though consciousness is a physical phenomenon produced by a brain, just as reflections are real phenomena produced by mirrors or water, yet it is not what it appears to be or where it appears to be. We understand, most of us, that when we see a tree, and a reflection of a tree in the lake, we are not seeing a literal second tree in the lake, but rather seeing the same tree 'round a corner'. This becomes more obvious when one considers a periscope, or the wing mirror of a car.

It is perhaps worth noting that in the case of the wing mirror (or the lake) what one sees is displaced from behind one to in front, (or from on the bank to in the lake), but in the case of the periscope it rather that the point of view itself is displaced - one sees as if one's head were that much higher.

"Consciousness is seeing the world round a corner", or perhaps better "the world seeing
round a corner". But don't take it literally. But that is as far as I want to press this analogy; it's time to talk more seriously about brains.

I'll get back to that a bit later.

Yes. I was trying to illustrate that though nothing can be taken for granted in every conversation, still in every conversation some things must be taken for granted. When you discover the memo, we can discuss that, but until you do discover it, the mere possibility that there might be such a memo undermines the discussion without adding anything. Thus we can discuss how life is but a dream when we wake up, but until then, flat-earther's have nothing to contribute to astronomy classes.

the image is really "in the mirror". — Metaphysician Undercover

No, it isn't really anywhere. It's a virtual image, not a real image. But to be honest, I don't want to discuss optics, but consciousness. If you do not understand that a virtual image can be located, you won't understand the analogy, but I am already wanting to move on; the analogy was intended to open up a conceptual space to consider the nature of consciousness, that's all.

I don't believe action and thought are as separate as you make them seem - thinking is also an action. — Agustino

But that is what I am saying, that thought is a real action - the act of modelling, or reflecting, that happens in the real world. But we have passed the limit of the mirror analogy, now, because the brain, unlike the mirror, is not passive. So I need to find another way to talk about it.

I must allow that brain is active in modelling the world, rather than passive in reflecting it, so I must allow 'inner workings' somewhat like a computer. But we allow computers inner workings without allowing them inner worlds, so I think all is not yet lost.

So with a lot of hand-waving and vagueness, I can talk about a modelling process that integrates memory and sensation. I see the lightening, and memory tells me to expect the thunder, and the model is that Shango is forging iron, or some far-fetched tale about electrostatic discharge in the atmosphere.

So what about someone who always contemplates destroying his enemies, committing adultery with his friends' wives, etc. but never does any of these out of, say, fear of punishment? — Agustino

Here is is a highly complex model that includes (a model of) the modeller as a part of the model and is 'run' just like a program, and it is just such complex reflexive models that are (mis)taken to be an inner world. I wanted to work my way a bit more slowly and carefully towards this, but the modelling error that I think gives the bite of reality to the inner world is the identification of the modeller with the model of the modeller.

I don't think there is anything which should make you talk about "behind the mirror". — Metaphysician Undercover

There is. As the ray diagram indicates, and I remember doing it in physics 101, one can readily find the location of the virtual image using parallax, and it is behind the mirror.

The only thing "out there" is light reflecting off of, or being absorbed by, various surfaces. The image in the mirror appears only in the mind. — Harry Hindu

Well that is a common way of understanding things, that I am questioning. I am saying that there is no inner world, no mind in which images appear. 'Seeing an image' - tree reflected in water is more or less identical to 'seeing a tree' and these seeings occur not in the mind but out there in the world where the tree and the water are; they are what brains do. The mind is a virtual 'behind the mirror' world where nothing happens because it does not exist, just as nothing happens in the mirror world, it merely reflects the happening of the real world.

Thus the attempt to create a conscious computer becomes a matter of finding the right way to fuck it up. :rofl:

What's the import of all this? — Agustino

I'm not sure. It might just save folks some time wasted looking for something where it isn't, or it might have much bigger implications. One implication is that there is no virtue in the virtual world, but only in what is expressed. It puts value firmly in action rather than thought. You are what you do, not what you think.

... he no longer considered the mirror stage as a moment in the life of the infant, but as representing a permanent structure of subjectivity, or as the paradigm of "Imaginary order".

It sounds very close, though I don't want the analogy to be taken too literally. In some ways, Apo's 'modelling relation' might be more appropriate.

We model the world in terms some "I" that stands at the centre of this view of things. — apokrisis

The action of brain is to model/reflect the world into the world as if there were a subject at the centre, just as a mirror reflects as if there was a mirror world in/behind the mirror. So then, by hypothesis, it is interpersonal relations, brain modelling brain, self modelling other, rather than a literal mirror, that give rise to the appearance of infinite depth. One sees the other as seeing oneself seeing the other... and since personal relations are what is important for a social creature, this depth of inner world, the mind, becomes reified - eventually to the point where 'individualism' is taken as the fundamental reality.

Or this has all been a dream and we will all wake up and see that the Earth was flat all along. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

When we wake up, we can have a laugh about that maybe, but in the dream, I want to talk about the dream-world, and to bring that up is just a futile undermining of any conversation, that is equivalent to the radical postmodern denial of fact that you seemed to want to reject.