Brain Physiology, Cognition and Consciousness group: topic
This is a public discussion board
The quest for a definition of the term 'consciousness'
Hans Ricke
Saturday, 17 May 2008 08:55 UTC
Arnold chose this expression of a quest to refer to what I am doing elsewhere, in fact almost fulltime since a while.
And he also gave his own definition, which is a remarkable one :
“I suggest the following succinct definition:
Consciousness is a transparent phenomenal experience of the world from a privileged egocentric perspective."
My actual concern is the situation that no generally agreed upon definition or a set of definitions exists within the fields of science that are working on the phenomenon of consciousness. This missing definition could be a kind of minimal consensus, with very few properties, but even that does not seem to exist.
There are many different views on this matter:
Thomas Metzinger: – an ill-defined term
David Chalmers: – we need more definitions
Christof Koch: – we just need a rough definition
Max Velmans: – we follow the common usage in which the term “consciousness” is synonymous with “awareness” or “conscious awareness”
Andrew Brook: – It is unlikely that consciousness studies will ever achieve a sound scientific footing with such an imprecise and ungainly conceptual toolbox
( these statements – Chalmers and Koch – not to be taken literally, but from how I remember the talks )
My idea that a well founded group of veteran consciousness researchers should be locked up like in a ‘conclave’ until they have come up with some sensible agreement has not been entirely embraced, which may be due to many reasons.
I still think this task is overdue and the current situation is almost embarrassing and it is the obligation of those people who want to establish a science of consciousness.
So getting back to Arnold’s definition I do not think it is possible to find wider agreement upon a definition like that. Also I believe a process of definition will need a longer determined effort, in which properties will be included others will be excluded. As long as there is not even undisputed wether consciousness is a real or an illusiory phenomenon, as long as there is still unlclear wether consciousness is only receptive or as well active, we are facing quite some task, but I think it is worth going for it.
references:
Max Velmans on Defining Consciousness
Andrew Brook on Terminology of Consciousness
John Searle on Consciousness
Thomas Metzinger on The Problem of Consciousness
Robert van Gulick on Consciousness
Rocco Gennaro on Consciousness
David M. Rosenthal on Concepts and Definitions of Consciousness
Please note this:
Hi all,
even though there were some interesting new turns last week, we have decided to lock this thread for several reasons. We may reopen it when the special edition of the Journal of Consciousness Studies covering this topic is out.
Meanwhile the thread stays locked and pinned. If you want to continue certain lines of thought please open a new thread for this.
Yours friendly
Hans
Updated 07 April 2009 06:50 UTC
-
Replies
This topic has been locked by the forum moderators.
Jump to resultsResults
-
Hans Ricke writes on 03 April 2009 | 12:19:
Hans writes: on page 111 of this thread you [Anthony] wrote:
“Similarly, if one asks, what is consciousness?, the starting-point answer will need to speak of the physiological activities that human organism carries out, performs – the activities that get performed to receive information about objects and events, specifically, information about the state or changing state of the system itself or of its external environment that it can perceive; the activities that get performed to process that information to yield an adjustment in the organism that accords with evolved biological imperatives.”
Hans writes: Objection! About consciousness we will NOT need to start with physiology. A much more natural starting point is the phenomenology of consciousness.
Anthony responds: Thinking physiologically makes sense as starting point for the quest to explain our ability to experience events consciously. At least, physiology at a fairly general level, like explaining breathing in terms of gas exchange in the lungs. Physiology can begin to explain cognitive functionings, at least metaphorically, in terms of information processing, say, — mind as machine, computations on representations.
Hans writes: We know about consciousness because we experience. We know this in the most direct way possible. We may overlook this, it may take time or effort to realize this, but then we know it.
Anthony responds: Yes, we know directly that we experience consciously some of the information we receive. But do we know directly that we experience consciously only some – a small fraction – of the information we receive from within and without our bodies? I wonder. We have at least figured that out, a few percent. We need to explain our abilities to experience events non-consciously and consciously in physiological terms at some starting level of physiological explanation, because those experiential abilities arise from physiological activities.
Hans writes: Physiology comes in much later, centuries later if you will. Physiology certainly comes in when we want to understand particular problems and aspects of conscious experience.
Anthony responds: Yes, we discovered our ability to experience events consciously long before we learned much about our physiology. But now we know that all cognitive functionings reflect physiological activities that we perform, and we can give physiological explanations at levels of physiological explanation that accord with the broad knowledge we have of physiology, and that satisfy as plausible hypotheses. The explanation of our ability to experience consciously resides in the domain of physiology, not philosophy.
Yours warmly
Anthony -
Hans Ricke writes on 03 April 2009 | 11:57:
Hans writes: Human consciousness is observable from the outside, at least to some extent and in some sense. If we refer to consciousness as the content of conscious experience, we have very good studies that tell us what is happening inside the brain of someone while e.g. a conscious visual percept is experienced. This observation still has inaccuracies, but to some extent it tells us very meaningful things about who human consciousness functions.
Anthony responds: I can’t help noticing, Hans, your reference to physiology (“what is happening inside the brain”) in telling us “very meaningful things about who [sic] [how] human consciousness functions”. I think we know enough about human physiology to formulate plausible and testable explanations about not so much how human consciousness functions but about how humans experience consciously and non-consciously.
Yours warmly,
Anthony -
recently…
Anthony Writes: When I speak a sentence or paragraph from the memo handed me by the interlocutors behind the nearly closed door, I speak what my “large subconscious processing network” (viz., those interlocutors) has already determined regarding the sense of my thought. I speak as a robot. Should you and I have a lively, spontaneous conversation over lunch, I would learn of my thoughts as spoken, by hearing my own voice, no sooner than you would learn of my thoughts as spoken – and vice-versa. No time to think for oneself much during lively conversation. The conversation occurs between two robots, reading off the messages from our subconsciouses.RKS:
The elephant in the room is that consumer of experience that you continuously include. OK, you have stripped him of all decision making processes and left that to an entirely deterministic subconscious. So far so good (ie logical). But then you add “by hearing my own voice”, “I would learn of my thoughts…”This extra bit is the fly in the ointment. You can’t make an experiencer as you have described him from the simple deterministic processes you allude to.
As for thinking/talking, my solution is to point out that our consciousness has two different modes. In the first mode, we sit quietly and think. The world is our mind and we may ruminate within it. In the second mode we are far too distracted by engagement in the real world to ruminate inwardly. But we are still just as conscious. The difference is that thoughts become actions, including facial expressions, spoken words, gestures and other interactions with those around us.
In reality, a mix of the two forms is possible with some people being able to carry on internal thought whilst engaging in conversation.
I note a particular experience that I think you may have had and that may be responsible for at least part of your hypothesis. Consider the two modes of consciousness I have mentioned above. Now consider what would happen if instead of a mix we had a separation so that one consciousness observed the other.
I recall some of my early experiences of internal thought. It was like there was thinking occurring in my head and I stated this openly. I have noted this in children who would be around the same age of my recalled experience (3~5 years old I think).
In the case I’ve described we have the mode 2 child (external/interactional consciousness, initially the default mode) becoming aware of an emerging mode 1 consciousness. The really interesting experience is when mode 1 observes mode 2. In this we observe the automata you have described, interacting and talking quite automatically (or so it seems) as this is the observation of mode 1 consciousness. If we switch to mode 2 momentarily we observe that we have an ‘observer’ consciousness simply observing everything we do.
This raises an even more vexing question – what is it that can switch between the two consciousnesses? How is it that we can experience the inner dialogue whilst carrying on a conversation and then switch to the conversational consciousness and note the inner dialogue.
Note that the inner dialogue or thought appears to be quite automatic when we view it from mode 2. In mode 1 we are the inner dialogue – those thoughts are us and the body does its thing autonomously. In mode 2 we are what we are doing and the thoughts appear to be autonomous.
This is just an observation I have made and not the foundation of any model I am currently working on.
Anthony Continues: …evaluative thinking…
RKS:
This evaluative thinking, I take it, is not deterministic as is the subconscious? If not, why not? And we still have the experiencer at the end of the chain. You seem to have assigned a specific role to this experiencer – he apportions subconscious and conscious load for a particular cognitive task. But we could have two deterministic processes, one that considers the immediate or proximal concern and one that considers the more remote or distal concern. The remote process includes a wider scope, both in spatial, temporal and abstract domains such as "what are the consequences of this action going forward?; is this action consistent with long term goals?; are these actions consistent with cultural considerations, family, the law and so on.Anthony Continues:…meta-cognising…
RKS:
This appears to me to be an avoidance of an answer rather than an answer though I am not sure exactly what your characterisation of the meta- processes is.Robert
-
Hi all,
even though there were some interesting new turns last week, we have decided to lock this thread for several reasons. We may reopen it when the special edition of the Journal of Consciousness Studies covering this topic is published.
Meanwhile the thread stays locked and pinned. If you want to continue certain lines of thought please open a new thread for this.
Yours friendly
Hans
Results
-
