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Defining Consciousness
Hans Ricke
Sunday, 24 May 2009 05:48 UTC
The special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies is now available here and I would like to discuss it in small portions to avoid another thread that is too huge to be read.
My first proposal is the editorial written by Chris Nunn
added 17 June 2009 14:08 UTC
Dear all, seeing how this discussion evolves I would like to keep this thread confined to two subtopics: 1. discussing Chris Nunn’s editorial and 2. discussing the general way how we want to discuss the whole special issue of the Journal of consciousness studies.
Let us open different threads for different other subtopics, e.g. articles. The big thread has quite often been criticized because of addressing too many aspects of this matter. So please, let us not fall back into the same track.
added 7 July 2009
As of today this thread will be locked for a few days. Hopefully there will be a new discussion about one of the articles soon.
added 31 July 2009
apparently there is no interest in discussing more articles of the special issue here. Thread will again be locked. If anyone is interested please notify me by a personal message.
updatded 8 September 2009
You will find two links that are related to the definition of consciousness below. The respective threads may be found this way.
Both threads have been part of a major effort of this forum dedicated to the definition of Consciousness.
Yours friendly
Hans
Two Links related to the definition of conciousness
1. the discussion of our JCS article
2. a very long thread about defining consciousness
Updated 09 September 2009 09:35 UTC
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Robert wrote:
“To understand those carefully thought through definitions that I here state are most probably correct one needs to know to what the definitions refer.”
This was the starting point of my paper with Hans (more than one year ago). You arrived a bit late at our debate and many of your points are similar to the ones we did (e.g. context-dependence, relation with scientific disciplines). I suggest you to write a full paper and publish it as we did.
Best
Alfredo
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Alfredo,
first you tell me that the point I make is not original (and I didn’t say that it was) and then you suggest that I write it up as a paper…aren’t papers supposed to be original?In my note I stated a position (mine), to bring Sussa up to date as much as anything else. I didn’t make any claim about the originality of these observations, which I myself has made in this and other forums as well.
But now you mention your paper let’s have a look at it. What is the name of the paper and where was it published?
And who publishes the non-original opinions of observers as papers? I can’t think of anyone ~ I wouldn’t be rushing to read material from such a publisher even if they published my opinions. Indeed, isn’t that what blogs are for?
As for my original ideas, I am still bouncing them off people for their opinion.
Robert
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Alfredo,
BTW I looked through the papers that you sent me earlier and I couldn’t see any that listed both you and Hans as authors. Or did you mean that you and Hans have published papers (but not necessarily together?).Let me know which paper you were referring to in your last message and I’ll have a look
thanks :),
Robert -
Dear Robert:
My paper with Hans is in the JCS special issue on Defining Consciousness – the one we are discussing here.
About your other points:
“first you tell me that the point I make is not original (and I didn’t say that it was) and then you suggest that I write it up as a paper…aren’t papers supposed to be original?”
Alfredo: The sub-forum you opened here in BPCC has some original aspects that deserve publication. Independently of me and Hans you arrived at similar conclusions. It would be particularly interesting for me to see them published (Otmar will say that I am doing politics here but OK I assume!).“In my note I stated a position (mine), to bring Sussa up to date as much as anything else. I didn’t make any claim about the originality of these observations, which I myself has made in this and other forums as well.
But now you mention your paper let’s have a look at it. What is the name of the paper and where was it published?”
Alfredo: “What is Consciousness? Towards a Preliminary Definition” JCS special issue on Defining Consciousness. I did not send it before because it was not published.“And who publishes the non-original opinions of observers as papers? I can’t think of anyone ~ I wouldn’t be rushing to read material from such a publisher even if they published my opinions. Indeed, isn’t that what blogs are for? As for my original ideas, I am still bouncing them off people for their opinion.”
Alfredo: In my humble opinion, you have done a great job with discussion forums and blogs, but publishing in good Jounals is an important step in everyone´s career – it can be combined with organization of informal discussions as we have done. Originality is not a matter of all or nothing, your detailed proposal has original aspects relatively to our proposal and I´d be delighted if you acknowledged our partial agreements. I am sure JCS would analyse and decide about your contribution; I guess they are trying to become more democratic. I would not say the same for ASSC; they have systematically rejected my proposals for talk, oral communication or tutorials in their annual meetings, as well as all my submissions to the Journal Consciousness & Cognition.Best
Alfredo
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Otmar wrote:
“For example, when Alfredo defends his own definition against my claim relating to personal identity, he invokes the phrase ‘my conception of personal identity’. As Alfredo continues in his defense against my further criticisms, he writes, ‘In my view (I haven’s discussed this issue with Hans) the quantum-like system is encapsulated within the brain…this view is different from researchers like…’ he presents his personal interpretive framework and keeps Hans’ options open, all the while graciously acknowledging other views. Alfredo continues, ‘you [otmar] are attracted to the …Von Neumman et al view.’ Like any good politician, he spins his own definition.
Using his mental abilities, presumably through the auspices of his own consciousness, Alfredo creates his own definition of consciousness. Therefore, Alfredo uses his consciousness to create his own reality. I, you, they, all use consciousness to create our own realities.”Alfredo: This debate was in the JCS-online list. We can continue it here. One of my disagreements with you is about the meaning of “to create his own reality”. Like Merleau-Ponty, I consider my own reality as being my living body and its relations with the world. My consciousness creates thoughts that can become actions of my body, but this move is not automatic or for free. In the Von Neumann et al. interpretations of quantum theory, the mere act of observing a micro system collapses the wavefunction and then creates a material reality. For me, creating a reality from consciousness is not such a free lunch; the subject (the living body) has to work, has to use technological tools, to spend energy and so on, not to mention the social organization involved in the production of material goods (as stressed by Karl Marx; in this issue – not in his political views – I would agree with him).
Best
Alfredo
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Alfredo,
I misunderstood your previous note and thought you were just being facetious, so sorry about that.Yes, I’ve been wanting to move the process forward for some time now but I want to ‘close the loop’, so to speak, and study each of the areas I personally flagged as important. The last two memory and emotion and I am almost through the books I have on emotion (the biggest ones always end up being last :).
I have been relaying Essays on emotion to Evolutionary Psychology and Mind & Brain for comment and have received mainly back channel comments to date. I was half thinking of starting a thread here on Emotion and see what people have to say.
My basic position is that emotion, and all other inner felt states, come from the same type of information which has utility in its most fundamental form. We see the end result in the somewhat more sophisticated forms of communication, such as facial expressions and so on. Trying to start at the facial expression and work back is like trying to understand what a motor car is by observing that Ferraris have something to do with ego and male display, small fuel saver cars have something to do with feelings of responsibility to the environment, trucks have something to do with the desire to make money and so on. And then thinking that the car has something to do with those drives and passions rather than the more mundane ‘transport’, a function which even the simplest form of motor vehicle can perform.
Emotions, in my view, are much the same ~ we see the examples of emotions and then go off and study the wrong end. Of course the wrong end is just as relevant to the general study of emotions, but you can not possibly figure out what the utility of emotion is, the reason for and manner of its evolution or what function they collectively perform (or the function they perform in common) if you take the wrong end of emotion and study only that…
So that is where my mind is at present. When I complete the reading circuit I will try for the complete theoretical circuit (one model) and then I will be hitting the public, academic and lay, with the results of these many years of dabbling. Fortunately, I do not have to evaluate the worth of any results – that is up to the people who consume my thoughts.
Robert
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Hans,
I read your paper ‘What is Consciousness? Towards a Preliminary Definition’. It is clear you are dutiful, diligent and earnest. If I trusted that anyone could cobble together a definition from the box of parts we have before us I would certainly trust you and Alfredo to do it. No question. You have the faith, orthodoxy and methodological clarity of excellent scientists. Among your beliefs (one I do not share) is that all the pieces are already in the box or will be found just around the next corner with additional reductively reasoned research or an averaged-out consensus. In the box are the full gamut of folk psychology terms, the full gamut of consciousness referents overtly expressed or not, all the well-accepted scientific and philosophical theories, and an ever expanding plethora of information on brain mechanisms. What’s oddly missing is the very thing that consciousness is in one sense responsible for providing
-an explanatory context to make sense of it all. It is not something that can be found by the ordinary methods of scientific reduction. If it was it would be in the box already. Another belief I do not share is that the missing part, the explanatory component, is an inherent aspect of the situation, is simply out there waiting to be plucked whole from the tree of knowledge. Explanatory matrices are creative acts. We make them up and then project them onto the world to inform our activities and feed ourselves meaning. We’ve been doing this with the most rudimentary explanatory tools – matter and spirit concepts. It is time to creatively rethink this bigger picture. The issue of consciousness, because it does not conform to our dualistic enterprise of measurability and mystery, provides us the opportunity, impetus and symbolic metaphors to expand our explanatory matrix. I invite you and Alfredo and any other persons reading here to employ your considerable talents thuswise. In a sense you already are as (whether you admit it or not) all cobbling is creative. Your referential nucleus concept is surprisingly hearty considering the milieu of confusion and disagreement out of which it was ostensibly averaged. As a small note I ask you to consider including the full spectrum of awareness in nature (human and non-human) as an informative aspect of this nucleus concept and to alert yourselves to the anthropocentric impulses misinforming the general cobbling activities.Thank you for inviting me to read and comment and thank you for your well-thought-out work.
Best,
CH -
The etymology of emotion is in fact very easy to trace given what we know about its hard coding in our brains through recursion of the fight/flight dichotomy in that emotion appears to cover communication of intent in dealing with context – to focus on context replacement issues (anger/sex) or context coexistence issues(fear/grief).
The initial fight/flight dichotomy going through first level recursion (a) refines anger(fight)/fear(flight) and (b) introduces acceptance/rejection.
Apply recursion again and we have the dimension of:
anger, love(sex), acceptance, surprise, anticipation, rejection, grief, fear.
By the time we get to 6 loops of recursion we find the above eight generic categories within each category. e.g.
context + text:
anger + anger (highly differentiating)
anger + sex
anger + acceptance
anger + surprise
anger + anticipation
anger + rejection
anger + grief
anger + fear (highly integrating within differentiating)These give us eight classes of ‘anger’ with local contexts customising such to present us with specialist instances of the classes that can include unique, highly context sensitive, expressions. (A context can customise to the level of expunging/marginalising/amplifying classes and so we see the emergence of actualisation of classes as ‘small world networks’ as a result of exposure of the ‘regular network’ of all possible classes to a random network, i,e. the local context environment.
If we jump from 64 categories to 4096 to 16+million we move into areas too specialist, too singular, for formal working but the range of 64 to 4096 is enough for general categorisation and prediction of goals/purpose etc.
There is also a refinement dynamic present that converts ‘negative’ to ‘positive’ and visa versa – e.g. anticipation is initially focused on protection and so covers anticipation of WRONG doing. Development allows for the emergence of anticipation of RIGHT doing in the form of cultivation.
The generic emotion of ‘anger’ refines into such as self-respect, single-mindedness, perseverance etc etc., and secondary emotions emerge where such are dependent on depth in recursion to allow for an emerging sense of self.
For a fuller coverage of the IDM template mapping of fight/flight see the first part of Categories of Mediation – practice
There is an extensive reference/further reading list at the end of that document. For a summary of the categories and their isomorphism with other dichotomy-derived perspectives see the IDM summary.
For the application of emotional assessments of situations and their translation into yin/yang assessments of situations see the Emotional I Ching work
Chris.
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Dear all,
please reread the opening post for an update
Yours friendly
Hans -
Dear Hans,
I found the JCS issue slightly depressing because it was insufficiently oriented towards physics and medicine. In physics we can only deal with phenomena that are described in physical terms. In medicine we need essentially the same physical description although this may involve a physiological/biological description.
There is a thread in this forum that deals with a scientific approach to consciousness: Will we ever be able to have a physical science of conscious experience? . Does anyone think that we can describe conscious experience in physical language?
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