Mar 26 2012: i think the split brain example is mostly used to show how functions of the brain relate to conscious thinking and how through physical means we can better understand how our brains consciously view things. This may however, based on what ive read so far and due to my lack of understanding, be a poor justification for how the easy problems get at the hard one....
i really enjoyed the link you posted, it was pretty humorous and interesting. that is something ive ever considered before though. it seems plausible that our consciousness doesnt need to directly be connected to our brain and could something be connected to objects, even ones that are not internal organs.
this is something you may find interesting and may have heard of before, and sort of gets at the buddhist approach to meditation i was talking about before... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1EPuLLEoUk&feature=relmfu
dr hagelin talks about a unity of consciousness, and how nature is comprised of the intelligence of consciousness, maybe similar to the 'life force' you talked about. he says the the string theory presents a unified field which is consciousness itself. the theory combines both quantum mechanics and classical physics which helps to unite the idea of the observed and the observed through this fluid process of observing. it creates a three-pronged aspect of nature where there is the known, the knower and the knowing which i again can see as being similar to your three fold concept of man in which the thinking would be this process of knowing, the feeling would be the knower and the willing would be the known by willing things into action. hagelin definitely pushes the idea of meditation to get in touch with the deeper levels of consciosness in order to reunite with the unity of nature. some of his stuff can at times seem far fetched but he raises some interesting points...let me know what you think of it!
Mar 26 2012: im just waiting for a confirmation email that my account has been approved. thank you for the source....do you believe that the easy problems will help to further understand the hard problem or do you think the hard problem is something that is in a whole different realm of understanding?
Mar 24 2012: Haha i can imagine, some of the stuff seemed pretty dense. ill check out some of the youtube readings to see what i can find.
I was wondering if you knew any examples of "easy problems" that have helped to change how we view consciousness? ive been thinking about how it makes sense that we can get closer to narrowing down the hard problem by getting at the easy ones but can only find the example of split-brain patients...
Mar 24 2012: Haha I agree, it is quite egocentric but it seems interesting that there is such an emphasis on phenomenology. I always wonder though that if through the first person perspective they discovered a greater meaning to consciousness rather than the typical scientific perspective that focuses on third person public information.
Ever since learning about neuroscience in biology i always thought the mind was one of the most intriguing things, so when the research project that all of the seniors have to do each year came around I figured it'd be a good chance to get at the hard problem.
I checked out steiner, which book of his would you recommend to read first? They all look really interesting!
Mar 22 2012: I feel as though the Buddhist approach to consciousness compliments the idea of fully understanding "beingness." it seems odd that they obtain some high understanding of consciousness though a loss of self and detachment from any self referential loop that could be considered self conscious.but maybe through the act of attaching ourselves to things we lose sight of the true nature and experience of the world.
I think I may divide the presentation up into theoretical discussions of consciousness from a functionalist, Buddhist, vitalist, QM, neurological/thought and some rethinking-of-nature approach. Sadly there is much more I need to learn before I'll be comfortable giving any presentation
Do you mean have I ever thought of these sorta of things, like what consciousness is, before or was it something my teacher had discussed?
I do also feel as though I should touch upon the concept of self and group consciousness. It seems like a much too prevalent thing in nature with animals to ignore. It also tied into a Ted talk I watched recently by Jonathan haidt called religion, evolution and the ecstasy of self transcendence.
Haha you a definitely right, there is nothing easy about this problem. It was appropriately named. I do think that my interest in neuroscience will lead me to a doctoral thesis on consciousness though. Some of these discussions are to interesting to avoid but sometimes aggravating in that there is sometimes no end in sight so I think it would be nice to someday clear as much of this up as I can for myself. Hopefully that day will come fairly soon
Mar 22 2012: Hmm, I had never realized the impact of thought in consciousness before. It seems like a hard thing to overlook now but when it comes down to it, it is our only tool to make any realizations. I had also not thought of thinking as the thing which divides subjectivity and objectivity, but it definitely makes sense. It sort of seems like consciousness could be some illusion created by our thoughts.
Would you say there Descartes was in a way correct based on the nonphysical nature of thoughts and consciousness? If there is physical and nonphysical then to some degree his dualist approach was right
I do have one question, and you can choose to answer it or not because it sort of drifts away from the whole conversation, but if you were to break consciousness, as a topic, into various parts, what would those parts be? After looking back through the conversation, I'm still sort of struggling to figure out how I should break up the presentation I need to give and was wondering what aspects of consciousness you think are more important or whether there are obvious divides you see in the topic
Mar 20 2012: ...objective lense once again distorts our image. It does seem a little backwards to distrust the only lense that we have to see the world, but at the same time it seems somewhat natural based on our observations....do you think a person who has always been alone would have a concept of consciousness unless there was someone there to prove they were in fact conscious?
Mar 20 2012: Do you believe that these materialist view points will ever yield a reasonable explanation or do you think they will continue to encounter the same problems?
It feels natural that if you put all of the pieces of the puzzle together, defining and explaining the functional properties that are thought to apply to consciousness, then you will be at the limit of what you are calling consciousness. Regardless of what people see in the outcome (the solved puzzle) it seems like this should be a sufficient explanation. I feel as though this is the approach that has been taken with explaining the processes of life and to this point it has been accepted as an explanation. Maybe this jigsaw puzzle metaphor is flawed, and I understand that even when the puzzle is solved there will always seem to be the missing piece of why these pieces produce an experience but I feel as though it creates a worthy, if not complete, representation of consciousness. But maybe that is just it, all we can ever obtain is a 'representation' or a correlation between what we think is consciousness and what we think creates it. I myself don't like the underlying pessimism of this reasoning and don't want to agree with the Dennet deflationary explanation. However, the concept of this 'life force' seems very appealing but in saying that I worry that it is appealing to me because I want to think my conscious experience is something greater than the millions of connections in my brain. In the book I am reading called Explaining consciousness-the hard problem there is an essay by Richard Warner that talks about the incorrigibility of humans and how we must guard against subjective distorting influences in order to produce some sense of objectivity and I feel that in this search for an 'appealing' answer that we may be succumbing to this distorting influences. It's hard to ignore the fact that consciousness requires a subjective element so maybe the fact that we are accustomed to looking at science through an
Mar 19 2012: Haha I was hoping it would too. Thank you for all of your comments though, they were extremely helpful! I will definitely check out your conversation as well.
Just out of curiosity, what is your take on the quantum approach to consciousness? I've been reading a bit about the orchestrated objective reduction theory and although im having a little trouble grasping it, it seems like a fairly sound argument.
Mar 6 2012: I do agree, this was quite wonderfully stated.
Frans, what do you believe we are as actors offstage? or does the fact that this stage is always present inhibit us from defining ourselves without it? This also makes me wonder whether or not there is every a true self, or even a soul, or if it only comes into existence because of its relative position. I suppose that if there was no idea of a soul or of the self then it would reaffirm your belief that we are all of one. I can't wonder if i am this 'one being' and my existence allows me to obtain consciousness and perceive the world or if its the 'one being' that i am a manifestation of that allows me to identify myself. I feel like i'm having trouble articulating what i want to say but i hope you can understand what i am trying to get at.
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A reply on Conversation: What exactly is or defines the self-aware, subjective, and phenomenal experience we call consciousness?
i really enjoyed the link you posted, it was pretty humorous and interesting. that is something ive ever considered before though. it seems plausible that our consciousness doesnt need to directly be connected to our brain and could something be connected to objects, even ones that are not internal organs.
this is something you may find interesting and may have heard of before, and sort of gets at the buddhist approach to meditation i was talking about before... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1EPuLLEoUk&feature=relmfu
dr hagelin talks about a unity of consciousness, and how nature is comprised of the intelligence of consciousness, maybe similar to the 'life force' you talked about. he says the the string theory presents a unified field which is consciousness itself. the theory combines both quantum mechanics and classical physics which helps to unite the idea of the observed and the observed through this fluid process of observing. it creates a three-pronged aspect of nature where there is the known, the knower and the knowing which i again can see as being similar to your three fold concept of man in which the thinking would be this process of knowing, the feeling would be the knower and the willing would be the known by willing things into action. hagelin definitely pushes the idea of meditation to get in touch with the deeper levels of consciosness in order to reunite with the unity of nature. some of his stuff can at times seem far fetched but he raises some interesting points...let me know what you think of it!
A reply on Conversation: What exactly is or defines the self-aware, subjective, and phenomenal experience we call consciousness?
A reply on Conversation: What exactly is or defines the self-aware, subjective, and phenomenal experience we call consciousness?
I was wondering if you knew any examples of "easy problems" that have helped to change how we view consciousness? ive been thinking about how it makes sense that we can get closer to narrowing down the hard problem by getting at the easy ones but can only find the example of split-brain patients...
A reply on Conversation: What exactly is or defines the self-aware, subjective, and phenomenal experience we call consciousness?
Ever since learning about neuroscience in biology i always thought the mind was one of the most intriguing things, so when the research project that all of the seniors have to do each year came around I figured it'd be a good chance to get at the hard problem.
I checked out steiner, which book of his would you recommend to read first? They all look really interesting!
A reply on Conversation: What exactly is or defines the self-aware, subjective, and phenomenal experience we call consciousness?
I think I may divide the presentation up into theoretical discussions of consciousness from a functionalist, Buddhist, vitalist, QM, neurological/thought and some rethinking-of-nature approach. Sadly there is much more I need to learn before I'll be comfortable giving any presentation
Do you mean have I ever thought of these sorta of things, like what consciousness is, before or was it something my teacher had discussed?
I do also feel as though I should touch upon the concept of self and group consciousness. It seems like a much too prevalent thing in nature with animals to ignore. It also tied into a Ted talk I watched recently by Jonathan haidt called religion, evolution and the ecstasy of self transcendence.
Haha you a definitely right, there is nothing easy about this problem. It was appropriately named. I do think that my interest in neuroscience will lead me to a doctoral thesis on consciousness though. Some of these discussions are to interesting to avoid but sometimes aggravating in that there is sometimes no end in sight so I think it would be nice to someday clear as much of this up as I can for myself. Hopefully that day will come fairly soon
A reply on Conversation: What exactly is or defines the self-aware, subjective, and phenomenal experience we call consciousness?
Would you say there Descartes was in a way correct based on the nonphysical nature of thoughts and consciousness? If there is physical and nonphysical then to some degree his dualist approach was right
I do have one question, and you can choose to answer it or not because it sort of drifts away from the whole conversation, but if you were to break consciousness, as a topic, into various parts, what would those parts be? After looking back through the conversation, I'm still sort of struggling to figure out how I should break up the presentation I need to give and was wondering what aspects of consciousness you think are more important or whether there are obvious divides you see in the topic
A reply on Conversation: What exactly is or defines the self-aware, subjective, and phenomenal experience we call consciousness?
A reply on Conversation: What exactly is or defines the self-aware, subjective, and phenomenal experience we call consciousness?
It feels natural that if you put all of the pieces of the puzzle together, defining and explaining the functional properties that are thought to apply to consciousness, then you will be at the limit of what you are calling consciousness. Regardless of what people see in the outcome (the solved puzzle) it seems like this should be a sufficient explanation. I feel as though this is the approach that has been taken with explaining the processes of life and to this point it has been accepted as an explanation. Maybe this jigsaw puzzle metaphor is flawed, and I understand that even when the puzzle is solved there will always seem to be the missing piece of why these pieces produce an experience but I feel as though it creates a worthy, if not complete, representation of consciousness. But maybe that is just it, all we can ever obtain is a 'representation' or a correlation between what we think is consciousness and what we think creates it. I myself don't like the underlying pessimism of this reasoning and don't want to agree with the Dennet deflationary explanation. However, the concept of this 'life force' seems very appealing but in saying that I worry that it is appealing to me because I want to think my conscious experience is something greater than the millions of connections in my brain. In the book I am reading called Explaining consciousness-the hard problem there is an essay by Richard Warner that talks about the incorrigibility of humans and how we must guard against subjective distorting influences in order to produce some sense of objectivity and I feel that in this search for an 'appealing' answer that we may be succumbing to this distorting influences. It's hard to ignore the fact that consciousness requires a subjective element so maybe the fact that we are accustomed to looking at science through an
A reply on Conversation: What exactly is or defines the self-aware, subjective, and phenomenal experience we call consciousness?
Just out of curiosity, what is your take on the quantum approach to consciousness? I've been reading a bit about the orchestrated objective reduction theory and although im having a little trouble grasping it, it seems like a fairly sound argument.
A reply on Conversation: What exactly is or defines the self-aware, subjective, and phenomenal experience we call consciousness?
Frans, what do you believe we are as actors offstage? or does the fact that this stage is always present inhibit us from defining ourselves without it? This also makes me wonder whether or not there is every a true self, or even a soul, or if it only comes into existence because of its relative position. I suppose that if there was no idea of a soul or of the self then it would reaffirm your belief that we are all of one. I can't wonder if i am this 'one being' and my existence allows me to obtain consciousness and perceive the world or if its the 'one being' that i am a manifestation of that allows me to identify myself. I feel like i'm having trouble articulating what i want to say but i hope you can understand what i am trying to get at.