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Why is consciousness special?

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Why is consciousness special?

YadaYada
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Posted 05/22/09 - 05:51 PM:	#11
J. Random Hacker wrote: At what point do we go from having only physical properties to also having minds and mental properties? At some fundamental level we might not have any properties that could be described as physical by a philosopher. For example, fields, whether continuous or particulate, could be prior to physicality. Yet, for particulate fields at least, information content, which might be seen as combinations of fundamental state, could be enormous. Perhaps structure in this information content, particular combinations of states, could be described as elements of consciousness?
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bert1
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Posted 05/23/09 - 01:09 AM:	#12
davidchalmers wrote: Yes, that's roughly right. Re your doubts, I take it that this comes down to some sort of "law of conservation of consciousness" -- no new consciousness can come into existence. It's true that conservation laws are ubiquitous in physics, so maybe that's a reason to take them seriously here too. I didn't really mean to suggest a law of conservation of consciousness. My comparison to electromagnetic and gravitational fields were only for illustrative purposes and not really meant to support the idea that complexity is irrelevant to whether or not a continuum exists. It's the ontological priority bit which is my intuition/argument in support of the idea. davidchalmers wrote: But still, if one isn't a physicalist, then the laws governing consciousness may be quite different from the laws governing physics. That's fine if you're talking about substance dualism, I think. It seems OK to say that different substances have different laws. I'm not so sure that makes sense for non substance dualists, though. I mean, if consciousness interacts with physical reality in some kind of ordered way, there must be laws common to both consciousness and physics, mustn't there? ----- Just to put my cards on the table about my assumptions in all this: 1. I'm a substance monist (or, more accurately, non-dualist) because of the problem of interaction. 2. However I don't think that consciousness is reducible to physical objects and their behaviours, because physical objects are precisely not fields when considered in their objective aspects. 3. Consciousness is to its objects-of-consciousness as substance is to its modes, or as a field is to the tensions within it. That way consciousness can bind and relate simultaneously all within it and remain, itself, undetectable and non-objective (i.e. subjective. Just as substance is the ultimate subject - the one thing that everything happens to). 4. As I'm a non-dualist I'm happy to consider any physical field as a candidate for consciousness. I'm not sure if fields are ontologically separable from space or not, and so I tend to think of consciousness, and perhaps all fields, simply as a properties or aspects of space. I'm not a physicist, though. ----- Tobias wrote: Aren't oppositions and the reconcilliation of them not in fact central to consciousness? Yes, I think they are. Indeed, that is really my main point. I obviously haven't been clear about it! Tobias wrote: Not a problem, but a feature of it? Without these, we would not even be speaking of consciousness. Agreed. Features can be hard to understand, though, and therefore constitute problems to the person attempting to understand them. Are you saying it is impossible to understand something which is intrinsic to understanding itself, just as the eye cannot see itself? If so, I've hopefully addressed that below (I've italicised it). Tobias wrote: We do not perceive space, in the sense that I can say, hey now I am seeing space. Yes, I agree. That would seem to me to support my assertion that consciousness is space, or a property/aspect of space, as you go on to say: Tobias wrote: In my view asking what consciousness is in general is trying to perceive one's own eye Tobias wrote: We can only see what consciousness is if we look at what consciousness does, so to see how these categories, which all consists of differences within a higher unity, hang together and how each philosophical position employs them, like the division between matter and form or the dualism of mind and matter. Yes, I agree that we can only infer things about consciousness from its actions. One of the things we can infer about it is that it is unified and relates its contents. We know this because all conscious experiences involve consciousness of many things, and many things cannot be many things unless they are related. Two is not: One thing [insert here a grammatical symbol signifying absolute separation, memory wipe, substance destroyed, new substance about to commence] One thing. Two is one system containing one element and another element. Although we cannot perceive the non-duality of consciousness we can infer it from our consciousness of plurality. Tobias wrote: ...like the division between matter and form... Interestingly, and relevantly, I don't think this is a correct opposition/division/duality. There is no higher unity that relates matter to form, I don't think. Matter is the unity that relates different forms of matter. Substance relates and constitues its modes, and needs no further relating medium. ragus wrote: Space itself? We are conscious of (at least) two types of space. One is conceptual, which we call physical space and which is thought to be independent of thought (!). The other is perceptual space which we typically confuse with conceptual space. What is perceptual space? ragus wrote: If consciousness exists as a field then the entities in that field have properties very different from those in physical fields. Well, all fields are physical in that they are spatially extended aren't they? If that's the case both consciousness fields and other physical fields will contain the same objects, I would have thought.
"Like a ungroomed dog in which the desired look is it’s long hair but it has been so unattended to, that combing is impractical, and it might be better if the hair was cut and attended to as it grows back." d_martin

DaveStillLearning
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0 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 05/24/09 - 04:42 AM:	#13
J. Random Hacker wrote: I think that treating consciousness as special and deserving of a new category of mental properties is anthropocentrically biased. The picture science has given us so far is the Big Bang, followed by billions of years devoid of any life or minds. Then, on at least one planet, life occurs, evolves and eventually minds exist. At what point do we go from having only physical properties to also having minds and mental properties? Do you know the big bang happened? Describe it to me in detail. Are you going to use common sense language, or perhaps the language and concepts of quantum mechanics? And, if you are using the language and concepts of quantum mechanics then will you make use of Birkhoff and von Neumann's quantum logic.. because that will allow for a better quantum description?...and so on If you don't mind me saying, you have a dangerously realistic conception of science. The pursuit of knowledge regarding the consciousness is, I accept, anthropocentric in nature. But is not out pursuit of knowledge in all fields?! It seems to me that it's always our minds asking the questions and not the alternative...those insentient things. By that reasoning what are we to take of Science, which you hold so deal. If we are to try and discover some kind of knowledge about everything external to us, why would we not stop and try to discover some kind of knowledge about our thinking selves. It, I contend, is perhaps potentially more fruitful that the former. Subjectivity, and following from that linguistic and communicative limits, are the greatest barriers to the development of accepted knowledge. Therefore it certainly deserves attention.

davidchalmers
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Posted 05/24/09 - 05:09 PM:	#14
Bert: Well, I'm a property dualist who's agnostic on substance dualism. But I think the picture I gave was compatible with denying substance dualism. Even a property dualist view needs laws connecting physical properties to phenomenal properties -- psychophysical laws. Those laws might say, when such-and-such physical criteria obtain, such-and-such phenomenal properties will be instantiated. But there are many forms such laws could take. They might involve only very simple physical criteria, in which case one will get a form of panpsychism according to which consciousness has been around all along. Or they might involve relatively complex physical criteria, in which case one may get a non-panpsychist view on which consciousness has come into existence relatively recently. Perhaps this is still too dualistic for you, but nothing here requires substance dualism.

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Posted 05/25/09 - 02:06 PM:	#15
Interestingly, and relevantly, I don't think this is a correct opposition/division/duality. There is no higher unity that relates matter to form, I don't think. Matter is the unity that relates different forms of matter. Substance relates and constitues its modes, and needs no further relating medium. If matter is the unity, but there can also be different forms of matter, than you will have a hard time to account for these differences. What I like to point out is that matter or form or the interrelations of form and matter are all ideas to gain a grasp on the world.
"The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you"

ragus
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Posted 05/26/09 - 03:23 AM:	#16
bert1 wrote What is perceptual space? Visually, it's the space in which you see a tree and aurally the one in which you experience the sound of the movement of leaves. This is to contrast it with conceptual (or physical) space which supports the models of how photons do their thing and how stuff transmits vibrations.
"A word in your ear is like an untethered goat in a field" Wittigenstein

Yael
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Posted 05/26/09 - 07:53 PM: Subject: importance of concsiousness	#17
Consciousness is so important, because as people study it more and more, they are realizing that it seems to have a lot more control over the physical world. You can think of consciousness as flowing information that isn't manifested in the physical reality. It is everywhere, but no where, nothing, and everything. Consciousness has no limit, and possibilities are unfathomable. That's why those who have control over their consciousness have a better handle on reality.

bert1
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Posted 05/27/09 - 02:30 AM:	#18
davidchalmers wrote: Bert: Well, I'm a property dualist who's agnostic on substance dualism. But I think the picture I gave was compatible with denying substance dualism. Even a property dualist view needs laws connecting physical properties to phenomenal properties -- psychophysical laws. Those laws might say, when such-and-such physical criteria obtain, such-and-such phenomenal properties will be instantiated. But there are many forms such laws could take. They might involve only very simple physical criteria, in which case one will get a form of panpsychism according to which consciousness has been around all along. Or they might involve relatively complex physical criteria, in which case one may get a non-panpsychist view on which consciousness has come into existence relatively recently. Perhaps this is still too dualistic for you, but nothing here requires substance dualism. It might be too dualistic for me, I don't know yet! I'm not sure I understand property dualism very well, even after reading a couple of things. I have too many questions about it to ask you to answer them all here, especially when the answers are probably in papers and articles I can access. What I'd like to do is go back a bit. Earlier you said this: davidchalmers wrote: If so these states/fields would come with the binding structure. It might even be that informational binding in the brain would correlate directly with phenomenal binding in experience, given the right laws. I just wanted to pin you down on what you think can do the information binding in the brain. I don't know what you think about the binding problem in general - whether you think that consciousness might happen as a result of distributed processes which never 'come together' or whether you think there must be a 'place' where they all somehow meet. Maybe you think it's OK to say that the brain (or body) is the place where they meet, as the brain (or body) is a natural unity? As far as phenomenal binding is concerned, you use the phrase 'binding structure'. What I've been trying to get at in my posts is that anything which is made of parts (i.e. a brain, or a 'binding structure') itself involves a binding problem, and so cannot be invoked to solve the binding problem. What we need is some kind of unity which isn't made of parts. It may be that the brain is a unity, but only by virtue of the relations of its parts, and its parts are related by space. Space is what confers unity upon a physical brain, and indeed the whole universe. By appealing to a whole brain to solve the binding problem, we are, in effect, appealing to space. And as unity is such a striking feature of consciousness, I feel that consciousness is intimately connected with space in some way - hence my talk of continuua and fields. Do you see what I mean (even if you think I'm wrong)? Tobias wrote: If matter is the unity, but there can also be different forms of matter, than you will have a hard time to account for these differences. Yes, I agree that is a problem. But I think it is the best option. What we have is one reality which contains many things. Which do we take as ontologically superior? Either we construct the whole from parts (gazillions of substances involving relation problems) or we divide the whole into (apparent) parts (one substance, problem of how to get difference from unity). Tobias wrote: What I like to point out is that matter or form or the interrelations of form and matter are all ideas to gain a grasp on the world. Well, OK, but does that mean that there is nothing corresponding to our ideas of matter and form in reality? (I always struggled with Kant) ragus wrote: Visually, it's the space in which you see a tree and aurally the one in which you experience the sound of the movement of leaves. This is to contrast it with conceptual (or physical) space which supports the models of how photons do their thing and how stuff transmits vibrations. Oh, I see. It's my view that these apparently different spaces are token-identical.
"Like a ungroomed dog in which the desired look is it’s long hair but it has been so unattended to, that combing is impractical, and it might be better if the hair was cut and attended to as it grows back." d_martin

YadaYada
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Posted 05/27/09 - 04:51 AM:	#19
The purpose of substance is to permit causal explanation of what is apparent. Two types of apparencies of philosophical concern are matter and thought, but there may be others. Substance must at least be primary, quantitatively conserved (symmetric in physics), qualitatively plural - have various forms that at least include matter or thought. Possible substances, if we are not to disregard current science, might be energy, linear momentum, angular momentum, electric charge, information/probability, and so on. It seems to me that matter as subtance has become obsolete because it is not physically defined (has no symbol in physics), it is not more than a loose concept in common use, and it is not conserved regardless how it is being used. Also, substance dualism would have to say that energy gives rise to matter, and something other than energy gives rise to thought (perhaps information?). Property pluralism might give rise to both matter and mind from information. Edited by YadaYada on 05/28/09 - 06:28 AM. Reason: readability
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IchiEmperor
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Posted 05/28/09 - 12:49 AM: Subject: Re: Why is consciousness special?	#20
Consciousness is special because it is the collective unconsciousness of unknown, and unidentifiable, entities who, by no means of "conscious" thought, have constructed a functional identifiable entity through unintentional actions. Consciousness separates "beings that exist" from "beings that exist with an understanding of existence." This is most often understood as the varying forms of "ego" and "self". This may be easily contradicted by saying: "A cat has no sense of Ego." (I myself would certainly disagree - I've met one or two cats with an attitude) however the cat understands the basic needs of survival and therefore, in my humble opinion, understands that it exists and want to continue that existence. This phenomenon does not exist with rocks. Plus, without consciousness, we wouldn't be able to engage in this enthralling conversation. Caveat: Please do not be too critical of my mundane explanation - I'm new to the forums and have had no formal education in philosophy or psychology. Cheers, IchiEmperor

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