What is Consciousness?


PDS

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You've given examples of how consciousness manifests itself as it relates to your dog. But you haven't said what consciousness is.

con·scious·ness
ˈkän(t)SHəsnəs/
noun
noun: consciousness
the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings

I do not think that that cuts it.

A person in a coma can still be "conscious" within their own mind and we cannot eliminate that alleged state of mind scientifically.

At this point in time we do not know.

A...

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My best shot is consciousness is the function of being able to ask: What is consciousness?

Put another way, it's not only the faculty of perceiving and knowing, it is knowing THAT one knows, and what. Apart from it being seated in the physical brain (which we are learning, self-creates new neural pathways in response to cognition), I am not sure consciousness can be explained by way of consciousness, except by the aspects of what it 'does' (and cannot 'do') and by what a single consciousness contains. It's an empty vessel to begin with.

Okay, this seems like a decent stab. But, fundamentally, what is it?

Saying what something does is not the same as saying what that something is.

Tony: you mention above that consciousness is a faculty. Memory is a faculty too, i.e., memory is the faculty of being able to recall past events, etc.

But in order to know that there is such a thing as memory one must first have consciousness. So memory is derivative of consciousness. What is consciousness derivative of?

Chemicals to electricity to necessity of chemical transport and protection of body and contents.

Or, maybe, memory is derivative of consciousness and consciousness is derivative of memory as in tautological if not axiomatic reasoning. But now you want to know derivative without knowing what you are talking about?

Consciousness is awareness. For us that includes self awareness. A plant has no brain so it's purely reactive awareness. Begging the question? Begging your pardon. (What is begging?) Aware. The begged question is aware of what? Aware needs "to be" to be a verb. Consciousness too. Consciousness is awareness is not a verb--not either word.

Brains--and consciousness as we know it--are necessary for mobility. Consciousness makes sense of sensory data, some very complex. This requires various levels of awareness animal to animal to animal. A man thinks. A deer runs.

--Brant

out of ammo

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A man thinks. A deer runs.

I'm with Old Potato Face on this. Thinking is a voluntary act. Refusal to think is the root of all evil.

If you think you can't think you can't think right for you are thinking.

Try that again--the not thinking. It's like holding your breath. For fun try doing both at once while counting to a hundred--slowly.

--Brant

please stop referring to yourself as "Old Potato Face"--it's not seemly

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A person in a coma can still be "conscious"

 

com·a·tose
ˈkōməˌtōs,ˈkäməˌtōs/
adjective
adjective: comatose

of or in a state of deep unconsciousness

 

General anesthesia is a medically induced coma, knocks out consciousness.

 

 

Start at 1:05

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I worked in Hollywood. It's a load of crap. And I've had general anesthesia, more than once. No consciousness.

How this can be mysterious escapes me, because the meaning of terms is clear.

Therefore, your experiences under general anesthesia are the rule of reality?

Cause there are folks who claim to have been conscious under general anesthesia, just like you claim that your experience is the only one permitted?

I am confused...

A...

I feel a consensus is about to break out...

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there are folks who claim to have been conscious under general anesthesia

Anesthesia is an art (as is all medicine). Your mileage may vary. I had good care, 100% unconscious.

Agreed, however, it does not harm my argument.

I think you are primarily correct in most cases, however...we are learning more about states of consciousness every year.

However, the question PDS is asking is what does it mean in the form of a noun.

A...

I am thinking it is a good question...

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This I found valuable...

Perhaps no aspect of mind is more familiar or more puzzling than consciousness and our conscious experience of self and world. The problem of consciousness is arguably the central issue in current theorizing about the mind. Despite the lack of any agreed upon theory of consciousness, there is a widespread, if less than universal, consensus that an adequate account of mind requires a clear understanding of it and its place in nature. We need to understand both what consciousness is and how it relates to other, nonconscious, aspects of reality.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/

Damn...nice section ...

A...

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Category error when the article segues to 'thought.' We weren't talking about thinking or Cartesian self-awareness.

On self-awareness, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_cognitive_development#Self-awareness

You wouldn't mind indicating the particular "segue" section, since they are nicely separated for reference?

A..

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there are folks who claim to have been conscious under general anesthesia

Anesthesia is an art (as is all medicine). Your mileage may vary. I had good care, 100% unconscious.

Wake up, Wolf! Wake up!

--Brant

I knew there was an explanation!

medicine is art, science and rote

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Calling it awareness begs the question, me thinks. As for the block quote, yes that explains consciousness as a verb, but it doesn't explain it as a noun.

I think everybody understands consciousness as a verb. I personally am more interested in it as a noun.

I think this section attempts to frame it as a noun:

2.3 Consciousness as an entity

The noun “consciousness” has an equally diverse range of meanings that largely parallel those of the adjective “conscious”. Distinctions can be drawn between creature and state consciousness as well as among the varieties of each. One can refer specifically to phenomenal consciousness, access consciousness, reflexive or meta-mental consciousness, and narrative consciousness among other varieties.

Here is the rest of section 2.3:

Here consciousness itself is not typically treated as a substantive entity but merely the abstract reification of whatever property or aspect is attributed by the relevant use of the adjective “conscious”. Access consciousness is just the property of having the required sort of internal access relations, and qualitative consciousness is simply the property that is attributed when “conscious” is applied in the qualitative sense to mental states. How much this commits one to the ontological status of consciousness per se will depend on how much of a Platonist one is about universals in general. (See the entry on the medieval problem of universals.) It need not commit one to consciousness as a distinct entity any more than one's use of “square”, “red” or “gentle” commits one to the existence of squareness, redness or gentleness as distinct entities.

Though it is not the norm, one could nonetheless take a more robustly realist view of consciousness as a component of reality. That is one could think of consciousness as more on a par with electromagnetic fields than with life.

Since the demise of vitalism, we do not think of life per se as something distinct from living things. There are living things including organisms, states, properties and parts of organisms, communities and evolutionary lineages of organisms, but life is not itself a further thing, an additional component of reality, some vital force that gets added into living things. We apply the adjectives “living” and “alive” correctly to many things, and in doing so we might be said to be attributing life to them but with no meaning or reality other than that involved in their being living things.

Electromagnetic fields by contrast are regarded as real and independent parts of our physical world. Even though one may sometimes be able to specify the values of such a field by appeal to the behavior of particles in it, the fields themselves are regarded as concrete constituents of reality and not merely as abstractions or sets of relations among particles.

Similarly one could regard “consciousness” as referring to a component or aspect of reality that manifests itself in conscious states and creatures but is more than merely the abstract nominalization of the adjective “conscious” we apply to them. Though such strongly realist views are not very common at present, they should be included within the logical space of options.

There are thus many concepts of consciousness, and both “conscious” and “consciousness” are used in a wide range of ways with no privileged or canonical meaning. However, this may be less of an embarrassment than an embarrassment of riches. Consciousness is a complex feature of the world, and understanding it will require a diversity of conceptual tools for dealing with its many differing aspects. Conceptual plurality is thus just what one would hope for. As long as one avoids confusion by being clear about one's meanings, there is great value in having a variety of concepts by which we can access and grasp consciousness in all its rich complexity. However, one should not assume that conceptual plurality implies referential divergence. Our multiple concepts of consciousness may in fact pick out varying aspects of a single unified underlying mental phenomenon. Whether and to what extent they do so remains an open question.

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You wouldn't mind indicating the particular "segue" section, since they are nicely separated for reference?

"...in the seventeenth century, consciousness had come full center in thinking about the mind. Indeed from the mid-17th through the late 19th century, consciousness was widely regarded as essential or definitive of the mental. René Descartes defined the very notion of thought (pensée) in terms of reflexive consciousness or self-awareness."

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You wouldn't mind indicating the particular "segue" section, since they are nicely separated for reference?

"...in the seventeenth century, consciousness had come full center in thinking about the mind. Indeed from the mid-17th through the late 19th century, consciousness was widely regarded as essential or definitive of the mental. René Descartes defined the very notion of thought (pensée) in terms of reflexive consciousness or self-awareness."

Section 1: History...

"By the beginning of the early modern era ...in the seventeenth century, consciousness had come full center in thinking about the mind. Indeed from the mid-17th through the late 19th century, consciousness was widely regarded as essential or definitive of the mental. René Descartes defined the very notion of thought (pensée) in terms of reflexive consciousness or self-awareness. In the Principles of Philosophy (1640) he wrote,

By the word ‘thought’ (‘pensée’) I understand all that of which we are conscious as operating in us.

Later, toward the end of the 17th century, John Locke offered a similar if slightly more qualified claim in An Essay on Human Understanding (1688),

I do not say there is no soul in man because he is not sensible of it in his sleep. But I do say he can not think at any time, waking or sleeping, without being sensible of it. Our being sensible of it is not necessary to anything but our thoughts, and to them it is and to them it always will be necessary.

Locke explicitly forswore making any hypothesis about the substantial basis of consciousness and its relation to matter, but he clearly regarded it as essential to thought as well as to personal identity."

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Right. Advertised as a discussion of consciousness, suddenly flips to issues pertaining to thought (even thinking in one's sleep!) Properly belongs in a discussion of thought, and separately a discussion of dreams, neither of which are generic consciousness, a faculty belonging to more animals than man alone. My opinion anyway.

I often feel like I'm an alien from outer space, very distant from conventional ideas. Plato, Descartes, Locke, Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel -- the whole crew -- belong in the trash heap of Silly Eunuchs. Not only did Aristotle screw up physics and ethics, but drawing a line between the "essential" and the "accidental" gave Aquinas the ground for transubstantiation (magic words turn wine into blood). Worse than Marx, those magic words gave Marx an excuse to be Marx.

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Oh, Marx would have found another "excuse to be Marx."

What could be easier?

I assume Wolf has an "excuse" to be Wolf.

The problems created by these philosophers were on other philosophers to eventually correct. This is an ongoing process frequently slowed by lack of need or a need filled by religion as in the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire. If you cannot explain heaven and earth, bring in God. Science pushes God back over time as fewer people need Him. Generally speaking hoi polloi still does, especially for Christians as in salvation through Jesus Christ. (The Christian Jesus beats the Muslim Mohammad hands down.) Another big blessing of Christianity on western civilization was the introduction of moral equivalence of all--ruled and ruler--before God thus with each other. This is the practical foundation of individualism upon which sits the modern political philosophy now trying to be honored by Objectivism and libertarianism, and not too well, for each needs the other but each excludes the other, as in a turf war. This is another way of saying a political philosophy needs more than a political philosophy and such is Objectivism, which needs more than an ethical philosophy and political philosophy not yet well enough rendered for prime time*.

--Brant

*when it is we'll know it for it will attract tremendous gravitas, mostly claimed today by the conservatives (that God thingy)

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My best shot is consciousness is the function of being able to ask: What is consciousness?

Put another way, it's not only the faculty of perceiving and knowing, it is knowing THAT one knows, and what. Apart from it being seated in the physical brain (which we are learning, self-creates new neural pathways in response to cognition), I am not sure consciousness can be explained by way of consciousness, except by the aspects of what it 'does' (and cannot 'do') and by what a single consciousness contains. It's an empty vessel to begin with.

Okay, this seems like a decent stab. But, fundamentally, what is it?

......

What is consciousness derivative of?

Awareness?

It is also agreed that within creature-consciousness itself we should distinguish between intransitive and transitive variants. To say of an organism that it is conscious simpliciter (intransitive) is to say just that it is awake, as opposed to asleep or comatose. (At least, this is true on one natural understanding. Others hear the statement as equivalent to saying that there is something that it is like to be the creature.) There don't appear to be any deep philosophical difficulties lurking here (or at least, they aren't difficulties specific to the topic of consciousness, as opposed to mentality in general). But to say of an organism that it is conscious of such-and-such (transitive) is normally to say at least that it is perceiving such-and-such, or aware of such-and-such. So we say of the mouse that it is conscious of the cat outside its hole, in explaining why it doesn't come out; meaning that it perceives the cat's presence. To provide an account of transitive creature-consciousness would thus be to attempt a theory of perception.

Calling it awareness begs the question, me thinks. As for the block quote, yes that explains consciousness as a verb, but it doesn't explain it as a noun.

I think everybody understands consciousness as a verb. I personally am more interested in it as a noun.

Well put PDS, but somehow I can't see it possible to isolate the 'being' of consciousness from the 'doing'.

As others have pointed to, it apparently starts from the awareness of self - i.e. the realization that one is the subject of perceptivity, while everything else is the object. At the same time one recognizes, non-contradictorily, that one's self, the 'subject', is an existent equally having identity, too. Immediately follows self-value and the cruciality of the only tool to survival. ("I am, therefore I'll think".)

How self-consciousness emerged in nature is absorbing. Why did it become evolutionarily necessary for our 'line' to forgo the only survival advantage so far existing, of 'pre-programmed', instinctual behavior? Initially, self-consciousness and consciousness, identification and conceptualization, might not have shown any evolutionary merits, I'd have thought -- but it so happened, it did. An animal basically can act only one way: to its self-preservation (via instincts and a simple pleasure-pain, emotional mechanism). Man had from the start to find out facts and assess their value to life and act accordingly. He could and can also avoid all that to act for his downfall.

"Consciousness is identification".

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I have a dog, a 20 lb male Shih Tzu. No shred of doubt that he's conscious (when not asleep). He tells me when the cat is scratching almost inaudibly on the window of my storm door behind a closed, thick metal front door. He howls at male strangers approaching on foot. His communication skills are excellent, letting me know when he's hungry, or wants to go outside, or just plain bored. He knows my intentions, whether I'm engaged at the keyboard, or getting ready to leave the house. If I say 'Jump' he jumps in the car. If I tell him 'Stay' he remains seated with no expectation of doing anything else while I'm in the store or the bank or whatever. This particular breed needs a lot of grooming because they don't shed. He understands it completely and cooperates when I trim his face with a scissors. He knows his name.

That's consciousness.

Although a Shih Tzu's temperament varies from dog to dog, the breed has a personality and temperament that is loyal, affectionate, outgoing, and alert. Training and proper socializing must start at a young age for the Shih Tzu to obey basic commands, for the Shih Tzu is prone to stubbornness. [Wikipedia] Prone to stubbornness -- how human-like!

Yeah, I always say I learn from our dogs. I do suggest that they have a developed sub-consciousness, with all its associations and connotations which we have. A jangle of car keys, and to the door they rush. Even more subtle responses than that. They have characteristics and temperament as you say. My border collie has never seen a sheep in his life, but still enjoys herding the other dogs.

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