this’d be a bit of a handicap wouldn’t it, if consciousness prevented one from considering (or feeling) what it might be like not to have it?
you’d get a type of instinct blindness?
If you’re not conscious, there’s nothing to imagine.
It’s like trying to remember what it was like years before you were born.
Bubblecar said:
If you’re not conscious, there’s nothing to imagine.It’s like trying to remember what it was like years before you were born.
From as close as I can get, it is a greyishing sludgy towards black to others saying .. oh you are back.
There’s pretty much nothing inbetween.
I mean like tried to imagine you’re a bird, or dog, or more feel like.
minus the self-aware thing, the big ideas, the alphabet.
transition said:
I mean like tried to imagine you’re a bird, or dog, or more feel like.minus the self-aware thing, the big ideas, the alphabet.
Bubblecar said:
If you’re not conscious, there’s nothing to imagine.It’s like trying to remember what it was like years before you were born.
I thought something similar . I thought hmm..how is this person imagining without a consciousness not to be confused with being unconscious or in a coma.
transition said:
I mean like tried to imagine you’re a bird, or dog, or more feel like.minus the self-aware thing, the big ideas, the alphabet.
what do you mean?
i’m thinking humans develop slow, like kids take couple decades to grow up, but adults even to very old age like to keep something young happening, if they can, something of the child in. Seems humans, to some extent, keep growing up all their life.
that self-aware thing, probably made possible by an abundance of neurons, arranged however, it has about it that not all behavior is constrained by instinct. If that’s the right way to put it.
Good part of child-like enthusiasms are instinct.
so, you got these instincts, and desires, that as you mature get more mediated, modified so, some repressed I guess, impulses and such, but there’s got to be something sorta opposite at some stage, traveling along with that, and perhaps it starts real early, maybe ~5yo. So let’s say a 5yo has developing self-awareness (and theory of mind), but simultaneously there are these potentials for useful regressions. Hold in mind that, the idea of useful regressions. Think of it as being a bit like having experienced changing mental states, and in fact it may be related.
a parent has to understand a baby, and it’d help if parents understood the domesticated animals providing the food etc (wild animals included, going back to ancestral environments).
here’s the idea of maturing regressions. Putting them to work.
the idea that some folding back of the higher functions is required to understand creatures that don’t have those so highly developed.
it’d hardly serve nurturing to abandon entirely the less conscious, or less self-aware, and some understanding of, abilities so. Some regressive, or reversional qualities would be helpful, and perhaps are necessary to consciousness-proper, that which humans credit themselves with.
transition said:
this’d be a bit of a handicap wouldn’t it, if consciousness prevented one from considering (or feeling) what it might be like not to have it?you’d get a type of instinct blindness?
From an evolutionary perspective, it’s no handicap at all. Plants get along quite well without consciousness, ditto fungi and single celled critters.
But as in previous threads, the word “consciousness” needs to be split into a whole raft of different mental traits. For example, once I was startled to see that a single celled animal demonstrated what to me was unequivocally the emotion “fear”. Yet such as creature couldn’t be called “conscious”. So some critters can “feel” (in the emotional sense) what it’s like to lack consciousness.
Because the “instinct” is tied into “emotions”, and emotions can occur without consciousness. It is really quite common to “feel” what it’s like to have no consciousness.
PS, I suspect that at least one of the plants in my front garden may be emotional. It carefully avoids touching the plant next to it. Long term memory of being hurt by the prickles I suspect. Although this could be explained a different way, the plant on the other side of the plant with prickles is quite happy to grove over the top of it and through it to grab more light.
So to summarise,
Yes, it’s quite common to feel what it’s like to have no consciousness.
No, this isn’t a handicap.
No, this isn’t “instinct blindness”.
PPS, the follow up question to this, one that I don’t have an answer to, is:
“Is the possession of consciousness a significant handicap?”
One handicap of consciousness is that thinking about thinking increases the time delay between sensing and acting.
Consciousness is the state of awareness
Unconscious = Asleep or under an anesthetic
Conscious = Awake
I get a feeling that some people think consciousness is something it isnt like a spiritual soul.
Consciousness describes awareness, as to whether a person is asleep or awake.
Maybe Transition means imagining you haven’t got a mind?
or maybe Transition means being stuck in an unconscious state?
transition said:
Good part of child-like enthusiasms are instinct.so, you got these instincts, and desires, that as you mature get more mediated, … perhaps it starts real early, maybe ~5yo. So let’s say a 5yo has developing self-awareness (and theory of mind), but simultaneously there are these potentials for useful regressions. Hold in mind that, the idea of useful regressions. Think of it as being a bit like having experienced changing mental states, and in fact it may be related.
a parent has to understand a baby, and it’d help if parents understood the domesticated animals providing the food etc (wild animals included, going back to ancestral environments).
here’s the idea of maturing regressions. Putting them to work.
the idea that some folding back of the higher functions is required to understand creatures that don’t have those so highly developed.
it’d hardly serve nurturing to abandon entirely the less conscious, or less self-aware, and some understanding of, abilities so. Some regressive, or reversional qualities would be helpful, and perhaps are necessary to consciousness-proper, that which humans credit themselves with.
Very well put. I’m in total agreement.
Tau.Neutrino said:
Consciousness is the state of awarenessUnconscious = Asleep or under an anesthetic
Conscious = Awake
Are you forgetting plants?
What Car said. Without consciousness, there’s no you.
have we defined consciousness yet?
dv said:
What Car said. Without consciousness, there’s no you.
That’s like saying that “because rocks aren’t conscious, they don’t exist”.
Let’s designate consciousness as self-awareness ie. “thinking about thinking”. Then just because there is no “thinking about thinking” doesn’t mean that there’s no “thinking”.
mollwollfumble said:
dv said:
What Car said. Without consciousness, there’s no you.
That’s like saying that “because rocks aren’t conscious, they don’t exist”.
hmmmm, doubt muchly the “you” means just the physical. might be wrong though.
Consciousness: here, there and everywhere?
From one of the links in the “Is strong AI possible?,” It covers just about every situation where consciousness might exist.
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1668/20140167
Arts said:
have we defined consciousness yet?
Were close I think.
>I get a feeling that some people think consciousness is something it isnt like a spiritual soul.
home in the head, and workings of, does have some ethereal qualities, if you like
PermeateFree said:
Consciousness: here, there and everywhere?From one of the links in the “Is strong AI possible?,” It covers just about every situation where consciousness might exist.
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1668/20140167
That paper is still a very long way from understanding consciosness. For example.
“Visual recognition of self, meta-cognition (knowing one’s mind), theory of mind, empathy and long-range planning have all been demonstrated in primates, rodents and other orders “.
I’ve observed “theory of mind” and “long term planning” in mosquitos. I’ve seen them on TV exhbited by spiders. I suspect that having them is a common factor among all predators.
mollwollfumble said:
PermeateFree said:
Consciousness: here, there and everywhere?From one of the links in the “Is strong AI possible?,” It covers just about every situation where consciousness might exist.
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1668/20140167
That paper is still a very long way from understanding consciosness. For example.
“Visual recognition of self, meta-cognition (knowing one’s mind), theory of mind, empathy and long-range planning have all been demonstrated in primates, rodents and other orders “.
I’ve observed “theory of mind” and “long term planning” in mosquitos. I’ve seen them on TV exhbited by spiders. I suspect that having them is a common factor among all predators.
Maybe why the paper is titled “Consciousness: here, there and everywhere?”
PermeateFree said:
mollwollfumble said:
PermeateFree said:
Consciousness: here, there and everywhere?From one of the links in the “Is strong AI possible?,” It covers just about every situation where consciousness might exist.
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1668/20140167
That paper is still a very long way from understanding consciosness. For example.
“Visual recognition of self, meta-cognition (knowing one’s mind), theory of mind, empathy and long-range planning have all been demonstrated in primates, rodents and other orders “.
I’ve observed “theory of mind” and “long term planning” in mosquitos. I’ve seen them on TV exhbited by spiders. I suspect that having them is a common factor among all predators.
Maybe why the paper is titled “Consciousness: here, there and everywhere?”
I imagine its an evolved survival instinct most complex life would have, could include flora as well perhaps
Cymek said:
PermeateFree said:
mollwollfumble said:That paper is still a very long way from understanding consciosness. For example.
“Visual recognition of self, meta-cognition (knowing one’s mind), theory of mind, empathy and long-range planning have all been demonstrated in primates, rodents and other orders “.
I’ve observed “theory of mind” and “long term planning” in mosquitos. I’ve seen them on TV exhbited by spiders. I suspect that having them is a common factor among all predators.
Maybe why the paper is titled “Consciousness: here, there and everywhere?”
I imagine its an evolved survival instinct most complex life would have, could include flora as well perhaps
It is my opinion that consciousness exists from people to microbes, it is purely the extent of it. So to my mind flora would be on that continuum and probably would vary depending on species, as do higher organisms. Plants are aware of their environment and will exploit it to their benefit, recent research has indicated that plants communicate with each other especially if being eaten, thereby permitting other plants to activate their chemical or physical defenses.
>I imagine its an evolved survival instinct most complex life would have, could include flora as well perhaps.
doubt it, that last part anyway, consciousness-proper has an awareness the representations generated (by minds) are a compression of detail, along with an awareness about that work injecting (processing) artifacts into the representations (conversions).
essentially, whatever you see and think about, that you’re seeing the work of your mind.
of course there’s stuff out there, that reality is hard to avoid.
an awareness of structure apprehending structure (forces included), I guess.
I wonder if you could think of the environment as a highly complex program, everything living is encoded/mapped into that program and removing something requires that program to reorganise to cope and it gets to a point where you remove too much the program can no longer cope and collapses. Like a background simulation running since life began
Cymek said:
I wonder if you could think of the environment as a highly complex program, everything living is encoded/mapped into that program and removing something requires that program to reorganise to cope and it gets to a point where you remove too much the program can no longer cope and collapses. Like a background simulation running since life began
That’s called an ecosystem.
PermeateFree said:
Cymek said:
I wonder if you could think of the environment as a highly complex program, everything living is encoded/mapped into that program and removing something requires that program to reorganise to cope and it gets to a point where you remove too much the program can no longer cope and collapses. Like a background simulation running since life began
That’s called an ecosystem.
That is true but it’s almost run like a computer program and its encoded in a higher dimensional plane
Cymek said:
PermeateFree said:
Cymek said:
I wonder if you could think of the environment as a highly complex program, everything living is encoded/mapped into that program and removing something requires that program to reorganise to cope and it gets to a point where you remove too much the program can no longer cope and collapses. Like a background simulation running since life began
That’s called an ecosystem.
That is true but it’s almost run like a computer program and its encoded in a higher dimensional plane
Life imprints onto the higher dimensional plane as do non living things but life leaves a bigger imprint in the short term
Cymek said:
PermeateFree said:
Cymek said:
I wonder if you could think of the environment as a highly complex program, everything living is encoded/mapped into that program and removing something requires that program to reorganise to cope and it gets to a point where you remove too much the program can no longer cope and collapses. Like a background simulation running since life began
That’s called an ecosystem.
That is true but it’s almost run like a computer program and its encoded in a higher dimensional plane
It exists by the creation of a habitat, which can support a range of species that are most adapted to the environment. There is no planning or design.
PermeateFree said:
Cymek said:
PermeateFree said:That’s called an ecosystem.
That is true but it’s almost run like a computer program and its encoded in a higher dimensional plane
It exists by the creation of a habitat, which can support a range of species that are most adapted to the environment. There is no planning or design.
But it exists by a creator?
>That is true but it’s almost run like a computer program and its encoded in a higher dimensional plane.
you could argue the basics of computation predate man, which they must have done in possibility space (predated life even), but I mean really did exist, resulting in organic life and the encoding and decoding (dna etc) of replicators.
does organic life run code, run programs? Absolutely. Does the Windows 7 i’m using have some origin in that? Absolutely.
could the rotating earth (day/night), seasons (years), and lunar cycles be clocking elements in computation that embed order. Absolutely.
Can humans see patterns? Absolutely.
Michael V said:
Can humans see patterns? Absolutely.
Are those patterns always correct?
No.
Michael V said:
Michael V said:
Can humans see patterns? Absolutely.
Are those patterns always correct?
No.
I don’t think there’s much of a case questioning whether biological systems are a type of computation.
I mean all it has to do is add and subtract for that, which it does, plenty of both, and much more.
AwesomeO said:
PermeateFree said:
Cymek said:That is true but it’s almost run like a computer program and its encoded in a higher dimensional plane
It exists by the creation of a habitat, which can support a range of species that are most adapted to the environment. There is no planning or design.
But it exists by a creator?
You having a lend of me curve, because it very much sounds like it.
>It exists by the creation of a habitat, which can support a range of species that are most adapted to the environment. There is no planning or design”
interesting isn’t it, that computation and computational apparatus can emerge largely by accident/s, such as minds of modern humans, and ancestors before.
a look at replicators, suggests addition’s in there (successes, they multiply), and death (or failures) you might call that subtractions.
you’ve got encoding, decoding (expression of the organism, or parts), you’ve got adaptive structures, tested. Selection pressures, mutations, evolution.
looks a lot like computation to me.
Consciousness is an awareness state of what the mind is in, as in whether a person is asleep or awake, keep in mind, that awareness can vary quite a lot.
Tau.Neutrino said:
Consciousness is an awareness state of what the mind is in, as in whether a person is asleep or awake, keep in mind, that awareness can vary quite a lot.
i’d more see it (consciousness-proper) as a quality, in or of potentials.
reason being, is that if the qualities were a set of characteristics that were exactly the same all the time, it’d stop being whatever it is.
transition said:
Tau.Neutrino said:
Consciousness is an awareness state of what the mind is in, as in whether a person is asleep or awake, keep in mind, that awareness can vary quite a lot.i’d more see it (consciousness-proper) as a quality, in or of potentials.
reason being, is that if the qualities were a set of characteristics that were exactly the same all the time, it’d stop being whatever it is.
start with a dumb example, that more points to potentials
you’re asleep, the wind kicks up outside, your mind flags the change in noise as worth further investigation (downstream processing of sound is folded back), it’s an unknown, and undefined, an uncategorized, so your mind has to wake you, to that end it generates a rather nasty dream to wake you, you wake then give attention to the sounds outside.
the above transition from sleep to what you call consciousness (or more conscious) can be understood as potentials. A state change, a mental state change, a processing change too, but the point is to get your body-vehicle ready (which sleep incapacitates), senses and all hunting, working on what is it?, then a what to do, if anything.
I think it necessary to see consciousness as potentials, adaptive potentials if you like. It involves the application of combinatorial resources, which, of humans, is quite a broad range, and you can come back again and again and try and test.
the trip from sleep to wakefulness (in the example I gave above) is not much different to turning your attention from one thing to another, which people do all the time. Now, turning my attention from this to making a coffee is no more an example of being conscious than the example I gave.
the potential to wake and turn my attention to resolving the noise is the work of consciousness, and in the example given the transition is essential to the task.
hear noise of unknown cause/origin, wake, listen, perhaps investigate, resolve cause (or that it’s not a threat, or frighten potential threats off).
sleeping creatures have always had some vulnerabilities, from predators (if only to steal things), and many predators (humans included, what I mean here) know of the risks of waking other humans (or waking them too soon, which may result in advantage reduced, or lost).
personally I can’t see any other sensible way to see consciousness than potentials. I guess looking at things after they happen doesn’t take you directly to that, but there is a before after something happens, conceptualizing or imagining the after, which is a specialty of human consciousness, the depth of it, possibilities considered.