This is What Consciousness is:

Author: Reece101

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#181
b9_ntt
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@Sidewalker
SW #170:
What happens to consciousness when a person is unconscious? 
Why does something have to "happen to it” when a person is unconscious?  What happens to anger when a person isn’t angry?  What happens to the brain when a person is unconscious?  I really don’t understand the point of the question.

I'm not sure your comparison is apt. No one claims an independent ontological status for anger. Anger comes and goes according to levels of excitation and so forth in the body. I asked the question because, if your idea of consciousness is correct, I would expect it to be persistent. If it's not, that would seem to indicate that it is still connected to the body in some way even when the subject is unconscious.

#182
Sidewalker
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@b9_ntt
SW #170
I have trouble understanding Nagle's view about "what is it like". I will re-read it.
A lot has been written about the article, and there are a lot of summaries available, but if you want to read the entire article, here you go:


SW #144
What we can observe is responsiveness to the environment, adaptation to circumstances, and other types of behavioral indicators from which we can impute consciousness.
Couldn't this be unconscious stimulus/response?
Microorgabisms demonstrate complex behavioral responses that go wellbeyond the capabilities of complex “chemical factories” or the complex “thermostat” type explanations that mechanisticmaterialists rely on.  It's hard to see how mere "stimulus response" can account for the way microorganisms are known to respond to a broad range of stimuli, demonstrate elementary forms of “memory”,and engage in purposeful activities. The creative range of bahavior responses imply intelligence and a "self" that is extraordinarily perceptive.  Mere "stimulous-response" can't satisfactorily explain  perception, learned behavior, and purposeful activities.

you need to define consciousness observationally as involving the ability to perceive sensory stimuli and respond by purposeful movement or by a behavioral change.
. . . there are plenty of studies of bacterial that allow us to extrapolate from behavior to a presumed internal cause of that behavior that have to be attributed to a rudimentary form of "mental activity".
I'd like to read one of those studies if you could send me a link or title.
 There are a lot of them, here are a few:

Bacteria can respond to a broad range of stimuli, demonstrate elementary forms of “memory”, and engage in purposeful activities. . . .
They clearly integrate these capabilities into a self-organized and sensate being that in at least an extremely attenuated way is perceiving, discriminating, remembering, and even “thinking”, on some level it is conscious. 
Do they know they are doing these things? If not, I think they are not conscious.
Sensate beings, percieving, remembering, and creatively responding to changing  circumstances implies awareness.  We presume other humans are aware by observing this type of behavior, I see no reason to presume no awareness of other beings exhibiting this type of behavior.


#183
Sidewalker
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@b9_ntt
What happens to consciousness when a person is unconscious? 
Why does something have to "happen to it” when a person is unconscious?  What happens to anger when a person isn’t angry?  What happens to the brain when a person is unconscious?  I really don’t understand the point of the question.

I'm not sure your comparison is apt. No one claims an independent ontological status for anger. Anger comes and goes according to levels of excitation and so forth in the body.
Fair enough, it was a bad analogy, but my point was that I don't undestand the question. 

I asked the question because, if your idea of consciousness is correct, I would expect it to be persistent. If it's not, that would seem to indicate that it is still connected to the body in some way even when the subject is unconscious.
How is that different if consciousness is a product of the brain?  Isn't consciousness 'persistent' under your scenario too,  when an unconscious person wakes up they are still conscious. 

With all due respect, you seem to be relying heavily on "gaps" fallacies to argue your position. Rather than justify your position you are asking questions that appear to be a disguised variation of the “God of the gaps” fallacy, which takes manydifferent forms, a few being “evolutionary advantage of the gaps”, “complexityof the gaps”, and “hidden variables of the gaps”; and I will contend that theyare all one and the same theory in principle. All of them are only differentforms of the argument from ignorance, illogical attempts to say that the lackof an adequate explanation supports my presumptions, and not yours, which is alogically invalid argument. 

The fact is that the lack of an adequateexplanatory theory about a particular gap in our knowledge does not rationallyyield a conclusion that supports a faith based belief in materialisticdeterminism for the same reason that it does not support a faith based beliefin God. I don't see much difference between "emergence" as an explanation and "God did it" as an explanation, both seem to be invoking magic as an explanation.
#184
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@Sidewalker
Thank you for the links. I will take the time to read Nagle and one or more of the others.
I asked the question because, if your idea of consciousness is correct, I would expect it to be persistent. If it's not, that would seem to indicate that it is still connected to the body in some way even when the subject is unconscious.
How is that different if consciousness is a product of the brain?  Isn't consciousness 'persistent' under your scenario too,  when an unconscious person wakes up they are still conscious. 
You compared consciousness to anger, which comes and goes, saying where does anger go when the subject stops being angry. I think I understand what you are getting at even if anger wasn't the best analogy. What I meant was that if consciousness is its own thing, apart from a brain, I would expect it to be persistent (someplace) when the subject is unconscious. If it only arises when the brain is awake, then it is dependent on the brain. If consciousness persists when the brain is asleep, 1) where is it, 2) what is the connection between it and the brain, such that sometimes it is connected and sometimes not?

As for my probing the "gaps" of your theory, I am trying to understand more precisely what you are saying, AND I'm looking for weak spots. I thought that was fair during arguments.
#185
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“Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical, real consciousness that exists for other men as well, and only therefore does it also exist for me; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men.”   Karl Marx
#186
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@b9_ntt
Anxiety occurs during consciouness and during dreams i.e. anxiety is still anxiety irrespective of when it occurs.

Watch the movie Monkey Hunters for good flick on Lions who eat baboons, and the lengths the baboons will go to to keep from being eaten by lions at night. I just watched it on prime. This anxiety at its peak. Good flick for sure.
#187
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@Reece101
Yeah 24 eyes.  Then there are the immortal jellyfish that revert back to embryo to keep from dying.

.."The ‘immortal’ jellyfish, Turritopsis dohrnii
To date, there’s only one species that has been called ‘biologically immortal’: the jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii. These small, transparent animals hang out in oceans around the world and can turn back time by reverting to an earlier stage of their life cycle."..
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#188
Reece101
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@ebuc
I thought there were many species considered biologically immortal, they just succumb to injury, hunger, disease, etc. Crocodiles come to mind. Though the immortal jellyfish goes one step further by producing clones of itself. 
#189
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@Reece101
I thought there were many species considered biologically immortal, they just succumb to injury, hunger, disease, etc. Crocodiles come to mind. Though the immortal jellyfish goes one step further by producing clones of itself. 
I dont think that is quite correct, in so far as, some all female species, ---ex some species of Gecko, pop-out exact female clones of themselves, and they do not revert some embryo likened state/phase to do this---  so I will have to reread about this one kind of jellie and the only known animal that has this immortal characteristic.

The point of the first URL about box jellies, was that it had two nervous systems and no brain, and the on nervous system knows with food toches its tentatcle and the tentacle pulls the food to its mouth.

Human  two primary and two 2ndary nervous systems .." The nervous system includes the central nervous system (CNS) and peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS is made up of the brain and spinal cord, whereas the PNS is made up of the somatic and autonomic nervous systems".. ergo a systemic fourness.

And again, sponge are less complex that jeelies, yet we discovered evidence of jellies that either preceded the evolution of the less complex sponges, or they evolved on differrrent branchs at same time.

And all of this begins with the base-line stuff from extra-terrestrial sources. Start at about 13:40 LINK to get the evolutionary path for search of origins of life. She mentions the ponds and Fuller also thought this was the pathways of the exttratrestrial material to really catch hold.  Thermal vents in oceans were  not known to Fuller at the times of his writings.



#190
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@Sidewalker
Thank you again for the links you provided above. One in particular has led to an unexpected treasure. The link was to “How thinking emerged on Earth: from bacteria to the human mind” (bigthink.com) by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam, March 10, 2022. I searched using the author's name and found their book. The reviews of that book led me to a more important book, Conscious Mind, Resonant Brain, by Stephen Grossberg. The latter book will take me a while to read but it promises a good, working theory for how consciousness is produced by the brain. I hope to engage you on this topic after I have read it.


24 days later

#191
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Are sleepwalkers unconscious?
I'd suppose so,
But they are human,
Maybe are conscious of their 'own inside world lucid dreaming?
Will 'become conscious if they wake up,
Animals are 'awake, yes?
. . .
Responding to outside stimuli,
Aware of environment,
. . .
Sleeping person's 'body responds, dreams influenced by outside,
Put a sleeper's hand in warm water,
Water dreams, body 'might urinate, I forget if that is fact or fiction.
. . .
Sleepwalkers can respond unconscious or forgetting to outside direction.
. . .


32 days later

#192
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Do you think a possible definition of consciousness is the ability to act upon your future orientation rather than what is present? After all, consciousness is the word of which defines the difference between humanity and animals and humans are better than animals at orienting themselves more prepared for the future over the present. Therefore, I think a sufficient definition of consciousness is the ability to overcome the present oriented self with the future oriented self. Would you all agree?
#193
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@Critical-Tim
Are you suggesting that animals do not have consciousness?
#194
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@TwoMan
People often say that consciousness is what defines human from animal, therefore it seems correct that consciousness would be described as the thing humans have and animals lack. However, I believe animals have it do a degree.
#195
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@Critical-Tim
Based on common definitions of consciousness, I would say that most, if not all life has some form or degree of consciousness.
#196
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@TwoMan
Can you explain the common definitions you are referring to?
As I understand it, consciousness it related to internal and external awareness along with the ability to experience sensations. However, I believe the sensations part is rather interpretable and not helpful to the definition. Therefore, I refer to the level of consciousness as proportional to the summations of the number and magnitude of each aspect related to internal and external existence that an entity is aware of.