What is consciousness?

Are we talking thinking or experiencing?

The former is essentially any information system that uses an internal semantic language to independently synthesize and distill symbolic representations of other things.

The former, qualia, is in all likelihood a type of physical property that doesn't interact with mass and energy in a conventional way, if at all, so it seems very mysterious to us because it's difficult and potentially not possible to measure, at least with any technology we have invented yet. Also, panpsychism is consequentially probably accurate.

As you can see I goofed there and meant latter in that second paragraph. You're aware and I'm aware, we'll move past it.

And what is "aware?"

How do you think without experiencing?

Being cognizant of something.

But birds, dogs, and other animals are cognizant of many things. The bird is cognizant about where it may lay its nest, the dog is cognizant about where it might have puppies, they are cognizent about where to feed, but also where to breed, where to give birth, and where to relax. When given the opportunity to be familiar, they know whether a person or an animal or a thing is a friend, a foe, or a neutral party.

>What is consciousness?

It's an extremely complex process produced (for the most part) by the workings of your brain.

>Is it truly the only non-physical thing in our universe?

Nope, it's entirely physical. There are no minds without brains.

So?

Why couldn't information interact in a semantic system without experiencing? I mean humans and vertebrae in general in earth evolved to take particular advantage of phenomenal experience because it's a really fucking useful and convenient property for creating symbolic language but I don't see why that means it has to be there for thinking to occur.

>It's an extremely complex process produced (for the most part) by the workings of your brain.

That doesnt explain what it is, only what produces it.
And you were extremely bad at explaining what produces it as well.

So if being cognizant of something is achievable by common animals, and if that is the definition of being "aware," and if consciousness is the faculty that enables us to become "aware" then that means birds, dogs, cats and other animals have a consciousness, which we know they don't.

>Nope, it's entirely physical.
>He fell for the materialist meme

I am not asking you why, or why not, Im asking you how do you think without experiencing?

>which we know they don't.

How do you know that?

In fact, surely our subconscious does thinking without relaying any phenomenal /experiential information to our 'conscious' part of our brain. So this shouldn't even be a controversial point.

>animals have a consciousness, which we know they don't.

Do you have a single fact to back that up?

>Descartes
>Convinced he can't prove the existence of anything other than the immaterial in himself
>Only disproves illusions through the concept of a benevolent god
>Even if existent, benevolence is still disputed even among believers
>Mfw

Materialism is the future, brother.

Consciousness is the ability to know that we are aware.We are cognizent that we are aware. Animals dont.

>Consciousness is the ability to know that we are aware.

Wrong.

>We are cognizent that we are aware

So what?

>Animals dont.

Prove it.

Are you witting that you are cognizant that you are aware?

>Consciousness is the ability to know that we are aware.
This is actually just one meta-cognition, which is just a thought about another thought.

Consciousness is just what we call a thing that probably isn't what we think it is. Concepts 'don't exist' in general.

>Consciousness is the ability to know that we are aware

You do realize that 'to be conscious', 'to know' and 'to be aware' are synonyms right?
You literally just said that consciousness is the ability to be conscious of us being conscious.

I said what thinking is and it didn't have anything intrinsically to do with experience. What makes you believe you would need to experience to think? I mean I more less agree if you just mean to say we incidentally have to experience when we think because qualia seems to be embedded directly into the physical structure of our particular universe.

>Materialism is the future, brother.
It is the future if the emotions of mankind are whittled down and made so petty that the significance of our thoughts, ambitions, interests and desires are put in such a marginal position as to be on the physical plain. There is more to a mind than its physical body, this is evidenced by the fact that the potential of the mind in each individual to create, to do, to say, to think, is infinite, while the finite part of mind, the brain, provides certain barriers for us to operate from within, I.E, memory. Think of the mind as a ship sailing on the sea, the capacity of that ship to hold any sort of cargo or to decorate itself as it likes or even WHERE it sails is entirely within your countrol, but certain factors are not, such as the cloth in the sails and the wood that the ship is made from. These are the physical limitations of the finite, and thereby the physical, while the limitations/potential of the inside is infinite and thereby spiritual, this is further evidenced by the fact that we cannot transmit our thoughts into the material plane on their own (I.E, you cannot attach a few wires to your brain and come up with images on a screen for what you are thinking of.) This can only be filtered through your physical mind. Another example would be a water-well, only you with your wooden bucket are able to draw the water from the well. If you do not have the bucket (I.E, If you are another person.), you have no way of knowing that there is water inside that well, or even WHAT KIND of water (personality, ambitions, etc.) You can only be sure that there is water because you too, and everybody else, also have a well of the same kind, but each with a different variety and quality of water. But you cannot really be sure that the water in the wells of others exist, only you can see your water. This water is the infinite mind and your bucket is the finite mind. The water in the well cannot be seen or manifested. It is spiritual.

How can people say that consciousness is grounded in reality and is just the chemicals in your brain?

>Concepts 'don't exist' in general
They exist within our minds. If concepts do not exist, yet they exist within our minds, the only conclusion we can come to is that our minds are not of this physical plane.

Because they are under the the inner workings of their mind is a purely physical scenario instead of one that takes place outside of our plane, where an item from our mind is not compatible with an item in our physical world unless filtered via the bridges between our minds and our brains.

It's not just the chemicals, it's also the organization of charges and connections causing patterns of activation.

>What makes you believe you would need to experience to think?

To think you need some material to think about.
That material are sensations either by memory, direct external obtainment or imagination.
Any of those 3 require you to experience the sensation otherwise it doesnt get taken in and if it isnt in then it cant be processed.

>What makes you believe you would need to experience to think?
Imagine a color you have never seen before.

Why can't information in general/of any type be the material? I mean, experiential information is a type of information but it's not the only type.

If I said 'I can't', what would your point be?

What part of "extremely complex process" didn't you understand? You want to now the details? They're a matter of public record, have fun making head or tail of neuroscience journals and biochemistry textbooks. Philosophers have always assumed "consciousness" is a "thing" because it seems so "simple". Science has discovered that teh trick to consciousness is that there is no trick, it really is as staggeringly complicated a sit looks and if you want to even try to understand it, it will take a considerable effort on your part and not a post on an Australian shitposting forum.

Explain how a non-physical "thing" interacts with a physical "thing"

That you cannot imagine something without experiencing it first. Even if you imagine something completely new, it will always have shreds of things that you have experienced, much like a quilt.

Sensations are necessary for whichever information type you desire to compute because it is through the sensations that we represent any other information type.

Lets take Anons reasoning and twist it a little.

Imagine or remember 'number 3' without any sensation. You cant.

Imagine or remember 'freedom' without using any of the senses. You cant.

Imagine or remember your girlfriend without being able to represent her in any way. You cant.

You need to be able to represent something before being able to change(Think, process) it otherwise you have no way of knowing whether you changed something to begin with.

>Explain how a non-physical "thing" interacts with a physical "thing"
If the dreams that you have at night are not on our physical plane, yet they still "happen." I.E, they created the emotions and thoughts associated with whichever scenario you are dreaming of, then you have just interacted with your infinite mind, able to create images and scenes completely independent of the outside world at that moment in time. Obviously your infinite mind is bound to your finite mind because of the damage that can be done to your infinite mind by damaging your finite mind. (Alzheimer's, for instance) And if that is the case, then your infinite mind is bound to your body, because only your body experiences those dreams. It is possible for physical things to create the perimeters for an infinite thing to come into being on the infinite level, yet these infinite things are bound to physical things like our body. Think of it as the windows to the lower levels of a ship, the ship is sailing on the sea, yet the window you are seeing leads into the infinite abyss of the ocean. Your infinite mind is an infinite object existing on an infinite level, but because of your body, it is leashed to the finite and physical plane. Only when you die can this infinite knowledge set itself free. In a way, this infinite mind could be called "the soul." but I believe that would be too presumptuous, because in order to confirm that, we would have to try and understand the fundamentals of the soul as much as we are understanding the fundamentals of the finite and infinite mind.

You do realize that 'soul' is just a word used to translate Ancient Greek 'psyche' which just meant 'the mind' and nothing else?

The definition of what constitutes a "soul" in the contemporary western mind has changed spades since the ancient Greeks, especially with the introduction of Hindu, Abrahamic, Jain, and Buddhist themes.

>If the dreams that you have at night are not on our physical plane, yet they still "happen."

Dreams are caused by observable brain states. Just because your consciousness is asleep doesn't mean your brain stops working and it doesn't make your thoughts (in this case, dreams) any more non-physical.

What you mean is the concept has shrunk as science has claimed more and more of it's presumed attributes. Oh it's not your /literal/ breath, that's just a metaphor! Oh it's not you /literal/ mind, that's just a metaphor! Oh it's not /literally/ real, that's ju- oh wait.

>Sensations are necessary for whichever information type you desire to compute because it is through the sensations that we represent any other information type.

I agree that this all incidentally true because that's precisely how we evolved but I don't see why we couldn't imagine a thinking being in some alternative universe that uses non-experiential/non-quale types of information to represent other things within its own internal symbolic language.

Isn't there a guy with an IQ of 150 who is missing like 95 percent of his brain matter?

Explain to me how there can exist vast palaces, solar systems, and giant crabs chasing me in the form of "waves" that I am also able to translate into images. How does one translate "waves" into scenarios?

No.
Each culture and religion assigned certain qualities and functions and obligations to the soul, for most of European History those definitions have been stooped in either the Pagan form or the Abrahamic form, but with the introduction of Vedic and other non-vedic Eastern religions such as Jainism, Buddhisms, and Hinduism, the functions and destinations and qualities of a "soul" began to measure up against the Abrahamic Christian ones, very few functions of the "soul" as explained by these cultures are explainable by scientific standards.

That's what is so strange, we can't imagine that, but we have the capacity to create that in the form of artificial intelligence. Isn't that strange?

Yes and he's amazing. But take a look at the part he's missing, it's the middle bit that's largely structural, he has plenty of the precious outer cerebellum that does our thinking. Most of your brain is not actually neurons, its glial cells that hold the whole thing together. They're why brains have that jello consistency.

"Waves" refer to cycles of relative electric activation/disactivation of neurons. REM sleep, when dreams occur, has activation patterns most similar to those found in the waking state, just more random. Notice that your examples of the fantastical nature of dreams mostly come from things you have seen or experienced in life, but assorted a but more randomly. For example, you've seen or experienced chasing, crabs, and the concept of something giant in waking life, and in the REM/dream state these are randomly combined into whole you've never directly experienced but is composed of experience. It is all electrical activity and it is all material.

Neocortex. Cerebellum is for inhibiting/fine-tuning motor instructions

You still haven't proved how electric activity could translate into perceived images. I know how computers put up images, they do it via a system of ones and twos repeated millions of times to produce the result, but what of thoughts and images? By what electrical system do they produce these images?

>Explain to me how there can exist vast palaces, solar systems, and giant crabs chasing me in the form of "waves" that I am also able to translate into images. How does one translate "waves" into scenarios?

Dreams are caused when the brainstem gives off "static" during REM sleep. Why it does this is to do with how our long-term memory works. When people lose the ability to REM or are prevented from it by researchers or torturers lose the ability to form new memories. However, this process is subconscious, "we" are not directly aware of it. When "we" experience this static, "we" interpret it in terms of known reality. This is because that is what "we"is for: our self conscious self's purpose in the "ecology" of our minds is to paint a coherent narrative out of the experiences we have. While we're sleeping, our brain is still active, and when the brainstem does it's memory thing, our inner narrator does it's best to form a coherent narrative out of it. Dreams are usually forgotten very quickly, you only remember one if you wake up during it, so your sample of all your dreams is pretty low even if you keep a journal, but if you look for themes in your own dreams you'll soon realise they for the most part contain the events of the previous day, as you would expect from a memory-forming process. How many times have you woken from the dream of doing a full days work, only to realise you have a full days work in front of you?

>the functions and destinations and qualities of a "soul" began to measure up against the Abrahamic Christian ones, very few functions of the "soul" as explained by these cultures are explainable by scientific standards.

Go on then. Give me the functions of the soul, as you understand them.

Whatever, nerd.

>do it via a system of ones and twos
Ones and zeros, which are actually patterns of on/not-on. Combinations of on-off are summed in different ways to produce other numbers which get translated etc. It is a very complicated system. In certain ways this is analogous to the patterns of activation in the neurons which can get summed in different ways and contexts, but you shouldn't get too caught up in the metaphor. The best thing to do would be to get reading, as there is a wealth of information dedicated to this exact topic in any neurology journal.

Notice how, like he said, the outer neo-cortex is the part that remains? This is the part that is well-developed in mammals and extremely well-developed in humans in particular, and allows for the higher order thinking and planning we're known for and is very capable of plasticity.

>he
I should clarify, I (, ) meant that was mostly right about his explanation, he just misplaced a word.

Christ, meant that was correct minus the word.

Jesus Christ.

>>What is consciousness?
One of the end results of the chemical reactions in your brain.

>>non-physical
No. Damage your brain and you either die or are radically changed in some way.

See:

You are asking for a simple answer to an impossibly complicated question. Just because we have this word "consciousness" does not mean we can isolate such a thing in the brain, it turns out to be far more complicated than that.

Ugh.

Consciousness/ experience is a property of nature.
We become aware of nature directly through our senses, and form ideas about it through abstractions.
Our nerve input channel patterns produce the senses: touch, vision, etc.
Our recursive, self-referential internal brain patterns produce abstractions: thoughts, emotions, beliefs, etc.
We **cannot know** what kinds of experiences exist "elsewhere" than our brains in this universe.
We hypothesize about the experiences of other places by conjecture and reason. e.g., other humans have minds like mine, higher animals have minds less like mine, lower animals still less, etc.
There is no true "person/non-person", "life/non-life", "matter/energy" distinction. There is only what is. All other directions are abstractions created by our brains.
Panpsychism is true. Epiphenomenalism is true.
We can never explain what consciousness "is". To do so we would need to explain it in terms other than its effects. But those effects are our entire experience of the world from which we can never escape.
Hope this helps.

La conscience est une petite flamme invisible et qui tremble. Nous
pensons souvent que son rôle est de nous éclairer, mais que notre être
est ailleurs. Et pourtant, c’est cette clarté qui est nous-même. Quand
elle décroît, c’est notre existence qui fléchit ; quand elle s’éteint, c’est
notre existence qui cesse.
Pourquoi dire qu’elle nous donne de ce qui est l’image la plus imparfaite?
Cette image est pour nous le véritable univers : nous n’en
connaîtrons jamais d’autre. Pourquoi dire qu’elle nous enferme dans
une solitude où nous ne trouverons jamais de compagnon ? C’est elle
qui donne un sens aux mots société, amitié ou amour. C’est en elle
que se forme le désir, mais aussi le sentiment de la possession, qui
est la possession elle-même.
Lorsque la conscience cherche un objet en dehors d’elle et souffre
de ne pouvoir l’atteindre, c’est qu’elle souffre de ses limites et qu’elle
cherche seulement à grandir. Car il ne peut y avoir d’objet pour elle
que celui qu’elle est capable de contenir. On peut bien dire qu’elle est
enfermée en elle-même comme dans une prison : c’est une prison dont
les murs reculent indéfiniment.

Mais qui pourrait penser que la conscience est une prison, sinon
celui qui clôt toutes ses ouvertures ? Lorsque la conscience naît, l’être
commence à se libérer des chaînes de la matière ; il pressent son indé-
pendance : une carrière infinie s’étend devant lui qui surpasse toujours
ses forces et jamais son espoir. À mesure que la conscience croît, elle
devient plus accueillante ; le monde entier lui est révélé ; elle communique
avec lui et une joie la remplit de trouver autour d’elle tant de
mains qui se tendent.
Il n’y a point d’état de la conscience, même la souffrance, même le
péché, qui ne vaille mieux que l’insensibilité ou l’indifférence. Car
ce sont encore des marques de l’être et de la vie qui témoignent de la
puissance avec laquelle elle se laisse ébranler. Il ne faut pas chercher à
les abolir, mais à les convertir. On rejette dans le néant tout ce que
l’on retire à la conscience. La conscience la plus grande, la plus riche
et la plus belle est celle qui unifie le plus grand nombre d’élans et purifie
le plus grand nombre de souillures.

What a lot of words to say nothing at all.

Lavelle writes with reality and things, not with words. Of course an illiterate of the Real can't understand anything.
I could spend a month reading and meditating this excerpt and still don't get everything.

>I could spend a month reading and meditating this excerpt and still don't get anything

Fixed that for you. I'm sorry that it hurts your butt, but the mind is no longer the domain of philosophers but of scientists.

It doesn't "hurt my butt" the fact you're an ignorant.
The mind is not the domain of science or philosophy, the mind is only a reality that deserves to be understood.

You don't even seem to understand what philosophy and science are (as if they were two opposite things).

I saw this in a thread yesterday and thought it was interesting.

>If the concept of free will is coherent, then a person can't merely be chemical reactions in the brain. If he were, then he could not freely choose a course of action any more than a rock at the mercy of gravity and friction can choose which way to roll down a hill. If humans are free, then they must have an "immaterial mind" that is the source of their free will that allows them to act without being completely determined by their biological functions.

>a reality that deserves to be understood.

Which we are doing, thru science. What progress has philosophy made since the Greeks?

Why can't some people accept the simple fact humans are an insoluble tension between material/immaterial worlds?
This is what being human is and what differentiates us from animals or gods, and this is what makes us free at all.

>>If the concept of free will is coherent, then a person can't merely be chemical reactions in the brain. If he were, then he could not freely choose a course of action any more than a rock at the mercy of gravity and friction can choose which way to roll down a hill.

No-one chooses freely, only God is unconstrained by reality. The level at which and the degree to which our choices are free is not always obvious but certainly everything in our universe has a cause and all causes fall into an unbreakable recession.

>immaterial

What does this even mean? Nonphysical? Abstract?

Well, I am a normal human being so I understand philosophy is love of widom, and wisdom is something good in itself and what you call "science" doesn't even mean anything without a human being behind it who is searching for some wisdom.

I'd say nonphysical, but that depends on your concept of physis.
Something real but "invisible", that can only be known through reason/imagination.

We can only imagine things based on what we have experienced, and reason is known to not always be reliable. Only the scientific endeavour is self-correcting, if you truly seek truth it is the only place worth looking.

Concepts exist, but concepts are just mental representations of ideas.

For example an impossible shape doesn't actually exist, but the idea of the impossible shape does.

You're confusing existence with the idea of an existence existing.
To be honest, you can't even truly imagine paradox. You imagining an approximation of a paradox that you can understand.

>This thread
Are philosophers the young earth creationists of academia? jesus fucking christ this thread is painful to read as soon to be M.D who wants to specialize in something psychoendoneuroimmunology related
Seriously go to /x/ or kill your fucking kill yourselves you superstitious retards.
Special mention to the guy who claimed thoughts and dreams are not physical because its just information in your brain, by that logic I can have 50 terabytes of child porn in my computer and get out of jail arguing the digital world is not bound by the laws of physics or men.
THERE IS NO
SUCH THING
AS NON-PHYSICIAL
IF YOU USE THAT WORD
YOU ARE AUTOMATICALLY A SPERG IN THE EYES OF EVERYONE WITH HIGHER THAN 2 DIGITS IQ
Fuck I'm mad.

It looks like you caught a case of scientism.

randyeverist.com/2011/04/can-science-explain-everything.html

>Why can't some people accept the simple fact that *insert absolutely ridiculous premise*
Gee I dunno

>We can only imagine things based on what we have experienced
Sure, but imagination is different from perception. You use your imagination to understand things you are not perceiving or can't perceive.

>reason is known to not always be reliable
I don't know if you are using the term "reason" correctly. But reason is what basically defines something as "reliable" or not.
If there's no reason, there's no way to determine something as right or wrong, true or false.

Science can't explain everything but philosophy can't explain anything.

You can't do science at all without philosophy.

>THERE IS NO
>SUCH THING
>AS NON-PHYSICIAL

Right, so show me where the english language is located and how many inches it has.

>I don't know if you are using the term "reason" correctly. But reason is what basically defines something as "reliable" or not.
>If there's no reason, there's no way to determine something as right or wrong, true or false.

And yet physics is full of "reasonable" arguments that have been BTFO by empirical observations. "Physical things have an explicit location" seems reasonable, until you discover the uncertainty principle. Heavy things fall faster" seems reasonable until you do the experiments. Reason is a good first start but only empirical observation can tell you whether or nto your reason is reliable.

Humanities was a mistake.

That's true but the philosophy needed has been done. Science was born from philosophy but it is no longer dependant on it.

This makes no sense.

Wait, since when reason and observation are opposites?
All things obey reason, even physical objects.

Ok, so stay away from philosophy. People like you do not deserve to understand some stuff.

To the people who think consciousness is not a physical process of the brain, please tell me how an unconscious mind could identify inebriation, blood loss, or physical damage that results in errors in the way a brain processes information.

>show me where the english language is located
Right behind your beady intelligence devoid eyes my man.