Where does my consciousness come from?

Which nu-atheists hate Hume? That's news to me.

>red doesnt exist!
>*describes red, distinguishes it*

Lmao

>Parmenides sighs & draws his katana

It doesn't "exist" any more than mathematics, language, money, or baseball "exist." It's a convenient abstract fiction that we behave around. The behavior's the real thing, but it's much more useful to speak in terms of the abstractions in all these cases or else you'd be spending a lot more time elaborating on irrelevant details.

It is a self-aware feedback loop between your brain and its many stimuli, also known as a "phaneron.'
It is little more than a computational iterative loop in which the body of the function is the brain's processing techniques, each input is the surrounding stimuli, and each output is the momentary behavior of the conscious being (i.e. the self)
The self is the output, the stimuli is the input, and the brain is the processor of the stimuli.
The self awareness comes from the fact that the self and its behavior become part of the input at each stage of the iterative loop.
Sometimes the processing is less effected by the macro-phenomenal reality than by the nuances of abstraction, which is why we dream, hallucinate, etc.

Mainly Whatisface, Harris. I think he hates him, because it conflicts with his idea of supreme morality, which is retarded anyway.

It comes from outer space via a certain vapor.

Lmao, "they only exist in so far as they exist!"

Yes, just like everything else.

>Plato appears behind you

>"nothing personal, atomist"

>they only exist in so far as they exist
No. There's a major difference between how a rock exists vs. how the concept of the yen exists. Even if you subscribe to Platonism you would still acknowledge a difference between Forms and the physical objects participating in them.

>tfw he's this mad

None of that has anything to do with the essential question of consciousness.

Also. this isn't just a semantics thing. The point in outlining this difference between physical objects vs. abstract fictions is that you no longer feel the need to believe there's a "hard problem of consciousness" when you recognize everything in that "consciousness" label's bucket of meanings that isn't behavior (both in terms of actions you take and reporting / belief behavior) or physiology (i.e. changes in your bodily processes associated with certain classes of interactions, like blood pressure rising in the presence of "pain" stimuli) is instead an abstract fictional reference point. And the abstract components aren't any more mysterious than any other abstract fictions we use in our day to day lives e.g. you certainly wouldn't need a new physics to explain the "hard problem" of all the aspects of money that go beyond the physical paper representing it. The solution to that "hard problem of money" would just be that everything about money that isn't paper symbolizing it or our behavior around it is instead the abstract reference point we're behaving around. We all agree to recognize this fictional concept of my having five dollars so I can "give" you this abstract thing and get real physical things in exchange. The behavior of treating something that isn't real as though it is can be very useful, and it's the same case with the brain's use of "experience" as a convenient stand-in for the actual complexities of our stimuli and behavior.

Yes, it's called hylomorphism, manlet. Form and matter. Combined, they constitute the particular instances.

The unmoved movers would shake their heads at you, if they were not beyond such things. Instead, the lesser deities disapprove of you.

Lmao I love me some good philosophical falseflagging/banter.

>hylomorphism
Pick a fucking position, Aristotle is the opposite of Platonism.

There is no such a thing as consciousness. That is a historical, a textual and a social construction. That's not a thing.

If you eat beans you will inherit the soul inside the bean, which could had previously been an animal or a man, even a close relative, thereby causing flatulence.

t. totally not Pythagoras

Pythagorean theorem = best theorem ever.

Wrong.gif

The supreme metaphysical and moral position is something reached through intense synthesis of Divine Plato and Aristotle.

You try to set them at loggerheads. Were I not so angry, I would kill you.

"Fictions"

Lmao, get off your high horse, peasant. You already admitted they exist. Or else, how do you distinguish ideas, how do you explain any of this here?

Parmenides killed you and Plato defiled your body.

Do you understand the difference between the concept of money vs. the paper representing a dollar's worth of money?
Or the difference between the concept of language vs. the ink used to represent it in a book?
That's the difference I'm talking about.

I understand the difference between the eternal and temporal, yes. When considering issues, a proper metaphysical foundation is necessary if you would arrive at the correct answer.

Your foundation is lacking, so your answer to the OP is likely wrong. I have answered him satisfactorily:

Being is

Being contains form and matter

Consciousness is a form

End

When the vapor or wind enters the cosmos from outer space, it lodges itself the interstices of the earth. When such breath or spirit enters through the nostrils of an infant at birth, the same becomes a living being. Such is the origin of counsciousness. After death the vapor is recycled and so on indefinitely.

You're not really disagreeing with me very much at this point. Your main complaint seems to just be that you believe abstractions shouldn't be called "fictions." In which case, OK, fine, don't call them fictions.
If you can agree "consciousness" in the sense that doesn't refer to either behavior or stimuli associated physiology (like the raise in blood pressure example) is instead an abstract (or a Form if you want to use that set of terminology instead) in the same way "money" in the sense that doesn't refer to either our behavior around it or the paper representing it, then that's great because that's my point.

Ok, we are largely on the same page. However, there is a greater war around the corner. For you will not grant the form of "money" life. Yet, the eternal form of our conciousness...

Here is also the root why it is proper to worship the pagan gods. Worship the forms, for they too maybe alive and give shape to the hylomorphic world. Or there are lessor demons who act in their names.

So what I would basically say to you is this, never eat beans, lest you become a wretched one, and hated of the gods.

Mexico is a very, very evil nation.

I said exactly what consciousness is. I don't know what more you're looking for, and I suspect neither do you.

gas yourself P-zombie

>I said exactly what consciousness is.
At best you said how consciousness works, not what it is.

fucking rekt haha. nice one user

Checked, but you don't understand the concept of p-zombies. The whole point is you wouldn't be able to tell from what a p-zombie says or does whether they're actually a p-zombie or not. They behave identically to non-zombies.

>Checked, but you don't understand the concept of p-zombies.
No, it's you who doesn't understand the concept of a joke, which proves that you're definitely a p-zombie

It was a shit joke because it was based on your lack of understanding of the thing you were trying to joke about.
Not surprising though, dualists all recognize on some level that the "qualia" meme is bullshit and behavior is the real thing, which is why they almost always wrongly assume a p-zombie would have identifiable behavioral differences from a non-zombie even when told from the beginning not to do that for the purpose of the thought experiment.

>implying I'm a dualist

That's what you implied about yourself by bringing up p-zombies, yes.

It is how it works.
What more can we say of it?

are you autistic? do you seriously not know what jokes are?

Just because you repeatedly point out that you were making a joke doesn't make your joke not shit or not based in an unintentional misunderstanding. You can make a joke and have it not reveal that you completely misunderstand the thing you're trying to joke about FYI.

read Descartes

Read any of the thousands of criticisms of Descartes that came after him.

Please show me the logical flaw in the formula "I think, therefore I am".

>think
>Descartes

;)

Insects are philosophical zombies, they have clear behavioral differences from non-philosophical zombies.

>can only tell what something's behaviour is by seeing it
>can only hear reports of behaviour through sound or sight

>Just because you repeatedly point out that you were making a joke doesn't make your joke not shit or not based in an unintentional misunderstanding.
>unintentional misunderstanding.
>unintentional
except it wasn't, you sperg

you sinned in your past life, so god created this underworld to punish you

Then you should have no trouble explaining what red looks like.

excellent shitposting my friend

Red isn't an abstraction, it's a sensation.
Also, I can't see how physicality, behaviour etc. could be things clearer than the sensations I'm having right now. Actually it's only they that can rightly be called abstractions, and they're indeed mere ghosts if we are to compare them to sensations and feelings.
You're turning knowledge upside-down.

final cause

Consciousness is a bullshit artifact of attention. Like a shitty, overcompressed JPEG.

aeon.co/essays/how-consciousness-works-and-why-we-believe-in-ghosts

Same author wrote pic related.

>So far, most brain-based theories of consciousness have focused on the first type of question. How do neurons produce a magic internal experience? How does the magic emerge from the neurons? The theory that I am proposing dispenses with all of that. It concerns itself instead with the second type of question: how, and for what survival advantage, does a brain attribute subjective experience to itself?
Way to miss the whole fucking point

Please, explain to me what IS the point he is missing?

youtube.com/watch?v=gsRb5PJcBP4

The whole point of the consciousness question is "how can we have internal experience", not "what is the evolutionary purpose of subjective experience".

His entire book is about how we have internal experience, he is a neuroscientist.

Kneejerking fucko

whereof one cannot speak one must remain silent
>tfw just wanted to say that and don't remember much about my philosophy degree other than Wittgenstein is awesome

You said it's a self-aware feedback loop. The essential question of consciousness is "what is awareness and how does it arise (if it does)"?

Yet another consciousness thread... and yet again it's half made up of people who don't understand the hard problem of consciousness.

>But everyone in the audience experiences an illusion of sentience emanating from his hairy head.
How can we talk about an illusion without presupposing sentience?
However I agree with practically everything I've read so far. I only can't see how he has "cracked" the hard problem; actually it seems like he hasn't understood it: he talks about consciousness having physical interactions as if he were saying something clear.

>how, and for what survival advantage, does a brain attribute subjective experience to itself?
An anti-realist perspective on subjective experience (which is the necessary position of materialists) is incoherent. Fundamentally, it posits that experience is illusory. The obvious problem is that illusion cannot exist in a vacuum, there must be a thing to experience the illusion. So if experience is an illusion, that raises the question: what is experiencing the illusion?

Really? This is middle school level science. The brain operates completely differently from a computer.

During evolution the brain seems to have gravitated towards computational processes, brain waves are like ticks for example, fundamentally though a neuron is very different from a transistor. The neuron can form multiple connections and it operates with an intensity of synapses, not discrete 1s and 0s.

We know we are conscious, we know other humans have brains like ours so likely they are conscious too. We can't be sure a computer will be conscious or just a simulation of consciousness.

MODS

This is not a history thread.

>Subjective experience, in the theory, is something like a myth that the brain tells itself. The brain insists that it has subjective experience because, when it accesses its inner data, it finds that information.
Straight from the article yo uposted.

>His entire book is about how we have internal experience, he is a neuroscientist.
Well then, what's his explanation?

>middle school level science
>I don't understand what he's saying, therefore he isn't saying anything, and if he is saying something, it must be wrong because I don't agree with it
>haven't read the book, you read it for me

guys please

princeton.edu/~graziano/

>I'm too lazy to back up my claims, just read this guy's books.
Fuck that you lazy cunt, if you can't even back up your points then shut the fuck up and leave.

he doesn't address the crucial and tbqh rather obvious point I mentioned, all the time and energy he spent on these papers and books was a complete waste

I can't improve your reading comprehension for you, user.
I don't need to back up his claims, he does that well himself. If the article was still too vague for you, his book gives detail.
Out of the six or so he has published, I suggest Consciousness and the Social Brain.
I posted a video above as well, where he directly deals with one of you spook-obsessed chucklefucks.

You remind me of those people who can't deal with Jeremy England's theories on the origins of life.

There is no hard question. It's not hard, it's simple. Consciousness is an artifact of the attention-awareness loop. And that's fine, I don't think it lessens it in any way, it's mechanical, and thus is observable and measurable, and to me, that's good. That's a good, good thing.
It negates nothing.

Perhaps an example for you: some people like to say that Prana or Chi is bullshit, and people who believe in Chi get angry about that, but the thing is, the truth is that Chi is the bioelectric field that is part of our electrochemical bodies, and the material world is composed of atoms, made of energy, as in the work of David Bohm, a physicist-- and the Chi people hear this and say "fuck you, you're reducing our beautiful ancient tradition!" and the anti-Chi people say "that's not what bioelectricity is, there's nothing spooky about it! Chi is spooky bullshit!"

And the truth in the middle that I am showing: Chi is Bioelectricity as (partially)understood by ancient peoples.
It validates your ancient tradition, and it provides measurable and scientific data for the skeptic guy.

It's like we can't let go of the fight that is in itself stupid bullshit.

So, as Graziano is saying: consciousness is a partial understanding, illusory as such, but is in fact a representation of a real mechanical reality. And that doesn't take anything FROM it, it doesn't NEGATE it, it simply renders it accessible and non-magical.
To me, that's a very very good thing.

He readily admits that brains and computers are very different. That's not even relevant to the discussion anyway. The fact they are not similar machines has no bearing on consciousness not being an actual thing. Which it isn't.
What the fuck man, nice strawman.

>illusory as such
What is experiencing the illusion?

Data is collected and processed by the neurological machinery.
I mean, if you enjoy the feelies over the realies, then you can insist on your tiny man living inside you if you really want to. It's your life.

emergence. It's an irreducible property of all matter related to feedback, consciousness /=/ sentience, it's can only be the most basic type of interaction between states of matter thereby altering them both.

And he's not denying that this happens.
I did mention David Bohm above, as well.
It's just not this magical thing. We already have it in our hands is the entire point, we just want so badly to be in awe that we insist it's more complicated than it really is.

I really think you would enjoy the work of Jeremy England.

Even the mainstream is catching on to his work-- I remember trying to talk about him three years ago, and now he's even in normy mags like Wired.

wired.com/story/controversial-new-theory-suggests-life-wasnt-a-fluke-of-biologyit-was-physics/

Here btw is a GREAT interview with Bohm. He did a lot of work with Plasma, a hardcore physicist. He discovered that plasma acts as though it is conscious.
youtube.com/watch?v=QI66ZglzcO0

you didn't answer his question

Since you decided to shitpost instead of answering my question, I'll go ahead and repeat it
What is experiencing the illusion?

>I don't need to back up his claims, he does that well himself.
What fucking claims you dipshit? That what I fucking asked you and instead of answering you go off on a fucking tangent replying to absolutely nothing I said. You're debating against imaginary opponents. I never even said that his theory is wrong, only that his theory doesn't actually address the hard problem of consciousness and thus misses the whole point of the discussion around consciousness.

>Consciousness is an artifact of the attention-awareness loop.
Nice theory, now prove it or else shut the fuck up about how the hard problem has been solved.

Except Graziano already has, if you read the book, you'd know that. Instead you just get triggered because
>MUH ONTOLOGY THO

If you've read the book then you should be able to explain it instead of having me read the book, unless you're just too stupid to understand it. Or at least you could link to an article explaining it for you.

And if you're not even willing to do that then don't even bother to reply because you clearly don't give a shit about engaging in meaningful conversation.

Here is a more nuanced discussion on the Hard Problem aspect of Graziano.

selfawarepatterns.com/2016/01/13/michael-graziano-what-hard-problem/