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Hey TL bloggers,
I don't post here much anymore (any forum, actually) but I thought I'd record some of my thoughts somewhere I can get feedback instead of scattered across gmail docs and scraps of paper.
If you're like me, you probably "woke up" as soon as you saw the title of this blog. Because you were reminded that you existed (if you were not already in this frame of mind), thus establishing an ephemeral and precious state of mind not unlike stepping out of a cage. Skip the next couple of paragraphs if that's the case.
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If you haven't thought about consciousness or need a reminder, here's a quick example (because there is no good definition). Warning: this is one of those "red pill or blue pill" moments! Consider observing a red object. It's well known that the object looks red due to the wavelengths of light the object absorbs, reflecting the "red" wavelengths to your retinas which undergoes a tremendously complicated journey through your brain, where you recognize that the object is red. But here's the interesting part. A computer can be programmed to process wavelengths to identify "red" as we do. But our experience has something extra. We "see" the color red.
Now think about your other perceptions. Sounds. Smells. Touch. Your own thoughts. They are products of your consciousness. Why and how does this happen? Why are we able to recognize that these are even questions in the first place? I'm sorry to say that many (relatively speaking) have tried -- and to the best of my knowledge, all have failed -- to make _any_ progress on these questions.
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So while we are both in this state where we question the nature of the manifestation of our perceptions, let's see if I can communicate one particularly interesting line of thought I had last night in my hotel room in vegas (I had a bad poker session, alright??  ).
The question I'll discuss here is the following. Why does our visual perception seem to span an infinite (more specifically, continuous) region? Two objects a meter away from each other look different than if they were two meters away from each other, and so on. We perceive the position of objects with respect to how they relate to each other on a continuous coordinate frame, in that it is smooth. This occurs despite the finiteness of our brains. Strange, right?
Here is what I'm thinking. Our visual perceptions aren't defined as the objects that are there, but instead how they affect a sort "fabric" in which they exist. Sort of like the hand in this image:
![[image loading]](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSdNYmJ2NjxnkAVDV28X6itEpZIr1jJdxjU5o7iWBv4TwHby7DAOmv1ow)
One way to interpret this is that we perceive what's _not_ there instead of what is there. Sort of like the universe being turned inside out as it is processed by our brains, where the representation of the objects as the space between the objects is equivalent to representing the objects directly. So my conclusion is that our brain creates equivalent (isomorphic) representations of slices of the universe in the form of everything we perceive. This makes our perceptions interchangeable with the interactions of matter producing them, resulting in an internally consistent bubble comprising our consciousness.
So those are some vague thoughts on the "where does consciousness come from" question, and also on the "why do perceptions look the way they do" question (we see inversions of slices of the universe). This latter point is one idea for why all of our perceptions seems to be defined within regions -- objects in 3d space, volume in 1d (quiet to loud), color (white to black), etc. But it doesn't address the question of why, once concepts within those defined regions are identified (like red on the color scale) they appear the way they do, and whether they could appear differently to someone else.
Thanks for reading!
Next entry will be: why I think studying consciousness could lead to practical applications in science and engineering.
  
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I hope you know that there are brilliant people out there with excellently sharp minds who are thinking about those sort of issues for a living and have published volumes of (peer-reviewed) work on it. This is just to add a bit of perspective on our own everyday idle musings. Not to discourage our mind's fancies - far from it! Doing some thinking sparks interest, which then can be indulged by reading books and articles on the matter, which in turn help refine our thinking! It's a learning process.
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i love this topic, its known as Qualia. its hard to explain even the mere existence of this problem, cause everybody just says "conciousness is a evolutionary useful thing, nothing more".
in my personal opinion consciousness is something that exists seperately from the brain (like an incarnation into a material body), something from another plane. For me the brain is more a managing processing deivce with memory, helping conciousness get along through this world.
ill add more to this discussion once ive thought some time about it.
Itd be nice if you and Sauwelios cited some of the literature that you think are worth reading.
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I've thought quite a bit about this topic.
An interesting "experiment" to me would be to see whether a computer program that simulates the brain(don't ask me how to make one) can ask these questions about consciousness. If it could, it would basically imply that we cannot deduce anything about the existance of a non-physical consciousness (because it can still exist but with a one way interaction) and I currently believe this would be the case. Now, if the program couldn't fathom these questions...let's just say that that would be interesting in the case we knew the program is a valid simulation (which woud be hard to know).
The concept of a non-physical consciousness is particulary interesting to me. I imagine it as something that just is and actually feels and nothing else, and therefore it's existance would have a lot of consequences on our view on morality (especially in the case where every being has one).
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I haven't studied this area enough to comment constructively on your thoughts, but this was a very interesting read. The two books that really got me interested in consciousness were by Douglas Hofstadter: "Godel Escher Bach" and "I Am a Strange Loop". Those are excellent and intense reads, the second book is less difficult to read than the first, but both are completely worth the time. You should check them out if you haven't read them, might give you more ideas.
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The objective existence of our consciousness is a concept which has been central to Philosophy for centuries
An early example comes from a disagreement between Thomas Hobbes, a materialist who defended the principle that all of the experience which we call consciousness stems from the physical matter of the brain, and Rene Descartes, who developed a new philosophical direction "Cartesian dualism", which supposed that the mind and body are separate entities, to whit, there exists a consciousness which is independent from the physical material of the body.
Naturally in the intervening four centuries, much thought and discourse has taken place on the subject.
I myself am a strident materialist, but nonetheless the subjective experience of consciousness is one which merits a great deal of thought. There is certainly a fascinating connection between the physical matter of our mind and the world which we perceive, which is very easy to prove that our perception and the reality are very often not the same thing (psychoactive drugs are an example of this phenomenon)
As far as the connection to science and technology, the development of artificial consciousness is a vibrant developing field.
Sparked by the development of Neural Network computing, the understanding of our own consciousness and decision making and the programming of AIs capable of say, recognizing a face in a picture (not a trivial task by any means), has joined neuroscience and computer programming closer than ever before.
A related issue is the Chinese Room thought experiement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room.
Philosopher John Searles posits a man in a room with a comprehensive set of instructions for how to look up chinese symbols in response to an input. He recieves an input, which he doesn't understand, and produces an output, which he also, does not understand. However, a Chinese speaker who puts in the input and receives the output will feel that the inhabitant of the room is having a fluent conversation in Chinese, though he is merely following rules.
Searles presents this as an argument that a computer will never be able to duplicate consciousness.
I vehemently and stridently disagree with this. This is to take a simplistic understanding of both the concept of consciousness and neglects our developing understanding of Emergence. One day I'll develop a full critique
But for now, I hope I have perhaps given you food for thought. Look up the emerging field of artificial neural networks. It will help you understand the issue of consciousness
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It's a very interesting topic but sadly I'm pretty sure you can think three decades about it and it won't get you anywhere. In the end It's all semantics. You can be really materialistic and say that consciousness is more or less an illusion that doesn't do anything, you can hold some kind of Cartesian - Dualism view (although I think that makes the least sense) or you can belief that God exists and gave us a soul and free will and whatnot.
There's no proof that any of that is true or false, It's just believe. You can't really conduct any experiments, as the whole Qualia thing isn't observable. I think we just have to accept that it's a little odd and care about something else.
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@Nyxisto: Saying that it's all semantics is itself a philosophical position - one with a clear practical consequence: you find the things a little odd and care about something else. So your dismissal of the topic is itself based on a take of the topic, which has clear practical implications, meaning that by moving on and caring about something else you contradict your premise about positions on the topic having no practical implications. The question then is, why should we accept your position and move on to care about something else? For that you need an argument for your position - a non-empirical one at that because you can't conduct any experiments to find out whether the statement that all talk about consciousness is purely semantic or not is true!
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Blazinghand
United States25555 Posts
Well what if our moinds can only process with a pixel density of, say, 1 cm (not actually that but bear with me) obviously movement would APPEAR continuous because "continuous" just means "continuous enough that it's not as strong as the resolution of our perception"
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very nice conversation, thank you
consciousness is a lot of things, reducing the scope of the term is useful to get anywhere
no quantifiable known entity has been scientificaly determined that would explain this ability human beings develop or have since their conception that allow them to go beyond cartesian logic and things that have been learned
a computer can only be taught to go beyond its own parameters/information library, if you teach it to do so
so arguably it cannot until we allow its scope to encompass not trusting its own base of information or/and need for limits
i have always thought that although harsh the saying "people chose their fate" is somewhat accurate to defining what human beings bring to life
some of us chose to be content as sheep, while others defy any common sense in the name of research and progress (knowingly or not, that is not the issue)
we like to reinvent stuff, we like to demean or put people on pedestals, we have huge capacities for sacrifice or self sacrifice
we are unique snowflakes, only we all cringe to solidarity or being apart of something bigger (acceptance, power over others etc) than ourselves
these grams that dissepear when we die, this unknown, this soul (or abscence of), what is it? Why is it there for (if it is there from the start, or build out of or own history/psychosis)?
i like to think we will never know, doesn't give it a uniqueness to it? (i hate that familiarity breeds contempt, to most people)
ps: be back, promise! i got to put my kid to sleep
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i can't continue sharing, because of work tomorow, there s always tomorow  )
but i definetly needed to declare all high and mitty that this should be a featured blog
we need more consciousness, even lurker consciousness
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EPT
