My thanks to you all for some interesting points. I guess this will always be a thing that has many different views.
Monavis
What? I never said viruses or errors don’t damage computers. Your screen still doesn’t know the computer is damaged, though, and my analogy holds.
But, as I said, I define consciousness as something that comes AFTER cognition, and isn’t really dependant on it. Der Trihs probably uses it as both my definition (Experiencing the world, in our case through input from our brains) and what I might call awareness, where the brain calculates with what it knows of the outside world.
Let’s say you’re about to get hit by someone. Your brain knows, presumably through visual input and comparisons with your memory, that you’re looking at a fist coming towards you and that this is going to hurt if you don’t do something. Some people, presumably Der Trihs and you included, would say the brain, or even “you”, is conscious of this, but I’ll reserve the term and use aware instead. No big difference so far, but now I’ve got a word free instead of two that means the same.
Now, if the brain reacts to slowly, you might get knocked “unconscious”. I say you’re not really unconscious, as your c. is still there, it just doesn’t receive meaningful input.
While the brain calculates what to do next, it also continually somehow sends signals to the c. This c. of mine really can’t do anything about the feed but experience it, which of course makes me wonder why it is there in the first place, but as a whole, the theory sounds compelling to me.
I might need more words to explain this, though. The best analogy is still Brain -> Consciousness / Computer -> Screen. Now, this is where the homunculus comes in, but I can’t claim to have an explanation for everything, can I? However, basic point is, I have a harder time believing c. to be a function of the brain than something existing in itself, like a basic attribute of the universe or something.
I have no problem believing atoms whirling about for billions of years eventually evolve into life, but life creating consciousness seems to me like people creating time.
If one is a soul with a body, how can the body cause the soul to be lost? The soul would have the intellect so it should be responsible for itself. It would be to me like blaming a driver for the car manufactor’s mistakes.
monavis
Why ? Your theory doesn’t explain anything; there doesn’t seem to be any point.
Now I’ve encountered this attitude before, but never understood it. What’s so impressive about consciousness that you or anyone can’t imagine it being created by matter ? IMHO, making something as sophisticated as a human mind/brain, with so much self monitoring and feedback non-conscious would actually be harder.
It doesn’t explain much, it’s intended to be a different approach to understanding consciousness, not an entire explanation. But, as you seem to admit in your next paragraph, there is some difference, and if there is any difference and I’m right, then there certainly is a point.
You could be right, of course, but to me it seems like c. is something the brain hasn’t got the materials to construct. And while a brain needs self-monitoring, feedback, awareness, it doesn’t need to be c., it could just be a soul-less machine (using soul here not because I approve of the word, but for the associations I’m sure it produces)
I agree that your explanation is simpler, and thus would be the choice of the razor, but I believe it’s insufficient. (As is mine at this point, of course, but all we can hope for is progression)
In that case, do psychopaths/sociopaths have souls?
Not necessarily. In theory it might be possible to devise a scientific test that would detect the soul or otherwise prove its existence. (It would be impossible, however, to devise a test to disprove its existence the way the Michelson-Morley experiment disproved the existence of the ether – mainly because the concept of the soul is not clearly defined enough to imply any clearly falsifiable predicitions.)
Perhaps I misunderstood your analogy. A computer screen would be like a mouth - an output device. It reports whatever is written to it, garbage or sense, and cares little for the state of the processor. I don’t see it having anything to do with consciousness.
My understaning of this situation is that the brain will react before the consciousness does anything, though the consciousness may be fooled into thinking it initiated the reaction. Similarly, it has been shown that signals to move an arm happen before the consciousness “decides” to move it. This should not be surprising, since non-conscious animals get along fine, and interposing the relatively slow conscious mind between an event and our reaction to it would not provide survival value.
I think a far better computer analogy than a screen is a program that monitors the other programs running in the computer - including itself, which I think is crucial. If it has limited time granularity, perhaps this program could convince itself it is issuing commands to start other programs, though the other programs are actually running already, and the commands come after they execute.
The self analysis seems to me the crucial distinction between our intelligence and that of animals. I’ve seen my dog generalize, I’ve seen him plan, and learn, and even be devious - but he still has no self-awareness. The difference between him and a hamster and a fly makes it seem plausible to me that the complexity of thoughts increased until we had the self-referential brekathrough that became consciousness.
Well, I agree that the brain does not need to be conscious, since the vast majority of brains on this planet aren’t. But don’t you agree that consciouness has evolutionary value? Analyzing how we think lets us think more effectively. That allows better learning, the conducting of thought experiments rather than actual ones (useful if you’re chasing a mammoth, to use a cliche). I’d expect that as soon as a glimmering of self-awareness evolved, there would be an evolutionary arms race to improve it. Clearly a male who can refine mating strategies would win out over a male who could not. (The same goes for females, of course.) How the first connection got made is interesting, but after that the growth of intelligence is pretty much a given.
You’re still not getting it right, I’m afraid. I do not talk about consciousness as thoughts. If your consciousness is two different things: BOTH the fact that you’re thinking AND the fact you’re experiencing your thoughts (not just being an “unconscious” part of a calculation, the thoughts), you lose precision when debating.
My c. does not “think”. The thinking has already been done, by the brain or what have you. It does not “understand” the thoughts it’s feeded, understanding would imply further thinking, which would cause the c. to fall back to the former definition. (Sensing right now that writing it this way made me understand something, but I’ll continue my previous train of thoughts)
Evident by this, your monitoring system would fail to qualify as “consciousness” since c. would be the indiscriminate final instance of the cognitive process, or life in its entirety.
And please, give me the credit of having a thus basic understanding of evolution as to guess wildly that thoughts, or language has been to our (at least evolutionary) benefit.
You’re still not getting it right, I’m afraid. I do not talk about consciousness as thoughts. If your c. is two different things: BOTH the fact that you’re thinking AND the fact you’re experiencing your thoughts (not just being an “unconscious” part of a calculation, the thoughts), you lose precision when debating.
My c. does not “think”. The thinking has already been done, by the brain or what have you. It does not “understand” the thoughts it’s feeded, understanding would imply further thinking, which would cause the c. to fall back to the former definition. (Sensing right now that writing it this way made me understand something, but I’ll continue my previous train of thoughts)
Evident by this, your monitoring system would fail to qualify as “consciousness” since c. would be the indiscriminate final instance of the cognitive process, or life in its entirety.
And please, give me the credit of having a thus basic understanding of evolution as to guess wildly that thoughts, or language has been to our (at least evolutionary) benefit.
I was reacting to your difficulty with life creating consciousness. Anyhow, this time you misunderstood me. 
I agree that consciousness is not the same thing as thoughts (which we should define) but that consciousness helps refine and improve the process of thinking, by thinking about thoughts.
The homonucleus model is appealing because it reflects our experience of watching our thought processes, kind of like looking at a factory line and noting inefficiencies.
As for thoughts and consciousness- what is a non-conscious thought? Can we be said to be consciously aware of something without thinking about it. Our brains certainly work below the level of thought sometimes, but does consciousness?
How does thinking relate to thoughts? When you solve a problem at below the conscious level, you can be said to be thinking about it, but are you having thoughts about the problem until it rises to consciousness solved? Sometimes I can’t control my thoughts, but I always remember them, unlike this case, where I cannot report on how I solved the problem, just that I did. To continue my analogy, the monitor would send off a problem to the rest of the computer, where it would be solved by some processing unit, and the result returned. But the monitor would not know which unit solved it (it gets scheduled somehow) and it has no visiblity at all into the methods used.
Could it be that when animals solve problems these invisible processing units get connected to muscles without sending a copy to the conscious brain. We do this all the time (while driving, for instance) but our consciousness can always check in on what’s going on.
How does your model handle this situation?
Oh, my. Thinking about thoughts is still thinking. I’d even venture to say it’s at the same level. Both thinking about a frog and thinking about your own worlds are thinking of concepts in this world. And how is thinking about a frog different from thining about your sensation of that frog?
C. doesn’t think, it listens to the brain. The brain understands itself, and c. somehow “listens” to that understanding, as well. C. is JUST EXPERIENCE.
Say you watch a movie. You can think all you want about that movie, but it won’t change anything about it.
Say your c. watches your brain. As the c. doesn’t know about anything else, it is totally absorbed in watching your brain. As such, it doesn’t have any attention left to devote to thoughts about your brain. You might say, c. is the ultimate slave to entertainment.
And again, this isn’t really “proving” much, but I’m offering a distinction I personally believe is essential to understanding consciousness, or what I regard as the actual concept closest to “soul”, in regard to the OP. “Life”, I guess, would be all sorts of evolutionary progresses (biological, social, astronomical, technological, what have you).
What I hoped to establish by my examples is that thinking is definitely not the same as consciousness, that you can think beneath consciousness. Now, this doesn’t mean we can’t think consciously also.
I agree that c. listens to the brain - or at least to the output of thinking. But I don’t agree that c. is just experience. C. must be tied in with thought, but my c. at least operates through thoughts - if thoughts mean what I think they do, which might be different from what you think they do.
An excellent example. We can watch a movie at several levels. We can watch for the story. Then we can watch at a meta-level, observing camera work etc. But then we can also watch ourselves watching the movie, perhaps forcing ourselves to look at other parts of the screen, or to think of the movie in terms of camera angles. It is true that the images on the screen don’t change, but what gets imprinted in our memories change quite a bit. Haven’t you ever had the experience of reading about a continuity error, and then seeing it for ever after, where you never noticed it in previous viewings? I’ve seen some tv episodes filmed, and I view these totally differently from how I view things I haven’t seen filmed.
My c. sometimes watches itself watching the brain, which, because it is part of the brain, is plausible.
Never fear, I don’t think anyone can prove anything. I think the crucial aspect of the soul is that it is considered to be independent of the brain. That’s why I don’t believe in it. C., on the other hand, is dependent on the brain (watching it while being a part of it.) We may not understand it, but it is there.
Okay…now the discussion is pretty interesting.
For me the question of soul as I define it, has a lot to do with the question "are we primarily eternal spiritual beings with physical bodies or are we simply physical bodies.
I find the question of where the physical lines are drawn very intriguing from a spiritual sense. We know that certain chemicals or the “God Helmet” can stimulate the brain to reproduce an experience very much like the spiritual experiences described by people who have had them.
For me a crucial question is does that mean that the spiritual experience starts in the physical or not? If it does then the term needs to be redefined.
It’s the question of, when the brain ceases to function does everything we are, cease to be?
Even though it is a common and accepted occurrence I think dreams are an amazing thing. While we are physically asleep some part of us creates scenarios that we see and feel and interact with at some level. Often dreams are an expression of a deeper unrecognized feelings. Our…what… selves? Our unconscious selves trying to express something? Is that a level of consciousness that exists beyond our thoughts trying to tell us something?
I understand how emotion plays such a large role in the spiritual experience but from my own the question arises where does revelation come from? Where does the life changing profound insight and understanding come from? If we are only what we see now then how do I have an experience where profound insight and understanding comes to me not from a book or a physical experience but from what can be called an epiphany or a moment of clarity. And, what exactly triggers such a thing?
Is it possible that it is simply a physical phenomenon that we don’t understand yet? Sure it is. For myself it rings of our connection to each other and a greater something that we have yet to understand.
As a musician and writer I feel a certain sense of wonder and gratitude when something I’m working on comes out well. Rather than a “Look what I’ve done” it’s a sense of being allowed to access a source of creativity that is always there.
It’s that sense that makes me believe that we are primarily spiritual and that when out physical bodies return to the elements our true selves, the soul, moves on to the next phase of our journey.
I’ve been reading the posts back and forth and I must admit I don’t understand your position.
To me consciousness is basically the same as awareness. It’s the incorporation of a person in his/her mental model of the world. To me that seems very straightforward.
You seem to be describing something, an additional step, beyond the mental processes that create awareness. If that is true, what is this step, and how can it not involve the brain yet still be considered “consciousness”?
Ok, I was a bit unconscious and missed page 2 when I posted that, I see some of it discussed above.
It seems that if consciousness is merely passive viewing of the brain’s output, then it is trivial because the content cannot affect change and therefore does nothing.
The tricky part is that this is unfalsifiable. Given that any spiritual experience must correspond to a set of brain states, then reproducing these brain states can also reproduce the experience. Finding an alternative method of doing this gives a plausible explanation for the experience, but does not prove the experience didn’t come from outside the physical. I’m not sure how we can do this. My rational self says that we could by having a person get access to information they could not know normally, but I can also accept that a spirtual experience does not result in knowledge in this sense.
The same thing has happened to me, but they are not spiritual experiences but intellectual ones. The very best experience from what I do is when you understand something that no one else understands. I think this comes from my unconscious mind working on something, as I mentioned - because after I get the blinding insight, the logical argument is very clear, but I did not consciously construct the argument. If you spend your time thinking about spiritual things, then it makes sense that you have spiritual awakenings in the same way as I have intellectual ones. I have an advantage in that I get to submit my insights to peer review, to see whether they are really significant or just nonsense (as they sometimes are.)
Just as some people have better eyes and ears than others, I think some have better subconscious minds. I don’t know if it can be trained, but when I submit something to be figured out, I get a response most of the time. Maybe you can train it. When I do cryptic puzzles, if I have to work at an anagram, it takes forever. But usually I just look at it, go onto the next clue, and it gets worked out for me.
BTW, I had a thought. Ever wonder what it is like to be a dog? Think about the experience of driving without thinking about it, like when you’re daydreaming. You plan, you avoid other traffic, you speed up and slow down, you might even change lanes, you monitor for your exit, but you don’t realize you’re doing it. I think that is exactly what it is like to be a dog - performing complex tasks without a conscious mind intervening. Thoughts?
As stated before, the distinction is nothing big in itself, but it seems to be so hard to explain that I’m giving it undue focus. It’s merely that I believe that thoughts and c. are different (and if they aren’t, explain how a movie is the same as the screen that shows it). I don’t think adressing such a difference is trivial.
Arguing that c. is the same as thoughts (Well, I could use another word for c. if anyone has suggestions) is suggesting that thoughts AUTOMATICALLY are conscious, which leads to the question of what qualifies as thoughts. If computer processes don’t qualify as thoughts because they are not c., we’re no further because we haven’t made the distinction between thoughts and c. Something causes c., and I think merely saying, well, thoughts do, is a FAR too simple answer, thus I dissect the old term c. in order to search further.
Here I spend all this time trying to convince you, and you make the point yourself. You seem absolutely certain dogs don’t think. I agree one might say that, what with dogs having smaller brains and at best a limited language, though I wouldn’t postulate it. But your dog still experiences this ride! How can it, if it isn’t conscious?
Because it IS! C. and thoughts are again NOT the same.
Oh, and I’m well aware the mind monitors itself, gives feedback on its own thoughts, and so forth. I don’t consider this c., however, reserving the term for the experience of existance.