Also, tourbot:
Even saying “conscious thoughts” is a bit tricky, terminology-wise. I can be conscious of the blue sky or the road I’m walking on without really “thinking about” them. And they don’t just pop in out of nowhere when and if I do “think about” them, of course. So, to me, having “thoughts” just seems like an added bonus we have on top of the basic consciousness package.
As soon as I hit post on that last one I realised you were going to make the mistake of assuming I meant only automatic functions. How you can understand the concept of Chalmers walking talking zombie and make that mistake escapes me.
The fact of the matter is that most of your thoughts are not a product of your conscious thought process. In fact, as part of the definition of a Chalmers zombie, consciousness is little more than an observer of those thoughts.
Let’s look at some concrete examples. When I walk, I am not conscious of the set of instructions being sent to my legs. It is not an automatic process, it is learned. When I speak, I am not conscious of the process by which I select the correct words and syntax to express a thought. I sometimes consciously decide to make alterations, but the time this takes would make it impossible to carry on normal conversation if I relied solely on the conscious part of the process. When I bring something up from memory, I am not conscious of where the memory was stored, or how it was retrieved. So if I wanted to call up a memory using consciousness alone, how could I?
And you can certainly add Freudian, Jungian, or whatever flavor of subconscious influnces you like. It is hard to say exactly which ones are there and what they are like, because after all, we arent’t conscious of them. Most of the time.
The list could go on and on. I would estimate that moment by moment consciousness rules less than 5% of any persons activity. Maybe less than 1%.
Now, back to the Chalmers zombie. As I understand it, it is capable of doing all the things that a conscious person can do yet has no consciousness. Now, given that, imagine a person with only the conscious observer mind, and, since you ordered before midnight, we’ll throw in all automatic functions of the medulla oblongota and below. I can guarantee you that this person would appear more zombie like than the Chalmers zombie. Can’t walk, can’t talk, can’t do a single worthwhile thing.
If you suddenly became a Chalmers zombie, I and everyone else who interacted with you would still think you were you. Only you wouldn’t be aware that we thought so.
I agree with the Buddhists on this much: we are wrong to think that the conscious mind is what is in control.
The catalyst for my departure from a couple of recent threads was a perception of my own inability to communicate. Nothing more, nothing less. Debate without communication is pointless and (for me) intensely frustrating.
In the hope of demonstrating that, I offer this:
When you said “I was not concious”, I interpreted that as a statement about consciousness. Now, it appears to me that you are trying to make a statement about identity.
I was not making any statements about identity.
Spiritus Mundi:
So, how do you distinguish consciousness from identity? I must have missed that step.
tourbot:
Hey, it was that or Freud. I’m at a loss still to explain how a thought could be non-conscious but not automatic, but we’ll get to that…
This sounds close, but I need more clarification. “Conscious thought process” or consciousness? Is there a difference? What constitutes a “thought” for you, exactly? Is the input of blue from the sky around me a “thought”?
I don’t see any reason an automatic process cannot be learned. Perhaps you could explain?
That’s like saying “if I wanted to pound my fist on the table using consciousness alone, how could I?” Your consciousness is using one of the many tools at its disposal, I’d say.
Who cares? It’s the most fascinating fraction of a percent we’ve got going!
That would basically be the guy in Metallica’s “One,” right? I certainly agree with you on that. Let me point out that I believe the reason Chalmers uses the word “zombie” is because “automaton” already had too many philosophical connotations.
You nailed it. It doesn’t bother you that we don’t know why we aren’t Chalmers zombies?
Perhaps a better choice of words would be not autonomic. More on that in a moment.
I should have been clearer about this. By automatic, I was referring to what you had established as automatic, i.e., breathing, heartbeat, etc. Walking is not regulated by the autonomic nervous system. It can be modified by conscious thought, but without the non-conscious thought, there is nothing to modify. Therefore, the thinking that your brain does to generate walking is a non-conscious thought process.
If you are saying non-conscious thought is one of the tools at its disposal, I would agree. Remove non-conscious thought and the tool is no longer at its disposal. If you intend to disagree with me, you need to show how consciousness can achieve these tasks without non-conscious thought. Saying, “It just does” is not good enough.
Now you are explicitly agreeing that most of our thoughts are not conscious thoughts. If you agree with the conclusion, but disagree with all the premises on which it is based, I would be interested in hearing the premises which lead you to that conclusion.
As I do not entirely agree with Chalmers assessment of consciousness, it does not bother me that we are not zombies.
God damn! Good post, tourbot. Now we’re getting somewhere.
So tell me if you agree with this… we’ve broken down the human brain into at least three categories of function:
Autonomic (life-support functions as well as non-vital but extremely useful functions such as pupil adjusting and other sensory inputs)
Non-conscious but not autonomic (Pavlovian, basically—walking, flinching at oncoming objects, my girlfriend’s reaction to club soda [kind of—not all tastes are “acquired” ones], etc.)
Conscious (umm… well, we’ll have to work on this)
One problem I can see already is breathing… it can be either autonomic or conscious, it seems. Or does breathing fit into category 2 (perhaps the first of the 2s that we learn)?
The next problem is this:
You didn’t really answer this to my satisfaction in your last post, so I thought I’d ask it again.
The problem I have, and the reason I ask the question again, is this: the input of the visual signal from my eye, through my optic nerve, into my brain’s visual-processing center and finally into my phenomenology is about as autonomic as it gets (unless I close my eyes deliberately, but you get my point). Yet that final step of me actually having a phenomenology (as opposed to the Chalmers zombie, whose brain determines a reaction to visual signals without sending those signals into a “phenomenology center”) is what I would call “consciousness”—again, even if I am not “paying attention” to the visual signals.
That is precisely what I am trying to say.
Well, I do agree with you on that point, but I don’t think it leads the two of us to the same conclusion. It is true that you cannot really do much of anything “through consciousness alone.” But you seem to be of the opinion that since consciousness is useless without the array of non-conscious tools at its disposal, it is somehow inherently useless. I’d make an analogy to a car on the highway—yes, without the car, the driver isn’t going to get around too well. And yes, without the driver, the car could get around via these new satellite-to-road guides and an ability to detect and react to obstacles. And from the outside, you can’t tell whether there’s a person (ie consciousness) in there making the calls or whether it’s just the car (the strictly material body). Does that mean the driver, should there be one, is no longer of interest?
Which is, I believe, precisely where Chalmers gets his zombie idea. There is no obvious functional (read: materialist) reason why there should be a phenomenology center—reactions could be purely non-conscious all the time (as you say, probably 99% of them are already anyway).
Most of our brain function is not conscious. But I believe all of our thoughts are. This is an important distinction to me, as I consider “thoughts” are one step further up on the consciousness-sophistication scale from “phenomenology.” It’s a question of definitions, of course…
I think I agree with your basic premises, actually. But just because we’ve narrowed the field in which consciousness plays does not have any bearing on the Chalmers question of whether the consciousness question is beyond the realm of empiricism.
p.s. I realize I am slightly misusing “autonomic” in the above post, but I didn’t want to use “automatic” again and create confusion. Read my usage, if you will, as “in the manner of the autonomic nervous system.”
The reason I didn’t answer is that I have been trying, mostly, to discuss your view of consciousness.
I would agree that it is automatic. To say that it is autonomic would be to disagree with over 100 years of neuroscience. The only way I can see in which it is at all “in the manner of the autonomic nervous system” is in that it is automatic, or rather, that it occurs without conscious intervention.
I would say that anything which you are conscious (aware) of is being “paid attention” to at some level. That is, it does not become part of your phenomenology until you pay attention. Some examples of this is are peripheral vision, or your breathing rate. The input is always there, but you aren’t conscious of it until some level of attention is paid to it.
I don’t think I ever said anything of the kind. I may have implied that without non-conscious thought to support it, it is useless. This is not the same thing. I think the issue was initially raised in regard to your statement that you are your consciousness, in the context of consciousness being limited to that which is missing from a Chalmers zombie.
As your experience being non-conscious for a day may demonstrate, this may not be true.[sup]1[/sup] If you are questioning why consciousness is necessary, you could just as easily ask why claws, beaks, or eyes are necessary. Maybe consciousness just has certain evolutionary advantages over other methods of achieving the same ends. And the zombie question doesn’t do a thing to address how it works.
I was using thought to mean any product of brain activity. Perhaps your definition is more precise, but I can’t think of a better word for non-conscious brain activity. Care to suggest one?
I believe you went in circles on this with Spiritus Mundi, but exactly what consciousness question is beyond the realm of empiricism?
Personally, I don’t understand why it is more troublesome to use empiricism to answer questions about non-conscious thought processes than it is to do the same for consciousness. After all, it is not possible for me to be conscious of my non-conscious thoughts anymore than it is possible to be conscious of another persons conscious thoughts.
1 [sub]This supposes, which I think is the most likely explanation, that your state that day resulted from some sort of suppression of conscious brain activity. Suppression of consciousness is common and naturally occurring (sleep, sleepwalking, etc.) whereas intermittent problems with memory function that never reappear are rare.[/sub]
Yes, I realize it is not really autonomic, but the problem I was having is that when I said “automatic” originally, you then divided “automatic” into “autonomic” and “learned non-conscious behavior” (ie walking, talking without thinking about every word, etc.). The function of the senses doesn’t quite fit into this second category because they aren’t really “learned” processes the way walking or riding a bike are. Either the hardware is in place to send a visual signal to your brain or it is not—you can’t “train yourself” not to be blind. So I figured “autonomic” might convey that sense better. I guess we need some new terminology…
I’m not so sure about that. I guess it’s a matter of how you define “paying attention.” In the case of peripheral vision or the breathing rate, I’d say that those things are technically part of your phenomenology well before you ever directly pay attention to them. How do I back up this claim? Well, it seems to me that if your peripheral vision or were suddenly eliminated, you would notice the difference (same with the breathing rate, but that’d be the least of your problems then, of course). Anything which, if taken away, would result in a noticably different phenomenology should be considered part of your phenomenology and thus part of your consciousness.
Right. Do you still disagree that “I”=my consciousness? Was it bad terminology? Without a phenomenology, it seems to me, there is no “I.”
Possibly. Though I agree with you that my “blank day” was more likely a problem with my consciousness than with my memory, I wasn’t exactly a Chalmers zombie either (or I would have done much better on my math test and would not have punched the playground bully). It would seem to me that I was missing more than just phenomenology—but I suppose it is possible that, for some reason, a true Chalmers zombie (missing only phenomenology) is impossible, and that my state was as close as you can get to what would be the Chalmers zombie. I can’t think of a good way to prove either side, of course…
The other option would be that I was only missing phenomenology, but that when you eliminate phenomenology, a whole lot of other things (ie ability to do math) go with it. Were this true, it would certainly provide a useful Darwinian explanation for why we have a consciousness/phenomenology (see below).
The difference is this: claws, beaks and eyes have a definite materialist advantage—they interact directly with the physical world. From a strictly materialist standpoint, it is difficult to see the usefulness of a phenomenology center (unless, again, the Chalmers zombie is a logical impossibility).
But I guess I really should amend my original statement a bit. I had said “There is no obvious functional (read: materialist) reason why there should be a phenomenology center.” I should have said “way how” instead of “reason why.” I wasn’t really trying to address the question of “is consciousness evolutionarily useful,” for I’m pretty sure it is. When I said “reason why,” I meant more in the sense of “what’s the reason why the sky is blue?”
Well, how about “signal”? “Impulse”? Or even “non-conscious brain activity”?
The question of how a phenomenology center arises out of a certain organization of (presumably) phenomenology-center-lacking matter.
It is less troublesome to use empiricism to answer questions about non-conscious thought processes, actually, but I’m guessing that was just a typo on your part.
You are correct that you cannot be conscious of non-conscious thoughts any more than you can of someone else’s consciousness. But I don’t think this proves anything. Non-conscious thoughts are non-conscious; someone else’s conscious thoughts are. There is a difference in the nature of the thoughts, clearly, so I don’t think the analogy holds. Otherwise, you’d be saying that another person’s consciousness is indistinguishable in nature from your (or their) non-conscious thoughts, and that road seems a bit (dare I say it?) solipsistic.
Sorry about taking so long to respond, I was away for the weekend. I think I’ve taken my amateur speculation as far as I can, but I’ll answer your questions so as not to leave you hanging.
Firstly, I don’t see any difference between attention and notice. You are using different terms to describe the same thing.
I am quite certain that it is possible for your ability to percieve your breathing rate to be disrupted without your breathing rate being affected. Of course, no method for doing this yet exists, and since there really isn’t a need for one, I doubt we’ll see one soon. However, it is in theory possible. So suppose that a method was developed which used a high energy particle beam, laser, or Superman’s heat vision, for disrupting the part of the brain which is capable of detecting your breathing rate without the subject noticing that instrument was used on them. We must further assume that this part of the brain serves no other funtion. If your ability to notice your breathing rate is removed while you are not paying attention to it (in other words, not noticing it, or not aware of it) I firmly believe that you will not notice any change, unless and until you attempt to notice your breathing rate.
Now, does consciousness require awareness or not? If it does, then it requires notice/attention. If it does not, then we have a harder time excluding things as conscious than including them. (To clear up what I see as an additional potential point of confusion here, we can be conscious of the results of our nonconscious processes, but not of the processes themselves.)
I am confused by your confusion of functional and materialist. You have already posted (if not here then in the Gnosticism thread) a defense of evolution as a “way how” it may arise. Do you mean that because we do not have an explanation of how consciousness works that one is impossible? If so, do you find it paradoxical that we know the speed of light today when 150 years ago noone did?
Do you believe that two things which are analogous are indistinguishable? Wouldn’t this make all analogies useless?
You are correct about my typo, though.
Here is another way to look at it. We can only know about magnetism by observing its affects. We have no other way of knowing that it exists. The same is true of the consciousness of others. How?
Suppose I am in the audience at a comedy club. The comedian on stage says, “Did you ever notice that when you wear a hat for a really long time, it feels like it isn’t there. Then when you take it off, it feels like it is?”
The audience breaks into laughter and applause. Now, having worn a hat, you have noticed this as well. You’re pretty sure you’ve never ever told anyone that you noticed it, though. Which leaves you three choices:
1.Embrace extreme solipsism. The comedian and audience are projections of your consciousness, but have no true existence outside of it.
2.Paranoia. The entire thing was staged by some other conscious entity/entities who have read your mind and are playing some sort of strange game with you.
3.Take it as empirical evidence that the audience and comedian share at least this one feature of consciousness in common with yourself. Or the comedian is conscious and the audience is just drunk. Either way, you have evidence of at least one other conscious being. If you stay for the whole show, maybe there will be more evidence.
Now, how is it that consciousness is beyond the realm of empiricism (but magnetism isn’t)?