Consciousness - what's the matter, you?

[Nearly Sane]

Interesting article.



http://tinyurl.com/zw28dqw

[L.A.]

Interesting article.



http://tinyurl.com/zw28dqw

That's basically the biggest load of bollocks I've read in a very long time NS.
 He says:

"I find this odd because we know exactly what consciousness is — where by “consciousness” I mean what most people mean in this debate: experience of any kind whatever. It’s the most familiar thing there is, whether it’s experience of emotion, pain, understanding what someone is saying, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or feeling. It is in fact the only thing in the universe whose ultimate intrinsic nature we can claim to know. It is utterly unmysterious."

Yet he doesn't even begin to define it! He just waffles on about the consequence of consciousness.


My definition would be:

Consciousness is that property of nature that causes an organism to be able to conclude "I'am".

But even that doesn't begin to explain it.

[Nearly Sane]

I think the point he is making is that it doesn't necessarily make any sense to look for an explanation as you think of it. I'm not convinced by his approach and it needs me to read up on something more substantial than the article but I think the challenge that we might be begging the question by treating it as 'hard' is an interesting one.

[L.A.]

He says:

"The reply is simple. We know what conscious experience is because the having is the knowing: Having conscious experience is knowing what it is. You don’t have to think about it (it’s really much better not to). You just have to have it. It’s true that people can make all sorts of mistakes about what is going on when they have experience, but none of them threaten the fundamental sense in which we know exactly what experience is just in having it."

OK, we know what conscious experience is, but that doesn't take us any nearer to knowing what consciousness itself is any more than a journey in a car would reveal to us the workings of an internal combustion engine. Indeed, I have no way of knowing whether my conscious experience is the same as your's or anyone else's for that matter.

[torridon]

I think to boil his point down to a single sentiment, I'd suggest from the final para :

"It’s not the physics picture of matter that’s the problem; it’s the ordinary everyday picture of matter".
 
I think he is pointing out that our 'common sense' intuitions about the nature of matter contribute to our struggle to reconcile how mental stuff can be the same as physical stuff - we can touch rocks and trees and neurons (with a scalpel) but we can't touch ideas or desires or smells.  But it is physics that reveals that if we take two apples out of the fruit basket it is impossible to get them to touch each other.  'Touch' is a phenomenological mental construct, not a physical reality, so we do well to remember that when trying to reconcile the seemingly tangible with the seemingly intangible.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Sane,

The article was whoosh to me, but interesting whoosh and you never know where whoosh will send you, in this case it sent Torridon using big words ( should be a crime on this forum ).

phenomenological

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/

Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.

Which put a wee bit more flesh on that course Torridon suggested, so cheers Torridon and Sane

One small step for mankind one tiny gnats hair leap for Gonnagle.

Gonnagle.

[Bubbles]

Dear Sane,

The article was whoosh to me, but interesting whoosh and you never know where whoosh will send you, in this case it sent Torridon using big words ( should be a crime on this forum ).

phenomenological

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/

Which put a wee bit more flesh on that course Torridon suggested, so cheers Torridon and Sane

One small step for mankind one tiny gnats hair leap for Gonnagle.

Gonnagle.

It looks like one of those words that are hard to pronounce even while sober