(May 31, 2017 at 9:34 am)Khemikal Wrote:

Hammy Wrote:To say it doesn't exist is to say you're not conscious. To say it's not real is to say you're not experiencing it. And the experience of consciousness is what consciousness is. It's neither the case that you're not conscious or you're not experiencing consciousness.

LOLNO, Ham, just no.  I'm saying (and dennet was saying) that consciousness doesn't exist as described and insisted upon by people who don't realize that they are proposing a humonculus with an attached system capable of processing in zero time.  This has been explained to you from the outset, and yet you persist.  Start over from there.  

Sorry moron but you can say "LOLNO, Ham, just no." all you want and it doesn't change the fact I'm absolutely right in what I'm saying.

To say that consciousness doesn't exist is to say that you and no one is conscious because it's impossible to be conscious when consciousness doesn't exist. To say it's not real is to say you're not experiencing it because it's impossible to experience something without that experience itself really being experienced. You can be experiencing something that isn't really there in objective reality but it's still real in experience.

Now to deal with your shit:

Quote:I'm saying (and dennet was saying) that consciousness doesn't exist as described and insisted upon by people who don't realize that they are proposing a humonculus with an attached system capable of processing in zero time.

The fact people are deluded about the mechanics of what they think consciousness is, doesn't make the experience of what they think consciousness is an illusion. That's an non-sequitur.

He's right about there not being a homunculous or Cartesian theater. And he's right about his multiple drafts model about how consciousness works. That's all very interesting and correct mechanics but it's completely irrelevant to his non-sequitur and logically fallacious conclusion that therefore consciousness itself is an illusion.

Pretty soon I'm going to be quoting where you yourself agreed with me and then quoting your own contradictions against yourself and it will make you look really foolish. I hope you have fun watching that while you try to wriggle out of it. You've already said that consciousness is real but people are in error about how it works. That is my position. That it's not an illusion people are just in error with how they think it works. They're deluded, they have a delusion not an illusion and it's about the mechanics not about the experience of consciousness.

And as for Jor, well, she says I'm making "empty predicates" but using the dictionary definition of consciousness being conscious experience is not an "empty predicate"... it's merely defining all consciousness as "an illusion" that's an empty predicate. And that's at best. At worst it's this confusion about what an illusion actually is and merely defining being delusional about the mechanics of something as identical to the experience of consciousness being illusory. That's as pathetic as when Dennett merely defines the computer screen on a desktop as the "user illusion" when the screen is very real as are the icons... as real as the hardware of the computer...and the fact that many people are deluded about how computers work doesn't make the screen not really there and a "user illusion". The fact Dennett makes such a terrible analogy and that he compares the so-called lillusion of consciousness to the so-called user illusion on a computer desktop... just betrays what utter nonsense he's talking. He's not right about everything. There's literally no logical reason to conclude that conscious experience or a computer desktop is an "illusion". It's utter nonsense. It doesn't matter what we discover about the mechanics about how something works and how most people are wrong about it, that just makes most people deluded about the mechanics it doesn't make the experience an illusion. Experiences are not illusions. Experiences are always real it's just some of them represent objective reality and some don't, and the ones that don't we call 'illusions'. When we're talking about experience itself, then that is the reality we're talking about... and being wrong about the mechanics of it doesn't change the reality of the experience of it.

(May 31, 2017 at 1:04 pm)Hammy Wrote: The fact people are deluded about the mechanics of what they think consciousness is, doesn't make the experience of what they think consciousness is an illusion. That's an non-sequitur.

The fact that people are deluded -by their conscious experience- regarding the nature -of- their conscious experience...-does- mean that what they think consciousness -is-....is an illusion..............

-if- those people insist that consciousness -is- the illusion. If they say, that how it seems to be, despite it's complete impossibilty, is the way it is. This is what dennet was commenting on, this is what I am commenting on.

Quote:He's right about there not being a homunculous or Cartesian theater. And he's right about his multiple drafts model about how consciousness works. That's all very interesting and correct mechanics but it's completely irrelevant to his non-sequitur and logically fallacious conclusion that therefore consciousness itself is an illusion.

"Ofc consciousness exists, it's just not what you think it is".

By the by, all that stuff you mentioned about the non conscious processing being fed to the conscious region of the brain -is- the humonculus in the cartesian theater.  That, he thinks..is an illusion..and so do you, if you agree with him..if you can make up your mind about whether or not you agree with him once and for all.....

Quote:Pretty soon I'm going to be quoting where you yourself agreed with me and then quoting your own contradictions against yourself and it will make you look really foolish. I hope you have fun watching that while you try to wriggle out of it. You've already said that consciousness is real but people are in error about how it works. That is my position.

That;s also Dennets position, and the position of eliminative materialism. That how it works, and how it seems to be..are not (or cannot be) in agreement.  It cannot be as it seems, because of how it works. Understand?

Quote:That it's not in an illusion people are just in error with how they think it works. They're deluded, they have a delusion not an illusion and it's about the mechanics not about the experience of consciousness.

OFC it's about the experience.  You -experience- the humonculus in the cartesian theater.  We all do.  If you want to wheedle around with the terms delusion and illusion be my guest? The experience is in error. What we experience is not what's happening.

(May 31, 2017 at 9:34 am)Khemikal Wrote: Sorry, missed you in the shuffle.  You can't be "experiencing percept a".  The experience, itself, is necessarily delayed in time.  It can't be something that you're presently doing, it can be something that you've done and experience-as the present.  You think and feel as though it is happening, but in truth, it already happened.  You couldn't have access to the product of that processing (even if there were a humonculus -or- an element x), unless it had already been done, because it would not yet exist.

The photon encoding which results in my experience of Casablanca on a reel-to-reel screening is long gone. However, I'm still experiencing Casablanca now-- this is because all that processing, whatever its nature or form, allows the information to navigate its way through time to the moment when the projector (and my mind) bring them back together. You wouldn't argue that the projector has traveled back in time, or cannot be located in time, simply because the content it presents is rooted in the past.

Quote:-and just in that extremely sparse definition you've managed to be wrong about a basic attribute of that experience.  You cannot be aware, in the present tense, of awareness.  

That's right, you cannot be aware of current consciousness, if you treat that awareness as the object of an inquiry, attempt to subject it to observation, compare it to your world view, and so on. But none of those things are actually consciousness anyway-- they are information or ideas ABOUT consciousness.

When you verbalize ideas about consciousness, you instantiate it-- i.e. you take a kind of template and manifest it into an entity (it's a computer term about classes, btw). So in the end, when it comes to discussion, we can only look into the past and say. . . "At that moment, I was aware of percept X."

Quote:When mind decides that some descriptions of mind are an illusion..you mean....?  Like the illusion of zero time processing fed to a nonexistent humonculus?  Ultimately, this entire thread has been about that simple, initial, misapprehension.  Call consciousness x, and it;s easy to see the mistake.

This isn't my argument, so I don't feel much like defending it.

Quote:Eliminative materialists think that x exists.  There, all comments regarding the notion that they deny the existence of x are handled.  Eliminative materialists think that some descriptions of x, don't exist.  That those descriptions, instead of being x, are a compelling misapprehension produced by the system that is x.  Illusions.  You are not, for example..."aware of awareness".  Your brain has access to a post processing narrative, with the narrative center of gravity, and referent time that, to you..seems to be the present even though it cannot be.

I didn't say I'm aware of awareness, or I shouldn't have. I think (and should have) defined the word "consciousness" as the awareness of awareness. There's no agency there, certainly not a self-aware human agency. There's really only the fact of qualia, and the semantic-- that for a subjective view to be allowed for in the Universe, there has to be something capable of subjective agency. Whether that's a specific brain part and function or a ghost in the gears or an illusion doesn't really matter too much, so long as the experiencing goes on.

Quote:Whatever you are seeing in front of you, like whatever you are thinking..didn't -and couldn't- be happening now.

This is content. I have clearly distinguished between consciousness and the objects of consciousness, so you shouldn't be making these kinds of examples any more. By "awareness" I don't mean "thinking about." I mean something much more primitive than that.

I've described consciousness as meta-awareness, but maybe it would be more simply viewed as meta-qualia: what's it's like for experiences to be experienced.

Quote:The proposition of eliminative materialists is not that nothing is happening in the brain, that there is no processing, for example presently happening at some time y......but that what we describe as consciousness does not or cannot map to a discrete mental state, that it does not match with what processing -is- happening at that time y.

It's not a very interesting proposition to me, because I'm substance agnostic anyway. If someone wants to start with what I call consciousness, and then shed light on how brain function relates to it, I'm down with that. However, if someone wants to nail down a physical description and then fail (wink wink nudge nudge) to find it, then they are just chasing their own tails.

(May 31, 2017 at 1:48 pm)bennyboy Wrote: The photon encoding which results in my experience of Casablanca on a reel-to-reel screening is long gone.  However, I'm still experiencing Casablanca now-- this is because all that processing, whatever its nature or form, allows the information to navigate its way through time to the moment when the projector (and my mind) bring them back together.  You wouldn't argue that the projector has traveled back in time, or cannot be located in time, simply because the content it presents is rooted in the past.

OFC I wouldn't, but since I'm not arguing that what relevance does it hold?  Here again we see language that invokes what cannot be.  Projector?  What is it projecting -to-?  The humonculus rears it's ugly head again.   Eliminative materialists don't think that there is no discrete mental state, in time, of processing.  The are skeptical with regards to whatever it is we seem to  think the projector is projecting -to-, to take your terms.    

Quote:That's right, you cannot be aware of current consciousness, if you treat that awareness as the object of an inquiry, attempt to subject it to observation, compare it to your world view, and so on.  But none of those things are actually consciousness anyway-- they are information or ideas ABOUT consciousness.

While that's an interesting way to look at it, it doesn't really argue any point with eliminative materialists, since they're suggesting that what people refer to, experience, and commonly believe to be consciousness -is- what you call "ideas about consciousness".  That they are not the thing, itself, and can be...and are...and must be, in error.

Quote:When you verbalize ideas about consciousness, you instantiate it-- i.e. you take a kind of template and manifest it into an entity (it's a computer term about classes, btw).  So in the end, when it comes to discussion, we can only look into the past and say. . . "At that moment, I was aware of percept X."

We can also say that a post processing narrative has been constructed with a manufactured point of focus.  That would be more accurate with respect to what the brain is doing, but it also completely contradicts both the terms and tense you used above in quotes, and the very experience we have of being.   

Quote:This isn't my argument, so I don't feel much like defending it.

-the problem, Benny, was that you weren't accurately relating the argument you were criticizing in that statement.  That, you will have to defend..or abandon.  I'd suggest abandoning it.  

Quote:I didn't say I'm aware of awareness, or I shouldn't have.  I think (and should have) defined the word "consciousness" as the awareness of awareness.  There's no agency there, certainly not a self-aware human agency.  There's really only the fact of qualia, and the semantic-- that for a subjective view to be allowed for in the Universe, there has to be something capable of subjective agency.

This refinement (I actually don't see any) does not change the comments levied at it from eliminative materialism.  OFC eliminative materialists think that  something exists which is capable of what we call subjective agency.  They don't think that it -is- what it reports itself as, and they don't think that every instance of a reported subjective experience is a legitimate account.  Some, many or most..in their opinion, are the cognitive equivalents of a false memory.  The cognitive equivalent of an afterimage.  There's a picture of the humonculus, not a humonculus.  

Quote:This is content.  I have clearly distinguished between consciousness and the objects of consciousness, so you shouldn't be making these kinds of examples any more.  By "awareness" I don't mean "thinking about."  I mean something much more primitive than that.

What is content...what you see (I agree).....or the brute fact of how it feels to be (I don't agree)...but, in the spirit of agreement, if seeing is the content, and thinking is the content...what's the jar, again, that all of these are in?  Eliminative materialists don't have this jar available to them.  They have to explain consciousness without reference to the jar, or at least explain how it could be possible without the jar.  I think they have..even if, ultimately, there is a jar and we do have it and anything and everything I might reference as a cognitive error are "just the contents".  This, ul;timately, is also what they refer to when they say that positing the jar merely pushes back the necessarry reduction.  If there is a jar, and we have it...does our description and experience of it, of what it feels to be, match how that jar actually works?

Eliminativism is also available to you, in fact...you're going to deploy it below, in describing consciousness as, itself, a brute fact or force related to but distinct from brain.  To "start with consciousness" as it were.  All of this business about how the brainstuff does this and that...would be the artifact or illusion upon which our compelling misapprehension as regards the true nature of consciousness was built.  

Quote:I've described consciousness as meta-awareness, but maybe it would be more simply viewed as meta-qualia: what's it's like for experiences to be experienced.

- :looks up:........that's shakier than the last one, namely..in that -what it feels like for experiences to be experienced- is exactly what's in error.....? It feels like I'm a little man in my head currently experiencing the present.....

Quote:It's not a very interesting proposition to me, because I'm substance agnostic anyway.  If someone wants to start with what I call consciousness, and then shed light on how brain function relates to it, I'm down with that.  However, if someone wants to nail down a physical description and then fail (wink wink nudge nudge) to find it, then they are just chasing their own tails.

Eliminative materialists think that many explanations of consciousness have failed to find what must be present in order for them to be true, pursuant to that, holding to their definitions of consciousness is to fail before we have begun.

(May 31, 2017 at 8:52 am)Hammy Wrote:

(May 30, 2017 at 8:53 pm)Whateverist Wrote: But then, when you say you experience your consciousness directly, what do you mean?  You experience its happeningness?

Wut? Yes consciousness is the experience of consciousness happening. Consciousness is experiential in nature and experiences happen in your brain.

You mean so long as one is merely conscious of pursuing dinner or a mate or a sunset, no consciousness yet.  But when one pauses to consider "hmm, it is I that am conscious of stuff" - then that is consciousness?  I don't think so.

(May 31, 2017 at 12:49 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Given the very complex nature of the problem, for the time being, at best, all we can do is model artificial neurons and map out all the interactions they have and see what comes out. We'd have access to all the inner workings, but I doubt we can model the complexity, nor the number of neurons required to replicate a consciousness... so here we are... producing our best guesses.

Sure.

Quote:So... these "Eliminative Materialists" are claiming that neurons cannot produce the feelings that we observe as consciousness, is that it? Why not?

No.  They're claiming that nuerons do not or cannot produce a mental state that maps to the feelings we observe as we describe them.  We observe ourselves as being in here, a little man..a singular entity in a stream of present moments.  That;s what it feels like to be. That's the referent of every other experience. That's not what those neurons are, that's not what those neurons are doing.  In some cases, the discrepancy goes further..not only are they not that thing, not only are they not doing that..they can't.  Not even neurons, for example, can process in zero time.

(May 31, 2017 at 4:34 pm)Khemikal Wrote:

Quote:So... these "Eliminative Materialists" are claiming that neurons cannot produce the feelings that we observe as consciousness, is that it? Why not?

No.  They're claiming that nuerons do not or cannot produce a mental state that maps to the feelings we observe as we describe them.  We observe ourselves as being in here, a little man..a singular entity in a stream of present moments.  That;s what it feels like to be.  That's the referent of every other experience.  That's not what those neurons are, that's not what those neurons are doing.  In some cases, the discrepancy goes further..not only are they not that thing, not only are they not doing that..they can't.  Not even neurons, for example, can process in zero time.

I must be a bit thick.... I don't think I get it.

In essence, there's something about neurons not processing stuff instantaneously. I agree.
But what is this stuff that neurons cannot do?
They can't process our awareness of the self at the same time as they process the fact they we are aware of the self?
I'd say they can, if such processing can be parallelized... and I'm sure lots of parallel activity is going on in the brain... but I can't say anything about that particular conundrum... it often seems that our conscious thought process is a single-thread affair, thus eliminating such simultaneity in two thought processes... but is it really single-threaded? How can we tell?

(May 31, 2017 at 5:35 pm)pocaracas Wrote: In essence, there's something about neurons not processing stuff instantaneously. I agree.

-and there's something about experience that -does- seem that way.

Quote: 
But what is this stuff that neurons cannot do?

Actually present you with zero-time processing, as they seem to, in your conscious experience. Hell, you could easily say that consciousness presents itself as negative time processing, in that you seem to be making decisions -before- you do things...when, as Ham linked to before...that's very often the other way round so far as we can tell.

Quote: 
They can't process our awareness of the self at the same time as they process the fact they we are aware of the self?

Simply that it takes time..time which, in our conscious experience, is -not- experienced.  

Quote:I'd say they can, if such processing can be parallelized... and I'm sure lots of parallel activity is going on in the brain... but I can't say anything about that particular conundrum... it often seems that our conscious thought process is a single-thread affair, thus eliminating such simultaneity in two thought processes... but is it really single-threaded? How can we tell?

Then you'd be saying that they can do something that they cannot do.  All lines in a parallel construction take time, no amount of adding lines changes that.  Speaking of parallel construction...where is it that these many lines condense into one, singular product, like it seems to? Is that component of how it feels to be accurate, either? Is there a discrete mental state of a unified conciousness?

That would be one way to tell.  Find this place, and see how many lines are going in, as it were, and how many are coming out.

(May 31, 2017 at 5:53 pm)Khemikal Wrote:

(May 31, 2017 at 5:35 pm)pocaracas Wrote: In essence, there's something about neurons not processing stuff instantaneously. I agree.

-and there's something about experience that -does- seem that way.

Quote: 
But what is this stuff that neurons cannot do?

Actually present you with zero-time processing, as they seem to, in your conscious experience. Hell, you could easily say that consciousness presents itself as negative time processing, in that you seem to be making decisions -before- you do things...when, as Ham linked to before...that's very often the other way round so far as we can tell.

Quote: 
They can't process our awareness of the self at the same time as they process the fact they we are aware of the self?

Simply that it takes time..time which, in our conscious experience, is -not- experienced.  

Quote:I'd say they can, if such processing can be parallelized... and I'm sure lots of parallel activity is going on in the brain... but I can't say anything about that particular conundrum... it often seems that our conscious thought process is a single-thread affair, thus eliminating such simultaneity in two thought processes... but is it really single-threaded? How can we tell?

Then you'd be saying that they can do something that they cannot do.  All lines in a parallel construction take time, no amount of adding lines changes that.  Speaking of parallel construction...where is it that these many lines condense into one, singular product, like it seems to?

That would be one way to tell.  Find this place, and see how many lines are going in, as it were, and how many are coming out.

ah, so... it's only about it taking time, in spite the instantaneous appearance of the thought process... is that it?
Again, that instantaneous appearance is just what should be called "Real-Time"... it's fast enough for that thought process itself to not be aware of the passage of that time.

I think I once read about the fastest a person could react to some stimuli and the delay between stimulus and reaction was of the order of 100ms (IIRC)... that's 0.1 seconds. Look around for slow motion cameras and see how much of the world occurs in under 0.1s... 0.1s is an eternity. Heck, your computer is probably calculating stuff at about 2GHz... one clock cycle every 1/(2x10^9) = 0.5x10^-9 = 5x10^-10s = 0.0000000005 seconds. It does 200 million calculations in the time a human takes to react to something. And, if the computer has a multi-core CPU, that can be multiplied by the number of cores.

My point is, we're slow, but we're fast enough for our purposes.
0.1s seems instantaneous.

Can you imagine how excruciating life would be if we could feel the milliseconds tick by?

(May 31, 2017 at 6:08 pm)pocaracas Wrote: ah, so... it's only about it taking time, in spite the instantaneous appearance of the thought process... is that it?

No, that's just one example of the discrepancy between how it seems to be and what nuerons are..or can be, doing.

Quote:Again, that instantaneous appearance is just what should be called "Real-Time"... it's fast enough for that thought process itself to not be aware of the passage of that time.

Again, no one doubts that the span of time is miniscule, or easily missed or not noticed or that it doesn't work.  Only that it appears to be a way that it is not, and cannot be.  Anyone who insists that consciousness is that, is insisting that consciousness is something that is not, or cannot be.  If that's what consciousness is, it doesn't exist.

I can give an even harder interpretation.  Since we know that consciousness -can be- in error with regards to itself, when it seems to be..could that seeming, itself, be an artifact?  Did we actually feel some way, x, in an actual past-but-then present moment, or is that another fanciful story that the brain is telling? The self not being a discrete mental state, that was there experiencing stuff then, but simply the narrative center of gravity?

Quote:I think I once read about the fastest a person could react to some stimuli and the delay between stimulus and reaction was of the order of 100ms (IIRC)... that's 0.1 seconds. Look around for slow motion cameras and see how much of the world occurs in under 0.1s... 0.1s is an eternity. Heck, your computer is probably calculating stuff at about 2GHz... one clock cycle every 1/(2x10^9) = 0.5x10^-9 = 5x10^-10s = 0.0000000005 seconds. It does 200 million calculations in the time a human takes to react to something. And, if the computer has a multi-core CPU, that can be multiplied by the number of cores.

My point is, we're slow, but we're fast enough for our purposes.
0.1s seems instantaneous.

Can you imagine how excruciating life would be if we could feel the milliseconds tick by?

I can, lol..and I'm glad we can't do that....and yet, it sure -feels- like we can, eh?  I'm "here" for every millisecond, in the present.  I don't blip in and out of existence, skipping through time.