What is consciousness?

Shanadeus

So it was brought up a tiny bit in the hocus pocus thread and after reading Blindsight by Peter Watts I wanted to make a thread on this topic.

Feel free to bring dualism if you think you can make a good argument for it but I think it's better if we focus on the material possible explanations for it.

I'm no expert but from what I gathered there seem to be two main groups of theories:

Consciousness from other processes

It is the result from other, identifiable processes in the brain. It is emergent and may be similar to the hexagonally shaped wax cells unintentionally created by many bees trying to make round wax cells together.

Consciousness as a process of it's own

It is a identifiable process in the brain, primarily seated in the front part of our brain but might also rely on other neurons in the brain.

With some specific theories and hypothesises falling somewhere between these two.

Or the above is just completely off the mark and should be dismissed.

What are your thoughts?

electricitylikesme

I'm partial to the notion that what we perceive as consciousness is like a "supervisor" process of the brain's autonomous processes - and what we perceive of consciously is things that an individual process decides need to be brought to general attention.

So breathing - not important. The inability to breathe - notify EVERYONE!!

[Tycho?]

I think the question is meaningless until we get some proper definitions going, which given our current understanding of the mind/brain is impossible.

Honestly I think conciseness is largely an illusion- that a lot of what feels like a conscious decision is really a series of automatic processes.

Shanadeus

That's certainly a possibility - conscience as a side effect of something else (much like octagonal beehives) that might or might not have been selected for evolutionarily.

MplsOsiris

What is the mind? Never matter. What is matter? Never mind.

Lucid

[Tycho?] wrote: »

I think the question is meaningless until we get some proper definitions going, which given our current understanding of the mind/brain is impossible.

Honestly I think conciseness is largely an illusion- that a lot of what feels like a conscious decision is really a series of automatic processes.

The concept of illusion is a product of our consciousness though.

[Tycho?]

Lucid wrote: »

[Tycho?] wrote: »

I think the question is meaningless until we get some proper definitions going, which given our current understanding of the mind/brain is impossible.

Honestly I think conciseness is largely an illusion- that a lot of what feels like a conscious decision is really a series of automatic processes.

The concept of illusion is a product of our consciousness though.

...any words we use to discuss consciousness, including consciousness itself, are a product of consciousness.

Grid System

Consciousness, you say? Peter Watts, you say?

Read this, I say.

Watts wrote:

What is the conscious self, after all? A short-term cache; a scratch pad; the little post-it note used to remind you to pick up a dozen eggs on the way home from work. The damn thing is barely big enough to hold a telephone number, for chrissakes; some folks claim that the bandwidth of conscious experience is a measly 20 bits/sec.

Seol

It might not be much... but it's me.

Lucid

[Tycho?] wrote: »

Lucid wrote: »

[Tycho?] wrote: »

I think the question is meaningless until we get some proper definitions going, which given our current understanding of the mind/brain is impossible.

Honestly I think conciseness is largely an illusion- that a lot of what feels like a conscious decision is really a series of automatic processes.

The concept of illusion is a product of our consciousness though.

...any words we use to discuss consciousness, including consciousness itself, are a product of consciousness.

I'm saying that by what an illusion is, it can't exist outside of our perception which seems to be what you were suggesting. An automatic process can't create an illusion of consciousness so to speak, since it suggests unreality.

Moridin

I love me some Peter Watts. Also worth mentioning that the entirety of Blindsight is on the internet for free, by the author himself right here. So it's not like it's ILLEGAL FILES or anything.

I look forward to the slow erosion of all supernatural explanations for consciousness over the next 20 years as brain scanning technology gets better and better. Gonna be an interesting few decades.