The Source of Consciousness

[Belindi]

Gee,if I may can I condense your argument into the claim that language crystallises more fluid thoughts and feelings?

[Terrapin Station]

You are making this more difficult than necessary. Consider this: If you measure your living room for a new carpet, but the measure that you come up with is "fluid, dynamic/changeable", then by the time you go to the store, purchase the carpet, and come home to install it, it may not fit.

Hence why a lot of us write the measurement down.

Thinking is fluid, but thoughts can't be. Numerals, measures, directions, names of objects, names of people, words that I am typing right now, all of these things must be stable and static to some degree or nothing would make any damned sense.

I guess you could say that we "remember thoughts," or that we can "have the same thought again," but I'm struggling again to figure how that would be the case in a way that having the "same" emotion or feeling again wouldn't be the case. (I'm putting the "same" stuff in quotation marks because I'm a nominalist--I don't believe that it's literally the same, and in contexts like this, it's important for us to be literal.)

I am sure you have heard of "debriefing" (not as used in the military, but as used in psychology). This is used in cases of trauma or emotional upheaval where it is necessary to stabilize the emotional memory before it corrupts itself. For policemen, firemen, nurses and doctors, or anyone who deals with emotional traumas, it is preferred for an incident report to be made out within 24 hours of the incident. After that amount of time, it is very likely that your memory of the incident will actually change, but putting it into words (thoughts) right after the event will stabilize the memory. This should always be used in criminal investigations, but it is not always practical and feasible.

Sure, it would make sense that putting something into words helps you remember it, and the longer you wait to put it into words, the less like the initial mental data it is likely to be.

If a family member or good friend walks through the door, and you see him, can't you tell if he is in a good or bad mood? You can read his body language, facial expressions, and eyes and learn a great deal about how he is feeling. Can you tell if he paid his taxes? Or how much they were? No, because those would be thoughts, unless he is very happy or depressed about paying his taxes. Moods, feelings, and emotions are shared between people/things; you may feel them internally, but you show them externally. Awareness actually functions between you are what you are aware of.

Ah, so the idea was that emotions are often correlated to "body language" in a way that more detailed thoughts often are not. Sure, although there are plenty of exceptions on both sides, and to an extent it's just because we simplify the idea of emotions so much.

[Terrapin Station]

the idea that consciousness exists outside the brain, science validates and verifies that it does. There is lots of evidence in different branches of science.

Are you talking about the NDE stuff there, or something else? And if you're talking about the NDE stuff, are you talking about "evidence" other than Stevenson's anecdotal evidence/interpretations of talking to people?

[Gee]

I am going to try to catch up on some of these responses I owe you. I read the entry on Stevenson, but did not find any new information. The entry is definitely slanted toward skepticism, which translates to bias in my view.

Sure. I don't see that as a problem, by the way. I don't believe that a lack of bias is even a theoretical possibility.

No, we can not honestly prevent all bias, but some of us do try. A variety of perspectives does help.

If I were going to adopt a belief system, it would not be skepticism as that is too self serving a belief to work well in studies of consciousness -- too easy to corrupt.

I don't know what you have in mind there, exactly, but in general I'm a skeptic. I'm very skeptical of a lot of scientific claims, too, by the way.

A skeptic is a person, who has a very high opinion of their own thoughts, and a real suspicion of other ideas; it would be fair to say that they are not very open minded. Consciousness is a study that is fraught with the idea of self. Religion has us made in "God's" image. Science has consciousness as sourcing from the human brain. Philosophy likes to examine consciousness from the internal, subjective perspective, and occasionally doubts that anyone other than "myself" is actually conscious. Considering all of this, we are talking about a committee of one, "the self", studying consciousness -- too easy to corrupt.

Science thinks that consciousness sources from the body/brain -- internal.

Sure, and I agree. I don't think that there's any other suggestion that's even remotely plausible/that has the slightest bit of evidence going for it.

Because you are not looking. You have stuck your head in one bucket and can only see what is inside it.

Sure. I'm not someone who thinks that religious claims deserve serious consideration at all. They're just too ridiculous, there's absolutely zero reason to believe them, no evidence at all for any of them, etc.

That is because you are looking at religious arguments made by religious people. I do not study religious people, I study the structure of religions and what causes them to function. I also study and compare religion's ideas to science's ideas and find that there is a whole world of evidence.
But you can believe whatever you want, as it makes no difference to me, and your beliefs are irrelevant to the idea that consciousness has a source that is external.

Gee

[Gee]

So there is no evidence, just neurologists's misunderstanding of what digital and analogue mean in computer science. And their speculations about what AI could be like, if we actually had any AI.

Lots of assumptions here. You seem to need to have information explicitly stated to you; I may not have provided proof, but I gave you examples as evidence.

Experiences are experiences, if we really want, we can call the more discrete-like experiences "digital", and the more continuous-like experiences "analogue". But there is no hard-line, hard-division between them whatsoever, they are parts of the same thing. For example I'd say my thoughts are usually more analogue than digital, probably because I'm heavily right-hemisphere dominant.

You are moving the goal posts here; I was not talking about experience -- you were.

The "hard-line, hard-division" between the components of consciousness is private and shared.

Gee

Humans have never created a single AI, but you gave examples of evidence using AI? And I'm the one making assumptions? w/e

I said you were making assumptions because you jumped to some conclusions. Neurologists did not misunderstand computer science. The post that I was thinking of was where some people were asking a neurologist about the difference between analogue and digital in the brain and THEY were comparing it to computer AI. He was just trying to set them straight.

I gave examples of evidence with scenarios that cause us to take experience, think about it, then convert it to thought, and vice versa.

Gee

[Atla]

So there is no evidence, just neurologists's misunderstanding of what digital and analogue mean in computer science. And their speculations about what AI could be like, if we actually had any AI.

Lots of assumptions here. You seem to need to have information explicitly stated to you; I may not have provided proof, but I gave you examples as evidence.

Experiences are experiences, if we really want, we can call the more discrete-like experiences "digital", and the more continuous-like experiences "analogue". But there is no hard-line, hard-division between them whatsoever, they are parts of the same thing. For example I'd say my thoughts are usually more analogue than digital, probably because I'm heavily right-hemisphere dominant.

You are moving the goal posts here; I was not talking about experience -- you were.

The "hard-line, hard-division" between the components of consciousness is private and shared.

Gee

Humans have never created a single AI, but you gave examples of evidence using AI? And I'm the one making assumptions? w/e

I said you were making assumptions because you jumped to some conclusions. Neurologists did not misunderstand computer science. The post that I was thinking of was where some people were asking a neurologist about the difference between analogue and digital in the brain and THEY were comparing it to computer AI. He was just trying to set them straight.

I gave examples of evidence with scenarios that cause us to take experience, think about it, then convert it to thought, and vice versa.

Gee

And as I said, then those neurologists misunderstood computer science. There is no literal hard-division between digital and analogue in computer science, that dichotomy is just a useful convention. And there is no AI, so people can only speculate what AI could be like if we actually create some.

You provided no actual evidence for your claim that neurologists found digital-analogue conversion in the brain. Since there is no literal digital-analogue dichotomy, this belief doesn't even make sense.

[Gee]

Gee,if I may can I condense your argument into the claim that language crystallises more fluid thoughts and feelings?

Well, that would certainly be more clear and concise, and I thank you for giving me this feedback. The problem is that this is not the message that I am trying to convey.

Let's try this another way; IF we could take all awareness, feeling, and emotion, and crystalize these aspects of consciousness into thought, knowledge, and memory, what would be the result? Everyone would die. All life would die. Thought, etc., has no power. It can not cause conscious life, it can not promote conscious life, and it can not support conscious life.

Consider Plato's cave; the shadows on the wall are like the conscious rational aspect of mind that we can know, remember, and think about, but they are essentially illusion. I don't remember if it was day light or a fire, but the light that causes the shadows, the part that we do not really see or know, that is what is real and it is awareness, feeling, and emotion -- the unconscious aspect of mind.

People have this backward as thought is NOT consciousness. If we are looking for the source, it would be kind of handy to have a clue as to what we are looking for.

Gee

[Belindi]

Gee, you wrote

IF we could take all awareness, feeling, and emotion, and crystalize these aspects of consciousness into thought, knowledge, and memory, what would be the result? Everyone would die.

I believe the opposite to be the case. Unless we took all awareness, feeling, and emotion, and crystallized these aspects of consciousness into thought, knowledge, and memory we men could not live. (Same with other intelligent animals too).

I agree with the pictured Cave of Plato, that men are chained to what seems to be the case. However I disagree that some men escape from the Cave and see absolute truth.The only escape from the Cave, and it is relative freedom only, is by means of reasoning.

[Gee]

You are making this more difficult than necessary. Consider this: If you measure your living room for a new carpet, but the measure that you come up with is "fluid, dynamic/changeable", then by the time you go to the store, purchase the carpet, and come home to install it, it may not fit.

Hence why a lot of us write the measurement down.

Terrapin;
I know that a lot of people have trouble comprehending abstract concepts, but I have never had this much trouble trying to explain something so simple. I am beginning to wonder if some of the posters in this thread are being intentionally obtuse.

Maybe I used a bad example. So let's say that you need to measure a specific bunch of water that is flowing by in a vast river, or maybe you need to take the measure of some part of the smoke that is climbing up from a camp fire -- these things would be "fluid, dynamic/changeable". How are you going to write that measurement down?

Have you ever heard the expression, "Raising a teenager is like trying to nail Jello to a wall." Nailing down feeling and emotion is much like nailing down Jello.

Thinking is fluid, but thoughts can't be. Numerals, measures, directions, names of objects, names of people, words that I am typing right now, all of these things must be stable and static to some degree or nothing would make any damned sense.

I guess you could say that we "remember thoughts," or that we can "have the same thought again,"

You could say that, but only because we can KNOW thoughts -- we can't know feeling and emotion. We can only feel or perceive them.

but I'm struggling again to figure how that would be the case in a way that having the "same" emotion or feeling again wouldn't be the case. (I'm putting the "same" stuff in quotation marks because I'm a nominalist--I don't believe that it's literally the same, and in contexts like this, it's important for us to be literal.)

Did you ever date someone when you were young that you thought was beautiful and wonderful, then years later looked at them, after the break-up, and wondered how you even found them attractive? How big the nose was or how pimply the face was did not change, only your emotions changed, which changed your thoughts. You remember the thoughts, but not the feelings.

Also consider that when you go to the doctor and tell him you are in pain, he wants to know where, which you can usually explain, but he also wants to know how bad the pain is, which is much harder to explain because it is a feeling. You start to play the let's guess game with him, where he asks, "Can you put weight on it? Does it limit your ability to do something? On a scale of one to ten, how bad is it? etc." If you say it is a three, and I say my pain is a three, and Joe down the street also has pain that is a three, then do we all have the same level of pain? Does it feel the same? I doubt it.

I am sure you have heard of "debriefing" (not as used in the military, but as used in psychology). This is used in cases of trauma or emotional upheaval where it is necessary to stabilize the emotional memory before it corrupts itself. For policemen, firemen, nurses and doctors, or anyone who deals with emotional traumas, it is preferred for an incident report to be made out within 24 hours of the incident. After that amount of time, it is very likely that your memory of the incident will actually change, but putting it into words (thoughts) right after the event will stabilize the memory. This should always be used in criminal investigations, but it is not always practical and feasible.

Sure, it would make sense that putting something into words helps you remember it, and the longer you wait to put it into words, the less like the initial mental data it is likely to be.

Actually, putting something into words helps you to KNOW it so that you have something to remember.

Ah, but what if it never happened? I watched a You Tube video about Emotional Memory where a guy went through an explanation of how the death of John F. Kennedy affected him. He was in grade school at the time and remembered it in great detail along with the reactions of his classmates, and he even remembered the color of his teacher's blouse. He had told the story many times, until one day someone looked at him and stated that he did not look old enough to remember Kennedy's death. He wasn't. When he checked the date, he learned that he was not even old enough to be in school, and was shocked by that discovery.

Emotional memory is like emotion; fluid and dynamic, capable of growth and creativity.

If a family member or good friend walks through the door, and you see him, can't you tell if he is in a good or bad mood? You can read his body language, facial expressions, and eyes and learn a great deal about how he is feeling. Can you tell if he paid his taxes? Or how much they were? No, because those would be thoughts, unless he is very happy or depressed about paying his taxes. Moods, feelings, and emotions are shared between people/things; you may feel them internally, but you show them externally. Awareness actually functions between you are what you are aware of.

Ah, so the idea was that emotions are often correlated to "body language" in a way that more detailed thoughts often are not. Sure, although there are plenty of exceptions on both sides, and to an extent it's just because we simplify the idea of emotions so much.

Actually, what we do is dismiss emotion as not having any relevance. We see it as something that is changeable, and not stable, so it is not solid and real. It is fluid.

Body language relates to emotion because it is EXTERNAL communication. Bonding relates to emotion because it is EXTERNAL communication. The self-balancing of an ecosystem relates to emotion because it is EXTERNAL communication. The mob or riot mentality relates to emotion because it is EXTERNAL communication. Survival instincts relate to emotion because they are EXTERNAL communication. The "God" concept relates to emotion because it is EXTERNAL communication. The paranormal relates to emotion because it is EXTERNAL communication. Homeostasis in the body relates to emotion because it balances the systems in the body, but the systems are EXTERNAL to each other.

Consciousness in essence is communication. Thought, knowledge, and memory are internal communications that are private and known (the rational aspect of mind); awareness, feeling, and emotion are external communications that are shared and sensed (the unconscious aspect of mind).

Gee

[Gee]

Gee, you wrote

IF we could take all awareness, feeling, and emotion, and crystalize these aspects of consciousness into thought, knowledge, and memory, what would be the result? Everyone would die.

I believe the opposite to be the case. Unless we took all awareness, feeling, and emotion, and crystallized these aspects of consciousness into thought, knowledge, and memory we men could not live. (Same with other intelligent animals too).

I suspect that you are viewing this from an entirely different perspective than I am, and I can agree with your thoughts. You are taking intelligence, which is highly desired, and comparing it to emotion, which can make us dumber than a box of rocks (something that I have often explained to my children.)

My perspective is more pragmatic. While studying instincts, I learned something that most people are unaware of, and that is that ALL survival instincts (self preservation) are activated through feeling and emotion. Feeling and emotion are the mental aspects that activate survival instincts, but hormones and pheromones are the physical aspects that activate survival instincts. Hormones can cause the production of emotion and emotion can cause the production of hormones -- they work together. Thought is not required, nor is it capable of working with hormones.

So if you crystallize emotion into thought, there would be nothing to activate the hormones and survival instincts would cease to exist. Emotion does not work, or function, the same way as thought. It is fluid, so maybe you could remember that water is necessary for life, but the north and south poles, which are rich with an abundance of crystallized water, are not fluid and have almost no life.

Without feeling and emotion, we would not have survival instincts, so we would occasionally forget to eat, or sleep, and we would not be afraid of something that could kill us, and we would not be very interested in the next generation. In short, we would soon die off as a species -- as would all other life.

I agree with the pictured Cave of Plato, that men are chained to what seems to be the case. However I disagree that some men escape from the Cave and see absolute truth.The only escape from the Cave, and it is relative freedom only, is by means of reasoning.

If no one ever escaped from the Cave, then how could they possibly know that it is a cave? There would be no other perspective, so the cave would be all of reality. Think of the movie "The Matrix".

You are not talking about escaping through "reason", you are talking about escaping through imagination. Reason requires at least some truth and in this case some perspective.

Gee