Consciousness, what is and what it requires?

[Consul]

Strictly speaking, I think the only distinctively and genuinely mental phenomena are experiential phenomena, such that mind = conscious mind/consciousness.

Are you including emotion and awareness in this? Because emotion and awareness work through the unconscious mind.

Yes, I include emotions (conceived as subjective feelings or moods). As for awareness, it depends on what this is. If it is cognition or perception, then there is a difference between conscious, subjective awareness (involving sensations or/and thoughts) and nonconscious, objective awareness.

[Consul]

"We have three possible positions before us:

[1] Only experiential phenomena (E phenomena) are truly mental phenomena.

[2] The class of mental phenomena also includes dispositional, nonexperiential phenomena (DN phenomena), such as beliefs, pro-attitudes, and memories, in addition to E phenomena.

[3] In addition to E phenomena and DN phenomena, the class of mental phenomena also includes certain occurrent nonexperiential phenomena (ON phenomena), such as the subexperiential processes that subserve vision, mental calculation, and so on.

There is, however, a fourth possible position:

[4] The class of mental phenomena includes E phenomena and ON phenomena but not DN phenomena.

Position (4) might appeal to someone who is inclined to take an eliminativist attitude to propositional attitudes, and indeed to mental dispositions in general, but who wishes to take a fully realist attitude to the existence of both experiential phenomena and subexperiential mental phenomena."

(Strawson, Galen. Mental Reality. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. p. 162)

2 are unconscious mental dispositions (dispositional mental states) or propositional attitudes (e.g. beliefs and desires), and 3 are unconscious mental processes—what Searle calls "the cognitive unconscious". According to Searle, 2 are "pre-conscious" in the sense that subjects can become conscious or aware of them, whereas 3 are "deeply unconscious" in the sense that subjects cannot possibly become conscious or aware of them.

I tend to believe that "only experiential phenomena…are truly mental phenomena"; but un- yet pre-conscious mental dispositions or propositional attitudes may be counted among the mental or psychological phenomena. However, I don't think we can become directly conscious or aware of them via introspection. What we are directly introspectively conscious or aware of are our conscious thoughts, our thought-experiences (our conscious thinkings or inner speakings), whose linguistic contents (e.g. the mental sentence "I believe that Berlin is the capital of Germany") are interpreted by us as expressions or indications of our unconscious propositional attitudes. So my knowledge of my propositional attitudes is always indirect and inferential.

I don't believe in the existence of deeply unconscious cognitive processes that are distinctively mental rather than purely neural ones.

"[T]he Freudian conception is that we need a distinction between the pre-conscious and the unconscious. The pre-conscious consists of phenomena we do not happen to be thinking about, such as my belief that Washington was the first president of the United States. But the unconscious for Freud involves cases of genuine repression. The Freudian notion of the unconscious as opposed to pre-conscious was the notion of mental states that are just too painful to emerge into consciousness. The male child’s desire to have sex with his mother and to kill his father, for example, was regarded by Freud as a repressed unconscious form of motivation, because that desire was too painful to acknowledge but was nonetheless present as part of the child’s motivation.

Freud is, I think, intellectually out of fashion today and his theory is no longer regarded as a valid scientific conception of the unconscious. But in the later decades of the twentieth century there emerged another conception of the unconscious, which I might call the Cognitive Unconscious. There were supposed to be processes going on in your brain that are genuinely mental, as opposed to merely neurobiological, but inaccessible in principle to consciousness. Of course they are realized or implemented neurobiologically. But the level of description that is essential for understanding the processes is that of the unconscious mental level, and not at either the neurobiological or the conscious level. The idea was that to explain human cognition we must postulate the existence of genuinely mental processes going on in the brain that are not conscious, not even the kind of thing that could become conscious, but all the same at a higher level than that of neurobiology. So there were supposed to be three levels of explanation: a top level of intentionality, sometimes contemptuously called “folk psychology,” a bottom level of neurobiology, and an intermediate level where a Cognitive Science—as then construed—could operate."

(Searle, John R. Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory of Perception. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. pp. 202-3)

"[W]e distinguish between, on the one hand, the shallow or ordinary unconscious, where the unconscious mental states are, in principle, the kind of thing that we can become conscious of, and on the other hand, the deep or inaccessible unconscious, where the unconscious mental states are not even the kind of thing that the agent could become conscious of. The deep unconscious is not accessible to consciousness because the rules in question do not even have a form under which they can operate consciously. They are, for example, matters of very complex computational rules, which could be stated as a very long sequence of zeros and ones. But even that is just a theoretician’s way of representing the symbol manipulation that is inaccessible to consciousness.
This conception of consciousness, the deep unconsciousness, seems to me philosophically illegitimate."

(Searle, John R. Seeing Things As They Are: A Theory of Perception. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. p. 207)

[Atla]

Many centuries ago, people hallucinated a mental-physical distinction. But these "two" are the same thing.

Since then dozens, hundreds of worldviews based on this hallucination have been explored (known as modern Western philosophy), and of course zero progress has been made. The definition of insanity is..

Taking human psychology and dividing it into these two made-up categories is a good career choice, there are so many aspects, nuances, questions, uncertanties etc. about human psychology that one can be doing this nonsense for decades (and get paid for it).

Now we live in the 21st century, our technological advancement has been out of this world, but still can't seem to fix this thinking error.

Why?

[BigBango]

"We have three possible positions before us:

[1] Only experiential phenomena (E phenomena) are truly mental phenomena.

[2] The class of mental phenomena also includes dispositional, nonexperiential phenomena (DN phenomena), such as beliefs, pro-attitudes, and memories, in addition to E phenomena.

[3] In addition to E phenomena and DN phenomena, the class of mental phenomena also includes certain occurrent nonexperiential phenomena (ON phenomena), such as the subexperiential processes that subserve vision, mental calculation, and so on.

There is, however, a fourth possible position:

[4] The class of mental phenomena includes E phenomena and ON phenomena but not DN phenomena.

Position (4) might appeal to someone who is inclined to take an eliminativist attitude to propositional attitudes, and indeed to mental dispositions in general, but who wishes to take a fully realist attitude to the existence of both experiential phenomena and subexperiential mental phenomena."
(Strawson, Galen. Mental Reality. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. p. 162)

This is interesting however it does not illuminate the metaphysics that accounts for these assertions.

2 are unconscious mental dispositions (dispositional mental states) or propositional attitudes (e.g. beliefs and desires), and 3 are unconscious mental processes—what Searle calls "the cognitive unconscious". According to Searle, 2 are "pre-conscious" in the sense that subjects can become conscious or aware of them, whereas 3 are "deeply unconscious" in the sense that subjects cannot possibly become conscious or aware of them.

Yes, what are the metaphysical underpinnings that support those positions?

I tend to believe that "only experiential phenomena…are truly mental phenomena"; but un- yet pre-conscious mental dispositions or propositional attitudes may be counted among the mental or psychological phenomena. However, I don't think we can become directly conscious or aware of them via introspection. What we are directly introspectively conscious or aware of are our conscious thoughts, our thought-experiences (our conscious thinkings or inner speakings), whose linguistic contents (e.g. the mental sentence "I believe that Berlin is the capital of Germany") are interpreted by us as expressions or indications of our unconscious propositional attitudes. So my knowledge of my propositional attitudes is always indirect and inferential.

Your knowledge of propositional attitudes is just known to you and is in your consciousness.

I don't believe in the existence of deeply unconscious cognitive processes that are distinctively mental rather than purely neural ones.

So you are saying that there are deeply unconscious cognitive processes that are "mental" and not simply neural? I think you should explore why that is because neural consciousness is simply the specialization of the conscious attributes of every cell in the body. Each cell sees but the visual cortex organizes the visual data into a comprehensive picture of the world. The fact is that the brain, in general, just specializes the mental facilities of all the cells that are conscious in their own right.

]

[Consul]

Many centuries ago, people hallucinated a mental-physical distinction. But these "two" are the same thing.

From the perspective of materialism/physicalism, this is the distinction between the mental-physical (the psychophysical) and the nonmental-physical (the non-psychophysical); but even then psychophysical phenomena are different from non-psychophysical ones.

[Consul]

No, it's required for subjective experience.

No. Experience is analogue, just like emotion, feeling, and awareness -- which means that we do not actually know about them when they happen -- like under anesthesia. But this does not mean that the experience did not happen or that our bodies did not respond to the experience. When a surgeon cuts you open, your body will react the same if you are conscious, or if you are knocked out, because the experience is real; you, your body, will still have subjective experience.

Experience works through the unconscious aspect of mind, just like emotion, feeling, and awareness. Because it is unconscious, we do not know about it. This is what RJG has been trying to explain, that experience is necessary before we can have recognition of that experience or thoughts about that experience in the conscious aspect of mind. Information flows from the unconscious to the conscious, which the brain actually does cause. The brain is essentially analogue, but it has the ability to turn our analogue experiences into digital thought -- at that point, we call it conscious thought. This is why most people associate thought with consciousness, because that is when we actually know about it, but it is only one step in the process. Or you could call it a level of awareness.

There's nothing experiential about what's going on in your body during general anesthesia or a dreamless sleep. It's nonsensical to call all physiological or neurological occurrences experiences. And drawing a distinction between "objective experiences" in a purely physiological or neurological sense and subjective experiences in the psychological or phenomenological sense causes nothing but confusion and misunderstanding.

In one sense, an unconscious experience is an unexperienced experience, which is obviously impossible. In this sense, all experiences are conscious experiences (such that the adjective "conscious" is superfluous).

In a second sense, an unconscious experience is an unattended, unnoticed, unintrospected, unreflected experience—one of which its subject is not conscious or aware, in the sense that the experience is not an object of attention, introspection, or reflection (cogitation).

Note that there is a difference between an experience of which you aren't conscious/aware and a nonexperience of which you aren't conscious/aware!

(Well, that's what first-order theorists of consciousness/experience say; for according to higher-order theorists, there is no such difference, because experiential or conscious states are defined by them as those inner states of which their subjects are conscious/aware.)

In a third sense, an unconscious experience is an unknown experience, which is impossible if the knowledge in question is knowledge by acquaintance. In this sense, to have or undergo an experience is to know it, and to know what it's like to have or undergo it, i.e. to know its experiential quality (and intensity). Here, "the having is the knowing." (G. Strawson)

In a fourth sense, an unconscious experience is an unknown experience that is unknown not in the sense that its subject isn't acquainted with it, but in the sense that its subject doesn't know that it is having or undergoing the experience, the knowledge in question being (what Russell calls) "knowledge by description" aka propositional knowledge (knowledge-that).
This sense is related to the second one, because propositional knowledge of one's experiences is grounded in or results from attention, introspection, or reflection.

The noun "self" is a terrible word. I don't like it. If selves are subjects, then let's use "subject" instead!

I don't think that we can reduce the word "self" to subject. Self is a perspective, whereas subject, as you are using it, is an object. Not the same thing at all.

Subjects are experiencing objects; and where there is a subject, there is a subjective (egocentric) perspective or point of view too (which mustn't be reified as a "self" different from the subject).

There's no justification for equating life (Leben in German) with conscious, subjective life (Erleben in German). Living objects (organisms) aren't per se experiencing objects = subjects.

I disagree. On the other hand, when the "living objects" die, then I can agree that they are no longer "experiencing objects".

Of course, dead organisms experience (sense, feel) nothing anymore.

What reasons are there to believe in panbiopsychism, the view that all living beings are conscious, experiencing beings?

Whether it's necessary for having a "mind" or a "self" depends on the definition of these terms.

Which means that we need to have a good understanding of "mind" and "self" in order to discuss this.

Yes, of course. So I'd like to see your definitions or conceptions!

As for the concept of a self, I recommend Eric Olson's paper "There is No Problem of the Self": https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/polopoly_fs ... e/self.pdf

"Abstract: Because there is no agreed use of the term 'self', or characteristic features or even paradigm cases of selves, there is no idea of "the self" to figure in philosophical problems. The term leads to troubles otherwise avoidable; and because legitimate discussions under the heading of 'self' are really about other things, it is gratuitous. I propose that we stop speaking of selves."

As for the concept of a mind, there's a distinction between minds as material/physical or mental/spiritual substances and minds as (nonsubstantial) complexes of mental occurrences (facts/states/events/processes) or mental attributes (properties, including abilities and activities).
In the first sense, (reductive) materialists say that the mind is the brain; and spiritualists say that the mind is the soul.
I presume we're talking about minds in the second sense, i.e. minds qua nonsubstances (nonobjects).

"[W]hen we use such expressions as 'having a mind', 'losing one's mind', 'being out of one's mind', and the like, there is no need to suppose there are objects in this world called 'minds' that we have, lose, or are out of. Having a mind can be construed simply as having a certain group of properties, capacities, and features that are possessed by humans and some higher animals but absent in things like pencils and rocks. To say that something 'has a mind' is to classify it as a certain sort of thing, capable of certain characteristic sorts of behaviors and functions—sensation, perception, memory, learning, reasoning, consciousness, action, and the like. It is less misleading, therefore, to speak of 'mentality' than of 'having a mind'; the surface grammar of the latter abets the problematic idea of a substantival mind—mind as an object of a special kind."

(Kim, Jaegwon. Philosophy of Mind. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2006. p. 6)

"To reject the substantival view of mentality is not to deny that each of us 'has a mind'; it is only that we should not think of 'having a mind' literally—that is, as there being some object or substance called a 'mind' that we literally possess. (...) If you have set aside substance dualism, you can take having a mind simply as having a certain special set of properties, capacities, and characteristics, something that humans and some higher animals possess but flowerpots and rocks do not."

(Kim, Jaegwon. Philosophy of Mind. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2006. p. 51)

Consider this: When studying law, I learned about self-defense. You can claim self-defense when protecting your actual self, your spouse, your children, and/or your home, and it will be accepted as a defense in most US Courts even when you kill. But you can not routinely claim self-defense when protecting your parents, your siblings or other relatives, friends, or your business. Why is that? Do your spouse, children, and home constitute a larger psychological self? They certainly have nothing to do with "subjecthood".
It is interesting to note that preservation of your spouse, children, and home are all covered under survival instincts and regulated by hormones. All are necessary for the continuation of the "self".

We have the reflexive pronouns ending with "-self/-selves", the use of which doesn't entail any ontological commitment to special things called selves. When I protect myself, I protect the body I am or have; but I don't protect any mysterious thing which is my self.

[Consul]

Your knowledge of propositional attitudes is just known to you and is in your consciousness.

No, knowledge is not a conscious state. There are no knowledge-experiences or experiential knowings. My knowledge of my knowledge (and all my other propositional attitudes) is private, but it is itself indirect and inferential (inferred from conscious thoughts).

I don't believe in the existence of deeply unconscious cognitive processes that are distinctively mental rather than purely neural ones.

So you are saying that there are deeply unconscious cognitive processes that are "mental" and not simply neural? I think you should explore why that is because neural consciousness is simply the specialization of the conscious attributes of every cell in the body. Each cell sees but the visual cortex organizes the visual data into a comprehensive picture of the world. The fact is that the brain, in general, just specializes the mental facilities of all the cells that are conscious in their own right.

What I'm saying is that all nonconscious activities or processes in the brain or body are purely neural/chemical/physical ones rather than mental ones (ones properly called mental).

Do you think every cell has eyes, so that it can see? Anyway, even if there is some sense in which single cells (in multicellular organisms) can (truly) be said to have mental attributes, there is no sense in which they can (truly) be said to have experiential attributes such as having subjective visual impressions (color-sensations).

[Atla]

Many centuries ago, people hallucinated a mental-physical distinction. But these "two" are the same thing.

From the perspective of materialism/physicalism, this is the distinction between the mental-physical (the psychophysical) and the nonmental-physical (the non-psychophysical); but even then psychophysical phenomena are different from non-psychophysical ones.

Yes. But what most people miss is that the perspective of materialism/physicalism is already based on a hallucination.

So starting from there, and dividing the world into mental-physical and nonmental-physical, we commit a second thinking error. So we end up with such double twists, double thinking errors, and most of our philosophers are shallow enough to only notice one of the two layers.

[RJG]

Consul, you are falsely equating "experience" as "conscious experience". These are two different things.

When we are conscious, we are conscious of something, not nothing. So then - What is this 'something' that we are conscious of?

Answer: We are, and can only be, conscious of physical bodily reactions (aka "bodily experiences"). That's it.

Important Note: "bodily experiences" are NOT "mental experiences". For it is the process of 'recognition' (a memory function) that converts a nonconscious physical "bodily experience" (bodily reaction) into a "mental experience" (i.e. a "conscious experience").

It is the knowing (recognition) of a bodily experience that yields a "conscious experience" ("mental experience"). Without these (nonconscious) physical bodily experiences, there could be no consciousness.

[Atla]

When we are conscious, we are conscious of something, not nothing. So then - What is this 'something' that we are conscious of?

Answer: We are, and can only be, conscious of physical bodily reactions (aka "bodily experiences"). That's it.

Important Note: "bodily experiences" are NOT "mental experiences". For it is the process of 'recognition' (a memory function) that converts a nonconscious physical "bodily experience" (bodily reaction) into a "mental experience" (i.e. a "conscious experience").

It is the knowing (recognition) of a bodily experience that yields a "conscious experience" ("mental experience"). Without these (nonconscious) physical bodily experiences, there could be no consciousness.

You expect to solve philosophy with a few word tricks?

[RJG]

You expect to solve philosophy with a few word tricks?

What word tricks?

There is a difference between physical experiences and mental experiences, ...wouldn't you agree?

Rocks, and all other physical bodies experience bodily reactions, ...agreed?

Only those physical objects/bodies that know/recognize their bodily experiences are said to be conscious subjects, ...agreed?

Boom. Philosophy solved.

[Atla]

You expect to solve philosophy with a few word tricks?

What word tricks?

Physical bodily experiences are NOT mental experiences, ...wouldn't you agree?

Rocks, and all other physical bodies experience bodily reactions, ...agreed?

Only those physical objects/bodies that know/recognize their bodily experiences are said to be conscious subjects, ...agreed?

Boom. Philosophy solved.

Of course I disagree. There is no converting process, bodily experiences are mental experiences. Fundamentally, bodily and mental are completely nonsensical categories, we only use them for utility.

Fundamentally there is also no sense of speaking of something vs nothing to be conscious "of". "Being conscious of something" is what we say when we talk about certain kinds of human cognition, but again that's more like utility.

Fundamentally it's also nonsense to talk about a rock's bodily reactions. A rock is a rock, it IS its experience. Just like everything else in the universe is.

It's also complete nonsense to claim that self-reflection (know/recognize your experiences) is all there is to consciousness in general. Besides there are no subjects and objects either.

This is what happens when you think backwards and try to solve philosophy based on word magic.

[RJG]

Is there a difference between 'physical' and 'mental'?

And if so, then is there a difference between 'physical experience' and 'mental experience'?

Conflating these as the 'same' thing is your error.

Fundamentally it's also nonsense to talk about a rock's bodily reactions. A rock is a rock, it IS its experience. Just like everything else in the universe is.

Can rocks experience vibrations, impaction forces, temp changes, etc? If so, then rocks can experience. And unlike you and I, and other beings that possess memory capability, they just can't "know" they experience.

[Atla]

Is there a difference between 'physical' and 'mental'?

And if so, then is there a difference between 'physical experience' and 'mental experience'?

Conflating these as the 'same' thing is your error.

There is no 'physical' and 'mental'. These are made-up categories, people hallucinated them a few hundred to thousand years ago, and then reified them.

Can rocks experience vibrations, impaction forces, temp changes, etc?

Not in the way you mean it.

[RJG]

Rocks experience the same as any other physical body (including us blobs of flesh and other material).

Rocks and people can experience "physical experiences" but rocks (who lack memory) cannot experience "mental experiences".

Without memory, an object cannot "know". (E.g. without eyes, an object cannot see). Without a means/capability to "know" (recognize/be conscious) there is no consciousness; no knowing.

The 'not-knowing' of a bodily experience does not mean there was no bodily experience!!!