How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

[Belindi]

At first glance that doesn't seem right to me.

There are similarities between sensory experience referencing the outside world and 'internal' feely sensations like pain, hunger or lust, but memory has a particular flavour of its own, mood and the thinky voice in our head seem very different too. And I can imagine or remember myself having moods or thoughts, etc.

But these are all just different ways of categorizing experience, and we can categorize and sub-categorize differently for different purposes. I just don't find the qualia v other division appropriate of helpful. Not when addressing philosophy of mind questions at least.

And if we said every type of experience is essentially sensory, then we'd just have to add extra senses like mood-sense and think-sense and remember-sense, etc wouldn't we?

Remembering is a kind of imagining or thinking, and thinking qua innerly speaking is itself a kind of imagining by simulating outer speech. Thinking or innerly speaking is constituted by linguistically meaningful sequences of auditory or visual quasi-sensa (virtual sensa), which do have a particular qualitative character in virtue of which there is something it is like for you to think or imagine something. What I deny is that there is a distinctive non-sensory "cognitive phenomenology" of thought.

There is a distinction between diffuse (non-concentrated, non-localized) bodily sensations and non-diffuse ones, e.g. between a mood of depression and a pain in a tooth. Moods are diffuse sensations, but they are a kind of sensations all the same.

The experience is subjective. The environment of the experience includes all sensations including memories, moods, and ideas. Nothing exists unless it exists vis a vis an environment. In other words, 'me' and 'not me'. It follows that a diffuse pain and a focused pain, and also moods, and also other people are experiences of the body.
The 'me' in all this is the bundle of experiences that is future -orientated as it must be to survive.

[Sculptor1]

In my view, all types of subjective experience are types of sensory or quasi-sensory experience: Obviously, all kinds of sensation are sensory experiences; and I think all kinds of emotion are sensory experiences too, viz. bodily sensations. I also think all kinds of imagination are quasi-sensory experiences, in the sense that imagination is the imitation or simulation of sensory perception.

Given this reduction of emotions and imaginations to sensations or quasi-sensations, all experiential qualia are sense-qualia or quasi-sense-qualia, sensa or quasi-sensa in short.

How is a dream a sensory experience?
You seem to be achiveing an enourmous amount of fudge by attaching the prefix "quasi" in front of everything, but this just clouds your meaning.
So is a dream a bit like a sensory experience, in that although it does not involve actual sensory experiences in is, nonethless quasi in that it can include visual and audible elements.
If I dream about a mathematical concept, is that not a purely abstract event, and not in any sense, sensory, not even quasisensory?

[GE Morton]

…Sensory signals --- electrical pulses transmitted via the nervous system --- per se don't have qualia.

By "sensa" I mean subjective(ly experienced) sensations. Mere sensory signals are pre- or subconscious.

Ok. Agree.

[Gertie]

At first glance that doesn't seem right to me.

There are similarities between sensory experience referencing the outside world and 'internal' feely sensations like pain, hunger or lust, but memory has a particular flavour of its own, mood and the thinky voice in our head seem very different too. And I can imagine or remember myself having moods or thoughts, etc.

But these are all just different ways of categorizing experience, and we can categorize and sub-categorize differently for different purposes. I just don't find the qualia v other division appropriate of helpful. Not when addressing philosophy of mind questions at least.

And if we said every type of experience is essentially sensory, then we'd just have to add extra senses like mood-sense and think-sense and remember-sense, etc wouldn't we?

Remembering is a kind of imagining or thinking, and thinking qua innerly speaking is itself a kind of imagining by simulating outer speech. Thinking or innerly speaking is constituted by linguistically meaningful sequences of auditory or visual quasi-sensa (virtual sensa), which do have a particular qualitative character in virtue of which there is something it is like for you to think or imagine something. What I deny is that there is a distinctive non-sensory "cognitive phenomenology" of thought.

There is a distinction between diffuse (non-concentrated, non-localized) bodily sensations and non-diffuse ones, e.g. between a mood of depression and a pain in a tooth. Moods are diffuse sensations, but they are a kind of sensations all the same.

Hmm. Maybe. I suppose it makes sense memory, thought,etc co-opt what's there to work with, but all have their own 'flavours'. It doesn't make them any less experiential - or help resolving the hard problem.

Rather, the debate concerns the nature of cognitive phenomenology. Is the phenomenology of cognitive states reducible to purely sensory phenomenology? Or, is there an irreducible cognitive phenomenology? A sceptic about cognitive phenomenology claims that conscious cognitive states are non-phenomenal. But, conscious cognitive states may seem to be phenomenal because they are accompanied by sensory states. For instance, when one thinks that ´Paris is a beautiful city`, one´s thought may be expressed in inner-speech and an image of Paris may accompany it. These accompanying sensory states are phenomenal states, and not the thought itself. Contrary to this, the proponent of cognitive phenomenology claims that a conscious cognitive state can have a phenomenology that is irreducible to purely sensory phenomenology.…"

It seems to me what you said is closer, that linguistic thought is experience, but it's 'quasi' hearing. Our folk ways of identifying senses, thinking, memory, mood arose because we recognise these thinghs exist, and are 'natural' categories. Even if we didn't and don't fully understand them, I know what it is like to read and understand your posts. Or sometimes not understand them . The understanding part feels different to simply reading the words, there's something extra there, a satisfaction or expectation being met or somesuch. Is that quasi reducible to other types of sensory satisfactions, well, hard to say, depends where you want to draw your lines. At some point the categories might be dictating the lines if we're too invested in them. 'Flavours' of experience avoids that.

[Consul]

It seems to me what you said is closer, that linguistic thought is experience, but it's 'quasi' hearing.

Thinking and imagining are experiences too, even if they are mental actions; and thinking in words or sentences is constituted by mental imagery like all other forms of imagination.

QUOTE>
"What I would like to call attention to is a tendency among philosophers to conflate thinking and materials used in thinking. We sometimes think 'in language', soliloquizing privately. On other occasions, we reflect non-linguistically. Some philosophers distinguish these, describing the first as 'propositional' or 'sentential', the second as 'imagistic'. But both kinds of thinking are imagistic: we deploy visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and kinesthetic images. Some of this imagery is linguistic, verbal. Verbal imagery can be auditory (as when you 'hear' utterances in your head), kinesthetic (you 'feel' yourself uttering sentences), or a combination of these. Some cognizers can visualize inscriptions, mentally 'sign', and 'feel' embossed letters or Braille sequences. The point to appreciate is that verbal imagery is no less 'imagistic' than imagery of other sorts."
(pp. 251-2)

"Inner utterances…are a species of mental imagery, where the images are images of what their audible, visual, or tactile counterparts sound, look, or feel like. There is no logical or conceptual gulf between linguistic ('propositional') imagery and imagery of other sorts, 'pictorial' imagery. Conscious thought quite generally is imagistic. Not all thoughts incorporate linguistic imagery, however. Much of our thought involves non-linguistic visual, auditory, tactile, or olfactory imagery. Indeed, your thought about a particular person might include verbal imagery (an inner utterance of a name, for instance) accompanied by a visual image of the person and perhaps other imagery as well. The association of imagery with thought is not a matter of identifying thought with images. Thinking is a matter of using imagery. …Without use, images or signs are empty; severed from use, representations fail to represent."
(p. 266)

"[C]onscious thinking is inevitably imagistic; to entertain a thought consciously is to deploy images of one sort or another. Imagery can be 'pictorial' or 'sentential'.You can imagine how something looks (did look, will look, or might look), feels (did feel, will feel, or might feel), tastes (did, will, or might tasts), sounds (did, will, or might sound), or smells (did, will, or might smell). One species of such imagining is verbal: you imaginatively utter, or hear, or feel yourself uttering, words."
(pp. 267-8)

"[O]rdinary conscious thought is best understood as the manipulation of images for various purposes."
(p. 271)

(Heil, John. The Universe As We Find It. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.)
<QUOTE

[Consul]

…Given this reduction of emotions and imaginations to sensations or quasi-sensations, all experiential qualia are sense-qualia or quasi-sense-qualia, sensa or quasi-sensa in short.

How is a dream a sensory experience?
You seem to be achiveing an enourmous amount of fudge by attaching the prefix "quasi" in front of everything, but this just clouds your meaning.
So is a dream a bit like a sensory experience, in that although it does not involve actual sensory experiences in is, nonethless quasi in that it can include visual and audible elements.
If I dream about a mathematical concept, is that not a purely abstract event, and not in any sense, sensory, not even quasisensory?

Imaginative quasi-sensations are virtual sensations, in the sense of being simulations of sensations.

Dreaming is an altered state of consciousness; and I think it is a form of imagination, so its experiential content consists of quasi-sensations. If to "dream about a mathematical concept" is to utter sentences of inner speech referring to it during sleep, then these dream utterances are made of (linguistically meaningful) auditory quasi-sensations.

QUOTE>
"How should the term ‘simulation’ be understood…? …[T]he general approach I recommend, fairly consonant with a good bit of the simulationist literature (though not all of it), is keyed to the notions of similarity, copying, or replication. Very roughly, one process successfully simulates another, in the intended sense, only if the first process copies, replicates, or resembles the target process, at least in relevant respects."

(Goldman, Alvin. "Simulation Theory and Cognitive Neuroscience." In Stich and His Critics, edited by Dominic Murphy and Michael Bishop, 137-151. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. p. 139)
<QUOTE

[Consul]

Dreaming is an altered state of consciousness; and I think it is a form of imagination…

Others think dreaming is a form of hallucination; but I beg to differ, thinking instead that hallucinations are pseudo-perceptual experiences which occur only during waking consciousness, and involve actual sensations rather than virtual ones, i.e. sense-impressions rather than mental images (copies) thereof. (That the sensations involved in hallucinations aren't caused by exogenous stimuli is irrelevant here.)

[Gertie]

GE

Gertie wrote: ↑January 22nd, 2022, 6:37 pm

The term ''qualia'' can be used in different ways, for example as only sensory experience, or all conscious phenomenal experience, so I don't find it that useful.

I'd rather people either specify they're talking about phenomenal ''what it is like'' experience generally, or specify what type of experience they mean. I tend to think in terms of ''flavours'' of experience, such as seeing, hearing, remembering, feeling sensations like hunger or pain, mood, imagining, thinking with your internal narrator, etc.

I agree that the lack of agreement as to what "qualia" includes reduces its explanatory and communicative utility. But it could be a useful term if some agreement was reached on that issue. I think that per the most general understanding of that term, it denotes the qualitative difference between inputs over a given sensory channel, such as color vision, odors, flavors, tactile sensations, sounds, which enable us to distinguish among them. Since we obviously can make those distinctions, each sensory signal must have some property that enables it --- that property is its quale.

OK thanks. So if a category such as colour vision is divisible into different sub-categories (different colours), those subcategories are qualia?

But then vision also includes varieites of depth perception, shapes, movement, perspective and focus. Colour is then a quale of vision?

But you're quite right that sensory signals are not the only inputs to consciousness. We can also distinguish among emotional states, e.g., between sadness, joy, anger, love, fear, etc., all of which have their own distinctive (and distinguishing) properties. So it would seem natural to recognize another category of qualia, namely, emotional qualia. Another class might be "autonomic qualia" --- the qualitative difference between various systemic states, such as hunger, sleepiness, thirst, anoxia, sexual arousal, and others.

Right

What all those qualia have in common is that they denote the properties which enable differentiation between signals delivered over a given "channel" (yes, we can think of emotions and autonomic information as having their own non-sensory "channels" --- the limbic system--- for delivering information to consciousness).

I'm not sure the term "qualia" has any useful application to memory or cognitive processes (thinking, understanding, analyzing, theorizing) etc., however. Those need to be analyzed with a different descriptive tool kit, with the qualia just described serving, by and large, as the "raw materials" upon which those latter functions/processes work.

Well neural correlation suggests every experiential state will have specific physical process we can call its ''channel'', tho some might be more complex and interwoven than others. And neural connectivity suggests to me no sub-channel is 'pure' red for example. And no individual's brain's physical colour system will be identical to another's, so if any two people look at the same red apple, there will be two distinct quales. And if we multiply that by the amount of brains there are, don't we have to conclude there is no specific red quale associated with any specific red object?

I'm inclined to accept the notion that more recently evolved cognitive subsystems will work with the existing sensory subsystems' ''raw materials'', but maybe result in new sensations like understanding, or some sense of satisfaction arising from the ability to manipulate abstract symbols or concepts in ways which 'feel right' by making sense within our model of the world.

[Belindi]

GE

Gertie wrote: ↑January 22nd, 2022, 6:37 pm

The term ''qualia'' can be used in different ways, for example as only sensory experience, or all conscious phenomenal experience, so I don't find it that useful.

I'd rather people either specify they're talking about phenomenal ''what it is like'' experience generally, or specify what type of experience they mean. I tend to think in terms of ''flavours'' of experience, such as seeing, hearing, remembering, feeling sensations like hunger or pain, mood, imagining, thinking with your internal narrator, etc.

I agree that the lack of agreement as to what "qualia" includes reduces its explanatory and communicative utility. But it could be a useful term if some agreement was reached on that issue. I think that per the most general understanding of that term, it denotes the qualitative difference between inputs over a given sensory channel, such as color vision, odors, flavors, tactile sensations, sounds, which enable us to distinguish among them. Since we obviously can make those distinctions, each sensory signal must have some property that enables it --- that property is its quale.

OK thanks. So if a category such as colour vision is divisible into different sub-categories (different colours), those subcategories are qualia?

But then vision also includes varieites of depth perception, shapes, movement, perspective and focus. Colour is then a quale of vision?

But you're quite right that sensory signals are not the only inputs to consciousness. We can also distinguish among emotional states, e.g., between sadness, joy, anger, love, fear, etc., all of which have their own distinctive (and distinguishing) properties. So it would seem natural to recognize another category of qualia, namely, emotional qualia. Another class might be "autonomic qualia" --- the qualitative difference between various systemic states, such as hunger, sleepiness, thirst, anoxia, sexual arousal, and others.

Right

What all those qualia have in common is that they denote the properties which enable differentiation between signals delivered over a given "channel" (yes, we can think of emotions and autonomic information as having their own non-sensory "channels" --- the limbic system--- for delivering information to consciousness).

I'm not sure the term "qualia" has any useful application to memory or cognitive processes (thinking, understanding, analyzing, theorizing) etc., however. Those need to be analyzed with a different descriptive tool kit, with the qualia just described serving, by and large, as the "raw materials" upon which those latter functions/processes work.

Well neural correlation suggests every experiential state will have specific physical process we can call its ''channel'', tho some might be more complex and interwoven than others. And neural connectivity suggests to me no sub-channel is 'pure' red for example. And no individual's brain's physical colour system will be identical to another's, so if any two people look at the same red apple, there will be two distinct quales. And if we multiply that by the amount of brains there are, don't we have to conclude there is no specific red quale associated with any specific red object?

I'm inclined to accept the notion that more recently evolved cognitive subsystems will work with the existing sensory subsystems' ''raw materials'', but maybe result in new sensations like understanding, or some sense of satisfaction arising from the ability to manipulate abstract symbols or concepts in ways which 'feel right' by making sense within our model of the world.

I think Gertie indicates that every quale is a gestalt, Each gestalt quale is posed against a background of what it is not. Each gestalt quale includes feeling tone(affect) and evaluation.

[Gertie]

GE

Gertie wrote: ↑January 22nd, 2022, 6:37 pm

The term ''qualia'' can be used in different ways, for example as only sensory experience, or all conscious phenomenal experience, so I don't find it that useful.

I'd rather people either specify they're talking about phenomenal ''what it is like'' experience generally, or specify what type of experience they mean. I tend to think in terms of ''flavours'' of experience, such as seeing, hearing, remembering, feeling sensations like hunger or pain, mood, imagining, thinking with your internal narrator, etc.

I agree that the lack of agreement as to what "qualia" includes reduces its explanatory and communicative utility. But it could be a useful term if some agreement was reached on that issue. I think that per the most general understanding of that term, it denotes the qualitative difference between inputs over a given sensory channel, such as color vision, odors, flavors, tactile sensations, sounds, which enable us to distinguish among them. Since we obviously can make those distinctions, each sensory signal must have some property that enables it --- that property is its quale.

OK thanks. So if a category such as colour vision is divisible into different sub-categories (different colours), those subcategories are qualia?

But then vision also includes varieites of depth perception, shapes, movement, perspective and focus. Colour is then a quale of vision?

But you're quite right that sensory signals are not the only inputs to consciousness. We can also distinguish among emotional states, e.g., between sadness, joy, anger, love, fear, etc., all of which have their own distinctive (and distinguishing) properties. So it would seem natural to recognize another category of qualia, namely, emotional qualia. Another class might be "autonomic qualia" --- the qualitative difference between various systemic states, such as hunger, sleepiness, thirst, anoxia, sexual arousal, and others.

Right

What all those qualia have in common is that they denote the properties which enable differentiation between signals delivered over a given "channel" (yes, we can think of emotions and autonomic information as having their own non-sensory "channels" --- the limbic system--- for delivering information to consciousness).

I'm not sure the term "qualia" has any useful application to memory or cognitive processes (thinking, understanding, analyzing, theorizing) etc., however. Those need to be analyzed with a different descriptive tool kit, with the qualia just described serving, by and large, as the "raw materials" upon which those latter functions/processes work.

Well neural correlation suggests every experiential state will have specific physical process we can call its ''channel'', tho some might be more complex and interwoven than others. And neural connectivity suggests to me no sub-channel is 'pure' red for example. And no individual's brain's physical colour system will be identical to another's, so if any two people look at the same red apple, there will be two distinct quales. And if we multiply that by the amount of brains there are, don't we have to conclude there is no specific red quale associated with any specific red object?

I'm inclined to accept the notion that more recently evolved cognitive subsystems will work with the existing sensory subsystems' ''raw materials'', but maybe result in new sensations like understanding, or some sense of satisfaction arising from the ability to manipulate abstract symbols or concepts in ways which 'feel right' by making sense within our model of the world.

I think Gertie indicates that every quale is a gestalt, Each gestalt quale is posed against a background of what it is not. Each gestalt quale includes feeling tone(affect) and evaluation.

Well I think we have to be careful about using materialist language to talk about experience, it's not always appropriate. The notion of parts, divisibility and reductionism don't seem to apply in the same way to experience as they do to describing brains. The experience I have when seeing the red apple isn't reducible or divisible to material parts, but includes shape, perspective, depth of vision - and can evoke memories, hunger, Adam and Eve and allsorts in that experiential moment, and something else the next. (I have a weird thing about fruit skins which puts my teeth on edge as I imagine biting them, that will be part of my experience of seeing a red apple, but probably not yours!)

There's also a unification about the field of consciousness which isn't reflected in the brain's subsystems and neural connectivity. It can still categorised by parts like vision and redness, but we have to remember the qualities of experience aren't the same as those of physical brains, and isolating building blocks in a process misses something.

[Gertie]

Consul

I just tried multiplying 47 by 53 in my head. Manipulating symbols which represent abstract numbers seems a long way from sensory experiences, so I tried noticing what happened. And I found myself 'hearing' the numbers and 'seeing' them written. So yeah, I'm coming round to that. But the understanding of the rightness of my answer evokes this satisfaction/dissatisfaction sort of experience which is related to meaning and knowledge. Which seems different. Tho you could call it a quasi sensation which is a bit like slaking a thirst. As I say it depends where you want to draw your category lines.

[Belindi]

GE

I agree that the lack of agreement as to what "qualia" includes reduces its explanatory and communicative utility. But it could be a useful term if some agreement was reached on that issue. I think that per the most general understanding of that term, it denotes the qualitative difference between inputs over a given sensory channel, such as color vision, odors, flavors, tactile sensations, sounds, which enable us to distinguish among them. Since we obviously can make those distinctions, each sensory signal must have some property that enables it --- that property is its quale.

OK thanks. So if a category such as colour vision is divisible into different sub-categories (different colours), those subcategories are qualia?

But then vision also includes varieites of depth perception, shapes, movement, perspective and focus. Colour is then a quale of vision?

But you're quite right that sensory signals are not the only inputs to consciousness. We can also distinguish among emotional states, e.g., between sadness, joy, anger, love, fear, etc., all of which have their own distinctive (and distinguishing) properties. So it would seem natural to recognize another category of qualia, namely, emotional qualia. Another class might be "autonomic qualia" --- the qualitative difference between various systemic states, such as hunger, sleepiness, thirst, anoxia, sexual arousal, and others.

Right

What all those qualia have in common is that they denote the properties which enable differentiation between signals delivered over a given "channel" (yes, we can think of emotions and autonomic information as having their own non-sensory "channels" --- the limbic system--- for delivering information to consciousness).

I'm not sure the term "qualia" has any useful application to memory or cognitive processes (thinking, understanding, analyzing, theorizing) etc., however. Those need to be analyzed with a different descriptive tool kit, with the qualia just described serving, by and large, as the "raw materials" upon which those latter functions/processes work.

Well neural correlation suggests every experiential state will have specific physical process we can call its ''channel'', tho some might be more complex and interwoven than others. And neural connectivity suggests to me no sub-channel is 'pure' red for example. And no individual's brain's physical colour system will be identical to another's, so if any two people look at the same red apple, there will be two distinct quales. And if we multiply that by the amount of brains there are, don't we have to conclude there is no specific red quale associated with any specific red object?

I'm inclined to accept the notion that more recently evolved cognitive subsystems will work with the existing sensory subsystems' ''raw materials'', but maybe result in new sensations like understanding, or some sense of satisfaction arising from the ability to manipulate abstract symbols or concepts in ways which 'feel right' by making sense within our model of the world.

I think Gertie indicates that every quale is a gestalt, Each gestalt quale is posed against a background of what it is not. Each gestalt quale includes feeling tone(affect) and evaluation.

Well I think we have to be careful about using materialist language to talk about experience, it's not always appropriate. The notion of parts, divisibility and reductionism don't seem to apply in the same way to experience as they do to describing brains. The experience I have when seeing the red apple isn't reducible or divisible to material parts, but includes shape, perspective, depth of vision - and can evoke memories, hunger, Adam and Eve and allsorts in that experiential moment, and something else the next. (I have a weird thing about fruit skins which puts my teeth on edge as I imagine biting them, that will be part of my experience of seeing a red apple, but probably not yours!)

There's also a unification about the field of consciousness which isn't reflected in the brain's subsystems and neural connectivity. It can still categorised by parts like vision and redness, but we have to remember the qualities of experience aren't the same as those of physical brains, and isolating building blocks in a process misses something.

Exactly, Gertie. The gestalt is indivisible . It's more than the sum of its parts as it's also relationships of 'parts' with all other 'parts'.

[Consul]

I just tried multiplying 47 by 53 in my head. Manipulating symbols which represent abstract numbers seems a long way from sensory experiences, so I tried noticing what happened. And I found myself 'hearing' the numbers and 'seeing' them written. So yeah, I'm coming round to that. But the understanding of the rightness of my answer evokes this satisfaction/dissatisfaction sort of experience which is related to meaning and knowledge. Which seems different. Tho you could call it a quasi sensation which is a bit like slaking a thirst. As I say it depends where you want to draw your category lines.

Consciousness and cognition&perception are interwoven, but the experiential content of the former doesn't consist of anything but sensory or quasi-sensory stuff. For example, when you look at this picture, you have a certain visual sense-impression, which is interpreted cognitively by your mind/brain either as a seeing of a duck or as a seeing of a rabbit. Seeing what is depicted as a duck seems different from seeing it as a rabbit, but the cognitive factor responsible for the difference isn't a nonsensory constituent of your visual experience. Instead, it's an extrinsic factor which influences your visual experience (and your thoughts about it).

[JackDaydream]

I just tried multiplying 47 by 53 in my head. Manipulating symbols which represent abstract numbers seems a long way from sensory experiences, so I tried noticing what happened. And I found myself 'hearing' the numbers and 'seeing' them written. So yeah, I'm coming round to that. But the understanding of the rightness of my answer evokes this satisfaction/dissatisfaction sort of experience which is related to meaning and knowledge. Which seems different. Tho you could call it a quasi sensation which is a bit like slaking a thirst. As I say it depends where you want to draw your category lines.

Consciousness and cognition&perception are interwoven, but the experiential content of the former doesn't consist of anything but sensory or quasi-sensory stuff. For example, when you look at this picture, you have a certain visual sense-impression, which is interpreted cognitively by your mind/brain either as a seeing of a duck or as a seeing of a rabbit. Seeing what is depicted as a duck seems different from seeing it as a rabbit, but the cognitive factor responsible for the difference isn't a nonsensory constituent of your visual experience. Instead, it's an extrinsic factor which influences your visual experience (and your thoughts about it).

I just found your last post from several months ago today, when I was looking at this thread in thinking about qualia in relation to ideas today. Somehow, neither I or
others writing on it replied to the post above, but it is a very good one.

The nature of such optical illusion like the duck picture say so much about the interpretative nature of reality. That is why Rorschach's ink blots were used in psychology because they raise the question of the interpretation of human beings. The cognitive worlds of the perceived determine the way in which people see or 'zoom' into specific ways of seeing based on biases, past experiences and cultural backgrounds. Having been reading this thread in connection with thinking about good and evil, it is likely that the ambiguities of interpretation occur in relation to ideas as well as aspects of the physical world.

[Sy Borg]

Consciousness, like life, is a continuum. Death is a change from highly integrated communities of cells and free microbes to different communities of organisms.

Consciousness is just highly integrated and sophisticated reactivity to the environment. The level of complexity that can build in millions of years is jaw-dropping then you think about it, but emergences remain largely of the same nature as that from which they emerged.

So, when a mammal dies - be it a possum or a human - the nature of the animal's reactivity becomes reflexive and more chaotic as new communities of microbes take over the cadaver.

We humans are "better" at consciousness than anything else, in much the same way as saltwater crocodiles are better at biting prey items than other organisms and the manchineel tree is better at amassing large amounts of deadly toxins than other organisms. So, naturally, humans store great value in their consciousness, much like those people you meet at work who think their own job is far harder than anyone else's. Why do they think that? Because they don't know what others do, but they do know that their own job can be hard. So they make assumptions about their relative abilities based on a biased data set, just as humans do as regards consciousness.