The House of Being (Consciousness) (V-VI)

[struth35]

appreciate the vid. my training is very much in the analytic tradition so we don't get much phenomenology (we get phil of mind). Its interesting to know whats going on on the other side of the divide. even so, analytic phil gets accused of being overly reductive... your illustration of searle is quite telling. what he was saying was not anything novel. identity theory died nearly 40 years ago as a default theory of mind in analytic philosophy.

[AI2flesh]

must say from that age you have thumbs up.. i at your age well sure for hell didn´t have such sound.. stay tuned.

[theoutlaw31]

dont get mad at his mistakes, were ALL students, and well never learn EVERYTHING before we "die" from this life,,

just build from this,

PEACE

[msbadhabbits]

perhaps the revolution will come with the paradigm shift around 2012 ;)

[PHANTOMSLAYER777]

It's called a spirit.

[bannedfromutopia]

What a load of bollocks this is. I hope no one is actually buying any of this psychobabble.

[bannedfromutopia]

"there's something that it's like to be somebody, that something that it's like, that intentionality"

I think you're confusing the concepts of qualia and intentionality.

[OneMove33]

Very interesting, good upload, perhaps you should watch 'the primacy of consciousness' its on google videos.

[xoberrywild]

great to see that your investigating this. thanks

[KarthikSoun]

hi xoberrywild! long time no see.. and nice to see u here.. i hope u remb me frm selfenquiry site and sailor bob? pm me..

[themountainviewguy]

nice comments

[joyfulvulture]

wow, 3:10-3:30 = blatant ignorance... wtf are you talking about... theres plenty of knowledge on how schizophrenia comes about and works.

its almost as if you concluded everyone else on the planet is clueless about it because you are.

and then you dare talk about the need for a paradigm shift, lol... you've got some serious reading to do kid.

[hippymilk]

As a psychology student, you must also be aware that you have issues. Allow me to illustrate through example.

As a graduate English student, I can tell you that you seem to show no understanding, whatsoever of the English language. Dont dare write anything ever again because it is obvious you will just hurt yourself and others. Wow, your comments display such blatant ignorance of how English works, its almost sad. You have a lot of reading to do. See? You're just an angry little man.

[joyfulvulture]

you want to know why your comment is utterly useless?

1. english isnt my first language

2. i'm aware of that and wouldnt start acting like i'm a big expert on it, unlike the idiot in this vid whos totally clueless about psychology yet thinks he's enough of an expert to talk about a "paradigm shift".

[hippymilk]

What's wrong with talking about it? Why do you care? Are you saying that just because he has a few of his facts wrong, according to you, that he shouldn't talk at all?

[AlaskanSky]

Idiot? There's no need to resort to character attacks.

[IsLikeThat]

("Dont" SHOULD BE "Don't") ("...English works, its almost sad" SHOULD BE "...English works that it's almost sad." OR "...English works; it's almost sad.") You either need to drop the "," and add "that" OR you need a ";" instead of a ",". Also, you forgot the apostrophe on "its". "Its" is possesive. "It's" = "it is". You're supposed to be a graduate student of English? Hah! Grammer is often neglected on youTube, but it's quite ironic to do so while pretending to be an English expert.

[hippymilk]

I was presenting an analogy, so I WAS indeed pretending to be an English major. Well, Im glad to see you missed the point entirely. It was never about your grammar, but about your response to his video. Good day.

[alcion]

Very good! It was very helpful, special about conc.,  about "observer and observed" Thanks!

[tezamysticangel]

you seem to be an incarnation of the Ascended Master..which one not sure about? lol! keep up the good mind observations and you'll find the truth! thanks for your beautiful mind!

[eugeneo1111]

Why can't you do an incremental lobotomy on a brain until they lose their self awareness. I know some people that act and react but they seem to not be self aware. Does this mean they are less intellegnce or are they less conscious.

[themilitantatheist]

I see your point about the possible need for a paradigm shift for the "mind sciences", though how would this manifest? The "mind sciences" are a world away from the physical sciences - for example how do you gain objective data regarding a "conscious event"? What new tool could provide this? Dennett's thoughts give some light on how experiments of this sort could be achieved but I am not sure a shift of what you have in mind can be achieved.

[0ThouArtThat0]

You cannot gain objective data about a conscious event. But you can gain intersubjective data about it. Dennett is somewhat on board with this project by way of his "heterophenomenology." Varela et al. have developed something similar called "neurophenomenology." The idea is that we can train subjects to interpret their experience beyond the way we naively do, such that rather solid structures may begin to emerge which apply to more than just our subjectivity, but to all subjectivity.

[0ThouArtThat0]

I think something significant to keep in mind is that all so-called "objective physical events," are events only because they are experienced by an observer. This has unsettled many of the classical assumptions of physics. So in a sense, we cannot start with "objective physics" and hope to derive consciousness, because "objective physics" occur only through our conscious experience of the world. Experience is primary, not a derivitive of the physical objects we abstract out of it.

[struth35]

@0ThouArtThat0 ....mmmmm.....no dude, maybe we give shape to things -"events" - by applying a description to them, but it seems silly to say if we understand "events" in a broad sense. at least with physical phenomena its a very strong anti-realist stance (and very anthropomorphic) to say that events dont occur. for example, a fox and a human being divide up the world in different ways but they are still subject to the same CAUSAL forces as one another. our views are constrained by the WORLD

[struth35]

@0ThouArtThat0 in other words, its a two way street, if we dont conform to the" laws of nature" even if we are instrumentalists about these things,as a good impericist should be, we can only deviate so far from the physical going-ons before our theory of the world loses PREDICTIVE POWER. predictive power seems to be the most objective of extra-rational criteria for theory choice, the most indubitable. if we want to talk about truth in termsof justification. hope im not misunderstanding u.

[joyfulvulture]

as a graduate psychology student i can tell you that... we dont give a fuck about all this consciousness crap :)

dont you dare talk about a paradigm in mind sciences... no one gives a fuck except you few weirdos.

[tbuniel]

I suppose that graduate students of buisness care even less than you do about the subject of consciousness....but do you care at least enough to tell us why ? You MUST have a pretty good reason - being that you are a graduate psychology student......Everyone reading these posts knows you've probably given the subject of consciousness more thought than most :]

[tbuniel]

this is a reply to JOYFULVULTUE ... (a few entries down) tbuniel

[sphlong]

have you ever thought of becoming a teacher or professor at a university when you finish college? i think you would do great in that field.

[PeaSoupYum]

hi, just me again. yea just me, Charlie Kaufman

[PeaSoupYum]

fine. make it sexy now. institutions aren't people either and people want to know despite the constraints of the institutions in which they operate. especially people whose careers are specifically based on work in this area. Just take on tiny thing at a time and make someone want it like a pregnant woman wants a pickle with ice cream, irrationally and with passion, with the pain of craving, guilty pleasure, giggling to understand.

[cruelfate45]

neural patterns exist as both causes and effects of various events within and outside of an organism. it is impossible to logically reduce all mental phenomenon to electrical impulses in the brain, because doing so would not allow mind to effect body. It would be a one way flow, when it is obviously not the case.

[0neironaut]

a few things you might want to consider... David Chalmers understanding of consciousness as another type of elemental force, like gravtity, magnetism, or light. As such, the human brain has evolved the sufficient structures to "receive" consciousness, like the ocular structures evolved to pick up traces of light... this might explain the various levels of consciousness exhibited by animals with lesser brain structures.

[0neironaut]

also, the "house of being" metaphor has already been used by Martin Heidegger who said that, "language is the house of being."

[Chapa7ld]

Hey dude, ive thought about this as well many times... :) If this is true, could it be possible that the information held within the "Consciousness" could alter the material world somehow. That is to say, bascially every piece of information is either known or not known and each informational state (aware of, unaware of) is what affects the change. Let me know some thoughts...

[coldblackrain7]

Perfect sense. Man dude so many vids. But I think I can talk more. Lol... But seriously what is your IQ? Not important but it would be nice to know. Heh.

[croesus1987]

Consciousness and mind are not the same. The state of consciousness of a new born baby is all people's natural state. It is only when a child's attention is grabbed and the child is taught concepts that ego is born. The mind is thought. Consciousness is the mirror of the mind. If one drops the concepts of a separate self we fall back into our pure state of being. Even the science you so admire points to everything being one. All matter is made from the same particles. Cont.

[croesus1987]

It is only the misguided interpretation of perception that draws us into the feeling of separateness. Non-dual teachings are at the center of all religions (not only Buddhism) you just need to scratch the surface. These days there a people that just teach non-duality, religious dogma removed. Check out Eckhart Tolle, Papaji and Osho on YouTube for some greater insights into non-duality. Or better yet get a copy of Sri Nisargadatta's book "I Am That I Am"

[markchanggz]

i strongly agree with you that correlations between mind and body does not imply any causations (at least up to now). it's quiet annoying when people just dogmatically explain consciousness by saying that it is caused by all the neurons. so freaking ignorant.

[pythagoras9]

It is not my intention to sound highly sceptical and cynical about different ways of explaining reality but it is possible that the concept of spirit maybe a way of explaining a property inherent within energy that we do not fully understand yet . Energy does have remarkable properties that human beings do not fully understand yet.

[pythagoras9]

Matt, i hope you keep working on, and developing your theories on consciousness because they sound interesting but please don't always think of it in a spiritual sense - think of it as sequences of processes in matter leading towards the development of, and forming of consciousness proper.

[0ThouArtThat0]

I don't see matter and spirit as irreconcilable. I think any full account of the nature of life and consciousness requires both an external, empirical description of the material development as well as an internal, phenomenological description of spiritual development. The coincide and relate, and neither can be reduced to the other.

[0ThouArtThat0]

I think it is a mistake to assume matter is primary, just as it is a mistake to assume the same about spirit. They are both aspects of the same unfolding reality seen from different sides.

[pythagoras9]

I am not a materialist philosopher, but what is spirit then?

[0ThouArtThat0]

Spirit is whatever it is that is aware of matter.

[pythagoras9]

As far as we know it is because we have brains that we are aware of matter, and our brain, and mind is made of matter and electrical signals. How else is energy, or electricity going to be aware of matter without a brain? I am sure that "spirit" is a redundant concept!.

[croesus1987]

The source of consciousness cant just be explained away as electrical signals. Contrary to what you say we don't actually know enough about the brain or reality to call the concept of spirit or a deeper existence redundant.

[Kyberspawn]

Yes you can. We are conscious, rocks and critters with simpler minds aren't. Therefore there must be a cause. whether it is chemical/electrical or whatever, it has to be a tangible force and is thus material. Anything that causes things to happen within our reality is material. There's no need to include primitive terminology to create useless labels.

[pythagoras9]

To be conscious of something you have to be conscious of that idea in yourself first and this is why i mentioned that consciousness is self-consciousness, self-consciousness is awareness of ideas in oneself as cognitions.

[pythagoras9]

I admire your enthusiasm for describing the processes that lead to consciousness, but these processes that you describe are not consciousness itself they are merely a gradual build-up to consciousness proper.

[pythagoras9]

You mention that a sunflower does what it does without a thought, but consciousness means the process and ability to use one's senses, and mental powers to be aware of one's surroundings by the use of thought. Words in the english language have very specific meanings that you have to stick to if you are going to convince people of the validity of your argument.

[pythagoras9]

All consciousness and its development and also how an understanding of its development exists is found in the gradual processes of simple types of brains gradually becoming larger and more complex through evolution. As far as personality, and character and how this is different one from another has a lot to do with how different people use their brains differently one from another.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Yes, there is definitely a correlation between brain evolution and the changes in consciousness exhibited by the human species through history. Similarly, the brain develops in an individual member of the species as they age allowing for higher structures of awareness to emerge.

[0ThouArtThat0]

I would just point out that there is no empirical reason to suppose the brain causes consciousness. The brain and consciousness are related, for sure. But which causes which? That is not a question that can be answered at this point. There is a good probability, I think, that it is a silly question to begin with, one which will make no sense when we have developed a better understanding of consciousness itself.

[pythagoras9]

A biological organism must develop a brain before it knows it exists, and consciousness begins as self-consciousness or the knowledge that one knows one exists. A tree, or a plant, or a single cell organism does not know it exists therefore it has no consciousness. It is specific processes in reality that produce brains in biological organisms.

[0ThouArtThat0]

I think you are conflating consciousness and self-consciousness. They aren't the same thing.

A.N. Whitehead coined the term prehension to describe the very primitive kind of awareness present even in atoms. As matter becomes more complex, the level of awareness also increases. Copy this link for an example of how the physical development relates to the consciousness development: wilber.shambhala . com/images/misc/four-quadrants­-lg.gif

[0ThouArtThat0]

Upper left quadrant represents the development of consciousness, while the upper right represents the development of its physical correlate.

[pythagoras9]

Something without a brain cannot have self-consciousness let alone consciousness of any other kind. Atoms don't have consciousness or awareness they are simply processes fulfilling themselves. Consciousness appears when brains appear.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Something without a brain cannot have self-consciousness, with that I can agree. Something without a brain cannot have consciousness either, in the strict sense of defining the term as being aware through senses of a world. But there are forms of experience, of relating to a a world, that even atoms are capable of.

[0ThouArtThat0]

But lets put that aside, cells are able to respond to their surroundings, moving away from toxins/toward food. They are aware in some sense and yet lack a complex nervous system or brain.

[pythagoras9]

A chemical reaction or process does not mean being aware, or conscious!.

[pythagoras9]

Sunflowers continually face the sun and move around during the day to face it directly, but this does not mean that they have consciousness it just means that they are fulfilling the process of being a sunflower.

[0ThouArtThat0]

"Being" a sunflower is precisely the kind of awareness I'm talking about. There isn't just a 3rd person process called sunflower, there is something it is like to be a sunflower.

[pythagoras9]

Could you please explain this more?

[0ThouArtThat0]

There are two levels of description here: 3rd person and 1st person. Now obviously a sunflower does not have the same phenomenal experience of the world that a human being does, but nonetheless, there is something called "being a sunflower" that cannot be reduced to what a sunflower seems to be from the outside (ie, a collection of physiochemical properties, etc.).

[0ThouArtThat0]

The 1st person level corresponds to the upper left side of that map I linked you to above, while the 3rd person corresponds to the upper right. Both are equally real and one cannot be reduced to the other.

[pythagoras9]

Being a sunflower does not mean it has consciousness or awareness. A moving cloud does not have consciousness it is simply a process just like a sunflower being a sunflower.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Everything is a process, but processes can also be events (ie, processes which are experienced). Being a sunflower is an experienced process.

In human beings, we tend to think that there is some ONE who is conscious. There isn't. What we think is an ego aware of a world is just a complex interrelated process of experience.

A sunflower is less complex, but nonetheless, still a process of experience, an awareness of events.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Doesn't seem we are going to agree on this. Let's call it a truce.

Bottom line, you have decided that brains cause consciousness. I am unwilling to assume that is the case. When empirical evidence presents itself that suggests brain states cause conscious states (rather than just condition or relate to them), I will certainly be open to changing my mind.

[pythagoras9]

How can something without a brain have consciousness or awareness then? If you can answer this then you will change my mind.

[0ThouArtThat0]

The brain conditions consciousness, making it capable of supporting complex conceptual/linguistic modes of awareness. This higher kind of consciousness is not present in sunflowers or cells, but I think a lower, less sophisticated type of awareness is present. A cell has a membrane (the evolutionary precursor of the brain) that regulates what gets in and what gets out. It also allows the cell to respond to the characteristics of its environment.

[0ThouArtThat0]

This responsiveness is evidence of a primitive form of awareness, or at least I tend to think it is.

Searle thinks consciousness is an emergent property of neurons, but I think he is confusing the ontological differences between 1st and 3rd person description. Suggesting consciousness emerges in this way is a fine description of its 3rd person ontology, but it doesn't explain anything about how the 1st person experiential domain arises.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Consciousness is more than complicated neuronal processes. It is the quality of being somebody, of being "here," alive, aware, etc. What Searle seems to be missing is that complex physical activity does not explain the fact that I feel as though I were looking out at a world through my eyes. We can say that this feeling is an illusion, but why on earth did such an illusion arise and what is its nature?

[0ThouArtThat0]

Think of it this way. A neurosurgeon has opened your skull and is peering into your brain. You are still awake, and he begins to electrically stimulate various parts of your cortex. He zaps one sector, and immediately you vividly experience a childhood memory. The surgeon may be tempted to say, "the memory is nothing but neural connections," but you know very well it is far more than that. It is your 1st-hand experience of re-living the past event.

[0ThouArtThat0]

My claim is that consciousness is primordial, an underlying pure witness to every event that occurs, and that the structure of various organic systems conditions this pure witnessing in certain ways. The human brain conditions it by imprinting a complex variety of sense impressions in neural connections, which when stimulated give this immaterial witness the experience of a sensed world.

[0ThouArtThat0]

So the "you" which is aware of the memory is really this primordial witness. The witness is eternal and cannot be created or destroyed. At the level of the witness, you and I and everyone else are identical. Only the conditioning of our brains creates the illusion that we are separate.

[0ThouArtThat0]

This gets rid of the problem of figuring out where consciousness comes from. It doesn't come from anywhere. It isn't created by the brain and fenced in by the skull. It is non-local and in a sense received by the brain like a radio antennae, which then turns it into the normal experience of being a person we all know so well.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Cells and sunflowers condition this primordial witnessing consciousness in less complex ways, leaving it more intact, less differentiated. A sunflower cannot abstract itself out of its always-present situation like the human brain allows us to do. It simply does what it does without a thought, but nonetheless, it is "there," it experiences its process.

[docrufus]

That was truly wonderful Matt- but what does this say about the reliance(?) on organically evolved structures (human brains) to channel this omnipresent recursively primordial witnessing causal(?) force 'we' call 'consciousness'? "We can say that this feeling is an illusion, but why on earth did such an illusion arise and what is its nature?"...

[docrufus]

... Indeed why anything really- so why would this consciousness (god?) seek to experience & evolve 'itself' if it is already fully (Jimi Hendrix experienced?) conscious by definition? Maybe this 'feeling' of unity in apparent duality is naturally 'illusive' on purpose.?

[0ThouArtThat0]

Language is what is working itself out in all of this wonder, not nature as we conceive it to be, as a self-generating system existing independently of the language used to describe it. We are calling nature, beckoning it, not explaining it. This is because we cannot explain it, we cannot flatten the territory and draw it out on a map without denaturing it.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Nature, whatever it is (the Zen poets call it the Tao), is certainly naturally illusive. Barely anyone notices it because most everyone is constantly looking for it, trying to catch it in the act, trying to explain it once and for all. But none of it is on purpose, because none of it is unnatural. All of it happens of itself, there is no purpose, no cause (beyond the one language invents for it).

[0ThouArtThat0]

"Maybe this 'feeling' of unity in apparent duality is naturally 'illusive' on purpose?"

Must be. But the purposefulness and the illusiveness seem to arise together. Unity knows no purpose, has no need.

[patternsinchaos]

Searle's great. I really love the way he thinks. I kept the book from my Q300 class, "The foundations of Cognitive Science" by Jay Garfield. Great book. Kinda heavy stuff, It touches on a lot of major questions. The Shifts in Quantum physics should lead the shift in cognitive science. Stuff like Dennis Radin's "Entangled Minds".

[HaleyMary]

I liked what you said about consciousness and the shift needed in the paradigm. Consciousness is still something no-one completely understands. People know quite a bit about the brain and how it works, but what makes people conscious; there is still a lot of mystery to that as far as pinpointing it to a certain part of the brain.

[jogayot]

there is no conscious part of the brain... even in "simple" thing like a car where is its locomotion located? in the wheels? in the sparkplug? in transmission?... sheesh.