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The Grand Illusion

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Aberro
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11 Dec 2011, 4:03 am

Dr. Susan Blackmore on "why consciousness exists only when you look for it":

Quote:
“The last great mystery of science”; “the most baffling problem in the science of the mind”; this is how scientists talk about consciousness, but what if our conscious experience is all a grand illusion?

Like most people, I used to think of my conscious life as like a stream of experiences, passing through my mind, one after another. But now I’m starting to wonder, is consciousness really like this? Could this apparently innocent assumption be the reason we find consciousness so baffling?

Different strands of research on the senses over the past decade suggest that the brave cognitive scientists, psychologists and neuroscientists who dare to tackle the problem of consciousness are chasing after the wrong thing. If consciousness seems to be a continuous stream of rich and detailed sights, sounds, feelings and thoughts, then I suggest this is the illusion.


The rest of the article is at susanblackmore.co.uk/journalism/ns02.htm.

It's from 2002, but still a good place to start if you're interested in "the hard problem" of consciousness. Feel free to debate, if you're into that.



ruveyn
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11 Dec 2011, 4:10 am

Aberro wrote:
Dr. Susan Blackmore on "why consciousness exists only when you look for it":

Quote:
“The last great mystery of science”; “the most baffling problem in the science of the mind”; this is how scientists talk about consciousness, but what if our conscious experience is all a grand illusion?

Like most people, I used to think of my conscious life as like a stream of experiences, passing through my mind, one after another. But now I’m starting to wonder, is consciousness really like this? Could this apparently innocent assumption be the reason we find consciousness so baffling?

Different strands of research on the senses over the past decade suggest that the brave cognitive scientists, psychologists and neuroscientists who dare to tackle the problem of consciousness are chasing after the wrong thing. If consciousness seems to be a continuous stream of rich and detailed sights, sounds, feelings and thoughts, then I suggest this is the illusion.


The rest of the article is at susanblackmore.co.uk/journalism/ns02.htm.

It's from 2002, but still a good place to start if you're interested in "the hard problem" of consciousness. Feel free to debate, if you're into that.


Were you conscious when you wrote you piece? Were you looking for consciousness then?

ruveyn



Tadzio
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11 Dec 2011, 6:04 am

"Consciousness cannot be adequately defined. This may explain why attempts at accounting for it in neurobiological terms have failed. Epistemological and scientific arguments are reviewed which suggest why a satisfactory explanation of consciousness is not now and may never be possible."
From:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... x/abstract

Then, it might be fun to lose consciousness in philosophy land:
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~paulsko/p ... oStudy.pdf

Tadzio

P.S.: http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/journalism/ns02.htm
With TLE, I can ask myself if I'm "conscious" without being "conscious", and that's with a neurosurgeon trying to figure things out too.



thedaywalker
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11 Dec 2011, 6:40 am

consious exists for we can consiously know it exists. i think therefore consiousnis exists.



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11 Dec 2011, 9:44 am

Threads need to stop reminding me of horrible songs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO62scTZ7Qk


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Robdemanc
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11 Dec 2011, 10:32 am

Susan Blackmore is very articulate and I have a great interest in neuroscience. I can appreciate their standpoint in that they are fairly confident that consciousness is the product of the brain. But I have a problem when they say it is an illusion. Although I can see where they come from it leaves a question: Who or what is having the illusion?



ruveyn
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11 Dec 2011, 10:50 am

How to solve the problem: Build a conscious thing out of non-living material and we can claim a possible explanation for consciousness. Consciousness to be determined by some version of the Turing Test.

ruveyn



Robdemanc
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11 Dec 2011, 11:10 am

ruveyn wrote:
How to solve the problem: Build a conscious thing out of non-living material and we can claim a possible explanation for consciousness. Consciousness to be determined by some version of the Turing Test.

ruveyn


If we could make a robot have subjective experience? The problem would still be there. We couldn't know if its "consciousness" is the same as ours.



ruveyn
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11 Dec 2011, 11:14 am

Robdemanc wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
How to solve the problem: Build a conscious thing out of non-living material and we can claim a possible explanation for consciousness. Consciousness to be determined by some version of the Turing Test.

ruveyn


If we could make a robot have subjective experience? The problem would still be there. We couldn't know if its "consciousness" is the same as ours.


Then accept it as a unsolvable problem along with the Halting Problem for Turing Machines and the Incompleteness Theorems and the Decision Problem for first order predicate logic. Unsolvable problems are not new. There are an infinity of them.

ruveyn



Robdemanc
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11 Dec 2011, 11:18 am

ruveyn wrote:
Robdemanc wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
How to solve the problem: Build a conscious thing out of non-living material and we can claim a possible explanation for consciousness. Consciousness to be determined by some version of the Turing Test.

ruveyn


If we could make a robot have subjective experience? The problem would still be there. We couldn't know if its "consciousness" is the same as ours.


Then accept it as a unsolvable problem along with the Halting Problem for Turing Machines and the Incompleteness Theorems and the Decision Problem for first order predicate logic. Unsolvable problems are not new. There are an infinity of them.

ruveyn


I think humanity would get bored if we were able to explain consciousness.



thedaywalker
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11 Dec 2011, 4:52 pm

i think if we were able to explain consiousnis a new problem would arise



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11 Dec 2011, 10:37 pm

I started to think about how light interacts with spacetime in relation to thought. I've often wondered why a moment can seem like an eternity. I'm sure there's a rational Einsteinian explanation for this phenomenon. Something like how electrical fields in your mind interact at near the speed of light and thus having a near infinite amount of time to compute relative to the gray matter in your head which isn't moving so fast.



ruveyn
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12 Dec 2011, 2:27 am

thedaywalker wrote:
i think if we were able to explain consiousnis a new problem would arise


What problems?

ruveyn



ruveyn
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12 Dec 2011, 2:29 am

cw10 wrote:
I started to think about how light interacts with spacetime in relation to thought. I've often wondered why a moment can seem like an eternity. I'm sure there's a rational Einsteinian explanation for this phenomenon. Something like how electrical fields in your mind interact at near the speed of light and thus having a near infinite amount of time to compute relative to the gray matter in your head which isn't moving so fast.


All the laws of physics, as observed would be "normal" if you were moving at a uniform velocity. It is impossible to distinguish one inertial from of reference from another by making internal observations.

ruveyn



Robdemanc
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12 Dec 2011, 6:13 am

cw10 wrote:
I started to think about how light interacts with spacetime in relation to thought. I've often wondered why a moment can seem like an eternity. I'm sure there's a rational Einsteinian explanation for this phenomenon. Something like how electrical fields in your mind interact at near the speed of light and thus having a near infinite amount of time to compute relative to the gray matter in your head which isn't moving so fast.


I am not sure what you are saying but I like the sound of it.



Robdemanc
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12 Dec 2011, 6:15 am

thedaywalker wrote:
i think if we were able to explain consiousnis a new problem would arise


Yeah undoubtedly, but what would that problem be? I think we will always feel we are just one step away from knowing the truth (if there is one), kind of like the frog that can only jump half the distance to the edge of the pond.