The Neuroscientific Basis of Consciousness?

[Sarah G]

I cannot listen to this lecture right now but I am of the opinion that EGO DEVELOPMENT requires an ability to communicate.

Our best human tool for grasping reality is really langugage. (math being just another form of language BTW)

Mostly we understand the world based on an increasingly complex set of metaphors.

As our language skills advance we build on those metaphorical understandings making them more and more complex, perhaps more and more accurate, too.

I believe that our egos are really artifical constructs based on our ability to metaphorically grasp reality through shared understanding that we mostly get through understanding that one thing can be LIKE another. (for you math guys think SET THEORY)

Basically everything we understand (including our own being) is based on our ability to find some linguistic ability to capture the concept of reality in language.

I'm not explaining this well because why?

Because I lack the words necessary to make the metaphors work for most of you, I suspect.

Let me try using computer language to explain what I'm saying (more metaphors, eh?)

I suspect that the ID and unconscious are hardwired parts of our brains, but the EGO is a software program that is created as we learn to communicate.

To some extent that's exactly why the dream state is so difficult for the conscious EGO to fully understand.

They speak entirely different languages. Babies have IDs but not egos.

The ID is easier for us to understand because it is our animal motives.

I agree. There have been a couple of books written on this subject by Eckhart Tolle. The Power of Now and A New Earth. His theory is exactly that only he doesn't feel the need to push the ego under once you understand that rather, to strive to bring yourself to the present and to stay in the now as much as you possibly can in order to lose the "baggage" that your ego holds.

 

[JBeukema]

I found a link that leads me to believe that that language can only form in a social situation....

1)Fear children actually support the LI model. Once the 'critical period' has passed, the acquisition and development of complex language is much more difficult, as I mentioned before.

2)Feral children are an imperfect example, as too little is known of the conditions of their development at a young age. If I recall correctly (it has been years since I read the text), this is touched upon in [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Girls-Wild-Boys-Children/dp/0312423357"]Savage Girls and Wild Boys[/ame]


The site you mentioned even lists Pinker's book as one to read

Would humans isolated form language? Maybe over time but I doubt they would sound like Shakespeare

.

To quote Pinker,

The three-year-old, then, is a grammatical genius―master of most constructions, obeying rules far more often than flouting them, respecting language universals, erring in sensible, adultlike ways, and avoiding many kinds of errors altogether. How do they do it? Children of this age are notably incompetent at most other activities. We won’t let them drive, vote, or go to school, and they can be flummoxed by no-brainer tasks like sorting beads in order of size, reasoning whether a person could be aware of an event that took place while the person was out of the room, and knowing that the volume of a liquid does not change when it is poured from a short, wide glass into a tall, narrow one. So they are not doing it by the sheer power of their overall acumen. Nor could they be imitating what they hear, or else they would never say goed or don’t giggle me. It is plausible that the basic organization of grammar is wired into the child’s brain, but they still must reconstruct the nuances of English or Kivunjo or Ainu.

I did look up Helen Keller and she too learned language in an unusual way.

Keller:

"Miss Sullivan began her task with a doll that the children at Perkins had made for her to take to Helen. By spelling "d-o-l-l" into the child's hand, she hoped to teach her to connect objects with letters. Helen quickly learned to form the letters correctly and in the correct order, but did not know she was spelling a word, or even that words existed. In the days that followed she learned to spell a great many more words in this uncomprehending way.

Makes sense. Being blind, she wouldn't be expected to understand written language, which noone has argued is part of Man's innate abilities.

 

[midcan5]

she wanted to know what OTHER people called the stuff
key point!
Did she need a label for it for herself or to communicate to others ?

I think you both miss the point. She didn't have the mental or conscious facility to want to know what other people thought. She followed their lead as a child would repeat something an adult did without consciousness of the meaning of the act. Once water had a word and a reality only then did that connection form and she realized the words referred to things. She moved from imitation to thought or consciousness, the word then had meaning.

Makes sense. Being blind, she wouldn't be expected to understand written language, which noone has argued is part of Man's innate abilities.

She understood even less as she had no way to connect until that perennial light bulb went on and she understand the connection of word to thing to thought.


Try for a moment to step back from your thoughts and see where they are coming from and why. Try to grasp consciousness. [As soon as i do all sorts of things fill my head as I now look across at the kitchen maze.]

 

[JBeukema]

She could know what other people thought in terms of empathy, and she could think about the tastes and sensations she desired, or what actions needed to be performed. What she lacked was what knowledge or development of an interpersonal language to adequately express her thoughts to another person. Many of us experience this (to a lesser degree) when we find ourselves in conversations like these, lacking any knowledge of how to express a concept in a manner that can communicate our thoughts effectively to another person.


Plus, she clearly suffered serious mental retardation, as evidenced by her strong delusional support of the soviet union and the communist fantasy

 

[midcan5]

I think you are in a little deep. Imagine the thought bubble in Helen's head? The dialogue that would stretch over to your sense of appetite and commiserate with you. She has no words, she has little connection to the material world and yet she can empathize? Seems a bit of a stretch. Do children empathize? dogs? higher primates? Doubtful as that is truly a complex set of me you relationship. I have read that monkeys feel or at least show grief but empathy, hmm.

Now consider consciousness in these two women, who repeat each other almost exactly as they look at each other. Poses a real issue for the uniqueness of the conscious self. They seem almost connected by a wire. For me it demonstrates the human psychological aspect of thought and I think thought is consciousness for humans. While other people can be hell as Sartre writes, we need them to develop.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg4cPWy0yR0]YouTube - The Twins - 52min. documentary[/ame]

 

[JBeukema]

Your constant reference to children is fallacious. It is an established fact that children's brains are not fully developed- physically. You need to cite fully grown persons who are without language and demonstrate that they are not capable of thought. The assertions and implications you make are simply ludicrous. You don't seem to comprehend that interpersonal communication and the languages that develop to supports need not be present for internal processing of information and consciousness. They are two different matters, with highly-developed interpersonal language being needed not for experience, but merely for expression and communication.

 

[midcan5]

Your constant reference to children is fallacious. It is an established fact that children's brains are not fully developed- physically. You need to cite fully grown persons who are without language and demonstrate that they are not capable of thought. The assertions and implications you make are simply ludicrous. You don't seem to comprehend that interpersonal communication and the languages that develop to supports need not be present for internal processing of information and consciousness. They are two different matters, with highly-developed interpersonal language being needed not for experience, but merely for expression and communication.

Face you are into a subject you really don't understand. No harm, I don't either. But children are humans and their growth demonstrates how consciousness and language connect. Helen Keller was not a baby, not are these sisters. And you still have provided zero proof of a natural language. You just like to argue or have the last word, that is your consciousness (your current mental growth) in action. Awareness is consciousness on a very low level and all animals probably have it. But human consciousness the ability to look into oneself, to be aware of the 'I' is (seems) unique to humans, and grows out of the social situation. That is pretty much proven by info above.

add:

It occurred to me after posting above and thinking about whether children can serve as a model and place for the study of consciousness, the awareness of an 'I' and its place in the world, that again our granddaughter at two when faced with some task would often say, "me do." Consider the implications of a child saying that, they know there is an 'I,' no matter how well defined that may be, and they know that they in this particular setting wish to do the act. Often she could not do it but she tried. Amazing the power of the evolutionary being, little girls. lol

 

[Oddball]

]Does consciousness even required a language or does using an invented one preclude us from even recognizing other communication forms especially self -recogintion.

No....We can start with a laugh and move on from there.

Richard Bandler and John Grinder studied this, amongst other aspects of internal and external communication, back in the mid-70s.

They found that there are numerous forms of communication that are universal, and others which denote not necessarily what another is thinking, but which sensory modalities that they're using to process the internal information to form the language with which they'll use to describe their experiences.

 

[JBeukema]

Dude, do you have any links to their studies?

 

[Oddball]

Google NLP and hypnosis.

Just for starters, Bandler's and Grinder's research and findings modeled the linguistics, and nonverbal communication techniques of Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls, and Milton Erickson.

 

[JBeukema]

{fallacious bukllshit}

It occurred to me after posting above and thinking about whether children can serve as a model and place for the study of consciousness, the awareness of an 'I' and its place in the world, that again our granddaughter at two when faced with some task would often say, "me do." Consider the implications of a child saying that, they know there is an 'I,' no matter how well defined that may be, and they know that they in this particular setting wish to do the act.

Exactly- as I commented earlier, consciousness and awareness exists within itself; it is independent of an interpersonal language understood by a second party, though the latter is necessary for adequate communication of complex messages.

 

[midcan5]

Exactly- as I commented earlier, consciousness and awareness exists within itself; it is independent of an interpersonal language understood by a second party, though the latter is necessary for adequate communication of complex messages.

Edit: Exactly- as I commented earlier, awareness is independent of language, for consciousness, language and society are the essential ingredients for an "I." - There I agree.


In order to discuss this issue it is essential we setup up some definitions and boundaries. My definition is limited as noted and my argument starts there. Do yours if you think differently but prove this one wrong.

For me, consciousness (C), human C is an awareness of self and the self's place in the world. For the sake of focus, C must be normal C, not C that was injured, or raised in a set of unique circumstances. Mind/Brain is not C, but mind is the place in humans where C takes place and is formed. Mind is physical and obviously essential to C. If mind/brain is injured or sick obviously the machinery malfunctions. In humans M/B is extremely complex, that matter can think, and be aware of itself and plan a future, is amazing. Brains are matter of a special kind and are active matter.

But the point we get into contention is the next step. How is M/B aware of itself? My point is it is through language and only exists in a social context. If you want to study the mind the only way you have is through words. You can do that both physically through brain scanners and interpersonal activity (they show some activity) or by asking questions. But language makes us human.

Next item of contention is while there is the facility of language in the mind I think it is learned and only natural in the sense that it can be developed. The child hears in the womb and from the moment the mother tell her she loves her and how cute she is, she begins the transformation to brat.

Awareness and grunts and waves are not language. I don't see awareness and consciousness as the same things or even similar as then any living thing could be granted consciousness. Which you could do, but then you'd need to recognize the power of human language.

If I wave my hand back and forth I could be saying hello or goodbye but it is in the context of my humanness that it has meaning. 'Parting is such sweet sorrow' is a step up that evolutionary chain.

In ancient writing there is no mention of consciousness and while that was a short time ago in evolutionary time, it is still an interesting point. Maybe it is only in the past five hundred years or so that this debate could even play out.

 

[JBeukema]

consciousness (C), human C is an awareness of self and the self's place in one's own subjective reality.

*edeit

For the sake of focus, C must be normal C

Normality is entirely subjective upon personal experience. One merely deems 'normal' that which one personally experiences or encounters most oft.

, not C that was injured, or raised in a set of unique circumstances.

All experience is unique, as no to persons are subjective to the exact same conditions from the same perspectives.

. Brains are matter of a special kind and are active matter.

They are not a special matter, but merely a specific and arguable special arrangement or organization of matter

But the point we get into contention is the next step. How is M/B aware of itself?

I think the most honest answer at this point is: Noone knows, but there are some ideas being tossed around and studies taking place

My point is it is through language and only exists in a social context.

Let us take your beloved feral children. They knew they existed. they knew when they were hungry. They knew that their hands were their hands and body. They knew that they desired and they were aware of pain. The were self-aware without any need for external communication or social influence. Social influence was necessary for full development of language, complex communication, and knowledge and awareness of the greater universe outside one's self and immediate surroundiongs.

The same can be applied to many species.

If you want to study the mind the only way you have is through words.

We can also seek to understand the brain and the way the physical gives rise to the metaphorical 'mind'. Computers and the field of AI are a mirror of this.

Next item of contention is while there is the facility of language in the mind I think it is learned and only natural in the sense that it can be developed.

Universal grammar and port languages developed b children illustrate that there is a universal potential for language and a universal basis or its construct. What is learned is both the words that will fit into the functions and any complex grammitcal or other rules that will build atop this natural language instict. Remember that we are not the only species to communicate, or to communicate lover distrances usng sound.

Awareness and grunts and waves are not language.

Any form of communication ibetween personns is or applies language, even if that language is very crude and made up as one goes along (experimentng until you agree that making a certain configuration of the fingers means 'two' and pointing indicates what your want is crude, but it is a language that devlopes during the communication)

I don't see awareness and consciousness as the same things or even similar as then any living thing could be granted consciousness.

Conciousness ~awareness ~ sentience

What sets us apart is a more advanced intelligence

If I wave my hand back and forth I could be saying hello or goodbye

That would be a social matter. if, howeve, I point and scream, it's clear that I am exptressing that one should look where I'm pointing and it is quite important. If I growl and pull something near when you approach it, it is clearly something I do not wish for you to ahve.

In this way, we can undertsand even our dogs at some level

ALso, there is no 'step up an evolutionary chain'. Evolution is not a ladder and it is not progressive. That which is able to survive, does. That is all. There is no goal or objective.

In ancient writing there is no mention of consciousness and while that was a short time ago in evolutionary time, it is still an interesting point. Maybe it is only in the past five hundred years or so that this debate could even play out.

until recently, such things were matters for deit(y/ies)

 

[Oddball]

consciousness (C), human C is an awareness of self and the self's place in one's own subjective reality.

*edeit

Now you're gettin' it!!

Also, the brain is a quantifiable organ, the mind is not.

 

[midcan5]

All experience is unique, as no to persons are subjective to the exact same conditions from the same perspectives.

I have to look at the rest of your comments but you lose me right off the bat.

So you perceive the color black different than Dude? I don't think so. If all experience were only subjective we'd hardly agree on anything. And yet in life we agree on most things. It is raining, it is cold, this novel describes the life of this person well. We may not have the same tastes, but saying all experience is unique and subjective extends individuality too far. A simple test of simple questions would show the similarly and only cultural or historical time or even special or unique societal situations would show differences between groups. I thought you were the natural language proponent?

Married couples who have lived together often seem like the same person, their minds and habits blend together so well. The sisters above disprove the totally subjective POV.

But you really need to define subjectivity and how it fits into your view of consciousness. I did mine above, lay out yours. I promise I won't quote each sentence and comment, as I personally find that annoying.

 

[JBeukema]

So you perceive the color black different than Dude?

Possibly. We don't really know, now do we?

I don't think so. If all experience were only subjective we'd hardly agree on anything.

That does not follow, logically

And yet in life we agree on most things. It is raining, it is cold,

We do not experience the same rain drops. No two people experience exactly the same things at exactly the same time from exactly the same perspective. All experience is unique. I never said they couldn't be similar.

Is it raining? It might be where you stand? In my hometown, though, I could oft walk 20 or 200 feet and no rain would fall on me. To say 'it is raining' or 'it is not raining' is fallacious, as it is not universally applicable.

Married couples who have lived together often seem like the same person, their minds and habits blend together so well. The sisters above disprove the totally subjective POV.

No, they don't. They have similar brains ans they are near eachother, experiencing very similar experiences at nearly the same time and processing this very similar information with very similar tools. The expected result is a very similar 'answer' or outcome. We apply this concept in science when we attemot to recreate an experiment as near to exactly as pssible to get very similar ('the same') results.

 

[midcan5]

I came across two pieces this morning that shed some light on our differences. You guys are closer to the hard school as noted below. I agree more with Dennett who I youtubed above, I am also reading "Sweet Dreams." None of your replies to the block quotes were helpful, creating this I-You doesn't help explain anything. It just creates division. Hofstadter gives a wonderful description of the married comment I made. See his, "I am a Strange Loop." Google book pages 227, 228, 229.

I agree with this, it fits my understanding of C.

"...Over eons, animals acquired an evolutionary grab bag of these self-perpetuating tricks, which allowed them not only to monitor the environment passively but to explore, hungering for the information that increased their odds of survival as surely as a good piece of meat.

At first many of the neural devices were discrete, Mr. Dennett speculates, unconnected to one another. But slowly they began to develop communication lines. Imagine the first primitive people, just dimly conscious, learning to use language to milk their fellow humans for information: "Is there food in that cave or a jaguar?" Then one day, someone might have asked for information when there was no one else around: "Now let me see, where was it that I left that chisel?" And, lo and behold, another part of his brain answered. A loop was closed in which the vocal cords, the vibration of the air and the eardrums were used as a pathway to connect one part of the brain with another. A virtual wire was formed. Eventually this signaling became silent -- the voices were in the head."

"Consciousness Explained"

"The Joycean software is not inborn like, for example, the looming-object detector. It is an accretion of learned behaviors, habits of mind, developed for recruiting teams of homunculi to deal with the long deliberative processes that the brain's wetware alone is not well equipped to handle -- planning a trip to Europe, dividing up a restaurant check, reliving an embarrassing encounter and deciding what you should have said."

Hard school versus a more pluralistic school.

"....consciousness remains the first and last of the great human mysteries.

So what kind of problem is it? The philosophers of the hard school think that consciousness is in a league of its own. Consciousness, they argue, has absolutely unique properties: it is private, subjective, peculiar to the individual, and cannot be directly observed by a third person.
As David Chalmers of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the hardest of the hard school of philosophers, summed it up after the last Tucson conference: "When we see, we experience visual sensations-the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities-the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs... Then there are bodily sensations from pains to orgasms - mental images that are conjured up internally, the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is to be to be in them. All of them are states of experience.""

Zombies Dolphins and Blindsight

"This is all nonsense for those on the other side. At Tucson, Daniel Dennett, from Tufts University, author of Consciousness Explained was first to attack....

"Mental states," explains Dennett, "do not become conscious by entering some special chamber in the brain, nor by being transduced into some privileged and mysterious medium but by winning the competition against other mental states for domination in the control of behaviour." Those who think that brain processes cannot explain our first-person experience of consciousness have the question all wrong, according to Dennett. "It presupposes that what you are is something else-in addition to all of this brain-body activity. But what you are, however just is the organisation of all this competitive activity between this host of competencies which your body has developed. You automatically know about these things going on inside your body because if you didn't, it wouldn't be your body.""

"Language gives us our clearest view into the consciousness of other people through our myriad social dealings."

additional stuff

"One of the great subjects of poetry, and one which I think remains uniquely well-exploited within the medium, is the multifaceted nature of human consciousness. Because poetry is made of language, and language is the vehicle for communicating, not only sensation, but feelings and ideas, good poetry seems to always, in some way, touch upon the protean nature of our awareness—whether directly, or by demonstration."

"Adam Zagajewski's Multifaceted Consciousness" by Robert Peake

 

[JBeukema]

"Mental states," explains Dennett, "do not become conscious by entering some special chamber in the brain, nor by being transduced into some privileged and mysterious medium

Nobody said they did. As the saying goes, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We cannot directly observe someone's consciousness, perhaps, but (as was mentioned during the conference in the OP) we can observe the activities of the brain under a number of conditions and quantify those actions. We can then compare those actions with apparent 'awareness' of one's surroundings (are they unconscious, sleepy, alert) and begin to theorize ways we might be able to measure such awareness in a person at one time compared to their awareness at another time.

 

[midcan5]

Yikes, too many science threads. How about combining some with key words or ideas for those interested in that particular topic.

Once again I agree with Dennett and I have to admit I admire his even disposition as Robert Wright looks a bit perplexed. Number 5 may be interesting too, but 6 gets to our opposing positions.

'consciousness is just like life...'

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0YF2mzp-IA]YouTube - Robert Wright interviews Daniel Dennett (6 of 8)[/ame]

only first 2 minutes of #7

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_oAetKSMRw]YouTube - Robert Wright interviews Daniel Dennett (7 of 8)[/ame]

 

[JBeukema]

3:30

They are both wrong. No, you cannot, in principle, know the history of every molecule of the universe by extrapolation history through scientific means. (Nor could you reproduce it, even with another Big Bang.) Remember the Uncertainty Principle. Even if you could, to argue that this would mean one could fully know another experience is fallacious through research. That could only be achieved through either experience or memory xfer through an as yet unknown means.

He is also fallacious to say that they can each know a grain of sand equally. Their frame of reference will be different, as will their past experience and their brains. Different information processed by different brains/minds with different past experiences and knowledge will not render equal results. Similar, perhaps. The same? no.

5:40- Incorrect. They might know more than you about how your brain works at the electrochemical level, but they would not know more than you about what it's like to be you. Such subjective experience can only be known through experience.

Frankly, his arguments are so patently fallacious that I cannot bring myself to watch any more.