What is the point of consciousness?

[swilow]

Just something I have been wondering of late. If you believe the stratified theory of mind, we are comprised of multiple level's of consciousness from real-time, self based awareness ("I") to the deeper, pre/sub-verbal unconscious and several states in between. For us, it is the real-time experience that we identify with as 'real'. But, I have found it difficult to understand for what reason we experience this state of being. Most functions of the body occur with no need for conscious thought, and according to many people, even our decisions are not so much our own as merely something that is made to feel like our own.

We have reflexes which serve to ignore the willfulness of consciousness. We identify with our thoughts and feelings but even they can be wrong or inacurrate. We have the 'art' of psychoanalysis which seeks to help us find out about our own motivations and desires. We have a brain that seeks subtle clues from the environment and feeds them through to our conscious thoughts as idea's. In a way, it doesn't feel like we have much to do with the functioning of our body and, in fact, we don't seem to need any control; the systems which control the physical body and the reactive brain do not require our conscious input to function.

So, what's the point of conscious experience? Is it simply a emergent phenomenon derived from the unification of disparate brain regions (multiple streams of sensory data coalescing to form a nebulous self), a coincidence arising from the modular mind? Or is the soul/self/ego that many relgious and philosophical ideology's espouse?

I do not know what I think about this, at all. I have the idea that it is more of a random ocurrence with no specific point. I think human consciouness is limiting and is why we encounter unsolvable philosophical problems (If a tree falls in the woods...) In creating the 'observer', problems of logic arise within the brain for which there is no objective solution as the problem does not exist outside the mind. And yet, the nature of the problem relies on external conditions and so has multiple objective parameters but, furthermore, the problem is moot if no conscious observers exist. It is a problem of logic that arises as a result of consciousness.

What do you think?

 

[sigmond]

i dunno, its one of those questions no one knows the answer to. i was going to type out my own response but my browser keeps messing up for some reason...

The purpose of consciousness?

From an evolutionary point of view, an animal composed of a giant collection of zombie systems would be energy efficient, but cognitively inflexible. It would have economical programs for doing particular simple tasks, but it​ wouldn’t have rapid ways of switching between programs or setting goals to become expert in novel and unexpected tasks. In the animal kingdom, most animals do certain things very well (say, prying seeds from the inside of a pine cone), while only a few species (such as human) have the flexibility to dynamically develop new software.

 

[Nixiam]

I feel like if there was a definitive answer, we would have it. Maybe a better question is, what should we do with it? I will type a more on topic explanation of what I feel later, but right now I'm tired as fuck

 

[Foreigner]

Life is a lot more peaceful if you stop asking why.

 

[turkalurk]

Why are your decisions not your own? Whose decisions are they then? You didn't build your home or your car but you consider those objects as belonging to you. Your body depends on what your parents gave you, but it is still your body is it not? I would say your decisions better represent who you are, than what you think of yourself. Why aren't your decisions yours, I don't get it. There is always a brighter way at looking at things. Consciousness has a wide range of functions, especially creativity. If we all were just programmed to go with the strongest impulse we would be doomed as prisoners of hedonism. Consciousness allows us to overcome impulse. Its allowed us to become social beings that can sacrifice for the benefit of others. Consciousness is a beautiful thing, certainly nothing to mope about. You ought to be thinking about your consciousness with a smile on your face, and not with furrowed brows.

 

[swilow]

Life is a lot more peaceful if you stop asking why.

Perhaps so, but I feel utterly compelled to ask why in most things. Life may be simpler and more peaceful if you stop such questioning but I think it may become boring. I would always feel like I am missing something...

Why aren't your decisions yours, I don't get it.

Your decisions are your own. But, some aspects of decision making occur before conscious thought and simply feel like like your own. For example, experiments have been performed using photo's of women with either non-dilated or artificially dilated pupils. These images were shown to (presumably) heterosexual men. The men were asked to rate qualities such as kindliness and gentleness or selfishness simply from looking at these women's faces. Dilated pupils correlated to a perceived higher rate of 'positive' traits. And the reason suggested for this is that dilated pupils is a understood as simple sign of sexual arousal by the brain. Men were more likely to perceive the women as having positive traits if these women appeared sexually aroused.

I think we could draw a few conclusions from this. There are things being communicated to us constantly but our consciousness is not really adept or nimble enough to actively parse all such inputs and so our brains have developed ways to assess and rate without our conscious input. The end result is that we are seeing positive, non-sexual traits in complete strangers through aritificial manipulation of one signal of sexual arousal. These positive traits are often traits humans seek in partners. You could argue that we are making broad and profound life-decisions at the urging of our unconscious rather than through active cognition. Of course, we can overcome and deny our impulses and this is not all that goes in to decision making, but I think it is an example of defined aspects of decision making being 'out of our hands' so to speak. I'm not sure what this tells us about consciousness in general though, but it does provide some evidence that the brain is modular and our consciousness is not everything but just one part.

There is always a brighter way at looking at things. Consciousness has a wide range of functions, especially creativity. If we all were just programmed to go with the strongest impulse we would be doomed as prisoners of hedonism. Consciousness allows us to overcome impulse.

I'm not really looking at this negatively, I don't really require a brighter way of looking at things, that is your ego making a value judgment of my question . Whilst such things are useful, when discussing physicality it often makes more sense for me to look at things in a utilitarian way. Most of nature is arrayed on such grounds. Humans are anomalous in many ways. It doesn't devalue a thing by examining it. At least not to me.

Consciousness is a beautiful thing, certainly nothing to mope about. You ought to be thinking about your consciousness with a smile on your face, and not with furrowed brows.

Who's moping? I don't see any harm in thinking deeply about a thing. There is a huge weird beauty in examining such a thing as consciousness using it itself as the investigative tool. If you don't feel like it is a valuable question that is cool...

I don't know, I just think that consciousness is such a profound thing. It is so strange to be going through this sensation of existence. It is so odd to have this 'me' in reality seeing it and it seeing me. It is the most intense experience I could imagine and yet it is quite difficult to imagine why it evolved.

 

[neurotic]

Your decisions are your own. But, some aspects of decision making occur before conscious thought and simply feel like like your own. For example, (...)

(...) I think it is an example of defined aspects of decision making being 'out of our hands' so to speak. I'm not sure what this tells us about consciousness in general though, but it does provide some evidence that the brain is modular and our consciousness is not everything but just one part.

this is so true. i am working on a code which does a task which is "human". in the first moments of the project, while i was "explaining the task to the computer", i'd always get surprised at the immense amount of details about the task that my brain knew and did automatically that i wasn't even remotely aware of (i actually ended up learning about the task itself more). the brain does all sorts of sneaky things which we don't have the slightest clue about. i think this is what people generally call intuition: when you can tell/see/whatever something but can't pinpoint exactly what/why/how. i'd say that this is probably our brain doing its sneaky deeds and not telling the conscious mind.*

if we go deeper on that, then "we" are not really doing anything. there are several tasks which our brain does which we don't even consider tasks and take completely for granted, for example, recognizing speech or a letter (and then making sense out of a word, a sentence, a text...). it is not "we" who interpret these things, but rather our brain, which then presents them to us already manipulated. now that i think of it, consciousness is something like, a representation of some of the information our brain processes.

one thing that particularly intrigues me about consciousness is that, well, what *is* consciousness? we can simply state that we exist because we experience. but then of course, there are things which we don't experience which also exist... or do they only exist because we could perceive them through other means (i'm thinking electromagnetic waves here). if there is a thing which exists, but cannot be perceived by any means... does it exist? ... wtf. the whole subject is one big mindfuck imo. i think that the "answer" to these questions easily is above our intellect...

* i would even go further and make one wild claim that there is one particular type of "beauty" in art which we experience precisely when there is something which "the brain" captures but still eludes "the mind". i could go deeper on that but... i digress

 

[infectedmushroom]

"So, what's the point of conscious experience? Is it simply a emergent phenomenon derived from the unification of disparate brain regions (multiple streams of sensory data coalescing to form a nebulous self), a coincidence arising from the modular mind? Or is the soul/self/ego that many relgious and philosophical ideology's espouse?"

I think it's both. The word point is funny. It implies function. Our conscious minds job is to seek patterns and look for the functionality of an object, or even an idea. How does consciousness operate to serve oneself/humanity/the earth/the universe? Perhaps the universe, and by extension ourselves as beings in the universe, has consciousness because the universe has a "will-to-life." By that I mean a desire to grow, expand, increase, and change.

Sounds really out there, but the only spiritual "realization" that's ever touched me has something to do with this sense of the universe having a desire to manifest itself. It exists because it wants to. I'm not saying it's a singular, multiple, or infinite being...or that it's intelligent as we understand intelligence...just yeah...it's complex. I don't know. Just musing.

 

[sigmond]

If someone were to come up with a widely accepted explanation for the Hard_problem_of_consciousness they would become - i dunno - as famous as an intellectual could possibly be. first you would have to agree on what consciousness is. It seems a lot of people accept John Searle's explanation.

own input: its an ever-changing or consistently transforming phenomenon, unique to the individual, reliant on electro-chemical-biological processes and innumerable external sensory input. i also think a dog might be self-aware, can't prove it though..

(not surprised if that doesn't make sense)

 

[njirem]

What is the point of consciousness?

When you can look at yourself and realise it is you you are looking at.

 

[sigmond]

i didn't click that link but you might as well just go with whatever it is you believe because no one is going to provide an irrefutable answer.

 

[turkalurk]

when a dog looks and sees his own balls, I believe he knows they are his own balls that need licking. Maybe animals are aware of their being without having human thoughts about it. Just because they don't have a language dialog goin on, doesn't mean they don't have an internal self aware experience with its own kind of internal communication system. We just want to think less of it because we believe our human qualities are the superior qualities so the animals most like us appeal to our ego because they are easier to anthropomorphize.

 

[sigmond]

i was in support of dog-consciousness. its possible 'consciousness' could be commensurate with a species intellect. since humans have advanced intelligence we probably also have an advanced, more complex conscious experience.

 

[JavInBoston]

To question "reality" to LIVE baby

 

[neurotic]

i don't think the dog looking at its balls has anything to do with the question willow proposed (correct me if i'm wrong). that would be self-awareness or whatever.

meanwhile i think that willow proposed something like the following: suppose an input output device which can keep itself working and reproduce itself etc... considering that for most of our actions consciousness/awareness isn't required, then why couldn't humans just be devices like the previous one? where is the advantage on having something which makes this whole subjective experience thing arise? what does this subjective thingy do, if it isn't take the decisions which it thinks that it takes?

anyway, there are some (long) videos of entire lectures of this dude Cristof Koch on YouTube, which i never got around to watching entirely, BUT, now i realized, might be pertinent to this discussion. here's one of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGd8p-GSLgY. i never checked out in depth this IIT thing but it looks like they might be onto something.

 

[Noodle]

Life is a lot more peaceful if you stop asking why.

I've been trying to do this. There is much truth in this.

 

[sigmond]

a dog does more than lick its balls, its capable of critical thinking and empathy that cannot be attributed to classical conditioning.

the dog manifests consciousness...

 

[swilow]

Some great replies thus far. I wrote back to a few of them but had to scale back what would have been a much longer and more boring post.

I think it's both. The word point is funny. It implies function. Our conscious minds job is to seek patterns and look for the functionality of an object, or even an idea. How does consciousness operate to serve oneself/humanity/the earth/the universe? Perhaps the universe, and by extension ourselves as beings in the universe, has consciousness because the universe has a "will-to-life." By that I mean a desire to grow, expand, increase, and change.

Sounds really out there, but the only spiritual "realization" that's ever touched me has something to do with this sense of the universe having a desire to manifest itself. It exists because it wants to. I'm not saying it's a singular, multiple, or infinite being...or that it's intelligent as we understand intelligence...just yeah...it's complex. I don't know. Just musing

I like the idea, I've entertained similar myself... It may be somewhat anthropomorphising the universe though. It does seem that the physical laws of the universe tend towards organisation of matter, an increase of some types of complexity despite the fact the universe seems to be expanding and the inevitable homogenous 'heat death' that this suggest, plus some laws of thermodynamics. You could argue that the formation of complex life on earth is evidence of a tendency towards self-organisation but I struggle to call that desire. You could speculate that our form of consciouness, that is self-aware and reactive, would be more widespread if the universe did exhibit some desire for intelligence/awareness/etc.

if we go deeper on that, then "we" are not really doing anything. there are several tasks which our brain does which we don't even consider tasks and take completely for granted, for example, recognizing speech or a letter (and then making sense out of a word, a sentence, a text...). it is not "we" who interpret these things, but rather our brain, which then presents them to us already manipulated. now that i think of it, consciousness is something like, a representation of some of the information our brain processes...

...i would even go further and make one wild claim that there is one particular type of "beauty" in art which we experience precisely when there is something which "the brain" captures but still eludes "the mind". i could go deeper on that but... i digress

Very interesting post. Humans have a unique ability to learn incredibly complex tasks. Think about actions such as playing the drums requiring the coordination of multiple moving parts, which people who drum do almost effortlessly. Muscle memory, etc. In most things, we do not actively decide every step of the process, we simply start drumming and tell our body to do what it knows. That may be the thing we really have going on, the ability to choose what to automate (learn) and then choose when to activate that automation. Typing on a keyboard is a good one- if I had to authorise every single action I would end up rf*igb3)r'bfi3r93{:KR83^fc. It could take me years to type a single lette

I had an experience on MXE and 4-HO-MET where I felt like consciousness (not necessarily mine) was diffused throughout my body. It seemed like trillions of beings were hopping about, collecting and rerouting information to be selectively relayed to mySelf via my brain. I wondered if this is so, and the involuntary processes of my body represent the 'decision making' of other consciousnesses within me. Kinda like InsideOut :D It blew me away, because it was a visceral insight into how little involvement I actually have with my body and how it operates. It is all happening whether I like it or not, my heart is beaten, enzymes are producing lubricant for my eyes, my toenails are growing, how I see the world is being edited, etc.

I think your idea regarding how we are effected by art is especially interesting. There is something primal about the response you can have to something beautiful. I have a specific chord sequence that, given the right manifestation, makes my hair stand on end and I break out in goosebumps. There is something deep inside me responding intensely, I love the feeling but I cannot rationalise it or make any sense of it. I don't really even want to, I fear that I will break the spell.

when a dog looks and sees his own balls, I believe he knows they are his own balls that need licking. Maybe animals are aware of their being without having human thoughts about it.

I definitely think that animals have consciousness. I think it would be a different character to our own, with less self-awareness, but I think it is valid nonetheless. That's why I have some specific beliefs about how animals should be treated. But, we cannot really ever know what an animal is experiencing, so its all speculation. I wonder if the fact that they do not posses complex language indicates a less nuanced conscious experience?

Its true that human experience need not be seen as superior if you think about the vast ways in which we can suffer... Lucky us

 

[Xorkoth]

I like the idea, I've entertained similar myself... It may be somewhat anthropomorphising the universe though. It does seem that the physical laws of the universe tend towards organisation of matter, an increase of some types of complexity despite the fact the universe seems to be expanding and the inevitable homogenous 'heat death' that this suggest, plus some laws of thermodynamics. You could argue that the formation of complex life on earth is evidence of a tendency towards self-organisation but I struggle to call that desire. You could speculate that our form of consciouness, that is self-aware and reactive, would be more widespread if the universe did exhibit some desire for intelligence/awareness/etc.

I more or less subscribe to this idea, that the universe itself is an awareness, and that the purpose of the existence of physical matter is that the universe is able to experience itself subjectively, to experience anything but isolated, dimensionless, eternal awareness. Maybe "purpose" is too strong a word... maybe it's just the way it is. I think I do anthropomorphize it somewhat, because my belief comes partly from a personal experience with psychedelics where I seemed to go so far out that the entire physical, subjective experience was eliminated and I existed in an absolute void, still aware but with nothing to experience. It seemed crushingly lonely, but of course, I didn't actually cease to exist, though I became unaware of my "self", so my own personal experience colored it.

I had an experience on MXE and 4-HO-MET where I felt like consciousness (not necessarily mine) was diffused throughout my body. It seemed like trillions of beings were hopping about, collecting and rerouting information to be selectively relayed to mySelf via my brain. I wondered if this is so, and the involuntary processes of my body represent the 'decision making' of other consciousnesses within me. Kinda like InsideOut :D It blew me away, because it was a visceral insight into how little involvement I actually have with my body and how it operates. It is all happening whether I like it or not, my heart is beaten, enzymes are producing lubricant for my eyes, my toenails are growing, how I see the world is being edited, etc.

Thoughts like this are another part of why I tend to view consciousness/awareness as the universe itself, seated in a physical form. It is that awareness that is the "self", the observer, and its experience depends on the interweaving factors produced by the countless independent machinery you mention.