rocketdodger
Philosopher
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Define "feels."
Resolution of Transporter Problem
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Define "feels."
Third Eye Open
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Well what do you think it is then?
Of course it is sense-data, and it has evolved to become very good at getting us to avoid things that damage us directly.
It's both: sense-data and subjective experience.
Let's hear yours first. What does someone mean when they say they feel sad? I assume you understand what they're talking about when they say something along those lines. What does it mean to feel sad?
rocketdodger
Philosopher
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Feeling sad means being sad.
Being sad means exhibiting sadness.
Sadness is an emotion.
An emotion is a global behavior modifer.
A global behavior modifer affects all behavior.
Behavior refers to the actions or reactions of an object or organism.
PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
What's the difference?
Third Eye Open
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EVERYTHING is a subjective experience. Which makes discussing things as subjective experiences pointless.
Damn philosophers and their navel gazing word games...
No. If you answer the question by thinking then selfhood is reconstructed. If you think about what is presented then selfhood is reconstructed. If I am not thinking, looking at the monitor, and you ask me "do you see the monitor?" then I will answer "Yes!" But, in actuality this "I" is only constructed as thinking recommences.
Nick
The reactive dispositions of the body will remain, thinking or no thinking. If one is looking at a large dog without thinking, and it should start to appear aggressive, the body will react for sure.
Nick
Yet there is a considerable difference between understanding the reasons for feelings, and understanding just how feeling itself should actually come about.
I can quote a famous statement - "feelings are the executors of evolutionary logic." This provides a means to understand feelings, why they exist and how they serve to modify behaviour often without the need for learning. But it does not examine just how it should be that we feel in the first place, or how feeling might be replicated in AI.
As in most of these matters, we can understand why, we can replicate the behaviour, but we don't yet know just how sensory awareness comes to exist in the first place. The best seems to be to state, with as much authority as one can muster, that it's an effect that occurs in complex organic systems and to accuse those who inquire more deeply of being dualists!
Nick
rocketdodger
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Well, Nick, I am done with you. This last post really illustrates just what kind of hogwash you consider to be honest dialogue.
The fact that you fimly believe that you can even answer a question -- such as "do you see the monitor?" -- without thinking exposes your dualism and utter lack of education. I don't know what kind of ignorant delusion could lead you to conclude that a human can listen to a question, parse it, evaluate the objects in their field of view in the context of the question, formulate an answer, and vocalize it, all without thinking, but it is a grand one.
It is of lilttle consequence -- you can believe what you want. But since I can't learn anything from your nonsense (and I have been trying, for over a year) I am going to stop bothering.
I hope you are satisfied that the stupidity and ignorance of your arguments has driven me off.
I'm pretty sure that's not what he actually said. It looks to me like he said when the question is presented to him he begins thinking again and this reconstructs his selfhood so that he may evaluate the question and answer it.
It still sounds pretty bizarre to me that way though. I really have no idea what he's talking about with the dog and reactive dispositions. Sure my reflex to react if needed would still be up and running, but that alone is not how I'd articulate the experience of being zoned out at all. I don't and can't as far as I know lose my awareness of the things Nick says one does, merely by zoning out.
What he describes sounds more like the sort of experience one might have on the way to getting knocked out with nitrous, where you truly can lose conscious awareness or knowledge or whatever the correct word would be, of what the hell things you're looking at actually are. That experience is nothing like merely zoning out.
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RD, I am saying that you need to think to answer the question and when you think narrative selfhood is reconstructed.
Nick
A lot of meditators report the state I'm describing as a regular occurence, and have done so for aeons. These days it's usually called non-duality, as it gives this awareness that subject-object relationships (dualism) are only created by thinking. A lot of meditation and meditation-related teachings are specifically created to try and bring about this state. I don't know that drugs get you there though I guess one can have fun (and no doubt dramas) trying.
About your earlier question, obviously I haven't answered it.
Lithrael said:
How do you consciously know something like this without thinking? And how do you know you consciously know without thinking! To get an answer, to interrogate a stream of information, as I see it you need thinking. I mean, it can do your head in a bit trying to answer questions like this, but I think it's clear you need thinking to be going on.
Nick
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Fair enough, I know next to nothing about professional meditation, but that seems like a specific altered state of mind where a person has learned to coach a lot of conscious processing to shut up and fk off so that they may feel one with everything. The way you described it, I thought you meant a simple lack of internal dialog.
Uh, and now it looks like you *are* talking about a simple lack of internal dialog. I don't really know how to describe what I mean to you, but I'm pretty sure we're coming from totally different directions on this. I totally consciously know a whole lot of things without thinking, if you mean thinking to be explicit thoughts like an internal dialog. But I don't know how to explain myself better at the moment.
Uh, and now it looks like you *are* talking about a simple lack of internal dialog. I don't really know how to describe what I mean to you, but I'm pretty sure we're coming from totally different directions on this. I totally consciously know a whole lot of things without thinking, if you mean thinking to be explicit thoughts like an internal dialog. But I don't know how to explain myself better at the moment.
Z
Variable Constant
Lith, that is what he's talking about. He associates 'thinking' with an active internal dialogue. Apparently, people who think without dialogue aren't really thinking to him - like iconographic thinkers, visual-spacial thinkers, etc. And apparently, he feels there's no thought processing involved with vision, hearing, balance, proprioception, etc.
This is a dualist's perception of thought - thought isn't 'brain activity' to them; thought is a separate entity, a process that exists beyond the brain and only engages via self. Or, in Nick's case, engages the self into being.
This is a dualist's perception of thought - thought isn't 'brain activity' to them; thought is a separate entity, a process that exists beyond the brain and only engages via self. Or, in Nick's case, engages the self into being.
Yes, I'm talking about a simple lack of internal dialogue.
But do you know you know without thinking? Knowing itself might not require conscious thinking, I agree, but in order to test the notion that one knows something, to even consider testing, there must be conscious thinking.
Nick
I consider thought to be purely brain activity. I am distinguishing however, between say conscious inner dialogue, visual phenomenology, and bodily sensations because to me these things appear distinct. They are all brain processes but they appear distinct. This is not dualism, it's simply making use of nouns!
As Dennett and other materialists relate, the brain creates a "user illusion" - a notional personal self who apparently owns the body, is the recipient of "experience," is the holder of opinions and the owner of possessions. I've no doubt that this is entirely a brain process, albeit one that's not yet well understood.
Understanding and appreciating this process allows one IMO to grasp materialism at a deeper level. Otherwise, the novice materialist is inevitably left seeking "pontifical neurons" or "feedback loops that experience" - rather in the manner that fundamentalist Christians are driven to assert that fossil records are sent by god to test us!
Nick
BTW, when you talk of "people who think without dialogue," are you saying that these guys write whole sentences without any conscious awareness of inner dialogue in the form of language?
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Z
Variable Constant
I can only speak from personal experience on that one, Nick.
When I write these words, what's going on in my mind is several flows of icons. The innermost ones are my own thoughts: the broad-stroke ideas and details I'm wanting to get across. Connected to that is a flow of iconics that would look somewhat like words to you, if you were reading them; but there's no 'voice' involved. Each 'word' icon is connected to one or more of my thought icons, and occasionally connected to thought-icons directly in the 'word' flow. Rarely - very, very rarely - the inner sight of a 'word'-icon triggers an aural memory of speech, but these memories lack meaning unless I concentrate on them and connect them to thought-icons.
Yes, my inner thoughts are utterly without sound. This could explain, in some way, why I work better with music playing constantly. Listening - as long as it's fairly passive - requires no shifting of focus in my mind regarding my thoughts. It cannot interrupt or drown out any 'inner dialogue' because, for me, the two are in seperate channels entirely.
I can't speak for others in similar situations, but that's my experience. In fact, it took me years to understand that other people DID 'talk in their heads'.
It also took me a while to learn writing, as it were, because it seemed such a cumbersome and tedious way to jot down thoughts.
Maybe this is why conscious experience is so different for the two of us. For me, every sensation has an icon flow associated with it, which I translate as 'thought'. But flows from each sense travel in different areas for me, unless I pull them into focus. That act - which I'm struggling to put into comprehensible terms - is more like the act of translating existing thoughts into a purer form for processing - stripping away spoken words, for example, to actually comprehend their meaning, rather than just blankly watching the words flow past.
If I gather correctly, what you term 'conscious thought' is what I might refer to as 'thought-icons' - the innermost layer of thinking, where it all comes together and processes (for those things that process within awareness). For you, it's a separate sensation from experiencing, because it has a different interior texture (although it's apparently one like hearing/speech). For me, it's the same as any other thought/experience, except that it resides in sharper focus at any given time and is easiest to understand.
Maybe I'm babbling - it's hard for me to say if I'm getting my point across.
When I write these words, what's going on in my mind is several flows of icons. The innermost ones are my own thoughts: the broad-stroke ideas and details I'm wanting to get across. Connected to that is a flow of iconics that would look somewhat like words to you, if you were reading them; but there's no 'voice' involved. Each 'word' icon is connected to one or more of my thought icons, and occasionally connected to thought-icons directly in the 'word' flow. Rarely - very, very rarely - the inner sight of a 'word'-icon triggers an aural memory of speech, but these memories lack meaning unless I concentrate on them and connect them to thought-icons.
Yes, my inner thoughts are utterly without sound. This could explain, in some way, why I work better with music playing constantly. Listening - as long as it's fairly passive - requires no shifting of focus in my mind regarding my thoughts. It cannot interrupt or drown out any 'inner dialogue' because, for me, the two are in seperate channels entirely.
I can't speak for others in similar situations, but that's my experience. In fact, it took me years to understand that other people DID 'talk in their heads'.
It also took me a while to learn writing, as it were, because it seemed such a cumbersome and tedious way to jot down thoughts.
Maybe this is why conscious experience is so different for the two of us. For me, every sensation has an icon flow associated with it, which I translate as 'thought'. But flows from each sense travel in different areas for me, unless I pull them into focus. That act - which I'm struggling to put into comprehensible terms - is more like the act of translating existing thoughts into a purer form for processing - stripping away spoken words, for example, to actually comprehend their meaning, rather than just blankly watching the words flow past.
If I gather correctly, what you term 'conscious thought' is what I might refer to as 'thought-icons' - the innermost layer of thinking, where it all comes together and processes (for those things that process within awareness). For you, it's a separate sensation from experiencing, because it has a different interior texture (although it's apparently one like hearing/speech). For me, it's the same as any other thought/experience, except that it resides in sharper focus at any given time and is easiest to understand.
Maybe I'm babbling - it's hard for me to say if I'm getting my point across.
If I understand you right, you're saying that you don't have any sense of inner voice when thinking.
As to experiencing, I'm not saying that it's separate from thinking. What I'm talking about is not directly to do with "experiencing." I'm saying that visual phenomenology is significantly qualitatively different from thinking. I appreciate that in AI some people use the term "thinking" to describe pretty much any mental activity, but I am using it in the more mundane, usual way.
This actually, for me, is why I still consider AI to be more "explaining consciousness away" than explaining it. That a group of people could be so content with lumping together say, the phone on the desk in front of me with the sense of an inner voice that is constructing this post doesn't make me feel like they are really interested in investigating so much.
Nick
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