following

"With ignorance as condition, volitional formations come to be. With volitional formations as condition, consciousness comes to be. With consciousness as condition, name-and-form comes to be . . ." (Samyutta Nikaya)

It are only theoretical, hypothetical, phylosophical, psychological definitions, without any scinentific direct argumentation.

Dear Nikola Ilankovic, what do you mean? You mean for example cognition doesn't have neural and scientific evidence? Please elaborate.

What scientific alternative do you suggest for them?

"[W]hen one does not intend, and one does not plan, and one does not have a tendency towards anything, no basis exists for the maintenance of consciousness. When there is no basis, there is no support for the establishing of consciousness." (Samyutta Nikaya)

Our scientific resources and capacity has not able to reach consciousness.

We have tried to explain it by saying that it is an abstract thing.

Take an example: We know there is mind. But is there any brain cell that is responsible for its function like generation of a thought? So we have tried to answer hypothetically.

Ananta Manna

Some scientific evidence is accumulating. Not single cells, but networks of cells. For example, it is strongly suggested that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) may be one end of such a network, responsible for the creation of thoughts.

Ashkan Latifi

Thanks for your input. I am not sure the answers to my questions are as straightforward as you suggested; honestly, I doubt there is really any answer to (most, if not all of) my questions, yet. But for the sake of discussing, I enjoyed your points.

1. How do you know that I am conscious? How do I know that you are conscious? How do you know that you yourself are conscious?! Do you really know that?

2. I understand your point of view (not that I agree or disagree with it), thanks.

3. We basically said the same thing, without you addressing my question which was " What are potential overlaps and differences between consciousness and cognition? "

4. I know the details of the psyche structure (as Psych101 we studied 20 years ago and still studying), but my question had nothing to do with the ego and it being partially conscious. My question was " Do Freudian "Unconscious mind" or "Subconscious mind" have a place in consciousness models? ". .... It was about the potential existence of an " unconscious consciousness " despite such a concept sounding self-contradictory.

5. My question was about the nature of the altered states, not their potential mechanisms. Of course anything happens to the consciousness (if any exists) is most likely a function of brain activity.

In all network there must be one centre point. So we should focus there.

Ananta Manna

The concept of "distributed computing" means quite the opposite. And the brain is a distributed supercomputer.

I am not sure how you concluded this "there must be one center point". For example, do you see any "center point" in the network of your friends and family?

Ashkan Latifi

Thank you very much.

1. Regarding the issue you cited that " to know that you are conscious you have to step out of consciousness ": I am not sure if this is applicable to my first question. This particular reasoning is useful for studying the consciousness; some say you need to engulf consciousness in order to be able to study it (not that I agree with it, but it is a common concept as you noted). This reasoning automatically presumes that consciousness exists in the first place.

However, my first question was a little bit more fundamental and concerned the very existence of consciousness itself.

Regarding the works of Vygotsky's and Leontiev you cited; these too don't address the existence of consciousness. They appear to be models for consciousness, again presuming that it exists in the first place, and secondly attempting to explain its mechanisms / nature.

I personally can't subscribe to either of them (admitting that they are quite interesting and worthy of investing time). For example, as opposed to Vygotsky's idea, the consciousness of advanced animals (if we presume it exists) would be free of words and language. Also apparently Vygotsky postulates that the non-verbal thinking emerged after the internalization of words and language. Neuroscientific evidence suggests quite the opposite: First were non-verbal thoughts, and later came verbalization.

Also Leontiev concepts of consciousness were quite beyond me. He apparently asserts that consciousness can't even exist outside the systems of social relationships (and outside something called "social consciousness" [I wonder what can it even be]).

That sounds quite materialistic, and fortunately quite testable (and hence, refutable). If correct, it will predict that consciousness can't exist in a non-society environment. In other words, people or animals who are not in contact with others will be unconscious. We have seen or heard of many cases of isolated living beings that appeared quite conscious. On the other hand, we have ants ad bees that despite being probably not very conscious (judging based on their level of not-so-smart mechanistic behaviors), are quite social and hierarchical.

Still I agree it is beyond me and I may have not understood it correctly.

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Regarding the Hegel's phenomenological explanation of the relation between the master and slave; thanks, I should look it up.

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2. That is a good way to put it. I think maybe the mind (and not the consciousness) is the gestalt, the consciousness being the mysterious subjective being within the mind experiencing the conscious parts of the cognitive processes (also in the mind).

Regarding "human consciousness without language", I think even in humans too, consciousness doesn't necessarily depend on language, not that language is not very important but not a must; my above examples of non-verbal consciousness for example. (on a different note, I am interested in consciousness, not human consciousness only).

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Regarding the unconscious consciousness, thanks for the interesting suggestion. But what I was trying to hypothesize was quite different from Sartre's philosophy. It was still purely epistemological.

Regarding the voyeur example in particular (regardless of its association with my question, or regardless of its association with quite interesting Sartre's philosophies), I really can't agree that the voyeur needs to be necessarily observed in order to become self-aware. That sound like sophistry.

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5. Of course as a discussion, it was about the nature of the altered states from any perspective you want. (But their nature, not mechanisms). I was interested in particular in their nature, because I think perhaps the acknowledgement of the probable existence of some altered states of consciousness can imply that (1) consciousness is metaphysical and hence felt as a state, and (2) perhaps its altered states can allow the assessment of the consciousness itself.

These interesting neural networks you mentioned seem to be responsible for the shift of attention (exclusively visual attention), not the altered states. The altered states seem to be much more complicated and elusive, from a neuroscientific standpoint.

Computer and world wide web is also a distributed coordinated computing system. So, should they have consciousness?

Ananta Manna

You seem to misunderstand our whole conversation. Did I say anything to infer that to be conscious, distributed computing is necessary?!

But about your question:

Firstly, computer is not at all a distributed computing system. On the contrary, computers are typical examples of serial computing. But who says since a conventional computer cannot compute in a parallel distributed way, it can't be conscious? Check out the "Turing test" and "artificial intelligence" topics.

Regarding world wide web, again why not? If the WWW is used for "computing" or better than that for "goal-directed computing", then why not?

WWW is mostly used as a storage of websites and files that can be shared between clients. It is not usually used for any distributed computing, as you suggest. But any set of computing happens in it (for example distributed computing happening to solve molecular modelings or other simulations) might cause some level of consciousness, who knows.

Ashkan Latifi

1. I agree.

2. Regarding the Vygotsky and Piaget and the order of non-verbal thoughts and verbal ones, I think there may have been few misunderstandings on both parts. I do still believe, after carefully going through you interesting comment, that Vygotsky presumes consciousness. As for your other inputs regarding his theories, thanks a lot. They were nice.

3. Regarding the Leontiev theories, again I think there were misunderstandings (off-topic ones) on both ends. The line most concerning the discussion was this one " For Leontiev, consciousness is sociohistorical and an effect of sociocultural development, division of labour, and the attributed social relations"... which again presumes that consciousness exists, in the first place. (at least I think so).

4. Regarding the quality of animal consciousness being different from that of human's: How can consciousness have "quality" (let alone different qualities) if it is not metaphysical? Maybe by quality, you meant differences in computation being affected or not by an existing culture. Anyways, back to our main discussion (that if we agree with Leontiev then we need to agree that ants too have consciousness), yes even with different qualities, that is still consciousness. Even bacteria should have consciousness. (Maybe they do).

4b. And if different computations mean different qualities, then there would be an infinite number of consciousnesses in humans too, as each human processes the information in a different way, each passing second. Would infinite consciousnesses help solving any questions about it? That would make the whole concept moot, unless we agreed that consciousness is metaphysical. :D I am kidding. We still can categorize ranges of computations into categories of consciousness qualities, and escape this paradox. Still, categorization would be an artificial and not-so-graphic way of solving (actually dodging) the problem.

5. Regarding this question of yours: " The question is what is human consciousness without higher order mental functions in general and language in particular? " ... Yes exactly.

5b. Regarding this " What is human consciousness without a self and what is 'self' out of social relations? "... Pleas think about the consciousness of socially-disabled individuals, such as autistics. Please think about the consciousness of animals.

[I would look up your references when I had time, thanks]

6. Regarding this one: " once I am immersed in something, I am lost in it and self-awareness disintegrates": there are few points to think of: (1) Well that sounds different from what Sartre states. He believes self-awareness begins when we are the object of somebody else's consciousness. But what you say (partially) correctly is that self-awareness is lost when one is absorbed in something else. This is simply "attention". (2) This also implies that you are presuming that "your self-awareness existed before you were immersed in that thing, with our without a third party observing you". This clearly differs from what Sartre assumes in his example.

But the most important part is that (3) Unlike what we may feel, (as far as I know) self-awareness almost never ceases to exist, even when we are absorbed in something (let alone when we are not observed by another person). At some points (such as certain deep trances [even not all deep trances] or under deep general anesthesia) it can really go away temporarily. But that doesn't hold for our every-day life immersions. But the number of instances where self-awareness doesn't disintegrates (as you put) by immersion in something else does not matter. Even one single instance of self-awareness existing despite being simultaneously absorbed in something else is enough to invalidate the example of Sartre. And that exists quite frequently, called divided attention.

7. Regarding the discussion of neural mechanisms of the altered states: Yes that would be very interesting to understand them. Even mechanisms of attention alone are quite interesting. But they all imply that we first believe that there "states" to consciousness. My follow-up question would be "Can a non-metaphysical consciousness have "states"?"

8. Yes very vague! :)

1. If you noted, in my original post, in the second question, I clearly stated that if we assume there is consciousness, then what would be its nature? I can still follow up on philosophical ideas, as far as I "presume" consciousness exists (what exactly I did in the second and all other questions).

I would rather say "I don't know if consciousness exists or not" instead of listing various theories of consciousness, all of which presume it exists in the first place. None of them seems to address if consciousness exists or not, in the first place.

2. Emotions too seem to be quite metaphysical when it comes to their qualities. At the computational level, no quality can be defined in the first place, as far as I can think of. IMHO quality is something to be "subjectively experienced", hence the qualia.

3. Well, I think we may have been lost in translation. In any case, I am interested in "your" own explanation of qualities of consciousness (as you stated earlier) without attributing any metaphysical properties to it.

4. Regarding autistics and this sentence of yours "I am not sure if those of autistics who are profoundly intellectually-disabled have the same human consciousness as normal people": Well, this sentence has numerous cognitive errors again. For one, autistics are still purely human and their consciousness is human consciousness whatsoever. If you think their consciousness differs from most of other humans, then you are automatically agreeing with my previous comments.

5. Thanks, I thought the third party is needed. Actually a couple of days ago I asked this from a professor who agreed with me. But maybe he was wrong too. I should look it up. In any case, Sartre's example was fallacious and invalidated. Regarding your own experience, as I said before, it is our illusion that we lose our attention to other objects such as the self, while absorbed in a fancy experience. And Sartre's idea does not not seem even close to, let alone the same as, the Freudian unconscious.

ps. But perhaps my professor and I were right about the necessity for the outside observer for the self-awareness to form: " In the second place, the world includes other people, and as a consequence I am not merely the revealer of the world but something revealed in the projects of those others. Thus who I am is not merely a function of my own projects, but is also a matter of my “being-for-others.” Sartre (1992: 340-58) brings out this form of alienation in his famous analysis of “the Look.” So long as I am engaged unreflectively in a certain practice I am nothing but that first-person perspective which constitutes things as having a distinctive salience in light of what I am doing. I am absorbed in the world and do not experience myself as having an “outside”; that is, I do not understand my action through some third-person description, as an instance of some general behavior. However, when I become aware of being looked at (that is, when my subjectivity is invaded by the subjectivity of another for whom I am merely part of the world, an item for her projects ), I become aware of having a “nature,” a “character,” of being or doing something. I am not merely looking through a keyhole; I am a voyeur. I cannot originally experience myself as something—a voyeur, for instance. Only the other can give rise to this mode of my being, a mode that I acknowledge as mine (and not merely the other's opinion of me) in the shame in which I register it. It is because there are others in the world that I can take a third-person perspective on myself; but this reveals the extent to which I am alienated from a dimension of my being: who I am in an objective sense can be originally revealed only by the Other. This has implications for existential social theory (see the section on Sartre: Existentialism and Marxism below) ".

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/

6. The working memory capacity is actually 4 items (not 7). Plus, it is again different from attention. It is not even supposed to invalidate Sartre's example (at least it is not what I was trying to relate). Sartre's example is simply invalidated by 1 single case where the person is both absorbed in the experience while aware of himself simultaneously. I ensure you if I am going to voyeur, I would definitely be self-aware at the same time lol; so you have now the very personal case invalidating Sartre's whole example.

7. I am interested in "your own" non-dualistic view. How can you explain "states" from a computational-only (or any other non-dualistic) standpoint?

Dear Ashkan

Thank you very much for the clarifications.

1. I am glad from your original answer "Of course it does exist", we are now reached some agreement. Regarding your question of what is consciousness in my view? Well, please see my original post here.

2. Regarding the metaphysical argument; Well, I never said anything about it being any ghost-like entity in the first place, did I? Did you really think I was talking about the soul or anything like it?! It appears to me that you are beginning to somehow accept its metaphysical dimension?

3. Thanks, you had already provided that. But that Leontiev argument doesn't address the quality of consciousness or its states. I think we are not on the same page perhaps.

4. We are lost in translation again, I think. I never meant anything you are trying to oppose; and it seems that you too never meant things that you thought I was trying to reject. Just FYI, I never said that to attribute qualities to consciousness, the dualistic view is necessary. I clearly noted that even from a pure computational view, we still can categorize a range of different computations into a single category (hence qualifying it, in an artificial and not-so-graphic way). The way Leontiev attempts to discriminate between consciousnesses of a blind and a non-blind seems to be such a categorization.

5. Good; thanks for the clarification.

6. Good again, thanks again. I second that.

7. Good again, thanks a lot for the nice clarification and lots of interesting arguments you provided.

8. Yes, but that is old and erroneous. New evidence with correct methodology shows 4 items.

1. Something I remembered: in my original post, I had asked about mechanisms responsible for consciousness, right? So I couldn't have been construed as talking about any ghost-like entities or souls, because these entities can't have "mechanisms"; only emergent ones can.

Anyways, I am glad about your new opinion as well. Regarding your questions, these are my questions too, all encapsulated as "what is the nature of consciousness?".

I personally think it is non-reductive yet unpredictable to some degree (as a result of stochastic computations and information flow probably giving rise to it). But all of these are quite beyond me.

2. Good luck with your studies.

3. By quality of consciousness, I mean the subjective and non-measurable non-quantifiable essence and feel of the "experience". Each of these factors seems infinitely mysterious and elusive per se. But this is what I personally feel, when I introspect deep within.

4. Sure, for example Article The Magical Mystery Four: How Is Working Memory Capacity Lim...

1. I see.

3. A. On the surface: I think maybe I have misunderstood the Leontiev's argument, in that I thought social interactions are needed for consciousness to form at each moment (and not that our experience is affected by our past experiences [including social interactions etc]).

If that is the case (and I have misunderstood the Leontiev), then yes, our experience is under the influence of our past experiences whatsoever.

But if Marxists say that consciousness forms in social interactions (meaning that isolated humans are not conscious), then I can't agree.

B. On a bit deeper level: A more subtle issue is that perhaps there are levels to experience. I agree that our past experiences and factors such as culture, social interactions, and language are very important factors for forming our personality, and the way we see and experience the world (i.e., cognitive biases we develop). But I think all of these experiences are still in the realm of cognition and not necessarily consciousness. This is why I am interested in finding the line between cognition and consciousness (if any line exists).

I think perhaps many people attempting to explain consciousness (like Leontiev or Marxists, Sartre, etc perhaps) have actually confused it with cognition.

My personal opinion is that the experience we (as our consciousnesses) have is a pure, absolute one appearing only after all the cognition around us (language, culture, past experiences, all cognitive biases, perception, memory, etc) is shed away. So in my hypothesis, there is actually no room for any factors to be able to affect consciousness. The rest of experiences are actually a mixture of cognition and consciousness. All these factors can affect the cognitive component, in my opinion.

C. On a different yet important note: I am interested in consciousness itself, not human consciousness in particular. So even if Leontiev's or others' theories of social interactions as a source for human consciousness are true, that is not really my true interest.

My cats are quite dumb (even for cats), have no culture, and are quite limited in language and social interactions. Yet they look more conscious than I do.

D. Are you sure that Marxists or Leontiev did factor in the metaphysical dimension of consciousness, in the first place, while formulating their theories? Because I am under the impression that they do not believe in a metaphysical consciousness, and rely on social interactions / culture alone.

Did Vygotsky believe in dualism?

If these theories lack the metaphysical dimension, again I can't agree with them (unless they accept dualism).

4. You're welcome.

Well I have a number of different personal models for consciousness, of course just to understand later that these had been formulated decades or centuries ago. Still I consider them my personal hypotheses because I didn't borrow anything from anywhere while developing them.

One of them was the very concept of "Cogito ergo sum" that I formulated when I was around 14 yr old, but without knowing anything about philosophy, knowledge, science, ontology, etc. Just through introspecting. So I can be trapped in such a cage, in which only I exists (and nothing else).

But I tend to presume what if the external life does exist? And in this case, I can formulate other hypotheses too.

The other one is the one you called a form of strong emergentism. This on is not purely mine, but some elements of it was developed by myself. I don't agree necessarily with the properties you attribute to this hypothesis, because it doesn't take any of them into consideration. But I understand your recognizing it based on your known models. Perhaps some of them really apply to my hypothesis. But I don't think it is theological (in a creator sense). In my hypothesis, it is still a function of brain activity.

And it may be radical and fundamental, but it is not more radical than my first question asking "if consciousness exists in the first place"! The first one was much more radical, questioning all the theories of consciousness together with it itself.

(How can I operationalize it or support it empirically?) Can such an out-of-reach consciousness be studied? I am afraid not with our current methodologies. However, (1) my hypotheses are not different from those you cited in terms of testablity. The only difference is that my hypothesis needs a couple of more presumptions. Mine acknowledges (maybe correctly?) the ultimate elusiveness of consciousness and its difference from cognition. The other ones mix and confuse cognition with consciousness and don't know what exactly they are looking for (and they don't even care as they consider them both the same). All of other hypotheses as well can't be supported empirically or operationalized.

(2) Maybe with better methodologies at hand, we can be able to track that pure consciousness itself too. For example, quantum mechanics and brain simulation might be route to the answer. God knows what we will have in future. As I was discussing this with a philosophy professor and his student some time ago, maybe we can reach quite intense and sophisticated simulations of brain structure that can allow us to replicate the qualia, and perhaps in even more remote futures, to understand the gist of it. Who knows maybe we are already replicas of other people's qualia, being simulated in an advanced machine.

(the duo were laughing at me first in front of a crowd, citing references and schools against me, and even ridiculing me politely. Five minutes later, the student was staring bluntly at me with an open mouth, and his professor was shouting at him "don't answer this question of him, otherwise you will lose").

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I am getting way behind my backlogs. So I would not be around for some days. Thanks a lot for the very good talk.

When Consciousness looks at the Super-Consciousness from the Intelligence perspective, it "sees" the ... Reality.

When Consciousness looks at the Super-Consciousness from the Identity perspective, it "sees" the ... Memory.

When Consciousness looks at the Super-Consciousness from the Influence perspective, it "sees" the... Proclivity.

Consciousness is dynamic and formed at the intersection of Willingness, Awareness and Remoteness. Once it shifts from one focus point to another, it moves into... subconscious.

Consciousness is like an operating interface.

Memory and feelings (emotions)!

Vahid Rakhshan , in your comment of Dec. 9, 2018, you stated “God knows what we will have in future.” Does this mean you personally believe there is an all-knowing God, or was it simply an expression you used? I am seeking to understand the philosophical discussion in this thread, with only a small background in philosophy (one summer course of about 4 weeks’ duration). My background is in sciences, mostly Biology. Not sure whether you are using “Metaphysical dimension” and “God” interchangeably.

Ron Scott Thanks for your interest in our talk. I think mind is an abstract entity. And IMO, abstract entities cannot be concrete (or physical). They do not take up space, do not have mass, or do not have energy. For example qualia (as contents of consciousness) cannot be touched, measured, do not have mass/energy, do not have volume etc. if my assumption is OK and abstract things do exist, well they cannot belong in our 4D time-space, because otherwise they would need to interact with physical objects. So they need to be somewhere else, hence the “metaphysical dimension” term I invented! It is not a physical dimension like in parallel multiverse. It is simply some metaphorical metaphysical space. The word “dimension” is completely metaphorical and does not refer to any real dimension.

I too have no background in philosophy, so my terminology is mostly personal and it can cause some misunderstandings first. When I said my idea to two philosopher friends, they believed that qualia should be concrete. Though there are other philosophers who say that consciousness is abstract.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

• "Perhaps confusingly, some philosophies refer to tropes (instances of properties) as abstract particulars—e.g., the particular redness of a particular apple is an abstract particular. This is similar to qualia and sumbebekos. "
• "Abstract things are sometimes defined as those things that do not exist in reality or exist only as sensory experiences, like the color red."
• Tye proposes that phenomenal experience has five basic elements, for which he has coined the acronym PANIC—Poised, Abstract, Nonconceptual, Intentional Content.