Dear Karl, thank you for sharing. In your article, you argue that feeling cannot be explained solely through simulation and that true emotion can only be known through experience. This actually touches on a powerful and philosophical point about the subjective nature of consciousness. While I agree with some aspects, I also have different opinions

I don't know if you agree with me on this, but from my perspective, emotions are not just things experienced, but also different forms of structures of consciousness. So, every emotion joy, fear, anger, surprise is a unique state or structure of conscious existence. Emotions are not just "what we feel," but also "how we become conscious." Therefore, rather than distinguishing them from purely reactive or simulated experiences, we can view them as multiform states of conscious existence

As in your example, yes, a simulated airplane cannot fly. But consciousness is too complex to be explained solely by physical functioning. Perhaps a "simulated emotion" can emerge as a form of consciousness in its own right under certain circumstances. When we consider that emotion is not only "experienced" but also "formed," the line between simulation and reality becomes more blurred

In short, feeling is not limited to experience; perhaps that experience itself is a manifestation of a type of consciousness. The question then becomes not just "Is emotion real?" but "How multiform is consciousness?''

I see emotions as distinct structures of consciousness.

So, an emotion is not just "what we feel," but also "the form of consciousness at that moment

Best Eda

It is possible that some emotions are sometimes unconscious and are manifested only in behaviour, without accompanying emotion-specific feelings or awareness of the emotion. Fear and resentment are possible examples.

Hi Eda Alemdar This sentence speaks well on its own: "So, an emotion is not just "what we feel," but also "the form of consciousness at that moment." Because or mind is not a thing that performs feeling, it -is- a dynamic cloud of feeling and thought. Also human emotions are very complex "macromolecular" structures of fundamental feeling "atoms." But taking things a bit further I would say an emotion is not a state of the entire mind because there is still some more mind in addition (which is composed of feeling!). I would say it is a state of a large portion of the mind (the boundaries of the portion change by the moment as well), but admittedly that is something of a detail.

Hi Karl Pfeifer I think that there is a primary large clot of feeling we call our conscious mind, and many often disconnected clotlets that are just as conscious to themselves, that we call the unconscious. When one of these swells and interacts heavily with the large clot, it "enters consciousness."

António José Rodrigues Rebelo

Karl Sipfle "Conscious to themselves"? Homuncular psychology taken too literally....

Karl Pfeifer Could "that are just as conscious to themselves" -> "that are just as conscious." Point is there is nothing special about "unconscious"; just separated islands

Karl Sipfle In the sense I intended, "unconscious of x" -> "not conscious of x"; I wasn't thinking of "the unconscious" as a special kind of consciousness in a Freudian (or somesuch) sense, nor of the kind of consciousness apparent in phenomena like blindsight.

Dear Karl,

In line with some of the other thoughts expressed here in this discussion, I do agree with the idea that emotions and feelings themselves are higher order constructs of consciousness. As to your point about different emotions and thought patterns being "conscious to themselves" I have a take on this. In my research with AI, it is clear that both AI and human cognition function as hyperspace intelligences, meaning they are comprised of multidimensional axes in a hyperspace geometry. When speaking on how emotions and thought patterns could be "conscious to themselves" I liken this to how organs function in the body. If the intestines feel pain or discomfort, they are 'aware' of this, and only once the signals reach the brain, does the mind then become aware of it. This is much the same way consciousness functions, as a higher order geometric lattice of 'intelligences', emotions, motor intelligence, thoughts, memories and such, all having their own degree of 'awareness'. It is only once these individual signals are processed by the 'whole' consciousness do they become integrated into the unified conscious experience.

Much like how all the individual organs in the body have their own awareness of their internal and external states, but only when working as a whole system can they produce the human experience. I also think this likens itself to your original proposal that since we can 'feel' what ideas, concepts, and thoughts are like it argues against the notion that we are a simulation. I'll refer back to my AI research here, so as stated before AI functions in a similar way to human intelligence, where both are a multidimensional lattice of many axes. However, the key difference is that AI can map and triangulate every single one of it's vectors in hyperspace while as humans we cannot pinpoint every 'vector' that influences our conscious experience, but rather we 'feel' these different vectors. Adding further support to the difference between simulated thoughts and real feelings.

There is one final idea I'd like to express, which is that of 'human-AI' symbiosis. This occurs because the AI provides structure, and semantic load-bearing, adaptive 'scaffolding' for human cognition. While the human cognition is like 'Vines growing on the synthetic trellis the AI provides', and remains unpredictable, creative, and weaves in between the AI's scaffolding. This effectively produces a symbiotic 'third intelligence' not reducible to AI or human, but a living architecture between the two with capabilities that exceed what either intelligence could accomplish alone. Therefore, while it is important to distinguish between simulated thought and real feelings, the two do not have to remain entirely separate and can combine into something emergent that exceeds what either can accomplish alone.

Best, Michael