To be conscious in the Human sense is commonly understood to mean that an individual being can think about itself As an individual being. This implies that the first condition of reflexive consciousness is self-reference. Perhaps this is not an adequate description of ‘our’ conscousness, and there are likely to be many other properties of consciousness that can be identified. This is an attempt to create a properly descriptive and comprehensive list of the necessary properties of human conscousness?
Michael Sadovsky Do you mean this one?
Article Algebra of Conscience
That one: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780792371212
I believe, that's the same.
Michael Sadovsky
It is a substantial work! On a superficial first look it seems the author reduces the subject/consciousness to self-reference defined as F(F(F(F(...)))) where the final term is F(x). If this is a fair representation, then the proposed formula encouters Russell’s paradox. I have discussed this problem on pages 3 here:
Article Ontological-Transcendental Defence of Metanormative Realism
> It is a substantial work!
That is classics. Taking start in USSR, in 1968.
I think the following link contains a basic and useful information
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness
Michael Kowalik ,
'Relations and subdivisions : Features of Subjective Consciousness ',
https://www.alento.nl/al2ar37e.htm#top1 ,
('essential' taken as inherent and/or as unique).
('reflexive consciousness' is not necessarily inherent to consciousness, only by stipulation/definition).
Cees van der Velde This is a good attempt at systematisation of consciousness. Thank you.
I’m not clear why you assert that “reflexiveness” is an inference. I am here specifically interested in the kind of consciousness which entails awareness of one‘s own unique (subjective) point of view vis-a-vis the object. I would thus draw a distinction between animal and human consciousness, where an animal is aware of the object but not of its own subjectivity vis-a-vis subjectivity of other animals viewing ‘the same’ object. In that sense i consider reflexivity an intrinsic feature of posessing the human-kind of consciousness: that of a awareness of being a subject vis-a-vis other subjects.
For lamost 15 years I have been working on the modeling of targeted migration of animals (resulted in PhD defense). Believe me, a huge number of species do exhibit relexive behaviour...
Michael Sadovsky Interesting! There is a category distiction between “reflexive behaviour” and “reflexive consciousness”. Is there any evidence of reflexive consciousness in animals?
> Is there any evidence of reflexive consciousness in animals?
I guess, for primates for sure. Konrad Lorents says dogs do have.
Michael Sadovsky I just dont see how reflexive conscousness could be infered without language, without exchange of meaning, and then we cannot directly observe it even in other humans; we only assume other humans have it based on mutual recognition for our own reflexive conscioisness.
Perhaps there is a level on which we could indeed communicate with animals in a way that presupposes some minimal degree of reflexive consciousness, but I struggle to see how we could verify this scientifically.
> we cannot directly observe it
Ha! That is the most sharp point! Actually, it seems to be a matter of belief: rigorous point of view stipulates that consciousness = reflexivity = articulation in words by speech. On the other hand, take a glance over consumer behaviour (I've done it for 12 years). Definitely, maybe one of tens thousand is able to articulate in oral speech the reasons standing behind his/her choice of an item.
Emotions bring another issue in this discussion. A lot of animals do exhibit emotions, with no word.
Shortly speaking: reflesivity goes ahead of speech, that latter goes ahead of (human) consciousness...
Michael Sadovsky It is not self evident that emotion is necessarily reflexive in the right way, in the subject-conscious way, or reflexive at all (even if it often is for humans). We can for example be paralised by fear to the point of forgetting ourselves, or take over by sadness to the point of forgetting ourselves, so there is certainly an anti-reflexive or non-reflexive aspect of emotion, even if some emotions can be reflexive. We must also be careful not to athropomorphise animals with human emotions; we ultimately do not know what they feel and they can not communicate it. Perhaps there is something there, but how would we objectively measure it? Or communicate it without already sharing Meaning?
M-m-m-m... you are right, from one side. The point is that we have no other way to detect or "meausre" an occurrence of reflexivity but to trace the behaviour. You want the reflexivity be something rationally explainable in words, and what is more important, not by a "researcher", but by an object.
This approach is neither wrong nor the only correct. This seems to be a good frame for the consideration of the problem. My frame differs.
Michael Sadovsky I disagree that we infer reflexivity primarily from behaviour. We infer reflexivity of others from what we experience directly, our inner reflexive conscioisness, and from a priori recognition of the Kind of being that we are. We know we are born of humanity and all our meaning is a product of humanity, so that our individual agency and content of conscioisness is conditional on sociality. This in turn makes it necessary to relate to others in our communication community on the assumption that they too are reflexively conscious, irrespective of behaviour. There could even be a deeper, physiological, genetically encoded sense for recognising Our Kind. I wrote more about this ontological dependency here:
Article Ontological-Transcendental Defence of Metanormative Realism
We are not bound in that way to animals, nor are animals bound in that way to one another because their mental content is not conditional on sociality in any meaningful way, at least we have no evidence to the contrary. But i am in principe open to such evidence.
> I disagree that we infer reflexivity primarily from behaviour.
I agree with your disagreement. We do not. This is not a reduction; this is manifestation.
> We know we are born ofhumanity and all our meaning is a product of humanity,
> so that our individual agency andcontent of conscioisness is conditional on
> sociality.
Wolfs don't know also... Meanwhile, they behave themselves very rationally.
Once again: you argue agaist something I did not tell, nor keep in mind. The arguments you've shown above are well done, but within the framework you follow.
Michael Sadovsky I am open to other frameworks, provided they are internally consistent. Would love some evidence that wolves act rationally from the wolf perspective, not just from our perspective. The only way to find out is to live among the wolves, live as a wolf. Are there any humans alive who were raised by wolves alone? They coud tell us something extremely valuable...
> The only way to find out is to live among the wolves, live as a wolf.
And to study elementary physics means to leave among the protons and positrons?
Michael Sadovsky
That’s a false analogy. To find out whether protons are conscious indeed does require living as a proton among protons. Whereas, we can study animal biology without knowing whether they are reflexively conscious.
I am suggesting that reflexive-consciousness we experience as individuals is meaningful to us only in light of social reflexivity, of relating in a particular way to other beings of the same kind. I argue further that reflexive-consciousness may be conditional on such social-reflexivity, and this requires development of in-kind language (Which need not to be a ‘spoken’ language).
> I am suggesting that reflexive-consciousness we experience
> as individuals is meaningful
Almost agree. My point is that there is a number of cases where the behaviour looks definitely -- for an outer observer -- as reflexive. Wolfs bring this example (protons don't... :) ).
Hunting, e.g. Or rather complicated behaviour of the socially supported defence of a tribe.
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