"So then, we know and discover ourselves in relation to the world, through our practical explorations of it. We see how the world responds to us, and how we respond to the world responding to us, and our self-knowledge emerges from this self-revealing/self-creative loop. We find ourselves by going out from ourselves and sharing ourselves with the world."
I was just working on a post with this very thesis! I think it's high time we get past our Cartesian thinking about these matters, and this seems to be pointing in the right direction.
Nice, I look forward to reading your post! I totally agree about the need to move beyond Descartes. It's like I said in a comment to Mike, when we think about consciousness primarily as a projection on a cinema screen, it's no wonder we end up with epiphenomenalism (I hate epiphenomenalism).
I like that definition a lot. "Participation" really gets at how consciousness is about the relation between "part" and whole, and our agency in entering and engaging with the whole. I'm going to have to give this some more thought.
I enjoyed your post you linked, and I'll try to gather my thoughts and leave a more full reply there :)
Interesting post. Some random thoughts inspired by your post…
Douglas Hofstadter, in his book "I Am a Strange Loop" (2007), posits the idea that consciousness is a chaotic loop and explicitly compares it to the positive feedback from when a microphone recycles what it hears from a speaker. It's the awareness of being aware that you're aware of being aware. (I know that you know that I know that you know that I know...)
On first contact, the idea that consciousness came after developing a theory of mind doesn't seem quite right. How can one develop a theory of mind without being conscious of one's own mind? I do think consciousness — even the minimal form in animals — does come from a need to navigate a changing and sometimes surprising world. At a low level, that's what it's for. But humans seem to take it to an intricate and abstract level because our brains are capable of fiction and invention. Some animals can use tools, but it's generally only humans that improve them over time.
One thing about rote tasks is the amount of intention and practice required to make them rote. I've read the notion that rote tasks are controlled by the cerebellum, and it seems we need cerebrum to train the cerebellum in those tasks. To off-load them. Both touch typing and driving a car a seem that way. To your three points of high consciousness, I'd add "learning", though perhaps it fits under your #2.
To some extent you seem to be talking about the notion of being "fully present", which isn't exactly what I think of as consciousness but as a laudable form of it, a goal. Dogs have it naturally, but we humans are so full of distractions and conflicts that it's harder for us to ignore the noise.
Would you recommend Hofstadter's book? It's been on my radar for a while but I haven't got round to it yet. It sounds very promising from what I've heard.
I perhaps shouldn't have said "theory of mind", but I think it's possible to have it before consciousness of one's own mind, or something like it. The basic idea is that we need to model others' intentions and plans, and I think that was likely a more pressing need than modelling one's own intentions, at some point in our evolution. It ties in with Dennett's idea of evolutionary "free floating rationales" preceding rationale representers (ie us). Animals don't need to understand the reasons for their behaviours, but recognising the reasons guiding others behaviours offers a good survival advantage.
That's a good point about the practice it takes to make these things "second nature", and I'd agree with adding learning to the list. I'd guess that was one of the earliest purposes of consciousness — learning new "instincts".
It is related to being "present", but I think that is tied to "consciousness". Although when we talk about being present we generally include a kind of meta awareness of our own minds, which isn't necessary for consciousness in the sense I'm speaking of. "Distractions" for example are generally conscious, but I think they still fit what I was saying, often being linked to our speculations, hopes and fears about the unknown.
I would say "I Am a Strange Loop" is probably worth reading (especially if you can get it as a library book). It's much easier to get through and digest than "Gödel, Escher, Bach" (1979). Hofstadter wrote the former as a more focused and distilled version of the latter. (I've tried to read "GEB" two or three times and gotten bogged down in all the detail and background.) "IAaSL" is in some ways a more personal book — he is clearly suffering from the loss of his wife (who died young of a brain tumor). It was from this book that I picked up his idea that, to the extent we can carry on a mental conversation with someone we know well, that person's consciousness partly exists in us. A mini-model of them exists within our own mental model of self and the world.
That said, and this is personal with me and may not apply to anyone else, I find a bit off-putting Hofstadter's (and Dennett's) tendency to say, in effect, "Listen up! Here, I've solved the great mystery of consciousness!" Because I don't think they have. I think that, until we solve the notorious Hard Problem, we're just guessing and grasping at pieces. I've never been persuaded by Dennett or Hofstadter (or even Chalmers, for that matter, though I align more with his views. Or many of them, anyway). You may have a different take, so I would say "IAaSL" is worth a try. I did write about it on my blog back in 2013. The post doesn't explore the book much but does get into Hofstadter's notion about consciousness being spread out in those who know us. FWIW:
Perhaps you could someday write more about your sense that the need to know other minds came before the need to know our own. I find it hard to get past my sense that "Who am I?" is more primal that "Who are you?" I find it difficult to see how one might attribute agency and intention in others before recognizing it in the self. But perhaps it might start with a simpler question, "What is that?" Querying the meaning of phenomena rather than attributing agency?
I re-read the post. Your opening, "By consciousness, I mean knowing oneself, experiencing oneself in the world, being awake to things", is, I think, what gave me the flavor of "being present" (or "in flow" as they say now). But your second and third points to me involve higher consciousness than is usually meant by "present" or "flow", so I can see they don't align with what you're talking about.
I do think many are, in fact, zombies much of the time. An SF book I love posits quantum effects as behind consciousness and gives it three levels with a 4:2:1 ratio for, respectively, zombies (not truly conscious), psychopaths (conscious but no conscience), and a mere 1/7th as conscious with conscience. It's an SF idea with some grounding in the Penrose-Hameroff notion of QM being important but would sure explain a lot if true.
Maybe the highest consciousness occurs inside our mental worlds when we are unconscious to the outside world. When creating something, don't we tend to lose track of what's going on around us and live within our own minds, but I feel like we are the most conscious then.
Good point! It's those experiences of dreaming, daydreaming, and generally imagining that are most clearly conscious, precisely because they're not physically real.
Perhaps that's the point when people say consciousness is a "controlled hallucination". Perhaps dreaming/imagining/hallucinating is the normal form of consciousness, and it being linked at all to our sensory experiences is the special case. It was never primarily about the real world, it was always about imagining the world as it might be.
I think there's a lot that's right here. Although I'd amend Bergson's "deficit of instinct" to say that often it's also when there are too many automatic reactions, when we have multiple contradictory impulses, and there's an adaptive need to break the logjam. And sometimes, when we've previously learned that our innate or habitual reaction wasn't a good one, it simply is proactive overriding of those impulses, at least until the new revised reactions "become natural".
But the main thing is that it's separate from those impulses. Consider the daydreaming you might do when performing some mundane task, like driving, cutting the grass, folding clothes, etc. At a certain level, your attention is on the task itself. But at another, it's on whatever you're contemplating. Your deliberative attention won't focus on the task unless necessary.
This, I think, gets at what conscious experience is for. It's for learning, reasoning, and planning, even if the planning is for seconds in the future. I know many philosophers want to cut off the conversation on the doing part, but that's looking at the system in isolation, and making it a lot more mysterious than it necessarily needs to be.
Yes, exactly. It's kind of funny when you contrast consciousness as we experience it (worrying about work, daydreaming about food, reacting to obstacles in the road, problem solving, enjoying a sunset) with consciousness as many philosophers talk about it ("the redness of red", "qualia", etc). It's little wonder it appears epiphenomenal if that's how you approach it, imagining it like a big projection on a screen.
"So then, we know and discover ourselves in relation to the world, through our practical explorations of it. We see how the world responds to us, and how we respond to the world responding to us, and our self-knowledge emerges from this self-revealing/self-creative loop. We find ourselves by going out from ourselves and sharing ourselves with the world."
I was just working on a post with this very thesis! I think it's high time we get past our Cartesian thinking about these matters, and this seems to be pointing in the right direction.
Nice, I look forward to reading your post! I totally agree about the need to move beyond Descartes. It's like I said in a comment to Mike, when we think about consciousness primarily as a projection on a cinema screen, it's no wonder we end up with epiphenomenalism (I hate epiphenomenalism).
Great article.
My definition: Consciousness is the capacity to participate in reality.
https://professordig.substack.com/p/introduction-the-first-ripple?r=50wsl7
Thank you!
I like that definition a lot. "Participation" really gets at how consciousness is about the relation between "part" and whole, and our agency in entering and engaging with the whole. I'm going to have to give this some more thought.
I enjoyed your post you linked, and I'll try to gather my thoughts and leave a more full reply there :)
Interesting post. Some random thoughts inspired by your post…
Douglas Hofstadter, in his book "I Am a Strange Loop" (2007), posits the idea that consciousness is a chaotic loop and explicitly compares it to the positive feedback from when a microphone recycles what it hears from a speaker. It's the awareness of being aware that you're aware of being aware. (I know that you know that I know that you know that I know...)
On first contact, the idea that consciousness came after developing a theory of mind doesn't seem quite right. How can one develop a theory of mind without being conscious of one's own mind? I do think consciousness — even the minimal form in animals — does come from a need to navigate a changing and sometimes surprising world. At a low level, that's what it's for. But humans seem to take it to an intricate and abstract level because our brains are capable of fiction and invention. Some animals can use tools, but it's generally only humans that improve them over time.
One thing about rote tasks is the amount of intention and practice required to make them rote. I've read the notion that rote tasks are controlled by the cerebellum, and it seems we need cerebrum to train the cerebellum in those tasks. To off-load them. Both touch typing and driving a car a seem that way. To your three points of high consciousness, I'd add "learning", though perhaps it fits under your #2.
To some extent you seem to be talking about the notion of being "fully present", which isn't exactly what I think of as consciousness but as a laudable form of it, a goal. Dogs have it naturally, but we humans are so full of distractions and conflicts that it's harder for us to ignore the noise.
Would you recommend Hofstadter's book? It's been on my radar for a while but I haven't got round to it yet. It sounds very promising from what I've heard.
I perhaps shouldn't have said "theory of mind", but I think it's possible to have it before consciousness of one's own mind, or something like it. The basic idea is that we need to model others' intentions and plans, and I think that was likely a more pressing need than modelling one's own intentions, at some point in our evolution. It ties in with Dennett's idea of evolutionary "free floating rationales" preceding rationale representers (ie us). Animals don't need to understand the reasons for their behaviours, but recognising the reasons guiding others behaviours offers a good survival advantage.
That's a good point about the practice it takes to make these things "second nature", and I'd agree with adding learning to the list. I'd guess that was one of the earliest purposes of consciousness — learning new "instincts".
It is related to being "present", but I think that is tied to "consciousness". Although when we talk about being present we generally include a kind of meta awareness of our own minds, which isn't necessary for consciousness in the sense I'm speaking of. "Distractions" for example are generally conscious, but I think they still fit what I was saying, often being linked to our speculations, hopes and fears about the unknown.
I would say "I Am a Strange Loop" is probably worth reading (especially if you can get it as a library book). It's much easier to get through and digest than "Gödel, Escher, Bach" (1979). Hofstadter wrote the former as a more focused and distilled version of the latter. (I've tried to read "GEB" two or three times and gotten bogged down in all the detail and background.) "IAaSL" is in some ways a more personal book — he is clearly suffering from the loss of his wife (who died young of a brain tumor). It was from this book that I picked up his idea that, to the extent we can carry on a mental conversation with someone we know well, that person's consciousness partly exists in us. A mini-model of them exists within our own mental model of self and the world.
That said, and this is personal with me and may not apply to anyone else, I find a bit off-putting Hofstadter's (and Dennett's) tendency to say, in effect, "Listen up! Here, I've solved the great mystery of consciousness!" Because I don't think they have. I think that, until we solve the notorious Hard Problem, we're just guessing and grasping at pieces. I've never been persuaded by Dennett or Hofstadter (or even Chalmers, for that matter, though I align more with his views. Or many of them, anyway). You may have a different take, so I would say "IAaSL" is worth a try. I did write about it on my blog back in 2013. The post doesn't explore the book much but does get into Hofstadter's notion about consciousness being spread out in those who know us. FWIW:
https://logosconcarne.com/2013/07/19/strange-loops/
Perhaps you could someday write more about your sense that the need to know other minds came before the need to know our own. I find it hard to get past my sense that "Who am I?" is more primal that "Who are you?" I find it difficult to see how one might attribute agency and intention in others before recognizing it in the self. But perhaps it might start with a simpler question, "What is that?" Querying the meaning of phenomena rather than attributing agency?
I re-read the post. Your opening, "By consciousness, I mean knowing oneself, experiencing oneself in the world, being awake to things", is, I think, what gave me the flavor of "being present" (or "in flow" as they say now). But your second and third points to me involve higher consciousness than is usually meant by "present" or "flow", so I can see they don't align with what you're talking about.
I do think many are, in fact, zombies much of the time. An SF book I love posits quantum effects as behind consciousness and gives it three levels with a 4:2:1 ratio for, respectively, zombies (not truly conscious), psychopaths (conscious but no conscience), and a mere 1/7th as conscious with conscience. It's an SF idea with some grounding in the Penrose-Hameroff notion of QM being important but would sure explain a lot if true.
Maybe the highest consciousness occurs inside our mental worlds when we are unconscious to the outside world. When creating something, don't we tend to lose track of what's going on around us and live within our own minds, but I feel like we are the most conscious then.
Good point! It's those experiences of dreaming, daydreaming, and generally imagining that are most clearly conscious, precisely because they're not physically real.
Perhaps that's the point when people say consciousness is a "controlled hallucination". Perhaps dreaming/imagining/hallucinating is the normal form of consciousness, and it being linked at all to our sensory experiences is the special case. It was never primarily about the real world, it was always about imagining the world as it might be.
I think there's a lot that's right here. Although I'd amend Bergson's "deficit of instinct" to say that often it's also when there are too many automatic reactions, when we have multiple contradictory impulses, and there's an adaptive need to break the logjam. And sometimes, when we've previously learned that our innate or habitual reaction wasn't a good one, it simply is proactive overriding of those impulses, at least until the new revised reactions "become natural".
But the main thing is that it's separate from those impulses. Consider the daydreaming you might do when performing some mundane task, like driving, cutting the grass, folding clothes, etc. At a certain level, your attention is on the task itself. But at another, it's on whatever you're contemplating. Your deliberative attention won't focus on the task unless necessary.
This, I think, gets at what conscious experience is for. It's for learning, reasoning, and planning, even if the planning is for seconds in the future. I know many philosophers want to cut off the conversation on the doing part, but that's looking at the system in isolation, and making it a lot more mysterious than it necessarily needs to be.
Yes, exactly. It's kind of funny when you contrast consciousness as we experience it (worrying about work, daydreaming about food, reacting to obstacles in the road, problem solving, enjoying a sunset) with consciousness as many philosophers talk about it ("the redness of red", "qualia", etc). It's little wonder it appears epiphenomenal if that's how you approach it, imagining it like a big projection on a screen.