Why is Consciousness

I am not denying the primacy of materiality over consciousness within the framework of scientific rationality, I am only allowing for the primacy of consciousness to exist within the framework of phenomenology.

You yourself stated that there is no ultimate beginning or ultimate end. Why then do we have to put either subjectivity or objectivity at the “beginning” of the other? Why can’t the “something” that always has existed be both subjective AND objective?

In other words, from one side of the cosmic coin everything begins with matter and from the other side of the coin, everything begins with consciousness. Together, they are that “something” that has always existed.

The arena of Mind and Mirror (Subject and Object as one integral unity).

You both seem, at least to me, unable to separate existence from the subjective experiencing of existence. A rock out in space does not require any “subjectivity”, any experiencing, in order for that rock to exist and to be what which it is. Most of the universe is like this, just non-conscious non-subjective and non-experiencing ‘dead matter’.

Matter is simply trapped energy. A particle is a little region of space that has a quantity of energy trapped or stored within it. These are what elementary particles are. When you get to the elements you have these elementary particles grouping together in different ways, producing interesting physical properties such as electromagnetism, things that create chemical bonds. The universe is in the vast vast majority of cases almost entirely made out of the simplest elements.

So what is “consciousness”, or “subjectivity”? What is “experiencing”? Experience comes from having a subjectivity which means to have a perspective from which interpretations usher actively. A rock ‘has a perspective’ because it is a certain thing that is different from things around it, and forces will tend to affect the rock differently than they will affect things near the rock but which are different from the rock, and yet the rock does not have an active perspective, it is not experiencing anything. Forces acting upon the rock do not remain stuck in the rock, they do not trigger dynamics within the rock that go on to change and determine what the rock is and how it acts. That is what happens when forces are exerted upon living things: the force triggers changes in the internal dynamics of the living thing, changes which are categorically different than the force itself, and those changes cascade and process in their own complex causal structures and end up changing the organism itself and its actions.

(And Don, for these purposes here I will agree to use your definition of sentience, namely “has feelings”. Rocks are not sentient because they do not have feelings, and we know this because they lack the structures that we know are what produce what we call feelings. We must also say that sentience is close to, but not required for, experience – it is possible for something to be having an experience but not having any feelings, although that is not typically how we experience.)

If subjectivity is having an active perspective capable of being changed by what is changing around us, and capable of changing us, then this is what it means to have an experience. Therefore this is the basis of what is called phenomenology in philosophy. Since phenomenology is the study of experience, you can’t have phenomenology unless something is experiencing and unless those experiences actually mean something.

Ontology is superior to (prior to, more fundamental than) phenomenology in the sense that phenomenology arises from ontology; phenomenology is a derivation of ontology. Ontology describes what is, phenomenology describes what is experience.

So when you conflate memory (an integral aspect of what it means to experience) with ontology, as I said you are doing and which is what you do when you posit phenomenology in a vacuum (without a corresponding and more fundamental ontological structure), you actually make it impossible to even do phenomenology at all, let alone ontology, because you have cut experience off from what experience actually is, namely a derivation of the ontological.

Edit: Don, just to let you know, you did inspire me to take a look at Dennett. I have found a couple of interesting things in one of his books so far, I will try to work them in here at some point if it seems relevant. I have to say that so far at least he is probably the best (most rational and accurate) contemporary academic philosopher that I know of.

On the issue of feelings and experience, if we define feelings in the broader sense of simply “being affected by” or “responding to”, if we consider a feeling to be nothing more than the fact that the organism or entity in question is changing and responding to something and that the “feeling” is simply this “responding to” as such, then we might be tempted to say that everything is potentially feeling. But I would pair feelings, even in this broadest definition, with what I just described as the basis for experience, namely subjectivity or having a perspective:

If an entity has subjectivity, which means is having an active experience (as I outlined above in the previous post), then the “feelings” (respondings-to) of that entity can be considered to be true feelings as we typically understand them, because the organism is “feeling” itself to itself, it is experiencing its own responses, responding to its own responses as an experience. If this is what it means to feel, in contradistinction to simply “responding to” as such, then I think we have a basis here for defining sentience more precisely: sentience is the case when an entity possesses subjectivity (is at least minimally phenomenologically capable) therefore converting its rudimentary responses and respondings-to into an experience of those responses, a responding to its own responses.

And how would it experience in this way? What would the experience of a feeling be like? We already know this from our own experiences with our own feelings, and we can rationally posit that feelings for any sentient organism would be similar, namely they would be like forces generated within the organism and against the organism itself, they would be experienced like “pressures” within the organism itself that have either a desirable, undesirable (or perhaps also neutral (in terms of desirability)) quality, namely the pressure compels us either toward or away from itself, which means toward or away from that which is causing the pressure. In terms of subjectivity or consciousness and our experience of it, the feeling is like a force imposed on the experiencing entity from the outside, that is how it is experienced by that entity, even though the feeling is actually generated within the entity itself.

Void_X_Zero

Why a new low?

I would suggest that the experience of a feeling would be different for each creature. Subjective . . .

Curious. How would we be so sure?

It seems you are talking about stimulus as opposed to feeling.

I am interested in further explanation.

Conflating your memory with the study of being is a new low because formerly at least stupid people here could understand in some level that the study of being, of what exists, is even possible on its own terms, at least in theory. They just refuse to actually do the work. Now, we have someone claiming that their own memory is the study of existence, that ontology and having a memory are more or less the same thing. It is a gross categorical conflation.

As for your other questions, we know that feelings are similar for other organisms as for ourselves because those other organisms share similar biological and neurological structures with us. They have muscles, brains, sense organs, hormones, and they are having a subjective perspectival experience of some kind, therefore we can easily deduce that they also experience feelings somewhat similar to our own. What reason would you possibly have to claim that isn’t the case? You’re just stating it might not be the case but without providing any reasoning or argument to that effect, which is merely empty radical skepticism i.e. a deliberate refusal to think.

The stimulus is the thing from outside of the feeling process that impacts upon the feeing process somehow, forcing the feeling process to respond. You step on a nail, the nail is the stimulus that imposes upon your body and causes the feeling process in your body to respond by producing a feeling of pain. It’s really not that difficult to grasp these things.

Void_X_Zero

Thank you for the further explanation.

Well do you have any arguments or reasoning against what I just said? We’re trying to have a discussion, to understand facts. Either you concede that what I said is true, or you disagree with what I said therefore you would explain why you disagree and we can keep discoursing about it to try and reach a common understanding… or you’re just going to sit there not making any arguments and only throwing wrenches in the gears.

I have no respect for people who just sit back and throw wrenches. There are always reasons why you either agree or disagree with any statement and claim, and if you’re not willing to explore those reasons and introduce them into the discussion then you’re just being dishonest.

Void_X_Zero

I have no arguments in this thread - I have been observing the discussion for quite some time. I am interested in your perception of facts - hence the request for further information. I am going to continue observing the previous discussion that was taking place prior to my request for further explanation.

You don’t have to respect me. No skin off my nose. No wrenches intended.

Dear Void_X_Zero, would you feel better if everyone were to join you trudging through the mires of consciousness ?

I don’t expect anyone to give a shit about their own minds, the nature of consciousness, subjectivity, rational thought, or any of that.

Recommend reading: The discourse on Prajna (Mind essence) by Hui-Neng

terebess.hu/zen/HuinengCleary.pdf

Don’t fret. I care about those things.

But are you still hopeful?

Void_X_Zero

This may or may not be the case but Consciousness itself does make it appear to be that way. You take all the mystery and joy out of it with a statement like that.
Are you going to tell me that you have never experienced this?

How is consciousness possible? What biological purpose does it serve? And why do we value it so highly? In Soul Dust, the psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, a leading figure in consciousness research, proposes a startling new theory. Consciousness, he argues, is nothing less than a magical-mystery show that we stage for ourselves inside our own heads.
This self-made show lights up the world for us and makes us feel special and transcendent. Thus consciousness paves the way for spirituality, and allows us, as human beings, to reap the rewards, and anxieties, of living in what Humphrey calls the “soul niche.”

Doesn’t composing poetry itself work this? Maybe it’s not a very good analogy.
How about when we see a rainbow? Isn’t it like a magical mystery show while at the same time we understand its cause.

If consciousness was/is so easy to understand, if we have, in fact, figured it all out, then why are the philosophers of the mind, et cetera, still grappling with it, still asking the question: "What is consciousness?

So all of the above ultimately solves the hard problem for you?
Do you know how to change a flat tire on your car? One thing about consciousness. It would necessarily dictate that one always has another tire in one’s car, just in case of a flat tire.
What about heart? Does heart play any role in the exercising of consciousness? Isn’t that also a tool?

The “magic” of consciousness, like stage magic, defies explanation only so long as we take it at face value. Once we appreciate all the non-mysterious ways in which the brain can create benign “userillusions”, we can begin to imagine how the brain creates consciousness.

Explaining the Magic of Consciousness
by Daniel Dennett

The brain is in some ways like the final frontier…as is space,don’t you think? There is much still to be explored and discovered about it.
Until then, how much really CAN we know about it?
If we take all of the mystery out of consciousness and believe that there is nothing left to know, that we have all the tools necessary to find it, to exercise it, that it can be as simple as 1+1=2, then we’ve closed the door on knowing ourselves.

Have a good day.

Consciousness may be prior to awareness of materiality but not to materiality as such
Otherwise you will have to explain how it could exist independent of a physical body
It is therefore a logical truth that materiality preceded consciousness not the reverse

surreptitious57

Are you speaking of human consciousness?
What about some other form of consciousness which may have preceded and been involved in the ongoing process/formation of the Universe[s]?

When did consciousness come to be? I’m not speaking of a Judaic/Christian God?

Can something be a logical truth if it cannot be proven…yet?

I am speaking of human consciousness but consciousness per se came into existence before that at the point when intelligent life evolved
And something cannot be a logical truth less it can actually be demonstrated to be true which is definitely so for the example in question

Dear friends
Thank you so much for the fine mind-artistry - please continue - but with joy - since mind is obviously capably of great ideas and thus should not waste its/our time with idle talk.

What isn’t the study of experience?

When I study human body, I study experience.
When I study human mind, I study experience.
When I study history, I study experience.
When I study physics, I study experience.
And so on and so forth.

Empiricism derives from Greek empeiria which means experience.

This is one of the reasons you can’t take philosophy seriously.
Too much of what is bad has been accepted by the general public.

Have been travelling for most of my life around our planet, and most of the ideas presented in my threats, stem from experience on the road.