Not really. I, in my own pompous way, think that I’ve defined consciousness. But in my not-so-pompous way, I do realize it’s subject to debate.
Yes, I agree with all this, except that I think knowledge is a form of cognition.
gib, I guess it depends on what you call ‘knowledge’ and how you define ‘cognition.’ For me, knowledge is acquired through experience, and memory, of sensory input, while cognition is the ability to sort through one’s knowledge, arrange one’s knowledge, and–in so doing–learn even more.
Have you ever read Jean Piaget’s theories of the development of cognition in infants and children? He’s quite interesting and really laid the groundwork in that area of child psychology.
Anyway–I’m interested in hearing your ideas so as to add to my knowledge. That’s why I’m here. 
Liz … (about uniqueness)
I see uniqueness as manifesting itself in the way genes combine to produce the physical aspects of the members of a species. No two leaves on a tree are the same just as no two snowflakes are and no two humans are. We’re all individually unique in physical composition because there is no model in nature when it comes to individual members of a species. Nature may be trying to keep a species pure and strong in the gene pool, which mankind has weakened with humans because we find medical remedies to prolong the weak/sick humans and allow them to pass along a weaker strain of genes which probably weakens the gene pool through breeding. But that’s another story. Anyway, I’d go on to say, though, that we humans basically function the same way. All life is related to other life at the molecular level (DNA) and is linked anatomically, physiologically and biochemically. Due to this common chemical thread, all living systems are similar in their basic structure and function.
Now, when it comes to thought, I’d be the first to admit that I function in that aspect just like a machine. It’s no different from the extraordinary instrument we have, the computer. You press a button and it indicates it is ready. Then you ask for something, then it searches. That searching is thinking. But it is a mechanical process. In that computer there is no thinker. There is no thinker thinking there at all. If there is any information or anything that is referred to, the computer puts it together and throws it out. That is all that is happening. It is a very mechanical thing that is happening. We are not ready to accept that thought is mechanical because that knocks off the whole image that we are not just machines. It is an extraordinary machine. It is not different from the computers we use. But my body is something living; it’s got a living quality to it. It has a vitality. It is not just mechanically repeating; it carries with it the life energy like current energy.
Pardon me for cutting in Gib …. But isn’t the stimulus response activity one unitary movement that is not actually able to be experienced by a fetus? Doesn’t knowledge or thought (that’s acquired latter) have to come in between the stimulus and response mechanism in order to experience what is happening?
Sorry Liz.
Do I “understand why kicking a ball results in it flying through the air?” Maybe and/or maybe not. I know that the kicker has exerted enough force on the ball to dislodge it from its state of rest for a given period of time before gravity takes over and ultimately returns the ball to its state of rest. If I don’t know the mechanics of that, that’s one thing; I do have, however, empirical ‘proof’ that that’s what’s going to happen.
As for the rest of your post, I don’t think physical explanations can be applied to everything in my mental world. I’d have to be a materialist to do so. Hey, anon, I’m on your side here, buddy. I’m just using my own words, is all.
No apology is needed, FM. However, I think I’ve answered this previously in my link, i.e., the fetus does show reactions to, and memory of, its stimulus/response mechanism.
To get a bit off topic here, because I found it so awesome I want to share it. I watched a very short film (a bit over a minute) the other night. It started with a dog asleep on the floor. Its legs started to twitch, then, as the dream progressed, it started running. It ran faster, looking back over its shoulder. Suddenly it stopped running, turned onto its back, and began fighting–teeth bared and biting, legs pushing upward. Then it stood up and started running again–right into a wall, which finally woke him up. It was one hell of a nightmare! But it showed primal fear.
This is what I thought you were talking about when you mentioned inborn memories. And yes, those memories are there. We all need them and so we all have them.
I only saw the first Matrix and I missed the beginning, so it was rather confusing to me. But, you’re correct, what is “real” to a materialist, are nothing other than electrical signals. What I’ve iterated–even stressed–is the difference between the mechanisms of the brain and the results of those mechanisms. How does the mind/brain actually transform those electrical signals into thought?
That, to me, is a phenomenon that can’t be explained by a materialist.
This makes a lot of sense to me.
Liz, a quick glance at subsequent posts and I don’t think you’ve responded to this. I might be wrong about that. What do you think of this presentation? You can say that language limits us to linearity on some level, but it’s really not that hard express non-linearity. In some ways, it’s just about presenting a bit of complexity.
These distinctions make sense to me. Would you say that one state causes the next stage? Or do you think maybe there is an underlying situation, that causes this flowering, in stages, to occur? Or some other explanation, perhaps?
Finishedman,
I’m not sure if I agree with the portion I bolded here or not. Perhaps if you clarify what you mean by a sense of self. But for the moment I think it’s safe to assume you’re just referring to awareness of consciousness - awareness of oneself as a conscious being. If so, then I think the important question is whether this is just semantics - i.e. I can choose to either define consciousness as including self awareness or not - or whether this is actually a fundamental difference - i.e. there is no connection between a thermostat and sentience, at all. In this second view, a thermostat shares no important characteristics with sentient life (or if you don’t believe the “lower” animals are conscious, then they share no important characteristics with the “higher” animals).
Thanks, finishedman. I’d slightly change what you’ve said though - I think you can find what you have the ability to know.
See my response to gib. Please understand, I’m still just trying to get some idea of what you believe regarding the relationship between consciousness and the senses.
What I meant by losing my sense of a shared topic, is that I’m losing my sense of what the salient points are. We’ve been talking about the senses, and about consciousness. I believe we’re exploring this because of an interest in the relationship between mind and body. If so, are you saying that the senses are physical, consciousness mental? Are you saying that one cause the other? Are you saying that they interact? Forgive me, sometimes I just don’t extract a person’s essential point the way I should. Maybe I would have less of a problem with this if I printed out our conversation so far and took it to a chair in a nice quiet corner somewhere and read through it like that. But I don’t do that.
Ok, sorry for going through your post so linearly, haha, but this seems like the kind of clarification I’ve been looking for. How far do you think all this develops, without any cognition at all? And what, then, causes cognition to arise?
How would you relate these assertions to the mind-body problem?
I follow the biologist Richard Lewontin’s characterization of biological organisms as “internally heterogeneous open systems”. I don’t think mind is blind to its own contents - there is no strict inside and outside. I do think genetic data is a form of mental content, and that like any data, this content can be experienced. Liz asked whether a person with no senses would be a blob or not - I’m not really sure what that means. I think a jellyfish experiences its world. I think Einstein experienced his world. I think a living person born without functioning senses would experience his world. We aren’t born from a vacuum, and we don’t return to a vacuum when we die. Our lives extend beyond what we think of as our selves. Genetic information is one example of this.
That’s an unusual dichotomy - I’ve never heard that one before. Is the generation of and use of thought not part and parcel of this living, vital body?
Ah, so cognition is more like an activity, whereas knowledge is the object this activity bears on? (but not exclusively knowledge, I would think, right?)
I haven’t read Piaget but I did learn more than I ever wanted to know about him while I was a psyc undergrad. I actually tried some of his experiments on my younger cousin when she was about 5 or 6 or thereabouts, and damned if I got the same results Piaget predicted! Which now makes me want to try it on my daughter.
Awsome, 'cause I like to talk 
.
But unless you want a whole novel on my ideas about consciousness, I suggest you ask one or two specific questions. If you want a sample of my thoughts on consciousness, visit the mm-theory.com link in my sig.
I don’t see why it should. I can understand that it’s impossible to do the thought experiment where you imagine having some kind of experience (like pain) without knowing you’re having it (the thought experiment would have to be setup with you inevitably knowing about it), but there’s nothing logically impossible about the idea of having an experience without knowing about it. The experience itself is handled by one part of the brain, the knowledge by another. The former could conceivably function independent of the latter.
I don’t think seeing the beginning would have made it any less confusing 
^^ more like this. Liz was right that it is a concurrent process–sensation contributing to the development of cogitation over a period of time, and even visa-versa (it has been shown that thought and memory affect how we perceive things on a sensual level)–but I still think sensation is the first kind of experience to emerge whereas cognition requires a lot more time and demands a higher degree of development on the part of sensation before it can develop in turn.
See, what I’m saying is that you understand it because you see it happen. That it happens, predictably, satisfies you on some level - you are familiar with it, you “understand” it. Further abstractions, such as “gravity”, “force”, “equal and opposite”, etc., allow you to understand things you haven’t directly experienced. It’s a form of extrapolation. Without either observation or extrapolation, there is no “understanding”. If mind emerges from matter, as it does according to at least some materialists, this emergence is neither observable nor accountable according to any known laws. In itself, this doesn’t mean emergence isn’t possible. Arguing against this on the basis of incredulity alone (“how could mind, which seems fundamentally different from matter, possibly arise from matter?”) doesn’t work.
I don’t understand. Again, the entire visual spectrum can be described in black and white (greyscale). But such an explanation can’t account for color. I see no reason to doubt that all mental phenomena can be described physically - that for every mental difference a corresponding physical difference can be described. A physical explanation can be applied. Similarly, we can quantify anything at all. Why not?
I think so too. Given the right conditions, a fetus will develop into a newborn, and a newborn will develop into a child. Kind of like a snowball effect or something. I think there are a complex series of triggers along the way, triggers to be distinguished from causes. If some things don’t happen, the overall development still happens. If some critical things don’t happen, maybe the overall development is blocked.
That’s an integral part of your sensory activity. It’s not the signals that tell you what is real, obviously. After the signals have reached the brain they are translated or interpreted or converted. That’s part and partial of what the brain does. You claimed it yourself: the major role that the development of a central nervous system and all its constituents plays in how we think consciousness is arrived at in a human mind/brain. Interpretation of electrical signals is precisely what delivers what is allegedly real. And what is delivered, basically, is the knowledge you have that has been extracted from memory.
How does a computer do it?
Through the process of translating them into frames of knowledge that move by very quickly. Thought is a movement of millions of these frames. The brain contains them. It’s called memory.
Knowledge is the structure of thought and thought is the repitition of the known. There is nothing mysterious about knowledge. It’s just naming things.
Well, what have you heard? Or, iow, what do you know about thought, consciousness and life? Obviously that knowledge did not come already in your memory banks at birth. You have been given that knowledge and from that knowledge your question is born.
But, you see, the life of the organism is not ‘interested’ in all of that because the life only requires the basic needs to fulfill its purpose to survive until the next moment. That kind of ‘consciousness’ (the physiological/biological life of the human body has its own programmed intelligence: nervous system, immune system, digestive, and so on) is aware of itself and does not need speculations of concepts or abstractions to go about its operation.
Life goes on apart from thought and its purposes to protect and maintain itself. I’m talking about the kind of thought that is used to give continuity to itself so as to give continuity to a separate self far removed from the physical body. I don’t know if that’s very clear. Trying to describe the dualism with the very instrument that causes the duality can be very misleading. 
It’s just unusual. Most people seem to think of the physical world as ordinary or degraded, the mental world as elevated or magical. I don’t agree with that view, but it seems common. You’ve apparently turned that view upside-down, right?
To be honest, I’m not sure what I make of this. I’ll try to think about it more…
What they’re looking for does not exist. They would rather tread enchanted grounds with beatific visions of a radical transformation of that non-existent self of theirs into a state of being which is conjured up by some bewitching phrases. That takes you away from your natural state – it is a movement away from yourself. To be yourself requires extraordinary intelligence. You are ‘blessed’ with that intelligence; nobody need give it to you, nobody can take it away from you. He who lets that express itself in its own way is natural.
I’m not in conflict with the society. This is the only reality I have, the world as it is today. Some other grand reality that man has invented has absolutely no relationship whatsoever with the reality of this world. As long as there is seeking, searching, and wanting to understand that reality (often called “ultimate reality,” or call it by whatever name you like), it will not be possible to come to terms with the reality of the world exactly the way it is. So, anything done to escape from the reality of this world will make it difficult to live in harmony with the things around.
The fundamental mistake that humanity made somewhere along the line, is, or was, or whatever is the correct verb, to experience this separateness from the totality of life. At that time there occurred in man this self-consciousness which separated him from the life around. He was so isolated that it frightened him. The demand to be part of the totality of life around him created this tremendous demand for the ultimate. He thought that the spiritual goals of truth or reality would help him to become part of the `whole’ again. But the very attempt on his part to become one with or become integrated with the totality of life has kept him only more separate. Isolated functioning is not part of nature. But this isolation has created a demand for finding out ways and means of becoming a part of nature. But thought in its very nature can only create problems and cannot help us solve them.
We don’t seem to realize that it is thought that is separating us from the totality of things. The belief that this is the one that can help us to keep in tune with the totality is not going to materialize. So, it has come up with all kinds of ingenuous, if I may use that word, ideas of insight and intuition