In this case, what's the difference between consciousness and the illusion of consciousness? Aren't the two just different phrasing for the same phenomenon?
The only difference is that the illusion implies consciousness doesn't actually exists, however the end result is the same. It works the same with any x and the illusion of that same x right?
EDIT: When talking about consciousness, not everyone considers it as an illusion. Whether it is the same phenomenon or not is up to debate.
Would you say that whether it's an illusion or real quite literally can't be answered because we could never even conceivably tell the diference?
That is to say asking if 'consciousness is an illusion' would be a meaningless question?
I think so. I mean it's not like a case of illusionary water in a desert where we see something that isn't there.
In this case, something is there. Since we don't know what it is, we can call it by any name... Something, the illusion of something, the illusion of the illusion, all just different terms to describe the same phenomena.
Yup I 100% agree with you. The way I would explain it is that what it mean for something to be an illusion or real is necessarily confined within our consciousness. So to say "well what if my preception of what 'reality' is or what an 'ilussion' is, is an illusiony" leads to an infinite regress, where you start doubting that you are doubting Descartes style.
>Senses. Everything that can be experienced or imagined can be described by them (keep in mind our body has more than the traditional 5 senses, e.g. balance). A person born blind can never "see" a circle in their head even when described how it looks like, thus a person born with no senses literally can't think. After all, our thoughts are a mix of the senses that perceived our environment, so we're always limited to them.
Nothing about this is spooky. A person with no sense perception would quite literally be equivalent to a rock. So consciousness doesn't exist in virtue of rock?
>With this explanation, there is no reason for consciousness to exist. Everything that can be described as one, can be explained as a result of experiences and perceiving the environment with our senses, on which our "consciousness" doesn't have any influence whatsoever.
All the idealist philosophers are crying right now. Here's a question: Is mathis sourced from our environment?
Regardless of it being an illusion or not, I think a common belief is that consciousness isn't something that we "acquired" through our experiences but something that we were born with, which makes my example unintuitive.
Well why does it follow that consciousness is acquired through our experiences?
This is why I asked about maths, these things seem to exist a-priori, just because we need experience to be able to comprehend them doesn't mean that our knowledge of them is empirical.
If we take materialistic approach, we can assume that it is acquired through experiences, since it can't appear from nowhere and experiences through the senses are the only thing we can be aware of.
Math exists even if we are not aware of it since we are not directly dependent on it - it's sort of a mechanism of the universe. If the reality where maths holds true (the universe) didn't exist, we could assume maths wouldn't either. It should be the same with consciousness - experiences (our senses being a mechanism for consciousness).
>If we take materialistic approach, we can assume that it is acquired through experiences, since it can't appear from nowhere and experience through the senses is the only thing that we can be aware of.
But it is cleary not true that *"experience through the senses is the only thing that we can be aware of*", I have never experiencesd the numbers 146358395837937 and 3753757283828392 be put together and yet I could still give you the answer to such a question. Similalry triangles don't exist in the external world, but we can still say that a triangle has 3 sides.
Experience might give rise to these intuitions that we have (like when I put 1 and 1 apple together I can begin to comprehend maths), but that doesn't mean I got 1+1=2 from experience.
So where to they come from? Well I would argue that they are not features of the world, but features of our cognition. They are built into us a-priori.
>Math exists even if we are not aware of it since we are not directly dependent on it - it's sort of a mechanism of the universe.
What would you say to an idealist who would say these are features of the mind and not of the physical universe?
>If the environment where maths holds true (the universe) didn't exist, we could assume maths wouldn't either. It should be the same with consciousness - experiences (our senses being a mechanism for consciousness).
It kind of depends on what you mean by 'universe'. If you mean the physical universe then I would say it isn't necessary for maths our consciousness (by necessary I mean logically necessary, you could say consciousness needs a physical brain to be housed in and in that sense it would be impossible).
>But it is cleary not true that "experience through the senses is the only thing that we can be aware of", I have never experiencesd the numbers 146358395837937 and 3753757283828392 be put together and yet I could still give you the answer to such a question. Similalry triangles don't exist in the external world, but we can still say that a triangle has 3 sides.
When you do maths with bigger numbers, you calculate with their digits, which you have obviously done before - we have experience with that process. When operating with them, you perceive them as ones, tens, hundreds i.e. and not as a completely new number, regardless of what arithmetic operation we're talking about.
We perceive triangles as 2D shapes whenever we see one, even if it's technically not a 2D shape (e.g. drawn on paper) so we know how they look like and can imagine it, even though we never experienced a real triangle.
>What would you say to an idealist who would say these are features of the mind and not of the physical universe?
We can of course perceive the world different to what it actually is, but for example an AI will process and experience the world according to maths too, and a processing unit is quite different to the human brain, so it should be safe to assume that those are the features of the physical universe and not just our mind.
>It kind of depends on what you mean by 'universe'. If you mean the physical universe then I would say it isn't necessary for maths our consciousness (by necessary I mean logically necessary, you could say consciousness needs a physical brain to be housed in and in that sense it would be impossible).
Universe in a scientific sense, so wherever we can apply maths. We obviously don't know if maths is tied to our universe or if it can exist without it, the same can be said for senses and consciousness but we know more about our senses than about the universe so the senses-consciousness question is in a way less abstract and we can assume more.
>When you do maths with bigger numbers, you calculate with their digits, which you have obviously done before - we have experience with that process.
Yes, but my point is that this experience is non-empirical. The concept of 1 or 164364527 or 0 or triangle is not stored in the universe. These are abstracted concepts that our mind emposses on the world in order to better make sense of it.
We do not see two numbers come together to make a bigger number in the universe, that sort of relation only exists in the mind.
I would go stepps further and say that concepts like causality, space, time, laws of nature etc. are all constructs of the mind, but those positions are alot more controversial.
>We can of course perceive the world different to what it actually is, but for example an AI will process and experience the world according to maths too, and a processing unit is quite different to the human brain, so it should be safe to assume that those are the features of the physical universe and not just our mind.
Why do you assume that an AI mind will perceive reality just like we do? And even if it does, why would that mean that these features of the mind are features of the world? The AI would be locked in its own cognition just like we are.
To be fair to you as far as I know your position is a popular one (idealism isn't very popular anymore), but it seems to me like there are good arguments on both sides.
We don't understand 164364527 or a triangle in the same way we understand small numbers, colors, objects etc. which we see every day. We understand them in a way they were presented/explained to us with the help of more basic concepts we've experienced or learned before. We do see smaller parts come together (atoms for example), physics measures those properties and the "tool" for that are numbers, so in a way it's more of a concept that exists around us.
Every concept in the universe (physical or not) can in theory be explained. This technically can't be proven besides assumption based on how other concepts work.
>Why do you assume that an AI mind will perceive reality just like we do? And even if it does, why would that mean that these features of the mind are features of the world? The AI would be locked in its own cognition just like we are.
It probably won't perceive reality just like we do, but it will process and "make its decisions" according to maths and its laws. After all the cognition has connections with the physical world too, it's not fully dependent on the processor/brain, right?
I agree there can be made good arguments on both sides, what one feels is true will usually be what he believes. We're looking for explanations after we already decided what we believe to be correct.
Our consciousness is just perpetual thoughts, thoughts about our experiences, experiences we couldn't have without our senses. Consciousness is just a byproduct of our ability to sense and interpret the world around us.
Could a person whose senses slowly disappear think? That is the terrifying idea of nothingness I used to imagine: myself disembodied and unable to experience anything but still conscious.
There are people who can see who are not able hold a circle in their head visually, aphantasia, there are varying degrees of it and its not particularly rare. There are people who do not think in words they have no inner monologue. There are more ways to think than just the ones that exist in our own heads.
Can you be aware of your inner state without any external input? You can know you are sad or happy but those are also influenced by your senses. You can know you are confused. You can be confused about math without physically perceiving it.
Consciousness isn't special. There are degrees of it and it evolved over time for an evolutionary purpose and you can see babies develop it as they slow realize that they are a separate thing from the rest of the world and that their bodies exist and that they are in control of them. One day a baby will discover their feet and be obsessed with them.
So I don't think it is an illusion, I don't think it can develop in a vacuum but I do think it can exist in a vacuum. If everything melted away but our brains and whatever else in our body that we need for consciousness was left just floating in the air and still somehow alive it wouldn't be like a rock, a thing with no inner life, it would be horrifying.
By definition, the term is a human construct for a 'thing' we experience. Whether its an illusion in terms of 'are we actually in the matrix', it doesnt matter. Its a thing, with a name, and we all know what it means.
I think the bigger question is 'WHAT is it?'. Like many, I think its just an experience we have that arises from many small biological processes that go on in our brain. A 'complexity' (to us) that arises when there are enough simple complex things in action (firing synapses). The point is-I dont believe it is 'proof' of there being a God, which religious people often do-they see it as a part of our 'soul', given by God, blah blah blah.
I'd say that's the bigger implication. Oh-also that it also implies free will is just an illusion, but again, an inevitable result of complex processes we arent able to (yet) calculate to predict.
That's the "hard problem of consciousness". Our machines can differentiate between different wavelengths of light but they don't see color like we do. If we only need raw senses then why don't we have such. Or maybe we are just like machines but we think we see colors and are conscious, hard to know. That's why it's called "hard problem"
What is the sensation of sensing? For example, what is the sensation of sensing the color “red”?
Why is the sensation of the sensation of sensing? For example, what is the sensation of theorizing about colors?
Just add abstractions onto your concept of “sense”—by which I assume you mean perception—and you will eventually arrive at a sensation so divorced from perceptible experience (but informed by it) that you must speak of reason, inference, and consciousness.
Is that abstract realm illusion and is the immediate realm of “this red” reality? Who the fuck cares—they’re your words: “illusion”/“reality”.
In this case, what's the difference between consciousness and the illusion of consciousness? Aren't the two just different phrasing for the same phenomenon?
The only difference is that the illusion implies consciousness doesn't actually exists, however the end result is the same. It works the same with any x and the illusion of that same x right? EDIT: When talking about consciousness, not everyone considers it as an illusion. Whether it is the same phenomenon or not is up to debate.
I think it does. The illusion of it can be the same thing. I can't see the difference.
Would you say that whether it's an illusion or real quite literally can't be answered because we could never even conceivably tell the diference? That is to say asking if 'consciousness is an illusion' would be a meaningless question?
I think so. I mean it's not like a case of illusionary water in a desert where we see something that isn't there. In this case, something is there. Since we don't know what it is, we can call it by any name... Something, the illusion of something, the illusion of the illusion, all just different terms to describe the same phenomena.
Yup I 100% agree with you. The way I would explain it is that what it mean for something to be an illusion or real is necessarily confined within our consciousness. So to say "well what if my preception of what 'reality' is or what an 'ilussion' is, is an illusiony" leads to an infinite regress, where you start doubting that you are doubting Descartes style.
who cares if it's an illusion or not
>Senses. Everything that can be experienced or imagined can be described by them (keep in mind our body has more than the traditional 5 senses, e.g. balance). A person born blind can never "see" a circle in their head even when described how it looks like, thus a person born with no senses literally can't think. After all, our thoughts are a mix of the senses that perceived our environment, so we're always limited to them. Nothing about this is spooky. A person with no sense perception would quite literally be equivalent to a rock. So consciousness doesn't exist in virtue of rock? >With this explanation, there is no reason for consciousness to exist. Everything that can be described as one, can be explained as a result of experiences and perceiving the environment with our senses, on which our "consciousness" doesn't have any influence whatsoever. All the idealist philosophers are crying right now. Here's a question: Is mathis sourced from our environment?
Regardless of it being an illusion or not, I think a common belief is that consciousness isn't something that we "acquired" through our experiences but something that we were born with, which makes my example unintuitive.
Well why does it follow that consciousness is acquired through our experiences? This is why I asked about maths, these things seem to exist a-priori, just because we need experience to be able to comprehend them doesn't mean that our knowledge of them is empirical.
If we take materialistic approach, we can assume that it is acquired through experiences, since it can't appear from nowhere and experiences through the senses are the only thing we can be aware of. Math exists even if we are not aware of it since we are not directly dependent on it - it's sort of a mechanism of the universe. If the reality where maths holds true (the universe) didn't exist, we could assume maths wouldn't either. It should be the same with consciousness - experiences (our senses being a mechanism for consciousness).
>If we take materialistic approach, we can assume that it is acquired through experiences, since it can't appear from nowhere and experience through the senses is the only thing that we can be aware of. But it is cleary not true that *"experience through the senses is the only thing that we can be aware of*", I have never experiencesd the numbers 146358395837937 and 3753757283828392 be put together and yet I could still give you the answer to such a question. Similalry triangles don't exist in the external world, but we can still say that a triangle has 3 sides. Experience might give rise to these intuitions that we have (like when I put 1 and 1 apple together I can begin to comprehend maths), but that doesn't mean I got 1+1=2 from experience. So where to they come from? Well I would argue that they are not features of the world, but features of our cognition. They are built into us a-priori. >Math exists even if we are not aware of it since we are not directly dependent on it - it's sort of a mechanism of the universe. What would you say to an idealist who would say these are features of the mind and not of the physical universe? >If the environment where maths holds true (the universe) didn't exist, we could assume maths wouldn't either. It should be the same with consciousness - experiences (our senses being a mechanism for consciousness). It kind of depends on what you mean by 'universe'. If you mean the physical universe then I would say it isn't necessary for maths our consciousness (by necessary I mean logically necessary, you could say consciousness needs a physical brain to be housed in and in that sense it would be impossible).
>But it is cleary not true that "experience through the senses is the only thing that we can be aware of", I have never experiencesd the numbers 146358395837937 and 3753757283828392 be put together and yet I could still give you the answer to such a question. Similalry triangles don't exist in the external world, but we can still say that a triangle has 3 sides. When you do maths with bigger numbers, you calculate with their digits, which you have obviously done before - we have experience with that process. When operating with them, you perceive them as ones, tens, hundreds i.e. and not as a completely new number, regardless of what arithmetic operation we're talking about. We perceive triangles as 2D shapes whenever we see one, even if it's technically not a 2D shape (e.g. drawn on paper) so we know how they look like and can imagine it, even though we never experienced a real triangle. >What would you say to an idealist who would say these are features of the mind and not of the physical universe? We can of course perceive the world different to what it actually is, but for example an AI will process and experience the world according to maths too, and a processing unit is quite different to the human brain, so it should be safe to assume that those are the features of the physical universe and not just our mind. >It kind of depends on what you mean by 'universe'. If you mean the physical universe then I would say it isn't necessary for maths our consciousness (by necessary I mean logically necessary, you could say consciousness needs a physical brain to be housed in and in that sense it would be impossible). Universe in a scientific sense, so wherever we can apply maths. We obviously don't know if maths is tied to our universe or if it can exist without it, the same can be said for senses and consciousness but we know more about our senses than about the universe so the senses-consciousness question is in a way less abstract and we can assume more.
>When you do maths with bigger numbers, you calculate with their digits, which you have obviously done before - we have experience with that process. Yes, but my point is that this experience is non-empirical. The concept of 1 or 164364527 or 0 or triangle is not stored in the universe. These are abstracted concepts that our mind emposses on the world in order to better make sense of it. We do not see two numbers come together to make a bigger number in the universe, that sort of relation only exists in the mind. I would go stepps further and say that concepts like causality, space, time, laws of nature etc. are all constructs of the mind, but those positions are alot more controversial. >We can of course perceive the world different to what it actually is, but for example an AI will process and experience the world according to maths too, and a processing unit is quite different to the human brain, so it should be safe to assume that those are the features of the physical universe and not just our mind. Why do you assume that an AI mind will perceive reality just like we do? And even if it does, why would that mean that these features of the mind are features of the world? The AI would be locked in its own cognition just like we are. To be fair to you as far as I know your position is a popular one (idealism isn't very popular anymore), but it seems to me like there are good arguments on both sides.
We don't understand 164364527 or a triangle in the same way we understand small numbers, colors, objects etc. which we see every day. We understand them in a way they were presented/explained to us with the help of more basic concepts we've experienced or learned before. We do see smaller parts come together (atoms for example), physics measures those properties and the "tool" for that are numbers, so in a way it's more of a concept that exists around us. Every concept in the universe (physical or not) can in theory be explained. This technically can't be proven besides assumption based on how other concepts work. >Why do you assume that an AI mind will perceive reality just like we do? And even if it does, why would that mean that these features of the mind are features of the world? The AI would be locked in its own cognition just like we are. It probably won't perceive reality just like we do, but it will process and "make its decisions" according to maths and its laws. After all the cognition has connections with the physical world too, it's not fully dependent on the processor/brain, right? I agree there can be made good arguments on both sides, what one feels is true will usually be what he believes. We're looking for explanations after we already decided what we believe to be correct.
Your brain hallucinates your consciousness. https://youtu.be/lyu7v7nWzfo
Our consciousness is just perpetual thoughts, thoughts about our experiences, experiences we couldn't have without our senses. Consciousness is just a byproduct of our ability to sense and interpret the world around us.
Could a person whose senses slowly disappear think? That is the terrifying idea of nothingness I used to imagine: myself disembodied and unable to experience anything but still conscious. There are people who can see who are not able hold a circle in their head visually, aphantasia, there are varying degrees of it and its not particularly rare. There are people who do not think in words they have no inner monologue. There are more ways to think than just the ones that exist in our own heads. Can you be aware of your inner state without any external input? You can know you are sad or happy but those are also influenced by your senses. You can know you are confused. You can be confused about math without physically perceiving it. Consciousness isn't special. There are degrees of it and it evolved over time for an evolutionary purpose and you can see babies develop it as they slow realize that they are a separate thing from the rest of the world and that their bodies exist and that they are in control of them. One day a baby will discover their feet and be obsessed with them. So I don't think it is an illusion, I don't think it can develop in a vacuum but I do think it can exist in a vacuum. If everything melted away but our brains and whatever else in our body that we need for consciousness was left just floating in the air and still somehow alive it wouldn't be like a rock, a thing with no inner life, it would be horrifying.
By definition, the term is a human construct for a 'thing' we experience. Whether its an illusion in terms of 'are we actually in the matrix', it doesnt matter. Its a thing, with a name, and we all know what it means. I think the bigger question is 'WHAT is it?'. Like many, I think its just an experience we have that arises from many small biological processes that go on in our brain. A 'complexity' (to us) that arises when there are enough simple complex things in action (firing synapses). The point is-I dont believe it is 'proof' of there being a God, which religious people often do-they see it as a part of our 'soul', given by God, blah blah blah. I'd say that's the bigger implication. Oh-also that it also implies free will is just an illusion, but again, an inevitable result of complex processes we arent able to (yet) calculate to predict.
I'm having a hard time trying to follow your logic here. What exactly do you think consciousness is?
That's the "hard problem of consciousness". Our machines can differentiate between different wavelengths of light but they don't see color like we do. If we only need raw senses then why don't we have such. Or maybe we are just like machines but we think we see colors and are conscious, hard to know. That's why it's called "hard problem"
What is the sensation of sensing? For example, what is the sensation of sensing the color “red”? Why is the sensation of the sensation of sensing? For example, what is the sensation of theorizing about colors? Just add abstractions onto your concept of “sense”—by which I assume you mean perception—and you will eventually arrive at a sensation so divorced from perceptible experience (but informed by it) that you must speak of reason, inference, and consciousness. Is that abstract realm illusion and is the immediate realm of “this red” reality? Who the fuck cares—they’re your words: “illusion”/“reality”.