So you're taking a more Buddhist approach here, the consciousness is the observer, thoughts aren't the observer? But it seems to me that for most, the observer isn't disconnected from everything else. It takes a lot of practice to disconnect them. 1/3
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When I have a thought, it feels like the thought is me. Whatever the consciousness is, that thought is part of it. My sense of awareness is tied into my perception. When I become aware of something, it feels just like seeing something. 2/3
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Consciousness seems to me to be a bridge between sensing something and acting on it. A tie between the different parts of the brain, which decides what parts are needed when. 3/3
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Replying to @imhinesmi @cognazor
Often while driving a car we will realise we've been on "autopilot". Learning is essentially expanding the circle of possible things we can pass off to our subconscious to manage. The "middleware" of awareness is self evidently not required in these moments. 1/2
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I think your instinct to define consciousness the way you have is probably quite useful for this discussion. Re prior tweet, consciousness kicks in to confront the total chaos of raw experience, and aggregate it into a abstractions, honing awareness, teaching us what to see
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That dimension of this process which has to process and aggregate information seems in principle to not require "felt awareness", which is what I've been calling consciousness - confusing perhaps
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But the process of felt awareness *is* consciousness. The bit of us that processes things, puts them together in a coherent way - that *is* the self-aware part. We need to know how our mind is working now to figure out how to get our minds to work in new ways.
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Replying to @imhinesmi @cognazor
We'll be using your definition of consciousness moving forward (to be clear) My sense is the same as yours, they are interconnected, but philosophically I argue that they are separate. Felt awareness/qualia is a side effect of our consciousness. 1/2
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"Consciousness" as you've described strikes me as adaptive. "Felt awareness" seems like a happy (if you're happy) accident The thought experiment that
@cognazor shared was my attempt at proferring a scenario where the _felt_ awareness part gets removed by surgery, a qualiaectomy3 replies 0 retweets 1 like -
I think it's probably the case that "felt awareness" is a process which takes place in the brain (maybe that strikes people as obvious but I don't know shit about anything), and it might be the case that in our physical reality, a qualiectomy is equivalent to breaking the system
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I would be very very surprised if any part of our mental activity took place outside of the brain, with the exception of hormones and I/O.
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Replying to @imhinesmi @nathan_k
I'd say its a structural coupling of the brain, body, and environment. Take one away, and the mind no longer functions.
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