This is a continuation of http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,690550

I'd love to get responses to the final post from the thread above.

Thanks,

Steve

<<I sincerely believe that we can build a better world if we find the right individuals, connect, and work alongside each other to put our best ideas into practice to make life more enjoyable and to reduce suffering.

Does anyone feel as strongly about this as I do?>>

Definitely, I do.

In stead of sitting around and philosophizing about it, they went out and built the relationships and communities that are making the world a better place. They have built great life long relationships with each other and made a better world for themselves and the people around them.

The community of gay and lesbian activists is just one of many such communities. There are tons of communities being built as I write. They are being built by people willing to act.

The rest, consciousness without language stuff just strikes me as mental masturbation over less than adequate words created by man.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/2012 01:47AM by MJ.

This is off the original topic, but does anyone think there will be a day when the divisive nature of people into "groups, types, religions" will end anytime soon?

I find it hard to believe we can achieve anything great as a people until these classifications are a thing of the past. I always hate how the news perpetuates racism(and other stereotypes) whenever they gush about the first black mayor of x, or the first lesbian, Hispanic legislator, etc. Why does any of that matter? Until we can quit looking at each other in such juvenile ways, I don't see a grand unification of humanity happening.

If you think that nothing great can be achieved as long as devisions exist, ans since devisions have always existed, it would mean that nothing great has ever been achieved.

So, do you think nothing great has ever been achieved?

well I certainly dont agree with HH....there is a lot to see...thats why so many people are exploring conscious in scientific ways...at least attempting to.

just dissenting~

From the previous thread:

G.P. wrote:
>> *Culture*, not consciousness, is a social product. That is to say, the contents of consciousness and language are shaped by culture, which spreads behavioral templates using the mechanism of observational modeling (i.e. mimesis). <<

I have no doubt that consciousness and language are shaped by culture (and that the underlying structure of consciousness shaped culture and language initially too), but that culture->language/consciousness relation is a development well past the emergence of deep conscious ability in humans. I've seen plenty of theories that consciousness is an emergent property that was catalyzed especially by language. However, I believe that animals at many levels communicate in a form of language. While they possess graded levels of consciousness, they do not possess the same level of abstraction. That said, there are data showing animals such as dogs can abstract on a basic level.

Theories suggesting that man's cortical increase was seeded first by walking upright (allowing them to protect in groups, navigate between feeding areas and gain a different perspective) have some merit in my mind. Abstract thinking would take larger amounts of processing, energy and brain capacity. The ability to find large supplies of protein are facilitated by upright walking. Large-vocabulary language is probably an outcome from this (because it involved large socialization to travel distances in protected groups), but also became a strong feedback loop in recent homo evolution.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/2012 10:15AM by Jesus Smith.

Gay Philosopher wrote:

"First, the idea of something being "supernatural" is ridiculous, in the same way that the null set, phi, is not a set! It's null. It's nothing at all. To even name "it" is to attempt to name "that" which does not exist! Our language is geared toward describing entities that, in some sense, exist. When we try to describe that which doesn't exist, it's usually to say that, for instance, that blue shoe that used to be by the door is no longer by the door. It is not there. But the "it," the shoe, still exists. When things get abstract, language becomes problematic."


Ha! I think you point out exactly the problem, which I call the Houyhmhnm Limitation. This inability to think of "that which is not" is what limits thinking about consciousness. Terrence W. Deacon is excellent on this peculiar inability (and I feel in great company that both popolvuh and Henry Bemis recommend his book). He likens the problem to the early difficulties with the Arabic zero. Europeans were able to build Rome itself without it, but just look what we've done since then with it!

Wish I had time to expound. I'll just note that even if we were able to write a complete 'connectome' of the brain and the nervous system we would not find consciousness itself.

I'll leave you with a poem by a poet that in many ways was a poet of consciousness:


The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

--Snow Man--
--Wallace Stevens--


Read closely and one is stuck by the question, what is this which "regards" and "beholds" as it seeks to avoid Ruskin's Pathetic Fallacy (the "misery in the sound in the wind")? And how, pray tell, does this "that which is not" behold the "nothing that is not there"?

Beholding the "nothing that is not there" *and* the "nothing that is" is precisely what Science must do to account for consciousness. Map the entire neuronal network of synapses in the brain, measure them in every imaginable way and from every imaginable angle, and you still won't find that which is not there, the "that which is not".

Poetry is a game of absences and presences. Science, in regard to consciousness, must go beyond materialism and deal with an absence.

Anyway, gotta run...

Human

(GP, put down the prose and pick up Wallace Stevens *Harmonium*. Trust me.)

Harmonium:

http://www.amazon.com/Harmonium-Faber-Poetry-Wallace-Stevens/dp/0571207790/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351789355&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=wallace+stevens+hamonium

Terrence W. Deacon:

http://www.amazon.com/Incomplete-Nature-Mind-Emerged-Matter/dp/0393049914/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1351789416&sr=1-1&keywords=terrence+w+deacon

Thanks, Human,

One of these days, I need to figure out what Heidegger was on about regarding poetry and technology.

Consciousness is extremely puzzling, as is the related problem of the freedom of the will.

Do you believe that the brain somehow produces consciousness after all, or that there's something more going on, e.g. that some form of idealism is true?

This thread is the best I've ever seen here.

Steve

I *believe* that something more than the brain is involved in consciousness. I *believe* that the brain may actually hinder consciousness in some ways. But that is what I believe.

What I think is a different matter. And my thinking isn't clear on the matter at all.

What is clear to me is that no one yet has solved the "hard problem", and I'm too skeptical to go along with the "Science of the Gaps" faith. Yes, science has given materialist explanations to that which was once thought of as supernatural, but there isn't any good reason that I know of to think or even believe that this will always continue.

Cheers,

Human

(What poetry can do for you, Steve, is give your reasoning some rest. Philosophy relies on very strict definitions to words and very controlled meanings that derive from them. Poetry does just the opposite. Both have there place.)

At some point brain neuron activity becomes interactive enough that the result is consciousness. The nodules, pathways and impulses are all interacting at once. If you take away some of the brain activity, the animal will lapse into unconsciousness.

Consider the brains of animals going from simple to sophisticated. At what point is something considered to be conscious?

Think about a jelly fish, responding to its environment. It is pretty much on autopilot. Is it conscious? No. It is lacking the structure of a brain- or even a central nervous system.

Next consider an octopus. There are signs of consciousness in the activities it undertakes. Is it conscious? It does not have a brain like ours but the ganglia apparatus does show things like personality, trainability, and maybe consciousness.

Next consider a dog. You can tell when a dog is conscious or unconscious. The dog’s brain is interactive enough that consciousness is in effect.

Next move on to a primate. Memory, planning, tools, and other evidence of interactive brain activity is obvious consciousness. Sophisticated brain activity and neuron interaction is the underlying requirement for consciousness.

If you take away O2, glucose, or levels of neuron activity (certain medications), you can induce unconsciousness.

For those who think there is some “external force” that grants consciousness, how do you explain the incremental demonstration of consciousness in animals as they go from simple to complex?

I don’t see the need to make it more complicated. A neuron highway in brains reaches critical mass and functions with consciousness or it doesn’t. The capacity for the potential of consciousness is in the structure of the brain and we can study when brain activity is decreased enough that it ceases.