[log in to unmask]"> Thank you, Nicholas and Gregg:DL: Yeps
In your view, is it meaningful to say that an organism can be aware but not conscious?
[log in to unmask]">DL: There were 100s of scientific and research papers at the science of consciousness conference at Univ. of Arizona with neuro-cognitive scientists and psychologists being a major chunk. Huge amount of work is happening on all the aforementioned by you. There is enough maths done on them all (I have myself done some maths on attention), to ensure its spoken and understood without semantic twists.
I am aware of research that seeks to differentiate attention and consciousness. I am somewhat suspect of this work (I need to look deeper) mostly because of terminological issues. In my view, we cannot identify or define consciousness, awareness, attention, etc. by looking carefully or by doing experiments.
[log in to unmask]">DL: I tend to agree. Words are interpretative categories. Within the scope of its category, Description/discovery of Awareness, as inverse of stimuli-response latency is a very major discovery. Think about it and you will find no everyday-example that violates it. As an example take - mosquitoes, humans and plants. Mosquitoes have the highest motor awareness, humans lesser, plants least. As explained because of event densities of existence. A mosquito sees clapping hands to trap it as though our swift movement is like their slow motion, through which they escape with a smile. Change the direction of the light and the plant take three days to bend to wards sunlight. But as you see in the literature there are three additional conditions as well (see in the book or it's summary @ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fr2hE8ER_IxIaE8tSws2dMcsql9yuiuSPUmo6mKVrnU/edit?usp=sharing )This is because these words already have meaning our everyday culture, and we start with these meanings. We have to start first by understanding these everyday meanings. Then, when we do studies and experiments, we can refine these meanings. When we notice odd things in research, we must then invoke different terms, phrases and definitions as we refine our concepts.
[log in to unmask]">DL: All simpler forms of organisms (innumerable of them) are aware but not conscious, including plant. Indeed, for most animals barring those that are human pets, there is no confirmation of consciousness. Though I personally feel most animals do have the signs of consciousness.
In my view — I am open to modification — I do not understand how an organism can be aware without being conscious.
[log in to unmask]">DL: Nearly true. There is neither consciousness nor life without awareness. But life and consciousness are mutually exclusive. One can be just aware (neither conscious nor have life - eg viruses); One can be aware & alive (but not conscious or cumconscious), one can be aware and conscious but have no life one may be aware & alive but not conscious. The enclosed set diagram explains it all.Awareness is, it would seem to me, a basic form of consciousness — not something fundamentally different.
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Thoughts?
M.############################
On Oct 4, 2020, at 10:04 AM, Nicholas Lattanzio <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I would first argue that most casual references of consciousness do refer to aspects of awareness that we are conscious of, largely being perceptual and cognitive images (versus the actual processes of perception and cognition/thinking). One always has operations of consciousness that are not in one's attentional field, and we can direct our conscious attention to bring things into consciousness and in the same throw lose consciousness of others. We have loose correlational research to suggest that consciousness and attention are different but related, and probably interdependent processes, I have yet to see anything close to compelling about awareness.
In my experience (I.e., in my consciousness), awareness seems to be more fundamental to existence than consciousness. One can be asleep (unconscious) but we still have a bare sense of existence, which I argue is what awareness 'is' and is what we fundamentally 'are.'
My perspective is highly nondual and phenomenological in nature, and I truly don't believe we have the scientific means to say we can define consciousness and awareness, or even mind in a precise or empirically reliable and valid way. I'm sure others on this thread with share more technical theories, but short of solving the hard problem of consciousness (if we even understand the question correctly), theory is all we can say we have.
Regards,
Nicholas G. Lattanzio, Psy.D.
############################Hi All:
Can someone please suggest definitions for “consciousness” and “awareness”. Is anyone here arguing that these are two different processes? I’m not sure what it means to say that an organism can be aware but not conscious (unless consciousness means “self-conscious”).
M.
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