[log in to unmask]"> Deepak:DL: Vicariousness ["we can represent it (intersubjectively) in our experience"] is a property of consciousness, not awareness. Indeed, this is one of the three critical features that make awareness evolve to consciousness. You are right when you comment that my understanding of awareness is physico-logical and mechanistic. That is what I set out to discover. Phenomenologically, there are two cases - why did it happen in the first instance and why someone 'ABC' is today experiencing awareness. ALCCO responds to the former but not to the later. It is not a neurocognitive approach as I wrote in last mail.
Again, please take my responses in the spirit of dialogue and exploration of divergent and convergent perspectives.
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
The point that stimulated your response was the assertion that one cannot identify consciousness or awareness from a “third person objectivist perspective”. We see awareness in others because we can represent it (intersubjectively) in our experience.
[log in to unmask]">DL: Quite in concurrence to Gregg's theory of knowledge there is a hierarchy - Physics chemistry, biology. In this queue, psychology is a higher, later science. So without biological and before that chemical and preceding that physical principles in place, principles of Psychology will be solely dependent on experiential. Such theory would be a castle in air, without foundation.You have to excuse me for my ignorance please. But I am reasoning in concurrence of what little I understood of UTOK.If it is to have something to say about psychological processes, neuroscience cannot operate autonomously: Good neuroscience is founded upon good psycho-science. It doesn’t matter, in my view, how many neuroscientists are studying awareness using biological and objectivist methods if the psychological science is not founded on clear conceptual and philosophical presuppositions.
[log in to unmask]">DL: That is not the motive of ALCCO. This is strictly deduction of experiential facts that I don't deal with. Mike, I am providing the skeleton, you got to understand the skeleton first and then put the heart & the lungs at the right place. I am not a specialists in that. Indeed through my discussions with Gregg I expressed that what pulled me to this group was indeed this capability to add on flesh to ALCCO which is a objective physico-logical theory of consciousness.
DL: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.“Mosquitoes have the highest level of motor awareness”. Perhaps. But I cannot evaluate this proposition without knowing what awareness is. Again, you can define awareness in terms of “stimulus-response latency” — but this does not tell us anything about the phenomenology of the mosquitoe or the role of that phenomenology in exciting a motor response.
[log in to unmask]">DL: Plants bending towards sunlight is a stimuli-response! And hence awareness. The challenge Mike you face, is you have a set notion of animate or human awareness and you are finding it difficult to apply it elsewhere. While awareness for me is like gravity - a phenomena impacting everything, a rock, cow, human all experience gravity! I do not consider awareness as the sole domain of the animate. Machine Awareness and Networked awareness are both discussed in ALCCO.
Why would you assume that a plant needs “awareness” to turn to the sun? It feels very much like the application of a naive (that does not mean bad) theory that says that since human movement is (often) mediated by awareness (and agency), so is plant movement. I am not against the idea that there may be some form of awareness in “life” — but such an assertion, in my view, requires a rather clear concept of phenomenal awareness and a theory of the role of awareness in a biological organism. We can find our best examples of this, I believe, in enactive models of life and consciousness.
[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.
This is a remarkable assertion! Remarkable assertions require remarkable arguments and remarkable evidence!
DL: Please check my statement. My assertion is that animals have consciousness. But generally, "there is no confirmation of consciousness" in animals. Kindly quote if you know of instances, where other than humans, consciousness has been confirmed in others animates. To understand my assertion you will have to read the book, else the email will be 550 pages long :-)
[log in to unmask]">Awareness is, it would seem to me, a basic form of consciousness — not something fundamentally different.
DL: Nearly true. There is neither consciousness nor life without awareness.
Again, this is an assertion. An interesting assertion, but an assertion nonetheless. My arguments above apply here.
DL: For understanding the reasons & justifications of the assertion you will have to study the theory in entirety.
[log in to unmask]">Book summary is available @ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fr2hE8ER_IxIaE8tSws2dMcsql9yuiuSPUmo6mKVrnU/edit?usp=sharingI’m not sure which diagram you were referring to — Can you please re-send it? (The interweaving of arguments get very confusing to me…).
Thanks so much for this stimulating dialogue.
Mike
Book is available at https://www.amazon.in/Awareness-Consciousness-Upanishad-Deepak-Loomba/dp/1692201220
All the images discussed till know are all attached.
[log in to unmask]">############################
On Oct 4, 2020, at 1:04 PM, Deepak Loomba <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
On 10/4/2020 7:50 PM, Michael Mascolo wrote:
[log in to unmask]" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;" class="">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]" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;" class="">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]" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;" class="">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]" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;" class="">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]" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;" class="">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.
[log in to unmask]" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;" class="">
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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