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############################Dear All
I'm not a regular reader of these emails, due to lack of time, not lack of interest. But I was attracted to the title of this 'Three meanings of consciousness'. I have been interested in the subject of consciousness for years, explored it as part of my PhD, and am in the process of creating the website www.scienceofconsciousness.com.
However, the overriding principle to me is quite simple. We will not be able to agree a meaning of consciousness, because we do not know what consciousness is. There are ontological, unprovable issues here, dependent only on beliefs, not evidence. To quote a short extract from my PhD:
George Miller summarises the difficulty:
Consciousness is a word worn smooth by a million tongues. Depending upon the figure of speech chosen it is a state of being, a substance, a process, a place, an epiphenomenon, an emergent aspect of matter, or the only true reality’. (1962:25)
We only need to look at two of the possibilities that Miller mentions, – firstly, consciousness as an epiphenomenon (that is, in this context, a by-product of brain activity); and secondly, consciousness as the only true reality, to realise that to agree a definition is extremely problematic. People’s understanding of consciousness – and in a similar way, of the unconscious, will be influenced by the world view they hold. If a materialist, then consciousness has to be explained as an emergence from matter; if not a materialist, then the options widen in terms of there being a range of possibilities as to the exact nature of the relationship between consciousness and matter, including a question mark over whether consciousness can exist independently of matter.
As far as I am concerned, consciousness is what we all experience. A prerequisite of reading and responding to these emails is consciousness. Without consciousness, that would not be possible. I know absolutely nothing about you, the person who is reading this email (age, gender, where you live, interests, beliefs, values, qualifications, personality, absolutely nothing), other than you experience consciousness. That is rock solid certain. (Oh - and that you speak English).
But is this consciousness that we experience a by-product of the brain? Or is it the infinite, eternal source of all that exists? Or something in-between? There is no such thing as a consciousness monitor, which lets us know where consciousness is present, and where it is not. We may assume. We may think that we know. We may feel we are certain. But actually, we don't have a clue!
However, what is clear is: we firstly have our experience of consciousness; and then, an aspect of that experience of consciousness is our ability to theorise about what consciousness is (or is not). Our definitions or meanings are an expression of our experience, as are our values, beliefs, assumed certainties, etc. But in the end, our definitions and meanings are completely speculative, with no means of providing evidence to support or negate any of them - because, to repeat, we actually don't know where, what we experience as consciousness, starts and ends.
Having reached that conclusion a long time ago, and not having a particular need to continuously bang my head against a metaphorical brick wall, I'm actually more interested in exploring what consciousness is capable of, and the methods we can use to investigate its potential. Perhaps if we were to do that rather more, we may discover more about its potential. An important aspect of this, for me, is, how can we use our consciousness to prevent us conscious beings from destroying ourselves and our planet, and instead, doing what we can to contribute to the flourishing and wellbeing of all living beings and the world we live in? Getting bogged down in abstract theories about what consciousness is, or isn't, whether that is about the 'hard problem' or the 'easy problem', may be intellectually stimulating (rather like doing a crossword), but because of the ontological implications, not a particularly productive use of our scarcest resource - i.e. time.
Best wishes
Joan
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############################Hi Greg,
My general reply is no. I do see qualia as a key ingredient, but an isolated disembodied qualia?
Not disembodied. Composed of whatever qualia are, like our consciousness, just a small amount of it. How would you define the minimum necessary to be considered conscious?
Also, my journey with John oriented me more toward adverbial qualia (the hereness-nowness-togetherness) than adjectival qualia (properties like redness).
Interesting. Can you help me understand what you mean by "adverbial qualia"? To be more specific, if consciousness was remaining static, except for one pixel on the surface of the brain changing between redness and greenness, what would the objectively observable change in the brain be like which was that awareness of only that one-pixel change? Adverbs are about verbs, and verbs are about things performing actions, more of a computation about the things doing such, and such and such an adverbial manner. What is it, that is representing the thing that is doing the verb action in that manner? To me, the knowledge of the thing doing something, is the qualia, the action computation meaning, and how all that is being done, is the computation done by the binding of all that.
When redness is specified in Wikipedia, as THE example of a qualia most used, how is that redness adverbial?
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