The subjective observer is a fictional character

[SpeedOfSound]

Given the two above, which (or both) leads to self-awareness?
Is there a threshold of complexity that has to be reached?

What I am expressing is that "self-awareness" looks to me like a lot less than is sometimes made of it. We give the notion so much respect because we've simply inherited the awe that ancient people expressed in relation to it. Now we put down our superstitions, and give up hunting for ghosts. It's up to any individual whether or not she thinks the cure is worse than the disease on that account.

This thing about complexity above threshold leads to some misunderstanding. It's going to hard for me to explain that.

The complexity that we humans have going on isn't what results in awareness rather it's what makes it so difficult for us to accept that C isn't the big Buzz-Bang that we think it is. In the past I have pondered this threshold complexity and then gone on to wonder if simple worms and rocks have C too. This is bad thinking. Consciousness is something that resides in our reality only. We are matter behaving in a brain-like way. Our brains are in a reality loop with their environments and their past and this creates a sense of a subjective 'I' having experience in a moment. But that is not actually reality. Actual reality doesn't feel like anything at all. Only we brain endowed creatures feel and feeling is a process in brains whereby brains create a reality.

We are really as dead as rocks but we are more interesting indeed. At least to ourselves. Imagine yourself as an eddy in a stream. There is no supervenience here. It is just the stream eddying.

What is it like to be a bat? Like a Fucking Bat!!! Same as it ever was.

[Bruce Burleson]

It's not odd that thoughts exclusive of awareness of direct sensory inputs are not identifiable until they reach the level of language. Whether you speak them to others, or talk to yourself, some language learning is involved. At the very least, it's the only way anyone else is ever going to find out about those thoughts.

I do a fair bit of public speaking both as an attorney and as a sometimes minister, and I have often had the experience of only having a vague idea of what I wanted to say when I started to speak. But once I opened my mouth and put something in the form of a word, the floodgates are opened and the message, whatever it might be, comes out. The older I am and the more command I have of a particular subject, the more I trust in this phenomenon. The spoken word accesses the information stored in the neural networks of my brain and brings the thought/story/message/argument into being almost automatically. It is often a complete mystery to me what will come out next, but it only reveals itself as I am about to put it into words. It appears that the brain has organized a coherent thought without me even knowing it, and reveals it to my consciousness as I will or agree to put it into words. That's the subjective experience, in any event.

[Bruce Burleson]

I don't mean to leave out the remark that we do a lot of processing of environmental conditions without pushing it up into the linguistic, which is where we finally establish it as "conscious". There's a whole host of simple experiments, though, in which organisms respond non-linguistically to stimuli, such as pressing a button.

The brain does not need consciousness to function adequately. Perhaps all of us have had the experience of driving on "automatic pilot" and then suddenly realizing that 10 miles and 10 minutes have gone by and we didn't even realize it. Your brain was operating a complex piece of machinery and didn't even need "you."

[SpeedOfSound]

It's not odd that thoughts exclusive of awareness of direct sensory inputs are not identifiable until they reach the level of language. Whether you speak them to others, or talk to yourself, some language learning is involved. At the very least, it's the only way anyone else is ever going to find out about those thoughts.

I do a fair bit of public speaking both as an attorney and as a sometimes minister, and I have often had the experience of only having a vague idea of what I wanted to say when I started to speak. But once I opened my mouth and put something in the form of a word, the floodgates are opened and the message, whatever it might be, comes out. The older I am and the more command I have of a particular subject, the more I trust in this phenomenon. The spoken word accesses the information stored in the neural networks of my brain and brings the thought/story/message/argument into being almost automatically. It is often a complete mystery to me what will come out next, but it only reveals itself as I am about to put it into words. It appears that the brain has organized a coherent thought without me even knowing it, and reveals it to my consciousness as I will or agree to put it into words. That's the subjective experience, in any event.

Yeah! I have that too. I just have to trust it. If I'm listening at a group meeting all these things come to me to say and then when it's 'Show Time!' I just start weaving it all together.

That indicates that our thinking out loud has become practiced to the point of becoming as automatic as walking or riding a bike.

[SpeedOfSound]

I don't mean to leave out the remark that we do a lot of processing of environmental conditions without pushing it up into the linguistic, which is where we finally establish it as "conscious". There's a whole host of simple experiments, though, in which organisms respond non-linguistically to stimuli, such as pressing a button.

The brain does not need consciousness to function adequately. Perhaps all of us have had the experience of driving on "automatic pilot" and then suddenly realizing that 10 miles and 10 minutes have gone by and we didn't even realize it. Your brain was operating a complex piece of machinery and didn't even need "you."

My brain insists that I'm the one that causes all of the trouble in my life. Sometimes it's worse than being married.

[Bruce Burleson]

Yeah! I have that too. I just have to trust it. If I'm listening at a group meeting all these things come to me to say and then when it's 'Show Time!' I just start weaving it all together.

In fact, the more conscious I am of the process, the more likely I am to mess up. The more I let it flow, the better it is. Consciousness gets in the way at times.

[Bruce Burleson]

I don't mean to leave out the remark that we do a lot of processing of environmental conditions without pushing it up into the linguistic, which is where we finally establish it as "conscious". There's a whole host of simple experiments, though, in which organisms respond non-linguistically to stimuli, such as pressing a button.

The brain does not need consciousness to function adequately. Perhaps all of us have had the experience of driving on "automatic pilot" and then suddenly realizing that 10 miles and 10 minutes have gone by and we didn't even realize it. Your brain was operating a complex piece of machinery and didn't even need "you."

My brain insists that I'm the one that causes all of the trouble in my life. Sometimes it's worse than being married.

Consciousness is a little like insanity - we are talking to ourselves. You really have to control it to keep from going crazy. Too much introspection leads to too many voices - not just like being married, but being married to a whole harem of sisters.

[SpeedOfSound]

Yeah! I have that too. I just have to trust it. If I'm listening at a group meeting all these things come to me to say and then when it's 'Show Time!' I just start weaving it all together.

In fact, the more conscious I am of the process, the more likely I am to mess up. The more I let it flow, the better it is. Consciousness gets in the way at times.

My definition of a spiritual path is a combination of learning to trust my automatic self and learning to make changes in it as I deem necessary for integrity and consistency. It's like making repairs and then trusting the structure to bear weight.

[Bruce Burleson]

My definition of a spiritual path is a combination of learning to trust my automatic self and learning to make changes in it as I deem necessary for integrity and consistency. It's like making repairs and then trusting the structure to bear weight.

So consciousness becomes another stimulus for the brain, just like our other senses. It provides more input for the brain and directs the brain when it finds it necessary. The brain creates its own stimuli.

[SpeedOfSound]

All that stuff I was saying about neural plasticity has practical uses. Unconscious processes can be made conscious and restructured to make lasting changes in your behavior.

1. Anything that you make conscious will more likley become conscious in the future.
2. The more connections or associations you make with it the stronger and more salient the conscious experience will be.
3. Just under conscious contexts can be programmed that will last for up to a week or more.
4. These contexts can be used to thrust a previously unconscious action into the light so that it can be modified.

I have used this for learning or just remembering where I left off in a book or DVR program. My first great success was with learning to never again use the sugar bowl spoon to stir my coffee. I found that knowing that it was a physiological process in neurons that involved time and focused attention made much more sense of the process than my previous reliance on just magical thinking about the brain.

I have since used this same technique to make lasting changes in the way I interface with others and to eliminate things about my personality that I don't care for.

Better living through molecular biology.

[SpeedOfSound]

My definition of a spiritual path is a combination of learning to trust my automatic self and learning to make changes in it as I deem necessary for integrity and consistency. It's like making repairs and then trusting the structure to bear weight.

So consciousness becomes another stimulus for the brain, just like our other senses. It provides more input for the brain and directs the brain when it finds it necessary. The brain creates its own stimuli.

That is the beauty of this organ. I just posted something that is also pertinent.

[SpeedOfSound]

When I previously described the above technique someone on RDF called it cognitive therapy on steroids.

[Bruce Burleson]

I have since used this same technique to make lasting changes in the way I interface with others and to eliminate things about my personality that I don't care for.

I read something recently about the rise in the rate of autism that caught my attention. Autism is, essentially, the inability to recognize other minds. There is a correlation between noise levels that infants are exposed to and the incidence of autism. Constant background noise overloads the young brain, making too many neurons fire together and preventing the formation of critical networks or maps. Neurons that fire together wire together, and too much of this can subject these kids to seizure activity, causing significant damage. It seems that autism, to a degree, is a deficiency of consciousness, or at least it leads to that in a way. Consciousness is required to "interface with others" as you put it, and autistic children can't do this - they see other people as things that move and make noise, but there is no recognition of personhood. Perhaps they don't even have a real sense of self-awareness. There is new hope, I understand, that with the new understanding of brain plasticity that even autistic kids can be coaxed out of their shell and taught to relate to people.

[jamest]

If nothing else, this discussion has highlighted some of the rational problems faced by those wishing to explain human behaviour in terms of a 'brain model'. For obvious [and explained] reasons, for example, we cannot have brain models that depend upon brains making assumptions about a reality beyond their own internal states. And neither can we have brain models that depend upon the brain giving external meaning to its own internal states. What is needed, then, is a brain model whereby the brain's internal responses to the external environment suffice to produce appropriate behaviour/response to that environment without the brain knowing about the external realm. I might budge on some issues, but on the issue of the brain knowing nothing more than its own internal states, I remain anchored to the spot.

Currently, my main issue is that the brain does seem to know about a reality external to its own states. And what is my reason or evidence for this claim? - 'Our' thoughts and words.

... If you reduce the 'I' to the brain, then intrinsically, whatever 'I' claim that I am thinking and feeling and saying, must be attributed to the brain itself. And the fact is this: practically all humans (except a small minority) think, feel & act, as though the world beyond itself is real. This should be obvious, as most of our responses are emotionally-driven: we fear the consequences of fucking up, for example.

My mind brain is currently awhirl with lots of questions for which 'brain models' seem insufficient to answer. For example:

1) If we require a 'brain model' whereby the brain's internal responses to the external environment suffice to produce appropriate response amidst that environment, then why does the brain require 'emotion' to produce the appropriate behaviour?
2) If the brain [evidently] needs emotion to produce 'appropriate' (self-serving) behaviour, and brain states are just responses to the environment, then from whence cometh 'emotion'? Certainly, the environment cannot be responsible for a self-serving attitude, or associated emotions that drive it.
3) If the response to the external environment is a consequence of a self-serving attitude, then how can we say that the brain's internal responses to the external environment suffice to produce appropriate response amidst that environment?

I have more questions like these. The point that I'm trying to make, is that ultimately, a model of the brain will make no sense unless it addresses such questions. No model will ever be acclaimed that fails to address reasoning... whilst simultaneously failing to impress, empirically. Unfortunately, all of this chatter about finite state machines et al, isn't really getting us anywhere. It's just conjecture that fails to address the rationale behind the issues, and has no sufficient empirical backing, either, to be of any worth in this discussion.

What was supposed to be a philosophical debate has turned into a pseudoscientific debate, that is oblivious to any rational concerns... so it seems.

[jamest]

Maybe off topic.

I have been asked why I argue with guys like LI and james and others of that CosmoCon ilk. I owe them a serious debt. In the last two years I have been spurred to educate myself in ways that I never could of without them. While their arguments don't seem to change a hell of a lot mine have. Almost daily. They provide me with a little anger oriented incentive and an outline of material to digest and things to consider.

The philosophical backing to my neurology studies and the amount of world-view self-searching I have done with their help could never have been obtained in any other way, at any price.

So to my arch-enemies...

It works both ways, which is why I'm not a member of an idealist forum.