Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Consul]

If selves are bodies, then bodily awareness is self-awareness, i.e. awareness of oneself qua body.

Okay I can't think of a way where this wordplay makes sense (unless some sort of dualism or trialism).
Selves are 'bodily' parts of some organisms, but most organisms are 'bodies' without a self.
One can't be aware of oneself 'qua' body, because 'one' and 'awareness' are also parts of the body.

First of all, I don't like the noun "self", so I prefer to use "subject" instead.
Anyway, there's a distinction between the perceiving, the perceived, and the perceiver. In the case of self-perception (perception of oneself), the perceived and the perceiver are identical—or at least partially identical if the perceived is only a part of the perceiver. In my view, perceiving subjects are a sort of material objects, i.e. living bodies or organisms. Self-perception is either perception of one's body—the body one is, not the body one has, strictly speaking—or perception of one's mind/consciousness.

[Atla]

If selves are bodies, then bodily awareness is self-awareness, i.e. awareness of oneself qua body.

Okay I can't think of a way where this wordplay makes sense (unless some sort of dualism or trialism).
Selves are 'bodily' parts of some organisms, but most organisms are 'bodies' without a self.
One can't be aware of oneself 'qua' body, because 'one' and 'awareness' are also parts of the body.

First of all, I don't like the noun "self", so I prefer to use "subject" instead.
Anyway, there's a distinction between the perceiving, the perceived, and the perceiver. In the case of self-perception (perception of oneself), the perceived and the perceiver are identical—or at least partially identical if the perceived is only a part of the perceiver. In my view, perceiving subjects are a sort of material objects, i.e. living bodies or organisms. Self-perception is either perception of one's body—the body one is, not the body one has, strictly speaking—or perception of one's mind/consciousness.

When it comes to self-awareness, perceiving perceived and perceiver are more ore less one and the same process. And one's mind/consciousness is part of one's body, or in other words, one's body is the outer layers of one's mind/consciousness.

The point is that without self-awareness, there is no "subject" to begin with, it's the one genuine emergence that happens when brains get big and complex enough in certain ways.

[NickGaspar]

…For example I suspect that magpies can recognize their own image, but aren't actually self-aware with that few neurons. Not sure, maybe they are.

There are quite a few neurons in a magpie's brain:

Birds pack more cells into their brains than mammals

Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain

By the way, I recently came upon this nice video:

That still seems way too low to me, it says magpies have ~1 billion neurons. Let's look at humans and other species which I'd say are probably self-aware: elephants, whales, dolphins, great apes (some/most subscecies of them), all on the order of 10 billion neurons.

Doesn't seem to add up, self-awareness seems to be the one genuine soft-emergence in brains, and it needs the numbers. Unless those 1 billion neurons for magpies are shaped in an unusually efficient way, in an unusually small volume, for genuine self-awareness. But I suspect what has happened here is that their brains are shaped in a way that imitates self-recognition.

Neuroscience 101. The number of neurons is not the most important thing in brains.(its function and connectivity).
i.e Neanderthals had bigger brains but their mental capabilities were not good enough to help them avoid winning the Darwin award.
Now some more Neuroscience 101. Unconscious Self awareness and Conscious states are enable by the brain stem. There is NO NEED for a huge structure of neurons for those two fundamental properties to emerge. So all organisms with a brain can consciously process stimuli, their self awareness included.
Now all the additional brain structures introduce the rest of the mind properties (reason, memory, pattern recognition,symbolic thinking etc) enabling a far greater quality of conscious awareness (the content which people find "impossible"for matter to produce).

Again an actual academic Mooc on the subject will provide you with the knowledge to help you understand what really "seems to add up" or not.

[Atla]

…For example I suspect that magpies can recognize their own image, but aren't actually self-aware with that few neurons. Not sure, maybe they are.

There are quite a few neurons in a magpie's brain:

Birds pack more cells into their brains than mammals

Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain

By the way, I recently came upon this nice video:

That still seems way too low to me, it says magpies have ~1 billion neurons. Let's look at humans and other species which I'd say are probably self-aware: elephants, whales, dolphins, great apes (some/most subscecies of them), all on the order of 10 billion neurons.

Doesn't seem to add up, self-awareness seems to be the one genuine soft-emergence in brains, and it needs the numbers. Unless those 1 billion neurons for magpies are shaped in an unusually efficient way, in an unusually small volume, for genuine self-awareness. But I suspect what has happened here is that their brains are shaped in a way that imitates self-recognition.

Neuroscience 101. The number of neurons is not the most important thing in brains.(its function and connectivity).
i.e Neanderthals had bigger brains but their mental capabilities were not good enough to help them avoid winning the Darwin award.
Now some more Neuroscience 101. Unconscious Self awareness and Conscious states are enable by the brain stem. There is NO NEED for a huge structure of neurons for those two fundamental properties to emerge. So all organisms with a brain can consciously process stimuli, their self awareness included.
Now all the additional brain structures introduce the rest of the mind properties (reason, memory, pattern recognition,symbolic thinking etc) enabling a far greater quality of conscious awareness (the content which people find "impossible"for matter to produce).

Again an actual academic Mooc on the subject will provide you with the knowledge to help you understand what really "seems to add up" or not.

Due to your usual incompetence, you have no idea what you're replying to. Neuroscience 101, most organisms with a brain stem don't pass the mirror test. And show no signs in general of having a sense of self.

[Consul]

The point is that without self-awareness, there is no "subject" to begin with, it's the one genuine emergence that happens when brains get big and complex enough in certain ways.

What about the possibility of a subject which is aware of other things but not itself, its own body or mind?

[Consul]

Neuroscience 101. The number of neurons is not the most important thing in brains.(its function and connectivity).
i.e Neanderthals had bigger brains but their mental capabilities were not good enough to help them avoid winning the Darwin award.

"Crucially, neurons in the brains of these species [of birds] are packed far more densely than in the brains of other species, and so contain many more cells than small monkeys of roughly equivalent size."

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/neu ... an-mammals

So, given that nerve cells in a brain can be packed more or less densely, same brain volume ≠ same number of neurons, and larger brain volume ≠ larger number of neurons.

[Sy Borg]

There are quite a few neurons in a magpie's brain:

Birds pack more cells into their brains than mammals

Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain

That still seems way too low to me, it says magpies have ~1 billion neurons. Let's look at humans and other species which I'd say are probably self-aware: elephants, whales, dolphins, great apes (some/most subscecies of them), all on the order of 10 billion neurons.

Doesn't seem to add up, self-awareness seems to be the one genuine soft-emergence in brains, and it needs the numbers. Unless those 1 billion neurons for magpies are shaped in an unusually efficient way, in an unusually small volume, for genuine self-awareness. But I suspect what has happened here is that their brains are shaped in a way that imitates self-recognition.

Neuroscience 101. The number of neurons is not the most important thing in brains.(its function and connectivity).
i.e Neanderthals had bigger brains but their mental capabilities were not good enough to help them avoid winning the Darwin award.
Now some more Neuroscience 101. Unconscious Self awareness and Conscious states are enable by the brain stem. There is NO NEED for a huge structure of neurons for those two fundamental properties to emerge. So all organisms with a brain can consciously process stimuli, their self awareness included.
Now all the additional brain structures introduce the rest of the mind properties (reason, memory, pattern recognition,symbolic thinking etc) enabling a far greater quality of conscious awareness (the content which people find "impossible"for matter to produce).

Again an actual academic Mooc on the subject will provide you with the knowledge to help you understand what really "seems to add up" or not.

D̶u̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶u̶s̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶o̶m̶p̶e̶t̶e̶n̶c̶e̶,̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶i̶d̶e̶a̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶p̶l̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶. Neuroscience 101, most organisms with a brain stem don't pass the mirror test. And show no signs in general of having a sense of self.

Go easy on the ad homs please, Atla. You could have made the same point without the struck-out passage above.

Putting aside rules of engagement (which are about as much fun as paperwork), I think the mirror test is overestimated. Humans are an unusually visually-oriented species. Most people would fail to recognise their own smell in an equivalent test, but scent-oriented species that fail the mirror test would easily recognise their own smell as easily as we recognise our own reflection.

Like Consul, I am unsure whether a sense of self is essential to feel the sensations of life, although it's clearly needed to care about that life, or to emote generally. Different selves can be hard to relate to - even the weakly defined self of an infant, who sees itself and mother as one composite self until mental separation occurs during the "no phase", where toddlers practice being a self rather than an appendage of the mother/baby self. So it's hard to imagine the kinds of weakly defined, or even downright weird, senses of self that might exist in wild species, especially simpler ones.

[Consul]

Recommended reading:

Lisa Feldman Barrett: Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain

[Atla]

The point is that without self-awareness, there is no "subject" to begin with, it's the one genuine emergence that happens when brains get big and complex enough in certain ways.

What about the possibility of a subject which is aware of other things but not itself, its own body or mind?

Yeah that's harder to spot, I guess all you can do is try to deduce from their behaviour whether or not there is a "subject", an awareness there.

[Atla]

That still seems way too low to me, it says magpies have ~1 billion neurons. Let's look at humans and other species which I'd say are probably self-aware: elephants, whales, dolphins, great apes (some/most subscecies of them), all on the order of 10 billion neurons.

Doesn't seem to add up, self-awareness seems to be the one genuine soft-emergence in brains, and it needs the numbers. Unless those 1 billion neurons for magpies are shaped in an unusually efficient way, in an unusually small volume, for genuine self-awareness. But I suspect what has happened here is that their brains are shaped in a way that imitates self-recognition.

Neuroscience 101. The number of neurons is not the most important thing in brains.(its function and connectivity).
i.e Neanderthals had bigger brains but their mental capabilities were not good enough to help them avoid winning the Darwin award.
Now some more Neuroscience 101. Unconscious Self awareness and Conscious states are enable by the brain stem. There is NO NEED for a huge structure of neurons for those two fundamental properties to emerge. So all organisms with a brain can consciously process stimuli, their self awareness included.
Now all the additional brain structures introduce the rest of the mind properties (reason, memory, pattern recognition,symbolic thinking etc) enabling a far greater quality of conscious awareness (the content which people find "impossible"for matter to produce).

Again an actual academic Mooc on the subject will provide you with the knowledge to help you understand what really "seems to add up" or not.

D̶u̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶u̶s̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶o̶m̶p̶e̶t̶e̶n̶c̶e̶,̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶i̶d̶e̶a̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶p̶l̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶. Neuroscience 101, most organisms with a brain stem don't pass the mirror test. And show no signs in general of having a sense of self.

Go easy on the ad homs please, Atla. You could have made the same point without the struck-out passage above.

Putting aside rules of engagement (which are about as much fun as paperwork), I think the mirror test is overestimated. Humans are an unusually visually-oriented species. Most people would fail to recognise their own smell in an equivalent test, but scent-oriented species that fail the mirror test would easily recognise their own smell as easily as we recognise our own reflection.

Like Consul, I am unsure whether a sense of self is essential to feel the sensations of life, although it's clearly needed to care about that life, or to emote generally. Different selves can be hard to relate to - even the weakly defined self of an infant, who sees itself and mother as one composite self until mental separation occurs during the "no phase", where toddlers practice being a self rather than an appendage of the mother/baby self. So it's hard to imagine the kinds of weakly defined, or even downright weird, senses of self that might exist in wild species, especially simpler ones.

I could have, but people are welcome here who typically only bring ad homs to the table without anything worthwhile to say (NickGaspar, Faustus, Terrapin, Sculptor for example), so then we play the ad hom game (while showing them wrong). But I can stop with it if necessary.

Yes the mirror test may give some false positives but also many false negatives, it's nowhere near reliable.
I didn't claim that a sense of self is essential to feel the sensations of life, nor did I see Consul comment on that.

[Consul]

What about the possibility of a subject which is aware of other things but not itself, its own body or mind?

Yeah that's harder to spot, I guess all you can do is try to deduce from their behaviour whether or not there is a "subject", an awareness there.

You wrote that "without self-awareness, there is no 'subject' to begin with," so my question concerns the ontology of subjecthood rather than the epistemology of other subjects.

[Atla]

What about the possibility of a subject which is aware of other things but not itself, its own body or mind?

Yeah that's harder to spot, I guess all you can do is try to deduce from their behaviour whether or not there is a "subject", an awareness there.

You wrote that "without self-awareness, there is no 'subject' to begin with," so my question concerns the ontology of subjecthood rather than the epistemology of other subjects.

That's what I meant too. Self-aware organisms that for some reason can't recognize themselves, are more difficult to identify. For example some human babies might reach self-awareness before recognizing themselves.

[NickGaspar]

Neuroscience 101. The number of neurons is not the most important thing in brains.(its function and connectivity).
i.e Neanderthals had bigger brains but their mental capabilities were not good enough to help them avoid winning the Darwin award.

"Crucially, neurons in the brains of these species [of birds] are packed far more densely than in the brains of other species, and so contain many more cells than small monkeys of roughly equivalent size."

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/neu ... an-mammals

So, given that nerve cells in a brain can be packed more or less densely, same brain volume ≠ same number of neurons, and larger brain volume ≠ larger number of neurons.

Correct. That is a fact for different group of species. In the case of the Homo genus though and in within a group of closely related species,we don't find such huge differences in how neurons are "compressed". What we do find is neuronal connectivity and function making a huge different in specific groups, which is mainly environmentally influenced. After all we know that Neanderthal shared many mental characteristics with us.We find evidence of rituals and social organization(small groups) and symbolic thinking.Unfortunately we don't have a Neanderthal brain but we also don't have reasons to accept the dramatic difference in neuronal density between two interbreeding "species" .

[NickGaspar]

Not long ago, wondering what came before the Big bang was considered a question of questionable coherence. Things change, especially in frontier areas of science.

Yes, it was "not long ago" we didn't have any observations on the first moments of Big Bang so we didn't have any epistemic foundations on projecting the implications of the laws of physics in our metaphysics. This changed with our technological advances in our observations.
Not long ago, we assumed the idea of chemical transmutation of metals was possible...now we know that we need to act at a subatomic level with immense quantities of power to alter metals.
So, as you can see, things can go both ways. Your arguments is more of a fallacious cherry picking than a real reason to start taking the "hard problem" of Chalmers seriously, plus we are dealing with ''why" questions when nature and science doesn't do "whys" without any demonstration that "why" is real

That said I will point out that the concept of "a brute or raw experience" is identified in Philosophy of Mind as a "Cataleptic Impression".
Cataleptic Impression is nothing more than a stimuli picked up by our sensory system and carried in our brain by our nervous system. There the brain tries to produce a narrative based on previous experiences and the best empirically verified interpretation (this is why we don't leave babies on their own, because they don't have their own narrative of this wold yet and that can be really dangerous for them).
We can experience such moments of raw experience where we stare at something, possibly from a different angle and be baffled and unable to process what we are really seeing. This is because the narrative of that image hasn't been installed by any previous experiences.Spiritual experiences are also a type of raw experience, which can be caused by all sort of physical environmental and organic stimuli. Since the narrative isn't there, we rush to reason by projecting our biased narrative on those experiences.

So in the case of the "brutal raw experience", we can agree for its value as a question, but in your insistence on equating "why" questions about a mind property with our questions about the moments before the big bang, I will disagree and direct you to the above reasons.

Still, once you are looking at human consciousness, you are already quite a long way from the source. It's akin to being on the ISS, trying to observe honey badgers on the Earth.

And how would you know that? In science we observe the necessary and sufficient mechanisms responsible for enabling this state, we identify the mechanism responsible for its content and how we can alter it and affect it. Science disagrees with your statement and since it is far more systematic and methodological way to know things why should we ever consider any of these philosophical objections?
Hw can you demonstrate the truth value of your claim?

Yes, we need to track back from the neuron

-Again, why and what is your evidence? And if we quit on neuron....what is there to observe investigate and test.....Philosophical ideas?How can we even construct an epistemology without direct Strong Correlations, verification through accurate predictions and application to all the above in reall life technical applications.

I would, as discussed, look back into microbial sensory organelles. Yes, it's a long way from the extreme complexity of human brains and minds. Many claim that consciousness is indivisible, like a river is indivisible, but consciousness is composed of interconnected reflexes in roughly the same way as water is composed of connected molecules.

-You are distracted by the label. Just because we label a process it doesn't mean it is an "indivisible entity". Its a process which enables organisms with brains to be aroused by stimuli and process them based on their previous interpretations of those stimuli. When you are awake, snapping my fingers will be more than enough to make your brain direct your attention to me. Then the connections of your brain provide the necessary info (stored by previous experiences of similar phenomena) for the content of your current conscious experience.
None of the concepts of "indivisibility, or rivers or waters or connected molecules offer anything of value in the conversation. Studying the mechanisms enabling the arousal of the specific area (ARASystem) and how the other areas of our brain store the interpretations of previous experiences and provide it when is needed is the way to do it. Sorry but your lines above is a classic example of woo and deepities.

One might argue that a water molecule does not have the properties of water; that a molecule is not "wet", just as reflexes don't have self-awareness. That's emergence, where a connected group develops qualities that its individuals do not, eg. Humanity builds skyscrapers and space stations, which individual humans cannot.

That is the whole idea behind emergence. You can look individual water molecules under a powerful microscope and you will never see, the property of surface tension, the proper of two explosive molecules to have fire extinguishing properties , or why water expands when frozen, or why it can exist in all 3 states etc etc.
All weird properties of water emerge from its structure ....not by the properties found in its individual molecules.

So, while there are clear differences between reflexes and consciousness, there are fundamental similarities. There is nothing in nature closer to consciousness than reflexes. I do not believe in "biological machines" exist, that sensing is actually felt by relatively tiny and subtle life forms in much the same way as Brownian motion is unimportant to beings of our size but significant to microbes.

-I am not sure you that you use a proper definition of consciousness. Consciousness is the brain state that allow us to be aware of a reflex after it happens. There was a great study where doctors were stimulating the part of the brain that jerked their patients' arm. Doctors asked every individual why they did that and ALL provided a narrative on why it was their "choice" to...."point to the nurse".
Biological "machines" and mechanisms exist in all organisms. Plants are a great example of that. Our reflexes and our Autonomic nervous system are too.

So, if organisms are sensing and responding to their environment to obtain food and to avoid threats, then they would seem to be experiencing some simple sense of being alive, just that the mechanisms behind it are still to be explored.

-Correct, the unconscious self awareness is a driving force for every living organism with a brain stem.

Or panpsychism might be correct, that consciousness exists in ever greater subtlety and simplicity, the further down one drills. Or materialism might be correct and the situation is closer to the conceptions you prefer. It would be nice if research was not so much about human brains but, if I am the one paying for research grants, I'd also wanting projects that make a difference in medicine rather than blue skies work.

That is a fallacious statement. Consciousness is not something in existence. Its a biological process that produces a property which allows organisms to be aware, record aspects of their environment and by utilizing other areas and properties of the brain to inform their future experiences caused by known stimuli.
So Panpsychism is nothing more than a poisoning the well fallacy based on an irrational and unfounded existential claim (consciousness being a substance in nature).
Materialism is also an indefensible worldview. We don't need to accept a burden of an absolute claim! We can only focus on what we currently know and what we can investigate!(Methodological naturalism).

-"It would be nice if research was not so much about human brains but, if I am the one paying for research grants, I'd also wanting projects that make a difference in medicine rather than blue skies work."

-We can not research something which its existence, as a substance or indivisible entity, isn't verified!. We also can not study mechanisms that do not display Strong Correlations with the phenomenon in question.
This is supernaturalism, we currently don't have a method to investigate the "possibility" of mind properties in addition to nature.
We have been assuming those principles for centuries. Only after the scientific revolution and by replacing those principles with those of methodological naturalism we managed to advance our understanding and epistemology.
Essentially you are demanding from science to go back to an epistemically failed set of principles...back in the dark ages of knowledge.

[Consul]

That said I will point out that the concept of "a brute or raw experience" is identified in Philosophy of Mind as a "Cataleptic Impression".
Cataleptic Impression is nothing more than a stimuli picked up by our sensory system and carried in our brain by our nervous system.

The phrase "cataleptic impression" belongs to the epistemology of the ancient Stoics, and it refers to a veridical sense-impression by means of which one can "grasp" reality and thereby acquire knowledge of it.

QUOTE>
"But what, precisely, is this ‘cataleptic impression’?
—[footnote 1:]
I transliterate the kataleptike of kataleptike phantasia, in preference to any of the several possible translations. kataleptike is the verbal adjective from katalambanein, grasp or get a grip on, and it is the impression which gets a grip on reality.
—
According to Diogenes Laertius, the Stoics held that…
—
…there are two types of impression, one cataleptic, the other noncataleptic; the cataleptic, which they hold to be the criterion of matters, is that which comes from something existent and is in accordance with the existent thing itself, and has been stamped and imprinted (enapesphragismenen kai enapomemagmenen); the noncataleptic either comes from something nonexistent, or if from something existent then not in accordance with the existent thing; and it is neither clear (enarges), nor distinct. (…)
—
So the Stoics do not hold that all perceptions are true, as notoriously do the Epicureans (…), whatever precisely that is supposed to mean. A cataleptic impression, then, satisfies the following conditions:

CIi: it derives from an existent object;
CIii: it accurately represents that object;
and
CIiii: it is ‘stamped and imprinted’ on the sensoria.

Taken together, CIi–iii represent Zeno’s first definition (D1) of the notion of a cataleptic impression."

(Hankinson, R. J. "Stoic Epistemology." In The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, edited by Brad Inwood, 59-84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. pp. 60-1)
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