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

[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".

William James famously describes a baby's perceptual experience of the world "as one great blooming, buzzing confusion." But no matter how fuzzy or indistinct their perceptual fields are, the question is whether babies (or adults) subjectively experience anything at all in any way if they are not aware or conscious of their experiences in any way. What I mean by "brute/raw experience" is experience which occurs independently of whether or not its subject is aware or conscious of it, and my question is whether such nonconscious experience is possible, and whether it is still experience rather than nonexperience.

QUOTE>
"[A]re to undergo an experience and to know it inseparable aspects of the same process; or are they two processes, so that possibly the undergoing can occur without the knowing?
This belongs to those great problems which have divided psychologists into two camps from the earliest days. Plato appears to have sided with the view that cognition is contingent only and can upon occasion fail to occur. Plotinus, and borrowing from him, Leibniz, advocated this emphatically. Since then it would seem to have been much more often held than not, especially conspicuous among its defenders being Kant, Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and Hamilton. During the last few years an enthusiastic support for it has been brought by Freud and his followers. But on the other side also there have explicitly ranged themselves numerous eminent authorities, from Descartes and Locke onwards—not to mention a host of further writers who have tacitly rejected the possibility of uncognized experience inasmuch as they have ignored it."

(Spearman, Charles. The Nature of 'Intelligence' and the Principles of Cognition. London: Macmillan & Co., 1927. p. 60)
<QUOTE

[NickGaspar]

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)
<QUOTE

-Correct, the concept of Cataleptic Impression (καταληπτική εντυπωση) was first articulated by the ancient Stoics. In modern Philosophy of mind we use the term to identify ineffable, empty of any narrative experience.
Religious, small children and every day experiences empty of content/narrative can be used as examples of a "first" Impression (Cataleptic).
The narrative (theory) descriptive of an experience is something that we build throughout our life.

[Consul]

Recommended reading:

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

QUOTE>
"ONCE UPON A TIME, the Earth was ruled by creatures without brains. This is not a political statement, just a biological one.

One of these creatures was the amphioxus. If you ever glimpsed one, you’d probably mistake it for a little worm until you noticed the gill-like slits on either side of its body. Amphioxi populated the oceans about 550 million years ago, and they lived simple lives. An amphioxus could propel itself through the water, thanks to a very basic system for movement. It also had an exceedingly simple way of eating: it planted itself in the seafloor, like a blade of grass, and consumed any minuscule creatures that happened to drift into its mouth. Taste and smell were of no concern because an amphioxus didn’t have senses like yours. It had no eyes, just a few cells to detect changes in light, and it could not hear. Its meager nervous system included a teeny clump of cells that was not quite a brain. An amphioxus, you could say, was a stomach on a stick.

Amphioxi are your distant cousins, and they’re still around today. When you look at a modern amphioxus, you behold a creature very similar to your own ancient, tiny ancestor who roamed the same seas.

Can you picture a little wormy creature, two inches long, swaying in the current of a prehistoric ocean, and glimpse humanity’s evolutionary
journey? It’s difficult. You have so much that the ancient amphioxus did not: a few hundred bones, an abundance of internal organs, some limbs, a nose, a charming smile, and, most important, a brain. The amphioxus didn’t need a brain. Its cells for sensing were connected to its cells for moving, so it reacted to its watery world without much processing. You, however, have an intricate, powerful brain that gives rise to mental events as diverse as thoughts, emotions, memories, and dreams — an internal life that shapes so much of what is distinctive and meaningful about your existence."
—Lisa Feldman Barrett: Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain
<QUOTE

A primitive sensorimotor mechanism as we find it in Amphioxi is brain-independent, but there is no reason to suppose that that mechanism involves some form of phenomenal consciousness. Amphioxi are phenomenal zombies!

[NickGaspar]

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".

William James famously describes a baby's perceptual experience of the world "as one great blooming, buzzing confusion." But no matter how fuzzy or indistinct their perceptual fields are, the question is whether babies (or adults) subjectively experience anything at all in any way if they are not aware or conscious of their experiences in any way. What I mean by "brute/raw experience" is experience which occurs independently of whether or not its subject is aware or conscious of it, and my question is whether such nonconscious experience is possible, and whether it is still experience rather than nonexperience.

QUOTE>
"[A]re to undergo an experience and to know it inseparable aspects of the same process; or are they two processes, so that possibly the undergoing can occur without the knowing?
This belongs to those great problems which have divided psychologists into two camps from the earliest days. Plato appears to have sided with the view that cognition is contingent only and can upon occasion fail to occur. Plotinus, and borrowing from him, Leibniz, advocated this emphatically. Since then it would seem to have been much more often held than not, especially conspicuous among its defenders being Kant, Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and Hamilton. During the last few years an enthusiastic support for it has been brought by Freud and his followers. But on the other side also there have explicitly ranged themselves numerous eminent authorities, from Descartes and Locke onwards—not to mention a host of further writers who have tacitly rejected the possibility of uncognized experience inasmuch as they have ignored it."

(Spearman, Charles. The Nature of 'Intelligence' and the Principles of Cognition. London: Macmillan & Co., 1927. p. 60)
<QUOTE

William James description is interesting but I will skip it for now to address your question.
You wrote that:" What I mean by "brute/raw experience" is experience which occurs independently of whether or not its subject is aware or conscious of it, and my question is whether such nonconscious experience is possible, and whether it is still experience rather than nonexperience."
-Well to answer that question we need to agree on the meaning of the word "experience". From what I understand an experience is a the process where a stimuli forces an organism to react consciously or unconsciously.
A great example on a behavior caused by an unconscious experience is our habit to touch our face hundred of times during a day (a huge problem during a pandemic). We do it unconsciously mainly as a result of unconscious stimuli created by itches and tickles felt on our skin.
Unconsciously I "choose" which letters I have to strike to compose this reply...while I consciously try to compose my thoughts!
Unconsciously I am irritated by a loud noise outside my window. Unconsciously I become hostile to a different group of people due to an underlying bad smell in a room(Social experiments).
The number of experiences our organisms address unconsciously is many far greater then the conscious ones.

Now a Cataleptic Impression is not an unconscious experience, so maybe I am talking something completely different when I address "brute/raw experience."
Its an experience which is processed by our conscious state but either the specific area of the brain that stores that is not "on line" or no previous experience resembles this new one. This results to n experience without a narrative or content for a brief moment.
Soon enough the rest of our high cognitive systems kick in and ''fabricate" a narrative. This is common with Religious and spiritual experiences.

[Consul]

William James description is interesting but I will skip it for now to address your question.
You wrote that:" What I mean by "brute/raw experience" is experience which occurs independently of whether or not its subject is aware or conscious of it, and my question is whether such nonconscious experience is possible, and whether it is still experience rather than nonexperience."
-Well to answer that question we need to agree on the meaning of the word "experience". From what I understand an experience is a the process where a stimuli forces an organism to react consciously or unconsciously.
A great example on a behavior caused by an unconscious experience is our habit to touch our face hundred of times during a day (a huge problem during a pandemic). We do it unconsciously mainly as a result of unconscious stimuli created by itches and tickles felt on our skin.
Unconsciously I "choose" which letters I have to strike to compose this reply...while I consciously try to compose my thoughts!
Unconsciously I am irritated by a loud noise outside my window. Unconsciously I become hostile to a different group of people due to an underlying bad smell in a room(Social experiments).
The number of experiences our organisms address unconsciously is many far greater then the conscious ones.

Now a Cataleptic Impression is not an unconscious experience, so maybe I am talking something completely different when I address "brute/raw experience."
Its an experience which is processed by our conscious state but either the specific area of the brain that stores that is not "on line" or no previous experience resembles this new one. This results to n experience without a narrative or content for a brief moment.
Soon enough the rest of our high cognitive systems kick in and ''fabricate" a narrative. This is common with Religious and spiritual experiences.

By "experience" I mean "first-person", subjective experience, subjective mental content (qua possible object of introspection), i.e. inner "impressions and ideas [images]".

(Impressions are "all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas I mean the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning." – D. Hume)

There is no doubt that perceptual states can be (phenomenally) nonconscious in the sense of lacking any subjective experiential content. (Phenomenally) Nonconscious perception is perception without subjective sensation. Actually, most (neuro-)cognitive processes don't involve phenomenal consciousness.

The phrase "nonconscious experience" is ambiguous between "phenomenally nonconscious experience" and "(phenomenally conscious) experience of which its subject is not cognitively/perceptually conscious (aware)". In the first sense the phrase is a contradiction in terms, since an experiential state is a phenomenally conscious state by definition; but in the second sense it is not, because in this sense a nonconscious experience is an unknown (uncognized/unperceived/unattended/unnoticed) experience.

When it is asked whether nonconscious experience is possible, the phrase "nonconscious experience" is used in the second sense: Must experience be known (by its subject) in order to be had or undergone (by its subject)? Does the "givenness" of experience (to its subject) depend on its knownness (by the subject)?

Locke defines "consciousness" as "the perception of what passes in a man's own mind." Leibniz calls this inner perception of one's conscious mind "apperception":

"It is well to make the distinction between perception, which is the internal state of the monad representing external things, and apperception, which is consciousness or the reflexive knowledge of this internal state itself and which is not given to all souls, nor at all times to the same soul." (G. W. Leibniz, Principles of Nature and Grace, 1714)

And in Latin he defines "apperceptio" as "perceptio melior, cum attentione et memoria coniuncta" ("better/enhanced perception conjoined with attention and memory").

I now strongly tend to believe that there is no "brute" or "raw" experiential "givenness", i.e. no experience without any apperceptual "takenness" and knownness—which is to say that totally noncognized experience is nonexperience.

Interestingly, according to the global-workspace model of phenomenal consciousness, its experiential content is identical with the access-conscious nonconceptual content of the global workspace aka working memory. ("Working memory is thought to provide a central 'workspace' in the mind." – P. Carruthers) And working memory cooperates with the cognitive module responsible for attention.

Accordingly, one can say that experiential states are apperception-dependent in the sense that there is nothing experiential or "impressive" about them unless their qualitative contents ("qualia") are apperceived by being part of the attended contents of working memory. Attention comes in different degrees, but degree zero means the absence of attention and thereby the absence of phenomenal consciousness; so attention (some minimal nonzero degree of it at least) is necessary for phenomenal consciousness. Totally non-(ap)perceived, non-cognized experience is non-experience!

Sounds pretty plausible to me…

[Consul]

…Accordingly, one can say that experiential states are apperception-dependent in the sense that there is nothing experiential or "impressive" about them unless their qualitative contents ("qualia") are apperceived by being part of the attended contents of working memory. Attention comes in different degrees, but degree zero means the absence of attention and thereby the absence of phenomenal consciousness; so attention (some minimal nonzero degree of it at least) is necessary for phenomenal consciousness. Totally non-(ap)perceived, non-cognized experience is non-experience!

Are there "sensations which are above the limen [threshold] of stimulus, but below the limen of attention?" (Edward Titchener)
No, I don't think there is such a twilight zone of nonconscious experience between nonexperience and conscious experience.
However, one can be more or less attentively conscious of an experience; so conscious experience isn't the same as fully/maximally conscious experience.

[NickGaspar]

William James description is interesting but I will skip it for now to address your question.
You wrote that:" What I mean by "brute/raw experience" is experience which occurs independently of whether or not its subject is aware or conscious of it, and my question is whether such nonconscious experience is possible, and whether it is still experience rather than nonexperience."
-Well to answer that question we need to agree on the meaning of the word "experience". From what I understand an experience is a the process where a stimuli forces an organism to react consciously or unconsciously.
A great example on a behavior caused by an unconscious experience is our habit to touch our face hundred of times during a day (a huge problem during a pandemic). We do it unconsciously mainly as a result of unconscious stimuli created by itches and tickles felt on our skin.
Unconsciously I "choose" which letters I have to strike to compose this reply...while I consciously try to compose my thoughts!
Unconsciously I am irritated by a loud noise outside my window. Unconsciously I become hostile to a different group of people due to an underlying bad smell in a room(Social experiments).
The number of experiences our organisms address unconsciously is many far greater then the conscious ones.

Now a Cataleptic Impression is not an unconscious experience, so maybe I am talking something completely different when I address "brute/raw experience."
Its an experience which is processed by our conscious state but either the specific area of the brain that stores that is not "on line" or no previous experience resembles this new one. This results to n experience without a narrative or content for a brief moment.
Soon enough the rest of our high cognitive systems kick in and ''fabricate" a narrative. This is common with Religious and spiritual experiences.

By "experience" I mean "first-person", subjective experience, subjective mental content (qua possible object of introspection), i.e. inner "impressions and ideas [images]".

(Impressions are "all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas I mean the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning." – D. Hume)

There is no doubt that perceptual states can be (phenomenally) nonconscious in the sense of lacking any subjective experiential content. (Phenomenally) Nonconscious perception is perception without subjective sensation. Actually, most (neuro-)cognitive processes don't involve phenomenal consciousness.

The phrase "nonconscious experience" is ambiguous between "phenomenally nonconscious experience" and "(phenomenally conscious) experience of which its subject is not cognitively/perceptually conscious (aware)". In the first sense the phrase is a contradiction in terms, since an experiential state is a phenomenally conscious state by definition; but in the second sense it is not, because in this sense a nonconscious experience is an unknown (uncognized/unperceived/unattended/unnoticed) experience.

When it is asked whether nonconscious experience is possible, the phrase "nonconscious experience" is used in the second sense: Must experience be known (by its subject) in order to be had or undergone (by its subject)? Does the "givenness" of experience (to its subject) depend on its knownness (by the subject)?

Locke defines "consciousness" as "the perception of what passes in a man's own mind." Leibniz calls this inner perception of one's conscious mind "apperception":

"It is well to make the distinction between perception, which is the internal state of the monad representing external things, and apperception, which is consciousness or the reflexive knowledge of this internal state itself and which is not given to all souls, nor at all times to the same soul." (G. W. Leibniz, Principles of Nature and Grace, 1714)

And in Latin he defines "apperceptio" as "perceptio melior, cum attentione et memoria coniuncta" ("better/enhanced perception conjoined with attention and memory").

I now strongly tend to believe that there is no "brute" or "raw" experiential "givenness", i.e. no experience without any apperceptual "takenness" and knownness—which is to say that totally noncognized experience is nonexperience.

Interestingly, according to the global-workspace model of phenomenal consciousness, its experiential content is identical with the access-conscious nonconceptual content of the global workspace aka working memory. ("Working memory is thought to provide a central 'workspace' in the mind." – P. Carruthers) And working memory cooperates with the cognitive module responsible for attention.

Accordingly, one can say that experiential states are apperception-dependent in the sense that there is nothing experiential or "impressive" about them unless their qualitative contents ("qualia") are apperceived by being part of the attended contents of working memory. Attention comes in different degrees, but degree zero means the absence of attention and thereby the absence of phenomenal consciousness; so attention (some minimal nonzero degree of it at least) is necessary for phenomenal consciousness. Totally non-(ap)perceived, non-cognized experience is non-experience!

Sounds pretty plausible to me…

So before we continue and in my effort to put aside any obstacle created by semantics, do we agree that a brain "experiences"(receives, processes, manages etc) stimuli from the world and the body inside and outside of its conscious state? So does the brain interacts consciously and unconsciously with organic and environmental stimuli?

[Consul]

So before we continue and in my effort to put aside any obstacle created by semantics, do we agree that a brain "experiences"(receives, processes, manages etc) stimuli from the world and the body inside and outside of its conscious state? So does the brain interacts consciously and unconsciously with organic and environmental stimuli?

Yes, there is both conscious and nonconscious information processing.

[Consul]

Yes, there is both conscious and nonconscious information processing.

But the conscious part of the mind is much smaller than the nonconscious one.

"More and more evidence is providing support for the notion that it is our unconscious processing that forms the overwhelming majority of brain functions. …Most brain processes are not conscious: the limited capacity of the contents of consciousness at any given moment are represented by the “tip of the iceberg.” The vast store of largely unconscious knowledge and representations is not available; however, much of it is retrievable from stable knowledge.

The Theater of the Mind and Its Stage:
Several aspects of the contents of consciousness are important to note: they are limited in capacity, controlled by voluntary attention, and directed by executive functions. Baars developed a “theater of consciousness” analogy to help understand the many “players” on the
stage of consciousness (…).
According to this analogy, the entire theater—stage, audience, players, and backstage area—form the basis of conscious and unconscious brain processes (Figure 1.8 ). The theater stage represents working memory. A spotlight on the stage represents voluntary attention. Only the stage contents illuminated by the attentional spotlight are conscious. The rest of the theater represents the vast unconscious store of knowledge and memories that can enter the contents of consciousness once they are on the stage and under the spotlight. A key point here is that the spotlight of attention on the stage is very limited in capacity: it represents just a small portion of the stage (working memory), which in turn represents a small portion of the vast theater (unconscious knowledge and processes)."

—Nicole M. Gage & Bernard J. Baars: Fundamentals of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2nd ed., 2018, pp. 6-9)

Figure 1.8:

[NickGaspar]

Yes, there is both conscious and nonconscious information processing.

But the conscious part of the mind is much smaller than the nonconscious one.

"More and more evidence is providing support for the notion that it is our unconscious processing that forms the overwhelming majority of brain functions. …Most brain processes are not conscious: the limited capacity of the contents of consciousness at any given moment are represented by the “tip of the iceberg.” The vast store of largely unconscious knowledge and representations is not available; however, much of it is retrievable from stable knowledge.

The Theater of the Mind and Its Stage:
Several aspects of the contents of consciousness are important to note: they are limited in capacity, controlled by voluntary attention, and directed by executive functions. Baars developed a “theater of consciousness” analogy to help understand the many “players” on the
stage of consciousness (…).
According to this analogy, the entire theater—stage, audience, players, and backstage area—form the basis of conscious and unconscious brain processes (Figure 1.8 ). The theater stage represents working memory. A spotlight on the stage represents voluntary attention. Only the stage contents illuminated by the attentional spotlight are conscious. The rest of the theater represents the vast unconscious store of knowledge and memories that can enter the contents of consciousness once they are on the stage and under the spotlight. A key point here is that the spotlight of attention on the stage is very limited in capacity: it represents just a small portion of the stage (working memory), which in turn represents a small portion of the vast theater (unconscious knowledge and processes)."

—Nicole M. Gage & Bernard J. Baars: Fundamentals of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2nd ed., 2018, pp. 6-9)

Figure 1.8:

Sure, so we can agree that an organism can experience environmental and organic stimuli and only a small portion of them can and is processed by our brains conscious states?

[Consul]

Sure, so we can agree that an organism can experience environmental and organic stimuli and only a small portion of them can and is processed by our brains conscious states?

Yes, but no phenomenally non-/preconscious organismic process should be called an experience. Otherwise, we would have to distinguish between objective experiences in a purely physical/physiological sense (like in "A piece of metal in a fire experiences heat") and subjective experiences in the psychological/phenomenological sense. In the context of our discussion, "experience" should always be used in the sense of "subjective mental experience". The nervous systems of organisms receive and process physical or chemical stimuli or signals coming from outside or inside, but no organismic information processing is an experiencing unless it has an introspectible subjective dimension.
(Most conscious animals are incapable of introspection, but their experiences are those inner occurrences which could be introspected by them if they were capable of introspection.)

[Consul]

QUOTE>
"Experience is necessarily experience-for—experience for someone or something."

(Strawson, Galen. "The Minimal Subject." In The Oxford Handbook of the Self, edited by Shaun Gallagher, 253-278. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. p. 258)
<QUOTE

The being of an experience is a private being (there) for its subject, and that's what its subjectivity consists in. But in what sense is an experience existentially an occurrence for a subject if the subject isn't conscious or aware of it? My experiences are something for me; but if I don't notice them at all, they are nothing for me. And an occurrence which is nothing for me is not a subjective experience of mine. So an experience's being for its subject requires its being known by its subject, such that an unknown or unnoticed occurrence is an unexperience.

Carruthers draws a distinction between "worldly subjectivity" and "mental-state subjectivity":

QUOTE>
"It is possible to draw a conceptual distinction between what the world (or the state of the organism’s own body) is like for an organism, and what the organism’s experience of the world (or of its own body) is like for the organism.
…
(I)t is one thing to say that the world takes on a subjective aspect by being presented to subjects with differing conceptual and discriminatory powers; and it seems quite another thing to say that the subject’s experience of the world also has such a subjective aspect, or that there is something which the subject’s experience is like.

(Carruthers, Peter. Phenomenal Consciousness: A Naturalistic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. pp. 127-8)
<QUOTE

If I don't perceive the world, it is nothing for me; and if don't (ap)perceive my experience of the world, it is nothing for me either. However, despite this analogy, there is a relevant non-analogy, because the external, physical world exists independently of my perceptions of it, whereas (arguably) my internal, mental/experiential world doesn't exist independently of my (ap)perceptions of it. If the world is nothing for me, it is still there, being something in itself; but if my experience is nothing for me, it is not there, being nothing in itself.

[Sy Borg]

Recommended reading:

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

QUOTE>
"ONCE UPON A TIME, the Earth was ruled by creatures without brains. This is not a political statement, just a biological one.

One of these creatures was the amphioxus. If you ever glimpsed one, you’d probably mistake it for a little worm until you noticed the gill-like slits on either side of its body. Amphioxi populated the oceans about 550 million years ago, and they lived simple lives. An amphioxus could propel itself through the water, thanks to a very basic system for movement. It also had an exceedingly simple way of eating: it planted itself in the seafloor, like a blade of grass, and consumed any minuscule creatures that happened to drift into its mouth. Taste and smell were of no concern because an amphioxus didn’t have senses like yours. It had no eyes, just a few cells to detect changes in light, and it could not hear. Its meager nervous system included a teeny clump of cells that was not quite a brain. An amphioxus, you could say, was a stomach on a stick.

Amphioxi are your distant cousins, and they’re still around today. When you look at a modern amphioxus, you behold a creature very similar to your own ancient, tiny ancestor who roamed the same seas.

Can you picture a little wormy creature, two inches long, swaying in the current of a prehistoric ocean, and glimpse humanity’s evolutionary
journey? It’s difficult. You have so much that the ancient amphioxus did not: a few hundred bones, an abundance of internal organs, some limbs, a nose, a charming smile, and, most important, a brain. The amphioxus didn’t need a brain. Its cells for sensing were connected to its cells for moving, so it reacted to its watery world without much processing. You, however, have an intricate, powerful brain that gives rise to mental events as diverse as thoughts, emotions, memories, and dreams — an internal life that shapes so much of what is distinctive and meaningful about your existence."
—Lisa Feldman Barrett: Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain
<QUOTE

A primitive sensorimotor mechanism as we find it in Amphioxi is brain-independent, but there is no reason to suppose that that mechanism involves some form of phenomenal consciousness. Amphioxi are phenomenal zombies!

Great quote but I still think you are judging phenomenal consciousness by human standards. Maybe the human standards are correct? Maybe not? We cannot measure subjectivity, only activity, so we can only make assumptions based on behaviour and body structures. Naturally, we best understand human consciousness. I suggest that only octopuses and leeches are greater outliers that humans when it comes to the phenomenon of consciousness, which means we are not ideal examples when it comes to understanding what it's like to be a very simple organism.

[Atla]

I now strongly tend to believe that there is no "brute" or "raw" experiential "givenness", i.e. no experience without any apperceptual "takenness" and knownness—which is to say that totally noncognized experience is nonexperience.

If we want to get something out of nothing, maybe the best shot would be to say that phenomenal consciousness happens when representational consciousness happens? And we probably would need to add an infinite number of dimensions, or infinite superpositions etc.

It could go something like this: when representation consciousness happens, the infinite world loops through itself, and this looping is finite when contrasted with the totality of the infinite world. The infinite would appear as nothingness void of phenomenal consciousness, while the finite would appear as taking certain forms and be phenomenally conscious.

Representational consciousness does seem to have emerged at some point in evolution. (I guess this could be roughly where the consciousness-interpretaions of QM are coming from, too.)

So it would have to with the infinite looping through itself, not cognition. Seems to me like a better trick than the idea that phenomenal consciousness appears at a certain complexity of cognition.

[Consul]

A primitive sensorimotor mechanism as we find it in Amphioxi is brain-independent, but there is no reason to suppose that that mechanism involves some form of phenomenal consciousness. Amphioxi are phenomenal zombies!

Great quote but I still think you are judging phenomenal consciousness by human standards. Maybe the human standards are correct? Maybe not? We cannot measure subjectivity, only activity, so we can only make assumptions based on behaviour and body structures. Naturally, we best understand human consciousness. I suggest that only octopuses and leeches are greater outliers that humans when it comes to the phenomenon of consciousness, which means we are not ideal examples when it comes to understanding what it's like to be a very simple organism.

What exactly do you mean by "human standards"?
A general theory of P-consciousness must certainly be applicable to all P-conscious animals.
My human P-consciousness is the only one to which I have direct, first-person access (through introspection), and I cannot experience what it's like to be a nonhuman animal; but it doesn't follow that I cannot experience anything which is like (similar to) something experienced by a nonhuman animal.

QUOTE>
"We can’t hope for insight into, let alone a resolution of, the distribution of phenomenal consciousness across the animal kingdom without first settling on a theory of consciousness. And since our concept of phenomenal consciousness is a first-person one, that theory will need to be constructed primarily from evidence collected in our own case (the human case). The only truly direct evidence one has of phenomenal consciousness is one’s own, of course. But other people can provide us with evidence that comes close. Not only do they respond to the world (and to events happening to their bodies) in similar ways to oneself while sharing a nervous system and brain that closely resembles one’s own, but they can describe their experiences to us in the sorts of first-person ways that make it reasonable to believe that they, too, have experiences like this."

(Carruthers, Peter. Human and Animal Minds: The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. pp. 69-70)
<QUOTE