We very much have in our own brains a bag of words and a set of numbers which are correlations. We also have other things, which we apply in a very general way.
For instance, the ability to create a map of spatial, kinetic relationships - to predict that our path will intersect the path of the buffalo herd - can be applied to lots of other situations. It can even be applied to non-physical situations. (Will spending exceed taxes in 10 years from now? Will my memory allocation strategy result in buffer overlow?)
I'm guessing a bit at just what other modeling apparatus we have, nobody knows for sure. We do know that our minds contain a complete, manipulatable model of our bodies - which can also be used to model other bodies, and other situations as well ("the town is at the elbow of that river"). What else do we have?
We think that we have an idea of our consciousness, that there is a way it "feels" to ourselves to "think", but I suggest that this is an illusion. That is, what we consider 'self consciousness', or consciousness of our thinking/consciousness is an *illusion*.
We cannot actually be thinking about our thinking while we are thinking. Our thoughts about our thoughts must always be retrospective. If I say that I am thinking about myself thinking about X, then I am thinking about a *previous* instance of thinking about X. That is, what it "feels like" is just one more module operating on a different module.
Descartes was wrong: we do not directly observe our consciousness.
Pardon my flight of fancy that you have just inspired. You just described an iterative proxcess:
0. I think about A
1. I think about thinking about A
2. I think about thinking about thinking about A
...
This is an iterative process that is well behaved, there's a bunch of math that says you can define the closure of this, in some sense this is the set of all steps from zero to infinity. This set clearly exists, it's countable and computable, even. Let's call it A*
This set also has the property that if you apply the operator "I think about X" where X is a set of propositions, then A* is a fixed point of "I think about X".
(And this prompts me to think of a Scott Aaronsen lecture where he points out that computation on a closed timelike curve can solve all fixed points where the operator is computable. But I digress.)
It seems we wish to define consciousness as that fixed point, not any of the finite subsets of A*.
I personally think this is probably too restrictive a definition of consciousness. I kind of find the question of whether I exist to be uninteresting. What's the measurement or experiment we could make that would distinguish? The question "Am I dreaming?" is much more interesting and difficult.
Remember that Descartes question was not whether he existed, but of what he could be certain. And his presumption was that he had certain access to his own thoughts - and thus his own conciousness.
This is the mistake, in my view. I would say that yes, we are conscious, but this does not mean what we often take it to mean: that is, that we have some immediate access to "what it feels like" to be thinking. Yes, we think, but when we think about our thinking, that is always thinking about something at some remove from the thinking itself.
I have become aware though, that there are many "mes". They argue sometimes, actually. The psychologists I know say that the primary difficulty a patient with "multiple personalities" has is that the personalities aren't aware of each other.
As I read the three "responses" I don't see a "B" level understanding or any understanding at all. Certainly not what I would have expected from a university undergraduate. As you say, it's just a bunch of words strung together. But OTOH perhaps that is the level of response expected in a short-answer response to an identification of terms? But then, so would a cut-and-paste of the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article.
Maybe I'm coming in at the middle of a longer series of questions.
Regarding the human trophism towards inferring intentionality:.
Some years ago there were imaging results suggesting the existence of what were called "mirror neurons". These neurons fired under two distinct stimuli. The first was an activity, e.g. throwing a rock. The other stimulus was observing someone engage in the same activity. The rock thrower is, of course, aware of their intention. From there it is a short step to inferring the intention of the other rock thrower. When observing a tree struck by lightning, the leap to inferring anger on the part of some invisible sky god is not great.
You may find it interesting to check out “Concept of Mind” by Gilbert Ryle and Daniel Dennett’s works for a deeper dive into this arena. You have started down a wonderfully provocative inquiry.
We very much have in our own brains a bag of words and a set of numbers which are correlations. We also have other things, which we apply in a very general way.
For instance, the ability to create a map of spatial, kinetic relationships - to predict that our path will intersect the path of the buffalo herd - can be applied to lots of other situations. It can even be applied to non-physical situations. (Will spending exceed taxes in 10 years from now? Will my memory allocation strategy result in buffer overlow?)
I'm guessing a bit at just what other modeling apparatus we have, nobody knows for sure. We do know that our minds contain a complete, manipulatable model of our bodies - which can also be used to model other bodies, and other situations as well ("the town is at the elbow of that river"). What else do we have?
This is the hypothesis that we have a lot of little modules that we repurpose and then re-repurpose, and I think this is a promising hypothesis.
The big problem is that “a bunch of little modules” does not **feel** like the way I think to **me**, or at least to the me that speaks internally…
But is that really a problem?
I suggest that it is not a problem.
We think that we have an idea of our consciousness, that there is a way it "feels" to ourselves to "think", but I suggest that this is an illusion. That is, what we consider 'self consciousness', or consciousness of our thinking/consciousness is an *illusion*.
We cannot actually be thinking about our thinking while we are thinking. Our thoughts about our thoughts must always be retrospective. If I say that I am thinking about myself thinking about X, then I am thinking about a *previous* instance of thinking about X. That is, what it "feels like" is just one more module operating on a different module.
Descartes was wrong: we do not directly observe our consciousness.
Yes: that Descartes was wrong, or so it appears, is very disturbing...
Pardon my flight of fancy that you have just inspired. You just described an iterative proxcess:
0. I think about A
1. I think about thinking about A
2. I think about thinking about thinking about A
...
This is an iterative process that is well behaved, there's a bunch of math that says you can define the closure of this, in some sense this is the set of all steps from zero to infinity. This set clearly exists, it's countable and computable, even. Let's call it A*
This set also has the property that if you apply the operator "I think about X" where X is a set of propositions, then A* is a fixed point of "I think about X".
(And this prompts me to think of a Scott Aaronsen lecture where he points out that computation on a closed timelike curve can solve all fixed points where the operator is computable. But I digress.)
It seems we wish to define consciousness as that fixed point, not any of the finite subsets of A*.
I personally think this is probably too restrictive a definition of consciousness. I kind of find the question of whether I exist to be uninteresting. What's the measurement or experiment we could make that would distinguish? The question "Am I dreaming?" is much more interesting and difficult.
Remember that Descartes question was not whether he existed, but of what he could be certain. And his presumption was that he had certain access to his own thoughts - and thus his own conciousness.
This is the mistake, in my view. I would say that yes, we are conscious, but this does not mean what we often take it to mean: that is, that we have some immediate access to "what it feels like" to be thinking. Yes, we think, but when we think about our thinking, that is always thinking about something at some remove from the thinking itself.
I have become aware though, that there are many "mes". They argue sometimes, actually. The psychologists I know say that the primary difficulty a patient with "multiple personalities" has is that the personalities aren't aware of each other.
As I read the three "responses" I don't see a "B" level understanding or any understanding at all. Certainly not what I would have expected from a university undergraduate. As you say, it's just a bunch of words strung together. But OTOH perhaps that is the level of response expected in a short-answer response to an identification of terms? But then, so would a cut-and-paste of the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article.
Maybe I'm coming in at the middle of a longer series of questions.
Regarding the human trophism towards inferring intentionality:.
Some years ago there were imaging results suggesting the existence of what were called "mirror neurons". These neurons fired under two distinct stimuli. The first was an activity, e.g. throwing a rock. The other stimulus was observing someone engage in the same activity. The rock thrower is, of course, aware of their intention. From there it is a short step to inferring the intention of the other rock thrower. When observing a tree struck by lightning, the leap to inferring anger on the part of some invisible sky god is not great.
Good point...
You may find it interesting to check out “Concept of Mind” by Gilbert Ryle and Daniel Dennett’s works for a deeper dive into this arena. You have started down a wonderfully provocative inquiry.
Yes, we certainly give ourselves too much credit for “thinking.”