What is consciousness made of?

brain and nerves

Neural connexions

consciousness is a meme
this post is original

The electrical firing between synapses

>>34552120
shut up faggot

r-raavioli

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>>34552120

DURRR CONSCIOUSNESS DOESN'T EXIST
*puts out shit book that doesn't address anyone's points*

>>34552162
>>34552167
But how can matter become sentient?

>>34552253
The matter allows for sentience.

Butterflies and rainbows
Butterflies are pretty from afar but when you look closely at them they're all gross and shit. Rainbows follow a similar principle, they're enchanting when you see them in the sky but when you deconstruct them they're just refracted light and that's boring.

So never look too closely because that's when you realize everything was actually always flawed.

consciousness is merely unconsciousness's fits and spasms

don't bother with it

>>34552253
>>34552284
this to be honest. There's no magic to it whatsoever. Your sentience and enhanced cognitive ability is a result of billions of years of cellular evolution through trilions of species. The strongest surviving traits get passed on. The brainlets die out.

>>34552253
How can't it?

thyme

>>34552120
Coins and salty milk.

did... did I do the meme right, guys?

>>34552284
>>34552353
Sounds right, but when I look into my consciousness I simply can't believe that. The awareness seems so immaterial and ungraspable.

>>34552552
Take a molecular biology course and an intro to philosophy course

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It's a bunch of feels feeling each other.

>>34552552
In the physical world there is no need for consciousness. Since everything has its cause in the physical world it follows that consciousness is completely superfluous.

It would also suggest that with a certain configuration of molecules, as in the case of a human brain, consciousness will arise.

If it is a matter of complexity, then you should be able to draw a line and say, this configuration of molecules is not complex enough to allow for consciousness will this other configuration, slightly more complex, does allow for it.

Since there is no fundamental difference between the molecules of the molecular configuration of the brain and all other molecules, the potential for consciousness is ever-present in the universe.

Perhaps even a rock has within in it the basic function of consciousness, simply by virtue of its physical structure.

>>34552661
No intro to philosophy course is going to cover the nature of consciousness

t. Philosophy minor

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>>34552552

Because it is irreducible and immaterial. Consciousness is not reducible to brain matter or any functional state. There are physical properties of physical matter and non-physical properties as well. This is a property dualism, a token-physicalism.

>>34552120
Consciousness is awareness. There is no distinction between consciousness/awareness and the rest of the world. We live in a non-dual universe.

>>34552692
The intro to philosophy is to get him to realize that
>but when I look into my consciousness I simply can't believe that. The awareness seems so immaterial and ungraspable
is stupid.

>>34552712

It's not stupid. You would be surprised on the variety of opinions which exist on consciousness. Sciencucks know little about the debates which go around in the philosophical circle.

>>34552751
>I can't understand it so it must not be true

No, that is stupid.

>>34552802

Whether it is or isn't true is a matter of debate. Try reading up on it

>>34552836
I'm not saying it's stupid because he thinks it. It could be true or untrue. His reason is stupid.

just electricity zip zapping around yur noggin, anon. the idea that it's anything more than that is pure human ego and narcissism.

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When you think of it, your body and all things are just appearances of your own consciousness.

>>34553043
You would like to read about Vedanta.

>>34553038
>claiming that human ego and narcissism can even exist when really they're just electrical impulses
why do the electrons think they're something they're not?

>>34552931

Actually, lots of arguments on the subject come from that very intuition.

>>34552120
pain and misery

>>34552120
Orgones desu, That or thetans.

>>34553163

Concept of immortal soul is dumb is all. Or that it is some special thing that exist beyond the mechanical functioning of the brain.

>>34552162
No idiot, consciousness is aware OF brains and nerves

>>34552353
Omg stfu with this meme evolutionary bullshit. All you are doing is regurgitating shit from some article you read.
There is no material explanation for qualia i.e are subjective experience. Neural networks are mainly computational structures for processing higher order functions like thought and emotion. However, baseline subjectivity precedes this. Consciousness simply is.

Faggot

>>34553482

>When Typa-A materialists trot out the ol' BUT VITALISM WAS DISSOLVED!!! SO WILL CONSCIOUSNESS. SCIENCE MARCHES ON

Literally non-arguments.

consciousness (mental states) is realized in and through physical brain states. The relationship is one of supervenience, or "nonreductive dependence."

the mind is to the brain what my car's starting is to the microphysical reactions that occur between the spark plugs, gas, etc.

>>34553482
I am not whom you are responding to, but if you are committed to the existence of qualia, then you're wrong. We don't need to appeal to qualia in order to account for the phenomenal content of experience. In fact, to do so is to confuse the content of perception with the object of perception.

Read Searle's book on intentionality, ch 2, and Dennett "Quining Qualia," and study wittgenstein's private language argument

to everyone:
there are three independent issues that often get muddled up here:

1. Ontology
>neutral monism (such as materialism or idealism) or Dualism (cartesian)
2. Semantic
>Reductionism, Eliminativism, or Nonreductive Ineliminativism (i.e. davidson)
3. Nature of Mental Content
>Introspectivism, Behavioralism, Functionalism (not to be confused with MACHINE functionalism).

All of these different positions are actually compatible. Don't think that affirming or denying one entails the affirmation or denial of another

Anything else is just confusion.

Yes, most philosophers are confused in this regard.

>>34553867

All discussion on consciousness in academia runs like an intuition merry-go-round. Someone claims something is intuitive (zombies), weaves a paper together, and T. Philosopher claims that's not intuitive at all.

Rinse repeat. No one moves from their seat, every continues arguing cuz MUH INTUITION

>>34553977
I believe that thought experiments are usually bullshit and anyone who appeals to them as a form of argument is a pseudophilosopher.

That being said, thought experiments aren't necessarily USELESS, because sometimes they reveal certain things about an issue that make us understand it better, and thus increase its solvability. But it's important to remember that, as they say, the context of discovery is different from the context of justification.

Also, if you'll indulge me, I would like to take this moment to express my deep disdain for anyone who thinks that studying the trolley problem or any of its uncountable unholy clones is anything but a waste of time and brainpower.

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Mahamudra is knowing that
all things are one's own mind.
Seeing objects as external is just noetic projection.
The whole of "appearance" is as empty as a dream.

The mind as such is merely a flow of awareness,
without self-nature, moving where it will like the wind.
Empty of an identity, it is like space.
All phenomena, like space, are the same.

>>34553717
No you have it wrong bud. Qualia is literally what your present experience of existing is constructed from. Subtract quality from the equation and you have no consciousness. Are you conscious right now?

>>34554085

What do you want philosophers to do? Either you believe in the magic of conscious experience or you don't. Dennett thinks searle is a fucking idiot and the opinion runs back likewise. People are devoted to their intuitions about conscious experience, even if those intuitions seem contradictory at first. (By that I mean self-contradictory, Yudkowsy is dedicated to the idea that epiphenonomalism is false, yet he believes in Strong AI. ???)

You can't browse through the literature without seeing some sort of thought experiment. I don't think they're wrong, I just think they reveal an intractable problem. The MUH INTUITION.

>>34554181
*qualia
>inb4 typo

>>34552120
pain
original fucking comment[/soiler]

>>34554181
no, a quale is literally a quality of an object that is only accessible introspectively and is essentially private.

The problem with qualia is that if they're actually what philosophers say they are, then they would be meaningless to talk about because they could change without you ever knowing it.

Again, it is easy to account for the phenomenal content of experience without appealing to qualia. For example, it can be done in functionalist terms: "you know that feeling you get when..."

>>34554182
First of all, it doesn't matter what Dennett and Searle think of each other. You need to judge their work on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it isn't.

I don't understand the problem that you're referencing. You mean literally just talking about what it's like to experience things should be off-limits?

Philosophers can appeal to intuitions in order to illustrate or describe something, but not to argue for something or justify a claim.

Again, that's why they say that the context of discovery is different from the context of justificaiton

>>34554340
In other words, to perceive the world is to perceive a quale or multiple qualia. It's just the ghost of british empiricism. Pretty bullshit when you think about it this way.

>>34554407

No, I'm merely saying that Dennett's arguments appeal to those who find them intuitive and Searle's Arguments appeal to those who find them intuitive. I'm partial to Searle, but I can't describe WHY exactly I find him correct and dennett wrong. Chalking it up to the mysterious intuition is all I can do.

And the arguments about consciousness don't seem testable in the practical sense. How do you test a possible world? I'll leave the experiments to the scientists.

>>34554340
>you know that feeling you get when
Can words give an apt description of the color red to someone visually blind since birth?

>>34554466
Well idk which arguments you're talking about, because there are a whole hell of a lot out there. I am also partial to searle, but only his views on why Dennett is wrong (i.e. chapter 9 (i think) of the rediscovery of mind). For example, syntax is not an intrinsic feature of anything, so Dennetts argument that the difference between consciousness and nonconsciousness is a matter of degree cannot be right.

>>34554507
no, but that does not prove that there are qualia. It only proves that the concept of red is essentially phenomenal, but not that it is also essentially private and essentially introspective. This is one of those confusions that I was talking about earlier.

>>34554584
*and also an object of experience, rather than THE WAY an object is experienced

>>34552120
Bits of pocket lint and half-chewed gum

>>34554584
Sounds like a whole lot of semantics guy.
Pretty redundant.
Still doesn't explain how a chain of nerve cells sending chemicals and electric pulses back and forth in a synchronised fashion gives rise to the subjective experience of seeing the color orange behind your closed eyelids while lying faceup under the sun.

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Have you guys ever tried to be actually conscious?

I apply it sometimes and it's a really cool experience. Force yourself to actually be aware of what is happening as if you were not you but still could give directions to yourself.

can't explain it properly but an example would be forcing a mild headache to stop by simply THINKING and telling your body to stop fucking up. I once got over a crush in a few minutes by simply tearing the negative emotions attached to that person and throwing them away through will power.

would you say it's mind control?

>>34552120
The very fabric of the universe itself

>>34553717
Dennett is a fucking hack

he's a compatibilist for christs sake lmao

>>34552120
Something wuantum physical, say theoretical physicists. Our brain has one huge quantum field. One, not millions like in qubit computers.