Hubert Dreyfus - Is Consciousness an Illusion?
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- čas přidán 25. 02. 2021
- Is consciousness something special in the universe, its own category, irreducible to physical laws, a carrier of meaning and purpose? Or is consciousness a mere artifact of the brain, a by-product of evolution, a superstition exaggerated by human misperception? If you think or hope consciousness is special, then you should surely be a skeptic.
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Hubert Lederer Dreyfus is an American philosopher. He is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley researching phenomenology, existentialism and the philosophy of psychology and literature.
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How can consciousness be an illusion when consciousness is the mechanism through which we perceive illusion?
Exactly. Illusion requires consciousness.
define illusion? isn't illusion perceived through the mind and isn't mind different to consciousness? i think this goes deeper than the whole illusion or materialist viewpoint..i think consciousness will NEVER be fully explained or discovered because it simply cannot be discovered by science..consciousness is the very fountain of the universe..IT created life, not the other way round. i guess you could say i am a dualist, but every time i declare my dualistic belief system, i am instantly attacked. to me consciousness has NOTHING to do with biology and EVERYTHING to do with the building blocks of the universe(s).
@@steak8278 now i'm brain-dead lol :/
Since consciousness is an illusion itself, it allows us to see other illusions.
We don't perceive illusion.
We perceive the world.
Sometimes our thoughts do not map the world exactly.
Yet we act on what we know.
If we act on an illusion then we risk our survival. (Remember Indiana Jones, the path in the Temple, in Petra)?
Which is why we find illusions thrilling from the safety of a seat in an audience.
Ditto the movie, 'Alien'.
It's about time you interview Bernardo kastrup. How many agree?
An illusion has to fool someone. If it’s an illusion then “ what” is being fooled?
I think it’s fooling anyone who concludes that consciousness is a “thing” that is somehow separate from the brain/body it is part of.
@@KestyJoe Brain and mind are not the same thing. Consciousness is not always local. There's more to human consciousness than what the material world can explain.
When the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres of the brain is severed, a person doesn't become two people. Even though their brain is split in two, they are still the same mind. There is no explanation. There's many things about human consciousness that are baffling, just as baffling as delayed choice and Quantum wave function collapse. But whatever, I guess we will see.
A new research study contradicts the established view that so-called split-brain patients have a split consciousness. Instead, the researchers behind the study, have found strong evidence showing that despite being characterised by little to no communication between the right and left brain hemispheres, split brain does not cause two independent conscious perceivers in one brain.
In the study researchers conducted a series of tests on patients who had undergone a full callosotomy. In one of the tests, the patients were placed in front of a screen and shown various objects displayed in several locations. The patients were then asked to confirm whether an object appeared and to indicate its location. In another test, they had to correctly name the object they had seen, a notorious difficulty among spit-brain patients.
The main aim was to determine whether the patients performed better when responding to the left visual field with their left hand instead of their right hand and vice versa. This question was based on the textbook notion of two independent conscious agents, one experiencing the left visual field and controlling the left hand, and one experiencing the right visual field and controlling the right hand.
To the researchers’ surprise, the patients were able to respond to stimuli throughout the entire visual field with all the response types, left hand, right hand and verbally. The patients could accurately indicate whether an object was present in the left visual field and pinpoint its location, even when they responded with the right hand or verbally. This despite the fact that their cerebral hemispheres can hardly communicate with each other and do so at perhaps 1 bit per second, which is less than a normal conversation. The researchers were so surprised that they decided to repeat the experiments several more times with all types of control.
The results present clear evidence for unity of consciousness in split-brain patients. The established view of split-brain patients implies that physical connections transmitting massive amounts of information are indispensable for unified consciousness, i.e. one conscious agent in one brain. The findings, however, reveal that although the two hemispheres are completely insulated from each other, the brain as a whole is still able to produce only one conscious agent. This directly contradicts the current orthodoxy you believe and highlights the complexity of unified consciousness. Sorry buddy, there is a God and you have a soul.
@@williamesselman3102 Exactly. And I don't know why, despite so many evidences being provided, some people put so much effort to convince the others that they know everything, that all the evidences are absurd and that there is nothing but nothingness!
I think the answer to this questions is that the idea an illusion requires someone to "illude" is a presupposition. If you really want to figure out an explanation of what consciousness is, you have to get rid of that presupposition. It's the same with Descartes' "I think, therefore I am". He is presupposing that thought requires a thinker.
@@williamesselman3102 An interesting study - I’d appreciate a citation. I expect you’re talking about adult subjects who have a life time of experience (training the brain) to operate as one unit - I wouldn’t find it surprising that they are able to behave as though the CC weren’t severed in certain instances. In any case, it’s a bit of a leap from stimulus-response to “there aren’t two consciousnesses in there”. More significantly to me, are many instances in which traumatic brain injury change everything about a person’s consciousness - their personality, their memories - everything that makes them them. What could be the role of a soul in such a instance?
we are all one consciousness having separate subjective experiences giving us the illusion of separation
Illusion????? Consciousness is the Only real "thing". It is the great I AM.
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Hi Robert, was there production lighting overhead between you two, or just normal house lighting? Very curious as a video producer. looks great!
On a muddy walk when caught off-guard and slipped, I immediately self-corrected and I realised I had ZERO control over my body during that short moment -- it just did it and I remained clean and dry!
Also how we're acutally able to move and control our bodies the way we do, we are the pilots of a biological beast...
Unconscious automatic reflexes developed and honed over millions of years. You're the pilot of a biological vessel that also has an intelligence of its own in many ways.
@Brian J @Brian J The nervous system was developed millions of years ago... But that was before we became humans. It took a long time to get to where we are now!
_"In bilaterian animals, which make up the great majority of existing species, the nervous system has a common structure that originated early in the Ediacaran period, over 550 million years ago"_
_theconversation(dot)com/our-500-million-year-old-nervous-system-fossil-shines-a-light-on-animal-evolution-55460_
(CZcams is deleting comments again, hence (dot))
@Brian J That's true. But there are aspects of our nervous systems that were under development over millions of years. And we still possess many of those same basic functions. Though I can't say for sure at what point, or how long ago, the body's ability to react or respond instantly/unconsciously, came about without conscious input.
@Brian J Hey man, I'm with you! If we don't even understand what we are or how how biology functions and/or what it's capable of, it's like being at the helm of a powerful supercomputer but only being able to use basic commands to get things done because you dont know enough about how the supercomputer works or what commands to use to take full advantage of its inherent capabilities!
Gnothi seauton! :)
@Brian J I'm with you on this, too. I feel like we're not even tapping into the full potentials of our genetics and consciousness yet. We're still at the kindergarten stages as far as that goes, imo. Also I don't see how we can effectively transition from a biological/genetic substrate to a digital/silicon one if we don't even understand how consciousness arises in genetic-based organisms. It seems like a huge leap of faith imo to assume that human consciousness can be uploaded into a digital substrate in a way that retains all of the qualities of consciousness that we are familiar with - awareness, perception, attention, emotion, feeling, sensation, intention, etc.
I feel it's more like as you say, let's try to understand what's going on with what we have, than get ahead of ourselves by assuming there's nothing more to know about what we are and what we're capable of! Exciting times, man. I feel like i['m living in the greatest time in human history, in spite of all the chaos that appears to be happening around us!
I think of consciousness as a kind of bonus of an evolving brain. Consciousness is extremely helpful when you're trying to capture an animal for food. It allows you to think of traps, spears, arrows, sling shots. The rise of consciousness probably happened very slowly, yet it allowed us to understand how to make fire and survive in incredibly harsh climates, among many other things. The bonus part of consciousness is the self-reflective aspect, with the first to be tested finding a puzzling distinction between the self and the rest of reality. There is "me" and everything else that isn't. Of course consciousness is a kind of illusion -- one of those examples where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Consciousness has a type of transcendent quality that can either provide meaning in a universe that may possess none or the opposite.
Do plants and cells have consciousness why not rocks in some rudimentary way
@@nottelling4876 True "self" consciousness is only found in human beings because our brains have evolved to a point where our synapses have interconnected in fantastically profound ways. By today's science, we measure consciousness by the capacity and interaction of brain function. Objects such as single celled microorganisms or rocks do not have the necessary equipment to develop consciousness. Thus, individual consciousness is consigned to individual human beings. It's a rare thing, so you have to have a firm hand on what consciousness is and isn't.
Utterly ridiculous and self contradictory statement. It's like you've read precisely zero philosophical work on consciousness
Consciousness is the word coined to describe neural activity that enables organisms to have situational awareness, affect, and cognitive capabilities.
So like imagine you didn’t know what a brain was how would you define consciousness then?
Like we can ply the reductionist game but like you don’t describe anything by reducing it
@@nottelling4876 How do you describe vision, olfaction, and so on without describing the components involved and how they work together in an arrangement and process? How do you describe qualia without describing what gives rise to the perceptions and affects? It is not just the "reductionist game" as you put it; it is the whole as well as the parts. It is the arrangement of the parts and their functions and processes. Consciousness is the ability of an organism to have situational awareness, affect, and cognitive capabilities.
@@georgegrubbs2966 true
But isn’t this what people accuse theist of all the time of shoe horning in anthropomorphic language into processes to make assuming their concepts easier
I mean identity theory is wrong like A=A and how are qualitative experiences just states in the brain this is just assuming a theory that’s not even that coherent like the Hard Problem of consciousness can’t just be ignored or maybe it can why not...
I mean like anger is a response to immoral actions and love is a response to value but how do you describe colour or sounds yeah you can’t really do that now so I guess buy the reductionist game is just a game at that point
@@nottelling4876 Not a game at all; it is serious research. Obviously, if you saw all the parts of the brain lying on the floor, you couldn't tell much except how each part works standing alone. If they are assembled into subsystems and you test what these subsystems do, you learn more. Then, the subsystems are arranged in a specific configuration that is called the brain (including all nervous systems), so you could test the whole brain along with the workings of the parts and the subsystems to get the whole picture. You focus on sensory subsystems and motor subsystems and learn exactly how they work. You see what interconnected networks are in use under a great variety of circumstances. You have tools you can use to do this work: fMRI, EEG, PET, and the like. You experiment with animals to assist in the learning. Once the lower and intermediate functions are well-understood including consciousness, you focus on so-called higher-level functions of the brain, such as, cognition, idea formulation, types of memory, recall, dreams, language, emotion/feelings, "what it's like" phenomena, planning, social interaction, types of behaviors, and so on. To assist the overall functioning of the brain, you build models and run simulations, and you build connectomes of subsystems and the entire brain and run many experiments. Over time, the workings of the brain and all nervous systems are revealed and well-understood. The scientific community is well down this road, probably much farther than most people realize.
@@georgegrubbs2966 I mean yeah consciousness obviously interacts with the brain and correlates with it but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's emerging from the brain like Idealism could still be true
And even if they map it out perfectly which they should be able to I guess that doesn't actually mean that they've solved the hard problem of consciousness it just means that they now have perfect correlations I mean if astrologer had perfect correlations but no theory or explanation that would be problematic because there might be some third variable that they are forgetting or something else that they might have made a logical jump on
And if I was to make a large system of water valves and repeatedly open and close them in certain patterns would that generate consciousness? Is information processing consciousness like If is a tornado conscious are rocks if they interact with each other in enough complicated patters that we could call information processing?
Or is consciousness like 100% electrical impulses? Like would my hypothetical valve water machine not generate dreams? I don't get how neurons aren't just neurons I don't see how two things correlating perfectly makes them the same thing isn't this just pure speculation I mean I understand that we're raised in a culture that says consciousness arises from matter but why can't it just be the other way around?
I think understanding Consciousness is like trying to locate a position of an ever moving ‘something’. The problem is in articulation of it from our ordinary classical way of understanding things. When we are using computer projectors, the image is appearing on the wall. Now is there an image, or colors to be quantified? Light is white but when passed through prism it splits into 7 colors. Ordinarily, without prism, there is absolutely no way we can pull those colors from a white beam of light.
We cannot formulate a lot of things in our classical way which were are so use to. The thing about consciousness so baffling is when we try to pull in down in our classical language of things.
Explain to me what is experiencing this illusion ?
It sounds like he's trying to talk himself into believing there isn't an inner self who has experiences so that he doesn't have to deal with the hard problem of explaining it. But that's just kooky dukes. All that happens when we're "caught up in the moment" is that we aren't introspecting. We aren't thinking about our thoughts. But we are every bit as conscious when that happens because we are still HAVING thoughts and perceptions. They are still first person subjective.
Don't they only become first person retrospectively, when we reflect on them?
@@jeremypeters1109 Well you’re definitely not having a second or third person experience when you’re “caught up in the moment” running after a bus
He starts by saying that different people are talking about different aspects of consciousness. Alertness, self awareness, daydreams, introspection, internal monologue, etc..
Yeah, this is my worry with this perspective as well. I mean, it may take introspection to label things "first person" perspective, but the experience of feeling at all seems like a perspective. "Who" is having the perspective? It seems hard to explain this on a materialistic point of view. If we don't get this right then we ignore both clear evidence of supernatural phenomena and also will be in danger of creating problems for ourselves when we create AI robots that act and look identical to humans. We could lose the ability to distinguish between "real" people and robots.
@gio I think he's saying there's no perspective until it's reflected on, not a second or third person perspective. I think he argues perceptions are information processing in the brain and being aware of experiences (the first person perspective) is the brain processing information about its own information processing.
Even more than" chasing the streetcar" playing an instrument, dancing or performing requires that we not be aware of consciousness or "self conscious" and yet go of that awareness seems to allow the act to flow directly from our inner self unrestrained by conscious awareness. To be free is to be unburdened of self conscious awareness. We call it being in the zone. A space of non judgmental experience.
Could particles in physical brain be acting together to program information (consciousness) from quantum wave function which becomes mind?
Hubert Dreyfus was a pre-eminent scholar of Martin Heideggar's philosophy. If you're curious about the distinction he's making here, you should read Being and Time.
In the question of "Is Consciousness an Illusion?", it doesn't make sense to use the word "Illusion" in that question.
The definition of an illusion is something which doesn't appear to be what it is. When you use the word "Illusion", you're defining something in relation to that thing which is considered to be real.
For example, on a hot summer's day, the road at a distance looks like there's water on it since it appears wet. Getting closer to the road, you then realize that the wetness you saw before was a mirage or an illusion. Since you're calling the wetness you saw before an illusion, then it's an illusion of what? Well, it's an illusion of water where water is considered to be a real thing and what you saw before was not real, thus an illusion.
To call consciousness an illusion, then what in relation to consciousness is it an illusion of?
6:30 -- I don't understand -- yes, "self-consciousness" (thinking about the idea of myself) goes away while you're trying to catch a train, but -- there's still an experience of the universe, there are still feelings and impressions, and this removal of "I am actively thinking about the idea of myself" doesn't cause the "there-is-something-that-is-experiencing-this-visage-of-light-and-sound-and-attractino-and-repulsion" to go away as a fundamental element of the "puzzle."
absurd question. "illusion" is a function of consciousness!
That's what I'm saying
I think we have a soul
@@bigboymustard230 look at penrose and hammeroff
@@TJ-kk5zf same thing
@@steak8278 u fried my brain with this
@@steak8278 I believe you have come quite close to the answer.
I believe I have discovered the essence of the answer to the hard problem but work has prevented me from finishing the explanatory essay. You might discover the answer yourself from the following few clues added to your knowledge...
Consciousness is not something that I have.
I am conscious.
I am conscious now but not when I am sleeping dreamless.
When I am sleeping dreamless I have ceased being.
Can't help but imagine that death is no different.
(And "being dead" is obviously oxymoronic).
A metaphor is a coded representation of something other.
The words in this sentence are metaphors for instance.
So is the sentence as a whole.
We are not at all interested in the words themselves or the sentence itself.
Rather, we are interested in their meanings.
And you know the words derive meaning from both their definition and their context in the sentence.
Can't say which contributes most.
Metaphors are pretty slippery.
When environmental energies impinge on one of my body's sense organs,
the organ adjusts, roughly in proportion, the base firing rate of the neuron(s)
that connect the organ to my brain.
Thus the change-in-rate encodes and represents some aspect of the environment.
As noted above, encoded representations are metaphors so that
it's perfectly legitimate to assert that neurons maintain/conduct metaphors.
Now, what do that sensor's neuron(s) signals encounter in the brain upon entry?
They encounter a vast ocean of previously acquired/synthesized metaphors
maintained & flitting about in discharge-frequency-encoded-form on a hundred billion neurons.
These metaphors adjust each other according to the logic of the synapses that interconnect the neurons. (I'm here expecting the reader to know lots about neurons. Google if you don't).
You already know that a thought is not the thing that the thought is about.
A thought is a metaphor of the thing it is about.
What does the word 'self' refer to?
The word 'self' is a metaphor but a metaphor for what?
Whereupon we reach the crux where the question becomes the answer.
Is it not your self that is conscious?
Yes, obviously!
Take the self to be a vast and nebulous concatenation of metaphors flitting about on some subset of the neurons in your brain.
One metaphor metaphorizing a vast collection of others.
The self is conscious of the metaphor originating in the sense organ when that metaphor propagates through those synapses that affect the modulation of the metaphors that constitute the self.
Ok, that's a little dense.
Ponder a while and please let me know what you think.
To say that consciousness is an illusion would be self-refuting. For example, me saying that consciousness is an illusion would also be part of that illusion, and thus, the possibility of me ever knowing that would be unknown. This is a defeater for the possibility of knowledge.
Novels create new worlds of consciousness and the best ones feel real. They make us feel that we have the ability to be conscious in a deeper way.
The inner self trying to convince the inner self that it doesn't exist. You can't make this stuff up.
There is no "essential" self without the larger frame of reference
IMAGINE, reality with-out thoughts ,words,ideas,concepts what reason would there be ,to believe that you are anything other than what you are aware of?
What evidence is there that there is anything other than what you are aware of?
I think consciousness is a feedback loop, perpetually aware of being aware. I dont see why it would need to be more complicated than that, the brain does everything else, what says consciousness is the exception, other than our current lack of a complete understanding of how the brain works (which I dont find to be a very compelling counter argument)?
Right, so there’s a feedback mechanism to consciousness. But that’s one aspect that continuously loops. But it certainly loops back to a source that is a singularity that is called “I”. Now THAT is consciousness. The singularity itself. So the question is: what is that singularity? To add, many mechanisms have a loop but no experience arises from it. I don’t think conflating feedback loops with consciousness to be valid
@@neonpop80 I dont think there has to be 'singularity', I think its an emergent property from the basic functions of the brain itself...the brain creates the feedback loop, its a self contained system.
The weather and blood glucose levels are feedback loops, but that doesn't make those systems aware. Where does the awareness, or inner experience, itself come from? That is the question.
Where do you think this property of feedback loops comes from? Why is the world made up of nothing but objects, right up until the moment in which those objects interact in such a way that we can call their interaction a "feedback loop"?
Do all interactions like this have the property of turning what were previously "objects" into "subjects"? Or are there rules that govern which feedback loops are capable of this?
@@theotormon I think this point is absolutely key to progress on this problem - there are systems everywhere in nature that resemble those underlying human consciousness in basic ways (e.g. those involving complex feedback loops), so all attempts to explain consciousness in terms of these kinds of basic interactions seem to share the undesirable(?) conclusion that consciousness is pretty much everywhere (as in your example, thousands of homeostatic processes in your body would have their own subjective awareness).
I don't think it's reasonable to rule out this possibility (maybe there really is consciousness everywhere - it's not like we have much evidence to the contrary) - you could even call it the most scientific option at this stage (we have limited evidence either way, so maybe our theory of consciousness only needs to be the most parsimonious to be the considered the best) - but I'm not a fan of giving into this viewpoint (that consciousness is ubiquitous) until we've made better attempts to find evidence that could differentiate good theories from bad theories...
Well. I can become aware of something supressed and that will have a real impact on the consciousness as well as on my life as a whole. So consciousness is very real and matters consciousness related can be life changing. Also neglecting yourself..stuff like pretending there is no you inside can eventually lead to you ending up in a mental institution. So i would be careful with how you handle yourself.
The problem with a lot of thinkers being experts in all sort of fields is they tend to be somewhat detached from the real world and the real people in it and do not get that putting in practice those views can break a person.
Talk to all those burn-out people who did not pay attention to what is inside and what that did to their lives...
It's a stupid question because an illusion presupposes consciousness; an illusion can only occur in consciousness. In other words, an illusion is the ACTIVITY of consciousness. There are no illusions without it.
In this case, every being that can be fooled, is conscious. Right? If you can produce an illusion that will fool an i sect it means insects have consciousness as well.
Correct?
@@adarwinterdror7245 Well, it depends how one defines "consciousness" exactly. If you ask whether I believe insects think, I would say probably not. But they may have a proto-type, or rudimentary type, of consciousness (involving some sensations). But the more important point is that you the observer, the one studying insects, think they can be fooled. The fact that you have a paradigm of what constitutes being "fooled", or what an illusion is, just proves that YOU are conscious. Does the insect have a notion of what it means to be fooled? It comes back to you.
An illusion is something that distorts the mind into seeing a reality that doesn't actually exist but the self being aware that the mind has become compromised makes consciousness or the self distinct from the illusory perception that has developed in the mind due to the illusion.
Since it is the self that is realizing what is happening within the mind the illusion the self is realizing is just an objective reality that is experienced by the self. As Pravrajika Divyanandaprana said, " If you can know something as an object of perception it can't be you." to know an illusion means there is a duality between the knower of the illusion and the illusion itself.
When you say something is a illusion, you are saying that there is something that we perceive as being something else. A photograph is an illusion, we can feel like we’re looking at a person but we’re really looking at a piece of card. You can specify what it is, what it’s an illusion of and how the illusion is created. If consciousness is an illusion, what’s it an illusion of? What is it? How is it creating the illusion?
The comments here are mostly focusing on whether consciousness derives from brain matter or some non-material element. I'd say the important thing is that consciousness even exists - wherever it comes from.
Consciousness isn't just the ego's inner life - just being aware of physical sensation is sentient awareness, and whether that sentience comes from matter itself or "spooky stuff" from some other dimension, it's the existence of sentience that defines the ultimate nature of reality.
A universe with sentient awareness is utterly different from a universe with no sentient awareness and it implies something about the ultimate nature of reality that it exists at all.
Let's give credit where credit is due. Just like the credit we give to the father of psychology, William James.
Julian Jaynes worked on this for 30 years while tenured at Princeton then wrote his book 1976
The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind
It is about time
So if there is no consciousness when we are “absorbed in the moment”, what is doing the absorbing? Illusion has consciousness but consciousness doesn’t have illusions? Feels backwards.🤷🏻♀️
Explore consiousness. Not once, not twice, not 3 times. Beyond counting. Explore your consiousness
All the world is but a play, be thou the joyful player.
Consciousness (summary)
Important:
The text was written in Spanish and translated with the Google translator. I mention it for the reader's consideration.
While this is a summary, it should be enough to clarify what Consciousness is. There are many interesting subjects, related to the topic, that are not included. I have no problem answering any questions you may have.
The material body is situated in a material environment, and carries out actions. The senses capture information from the material medium. This information activates memories in the brain, groups of neurons that store information about the individual's life history. Through this process, the information from the medium, which is captured by the senses, acquires Meaning. From this same process the Expectations of Action (Pavlov) arise.
As described, the brain manages information from the Present, the Past and an eventual future. It is reasonable to assume that the brain makes a distinction between the information it manages from the Past, Present and Future.
In the brain there are no tables, skies or trees. In the brain there is information that represents tables, skies and trees.
It is reasonable to assume that the brain administers a Mental Correlation of the Relevant Environment of the Individual, which represents what is happening, in the Present, in its relevant environment. The mental correlate of the relevant environment can be called The Reality of the Individual.
Emotions and feelings accompany every life experience, and are represented in the life experience that the brain stores. Emotions and feelings give meaning to what is perceived.
Various factors determine the time that neurons remain activated.
If by turning my head to the right I stop seeing what is happening to my left, that does not mean that what I stopped perceiving a moment ago is no longer part of the mental correlate of my relevant environment. The brain has the ability to project, in time, the state of said segment of the environment; is what Pavlov observed. If in the previous example, before turning my head to the right, I observed that my dog, some hundred meters away, was running towards me, my brain will project such an event in time. Although, as the seconds pass, such a projection will become more and more diffuse, less certain, less representative of what is happening in the material world, that does not mean that my dog will no longer be represented in a certain segment of the mental correlate of my relevant medium. It is evident that this "Actualization of the Present" is due to the brain's ability to project future states of the environment. At the same time it is clear that, in the Actualization of the Present, which arises as a consequence of the Projection of the Future, a certain degree of uncertainty is implicit. By the way, the Projection of the Future is related to expectations.
The conditions of an ever-changing environment result in the expectations that the brain previously diagrammed to face what is coming are met only to a variable degree. The Projection of the Future is constantly being updated by the brain.
In the life experience that my dog has been storing in his brain, there are "latent", as non-active memories, the biographies of countless Entities with which my dog has interacted throughout his life. His life experience, in which said entities have participated, through his daily life of him, has characterized these entities, generating in his brain a kind of utilitarian biography of each one of them.
The vast experience of my dog's life, in which I have participated, allows him to carry out, when I get home and he perceives me, a fairly accurate reading of my state of mind, which determines his actions. Indeed, when I get home, a glance is enough for him to see that I am grumpy. Then he ducks his ears and lays on the floor, his gaze fixed on me. If I'm in good spirits when I open the door, he pounces on me as soon as he sees me. His brain, according to what he perceives, activates convenient memories, which allude to information with meaning contained in the biography that he possesses of me, generating expectations of action.
We can affirm, metaphorically, that an entity "dwells" in a dog's brain that represents, as a unit, both the dog's body and the dog's interests. We will call this entity, which is represented in the brain, that is, it "dwells" in the dog's brain. By the way, using similar criteria we can affirm that a “monkey entity” lives in the human brain, or that “the monkey that inhabits us” is present in the brain.
In the Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya, the East African green monkey (Chlorocebus sabaeus) inhabits groups of 10 to 30 individuals. They emit loud cries of alarm if they spot a predator, shriek specific sounds if they go out to meet other groups, growl threateningly when fighting with individuals in their own group, and growl quietly during relaxed social relations.
According to the type of predator, it is the sound call they emit, distinguishing three in particular: leopard, eagles and snakes. The alarm that warns of the flight of the eagle, induces them to look up or to run towards the bushes; hearing the snake alarm, they stand up on their hind legs and watch the grass; leopard alarm causes monkeys to climb trees.
The moment a green monkey hears the alert by eagle, the activation of memories related to the aerial environment is reinforced, drawing with greater clarity the diffuse aerial scene that was previously being represented in its mental correlate of the relevant environment, a scene that a moment ago he played a rather secondary role in the selection of the actions he was carrying out. The evocation of an eagle activates multiple memories that represent probable scenarios for the aerial environment, in a diffuse representation of said segment of the medium, where its brain places a flying predator. The predator, who is not being directly perceived, can either be ten meters from his head, heading directly towards him, or be within a couple of hundred meters. Faced with this uncertainty, the monkey's action is oriented to raise its head in order, using its senses, to have a more accurate representation of what is happening in its relevant environment.
The contribution to their survival expectations that the green monkey obtains thanks to the alert signal heard is evident, and in this sense the use of language is highly useful. This, despite the aforementioned uncertainty, an uncertainty that can be diminished through the action of raising the head and seeing the predator. For its part, the monkey that gave the warning voice has a more limited and accurate representation, in its mental correlate, of the predator, regarding its speed and apparent distance, its direction of flight, etc. For the monkey that emits the warning signal, fleeing and finding protection is notoriously better delineated, as expectations of action, than fleeing and protecting itself is in that of its congeners at the moment they hear the warning voice. Just a fraction of a second separates a very diffuse representation of the relevant aerial environment, from that which is achieved immediately after raising the head and seeing the predator.
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The monkey that gave the warning voice transmitted information from a segment of its mental correlate. Incomplete transmission of the mental representation of danger, uncertain, but potentially effective for the remaining members of his group. For their part, those who listened to the alert suddenly saw a segment of their mental correlate of the relevant environment modified, which results in a significant alteration of their action expectations. The monkey who was courting a monkey stopped doing so to direct his attention to the danger in the air; the one who was about to reach a succulent food with his hand, interrupted the movement.
Humans are born without having the meaning of the words that we use as adults. The life history of the human being allows us to give meaning to what, initially being a sound, then acquires the character of a “word”. When a mother pronounces the word "ball" and simultaneously manages to get the child to fix her attention on that spherical object, an association takes place in the child's brain between the sound she hears and what her eyes are seeing. By the way, such an object has several qualities: it has color, size, texture, etc. The brain of the child who sees a ball for the first time and at the same time hears the word "ball", associates, by being simultaneously activated groups of neurons that refer to the object "ball" and the word "ball", the different characteristics that the observed (shape, size, color, etc.) with “the sound” of the word “ball”. If the mother has half a dozen balls, of different sizes and different colors, and succeeds in having the child turn his attention to each of them at the moment he mentions the word “ball”, then, successively, in the child's brain smaller groups of neurons associated with color, spherical shape, size, and sound heard will be activated. The common thing that these six experiences have is the spherical shape of an object and the sound heard. This is how a child's brain discriminates between the different attributes of the balls in question. In practice, in each of the six experiences, specific groupings of neurons fire to represent color, size, shape, etc. The common thing about the six experiences is the spherical shape and the sound of the word "ball." Once the association between the group of neurons that represent the word "ball" and the group of neurons that represent the spherical object in question has been consolidated, when the child later hears said word, his brain will associate said word with a spherical object that can be of different size and color. In turn, it will not be necessary for a ball material to be part of its relevant material medium for it to be integrated into its mental correlate of the relevant medium. Metaphorically, “the monkey that lives” in the child's brain, when he hears the word “ball”, he “observes” a ball. By the way, the brain does not have eyes to observe, nor is there a furry monkey in the child's brain, however it is clear that when hearing the word ball, memories are activated in the brain that result in its integration, in the correlate mental of the relevant environment of the child, the meaning that the brain assigns to said word, without it being necessary that there is a material ball capable of being perceived by the child.
Although the process of capturing information through the senses takes place in the present, the brain has the ability to keep memories conveniently activated, that is, groupings of neurons, which were previously activated via perception, which contain information from segments of the brain. relevant medium that are not being perceived in the present. The brain has the ability to manage this information, and project over time, the events associated with that information. Thus, for example, if by turning my head to the right I stop seeing what is happening to my left, that does not mean that what I stopped perceiving a moment ago is no longer part of the mental correlate of my relevant environment. In turn, as mentioned, the brain has the ability to project, in time, the state of said segment of the medium; is what Pavlov observed. If in the previous example, before turning my head to the right, I observed that my dog, some hundred meters away, was running towards me, my brain will project such an event in time. Although, as the seconds pass, such a projection will become more and more diffuse, less certain, less representative of what is happening in the material world, that does not mean that my dog will no longer be represented in a certain segment of the mental correlate of my relevant medium. It is evident that this "Actualization of the Present" is due to the brain's ability to project future states of the environment. At the same time it is clear that, in the Actualization of the Present, which arises as a consequence of the Projection of the Future, a certain degree of uncertainty is implicit. By the way, the Projection of the Future is related to expectations.
During the first four years of life, a child hears between 7,000 and 25,000 words a day ¡¡¡. It is, without a doubt, a stark figure. It can be said that a child is immersed in a sea of language, language that certainly expands "the size" of the mental correlate that, in the absence of language, only represents the material environment. With human language, the mental correlate ceases to represent only what is happening in the world of matter.
For the brain of a child listening to the story of Little Red Riding Hood for the tenth time, Little Red Riding Hood is a "very real" entity, an entity that is integrated into the mental correlate of the child's relevant environment. The child often interrupts her mother's story to ask her about some details. They are questions of the type "Does Little Red Riding Hood have siblings? Do you eat all the food? Do they punish her when she is not obedient? " etc. The fact that the child's eyes cannot see Little Red Riding Hood, nor her ears hear her voice, does not prevent his brain from “placing” such an entity in the mental correlate of his relevant environment when his mother tells him. tell the tale.
When his mother tells him, “Little Red Riding Hood woke up, got dressed, sat at the table and had the breakfast that his mother had prepared for him, consisting of a cup of milk and a bread with jam”, for the child's brain Each of the events mentioned are happening at the time they are being described through language.
It is clear that the dozen seconds it takes her mother to describe the above does not correspond to the "real time" that would elapse between waking up and finishing breakfast for a "real" Little Red Riding Hood. In the material world, it would take Little Red Riding Hood a few dozen minutes to carry out the sequence of actions described. In this sense, human language allows a very particular “manipulation” of time / space, acquiring -time / space- a malleability that turns out to be one of the pillars of what differentiates us humans from all other forms of life. . By the way, in the brain of a child who is able to follow the story in the aforementioned story, many other latent entities “inhabit” such as non-active memories (set of neurons). The child's brain has a biography of his siblings, his parents and grandparents, his friends, his dog, etc. According to what the minor perceives, the memories associated with the biography of said entities are activated, conveniently.
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The functional architecture of the human brain evolved to be able to give meaning to the wide vocabulary of words that we use, and expand, through its use, the "dimension" of the mental correlate of its relevant environment, a relevant environment where, thanks to the language that the child hears, there are entities and events that are not necessarily part of the material world.
A substantive part of “the magic” of human language consists of its ability to alter the mental correlate of the relevant environment of the language receptor, thanks to the meaning that the language receptor's brain gives to the words it hears, without necessarily being part of it. from the world of matter what the language that is processed by the brain alludes to.
Among the many entities managed by the brain of a child that uses language, there is a very special one.
I mean "Pedrito".
Pedrito is the name they gave the child, and it is an entity that is continually referred to, using language, by those around him. “Pedrito is good”, “Pedrito ate all the food”, “Pedrito is messy”, “We will go with Pedrito to the beach tomorrow”, etc., etc.
Although on many occasions, the language of third parties that the child hears refers to a Pedrito who is carrying out the same action that the child's body is performing at that moment, an opportunity in which the brain associates the action of the Pedrito entity with the action of his own body, in others, the language of third parties refers to a Pedrito who will perform, performed or is performing actions that do not correspond to the action that Pedrito's material body is performing at that time.
If the phrase the child hears is "tomorrow we will go with Pedrito to the park to swing", the entity Pedrito swinging in the park will be integrated into the mental correlate of the child's relevant environment. At that moment, Pedrito's body is not swinging, so there is no direct association between Pedrito's action and bodily action. For the child's brain, everything is happening "now", in the present; for the child's brain, it is the Pedrito entity that is swinging at that moment, somewhere that is outside his visual and auditory field. The child's brain is not confused; The brain's function is to administer the bodily actions of a highly material body. With the same ease that the child's brain “locates” a Little Red Riding Hood in her grandmother's house when she hears the story, it places the Pedrito entity where the language of third parties places it.
At the age of four, the minor has an extensive biography of the Pedrito entity, as a result of the language used by third parties to refer to that entity.
It is clear that the Pedrito entity is diagrammed by the language of third parties, and just as for the child's brain, Little Red Riding Hood is given "very real" actions, the Pedrito entity is also given "transit", thanks to the language of third parties, for “timeless and immaterial worlds” that the child's brain assumes as “very real”.
In practice, when, through language, third parties refer to actions that the child is carrying out at that moment, an association is established in the child's brain between the action of the Pedrito entity and the action of the child's material body. he. However, a total fusion between said entity and its material body is never generated in the brain, because sometimes the language of third parties alludes to actions of a Pedrito that are not the actions that the child's material body is performing. at that moment.
It is important to reiterate that the brain is a tool that emerged to manage the material body of the individual, a body that is only given to carry out actions in the world of matter, in the Present in which it inhabits. When third parties allude to actions that Pedrito performs, and the child is not performing such actions, obviously the child's brain does not associate such actions with the actions that his material body is performing; such actions, for the child's brain, are carried out by the entity Pedrito. Although over time the child's brain establishes an increasingly close association between the Pedrito entity and the child's body, a complete fusion between the Pedrito entity and the child's body never takes place.
From now on, we will call the Pedrito entity, which is initially diagrammed and “comes to life” in the child's brain through language, “the Being”.
By its genesis, the Being is a child of language and Affection. He is a "child of Affection", inasmuch as during his gestation he is diagrammed, characterized and "mobilized" by those who interact with the child. Humans are extremely dependent on our peers, on "how they see me" my peers. Not for nothing is vanity a trait that characterizes us, exclusively, human beings.
Although at birth the human brain has the architecture to "house the Being", it is not born having the Being. The biography of the Being is initially outlined through the language of third parties. Just as it is the language of third parties that "gives life" to Little Red Riding Hood, it is the language of third parties that gives life to the Being and builds his biography.
In the first years of life, for the child's brain, the action of the Being depends fundamentally on third parties. It is they, third parties, who, through the language they use in the presence of the child to refer to him, are initially diagramming the biography of the Being, its characteristics and actions, an entity to which it is given, thanks to the language that third parties use with the minor, not only carry out actions that correspond to the actions that the minor's material body is performing, but can also carry out actions in immaterial and timeless scenarios that are not part of that segment of the mental correlate of the environment that it represents the conditions of the material environment in which the minor is found.
As mentioned, the Being is valued by the brain as an entity that is given to carry out actions in authentic "immaterial worlds" through the use of language. I reiterate once more; Such a condition makes it impossible to achieve a total fusion between the material body that administers the brain and the Being, a material body that is the slave of Matter, matter that only exists in the Present.
In practice, with the passing of time, in a waking state, the Being becomes always present in the mental correlate of the relevant environment of an adult human who administers language, becoming, for the monkey that inhabits us, an inseparable companion of the material body that manages the brain. Just by waking up in the morning, we perceive that we are not alone. During wakefulness, the Being is permanently part of our mental correlate of the relevant environment. We usually refer to it with the term "I", without realizing (consciously) that due to the close relationship that our brain has come to establish between our material body and the Being, after an "I am", "I will", etc. , both are being represented, in their own way, in the brain.
When they ask me "What did you have for lunch yesterday?", Such a phrase activates memories in my brain that diagram a new segment in the mental correlate of my relevant environment. The monkey that inhabits me participates as an observer of what happened then. Being for my brain, in some respects, a case similar to the one that took place when I was a child, the monkey that inhabited me “observed” what Little Red Riding Hood was experiencing, when I then heard the story, there are some notable differences between both cases. Indeed, when I heard the story, for my brain everything was happening in the Present. When they ask me “What did you have for lunch yesterday?”, The question refers to the past, a past in which my body intervened, a body that is associated with the Being, a Being that, with an adequate life experience, my brain “locates "In the time / space of" yesterday having lunch. " By the way, for my brain, for the monkey that inhabits me, it is not my body that is transferred to the past. For my brain, my body can only perform actions in the Present, the same brain that has no problem in placing the Being, anywhere in time / space.
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The monkey that inhabits me, “observes” the action of the Being, and knows (in the particular dimension of the “knowledge” administered by the monkey that inhabits me) what I then had for lunch, by activating memories that diagram the scene in which I lived yesterday , and I answer: "Yesterday I had beef stew with cooked potatoes for lunch." By the way, if after having told the child (for the tenth time) the story of Little Red Riding Hood, his mother asks him "What did Little Red Riding Hood have for breakfast?" In the present, he will locate Little Red Riding Hood in the Present, even if his eyes do not see her or his ears hear her, and he will have no problem answering “a cup of milk and a bread with jam”. For the child's brain, it is Little Red Riding Hood who is having breakfast at that moment, an entity (Little Red Riding Hood) with whom the child's body does not identify itself. On the other hand, for my brain, due to the close association that comes to be established between the Being and my material body, "it is me" who yesterday had a beef stew with cooked potatoes for lunch.
My material body is not given "travel to yesterday." Such "travel in time / space" is carried out by my Being, an entity that at times seems to merge with my material body, giving rise to an "I". The monkey that inhabits me does not know that "traveling to the past" is a fiction. For the monkey that inhabits me, the reality of the individual only has a place in the present.
We make use of Reason every time language is integrated into our mental correlate of our relevant environment. That is, we make use of Reason every time we listen to speak, speak, read or think.
Consciousness is not an Entity. The term Consciousness refers to the action of the Being. The monkey that inhabits us is the one who “observes” the action of the Being. It is the Being, not the Consciousness, who possesses the character of Entity. The word Consciousness is a term that human beings have used for millennia, whose meaning has been diffuse and confusing.
The monkey that inhabits us is the one who selects the words we use; that is, he manages our vocabulary. In that sense, he is an extremely skilled monkey. In turn, the monkey that inhabits us does not select all the words that our brain processes. Indeed, our brain does not choose the language we hear, or the words of the text we read. What we hear, or what we read, and that does not refer to what is happening in the world of matter, in the "now" that we are living, is capable of "mobilizing" the Being, in timeless and immaterial scenarios, which confirms the thesis that it is not possible for our brain to establish a total fusion between the Being and the monkey that inhabits us, such as that which does exist between the brain and our body, since our brain has the function of administering a material body, which only inhabits the material world, in the present. The brain is not confused, and knows how to make a convenient distinction between the Being and the material body that it administers, whose actions, as we have seen, depend on the language that the brain processes, a language that is not always chosen.
For the monkey that inhabits us, the experience of his own life is not necessarily the experience of life that he assumes belongs to the Being. Let me explain.
The brain of an eagle that watches a rabbit run knows how to distinguish between the action of the rabbit and the action of observing the action of the rabbit. The brain of the eagle does not make the running action of the rabbit its own. In the same way, the human brain distinguishes between the action of observing the action of the Being, and the action of the Being. The monkey that inhabits us, “observes” the action of the Being, and does not necessarily make it its own. The monkey that inhabits us, administers a biography of the Being, and makes use of the information contained in said biography to project the potential actions of the Being. After such exercise, there is an apparent “putting oneself in the place of” the Being. I referred to it, alluding to what we know as Theory of Mind.
I mention that the monkey that inhabits us observes the action of the Being and does not necessarily make it his own, because in opportunities there is full congruence between the action of the monkey and the action. This is what happens when, for example, I say to myself "I'm thirsty" and I go for a glass of water. In that case, for my brain the action of my body is also the action of the Being, and of this "I am aware."
Like the word "Consciousness", the term "knowing" has a diffuse, and sometimes ambiguous meaning. The "knowledge", which manages any living being with a brain, refers to "the reality of the individual." Said "reality" is given by the mental correlate of the relevant environment of the individual. For the living being with a brain, there is no better representation of what happens in his relevant environment than the one constructed by his brain, in what I have called a "mental correlate of the relevant environment".
The knowledge of the Self refers to "conscious knowledge". For its part, the knowledge of the monkey refers to "unconscious knowledge". Both types of knowledge are, at times, immiscible, constituting different “realities” that affect two different entities. This is because, for the monkey that inhabits us, the actions carried out by the Being are not necessarily his own actions. In practice, our actions are the result of a brain process in which both the "reality of the monkey" and that which for the monkey that inhabits us constitutes the "reality of Being" have a place. Although the brain is not confused, and knows how to make an adequate distinction between both realities, due to the close association that exists between the Being and the material body, both realities sometimes overlap. It happens, for example, when I hit a finger with a hammer, an opportunity in which the reality of the monkey and the reality of the Self overlap, and I am “fully aware” of my bodily pain.
The knowledge of the Being, the conscious knowledge, corresponds, by definition of the term "knowing", to the mental correlate of the relevant environment of the Being. Only, the Being does not have a brain that administers a mental correlate of its relevant environment, a mental correlate that its function is to represent what the Being "is living". In practice, what the Being "is living" turns out to be what the monkey that inhabits us observes the action of the Being. A permanent "putting oneself in the place of the Being" is carried out by the monkey that inhabits us, necessary "Existential condition" of the Being. What the Being is living, is incorporated into the biography of it administered by the monkey that inhabits us.
The monkey that inhabits us is the one who selects the words we use. Indeed, a moment before we make use of a word, the monkey that inhabits us already decided to use it, and as long as said word is not pronounced, or "thought", we do not know, consciously, its meaning, and the consequences that entails their employment. A few years ago, neuroscience revealed such a fact, and specialists panicked, as it was found that what until then we called "free will" did not exist, at least as it was known until then.
"Conscious" is another word for "who he agrees with me."
how come?
The consciousness of a dog >> more interesting than >> all galaxies . I dont know if consciousness created matter or the opposite , but what i know for sure is that is by far the most awesome thing in our reality . So much that reality will be totally irrelevant without consciousness.
Totally in agreement, anch'io italiano 😊🙏
@@kuroryudairyu4567 evvai ;)
Consciousness are memories, it defines who you are! Those memories can be analysed subjectively. It transcends life and is eternal. ‘A recording of self’!
Thanks so much for this perspective!
When anyone expresses to external world anything about being conscious using any communication mechanism - speaking, writing, sign language or whatever, they are using the same brain and output organs, where that expression originates from, is also the brain where the reported conscious experience is occurring. Basically the brain is reporting what it was taught to call "conscious experience" in the past, for the experience it is having now. It is similar to them saying they are seeing "red" rose when they are shown a "red" rose, why? because their brain is comparing the pattern, with a previously remembered pattern, which they were taught to call "red". If they were taught to call that experience "foobar" in the past they would have said they are seeing "foobar" rose. So it is not a big deal.
The "hard problem" of consciousness is over rated and over hyped. "Consciousnes" is name given to certain class of brain structures (memory) plus dynamical, electrochemical state(perception, thoughts and comparison with previously stored memory and its reporting to external world when interrogated). This is evident from the effect of alteration of brain structures (damage or injury) or the electrochemical state (induced by drugs or anesthesia) on various aspects of consciousness. this is not controversial at all. Even the internal self awareness or its report to the external world is affected. Just think of disappearing self awareness when the anesthesia alters the brain chemistry. And by that I do not simply mean inability to report to external world but also true disappearance of internal self awareness.
How do you explain people like Pam Reynolds, who was having brain surgery, was technically dead, EEG showing no responses, yet during the operation she found herself floating outside her body, she recalled the conversations the doctors had and the instruments used. She was in no pain at all but was watching them perform surgery on her? There are many cases like this one.
The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, which is universal for all living things (fundamentally = the intention to survive), whether or not we are "conscious" of the specific mechanism(s) we perform. Because science will not accept, nor acknowlege a subjective role to "reality", the science of consciousness is doomed as Hubert Dryfus points out at the begining. "it's a subject about which everyone agrees we know absolutely nothing about, it's the hard problem". This is because science is not about the science of the inside-out perspective (subjective), science only defines itself as the outside-in (objective) pespective.
The relationship between "intentionality" and "universal patterns of human thought" is what needs to be developed, however, the science of "conscious thought" is doomed because science refuses to accept the internal world of mind as part of "reality".
Can you experience getting out of bed without first "intentionally" doing so? You can not!!! .....Intentionality precedes all consciouness and behvior.
Consciousness can still be there without intentionality, no?
@@itsalljustimages Part of the problem, as Hubert Dreyfus shines a light on (@1:15s in), and I agree with, is the undifferentiated definition of just what “consciousness” IS. Currently the concept is so varied, so everyone has their own belief on what this term means. The term has the range of; not being asleep, to awareness of thoughts and self, to the greatest understanding of unity of science, mind and purpose.
However, I do think that looking at the inner story, and developing functional models for understanding mental thought patterns is something that will be necessary to put more form to “consciousness”.
For example, if consciousness is related to energy, then I view our mind is a sense receptor for energy, such that, once we can discern energy different than “ourselves”, we become “conscious of this”. ‘I think, therefore I am’, means we differentiate the thought energy, different than the energy of self “minds eye/I”.
So to answer your question, intention and consciousness kinda act as a duality, the intent to look/sense, and contingent awareness that an energy exists, which is differentially sensed separate, relative to us, the self (minds eye).
...Thanks for your question, it's a good one!
"Illusion" is the wrong word. Consciousness is "real". The question is whether consciousness is fundamental, or an emergent phenomenon. Science will never completely describe consciousness, mainly because the way science tends to explain things, is in form of mechanistic explanations. How something "feels" on the inside ("poetry"), is not its thing.
The (mechanistic) explanation that comes closest to explaining consciousness, is how *perception* developed in evolution. Along with this perception, is internal model building, internal representation. This process of perception-model-building, can recurse on itself. It can build a model of itself, of its own processes, model of a model, "awareness of 'awareness'", of "self". It develops a subjectivity, an "inner life". It's called meta-cognition, meta-perception, by cognitive scientists. But its still primarily the process of perception-model-building, of a living system. (Someday, we might build a "sentient AI", along these lines.)
I was impressed by how close Sarte came to the Buddhist insight of Anatta, when he described "running to catch a streetcar". There is no "I". This would be bare perception (and motor control). But no recursing into subjectivity, in that moment. This is something many people notice in mindfulness meditation. There is no inherent self, in the moment to moment awareness.
I agree that "illusion" is a confusing way to describe consciousness, but I disagree that there is something about consciousness that is separate from perception. The idea of somehow being conscious without any perceptions to be conscious of seems meaningless to me.
So from my perspective, if you acknowledge that there are mechanistic ways of describing perception, these same mechanisms are also describing consciousness.
I would say, consciousness is equivalent to a complex organization of information processing. Saying that it's an illusion, is the same thing as saying buildings are actually illusions, they're just particular arrangements of bricks.
_"I was impressed by how close Sarte came to the Buddhist insight of Anatta, when he described 'running to catch a streetcar'"_
I noticed that as well.
What did he want say?
The Living Being and Consciousness, are Eternal, cannot be created, or separated.
Consciousness got it's own structure.
Consciousness are the source/ability of creation.
Creation is a Illusion, kamouflaged 'empty space' as Motion,
but it is a real illusion, a eternal miracle,
based on eternal laws and principles.
So, Consciousness is real, and the effect is an real illusion.
Fascinating take....food for thought...thank you🧐
*puke*
@@ChocoDrum03 it’s all good...8 billion unique people are required by nature to ponder the greater mysteries...If you have no further road to travel than man’s written words, then enjoy where you are at because like it or not...it’s your unique perspective that brought you to the this conclusion we’ll call “puke”. 😁
@@oculusnomadslosttribe5672 It's just that the original comment contains some terrible philosophy. Half of it is straight up non-sense. For example, what is a "real illusion?" Aren't illusions by definition things that appear to be real but are not? What does it mean to say that "consciousness is the source/ability of creation"? Sources and abilities are obviously quite different things, are we using them interchangeably or is consciousness both the source AND the ability of creation? Then again, what does it mean to say that consciousness is the ability of creation? This sounds like nonsense to me. Almost every other line is like this. And, most importantly, what kind of a line of reasoning would get you from all these propositions about consciousness and creation to the apparent conclusion? The premisses contain no information about some "effect" of consciousness, what does it mean to say that its effect is a real illusion?
I would like to be enlightened on this topic, of course.
@@ChocoDrum03 The point is it doesn’t have to make sense to be fascinating. Most people are not going to grow much from a CZcams comment BUT we can grow if we research a comment which brings us to a greater realization. The comment is fascinating and when talking about advanced spiritual concepts using keywords such as source, creation and consciousness that is food for thought and a unique perspective. I’m not looking for right or wrong with the comment because everything we think we know may be just a “real” illusion🤣
Who or what is having the illusion? Is he (or it) conscious of the illusion ? Is it even possible to experience an illusion without consciousness ?
Consciousness is the language of reality that tells itself about itself.
And comment about itself
Some might even say there is no self
Not consciousness, but everything else is.
One has to simply admire the glowing intellect, wonderful post.
Well, consciousness is blah blah, and the something or other communicates its inner blah blah which sometimes 😅😅 dude im sry but thats what these comments sound like to me
A consciousness is not a thing. Like force is not a thing.
A sentience is a thing and it has consciousness.
Consciousness is consciousness. Call it an illusion if you like but I don’t think that’s meaningful in any way
Since we don’t really have a concise definition of consciousness I don’t see the meaning in trying to decide if it’s an illusion when we can’t even decide what it is. For now it’s just a word
Is internal combustion an illusion?
If Consciousness is an illusion, who is being illuded ?
Exactly. The idea that consciousness is an illusion is preposterous
@@darkyodd yea it's a paradox
Or we have a soul, at this point both make sense
Brain
@@TupacMakaveli1996 3 of em
This is getting better and better. I love this subjects.
3:54 when he talks about the Saint reading the Bible from and to himself is very interested take...cause humble for me, more your consciousness expand more different meanings you find to the same phrase, to the same concept, sadly our ego, stuck in our "me, me,me" way of being can't handle new reading
I wonder whether I’m delusional when I think outside of the box.
grain of truth here is that consciousness is not "objective" - not part of empirical science
I think therejore I am.
Consciousness is the one and only thing that's real.
Consciousness is a story our brain is telling to keep us sane.
More like brain is the story the mind tells itself to keep itself sane
Who is listening to that story?
Definitely makes sense
@@ferdinandkraft857We are the story
@@shortbutsquat8482 Circular reasoning.
Wrong! (IMHO)
Consciousness is either in the brain because it's produced by the brain, or it's immaterial and maybe only sort of in the brain.
You can't say consciousness is somehow "out there" just because you sometimes "disappear" (but your experience doesn't) and still call yourself a materialist/physicalist. I mean, maybe he's right and our conscious experiences really are "out there" well, but then something non-physical is going on.
Tom Campbell has the answers to these questions
I am equals consciousness equals existence. No consciousness, no existence. Now, figure that out!
if your aware of this sentence,then you are all of existence
Sounds much like buddhism: basically you are your experience of this moment
There is a problem with the terminology, when people use the word illusion most people take that as it does not really exist, it just means we cannot get to that which is presenting the illusion.
For me Bernardo Kastrup and other Idealist are on the right track there is no hard problem of consciousness when you come to understand that everything is happening in consciousness.
We are all Alters of Mind at Large and at death, we are reintegrated into that Mind, this is why people talk about being at one, returning home etc.
Now when it comes to the nature of reality then talk to British Consciousness Researcher Anthony Peake, he has built a hypothesis that is very intriguing, according to Peake you keep reliving the Same life over and over again with the goal of living the perfect life. He stresses this is not a Nietzchian cycle more like an Ouspensky spiral. Everything that can happen will happen:
czcams.com/video/YWes5sLvVNM/video.html
You're right, your contribution isn't much.
Consciousness is a miracle rather than a magic trick that has never been revealed or explained scientifically
It's odd how the brain can't make conscientiousness. Besides if it's an illusion that implies that it's fooling something other than the brain so yea, I'll live it up to you to draw you own conclusions
No consciousness is not an illusion but with a.i the illusion will be consciousness.
Consciousness is just another word for mind processes
Reality can not be put inside the mind so whatever we see does not represent the real reality
Where is you and your human consciousness when you are fast asleep?
If your answer is that u are on the couch you're lying because when asleep u don't conscious of anything!.
wrong..you have deep levels of consciousness during sleep..in fact, the brain is more active when you're asleep than when you are awake.
Who is experiencing the "illusion? 🤔
Hubris Dreyfus cannot explain consciousness in purely material terms, because consciousness has qualities about it that do not conform to purely mathematical, biological, or physics-based definitions (i.e. awareness of, feeling of, attention, emotion, subjectivity). Put differently, how do you get subjects that have awareness from unconscious matter that doesn't?
excellent point
Is **Free Will an illusion?
Most people aren't conscious
take mushrooms and then tell me consciousness is an illusion
More Illusions :p
NO. Consciousness is our true created existence that is eternal. Everything we experience within our consciousness is an illusion.
The things we experience within consciousness seem to refer to things in the outer world though.
@@theotormon The outer world is the illusion being formed in your consciousness. Think of your consciousness ( mind ) as a processor of information fed by an AI system known as the IMAGE and VOICE of our Creator. That is how you're able to speak.
The idea that conciousness is an illusion is the most absurd idea ever. By definition, an illusion is a wrong interpretation. An illusion must have an object (the illusion) and a subject. The subject of ALL illusion is precicely what we call the consciousness.
If consiousness is an illusion, it means that it does not exist.. then what is the subject of this illusion ? There must still be an subject. Without subject, there can’t be an illusion
All this talk about consciousness is getting nowhere. Just a good topic for more videos. Basically this pursuit is a waste of time.
No.
Same OLD Materialistic 'FlatLand' 🙏
`Huh? Consciousness~! "" Life = *OPEN SESAME* "~! "" --- "" DEATH = *Close Sesame* "~! "" ~!! *Lost my partner! What'll `I do? ., *Lost my partner! What I'll Do ?? **LOST MR PARTNER! ., What'll `I do??? = ***Skip to my Lou, my darling~! **Peace
Time-pass while making sponsored documentaries 😂😂😇👽👎
Hard to listen to. Stuttering and rambling from one fragment of thought to the next.
Consciousness : The eternal & immortal being comes into material universe or multiverse in a material body to experience this simulated reality or material reality (life) to fulfill its desire to do certain things or for the attachments to certain beings or things & to complete some work. consciouness left after bodily death & come again in new material body for similar reasons.Supreme consciousness (GOD)is the ultimate destination of consciousness (soul).
🤢🤮
Yes, it's an illusion. Now you don't have to ask about consiousness anymore.
Easy peasy. Close the book right away so you don't need to think anymore, believing that you have the answer and there is nothing else to learn. That's exactly what a 3rd grader learning multiplication would say about algebra. They're confident in what they know only, and everything else is non-existent because they cannot explain it yet.
@@erikawolf3736 Except the book is empty of words. Consciousness is the most overrated "hard problem" in our modern world. Is it so hard to accept that it's just a cascade pattern of multiple brain functions that upholds your awareness? There is no soul or afterlife, your consciousness is neither special or immortal. We shall all cease to exist and return to nothingness, like it was before our birth.
@@grattata4364 how do you know? How can you be 100% sure? How do you know what there was before you were born? It's not hard to believe that what your saying is a POSSIBILITY, but not the only possibility. That's all I'm saying, that we can't be sure. If, according to you, we came from "nothing" and will return to "nothing", isn't that kind of strange? How could we come from nothing? Maybe you just dont remember what came before. Such possibilities are not crazy, people have diseases that make them forget their own names (Alzheimer's) while they are still in this physical world. It's not too strange or impossible to think that once our body perishes, we may move on somewhere else without remembering this life. And what makes you think this process has not happened before? I'm not pushing for you to believe these are facts, I'm just asking you to consider that your opinion may not be the only possibility.
@@erikawolf3736 That's why I prefer the stance of being what I call a hopeful agnostic. We don't know - that describes it pretty well. Do we go on existing after our bodies die? Don't know. Do we have free will? Don't know. Are there other planes of existence? Don't know. Is there an explanation for all reality? Don't know.
The trick is becoming comfortable with admitting that we don't know. But once you can achieve it, it all seems more peaceful somehow.
@@erikawolf3736 It's the most straight forward and logical explanation, following Occam's Razor. If there's no reason to add things to be able to explain a system sufficiently, you shouldn't do that. Of course i can't prove that our consciousness isn't immortal, but i also can't prove that invisible unicorns doesn't exists in my house. You see how ridiculous it becomes? That's why the burden of proof is on the claim, and not vice versa. There is literally no reason to believe that there is a "ghost in the machine" as some call it. So i'd say it's pretty safe to assume my position until there is atleast a grain of evidence that pulls us in the other direction. And i wouldn't hold my breath for that to arrive.
Absolutely useless commentary about consciousness made by Hubert.
Eloquent speaking zero substance.
He absolutly wrong conscience gone when I sleepwalker. Trust me I say thar Im skeepwalk.He not prove nothing mister Herbert smug.
Follow Jesus Christ
For God so love the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life
No.