Does Consciousness Exist
It is as hard to prove consciousness exists as it is to prove God exists.
The ongoing problem is not that we can image our non-existence- in the past or future. The problems is our trying to imagine our consciousness exists as or within being. We think of this before we say it relates to questions of fear of death for example that explain religion.
The daemon of Descartes is not deceiving as to if Descartes is dreaming or awake, that he reacts to even illusive experiences but deceives him that he thinks he exists as something capable of experience.
We can imagine our bodies, and thus matter itself to be vaporous non-existence ultimately and we can imagine if matter in a sense is space as vacuum or its flux- then why not such structure imagined for our consciousness?
By doubting we exist- paradoxes aside encountered in the reasoning or other fallacies of thought, we give grounds for a view of the enduring reality of one side or the other of the dualism. Thus the method of modernity and science is balanced on the existence or not of the universe itself as a vital illusion.
Descartes made the assumption by appeal to mathematics as simplicity, that there was a non-mathematical and rational knowledge. One might therefore conclude a perfect God by ontology and Descartes goes back to the drawing board or square one with revolutionary appeal in his day and the centering of things for the philosophical or subject part as his questions centered in epistemology.
I question your premise, viz. "it is as hard to prove consciounsess exists as to prove that God exists."
I think it is a categorical error to conflate the metaphysical, unanswerable questions of theism with natural phenomena, namely, the fact of consciousness. God or gods is a conceptual bucket. We pour into that bucket whatever we want to, but and the end of the day any kind of proof amounts to talking in circles or appeals to faith including the faith that my definition of God must be the one and only true definition of God. Consciousness is a different matter as it is a label of a reality that provably exists.
"Consciousness may involve thoughts, sensations, perceptions, moods, emotions, dreams, and self-awareness. It has been defined from a biological and causal perspective as the act of autonomously modulating attentional and computational effort, usually with the goal of obtaining, retaining, or maximizing specific parameters, such as food, a safe environment, family, or mates."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness
We might ask, what constitutes sufficient proof? If you were walking past a boulder and there on the rock was "Jack Sprat could eat no fat/His wife could eat no lean" you would without much thought identify some kind predicating consciousness behind those symbols. And they don't even need to be symbols as in the Easter Island monoliths. As I walk home, I kick an ant nest, and the ants scatter. Do the ants have consciousness? Perhaps not, reacting as they are to instincts of self-preservation and nothing more. My cat ecsatically greets me knowing that I'm going to give Kitty kibble. Consciousness? Probably at a rudimentary interspecies level. I put cassarole in the microwave, and, lo, it cooks it just right. Consciousness? No, as there is no self-referral awareness-- no cogniito ergo sum. The same would be true with my computer or any computer or robot to date. I see no evidence of that changing any time soon. Later that evening I monkey with my ham radio, whereupon I get the following beeps from Alpha Centuri- 1 beep, 1 beep, 2 beeps, 3 beeps, 5 beeps, 8 beeps, 13 beeps-- the Finonacci Sequence. Predicating consciousness? Doubtful, as that is a pattern that is inertly replicated in nature. We would need much more than a mere pattern to demonstrate consciounsess from beyond. From a number of reasons that are off topic, I don't believe that can happen, SETI to the contrary.
Consciousness and cognition is not a particularly easy construct to define or model, but that is true with other scientific theories as well, such as time, viruses, evolution, and gravity. But the underlying reality is beyond dispute.
It may be helpful to state what consciousness is not. It is not a synonym for intelligence or meaning. I think these cloud the issue by letting us for example anthrmophize the computational power of IBM's Big Blue. It seems to me a model of higher or human-level consciousness must include that which in not on the face of it is neither meaningful nor intelligent, for example, feelings of dread, guilt, affection, greed, altruism, religious mysticism, and superstition.
I think you are right in that consciousness is a fact for me and there does not need to be much polemic. Now when you ask for objective proof it’s like asking a silly question because our notion of the veracity of an objective world is based on us all experiencing the world “consciously” and in close to the same “categories” of understanding. The public objective world can never be a superior truth to the truth of our individual conscious experiences. The objectivity of our “phenomenal” world is an assertion that assumes the commonality of our subjective conscious experience. Although we have to be careful here in that we are not saying we are all conscious of the same things at the same time but just that our different perspectives can be reconciled with a rationally constructed model of the world. There is no way for us to sit at a table and have the same content of consciousness and I think we can’t successfully divorce “content” from consciousness, even if consciousness itself is its content.
You stated that "Consciousness... is a reality that provabl] exists.". I did not just arbitrarily request proof that consciousness exists, he stated that he knew of such proof. It is hardly unreasonable to ask what it is, is it?
Why do we have a soul?
It seems to me that you are on the brink of a whirlpool of circularity-- We have a soul because we have consciousness. We have consciousness because we have a soul.
A rock with intelligible symbols is evidence of another's consciouness. As long as you were sure that the symbols were outside of nature, that would be evidence (I don't use the word proof) of consciouness from another person. It seems to me you are struggling to make the case that this the rock with the sentence that both of us apprehend is something that neither of us can apprehend at all, a position that aligns with radical idealists who would deny the existence of that rock outisde of our minds that apprehends that rock.
When you are asleep, hypnotized or drunk, it is said that you are not conscious of certain stimuli. However, this presupposes the existence of mental occurences that we can or cannot recall. In the case of the rock with the sentnce on it, our consciousness is a relationship to an object-- a perception of a real thing. When we see a rock, it seems to me incorrect to assert we are really processing a motion in our brain. Thus, the object-- the rock-- is just as "mental" as the perceiving. William James in his 1904 essay "Does consciousness exist" made this very point-- that consciousness was a function rather than an entity, laying the foundations of what is called neutral monism.
http://fair-use.org/william-james/essays-in-radical-empiricism/does-consciousness-exist
Now, how can you be certain that these mental images are "real"? How do you know that you are knowing? And do we know our own thoughts better than anything else? The answer is: dialectically, through exposure to intentional actions and experiements outside of your own actions and experiments.
The ongoing problem is not that we can image our non-existence- in the past or future. The problems is our trying to imagine our consciousness exists as or within being. We think of this before we say it relates to questions of fear of death for example that explain religion.
The daemon of Descartes is not deceiving as to if Descartes is dreaming or awake, that he reacts to even illusive experiences but deceives him that he thinks he exists as something capable of experience.
We can imagine our bodies, and thus matter itself to be vaporous non-existence ultimately and we can imagine if matter in a sense is space as vacuum or its flux- then why not such structure imagined for our consciousness?
By doubting we exist- paradoxes aside encountered in the reasoning or other fallacies of thought, we give grounds for a view of the enduring reality of one side or the other of the dualism. Thus the method of modernity and science is balanced on the existence or not of the universe itself as a vital illusion.
Descartes made the assumption by appeal to mathematics as simplicity, that there was a non-mathematical and rational knowledge. One might therefore conclude a perfect God by ontology and Descartes goes back to the drawing board or square one with revolutionary appeal in his day and the centering of things for the philosophical or subject part as his questions centered in epistemology.
I question your premise, viz. "it is as hard to prove consciounsess exists as to prove that God exists."
I think it is a categorical error to conflate the metaphysical, unanswerable questions of theism with natural phenomena, namely, the fact of consciousness. God or gods is a conceptual bucket. We pour into that bucket whatever we want to, but and the end of the day any kind of proof amounts to talking in circles or appeals to faith including the faith that my definition of God must be the one and only true definition of God. Consciousness is a different matter as it is a label of a reality that provably exists.
"Consciousness may involve thoughts, sensations, perceptions, moods, emotions, dreams, and self-awareness. It has been defined from a biological and causal perspective as the act of autonomously modulating attentional and computational effort, usually with the goal of obtaining, retaining, or maximizing specific parameters, such as food, a safe environment, family, or mates."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness
We might ask, what constitutes sufficient proof? If you were walking past a boulder and there on the rock was "Jack Sprat could eat no fat/His wife could eat no lean" you would without much thought identify some kind predicating consciousness behind those symbols. And they don't even need to be symbols as in the Easter Island monoliths. As I walk home, I kick an ant nest, and the ants scatter. Do the ants have consciousness? Perhaps not, reacting as they are to instincts of self-preservation and nothing more. My cat ecsatically greets me knowing that I'm going to give Kitty kibble. Consciousness? Probably at a rudimentary interspecies level. I put cassarole in the microwave, and, lo, it cooks it just right. Consciousness? No, as there is no self-referral awareness-- no cogniito ergo sum. The same would be true with my computer or any computer or robot to date. I see no evidence of that changing any time soon. Later that evening I monkey with my ham radio, whereupon I get the following beeps from Alpha Centuri- 1 beep, 1 beep, 2 beeps, 3 beeps, 5 beeps, 8 beeps, 13 beeps-- the Finonacci Sequence. Predicating consciousness? Doubtful, as that is a pattern that is inertly replicated in nature. We would need much more than a mere pattern to demonstrate consciounsess from beyond. From a number of reasons that are off topic, I don't believe that can happen, SETI to the contrary.
Consciousness and cognition is not a particularly easy construct to define or model, but that is true with other scientific theories as well, such as time, viruses, evolution, and gravity. But the underlying reality is beyond dispute.
It may be helpful to state what consciousness is not. It is not a synonym for intelligence or meaning. I think these cloud the issue by letting us for example anthrmophize the computational power of IBM's Big Blue. It seems to me a model of higher or human-level consciousness must include that which in not on the face of it is neither meaningful nor intelligent, for example, feelings of dread, guilt, affection, greed, altruism, religious mysticism, and superstition.
I think you are right in that consciousness is a fact for me and there does not need to be much polemic. Now when you ask for objective proof it’s like asking a silly question because our notion of the veracity of an objective world is based on us all experiencing the world “consciously” and in close to the same “categories” of understanding. The public objective world can never be a superior truth to the truth of our individual conscious experiences. The objectivity of our “phenomenal” world is an assertion that assumes the commonality of our subjective conscious experience. Although we have to be careful here in that we are not saying we are all conscious of the same things at the same time but just that our different perspectives can be reconciled with a rationally constructed model of the world. There is no way for us to sit at a table and have the same content of consciousness and I think we can’t successfully divorce “content” from consciousness, even if consciousness itself is its content.
You stated that "Consciousness... is a reality that provabl] exists.". I did not just arbitrarily request proof that consciousness exists, he stated that he knew of such proof. It is hardly unreasonable to ask what it is, is it?
As I said in earlier, a rock with a sentence would be proof of consciousness, but not necesserily meaning or intelligence. The a priori that we are in an existence of reality and not in a matrix reality or a dream reality doesn't negate that ther is some kind of consciousness. Is consciounsess an a priori or a fact? It is a fact in so far as it can be demonstrated external to our own feelings or impressions that is indeed a rock with a sentence on it. It is similar to the question: Is grass green? We have instruments that can show you and me that the color of my lawn (I live in Arizona!) is objectively between 430 and 540 nanometers on the visible spectrum. That I am color blind or that the instrument of measuring the color of grass is broken, say, is irrelevant. We have third party means of measuring this piece of reality.
The public objective world can never be a superior truth to the truth of our individual conscious experiences.
Are you sure about that? Is there only "your truth" and "my truth" but no "the truth"? If so, then I would suggest that communication and science has no meaning.
Why do we have a soul?
It seems to me that you are on the brink of a whirlpool of circularity-- We have a soul because we have consciousness. We have consciousness because we have a soul.
A rock with intelligible symbols is evidence of another's consciouness. As long as you were sure that the symbols were outside of nature, that would be evidence (I don't use the word proof) of consciouness from another person. It seems to me you are struggling to make the case that this the rock with the sentence that both of us apprehend is something that neither of us can apprehend at all, a position that aligns with radical idealists who would deny the existence of that rock outisde of our minds that apprehends that rock.
When you are asleep, hypnotized or drunk, it is said that you are not conscious of certain stimuli. However, this presupposes the existence of mental occurences that we can or cannot recall. In the case of the rock with the sentnce on it, our consciousness is a relationship to an object-- a perception of a real thing. When we see a rock, it seems to me incorrect to assert we are really processing a motion in our brain. Thus, the object-- the rock-- is just as "mental" as the perceiving. William James in his 1904 essay "Does consciousness exist" made this very point-- that consciousness was a function rather than an entity, laying the foundations of what is called neutral monism.
http://fair-use.org/william-james/essays-in-radical-empiricism/does-consciousness-exist
Now, how can you be certain that these mental images are "real"? How do you know that you are knowing? And do we know our own thoughts better than anything else? The answer is: dialectically, through exposure to intentional actions and experiements outside of your own actions and experiments.
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