I feel that way at times. I increasingly wonder if “consciousness” is actually a useful concept, the belief in which will make any difference to anticipated outcomes. (Does anyone have a handy list of anticipated outcomes that “consciousness” makes a difference to?) This is like saying “I don’t exist”, but that doesn’t automatically make it false.
If a non-conscious system is understood to be kind of like a p-zombie, then no, of course not.
If a non-conscious system is understood to be more like my arm for a few days after my stroke, where it would do things that were clearly related to various motivations that I had, but where I was not aware of myself as directing it to do those things, then I expect it to make a difference to motivation.
For example, I found it much easier to do PT exercises with that arm during that period, because I was in some sense not aware of it as my arm. I could form the desire to do exercises with that arm, and the arm would do those exercises, and I would experience fatigue and pain from the arm, but I didn’t experience the same connection between those sensations and a reduced desire to keep performing the exercise as I would with my uninjured arm.
I have no idea whether what I just described makes any sense to anyone else, though. It was a very surreal experience.
I also don’t know whether what I experienced is at all related to what you mean to refer to by “consciousness”.
With some thought over the past few days, I think I’m saying I am increasingly treating people as more or less predictable systems based on past behaviour and stimulus/response, and ignoring the noises that come out of their mouths. I used to treat the noises as having anything much to do with what the people do, but the evidence is scant.
So it’s conversational cynicism-signaling, but with a slightly useful point ;-)
Ah! Yeah, agreed that the stuff people say is often unrelated to our other behaviors, and in particular our accounts of why we do what we do are often simply false. In fact, often the narratives we accept as accounts of why we do what we do aren’t any such thing in the first place, even false ones.
I feel that way at times. I increasingly wonder if “consciousness” is actually a useful concept, the belief in which will make any difference to anticipated outcomes. (Does anyone have a handy list of anticipated outcomes that “consciousness” makes a difference to?) This is like saying “I don’t exist”, but that doesn’t automatically make it false.
If a non-conscious system is understood to be kind of like a p-zombie, then no, of course not.
If a non-conscious system is understood to be more like my arm for a few days after my stroke, where it would do things that were clearly related to various motivations that I had, but where I was not aware of myself as directing it to do those things, then I expect it to make a difference to motivation.
For example, I found it much easier to do PT exercises with that arm during that period, because I was in some sense not aware of it as my arm. I could form the desire to do exercises with that arm, and the arm would do those exercises, and I would experience fatigue and pain from the arm, but I didn’t experience the same connection between those sensations and a reduced desire to keep performing the exercise as I would with my uninjured arm.
I have no idea whether what I just described makes any sense to anyone else, though. It was a very surreal experience.
I also don’t know whether what I experienced is at all related to what you mean to refer to by “consciousness”.
With some thought over the past few days, I think I’m saying I am increasingly treating people as more or less predictable systems based on past behaviour and stimulus/response, and ignoring the noises that come out of their mouths. I used to treat the noises as having anything much to do with what the people do, but the evidence is scant.
So it’s conversational cynicism-signaling, but with a slightly useful point ;-)
Ah! Yeah, agreed that the stuff people say is often unrelated to our other behaviors, and in particular our accounts of why we do what we do are often simply false. In fact, often the narratives we accept as accounts of why we do what we do aren’t any such thing in the first place, even false ones.
“Are you conscious?” “Why did you do what you just did?” “Who is that person in the mirror?”
Consciousness helps with all sorts of useful things. The problem is that they’re so basic we take them for granted, so it becomes tough to define.