The thing I don’t understand about claimed connection between self-model and phenomenal consciousness is that I don’t see much evidence for the necessity of self-model for conscious perception’s implementation—when I just stare at a white wall without internal dialog or other thoughts, what part of my experience is not implementable without self-model?
Even if I’m not thinking about myself consciously [ i.e., my self is not reflecting on itself ], I have some very basic perception of the wall as being perceived by me, a perceiver—some perception of the wall as existing in reference to me. I have some sense of what the wall means to me, a being-who-is-continuous-with-past-and-future-instances-of-myself-but-not-with-other-things.
To generate me, my non-conscious, non-self-having brain has to reflect on itself, in a certain way [ I don’t know exactly how ] to create a self. The way I tend to distinguish this discursively from introspective cognition or introspective moods [ the other things that are, confusingly, meant by “reflectivity” ] is “in order for there to be a self, stuff has to reflect on stuff, in that certain unknown way. Whether the self reflects on itself is, in my experience, immaterial for consciousness-in-the-sense-of-subjective-experience”.
Even if I’m not thinking about myself consciously [ i.e., my self is not reflecting on itself ], I have some very basic perception of the wall as being perceived by me, a perceiver—some perception of the wall as existing in reference to me.
Is it you inspecting your experience or you making an inference from the “consciousness is self-awareness” theory? Because it doesn’t feel reflective to me? I think I just have a perception of a wall without anything being about me. It seems to be implementable by just forward pass streamed into short-term memory or something. If you just separated such a process and put it on repeat, just endlessly staring at a wall, I don’t see a reason why would anyone would describe it as reflective.
I mean, it is reflective in a sense that inner neurons observe outer neurons so in a sense it is a brain observing brain. But even rocks have connected inner layers.
My perception of the wall is in reference to me simply in the course of belonging to me, in being clearly my perception of the wall, rather than some other person’s.
If you just separated such a process and put it on repeat, just endlessly staring at a wall, I don’t see a reason why would anyone would describe it as reflective.
Would anyone describe it as theirs? That access is reflective. It’s pretty difficult to retrieve data in a format you didn’t store it in.
Would anyone describe it as theirs? That access is reflective. It’s pretty difficult to retrieve data in a format you didn’t store it in.
But what if there is no access or self-description or retrieval? You just appear fully formed, stare at a wall for a couple of years and then disappear. Are you saying that describing your experience makes them retroactively conscious?
I’m saying that the way I apprehend, or reflexively relate to, my past or present experiences, as belonging to “myself”, is revealing of reflective access, which itself is suggestive of reflective storage.
If a hypothetical being never even silently apprehended an experience as theirs, that hypothetical being doesn’t sound conscious. I personally have no memories of being conscious but not being able to syntactically describe my experiences, but as far as I understand infant development that’s a phase, and it seems logically possible anyway.
The thing I don’t understand about claimed connection between self-model and phenomenal consciousness is that I don’t see much evidence for the necessity of self-model for conscious perception’s implementation—when I just stare at a white wall without internal dialog or other thoughts, what part of my experience is not implementable without self-model?
Is it claimed? There’s no mention of “phenomenal”in the OP.
Even if I’m not thinking about myself consciously [ i.e., my self is not reflecting on itself ], I have some very basic perception of the wall as being perceived by me, a perceiver—some perception of the wall as existing in reference to me. I have some sense of what the wall means to me, a being-who-is-continuous-with-past-and-future-instances-of-myself-but-not-with-other-things.
To generate me, my non-conscious, non-self-having brain has to reflect on itself, in a certain way [ I don’t know exactly how ] to create a self. The way I tend to distinguish this discursively from introspective cognition or introspective moods [ the other things that are, confusingly, meant by “reflectivity” ] is “in order for there to be a self, stuff has to reflect on stuff, in that certain unknown way. Whether the self reflects on itself is, in my experience, immaterial for consciousness-in-the-sense-of-subjective-experience”.
Is it you inspecting your experience or you making an inference from the “consciousness is self-awareness” theory? Because it doesn’t feel reflective to me? I think I just have a perception of a wall without anything being about me. It seems to be implementable by just forward pass streamed into short-term memory or something. If you just separated such a process and put it on repeat, just endlessly staring at a wall, I don’t see a reason why would anyone would describe it as reflective.
I mean, it is reflective in a sense that inner neurons observe outer neurons so in a sense it is a brain observing brain. But even rocks have connected inner layers.
My perception of the wall is in reference to me simply in the course of belonging to me, in being clearly my perception of the wall, rather than some other person’s.
Would anyone describe it as theirs? That access is reflective. It’s pretty difficult to retrieve data in a format you didn’t store it in.
And rock’s perception belongs to a rock.
But what if there is no access or self-description or retrieval? You just appear fully formed, stare at a wall for a couple of years and then disappear. Are you saying that describing your experience makes them retroactively conscious?
I’m saying that the way I apprehend, or reflexively relate to, my past or present experiences, as belonging to “myself”, is revealing of reflective access, which itself is suggestive of reflective storage.
If a hypothetical being never even silently apprehended an experience as theirs, that hypothetical being doesn’t sound conscious. I personally have no memories of being conscious but not being able to syntactically describe my experiences, but as far as I understand infant development that’s a phase, and it seems logically possible anyway.