I know that when I look at my hand, the experience is not as immediate and straight-forward as it seems. It’s not me “looking at my hand”—if by ‘me’ I mean my conscious self. Instead, my brain is putting together an image of my hand based on sensory information it is receiving from my eye. Nor is it even so simple as “it is me that is aware of a constructed image of my hand”. Because the part of me that ‘sees’ the image is still not my conscious ‘me’. What is actually going on is that I imagine ‘myself’ seeing my hand—that is, I imagine a ‘me’ and I imagine this ‘me’ is seeing a hand. So when I think about it quite carefully, I realize that when I think to myself that I am seeing my hand, this means I am simulating myself seeing a hand.
Since I have been putting a lot of time into learning about what people like to call consciousness this part of the post really leapt out at me.
What am I if I am not the processes that constitute both the physical matter of the brain and the physical patterns that allow the various senses to both operate and combine to produce a model of the outside world (and place me within that model)?
This quote seems to beg this very question. Both Douglas Hofstatder’s I am a Strange Loop and Jeff Hawins’ On Intelligence maintain that our consciousness is the sum total of the operations that take place in the brain, and that the I that is observing your hand, is just the result of recursive patterns within one’s brain.
So, this quote seems to be a strange observation to make for a monist point of view.
This quote reminds me of comments by Searle on how Computationalist or Connectionist theories of mind assert a form of Strong Dualism that really fails to be a criticism of these stances, due to a false implication that these stances are somehow cartesian.
Both Douglas Hofstatder’s I am a Strange Loop and Jeff Hawins’ On Intelligence maintain that our consciousness is the sum total of the operations that take place in the brain, and that the I that is observing your hand, is just the result of recursive patterns within one’s brain.
But I would agree with this. Consciousness is the sum total of the operations (or most operations—things go on when you’re unconscious) while my self-awareness is some subset. ‘Rercusive patterns within one’s brain’ and ‘simulations of reality’ sound like they could be the same thing to me.
Later edit: Aha! I think I understand your point. I didn’t intend to define consciousness in any limited way.
It’s not me “looking at my hand”—if by ‘me’ I mean my conscious self.
Place much more emphasis on the word ‘self’ than ‘conscious’.
That is, my conscious sense of self never gets to look directly at a hand—it only gets to experience a simulation of me looking at a hand.
This quote reminds me of comments by Searle on how Computationalist or Connectionist theories of mind assert a form of Strong Dualism that really fails to be a criticism of these stances, due to a false implication that these stances are somehow cartesian.
This sounds interesting but I don’t know what any of the words mean. Could you clarify please if you are tactfully/mildly suggesting in your comment that my hypothesis for dualism is dualist? (If so, I’ll be more interested and motivated to research those terms.)
Searle asserts that Computationalism or Connectionism explicitly suggests that the mind and body are different, because if all a mind happens to be is a collection of symbols being computed, (or connections of patterns) then the mind would just be the program (or diagram of the patterns), and this could be written down on a hard copy.
Yet, Searle fails to take into account that the mind isn’t the hard copy, but it is only the hard copy of an instance of the program in operation.
Searle also denies that there can be multiple instances of the same mind (and, he is both right and wrong about that, but like most of his philosophy of mind, he really fails to follow through with his description of why this is the case).
Which led to my question: What am I if I am not the processes....
Now, if you are a dualist, which I was rather caught by… Then my reply is rather pointless.
I don’t understand it, but I don’t think it can be understood. He says that a theory X assert a form of the theory Y that fails to be a criticism of the theory X. Nobody holding theory X would assert theory Y, and want theory Y to be a criticism of theory X. So this can’t make any sense, no matter what the words mean.
Since I have been putting a lot of time into learning about what people like to call consciousness this part of the post really leapt out at me.
What am I if I am not the processes that constitute both the physical matter of the brain and the physical patterns that allow the various senses to both operate and combine to produce a model of the outside world (and place me within that model)?
This quote seems to beg this very question. Both Douglas Hofstatder’s I am a Strange Loop and Jeff Hawins’ On Intelligence maintain that our consciousness is the sum total of the operations that take place in the brain, and that the I that is observing your hand, is just the result of recursive patterns within one’s brain.
So, this quote seems to be a strange observation to make for a monist point of view.
This quote reminds me of comments by Searle on how Computationalist or Connectionist theories of mind assert a form of Strong Dualism that really fails to be a criticism of these stances, due to a false implication that these stances are somehow cartesian.
But I would agree with this. Consciousness is the sum total of the operations (or most operations—things go on when you’re unconscious) while my self-awareness is some subset. ‘Rercusive patterns within one’s brain’ and ‘simulations of reality’ sound like they could be the same thing to me.
Later edit: Aha! I think I understand your point. I didn’t intend to define consciousness in any limited way.
Place much more emphasis on the word ‘self’ than ‘conscious’.
That is, my conscious sense of self never gets to look directly at a hand—it only gets to experience a simulation of me looking at a hand.
This sounds interesting but I don’t know what any of the words mean. Could you clarify please if you are tactfully/mildly suggesting in your comment that my hypothesis for dualism is dualist? (If so, I’ll be more interested and motivated to research those terms.)
Searle asserts that Computationalism or Connectionism explicitly suggests that the mind and body are different, because if all a mind happens to be is a collection of symbols being computed, (or connections of patterns) then the mind would just be the program (or diagram of the patterns), and this could be written down on a hard copy.
Yet, Searle fails to take into account that the mind isn’t the hard copy, but it is only the hard copy of an instance of the program in operation.
Searle also denies that there can be multiple instances of the same mind (and, he is both right and wrong about that, but like most of his philosophy of mind, he really fails to follow through with his description of why this is the case).
Which led to my question: What am I if I am not the processes....
Now, if you are a dualist, which I was rather caught by… Then my reply is rather pointless.
I don’t understand it, but I don’t think it can be understood. He says that a theory X assert a form of the theory Y that fails to be a criticism of the theory X. Nobody holding theory X would assert theory Y, and want theory Y to be a criticism of theory X. So this can’t make any sense, no matter what the words mean.