I find consciousness perhaps the hardest of the hard problems, in particular the self-awareness aspect of the phenomenon. I experience it, as I suspect (but can't prove) do the rest of HN's participants. But damned if I can figure out how it emerges from organized systems such as ourselves or even whether it's necessary.
I can imagine going about my day emitting behaviors without self-awareness: stimulus/response, variation/selection/inheritance over the short and long term yielding the rich behavior we associate with ourselves, our conspecifics, and the other critters we share the planet with. I can imagine everyone and everything else doing the same - behaving, absent awareness. So far, I haven't seen how consciousness is required for behavior.
And yet I feel aware, never mind that I don't see why that's required. Inevitably, that suggests to me a continuum of consciousness, from less organized to more organized systems. For me, it's a long walk from the Nernst equation and neuronal membrane potentials to my dog's happy disposition, which algorithmically seems to be wag more, bark less.
> I experience it, as I suspect (but can't prove) do the rest of HN's participants.
Wouldn't it be interesting if science had to be advanced by resorting to individual proofs? In other words, currently we can perform one experiment and have everyone else verify what we have done by looking at our results.
It may turn out that there are some aspects of reality that can only be "proven" at the individual level; however, one would assume that this applies to everyone equally.
Continuing my analogy above, if everyone can "prove" to themselves that their own floating fruit exists (even though they can't see everyone else's), that should be enough to consider it science in my opinion.
(In essence, we move from global consensus about one event to global consensus about many similar, but individual events.)
Where things gets interesting, is when you realize you can manipulate the other person's orange through your own view. that realization comes with the fact that consciousness, I believe, is shared across all living beings.
My experiences with my own practices indicate that these closed off views are indeed not closed off. be aware, that my practices involve the esoteric and the occult. Many people are not comfortable with these discussions and will actively refute any merit whatsoever. Interestingly enough, I do my own semi - scientific theories regarding the occult, only that N=1, me. And I also have to acknolodge that my own sensors also can actively deceive me (placebo).
I've given up on proving this or that phenomenon within an esoteric background. Either you practice and have seen these things for yourself (and another N=1), or you haven't.
>I can imagine everyone and everything else doing the same - behaving, absent awareness.
In which case you are reasoning in error: people's behavior depends on their subjective experience quite a lot of the time. You simply couldn't get the same behaviors without the experiences.
I find consciousness perhaps the hardest of the hard problems, in particular the self-awareness aspect of the phenomenon. I experience it, as I suspect (but can't prove) do the rest of HN's participants. But damned if I can figure out how it emerges from organized systems such as ourselves or even whether it's necessary.
I can imagine going about my day emitting behaviors without self-awareness: stimulus/response, variation/selection/inheritance over the short and long term yielding the rich behavior we associate with ourselves, our conspecifics, and the other critters we share the planet with. I can imagine everyone and everything else doing the same - behaving, absent awareness. So far, I haven't seen how consciousness is required for behavior.
And yet I feel aware, never mind that I don't see why that's required. Inevitably, that suggests to me a continuum of consciousness, from less organized to more organized systems. For me, it's a long walk from the Nernst equation and neuronal membrane potentials to my dog's happy disposition, which algorithmically seems to be wag more, bark less.
It's good there are hard problems to think about.