I mentioned the first and easy problem that he states about consciousness before but I will state it again. The first problem, which is the easy problem, is just figuring out how we react to things and how we feel about things. The second problem with consciousness, which is the hard problem, is trying to explain how all the complex interaction in the brain gives us subjective experiences in our life. For example, the sensation of looking at color, hearing music, our awareness of situations and every moment in our lives.
In this interview, the conversation with David Chalmers was a little different because he was trying to explain to this other guy why consciousness was important. The subject came up that it was possible that studying consciousness could eventually be a waste of time. David Chalmers' defense to this was that even if nothing extraordinary ever comes from studying consciousness, then at least it can lead to other important findings and information on understanding how the brain and neural processes work.
At this point I am thinking, "you know what, this isn't getting me anywhere like I had hoped so let me go ahead and find out what the definition of consciousness is." According to Gerald Edelman, who happens to be a Nobel Prize Winner of Medicine and is the founder and director of The Neuroscience Institute, consciousness is a form of awareness that is a process which is individual or personal, continuous but changing, and has intentionality. This didn't quite do if for me so I went on Wikipedia and found another answer. Wikipedia defines consciousness as a subjective experience, awareness, the ability to experience feeling, wakefulness, or the executive control system of the mind.
In the beginning, I was really interested in this topic of consciousness but now I am starting to become annoyed with it. I am beginning to think that David Chalmers is just fascinated with the fact that he can feel things and that he is "awake" to life. Through his other interviews and seeing him refer to God many times, it is obvious that he is a very spiritual person and I believe that is the reason why he is so fascinated with all of this. We experience being "aware" of everything because the brain sends signals at hundreds if milliseconds. I think what David Chalmers is more concerned with is just the sensation of experience by itself. Experiencing emotions, say seeing a beautiful waterfall for example, can possibly be an overwhelming experience. Maybe that isn't the best example but does anyone know what I'm trying to get at?
I'm not quite sure. Are you saying that you think consciousness should be a series of events, whereas Chalmers says it's a state of mind/being? You mention that Chalmers says he is "awake," maybe that has something to do with it.
ReplyDeleteWhat I don't get is the waterfall example. Are you saying that an overwhelming sensory experience IS or is not part of consciousness?
Well yea, an overwhelming sensory experience is part of consciousness. To answer your first question, I think that consciousness is simply a feeling of awareness. My problem with David Chalmers is that I don't understand why he is so fascinated with this consciousness/awareness/feeling ordeal. He proposes that consciousness is something like a spiritual awareness, but I don't know why he thinks this way even after seeing 3 different interviews.
ReplyDeleteI might be missing part of the debate but here is how I see the two sides:
ReplyDeleteYou can argue that consciousness derives from physical activity in the mind, such as the firing of neurons that are wired together when a certain activity is taking place, e.g. talking, perceiving, listening. But there is a giant leap between all of those and the awareness aspect by which the mind is directed toward not only things but also ideas and concepts. So this is what makes intentionality attractive as a way to account for the mind's higher-level directedness. I suspect all philosophers of mind secretly know this but don't like to admit it. On the other hand, it's difficult to explain how intentionality reduces to lower-level states of brain activity. Even if we say there's a temporal correspondence between intentionalities and brain activities, that doesn't explain a whole lot.
From the perspective of a phenomenologist (i.e. speaking in my own voice), the issue with analyzing consciousness by considering brain matters is that this method provides a rather limited lens -- there seems to be a wide disconnect between biologic processes and higher-order conscious states such as vision, memory, fantasy, or logic.