Medical What makes my consciousness mine ?

[Pythagorean]

Who wants to argue that pain is not real or that it cannot be described and evaluated? However it is an entirely subjective internal experience (except perhaps for one retired US president).

I don't believe that it is "an entirely subjective internal experience". I believe pain is experienced in more-or-less the same way by the majority of the population. That's what allows us to talk about it and measure the physical correlates.

I don't think it's too far of a stretch to say: if you want to know what it felt like for Phineas to get a spike in his head... get a spike in your head. Can't we all agree that it must be a much closer approximation to what Phineas Gage experienced than getting a brain freeze from a slushee?

I haven't read the literature that's been cited in this thread, but from a scientific perspective I see no way the usual scientific methods can be applied. Perhaps someone can suggest where I'm wrong. Remember, we are not talking about observable physical correlates of qualia, but the qualia themselves.

It's not impossible to explain your perceptions (a tingly feeling crawling up my arm). Or what about heart break? If you've ever experienced it, "a sunken feeling in my chest" is appropriate (and possible contributed to why the ancients thought the heart had a brain's role in emotional experience, as the opposite fluttery feeling of love/infatuation tends to be perceived in the heart as well... generally because it's trying to jump out of your ribcage. Good think for the buffer zone.

Anyway, are qualia and perceptions really unique to each person and completely subjective? We don't really know, but I doubt it. I think the only real difference is the quanta of the qualia (i.e. same thing, but to a different degree... so two different healthy people have the same general experience, but particular aspects are more intense to one person than the other so the emergent experience may be different.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

Since this discussion has been reopened, I want to make more rigorous my claim that while qualia, as the elements of subjective experience (consciousness), are real, they can only be studied indirectly from the third person perspective. Put quite simply, I cannot feel someone else's pain. My attempt to put this in the form of a syllogism in post 22 was loosely based on Russell's paradox. This was a profound logical result which altered the way the foundations of mathematics were and are formulated.

The original paradox was quite simple. The barber only shaves everyone in the village who do not shave themselves. There's a hidden assumption that the barber is resident of the village. So who shaves the barber? If he shaves himself, then the premise is violated because the barber only shaves those who do not shave themselves. However, if someone else shaves the barber the premise also is violated because that person is supposed to only shave himself.

Now say the barber only shaves all patients in the hospital ward who do not shave themselves. All the conscious patients in the ward shave themselves. The barber is also a patient in the ward. Who shaves the barber?

In both cases, as in my original syllogism in post 22, the paradox is removed if we remove the subject from the set. In mathematics this means there is no universal set (a set of all sets). In the present context, it means that the observer/actor cannot be part of the set she/he is observing or acting upon. I can always determine whether anyone in the set is conscious or unconscious only if I am not a member of the set.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Very nice, SW VandeCarr.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

Very nice, SW VandeCarr.

Thanks.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Since this discussion has been reopened, I want to make more rigorous by claim that while qualia, as the elements of subjective experience (consciousness), are real, they can only be studied indirectly from the third person perspective. Put quite simply, I cannot feel someone else's pain.

Some years ago I was studying neuroscience modules during my Bsc whilst my partner was studying philosophy of mind. We had many conversations about qualia and how one cannot experience another persons experiences. To this I proposed that this may not always be true, if we could accurately map a neural circuit in one persons brain and cause the rearrangement of a circuit in another persons we could hypothetically transfer the experience.

If you went out and did something an then using our hypothetical advanced knowledge of neuroscience we recorded your thoughts/feelings/memories to my brain would I not have experienced your qualia?

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Some years ago I was studying neuroscience modules during my Bsc whilst my partner was studying philosophy of mind. We had many conversations about qualia and how one cannot experience another persons experiences. To this I proposed that this may not always be true, if we could accurately map a neural circuit in one persons brain and cause the rearrangement of a circuit in another persons we could hypothetically transfer the experience.

If you went out and did something an then using our hypothetical advanced knowledge of neuroscience we recorded your thoughts/feelings/memories to my brain would I not have experienced your qualia?

Posts here, especially # 157, etc.
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=485718&page=10
regarding 'Phantoms in the Brain', Ramachandran, 1999

 

[yeshi]

(not sure if its allowable to ressurect threads that lay still for 3 months ? :) )

I think it makes sense to dismiss any definition of the concept of ‘me’ that we are so accustomed to.
There is no 'me', there is no single thing or substance that the 'me' is dependent on - the 'me' is only a pattern, the material for which is replaced regularly by the body's own devices.
DNA splits, and new cells are formed, while the material for the old cells is reprocessed or discarded.
We can replace the concept of there being a me or you with the concept of there being a phenomenon (or set of phenomena) that occur and is dependant on the material on which it occurs.
But the phenomenon is not anything more than that.
It is analogous to a wave on the ocean, moving along the surface, and constituted by all sorts of different molecules over time, but the wave is not dependent on a single set of molecules and does not exist separately from the water.
Other than the water, there are no substances, natural or supernatural, required to define the wave.

Nevertheless, though as rational naturalists we know universe is built from phenomena that are impersonal, this "illusion" of personal consciousness is THE base of our very existence, its main domain and the protagonist of all experiencing.

How or why does a "personal identity" get encapsulated into the body, why is it bound to this ever changing body and rebooted every day after good night's sleep?

If the laws of emergence of consciousness in gray matter are universal, and there is a physics phenomenon transposing neural activity (probably electrical field and resonance activity) into subjective experiencing (and therefore solving Chalmer's "Hard Problem of Consciousness"), what makes the illusion of MINE appear?

If it is a chance that "I, myself, me" appears in this body on waking up, does this incredible chance mean that "I, myself, me" will continue to appear somewhere forever, as no phenomenon in know universe is ever disappearing, but always gets transformed only?

NB the singular view of "mine consciousness" and the subjective experiencing is the only occurance of "individuality" that appears in nature, and since then we personify and ascribe it to many diverse phenomena around.