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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36042 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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If messing around with the radio makes it output an entirely different program, one would suspect that it was actually generating, not receiving a signal. (Or changed which signal it receives. Brain damage tunes your body to a different soul/consciousness is an option.)

As far the popular view of consciousness as mostly providing a narrative/excuses for subconscious processes (of which Jaynes' feels like a variation, where the narrative historically wasn't conceptualized as "I" and didn't have to have a single narrator), I feel like that would only more strongly suggest that it is inherently embodied.

If messing around with the radio makes it output an entirely different program, one would suspect that it was actually generating, not receiving a signal.

What? I cannot understand the point you're making here. If I turn the volume up or down on a set of speakers, I do not in any way begin to suspect that the speakers are the source of the audio signal rather than receiving it. Similarly, I've had psychedelic trips that caused me to behave in extremely odd ways compared to normal - but there was still a solid continuity of consciousness the entire way through. The signal remained constant despite the radio acting in bizarre ways, and when that temporary shift was over the signal returned to normal so to speak.

As far the popular view of consciousness as mostly providing a narrative/excuses for subconscious processes (of which Jaynes' feels like a variation

That is most definitely not how I interpreted Jaynes' work on consciousness. Could you please provide a bit more elaboration on what you think his model of it actually is?

Yes, psychedelics are consistent with the soul-radio model. Dissociatives and deliriants seem a lot more like the sort of brain damage that's evidence against it. The different consciousness part was mostly a joke.

I was going off what I remembered of Scott's review. Rereading it now, my memory of it was wrong, but it seems not very relevant to this conversation. Quoting the review,

I think he is unaware of (or avoiding) what we would call “the hard problem of consciousness”, and focusing on consciousness entirely as a sort of “global workspace” where many parts of the mind come together and have access to one another. In his theory, that didn’t happen – the mental processing happened and announced itself to the human listener as a divine voice, without the human being aware of the intermediate steps. I can see how “consciousness” is one possible term for this area, if you didn’t mind confusing a lot of people. But seriously, just say “theory of mind”.

But this thread is entirely about the hard problem.

Dissociatives and deliriants seem a lot more like the sort of brain damage that's evidence against it.

I didn't permanently damage myself with them but I have consumed those substances and never experienced anything that would be inconsistent with that model.

But this thread is entirely about the hard problem.

Yes, but there was a specific reason I brought up specific parts of Jaynes' work and if you haven't actually read the book then you won't understand the relevance to it - I said that I was talking about his work in the earlier chapters establishing exactly what consciousness is, rather than the central thesis of his work. I don't think we're allowed to just post entire chapters of copyrighted books in here, so I'll post a quick excerpt that sums up some of the points I was trying to make.

Let us review where we are, for we have just found our way through an enormous amount of material which may have seemed more perplexing than clarifying. We have been brought to the conclusion that consciousness is not what we generally think it is. It is not to be confused with reactivity. It is not involved in hosts of perceptual phenomena. It is not involved in the performance of skills and often hinders their execution. It need not be involved in speaking, writing, listening, or reading. It does not copy down experience, as most people think. Consciousness is not at all involved in signal learning, and need not be involved in the learning of skills or solutions, which can go on without any consciousness whatever. It is not necessary for making judgments or in simple thinking. It is not the seat of reason, and indeed some of the most difficult instances of creative reasoning go on without any attending consciousness.

As for the hard problem of consciousness, I think the correct answer is that it falls on the other side of the line dividing science and religion/spirituality. My tradition has an actual answer to the hard problem that I find satisfying and consistent with my experience of reality, but I don't expect that to be convincing to anyone else (though if I had to categorise it as one of the existing responses it would fall under panpsychism).

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