[FRIAM] Is consciousness a mystery? (used to be "mystery...deeper".T

Thu Jul 11 11:15:48 EDT 2024

Hi, David,

Sorry to have  included you in my grumpiness.

With your example of Dusty, you engage at precisely the baby-steps level
that I seek.  I think it helps to start with an evocative particular.

First, could we dispense with the  Cartesian metaphor of "expression", the
pimple-pinching model of emotionality?   Love is something inside, and we
reach down with two mental thumbs and squeeze it until the pressure is
released and it oozes out over the skin.  Ahhhhh!

Could we agree that the question before us is simply, does Dusty love
David.   I say yes.  You are still in doubt.  The goal would then be, to
explore our uses of language and our experiences with respect to our
relations of other beings to seek a common understanding of the question
and, if possible, a common  answer or, at least, a common understanding of
our diverse answers.

That is my project.  It comes from my feelings, premises, values etc that
tell me that any disagreement with someone I respect is an instability that
makes me uncomfortable.  You may not share those feelings, etc.  I think
many people on this experience *agreement* as an instability they need to
correct.  So, can we agree on the project, for starters?

By the way,  I am going to grab some breakfast and join Thuam in about 15
minutes.

Nick

On Wed, Jul 10, 2024 at 10:12 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
wrote:

> I'm not  sure dusty Dusty was expressing 'love'—she seemed to be finding
> some sense of security and protection from the thunder and lightning. She
> was 'taking' something from me of value to her, not 'giving' something to
> me.
>
> BTW, I do not believe that humans are egoistically, individually, and
> idiosyncratically 'conscious'. I do believe in *Consciousness**, *but
> that is an entirely different topic.
>
> davew
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 9, 2024, at 5:37 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>
> Frank
>
> What you laid out is an abduction,,isn't it?;  I don[t think I am doing
> that in either of my syllogisms.  But I am no logician;
>
> An induction is a valid inference, although a probabilistic one, at least
> on Peirce's account.
>
> David,
>
> If humans are conscious, I am pretty sure that animals are conscious, .
>
> I am just not sure that humans are conscious.
>
> I am not sure why the fact that your dog loves you, implies its
> consciousness.  George agrees with you that things like love are signs of
> consciousness, but he could never explain why.
>
> Eric,
>
> Yes, I am pretty sure I am a worthless piece of Baconian Behaviorist
> Crap.  Stipulated.  Still, I like your questions.  So,  do you see any way
> of proceeding to develop those question in a such a way that we are roughly
> on the same page as we go?  If you do, I would love your help, here.
>
> All,
>
> Sorry, it is hot, here,  and I am cranky.  I resent you all sitting in
> your air-conditioned offices being paid huge sums of money to be cool.  I
> just thought it might be nice to have a conversation about consciousness in
> which everybody is not sitting in front of their own hut shouting.  Happy
> to abide by any method that isn-t like an explosion in a concept shop.
>
> Nick
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 9, 2024 at 5:00 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Nick, That is not a valid syllogism.
>
> All X have Y
> x has Y
> Therefore x is an X
>
> Is that a correct formalization of what you said?
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Tue, Jul 9, 2024, 1:54 PM Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> While I find all the  ancillary considerations raised on the original
> thread extremely interesting,  I would like to reopen the discussion of
> Conscious as a Mystery and ask that those that join it stay close to the
> question of what consciousness is and how we know it when we see it.  Baby
> Steps.
>
> Where were we?   I think I was asking Jochen, and perhaps Peitr and
> anybody else who thought that animals were not conscious (i.e., not aware
> of their own awareness)  what basis they had in experience for thinking
> that..  One offering for such an experience is the absence of language in
> animals.  Because my cat cannot  describe his experience in words, he
> cannot be  conscious.  This requires the following syllogism:
>
> Nothing that does not employ a language (or two?) is conscious.
> Animals (with ;the possible exception of signing apes) do not employ
> languages.
> Ergo, Animals are not conscious.
>
> But I was trying to find out the basis for the first premise.  How do we
> know that there are no non-linguistic beings that are not conscious.  I
> hope we could rule out the answer,"because they are non-linguistic",  both
> in its strictly  tautological or merely circular form.
>
> There is a closely related syllogism which we also need to explore:
>
> All language using beings are conscious.
> George Peter Tremblay IV is a language-using being.
> George Peter Tremblay IV is conscious.
>
> Both are valid syllogisms.  But where do the premises come from.
>
> Nick
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