Consciousness.... ideas from idea people...

[Maxmars]

Given that the topic is conceptual... as in a form of thought experiment... 

Some people with clout and social currency have proposed we study "what is consciousness" scientifically...
claiming an urgency due to "approaching AI" technologies...

As if people hadn't been bringing it up ever since they endorsed large language models as "artificially intelligent."

One article characterizes the source as: Scientists Warn That Understanding Consciousness Is Now Urgent
 

As artificial intelligence races ahead, a group of leading researchers says the most profound scientific question of all, how consciousness arises, can no longer be postponed. Writing in Frontiers in Science, they argue that the ethical, medical, and societal stakes make it critical to understand awareness before machines or lab-grown brain systems begin to exhibit it.

The narrative is that "science" is behind the curve when it comes to understanding "consciousness."

And that the specter of AI is looming... they are actually thinking in terms of we could "accidentally" "create" "consciousness."

But this is just one authors gist.... along with AI hype and hyperbole about a threshold we aren't even sure how to define.

Off to the actual source....

 Consciousness science: where are we, where are we going, and what if we get there?

And there.... in that article... well... I was not a happy web-surfer.

The abstract lost me almost at once... it begins

Understanding the biophysical basis of consciousness remains a substantial challenge for 21st-century science. This endeavor is becoming even more pressing in light of accelerating progress in artificial intelligence and other technologies.

This article is NOT about consciousness... it's about the AI fantasy... a wish list...
and maybe something incidentally insidious.

In the process of wrangling the obvious void in our understanding about "consciousness."
The authors seem driven to crave a 'metric' framework as a determinant of consciousness.

They offer some "key points" which I found telling of intent... all focused on the "upcoming" AI as a driver for their so-called urgency.

Within their key points is a sticky little point...

A key development would be a test for consciousness, allowing a determination or informed judgment about which systems/organisms—such as infants, patients, fetuses, animals, organoids, xenobots, and AI—are conscious.

A "test" ... a "measurable" determinant of "consciousness."

They speak of "tests" of the sort where you can "scientifically say" that a fetus is not conscious...

Why do I just KNOW that's in there as a  distraction?....

The industry is desperate to "claim a success" and the recent "look at the AI" marketing spate has really started to fizzle as they attempt to scale an "AI look alike" and use it as an "AI."

Now they want to establish a legitimate way to claim "machine consciousness" by setting up parameters they can appear to achieve...  

But here's the kicker...
 

Three distinctions about consciousnessConsciousness is a broad construct—a “mongrel” concept (10)—used by different people to mean different things. In this paper, we stress three distinctions.
 The first distinction is between the notion of the level of consciousness and the notion of the contents of consciousness. In the first sense, consciousness is a property associated with an entire organism (a creature) or system: one is conscious (for example, when in a normal state of wakefulness) or not (for example, when in deep dreamless sleep or a coma). There is an ongoing vibrant debate about whether one should think of levels of consciousness as degrees of consciousness or whether they are best characterized in terms of an array of dimensions (11) or as “global states” (12). In the second sense, consciousness is always consciousness of something: our subjective experience is always “contentful”—it is always about something, a property philosophers call intentionality (3, 13). Here, again, there is some debate over the terms, for example, whether there can be fully contentless global states of consciousness (14) and whether consciousness levels (or global states) and contents are fully separable (11, 15).
 The second distinction is between perceptual awareness and self-awareness (note that in this article, we use the terms consciousness and awareness interchangeably). Perceptual awareness simply refers to the fact that when we are perceptually aware, we have a qualitative experience of the external world and of our bodies within it (though of course, some perceptual experiences can be entirely fictive, such as when dreaming, vividly imagining, or hallucinating). Importantly, mere sensitivity to sensory information is not sufficient to be considered as perceptual awareness: the carnivorous plant Dionaea muscipula and the camera on your phone are both sensitive to their environment, but we have little reason to think that either has perceptual experiences. Thus, mere sensitivity is not sufficient for perceptual awareness, as it does not necessarily feel like something to be sensitive. This experiential character is precisely what makes the corresponding sensation a conscious sensation (16).
 We take self-awareness, on the other hand, to mean experiences of “being a self.” These experiences can be of many different kinds, from low-level experiences of mood and emotion (17) to high-level experiences of being the subject of our experiences, which might be supported by some inner (metacognitive) model of ourselves and our mental states (18–20). This kind of high-level reflective self-awareness is associated with the “I” and with a sense of personal identity over time (21).
 The distinction between self-awareness and perceptual awareness is not sharp. Some aspects of the experience of “being a self” seem not to involve reflective self-awareness, such as experiences of emotion, mood, body ownership, agency, and of having a first-person perspective (22, 23). Some of these aspects may arguably have perceptual features. For example, emotional experience may depend on interoception (24–26). In addition, some perspectives, such as the higher-order theories described below, suggest that a form of metacognition might play a constitutive role in all instances of perceptual awareness, not only in self-awareness (18, 27, 28).
 Human beings normally possess both perceptual awareness and self-awareness, but this is probably not true at all times or for all species. In humans, reflective self-awareness may be absent in specific conscious states, such as absorption or flow (29), or in states of minimal phenomenal experience (14). Other species may lack this reflective capability altogether. For example, few will doubt that dogs have perceptual experiences as well as various non-reflective self-related experiences—though this can be contested as we currently lack a way to directly test for consciousness in other species [see (30–32) for recent attempts to tackle this problem]. Nevertheless, there is no convincing evidence that dogs have reflective self-awareness in the sense defined above. Putting these debates aside, consciousness research has thus far largely focused, with exceptions (26, 33, 34), on trying to explain perceptual awareness as a first, albeit notoriously difficult, step toward understanding other aspects of consciousness. This emphasis most likely stems from the fact that perceptual awareness is generally easier to manipulate in experiments.
 The third distinction contrasts the phenomenological (i.e., experiential) aspects of consciousness with its functions. This discussion has been largely shaped by Block’s (35) influential, yet controversial (36, 37), distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness—informally, what consciousness feels like and what it does. Access consciousness is associated with the various functions that consciousness enables, such as global availability, verbal report, reasoning, and executive control. Phenomenal consciousness, on the other hand, refers to the felt qualities of conscious mental states: the complex mixture of bitterness and sweetness of a Negroni cocktail, the distinctive hue of International Klein Blue, the anxiety prompted by one’s to-do list. All such conscious mental states have phenomenal character (using the philosophical term, often referred to as “qualia”): there is something it is like for us to be in each of these states. By contrast, there is nothing it was like for the neural network Alpha Go (38) to win against the South Korean world Go champion Lee Sedol (it was Sir Demis Hassabis and the DeepMind team who drank the champagne instead). Despite its seductive use of language, we think there is also nothing it is like for GPT-5 to engage in a conversation (39, 40).
 Just as there has been greater emphasis within consciousness science on studying perceptual awareness compared with self-awareness, there has also been a greater emphasis on studying the functional rather than the phenomenological aspects of consciousness. This, again, may be due to the relative ease with which functional properties related to conscious access can be studied empirically compared with phenomenological aspects (41–43). With respect to the neural underpinnings of consciousness, we have been more focused on finding the mechanisms that differentiate between a consciously processed and an unconsciously processed stimulus than on explaining the difference between two conscious experiences, again with exceptions (44–48). Additionally, with respect to the functions of consciousness, we have been more oriented toward documenting what we can do without awareness rather than because of it (49–52). The potential for complex behavior in the absence of awareness has been further emphasized by the rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI), where complicated functions can be executed without any accompanying phenomenology, at least as far as we can tell.

Step 1 - Bitch about misuse of the word "consciousness" generally... (ironic and hypocritical, considering they are still pretending that AI is just around the corner.)

First aspect:  Admitting we know nothing about what it actually is... they are partitioning types and levels and categories of it.... 
Second aspect: To define "awareness" as a distinct component of consciousness...
Third aspect: Utterly confound any search by conflating social structures on consciousness. And irrevocably confuse consciousness with reason.

Maybe I just had too many candy bars today... but this is not what I was expecting...

This idea that some technocrats are going to "define" consciousness for their own convenience in propping up our newest notional, virtual, "personal neighbors"... whom the industry will own and sell... as slaves...
kind of disturbs my calm.

[UltraBudgie]

It is anathema to the Western mind to consider that human consciousness is not composed of thoughts.

The concept that thoughts are a worldly experience that happens to consciousness, at the same level as a bowel movement, goes against every precept of Western socio-psychological doctrine.

The goal of Western "culture" is to fill the mind with a non-stop stream of infatuating thoughts, to sufficiently distract consciousness from any direct experience of reality.

Looking deeper at what consciousness really is might actually reveal that, which is unacceptable to power, which is why there's all the confusion and hand-waving from academia right now revolving around so-called AI.

[ANNEE]

I was reading something the other day when I was researching relationship powers.

Personally -- I believe everything is energy -- that energy evolved into consciousness -- and physical is a manifestation.

However -- the article was saying something along the lines of -- when you're in a strong partnership your energies join together.  I guess kinda like twin energy -- you seem to join in each other's thoughts.

Then it occurred to me -- can human energy meld with computer energy?  

I'll have to try to find the article.

[Maxmars]

It is anathema to the Western mind to consider that human consciousness is not composed of thoughts.

The concept that thoughts are a worldly experience that happens to consciousness, at the same level as a bowel movement, goes against every precept of Western socio-psychological doctrine.

The goal of Western "culture" is to fill the mind with a non-stop stream of infatuating thoughts, to sufficiently distract consciousness from any direct experience of reality.

Looking deeper at what consciousness really is might actually reveal that, which is unacceptable to power, which is why there's all the confusion and hand-waving from academia right now revolving around so-called AI.

I noticed this as well.... the very first thing I thought of was a smarmy "yeah... obviously you have never meditated successfully..."

Thoughts are an 'event' in consciousness, not it's "product."

[rickymouse]

Consciousness can be susseptable to brainwashing.  The Subconscious is in a different primoridal part of the brain and the subconscious in that area develops a more protective membrane in that area to  make it able to survive better if chemicals or diseases attack the brain cells.  That area of our brains is kind of sealed off between the ages of around six or eight.  So we should learn things that are necessary for us to survive by that time....communication, basic math, preparation and growing of food, and basic rules our society has to follow....like civility, and things like though shall not kill, though shall not lie, though shall not bear false witness against others.  Not much needs to be taught about sex before that, our minds will develop that instinct later, except self control should be taught before that subconscious goes into protective mode.

The link between people and elements of nature is also part of the subconsciousness somehow.  If the consciousness is compromised, the subconscious link to other people might be able to help to survive as long as that part of the brain is not doped up too bad so that it does not work.  Some call this a connection to god, but it may possibly be related to a saying in the bible.....God is the word, the word that is not spoken.  So this may be an explanation of  what god may be.  A link to the collective consciousness of all living things in this world and possibly beyond.   

So, it is important to teach your kids to grow foods, and to start learning to prepare foods before that point...for survival.  It is also better to not feed them a lot of unnatural food chemistry when they are young too.  Too much tyramine or monoamine chemistry can cause problems in their future.  Feeding them a balanced diet, low moderation in junk food, can help to keep this part of the brain functioning to preserve this primordial knowledge when they are young.

This subconscious part of the brain gives us cravings for special foods to eat when we are sick, a craving for chicken soup, a crave for toast or certain foods that we need for the sickness and also for regulation of the kids future ability to think correctly.  Many foods increase dopamine, and if this area of the brain gets addicted, it is hard to regulate the dopamine properly.  But at the same time, they also need dopamine stimulated when it is needed.  That addiction tied to a genetic trait where people eat dopamine producing chemistry or tyramine chemistry can lead to problems...if they make lots of enzymes when needed to break down dopamine, and eat lots of food that creates dopamine, it can cause enzymes to be created that break it down fast, those enzymes do not just shut off when levels of consumption disappear, they wipe out all the dopamine and you are short, that leads to depression or what they refer to as Bi-polar issues.  So a little treats occasionally for people is good to reward a person as long as it does  not stimulate a lot of the enzyme to break it down like when they eat a lot of it.  Look at the behavior of kids after their sugar rush after Halloween...today will lead to possible crash for them till those levels go back down a day or two later.

So, it is important to not let young kids get screwed up cravings, yet it also is not good to just have them eat all so called healthy foods either...they need a treat occasionally.  As parents we need to understand the science behind this a little.  Moderation, provide the kids needs, and also let them have some occasional treats after they eat their Healthy meal properly. 

Ok, got so far off topic, forgot what this reply was about.

Oh yeah, I don't think consciousness is as important as subconsciousness, and always remember, subconsciousness gives us our gut feeling about things if we do not ignore it.  Our consciousness might be convinced through training and conditioning that a part of our consciousness is from being taught things in school...social conditioning is being shoved on us, and although it is important, also is the respect for others with other opinions....get along with others in your country, and do not be torn apart by those who want to keep us under their thumb....those who want to control and brainwash us.  Including some people in the medical field that want us to give them lots of money.  I have nothing against doctors and people working in the medical trade, as long as they are not pushing pills and trying to get us to go for unnecessary tests like they are doing today.  Doctors used to be able to just diagnose most things years ago, and tell us what to do...no expensive tests needed most times.  But some people did slip through the cracks, being sick for a long time.  but it was better forty years ago than now...and people had more money because the medical and pharma industry was not taking it all...which includes what we contrubute to pay for rising insurance premiums. 

But society has been conditioning people to believe the science, when in fact the science is being twisted to make us believe in things that match the opinions of those who want us to believe what they want us to believe so they make profit or gain prestige.  Yes, we need to do research, but I see that research being misused or misquoted.  My mind now is fully aware of the phrase that is used against us a lot.  The phrase...there is no accepted evidence that backs someone's statement... is always a clue that they are hiding something from us.  First of all, is a pharmaceudical company going to test if a natural thing cures a disease when it would lesson their sales and profit?  Is the medical industry going to say they ae going to test something that lessens our needs for medical treatments?  Ad Hominum techniques are used to make us think things are not true.  And it also goes for people who want us not to believe in a medical procedure that is fairly safe too, they will exploit rare incidents that occurred to disuade us from treatments using cherry picked evidence to fit their beliefs.

I personally do not believe the covid vaccine was tested properly when they released it, I had been studying vaccine progressions for years before that and warp speeding a vaccine technology that had a high rate of failures was not a good thing for them to do....and now those mRNA vaccines are being utilized for other diseases...but at least they are not trying to vaccinate everyone with them like they did with the covid shot.  That is my belief, based on unbiased research on vaccine technology development  for fifteen years.  After the covid vaccine was released, I decided to stop following the lunacy they were creating, I am not going to take anymore vaccines without thoroughly investigating them.  But I have had problems with vaccines and overreactions, some people need vaccines and they should take them I suppose, I am not recommending or not recommending anyone to take or deny a vaccine, I am not broken because I cannot take a vaccine, I never have got viruses very bad for the last fifty years, even though I have been exposed to them regularly all along, working out in the public.

Again off topic.  I do not even know if the severe off topic in this post is even tied to the title at all, definitely not related at all some times.

Other than I now listen to my subconsciousness more, and just take my conscious knowledge into consideration....and I do not automatically believe someone who supposedly has more knowledge than I about something....I evaluate everything.  Consciousness can be hijacked, subconsciousness is harder to hijack.....the gut feeling I have is not too messed up but only applies to me and people I know and personally observed over the years...but I never give medical advice to even friends, but show evidence of how to prevent conditions to my two daughters, but they both believe in the medical industry and people who they don't even know who have less studying of this stuff than I have done.  Not everyone is created equal, everyone has different genetics and epigenetic traits, I did research that utilizing genetics and gene apps to analyze my family history and it's association with diet necessary for us personally.

[rickymouse]

From now on, I will try to limit my posts to one or two short paragraphs and try to keep on topic.  Instead maybe I will start some medical science threads to provide some interesting medical research and interpretations of research....and not tie it to other threads.

[Maxmars]

From now on, I will try to limit my posts to one or two short paragraphs and try to keep on topic.  Instead maybe I will start some medical science threads to provide some interesting medical research and interpretations of research....and not tie it to other threads.

Please don't stress to much about that... I do it as a habit myself...

I feel that since we are not 'talking' to one another, but typing, I can't avoid the segues that are natural in conversation....

In the end... I don't think that qualifies as "off topic" unless we're picking nits.

We are not robots... and not 'feeding them' either...

No worries.

[rickymouse]

Please don't stress to much about that... I do it as a habit myself...

I feel that since we are not 'talking' to one another, but typing, I can't avoid the segues that are natural in conversation....

In the end... I don't think that qualifies as "off topic" unless we're picking nits.

We are not robots... and not 'feeding them' either...

No worries.

In a real conversation with someone you are talking to, a response generates another response from the other person.  Within minutes, when you are on the same track in the conversation.  So, in these threads, the response may come the next day...then you have lost your train of thought, forcing you to read what you wrote to try to figure out what mindset you had at the time.  I seem to have to try to explain things so people's questions are answered as they read down, including examples of how I reach my conclusions.  But it is not as good as an in person conversation.

[IgnorantGod]

How convenient for them. They are basically saying that since other lifeforms don't exhibit the same 'thoughts' as humans from an observer standpoint, then there are no 'legitimate' excuses reasons to believe they have 'consciousness' or 'awareness' and stuff.

I wonder if they'll start at some point to market brainchips as 'consciousness features', whereas each has a different 'flavor' for every 'taste'. Your 'conscious level' will be measured by how much 'synthetic neural network' you added to your brain. The higher in society, the more you'll add SNN, and the more you'll be seen as a 'higher something' from the pleb.

[Maxmars]

I was reading something the other day when I was researching relationship powers.

Personally -- I believe everything is energy -- that energy evolved into consciousness -- and physical is a manifestation.

However -- the article was saying something along the lines of -- when you're in a strong partnership your energies join together.  I guess kinda like twin energy -- you seem to join in each other's thoughts.

Then it occurred to me -- can human energy meld with computer energy?  

I'll have to try to find the article.

I think I see how you are considering this... but it is so worth exploring that I would ask you develop the thoughts further....  I would love to see a thread about it because it does relate to something important to this topic.

we can't seem to help but use what word we have available to express things the normal usages doesn't include.  We are symbol-focused, our language distills down to symbols externally and 'mental tokens' internally.  Can we make that energy a medium between brain and machine... but is it the same thing as saying "my car agrees with me," when I slam on the brakes?

Everything we do is a reduction of what is to it's purest thought utility.  And we don;t all think alike...
So talking about consciousness as a 'thing' can be quite tricky.

Energy is a concept that I feel is a "placeholder" in our head for something real that has animus, agency (force and vector.)  For consciousness to occupy that conceptual domain... it must accommodate that it is not itself, "mindless.")  

Wow... I just talked myself into confusion...