SeekerofTruth wrote:Tarski wrote:
Is that like saying consciousness is the consciousness of thinking?
You are doing what I feared.
How do you come up with that? I have tried to be quite explicit that for me consciousness is an experience, this includes the consciousness of thinking as well as other aspects of consciousness.
And Tarski has been quite explicit as well, but you just aren't really reading what he's saying, or else you're refusing to understand it. The experience of consciousness in a human being is "what it feels like" to have an exceedingly complex, evolved brain, which has access to memories, knowledge, intuition and the ability to predict things based on perceived circumstances, access to complex sensory organs and the ability to interpret the stimuli coming from these senses, and an OS and software that are running 24/7. Right now I'm "conscious of being conscious", and what that means to me is that my brain is thinking about the fact that I'm here, alive, looking at things, thinking about things, etc. My "software" is running constantly, and what I sense as consciousness is "what it feels like" to be doing this.
It might actually be possible to ask a human-built, extremely complex computer someday what it "feels like" to be executing whatever software it's running, and it might actually have something to say about it.
Why exactly can't consciousness be a physical activity of self-monitering and world monitering that is poorly conceived of by our prescientific thinking and intuitions?
Where is the logical obstacle?
You are avoiding answering how the brain can produce a conscious experience. You claimed that you knew how the brain (a physical being) does this, but you have not been forthcoming.
What does it feel like when you hit your thumb with a hammer? Would you deny that this "what it feels like" is the result, in your brain, of its processing the inputs from various nerves in your thumb? You know what heat "feels like", would you deny that this experience is the result of your brain processing the inputs from various nerves in your body which are sensitive to temperature?
Our brains clearly think. The brain scans too clearly demonstrate electrical and chemical activity in various centers of the mind corresponding to certain types of thoughts or mental tasks, for this to be in dispute. The experience of consciousness is the result of processing in your brain of various mental clues having to do with the evaluation of your current mental activity and the various stimuli you are receiving, and results in the "feeling" that you are actively in control of and directing your thoughts. Just as intense pain is "what it feels like" when your brain processes the electrical and chemical stimuli channeled to your brain by the nerve cells in your thumb after you hit it with the hammer, consciousness is "what it feels like" when your brain is processing thoughts about its own mental and processing state.
A physical activity can be directly measured. How does one directly measure a conscious experience?
By hooking your brain up to a scanner and looking at what centers in your brain are active when you are contemplating your own consciousness, and by evaluating the relative level of these activities.
Researchers have already done many brain scans where specific brain tissues are measured to be more electrically and chemically active during the performance of various mental tasks, on purpose, by the person being measure, as a response to requests to perform those tasks by those doing the measuring. If this isn't measurement of "consciousness" in your estimation, than I submit you're just hand-waving and being deliberately obtuse.
We've commented on these things, and yet you still come back and keep claiming we haven't answered any of your questions. I submit that, if this is indeed true (which I doubt), it is the result of your questions being only vaguely defined, and only in your own mind, and that you haven't actually articulated your questions clearly.
How does one directly measure the thoughts that a person is having? It cannot be done because consciousness is not a physical activity.
Bullsh*t. We can measure, directly, the brain activity associated with thoughts. Sensors are being developed which allow a human being to control things on a computer, merely by thinking about things. They have actually succeeded, literally, in detecting, with sensors worn on the head, thoughts by the wearer specifically to have the computer respond in a certain way, and that is picked up by the sensors, and fed into the computer, and it responds that way.
Scientists have already produced rudimentary thought-controlled computer interfaces, which really worked. How can you continue trying to deny that thoughts are a physical activity, cannot be measured, etc.? If thoughts aren't the result of measurable physical activity in physical brain matter, how then have scientists measured these thoughts and used them as inputs into a computer? Have the scientists actually managed to make a "spirit detector" or something? Is that what you think is really going on here?Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen