A definition of consciousness

[Adur Alkain]

(I would like to include a consistent definition of consciousness in my “idealistic interpretation of quantum mechanics”. I thought it would be better to try it out first in a separate thread. Here it is. Any comments will be appreciated!)

We have said that in the realm of physics there is only observation, and we have defined observation as a “modality of conscious experience”. What, then, is conscious experience?

Let’s begin with “experience”. We can define experience as a change in consciousness. The term “conscious experience” is, therefore, redundant. We could eliminate that redundancy and say that “observation is a modality of experience”. But I think the addition of the qualifier “conscious” is useful to highlight the fact that all observation (and therefore, the whole physical world) is grounded in consciousness.

Now, how can we define “consciousness”? Let’s have a look at Bernardo Kastrup’s definition (as it appears in Brief Peeks Beyond): consciousness is that whose excitations are subjective experiences. This definition could be improved, in my view, if we got rid of the term “subjective”. In deep conscious states, the distinction subject/object disappears. In other words, conscious experience can be “objective”, or transcend the subjective/objective polarity. I would also suggest to use the term “changes”, instead of “excitations”. “Excitations” seems to imply a change from a state of relative stillness to a state of relative motion or disturbance, like in the metaphor of ripples on water. But there can also be a change in the opposite direction: from agitation to calmness, like we can achieve through meditation. Ripples in water eventually subside back to a still surface. That subsiding also constitutes experience. So, the key here is change. If there were always ripples (of exactly the same frequency and wavelength), or if there were always stillness, there would be no experience, and probably no consciousness.

The problem is, these two “improvements” to Bernardo’s definition would leave us with a clunky and circular formulation: consciousness is that whose changes are experiences. Given that we have defined “experience” as change in consciousness, this obviously wouldn’t take us very far.

I therefore propose an alternative definition of consciousness: consciousness is knowing.

I don’t think it is possible to reach a simpler and more fundamental level of definition than this. In my view, it’s not necessary to appeal to “qualia”, or to clumsy expressions like “what it feels like to be a person”, “what it feels like to see the colour red”, etc. What distinguishes conscious beings from unconscious objects is the knowing. A self-driving car, for example, can detect a red light, but it doesn’t know that it is doing so. It doesn’t know anything. Conscious beings not only have perceptions, they know what perceptions they are having.

Thus, experience is change in knowing.

In the context of physics, this definition is useful in showing the difference between conscious observers and measurement devices. An observation only happens when a measurement is known by a conscious observer. Measurement instruments and computers don’t know anything.

It may be necessary to make clear that I’m using the term “knowing” in a very specific sense. I’m pointing at what A. H. Almaas calls direct knowing: a discriminating awareness that exists only in the immediacy of experience. Materialists conventionally ignore this direct knowing, and often identify consciousness with “information processing”, thus concluding that computers are (or will be) conscious, or that consciousness is “an illusion”. No amount of reasoning can dispel this error. Direct knowing can only be reached through direct knowing itself. It’s not an accident that philosophers have been debating for decades about the nature of consciousness (or “knowingness”) without reaching any conclusions. Academic philosophy uses the indirect approach of discourse and reasoning, which is antithetical to direct knowing.

According to A. H. Almaas, Knowing is a fundamental quality of Being, and is inseparable from it. Knowing is Being, and Being is Knowing. This is why it’s not possible to avoid circularity when we try to define consciousness. Knowing is irreducible.

We can define our individual consciousness as a field of knowing.

[Jason Barr]

I could not disagree with this more. Consciousness has nothing to do with knowing, knowing is just a mode of consciousness.

Knowing is secondary to consciousness. It’s easy to conceive of a scenario where we experience something, but don’t know it. We forget 90% of our dreams at night. I experienced 100% of them. What did they contain exactl? I don’t know.

I’m experiencing a certain amount of breaths per day, how many? I don’t know.

Knowing is irrelevant; consciousness is more fundamental.

[Jason Barr]

Out of all the Philosophical definitions I’ve heard this strikes me as obviously the most flawed.

Consciousness is self-evidently prior to any knowing. We can easily conceive of a conscious experience in which it is not known, but still experienced none the less.

[jeffnf...@gmail.com]

You wrote:

" A self-driving car, for example, can detect a red light, but it doesn’t know that it is doing so. It doesn’t know anything. Conscious beings not only have perceptions, they know that they are having those perceptions."

My problem with this is that it seems to imply a meta-awareness that I don't think exists for most beings, probably. I don't think my three year old *knows* he is experiencing the floor. But, sure, an experience and a change in experience, yes. 

I understand how Spira uses 'knowing' in the sense you mean. I like it in the context of meditation, but its implications don't sit well with me for philosophy.  You write very clearly and I enjoyed taking that in. 

[Jason Barr]

You could also know all things without experiencing all things. God could plop all knowledge of things into my mind by merely willing it without having experience all things.

So if I could know of all things without experiencing all things then how could they possibility be equivalent?

[Adur Alkain]

On Tuesday, 5 March 2019 01:58:34 UTC+1, Jason Barr wrote:

 

Knowing is secondary to consciousness. It’s easy to conceive of a scenario where we experience something, but don’t know it. We forget 90% of our dreams at night. I experienced 100% of them. What did they contain exactl? I don’t know.
I’m experiencing a certain amount of breaths per day, how many? I don’t know.
Knowing is irrelevant; consciousness is more fundamental. 

Consciousness is self-evidently prior to any knowing. We can easily conceive of a conscious experience in which it is not known, but still experienced none the less.

I think this is in part a matter of words. What you call "consciousness" I would call awareness. (I base this distinction between consciousness and awarenesss in the works of A. H. Almaas.) Yes, awareness is more fundamental than knowing (what I call consciousness), and we can be aware of many things without knowing them. But I think that without knowing there is no experience. You are aware of your breathing, but if you don't know it, there is no experience. You only experience your breathing when you turn your attention to it: in other words, when you know it.

[Adur Alkain]

You are right, I made a mistake when I wrote that. I wasn't talking about meta-awareness, or self-awareness, I just wasn't paying attention and didn't express myself correctly. When I said "they know that they are having those perceptions," I should have said "they know what perceptions they are having". So, in the case of your three year old, whatever he is experiencing when he is touching the floor (something hard, cold, smooth, whatever) he knows what he is experiencing.

I know this is cheating, but I'm going to edit my original post. This comment will stay here to show my blunder! Thanks for pointing this out! :)

[Adur Alkain]

On Tuesday, 5 March 2019 01:58:34 UTC+1, Jason Barr wrote:

You could also know all things without experiencing all things. God could plop all knowledge of things into my mind by merely willing it without having experience all things.

So if I could know of all things without experiencing all things then how could they possibility be equivalent?

 

Here you are talking about knowledge, which is not what I mean by knowing. I mean direct knowing, which happens only in the present moment. You may "know" many things, meaning that you have them stored in your memory, but that's not what I mean by knowing. For example, you can say you "know" what pain is, but it is different to know pain, to actually experience it. What I'm saying is that if you don't know that you are experiencing pain, there is no pain, and no experience. See what I mean?

I'll repeat here Almaas's definiton of direct knowing: "a discriminating awareness that exists only in the immediacy of experience". The key here is the word "discriminating". There has to be a discrimination of awareness, a knowing, for there to be experience. If there is awareness but there is no knowing, no discrimination, you don't know if you are experiencing pain, or pleasure, or your breathing, or whatever it is. So, there is no experience.

[Arthur W]

If you have to say "which is not what I mean by knowing" then this may be an indication that "knowing" is a less than ideal word for your purpose, especially if you have to further qualify it with an adjective such as "direct". And when you talk about "discriminating" being the key, that the discrimination of awareness is somehow different than an awareness existing without discrimination, it seems to me that you're merely re-introducing the notion of the subjective, earlier discarded, but in a less concise, more round-about or convoluted way.

I also think the "what it feels like to be" constructions are brilliantly simple, elegant & accessible, and see nothing clumsy about them. Not to be unkind, but I like BK's definition, unchanged, much, much better.

[Scott Roberts]

It is futile to attempt to define consciousness, especially for an idealist. It is the "one free miracle" of idealism, fundamental reality, and so just as there can be no explanation of consciousness, there is nothing more fundamental for defining it. As can be noticed in this thread, one just jumps around with other words like 'awareness', 'experience', and 'direct knowing'. This is not to say that one cannot arrange these words in some sort of usage scheme for work within a specific text, but if one does so, one is basically inventing that scheme -- there is no external means for judging the correctness of that usage. Which means that one's attempt at definition is either circular or ad hoc.

I agree with Arthur, that the phrase "there is something it is like to be a whatever" serves best as a pointer if someone asks what is consciousness, or awareness, or experience, or mentality, or subjectivity.

[Adur Alkain]

On Tuesday, 5 March 2019 20:32:25 UTC+1, Arthur W wrote:

If you have to say "which is not what I mean by knowing" then this may be an indication that "knowing" is a less than ideal word for your purpose, especially if you have to further qualify it with an adjective such as "direct". And when you talk about "discriminating" being the key, that the discrimination of awareness is somehow different than an awareness existing without discrimination, it seems to me that you're merely re-introducing the notion of the subjective, earlier discarded, but in a less concise, more round-about or convoluted way.

I also think the "what it feels like to be" constructions are brilliantly simple, elegant & accessible, and see nothing clumsy about them. Not to be unkind, but I like BK's definition, unchanged, much, much better.

I don't understand why you identify discrimination with subjectivity. The way I see it, subjectivity only can exist when there is a lack of discrimination. Using Bernardo's words, subjectivity is the result of obfuscation. And obfuscation is a lack of discrimination, a lack of knowing. If I understand Bernardo's view, he maintains that mind at large has some kind of "subjectivity", but I disagree (if that's what he says). I think that mind at large is purely objective, or rather, that it's beyond the subject/object polarity.

I'm happy with Bernardo's definition of consciousness is that whose excitations are subjective experiences. It works perfectly well in the context of his metaphysical system. I was just looking for a different definition that would be better suited to my own "idealistic interpretation of quantum mechanics". It's not necessary, I think, to choose one definition over another. In fact, these are not really definitions. They are only pointers. Consciousness is the most fundamental element of our experience, that's why it's impossible to define. But we can still point at it. And different pointers may be complementary and helpful, I think.

I'm not convinced by pointers of the "what it feels like to be" type, because they appeal to feelings, and they are too indirect to my taste (and I fear that for hardcore materialists they seem rather "wishy-washy"). Instead of appealing to feelings or these elusive "qualia", I'm trying to point at something more direct, more essential and more intellectual: the very essence of knowing itself.

I'll try to explain myself better in another comment below.

[Adur Alkain]

On Tuesday, 5 March 2019 21:17:31 UTC+1, Scott Roberts wrote:

It is futile to attempt to define consciousness, especially for an idealist. It is the "one free miracle" of idealism, fundamental reality, and so just as there can be no explanation of consciousness, there is nothing more fundamental for defining it. As can be noticed in this thread, one just jumps around with other words like 'awareness', 'experience', and 'direct knowing'. This is not to say that one cannot arrange these words in some sort of usage scheme for work within a specific text, but if one does so, one is basically inventing that scheme -- there is no external means for judging the correctness of that usage. Which means that one's attempt at definition is either circular or ad hoc.

I totally agree with you in this, Scott. All "definitions" of consciousness are inevitably circular, for the very reasons you explain. We can only use pointers.

 

I agree with Arthur, that the phrase "there is something it is like to be a whatever" serves best as a pointer if someone asks what is consciousness, or awareness, or experience, or mentality, or subjectivity.

I don't doubt that pointers of the type "there is something that it is like to be..." work best for many people. Otherwise, they wouldn't be so popular. And I know that people like David Chalmers, who have devoted most of their lives to the understanding of consciousness, use those kind of pointers as their best shot at explaining what they mean by "consciousness". But as I said to Arthur, I personally feel disatisfied with those kind of indirect pointers, and I'm trying for a more direct approach.

I'll explain what I mean by this on my next comment, below this one. I don't have much hope that this idea I have will work at all, by I think it's worth a try anyway. :)

[Jason Barr]

The word “knowing” causes too much confusion.

This is a much better definition you provided:

“A discriminating awareness that exists only in the immediacy of experience".

But even then, what’s the difference between awareness and experience? I still have questions about this. Isn’t being aware of A the exact same thing as experiencing A? If they are equivalent, then how can you say awareness is “in” experience? That doesn’t make much sense to me.

[Adur Alkain]

I'm going to propose a kind of "mental exercise" to try to explain what I mean with this idea that consciousness is knowing. To better ilustrate this, I'm going to use the old-fashioned but time-honoured and much revered Platonic method of making up a fake Socratic dialogue.

So, we have our wise philosopher, Socrates, who of course, is an idealist. And we have a not very smart student, Agathocles, who is (alas!) a materialist. Great fun ensues.

SOCRATES: You see, my dear Agathocles, everything is consciousness.

AGATHOCLES: Oh, Socrates, what do you mean by "consciousness"?

SOCRATES: Consciousness is everything. It is so fundamental and all-pervading, that it is difficult to realize it's there. Or rather, that we are in it. But I can show it to you, if you like.

AGATHOCLES: Oh yes, Socrates, please show me this mysterious "consciousness", by Zeus!

SOCRATES: Sure thing. Let's do a simple experiment. Choose a number between one and nine. Don’t say it out loud.

AGATHOCLES: Got it.

SOCRATES: Do you have the number in your mind?

AGATHOCLES: Yes, oh Socrates.

SOCRATES: Very well. What number is it?

AGATHOCLES: Four.

SOCRATES: How do you know it is four? How do you know it’s not seven, or two, or nine?

AGATHOCLES: (Thinks hard.) Is this a trick question?

SOCRATES: No, it’s not a trick question. How do you know the number in your mind is four, and not five, or eight, or three?

AGATHOCLES: (Shrugs.) I... just know it.

SOCRATES: (Smiles triumphantly.) There you have it! That’s consciousness.

Ta-da! Now, if Agathocles had been a little smarter, he would have got it immediately and become enlightened and converted to idealism. The sad truth is that he wasn’t, and he didn’t. Instead, he started reading all kinds of books about consciousness. He was especially impressed by a wonderfully intricate treatise called Consciousness Explained, by famous philosopher Daniel Dennett. He ran back to his old teacher, Socrates, convinced that he had found the right answer to the riddle.

AGATHOCLES: I now know the answer to your question, Oh Socrates! The fact that I know what is in my mind is the result of very complex processes that happen in my brain, like electrical signals in my neurons and things like that.

SOCRATES: (Smiling sweetly.) Is that so? And how do you know that?

AGATHOCLES: Oh, I read it in this amazing book, Consciousness Explained.

SOCRATES: And how do you know that you read it in that book?

AGATHOCLES: Because I remember reading that book, oh Socrates.

SOCRATES: And how do you know that you remember reading that book?

AGATHOCLES: …

This went on for a while, until poor Agathocles’s mind finally gave up and he converted to idealism. Or maybe he kept thinking that it must all be neurons firing up in his brain, or something mysterious like that.

What is the most plausible ending to this edifying story? I guess only materialists can answer that!

[Cosmin Visan]

It's actually the other way around. Each experience is a mode of knowing. When I feel hunger, I have a certain type of knowledge, namely that I need food. And this is done by default without any extra human thought. An amoeba when it feels hunger, it knows that it needs to eat. You can check my paper "Is Qualia Meaning or Understanding?".

[Arthur W]

I dunno. I'm not a professional philosopher or even close, so sometimes I admit that when we get into a lot of hair-splitting over technical terms and what they mean, it hurts my fuzzy little brain. It almost seems akin to Heisenberg's uncertainty, except the limitation is linguistic: IOW beyond a certain point I can't know the precise meaning of a given word except at the expense of understanding its contextual meaning in relationship to other words in the greater flow of sentences etc. This may just mean that I'm not very smart. Or it may be an inherent limitation of language itself, because we can only precisely define words by invoking other words via which we define them, which in turn necessitates the creation of precise definitions of those words and so on, either circularly or forever...

But I guess I equate discrimination with subjectivity because regardless of whether a discriminating assertion is considered to be subjective or objective ("x is more enjoyable than y" vs. "x has more mass than y") the very act of making the differentiation seems to imply a differentiator. For the sake of the argument, the statement "x has more mass than y" may exist as a truth in an objective vacuum, but the act of making the assertion "x has more mass than y" requires someone or something that is both 1) capable of rendering the differentiation, and 2) has a motivation to do so. So I cannot see how "x has more mass than y" can exist at all (at least not in any domain that is accessible to us) except as embedded in a larger system, beyond the assertion itself, a system that is both willing and able to engage in a discriminatory process and thus requires a subjective attribute.

[Lou Gold]

Scott,

I agree. One can't define a fundamental with something else.

Would it be helpful to introduce the dimension of organization or order(s) within consciousness?

For example, the human body contains about 40 trillion cells. They are all bits of consciousness and I'm mentally aware of little other than whether the collective state is in order or in disorder. Perhaps, it would better to say that I'm only aware of balance or imbalance and integrity (holding it together). Not being able to hold it together is called corporeal death. Consciousness always and life or death in context. 

[Scott Roberts]

On Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at 9:14:31 AM UTC-10, Lou Gold wrote:

Would it be helpful to introduce the dimension of organization or order(s) within consciousness?

It has been introduced. 'Organization' and 'order' are other words for 'form', so, as consciousness is mumorphic ("formlessness-form-ic"), they are included. See also Coleridge: "two forces of one Power" those forces being that of "expanding life" and "confining form". 

[Lou Gold]

Scott,

I'm not sure that I get it. Using the word "form", how might a nonmaterial non-local realm be described? Or an Archetype? Would it just be a "nonmaterial non-local form"? 

[Adur Alkain]

Arthur,

I don't think this is a problem of not being smart enough, or an inherent limitation of language. I think we simply need to define the words we are using in the most precise way we can, not in a general sense, but in the context of a particular discussion. This is of key importance in philosophy, because otherwise we can end up thinking that we are disagreeing when in reality we are just using the same words but applying to them different meanings, etc. I think it would be very helpful for this forum to reach some consensus about basic words like "consciousness". I didn't realize how much of an issue this could be until I started this thread.

I don't think it's true that we can only define words by invoking other words. That's not how we learn to speak, certainly. A classic example is the word "red". We learn the meaning of the word "red" by direct experience (somebody pointing it out to us and saying: "look, that's red"). The same happens with all other words we learn. We learn them in context.

I think I made a mistake by calling this thread "a definition of consciousness". I should have called it "another pointer at consciousness", although come to think of it, it sounds a little awkward.

About discrimination: the way I see it, discrimination is a quality of mind-at-large. I'm following here the philosophy of A. H. Almaas, who says that discrimination is a fundamental function of consciousness. For example, when we experience love, we know it is love. That's discrimination, and it is objective. Most people would probably say that love is a subjective experience, but that view is only consistent with materialism, not with idealism. For a materialist, the experience of love is nothing but neurons firing up in a particular brain. From this point of view, the experience of sharing and union we encounter when we are with our loved ones is an illusion: we are all contained inside our own brains. From an idealistic point of view, however, love makes us realize that we are all ultimately one: the love we are feeling is the one Love. It is fundamental, and belongs to the underlying mind-at-large. Therefore, it is objective.

As you can see, "discrimination" in this context has nothing to do with measuring or comparing different things. It is direct discrimination, direct knowing.

I'm realizing how difficult it is to explain these things. I keep using all these words in a particular (but very precise) way, and it is not the usual way. It is the way I learned from A. H. Almaas. He uses the English language in such a precise, rigurous and revolutionary way that reading his books (and understanding them) is like learning a new language.

[Lou Gold]

Adur,

I personally prefer the word "discernment" to "discrimination."  Thich Nhat Hanh focused on the problem of discrimination often but this is probably another example of words being used in different ways. Here is a video I like where he places "discrimination" into the context of interbeing >>>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAw74kZYpCI

[Lou Gold]

Adur,

The word "love" carries an enormous amount of personal and cultural baggage and I don't know if we are all referencing the same sensibility when we use it. I've passed through favoring many different meanings/feelings of love as my life flowed across eight decades. In my recent stage I feel love as my own openness and acceptance of experiences exactly as they are. 

[Scott Roberts]

On Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at 11:52:44 AM UTC-10, Lou Gold wrote:

I'm not sure that I get it. Using the word "form", how might a nonmaterial non-local realm be described? Or an Archetype? Would it just be a "nonmaterial non-local form"? 

In its traditional philosophical sense, the form of a thing is what distinguishes that thing from other things. It applies to all things, where a thing is whatever one can be conscious of, be it a tree or a thought or a hallucination, be it in physical reality or a non-local realm.

 

[Lou Gold]

Thanks Scott,

I'll refine my question.

Forms that follow the laws of physics are called physical forms.

What might be an equivalent sentence for immaterial non-local forms?

[Cosmin Visan]

I don't agree with this, because this definition is the end of the line, it stops us from asking the further question "Why do qualia feel the way they feel?". But if we just ignore this definition and just go ahead and ask the further question, then we will get the answer: "Because each qualia is a form of meaning.", and this is highly productive because then it opens the door for doing science and we can start looking into our evolutionary history for where specific qualia first appeared in specific evolutionary contexts. And so much more.

[Lou Gold]

Cosmin,

I often share your suspicion of something else and frustration with the "one free miracle" approach. I was told here in the forum that some philosophers would hold that therefore ontology is impossible (I think this is a Kantian view). However, accepting ontology for what it is rather than what it might be, the ontologist offers a protocol, which is "plausibility and parsimony" and thus a process of discovery. The power of the ontological imperative of consciousness is only that it is more plausible and parsimonious than materialism. It does frustrate the the search for more and definitely gets in the way of searching for meaning which I believe can only be found in story. However, if you think feeling is a better ontological imperative you will have to demonstrate somehow that is is more plausible and parsimonious than consciousness. Such is the protocol of ontology.                                  

[Scott Roberts]

Forms that follow the laws of an immaterial non-local reality are called immaterial non-local forms.

Comment: It might be better to replace "laws" with something less strict-sounding, like "habits" or "patterns of behavior". Every reality will allow some creativity. However, a reality will have some basic assumptions, which can be broken, but breaking them basically means leaving that reality for another. 

[Lou Gold]

Scott,

How about "rules"?

What I'm thinking of is whatever is holding together the integrity of the form or prevents a scattering into into chaos. Rules are the structure or architecture of the magical, of the enchanted, of the archetypal, of the logical in non-material non-local forms. Perhaps it can also be said that structure is True, Good and Beautiful. I dunno. I'm contemplating it.