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"Conscious self experience" is a kind of illusion, an artefact created by labels, like so many other illusions created by labels.

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Originally posted by OliviaCA:
PS. NB. @ Alyosha:

When I say, ref. Gnosticism, that I believed for a while that I should "try to look past or through it" I meant ***past the Demiurge***, not the "model world" because I *already* thought that I needed to look past or through that.

My impression was/is that the Gnostics taught that one should not enter into a relationship with the builder of the model. *I* just don't believe that the model-builder" is an alienated/separate or corrupt being as they seem to.

That may change.

* Could * you explain what you meant by "the natural conclusion" of my beliefs, etc above? Apologies for my rather brusque/gesticulated expression of bewilderment/bemusement.

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Originally posted by OliviaCA:
PS. NB. @ Alyosha:

When I say, ref. Gnosticism, that I believed for a while that I should "try to look past or through it" I meant ***past the Demiurge***, not the "model world" because I *already* thought that I needed to look past or through that.

My impression was/is that the Gnostics taught that one should not enter into a relationship with the builder of the model. *I* just don't believe that the model-builder" is an alienated/separate or corrupt being as they seem to.

That may change.

* Could * you explain what you meant by "the natural conclusion" of my beliefs, etc above? Apologies for my rather brusque/gesticulated expression of bewilderment/bemusement.

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Originally posted by itsarumdo:
In order to experience there has to be an experienc-er.

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Originally posted by IngoB: What nobody understands, and what you also fail to tell us, is how this state tracking becomes a world inhabited by us.

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Thank you again very much everybody who has posted on this thread, for all your replies; they are hugely appreciated because they push me to examine and re-examine my beliefs and this theory etc really closely, question myself about them, and then look for/find better ways to explain what I remain sure of.

I think I may, waking at 4 am this morning, :lol have found a new approach to explaining the mysterious creation of "conscious self experience"/awareness as the result of our modeling of attention.

I'm a bit tired/frazzled from the short night's sleep so this may take quite a while to compose, but here goes:

Starting with what I have already laid out previously, as precisely as I can manage. Please bear with me right to the end of the explanation. :

Almost all of the models employed in the "modeling of attention processes" would be/are "read" by the part of the brain doing the modeling as "simple descriptors"/representations of various things, ( there would be no apparent "conscious self experience" of them ), *even* the models of *other* people's consciousness/awareness ...

***if***

... the attention model did not also include a model of both "itself" ( the organism in which the neural basis/correlate of the attention model is physically located )

***and***

... the model of its attention processes.

The property/label/status "conscious self experience" ( the "self" + "the attention processes" ) is somehow ( I suggest a possible mechanism in a minute ), a description that is so constructed that it "forces" the brain, almost irresistibly/automatically, to "read"/scan it ***as if*** the part of the brain involved in modeling attention were *inside* of the model of itself.

It is as if the part of the brain modeling attention processes is "sucked into" the model, as if the combined models of "self" ( the organism in which the etc is located ) and "attention processes" acts like a sort of trap, a sinkhole into which the part of the brain modeling attention processes is pulled.

The "description"/data used to build the models of "self" and "attention processes" is so "vivid" ( in some way ... ) that the part of the brain "reading"/scanning it/"watching the model from the outside" ( of the model ) nevertheless feels as if it is *inside* it, as if it was/is the model/avatar of the whole organism "living in" the model.

I thought of analogies like when reading a book or watching a film that is so gripping that are totally swept up by it, made to forget yourself, identify completely with the protagonist, etc; the idea of a collection of data/symbols/descriptors in the brain which has that effect on a part of the brain.

Why/how though?

... Like this : the model of the "self" is a model of the organism ( human ) in which the attention processes are located ... and that model of a human includes a model of its attention processes and the model it builds of its attention processes, which model includes the model of the human and its attention processes, and the model it builds of its attention processes which ...

It is like a Russian Doll. A neural sinkhole/whirlpool. The "strange loop" that Graziano refers to himself, but I didn't really understand before now.

It's almost infinite "depth" ( which will be worse the more sophisticated and complex and detailed the model ... ) exerts an almost irresistible force on the part of the brain which models attention processes; it *shrinks* it, like a potion in "Alice in Wonderland", like a bottle catching a spirit in a story, part of our brain is caught in an almost infinite loop.

A part of our brain which models attention processes/awareness finds itself "inside" the model, relating to models of things, as if it were the real world.

And like in the stories the tiny miniaturised creature can't get at the "table" where the antidote is, keeps trying various strategies to solve the puzzle of how to get at it, but is in fact totally dependent on the vaster original brain to "send it tools" *in the model* to help it remember its real size, perhaps escape the sinkhole-trap.

To recap: the endless loop created by the "attention model" ( of "self" and "attention processes" ), makes a part of the brain feel as if it is "inside the model"/"consciously self experiencing" it, and disconnects it from the greater original self. It is in a sense "cast out".

The problem may be all in the model of "self", as in "the organism in which the attention processes are located"; it is soooo detailed, so deep, includes levels and of models containing models, ( compared to the *relatively* simple/shallow ones of other people ) ...

... and it *is* interesting that some apparently effective tools for dismantling this bit of the model and/or partially disactivating the "trap" seem to involve behaving as if have no self, perhaps because the feedback from that causes the brain/unimaginably vast and infinitely complex "real self" ( compared to the little model )/God to revise/reformulate the "self-model" such that there is no/less infinite-loop whirlpool effect.

Debunking the social construct of "self".

I think that the model of the self and its attention processes, and the model of the ... etc etc etc , round and round at ever "lower definition", ( presumably? ) is what the earliest brilliant psychologists meant by the serpent of Genesis, curled up on itself/looped, which exerted such force on the pre-Fall Adam/Eve's ( the parts of our brain happily modeling attention processes before the model of the self became so deep ).



[ 13. May 2015, 13:27: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]

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Originally posted by Mark Betts:
... yes, the mind can construct the world around oneself in a way which is totally out of step with reality - either better than it really is, or far worse ... Whatever, it doesn't make us "God" ... ... ... A God who is subjective to our mental processes isn't a real God at all. It is us who are subject to Him, not the other way round.

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The theory that I have been explaining as clearly as possible, from a couple of different angles, is that *we* are indeed subject to God, that *we* are "living in"/"stuck" in the model world, ( as result of the infinite loop of representation I described above ) and that our almost unimaginably vast and infinitely complex "real self", ( that from which we have been "cut off" by that loop's effect ), *is* God, part of the "kingdom of heaven" of waves, particles, energy. I have definitely not been saying that *we* are God.

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Originally posted by OliviaCA:
Does anyone else here see God as "simply" the most remarkably evocative *and* ***accurate*** term for their almost unimaginably vast and infinitely more complex "real self"?

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Thank you for the comments. I plan to reply to them all some time today.

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Originally posted by Porridge:
... If you would be so kind as to clarify what the differences are among words and phrases set off by ***x***, * x *, “x”, 'x', and so on, perhaps I might begin to get the hang of your idiolect, and squeeze a glimmer of meaning out of what you’re saying.

... The idea that labels – I’m assuming this refers to words, or names, or nouns, or language generally, though I’m probably wrong – are somehow responsible either for the existence of the phenomena they designate, or for an individual’s experience of the phenomenon, seems preposterous.

I do agree, FWIW, that all labels are essentially reductive in nature. A label, or even a masterfully-crafted aggregation of labels as in, say, a poem, cannot transfer an experience from one individual to another.

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I totally take your point about the idiolect. I apologise, and will try to clear up my style.

It's quite a while since I posted much on a message-board/forum as opposed to discussion groups on Facebook, and I have got used to using various numbers of asterisks instead of bold to represent degrees of emphasis, and ...

... I have also got used to using quotes to indicate that a word is a potentially misleading/inaccurate shorthand for something, ( used because the fuller more accurate expression would take up too much space ), and that the word in question should be read/taken with a ( sometimes sizeable ) pinch of salt ...

... and there seem to me to be an awfully large number of such words. :lol

Yes, by labels I don't mean ( just ) words.

I have been referring to labels, symbols, representations, value judgments, social constructs, descriptors, data about, etc somewhat interchangeably in an attempt to provide at least one expression which would make sense to people.

I am saying that, as apparently most neuroscientists now believe is the case, the world that "we live in" ( which makes up our conscious self experience ) is actually not the real one, ( of waves, particles, energy etc, which I equate with the kingdom of heaven ), but is one constructed by our brain, is a model ( representing with varying degrees of accuracy the other world/plane of reality ).

This world that we ( seem to ) live in is the world of shadows on the cave wall that Plato refers to. It is the one in which you pay taxes to Caesar because his profile is on the coin, ( which is itself a symbol/representation, of value ). It is the nut/seed compared to the full grown tree that it comes from which is the "real world"/other plane of reality.

The "experienc-er", as itsarumdo put it, is the attention-modeling part of the brain, which reads/scans the model of the world in order to optimise attention processes which contribute hugely to the higher cognitive functions which distinguish us from most other animals ...

... which "experiences" itself as inside of the model, because of the infinite loop caused by the highly detailed modeling of "self" and attention processes, in which the model of "self" and those processes includes a further model of "self" and those attention processes which includes a further model of the "self" and its attention processes ... ... ... and so on.

I don't know how many such levels of "model including a model" you would have to program, how "deep" the recurring loop would have to go, or how detailed/convincing those models would have to be, before a computer would express/declare a conscious self experience, but it seems to me that doing so, or even trying to, risks creating a being that suffers, unavoidably.

The only possible plus to that being that perhaps it is the suffering of conscious self experience which has driven humans to invent so many things, to understand so many things, etc. Perhaps if the critical number of levels of models inside models had not been reached humans would still be living simply, off the fruit of the land, etc.

And my point about God is that from the standpoint of the attention-modeling-part-of-the-brain, "trapped" in the sinkhole/blackhole infinite/recurring loop of the models within models, such that it feels as if it is inside it, that is what the ( rest of the ) brain now feels like, some distant almost separate unimaginably vast infinitely complex being, like the table top/ceiling/room seems to someone who has just been shrunk by many orders of magnitude.

I hope that this is slightly clearer. I really hope that some of it makes some sense to somebody.



[ 14. May 2015, 07:50: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
You might as well go the whole hog, and say that there is neither we, nor God, nor energy, nor world. This would take you close to some Eastern ideas, e.g. in advaita.

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:? I don't understand what makes you think that I might as well do that, because I do believe in God, energy, the real world, and the model world I "consciously experience", two planes ( or perhaps more? ) of reality, etc.

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
I am you and you are me and we are all together? You blow my mind, though in better ways than some other posters. Trapped inside words. Which apparently were originally holy but became profane, and it's all our fault apparently.

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Trapped inside a model, yes, ( except when I go to sleep ), and everyone I meet/know ( incl neighbours ) is an avatar, created by my unimaginably vast and infinitely complex "real self", ie. is part of that self, therefore sort of "me", yes. ...

But I don't get the holy-profane transition, :? unless you are referring to how the attention-modeling process was in a sense "corrupted" when the infinite "models within models" loop happened ... which was in a sense caused by our "self" ( greater or lesser ...

... yes, except that I don't think my "infinitely complex real self" and/or God ( I'm once again considering the Gnostic teachings ref. the Demiurge/"builder-gods", multiple levels of reality etc ) goes in for blaming/finding fault, being at one with waves, particles and energy etc.

I think that "fault" etc is a social construct, belonging to/exclusive to the model, yet another classically dualistic/black and white aspect of the massive "miniaturization"/simplification involved. And is also one of the many destructive results of believing in free will.

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Originally posted by ChastMastr:

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Originally posted by OliviaCA:
Does anyone else here see God as "simply" the most remarkably evocative *and* ***accurate*** term for their almost unimaginably vast and infinitely more complex "real self"?

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No. Well, I don't, certainly. Carry on.

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Thank you.

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Originally posted by itsarumdo:
One clue to this is the discovery of mirror neurons - we "model" the outside world symbolically in the premotor cortex (about 20-25% of the cortex) as if we are performing actions ourselves. It would appear that language passes through this symbolic stage, and maybe even other senses. ... [ ed. and posted later on ] ... The best (probably only) model we have so far for consciousness that appears to be capable of accounting for the various phenomenological aspects is the ORC-OR model (or similar), produced by Penrose and Hameroff as an extension of the theoretical basis first proposed by Zohar. i.e. conscious activity is a quantum phenomenon - specifically a Bose Einstein state (something like a laser type coherence of subatomic particles) contained in microtubules.

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That may once have been the best theory or explanation of conscious self experience but Graziano's theory has attracted unqualified praise from respected thinkers in the field like P Churchland. It doesn't have any of the usual gaps in it. It doesn't involve invoking the "indeterminism" of quantum mechanics. It is simply rather difficult to explain. :lol

Graziano mentions mirror-neurons at some point in his book, but doesn't think that they solve the problem of explaining "awareness".

His theory depends on understanding how our brain's attention modeling processes attribute properties to things, and how the depth/rich detail of some properties attached to certain parts of the model "forces" the attention-modeling part of the brain to "identify with" the model of itself.

Very likely because of a "strange" infinite loop involving models within models.

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Originally posted by Eliab My difficulty with your arguments is that you seem to me to have conflated several ideas that are really separate, and are defending the controversial ones by reiterating the ones where you are on more solid ground. As far as I can separate them out the points are: ...

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Thank you very much for your long and well-organised comment. I plan to answer it soon, but it may take a while.

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Originally posted by Eliab:
1. Our mind (conscious self) models reality based on sense data and subject to physical constraints. What we perceive is not itself external reality, though it connected to sensory experience of that reality. ( Fine, uncontroversial. I don't think anyone denies it.

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Er, me, I do. :lol

It is not, I think, our "conscious self" that does the modeling. It is our whole brain to some extent, and some areas more than others, eg. those which model attention processes, which do that.

Our "conscious self" is a product/result of the modeling, arises from that modeling ... and its only role ( not an entirely insignificant one but nevertheless only indirectly contributory ) in the construction/shaping of the model is via the feedback ( about attention processes and management of representations ) that that model provides for the brain.

NB. And, somewhat less crucial, but still a quibble; the "mind" is not an objective thing ( not detectable by scientific study etc ). It is a value judgement or label. I'd prefer to say "brain".

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2. That modelling takes place in our brain. However it is far from being the sum total of our brain's activity. There is stuff going on in our brain that we are not aware of, and that stuff is important and directly affects what we experience;

(Again, I can accept that. It's very easy to overlook this day-to-day, but still true.)

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Yes.

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3. The important stuff that our brain does that our conscious self is not involved in includes decision making. Our conscious self merely models the experience of decision making. Our conscious self is essentially constructed to observe the decision-making event, and that gives us an illusion of having 'made' the decision, but in fact "we" (the conscious bit) experiences but does not control.

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Yes, this is what I have been saying, with the proviso/qualification mentioned above that the model of attention processes plays role in shaping cognitive functioning with the feedback it provides about the brain's attention processes and use/management of representations.

eg. in social interactions, long-term projects, etc.

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(Evidence? If this were so, the big unexplained question is why the brain bothers with this modelling process, which, since we cannot currently even guess at how we might successfully replicate it, must presumably be a task of no trivial difficulty. If the human being could function as a biological animal without this complex construction of a self-aware mental passenger, why not save the resources dedicated to it? And you do seem to be arguing that as a biological, even as a social, animal, we would "work" without consciousness, since all our decisions are really taken elsewhere than in our conscious minds.

It seems more likely to me that the constructed consciousness is part of, and necessary to, life as a deciding-animal. It could be that all our experience is a sort of gratuitous fluke, that serves no practical purpose at all, and that the physical facts observed by Martian zoologist would be unchanged if consciousness were to vanish from the earth, but it seems unlikely. Decision-making may well be much more complicated a process than that more of it of which we are aware, of course, but it seems to me completely unwarranted to say that awareness must therefore be no part of it.)

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4. The brain's activity is physically determined. We have no free will. Our conscious self creates an illusion of free will as part of the observing process.

(OK - I don't believe that, but I acknowledge that it's a tenable point of view.

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Yes. Extremely tenable.

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You haven't answered IngoB's point that calling our consciousness a model doesn't explain how there is anything that is self-aware.

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I have, he just doesn't agree with or accept my answer.

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... [ But ] how there comes to be anything that is self-aware at all, to however limited a degree. ... It is a significant weakness in your argument that you are presenting this model as somehow explaining our experience when in fact it does nothing of the sort.)

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I believe that it does, as does, apparently, as respected an authority on the subject as P. Churchland, among others.

I recommend that you read Michael Graziano's descriptions of his theory at his website, and/or in his book, ( both linked to on first page of this thread ). I don't seem to be doing a v good job of explaining it myself.

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5. The brain that lies behind our consciousness is our "real self";

(No. Obviously not. My real self is the thing that says 'me' when I look in the mirror. It's conscious. ... "me" is the name I give to the thinking thing. I may be mistaken about what role "I" have in forming my thoughts, but it is the thinker that's me. If my consciousness and my (working) brain could somehow be separated, and I was given the choice to preserve one and destroy the other, I'd unhesitatingly elect to save my consciousness. That's because it's me.)

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The thing you see in the mirror is a model. It is a symbol of your real self, a highly simplified representation of it. It is not actually doing any thinking. It is the avatar built by the part of your brain which models attention processes to represent it in the model.

They could never be separated, because your real self is not what you see. Your real self is far greater, far more amazing, infinitely more complex. What you see in the mirror is a mere "smiley" in comparison.

I will have to get back to you on the rest as it's supper time here and I am hungry.

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Originally posted by OliviaCA:
It is not, I think, our "conscious self" that does the modeling. It is our whole brain to some extent, and some areas more than others, eg. those which model attention processes, which do that.

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I think it is important to distinguish between consciousness, the state of being awake etc, and that of "conscious self experience" or "awareness of". Obviously one can not invent things or interact with people when asleep.

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Then I think it is important to distinguish between the purpose of the modeling of attention processes, which is involved in enabling social interactions ( modeling other people's attention, etc ), sustaining attention and productive effort over the long-term, ( managing the resources required for such extended or renewed attention to something ), among many other things/higher cognitive functions, and the existence of "awareness"/the "conscious self experience", which may in fact be totally useless, unless the pain it appears to produce has been responsible for driving humans to the levels of technology etc we see today.

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It is likely that the complexity of cognitive functioning which most humans are now capable of would not have been possible without the richness of detail/depth of the modeling which at the same time produces the "conscious self experience".

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ie. this often painful "conscious self experience" is the cost of higher thought, but costs the brain nothing because it simply comes automatically with this level of cognitive complexity.

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Me:You haven't answered IngoB's point that calling our consciousness a model doesn't explain how there is anything that is self-aware.

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I have, he just doesn't agree with or accept my answer.

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I believe that it does, as does, apparently, as respected an authority on the subject as P. Churchland, among others.

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I recommend that you read Michael Graziano's descriptions of his theory at his website, and/or in his book, ( both linked to on first page of this thread ). I don't seem to be doing a v good job of explaining it myself.

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In this theory, a brain does not actually have awareness. Instead it has attention, a mechanistic process. It also has information, in an internal model, that tells it that it has awareness. The information describes a self that experiences something and that can choose to react to and remember that something. The reason for this information is that it is a useful, if approximate, description of attention. The brain is captive to that internal information. On introspection — when relying on internal data — the system will always conclude that it has awareness, because that is what its internal models tell it.

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The thing you see in the mirror is a model. It is a symbol of your real self, a highly simplified representation of it. It is not actually doing any thinking. It is the avatar built by the part of your brain which models attention processes to represent it in the model.
They could never be separated, because your real self is not what you see. Your real self is far greater, far more amazing, infinitely more complex. What you see in the mirror is a mere "smiley" in comparison.

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Originally posted by Eliab:
... "modelling awareness" in that sense doesn't create awareness. I can construct a mental model of the universe in which, for example, my computer hates me and the person I'm attracted to loves me. But modelling those conscious experiences does not make them real.

What you are calling the higher self can make an avatar as part of its mental model, and can label it as "conscious" just as I can label my PC as conscious, but the act of labeling does not create consciousness where none existed previously.

On your thesis, the conscious part of the mind isn't involved in cognition. It's an observer of decisions made elsewhere. If you are right, there's no necessary reason to presume that we could not subtract consciousness and leave cognition wholly unimpaired.

It's my argument that this is unlikely - that if we think, and we are conscious, our feeling that out conscious self is to some extent involved in forming, selecting and developing ideas is probably not an illusion.

This seems to me to be particularly so in your world-view, which holds that very detailed cognition (including such things as social interaction, scientific analysis, rational argument...) happens entirely in the non-conscious part of our brain, and all our consciousness does is to observe the outcome.

However hard it might be to build a brain than can play Scrabble, it must be harder to build a brain that can both play Scrabble and model an internal spectator. In evolutionary terms, a brain that did the cognition without the self-awareness would be simpler, and consume less embryological and energy resources, than one burdened with a superfluous passenger. Consciousness would tend to be eliminated by natural selection.

You cannot simply assert that an internal model of the self must be self-aware, because the mind attributes self-awareness to (parts of) its own model, as if that was a complete answer. You need to explain how it is that an externally-applied label creates an internally-experienced reality, and this you have not done.

It seems to me that either brains (at our level of brain) need to be self-aware in order to do all the stuff which we do, or they do not. If they do not (and it is fundamental to your argument that they do not, if you think the conscious self an observer, not an integral part of the cognitive process), then if we discover a brain which is self-aware (mine, for instance) then that extra quality is not accounted for by the fact that the brain works at all the other stuff brains are good for.

What you are saying also appears to be somewhat different to Graziano's views expressed on his web-site:

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In this theory, a brain does not actually have awareness. Instead it has attention, a mechanistic process. It also has information, in an internal model, that tells it that it has awareness. The information describes a self that experiences something and that can choose to react to and remember that something. The reason for this information is that it is a useful, if approximate, description of attention. The brain is captive to that internal information. On introspection — when relying on internal data — the system will always conclude that it has awareness, because that is what its internal models tell it.

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The trouble with that argument is that true "awareness" is meaningless, a non-existent quality. Nothing has it. The higher-self doesn't, and the avatar-self doesn't either, if Graziano is right. And yet I possess something which I call "awareness", and, Graziano's argument is that I am actually constrained to believe that this quality actually is awareness, even though it really isn't. But I cannot form any concept of what true "awareness" might be that does not also encompass the "awareness" that I already possess.

What Graziano is calling "awareness" can therefore be dropped from consideration without loss, since it doesn't exist, can never exist, and no existent entity could ever have any sort of cogent idea as to what it might be. That frees up the word "awareness" to be used to describe the other quality, the one which I actually have, and that quality is more than mere attribution of a label.

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Can you point to (or summarise) Churchland's arguments for thinking that the problem of consciousness has now been solved?

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You've misread me. "Me" is the thing that thinks "That's me!". Of course, "me" is also, in a sense, my body and brain, and all the processes associated with it, conscious and unconscious, but the thing that I really value, the thing I care about, is the conscious bit. What you are calling my "real self" may be wonderfully complex, but I care much more about the self I'm aware of than I do about the support structure.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I thought that the Churchlands are eliminative materialists? They have certainly solved the problem of consciousness, since for them, it doesn't exist. It is part of folk psychology which will be unnecessary in a scientific neurology and psychology.

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Originally posted by Eliab:
6. The brain is (in a sense) God;

(Again, obviously no. The brain doesn't do the job theists think that God does. It does create the world, can't end it (but only end it's own vicarious experience), can't give eternal life, can't mandate a transcendent morality, can't guarantee truth. It has one feature in common with God (at least by analogy) - it's the ground and cause of "my" existence. That's not enough to replace in meaning all that the word "God" means to me.

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7. The scriptures set out an analogy for this psychological model;

(I grant that you can read such a model into the Bible. I deny that the Bible was written with such a purpose. I do not consider that interpretation to be remotely convincing or plausible.)

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Noted.

[ 15. May 2015, 14:17: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]

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Originally posted by IconiumBound:
I would like to know if any of the responders have anything to add about the experiments with the God Helmet. Does it apply to the question?

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I don't think so , no.

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Originally posted by itsarumdo:
If Buddha had not trusted his experience at some level (i.e. from his observer consciousness) he would not have even started to meditate. ...
... And the same goes for everyday experience - one is forced to trust experience to some degree. Putting this in the pov of the Matrix films ... when Neo et al enter the matrix, they still recognise that what they see has some basis - because they can act within it as if it exists. When Neo transcends that, he then sees reality - so he has seen through the coding, but he still trusts what he sees. In the middle zone it's not that things don;t exist, but rather, the nature of existence is also mutable according to belief. This is maybe not so far from reality.

It would be more sensible to say there are a hierarchy of realities - and the "brain" /our awareness makes of them what it must so that we can function in them.

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Yes.

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I honestly don't think that the higher end of that is restricted to physical tissue. This is from my pov the main difficulty that most consciousness studies and models hit - most of them assume a physical causality or at least a physical basis for all experience.

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I think that is only a problem when have the belief that what is physical is somehow "low", valueless.

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Originally posted by OliviaCA:

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Originally posted by Eliab:
6. The brain is (in a sense) God;

(Again, obviously no. The brain doesn't do the job theists think that God does. It does create the world, can't end it (but only end it's own vicarious experience), can't give eternal life, can't mandate a transcendent morality, can't guarantee truth. It has one feature in common with God (at least by analogy) - it's the ground and cause of "my" existence. That's not enough to replace in meaning all that the word "God" means to me.

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From the viewpoint of this mirage which is "conscious self experience" or awareness ( the reading/scanning by the parts of my brain responsible for attention modeling of my brain's detailed model/simulation of the "self" and attention processes ), the brain/"my real self" does seem to totally correspond with the God that I have been believing in on and off the last 7 years:

1 ) It created me and the world I live in, and can end it too.

2 ) It existed before I did and will exist after me.

3 ) It has a deep personal interest in "me"/my behaviour, watches/sees everything that I do.

4 ) It determines every last little event in this world that I live in, including the "hardening of hearts" etc.

5 ) It is unimaginably vast and infinitely more complex than me or the world that I live in.

6 ) It is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent.

7 ) It provides everything. It provides for me. It feeds me, clothes me, etc.

8 ) I believe that because the human brain works in certain ways certain behaviours and belief systems tend to have positive outcomes and others more painful or destructive ones. Those principles tend to be more or less the same across the majority of people ( with some notable exceptions ) but I am not sure if that is what you mean by "a transcendent morality"?

9 ) I don't understand what you mean by "guaranteeing truth". "Truth" is a value judgement, a label, or classification, which our brains assign/attribute to certain things, ideas etc. Whatever my brain/"real self" deems to be "true", or "real", is so.

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7. The scriptures set out an analogy for this psychological model;

(I grant that you can read such a model into the Bible. I deny that the Bible was written with such a purpose. I do not consider that interpretation to be remotely convincing or plausible.)

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Noted.

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Originally posted by OliviaCA:

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Originally posted by Eliab:
6. The brain is (in a sense) God;

(Again, obviously no. The brain doesn't do the job theists think that God does. It does create the world, can't end it (but only end it's own vicarious experience), can't give eternal life, can't mandate a transcendent morality, can't guarantee truth. It has one feature in common with God (at least by analogy) - it's the ground and cause of "my" existence. That's not enough to replace in meaning all that the word "God" means to me.

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From the viewpoint of this mirage which is "conscious self experience" or awareness ( the reading/scanning by the parts of my brain responsible for attention modeling of my brain's detailed model/simulation of the "self" and attention processes ), the brain/"my real self" does seem to totally correspond with the God that I have been believing in on and off the last 7 years:

1 ) It created me and the world I live in, and can end it too.

2 ) It existed before I did and will exist after me.

3 ) It has a deep personal interest in "me"/my behaviour, watches/sees everything that I do.

4 ) It determines every last little event in this world that I live in, including the "hardening of hearts" etc.

5 ) It is unimaginably vast and infinitely more complex than me or the world that I live in.

6 ) It is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent.

7 ) It provides everything. It provides for me. It feeds me, clothes me, etc.

8 ) I believe that because the human brain works in certain ways certain behaviours and belief systems tend to have positive outcomes and others more painful or destructive ones. Those principles tend to be more or less the same across the majority of people ( with some notable exceptions ) but I am not sure if that is what you mean by "a transcendent morality"?

9 ) I don't understand what you mean by "guaranteeing truth". "Truth" is a value judgement, a label, or classification, which our brains assign/attribute to certain things, ideas etc. Whatever my brain/"real self" deems to be "true", or "real", is so.

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7. The scriptures set out an analogy for this psychological model;

(I grant that you can read such a model into the Bible. I deny that the Bible was written with such a purpose. I do not consider that interpretation to be remotely convincing or plausible.)

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Noted.

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Originally posted by itsarumdo no no no - ...

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Well, I have been referring somewhat interchangeably to "the real self" and "the brain" in order to try and make clear what is doing what ... but now I have to clarify that I really do mean "my real self" and that is ( perhaps/in some ways ) as big as the universe or bigger, because as you say, and I know very well ( after decades of seeing the effects of food on my mood/mental health etc ), the gut and the rest of the body, the whole organism, and the environment which acts on it, of which it is an indissoluble part ( ... where would one draw the line in fact? ... ) all play a role in creating the model world that "I" "live in"/appear to experience and seems to be my "point of view".

I don't believe in free will; I believe that "my real self"/God determines everything in this world that "I" "live in", ie. this model.

This does not feel to me like automation/being an automaton. There is nothing grim or machine-like to me in being part of/produced by such an amazing vast thing, made up of trillions of waves, particles, molecules, cells, electrical signals ... that is awesome, not horrific.

It was however, very often horrific, until I decided to "believe in God", at which point it went from being hell to being "home", and I was suddenly in relationship with that vast awesomeness. Re-connected.



[ 15. May 2015, 15:37: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]

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Originally posted by OliviaCA:
Awareness is the same, it is a model of something, it represents as efficiently as possible ( highly simplified but detailed enough to function "realistically" in the model ), something in the real world involving millions of neurones, millions of cellular molecular interactions, electrical activity etc.
[...]
The part of the brain modeling attention processes is not a "conscious self", it is "simply" some neural networks in the brain "reading"/watching/scanning/advancing-through an incredibly convincing 3D simulation including the simulation of "being aware of" it.

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The modeling of attention processes is essential to the higher cognitive functions. The depth and detail enables it to better track and manage attention processes, so that the human can better interact with others, engage in long-term planning, carry out complex multi-layered/multi-step calculations etc ... all very important and worth the brain investing resources in, ... but that same in-depth richly-detailed ( while still highly simplified ) modeling also happens to make the models of "self" and "attention processes" so high-def/so convincing that when the part of the brain monitoring the model "reads"/scans it the effect is stunningly "3D", as if are inside it.

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Ref. the "conscious self" that you are so attached to; it is the "worldly wealth/riches" which prevent you passing through the eye of the needle.

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the brain/"my real self" does seem to totally correspond with the God that I have been believing in on and off the last 7 years

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Originally posted by Eliab:
You can't experience "a simulation of being aware".

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Ref. the "conscious self" that you are so attached to; it is the "worldly wealth/riches" which prevent you passing through the eye of the needle.

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No. The conscious self is the whole damn camel. If it can't get through, I can't get through.

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The very fact that the "world" is constructed from sense data of something outside the brain establishes that the "world" is not all that there is. The brain simply receives that external data, and, as a deterministic entity, doesn't control the "world" that it "creates" from it.

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Your failure to fit such concepts as transcendent morality or objective truth ...

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Hardly. You'll have to explain what those mean to you, because what they mean to me is, as I described above, is covered quite well by my "experience" of my "real self" God.

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[ 16. May 2015, 07:09: Message edited by: OliviaCA ]

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Originally posted by OliviaCA:
This "conscious self experience"/awareness is a "simulation of experience". It is a model of what our attention processes are doing. There is no such thing as this "conscious self experience"/awareness in the real world of waves, particles, energy, molecules, etc, which are involved in our attention processes.

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Originally posted by OliviaCA:

I think that a lot of people have a tendency to find models containing models, ( especially models of the "largest"/outermost model ), particularly fascinating ... and to "believe in" them more as a result.

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Originally posted by itsarumdo:
Nice - particularly since the "horns" might actually be there! But common consensus is that they are not.

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Originally posted by itsarumdo:
Which, I guess, leads to questioning how universally true is the common consensus of sensory perception?

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Originally posted by OliviaCA:
It seems to be practically impossible to get anyone to understand that "experience" or "awareness" or "conscious self experience" or "consciousness" ( other than the simply "awake" kind ), is just a symbol/description/simulation/ model of massively complex attention processes, which, like our model of white light, bears little resemblance to the original.

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I haven't been doing a very good job of explaining it, I realise that. It is a slippery thing to explain. I have been trying to "get at it" by analogy/metaphor etc, but that doesn't seem to have worked, so I'll just try one more time to put it as clearly as I can.

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The part of the brain which is responsible for modeling attention processes, for managing the models, monitoring them, recording/receiving feedback from them, etc scans the model as it runs, and the model of those immensely complex attention processes looks like "awareness". That richly detailed but nevertheless highly simplified description of attention processes will "appear" in the processing/scanning operation as "awareness" "of"/belonging to the model of the "self" ( when it is not assigned to other people or things that is ).

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There is no "experience of the simulation". There is "the simulation of experience" ( or, of the molecular, electrical, cellular activities of attention processes ).

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Eliab:The conscious self is the whole damn camel. If it can't get through, I can't get through.

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You want to save the simulation more than the real thing.

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Eliab: Your failure to fit such concepts as transcendent morality or objective truth ...

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You'll have to explain what those mean to you, because what they mean to me is, as I described above, is covered quite well by my "experience" of my "real self" God.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
The picture of a thing is not the thing itself. A story told about what happened is not what happened as such. A mathematical description of a stone falling is not an actual stone falling.

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It is however an indisputable fact that we do experience.

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If there is indeed no room in the "real" world of waves, particles, energy, molecules, etc. for this actual experience, but only for a "simulation of experience", then either this conception of the "real" world is wrong or we are not merely part of that "real" world. Or both.

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The real world of particles, waves, energy, molecules, etc contains attention processes, neural activity to do with enhancing representations of things for higher cognitive processing.

"Awareness"/consciousness/"conscious self experience"/experience is a caricature, a basic exaggerated and/or simplified model/representation of that activity, which the brain uses to tell itself/inform itself of what the attention processes are doing, like a sort of homeostatic-regulator keeping an eye on a system.

"We" are indeed not part of the real world of waves and particles etc. "We", this "conscious self" that we generally mean by that label, are models, part of the info/description or story being run by the brain about some of its processes.

I really really recommend that you read some of the articles I linked to above, if you have time, because most of them do seem to do a much better job than me at explaining this.