If theories are targeting different aspects of consciousness(say, one theory is focused on the phenomenal character ofconsciousness and another is focused on its functionalprofile) then they might not be the ‘adversaries’ that theyat first glance appear to be
good point some theories might actually be explaining different pieces of the same puzzle.
otably, there may be some contents that cannot be conscious (for example, low level processing within earlysensory or regulatory systems) and others that can onlybe conscious (for example, globally integrated perceptual scenes). Thus, in addition to explaining why somemental contents are conscious in some contexts but notothers, another challenge is to explain why some contents can never be conscious and why others can existonly as conscious
Makes me wonder how researchers determine which processes never become conscious.
he grip ofthe hard problem may loosen as our capacity to explain, predict and control bothphenomenological and functional properties of consciousness expands
They're saying the mystery could fade as science improves.
ome ToCs focus onthe phenomenal features of consciousness, others focuson the functional features of consciousness and stillothers attempt to account for both th
Different theories seem to be answering different questions, which might explain why they disagree
The functional aspects of consciousnessconcern the role(s) that mental states play in the cognitive economy of an organism in virtue of being conscious. (‘Function’ here encompasses both teleologicalfunctions — functional roles as shaped by evolution
This seems like the practical side of consciousness instead of the feeling side
bound togetheras components of a single conscious scene that subsumeseach of the agent’s local states25
How does the brain combine all these different experiences into one moment
we prefer the term‘global states’ because it leaves open the possibility thatthese states cannot be given a complete ordering in termsof a single dimension, but are best conceptualized asregions within a multidimensional space2
like this distinction because consciousness might not be as simple as one scale from low to high.
global states and local states. Global states concernan organism’s overall subjective profile and are associatedwith changes in arousal and behavioural responsiveness.Familiar global states include wakefulness, dreaming,sedation, the minimally conscious state, and (perhaps)the psychedelic state.
Basically talking about your overall state,like being awake vs dreaming
what it is like to bein one state of consciousness differs from what it is liketo be in another state of consciousness.
Interesting because it points out that every experience feels different, not just whether you're conscious or not.
there can be nothing in the mind
This stood out because modern psychology talks about unconscious thoughts all the time.
Descartes
nteresting that Chalmers traces this confusion all the way back to Descartes.
he concepts of learning and memory might best be taken as psycholog-ical. For something to learn, at a first approximation, is for it to adapt itsbehavioral capacities appropriately in response to certain kinds of environ-mental stimulation.
Interesting Learning and memory can affect behavior even when we're not consciously aware of them.
what it means for a state to be phenomenal is for it to feel a certain way,and what it means for a state to be psychological is for it to play an appropri-ate causal role. These distinct notions should not be conflated, at least atthe outset.
This definition focuses completely on what a mental state does rather than what it feels like.
the phenomenal and psychological "aspects" ofmind, and sometimes of the "phenomenal mind" and the "psychologicalmind." At this early stage, I do not wish to beg any questions about whetherthe phenomenal and the psychological will turn out to be the same thing.
think he's arguing that people often mix up consciousness itself with the mental processes that produce behavior.
n the phenomenal concept, mind is characterized by the way it feels; onthe psychological concept, mind is characterized by what it does. Thereshould be no question of competition between these two notions of mind.Neither of them is the correct analysis
This distinction seems really important. He's separating subjective experience from the functions and behaviors of the mind.
he sense of self.
This was one of the more interesting sections. He suggests that there might be a background feeling of being "you that goes beyond individual experiences.
Pain is a paradigm example of conscious experience, beloved byphilosophers.
Makes sense because pain is something almost everyone immediately recognizes as a subjective experience.
Why should it feel like that
his question seems simple but it's basically the entire problem Chalmers is trying to explain.
A catalog of conscious experien
I like this section because it makes the discussion more concrete with real examples instead of abstract philosophy.
When someone strikes middle C on the piano, a complex chain of eventsis set into place. Sound vibrates in the air and a wave travels to my ear. Thewave is processed and analyzed into frequencies inside the ear, and a signalis sent to the auditory cortex.
This example helped me understand the problem. We can explain how sound reaches the brain, but not necessarily why it feels the way it does.
why isseeing red like this, rather than like that? It seems conceivable that whenlooking at red things, such as roses, one might have had the sort of color ex-periences that one in fact has when looking at blue things. Why is the expe-rience one way rather than the other?
I never really thought about this before. Why does red feel like red instead of some completely different sensation?
This is the really hard part of the mind-body problem.
Chalmers is drawing a distinction between explaining behavior and explaining subjective experience. He thinks the second part is much harder.
These qualitative feelsare also known as phenomenal qualities, or qualia for short.2
Qualia basically refers to the personal feeling or experience associated with something.
there is something it feels like tobe a cognitive agent.
this phrase is one of the most common ways people talk about consciousness.
4 Foundationsness, at least in the most interesting sense, is experience. But this is notdefinition. At best, it is clarification
This seems important because he's narrowing the discussion to subjective experience rather than things like attention or awareness.
Conscious experience is at once the most familiar thing in the world andthe most mysterious.
I like this opening because it captures the whole problem right away. We experience consciousness constantly but it's still hard to explain what it actually is.
Life is speckled with surprises, and we sometimes make mistakes.
I like this line he's admitting that our expectations are sometimes wrong while still arguing that most of the time perception works pretty well.
We will see how our inner universe is part of, not apart from, the rest of the universe” (p.276). To look half-way persuasive this promise of a journey towards a completed naturalism requires more than the arguments and experimental findings set out in the preceding 275 pages.
This sounds like an ambitious goal. Tallis doesnt seem convinced that the evidence presented in the book actually gets us there.
But that I can be tricked into getting things wrong, and then recognize this, itself shows that I don’t always, or even typically, get things wrong.
I thought this was one of his stronger arguments. If we can notice mistakes, then some of our perceptions must be accurate enough to compare.
wherever there is causal interaction, there is information… One can find information states in a rock – when it expands and contracts, for example – or even in different aspects of an electron” (The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, 1996, p.297).
This feels like a really broad definition. If everything contains information, then the term might lose some of its usefulness.
brains are ‘prediction engines’
This is one of Seth's main ideas. The brain isn't just reacting to informationit is constantly trying to predict what comes next.
A brain at time t is confined to time t. By contrast, a person at time t reaches back into time t-1 and forward into time t+1 – to many-layered realms of the no-longer and the not-yet, which are necessary for our present moments to have explicit meaning and significance.
Interesting point here arguing that people can think about the past and future in ways that physical brain states alone don't explain.
neural discharges are nothing like, for example, the experience of the colour yellow, of knowing that Paris is the capital of France, or experiencing nostalgia or regret.
This example makes sense to me. A brain scan and the actual feeling of seeing yellow seem like completely different things.
the brain is not only a necessary condition for human consciousness and indeed personhood, but also a sufficient condition: the idea that consciousness ‘is only’ brain activity.
This seems like the main debate of the article. Tallis agrees the brain matters but doesn't think the brain alone explains consciousness.
The personal level is where we live, and where ‘we’ lives. 3 Part ofmeeting
I wasn't super sure what he meant hereIt sounds like he's saying our sense of self exists at a higher level than the brain processes under it.
we are robots made ofrobots made of robots.
Definitely a memorable line in the paper It sums up Dennett's view that complex consciousness can come from lots of simple processes working together.
‘the boys have all looked for something too hard’
I liked this ending because it connects back to his overall argument about people sometimes make consciousness seem more mysterious than it actually needs to be.
Would there be orphaned phenomenalproperties, there but unaccessed?
This made me stop and think about If nobody notices or responds to an experience can we really say the experience happened in a meaningful way???
Easy? What makes Chalmers so sure that solvingthese easy problems won’t uncover the mechanistic sources of theproblem intuitions that define the meta-problem for him?
You can tell Dennett is skeptical here. He thinks the so called "easy proble ms" might actually explain more than Chalmers expects.
Where does this fancy personal levelcome from and how is it constructed?
This seems like one of the biggest questins in the paper. Dennett keeps pushing to explain where the feeling of a conscious self actually comes from instead of just expexting it exists.
The system is simply in that state. It is not given accessto the mechanisms that bring the state about. (ibid., p. 24
This reminds me of how people can have thoughts or reactions without actually understanding where they came from. We experience the result but not the process.
I await his arrival with open arms
This was kind of funny It sounds like Dennett thinks Chalmers is slowly moving toward his side of the argument and just hasn't fully committed yet
I am, and have alwaysbeen, a card-carrying strong illusionist.
He's basically admitting his bias right away