Questions tagged [consciousness]
Consciousness, and related notions like sentience and self-awareness, denote the capacity of certain organisms to express recognition of their own presence in the world.
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Why did Daniel Dennett not explain consciousness?
Dennett frequently talks about consciousness as if it has already been solved and that we're just inventing new problems because of some innate fear of naturalism.
In his (now rather old) book ...
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What justified consciousness is an experience and not an thing? [on hold]
No philosophers has justified that consciousnesses can be measured. Many philosophers have tried to describe the mind, but are there any specific scholars who describe justified methods to describe ...
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What are the main oppositions to the extended mind thesis? and who presents them?
Andy Clark and David Chalmers are huge in promoting the extended mind thesis but who/what is their main opposition?
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Imagination versus reality [closed]
How can I know of something that happened billions of years ago if I cannot even recall what happened just a day before I was born? Just wondering.
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The illogical nature of want/motivation and its effects on free will
Are all the decisions and desires of humans made in order to stimulate pleasure centers and avoid pain?
If so, could someone/thing which is unable to feel pleasure and pain, and only had the power of ...
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Is consciousness considered a resolved/able problem?
Is the existence of qualia generally considered an unresolved problem by philosophers? Is there a consensus on its nature or whether it can be studied at all?
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Where to start to be savvy about the current literature on consciousness?
I imagine that there are probably only a few major schools of thought, though this may be a misjudgment on my part.
I am very familiar with Daniel Dennett's work, Chalmers, Hoffman's (though I'm not ...
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Can mind-body dualism be modelled by computer programs and their corresponding logic gates at the physical level?
If we a consider complex computer program (such as an operating system) running on an unknown architecture, then somebody observing the computer program at the logic gate level may be able to gain a ...
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Inductive Logic on Existence
Because we, only by inductive reasoning, are sure about next moment 'happening' (or more precisely, not worried about it not happening), does this mean that there is no logical guarantee that next ...
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Which major philosophers (if any) prior to the 1900s believed that consciousness was an emergent property of the brain?
I am going to be doing an Independent Study with one of my professors, and I am obligated (due to the professor's expertise) to choose a philosopher prior to the 1900s.
Were there any philosophers ...
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Can an animal have qualia without self awareness?
Can an animal have qualia without self awareness? I understand that many animals are said to have qualia but not self awareness (perhaps not the great apes).
In particular, I'm having a hard time ...
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Where's Sophia along the “spectrum of consciousness”?
This is really more of a follow-up to all the recent (and not-so-recent) somewhat goofy (and maybe some not-so-goofy) ai-and-consciousness-type questions.
In that vein, I serendipitously stumbled ...
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If we had a hive mind, could we discover it?
Question prompted by @jobermark answer to my question: Are there many minds or is there only one?
The idea that 'greater-that-the-sum-of-its-parts' minds (functional decision capable entities) exist ...
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Can science account for consciousness
Looking at the mind and body it can presumably all be accounted for with physics and chemistry each activity happening purely as a result of the previous state just like as machines work (making free ...
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What is the minimum statement of faith?
Taking 'faith' to mean: an effective trust or acceptance of the veracity of certain statements of fact, or the truth of existential claims. I.e. the kind of faith/beliefs that are cardinal to the ...
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How can we describe consciousness?
Humans consist of complex physical materials. However, we determine and experience our lives through numerous spiritual moments. Should consciousness be described as an outcome of physical matter and ...
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Scholarly retorts to “Quining Qualia”?
I've been reading and rereading Daniel Dennett's dismissal of qualia, and I have been wanting to see what some of the experts in the field think of his portrayal.
For example, has Nagel, Hoffman, or ...
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What is consciousness
Is it a question that science may answer? This article became the root of my thinking.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/mar/01/consciousness-eight-questions-science
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Does it make sense to say that consciousness does not exist or there is no such thing?
Does it make sense to say that consciousness does not exist or there is no such thing? I've not taken any classes in reductionism, but it seems reductionst.
How would philosophy of mind and ...
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Is it rationally possible to believe in a sensationless soul after death?
Epicurus's thoughts on death were:
-Death is the cessation of sensation
-Good and evil only make sense in terms of sensation
Therefore: Death is neither good nor evil
My (sort of related) question ...
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can a dog give consent?
We know consciousness requires a specific level of awareness. Many people view other life forms who have a lower level of awareness as having a lower level of consciousness. Thus consciousness ...
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When would someone not have free will?
I was thinking about free will, and I kind of got confused. What would it look like for someone to not have free will?
For example, if someone was paralyzed, they could still control their thoughts. ...
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What is the physicalist response to the explanatory gap for conciousness?
The zombie argument against physicalism usually goes like this
Physically identical zombies are conceivable.
If zombies are conceivable, they are metaphysically possible.
Therefore physicalism is ...
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How do I believe in free will? [closed]
After considering all possible ways that famous philosophers have tried to explain it, and reading so many articles that treat it like God’s greatest gift to mankind, I still don’t get it.
Is it that ...
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Could “I” become consciousness as someone else in the future?
I want to immediately dismiss any idea of soul or spiritual component of human being and I accept that death is nothingness (end) when it comes to my question. No rebirth, reincarnation etc.
But ...
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Is there any literature discussing whether all conscious entities are separate, discrete experiencers or a single experiencer?
I would like to know if there is any work discussing whether conscious entities (minds) are perceived by different "experiencers," arguably who we are. The other option as far as I know would be ...
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Consciousness and Spacetime [closed]
What is consciousness?
Is our conceived perception a part of space or time?
Can we be conscious in a state where time is non existent, or frozen?
Is consciousness energy?
Does it adhere to ...
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Does anyone really know that they're conscious?
According to the YouTube video What Is Consciousness, somebody can know that they are conscious but doesn't know that other people are conscious. I think it might not even be possible for one to prove ...
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What is the relationship between consciousness and intelligence?
Some philosophers say that consciousness is all about experiences, feelings, etc.
Can we say that intelligence is also an experience or feeling making it one of the outcomes of consciousness
or ...
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Can physical aspects of the brain reveal everything about what one's subjective experience is like?
In Colin McGinn's "The Mysterious Flame," McGinn argues against the materialistic response to the hard problem of consciousness with the following argument:
Suppose I know everything about your ...
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Why am I this particular human being?
Some philosophers dismiss this as a question about a tautology: when Alice asks "Why am I Alice?", this is equivalent to her asking "Why is Alice Alice?", which is not an interesting question. But ...
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How do epiphenomenalists make sense of discussions about qualia?
Epiphenomenalists believe that mental events have no causal effect on the physical. They may differ in what they consider "mental events" but it seems all of them would consider qualia / phenomenal ...
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Consciousness doesn't need your body - a thought experiment
1) During a deep sleep, your consciousness deactivates to reactivate upon awakening
2) During a deep sleep, you are narcotized and killed, to be replaced instantly by an identical copy, which wakes ...
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What is the relation between consciousness and thinking? [closed]
This jumble of questions isn't organized in any specific way. Please don't feel the need to address all the questions.
Do we need the ability to think or be in possession of a unifying self to be ...
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Do other animals have conscience?
Does any other animal (apart from humans) have conscience, feel guilt, and have the ability to discern right and wrong?
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Was active ignorance the genesis of self awareness?
In other words, is an organism's ability to ignore some of the sensory input it receives from the outside world the first requirement in defining self from other?
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If there's an physically identical copy of me, is that me?
I recently came up with a question. It is as you may know based on consciousness.
Let’s say I made a blueprint of myself, exactly the same person I am talking at the atomic level. Let us say the ...
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If we don't have free will, why was the quality of being conscious selected for?
I think scientists agree that we're conscious and aware that we have consciousness and awareness. But they don't agree on whether we have free will. I think they don't even have a universal definition ...
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Cloning: Will you be the same person? [closed]
Imagine, in the future, we have mastered the technology of cloning.
The rich and powerful have got their own cloning devices. They clone their bodies and keep the clones in a cryogenic environment to ...
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Does consciousness exist?
I am not the first to ask that question. There is at least the article written by William James with that very same title in:
The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, Vol. 1,
...
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What if Brentano was wrong?
Brentano held that every mental phenomenon has content, has a mental object, is about a mental object, or words to that effect.
However, skillful Buddhist phenomenologists, over millenia, have found ...
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The Hard Problem of Consciousness and Wave Function Collapse [closed]
Philosophers and physicists have been throwing around the idea that "consciousness causes collapse" since the early days of QM. Today most physicists reject this idea, but it seems to me this is ...
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How can an animal be interested in avoiding pain, without being aware that one has such an interest?
Source: Benatar, David. Better Never to Have Been (2008 1 edn). pp. 135-136.
I don't understand 1 and 2 beneath. Please LMK if 2 ought be asked as a separate question.
Philosophers have offered ...
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bypass for morality, proof of consciousness
Logically morality can stem from thinking that other people are just as living / human as yourself, so you shouldn't do to others what you don't want to be done to you.
But this can be bypassed by ...
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Sketch of a proof for real free will?
I have read many contemporary philosophers and the mainstream view seems to be that real free will is an illusion in the sense that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon which is only set on top of ...
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Is the phenomenom of “subjective consciousness” or “qualia” formally captured by any state-of-the-art Theoretical Model in Physics?
Is the phenomenon of "subjective consciousness" or "qualia" formally captured or defined by any state-of-the-art Theoretical Model in Physics? If so, can you share a brief summary of such ...
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Is it possible for the “feeling of having a rational thought” to be an illusion? If so, how can you have any confidence whatsoever in your thoughts?
All our reasoning, logic, deductions, Science, Philosophy, eureka moments, Aha! moments, etc. are based on a feeling of confidence that we are "thinking correctly", we are "reasoning correctly", we ...
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If consciousness is an emergent property of brain state, does this mean that we can only truly exist for 1 Planck unit of time?
Suppose my self-awareness, consciousness, point of view (POV) or qualia is not a "thing in itself" but rather an intrinsic emergent property of my brain's current brain state.
Then, as my brain ...
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If two brains A and B were 100% identical, why would A's self-awareness emerge in A instead of emerging in B and viceversa?
What I'm asking is basically how is the "self-awareness allocation problem" solved. I know this problem can be confusing, so let me try to explain it by means of examples:
Example 1: Let’s imagine ...
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Is 'self ownership' encompassed in John Locke's 3 natural and inalienable human rights life liberty and property?
Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right
to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hand, we
may say are properly his.
[- John Locke, Second Treatise, ...
