noonemustknowmysecre t1_j7v68px wrote
Reply to comment by TylerX5 in What makes humans unique is not reducible to our brains or biology, but how we make sense of experience | Raymond Tallis by IAI_Admin
Yes.
Show me how your consciousness is fundamentally different than that of a cow.
We're probably smarter than most cows, but then again you and I are probably smarter than most people. That's not really a road anyone wants to go down.
You still owe me What drugs makes someone "awake and unconscious"?
C'mon man, I said consciousness is being awake. The obvious rebuttal is explaining how they're two different things. If you're just going to skip over the hard questions, you've already left the conversation even if you're still here.
TylerX5 t1_j7vqvr1 wrote
>You still owe me What drugs makes someone "awake and unconscious"?
This is an example of one but there are many others in the vein of date-rape drugs that have the effect I'm referencing. At the right dosage people can be awake yet very little to none of their experience during intoxication is stored into memory. That's essentially being unconscious and awake at the same time. Another example? Alcohol when people "black out" while drinking.
>C'mon man, I said consciousness is being awake. The obvious rebuttal is explaining how they're two different things. If you're just going to skip over the hard questions, you've already left the conversation even if you're still here.
I have a clearer idea of what it means to be awake and asleep than I do conscious and unconscious. I believe both are biomechanistically determined. Awake and asleep are actively adapting cyclical states regulated by the circadian rhythm (which I'll assume you're familiar with).
Consciousness seems to be an emergent property of episodic memory and linguistic (or perhaps symbolic?) activation thereof. We can talk ourselves into accessing our memories as well as talk ourselves into explaining them. I guess if I were to take a stab at a precise definition of consciousness, it is the act of using symbols (language and representation of language) to engage memory processes.
Unconscious is the state of a being capable of consciousness who is temporarily unable to do so.
Not conscious is the state of a being that lacks the ability to be conscious.
>Show me how your consciousness is fundamentally different than that of a cow.
We have episodic memory and symbolic language to access it, which emerges as consciousness. That would be my best answer to that question at this time.
noonemustknowmysecre t1_j7w9noe wrote
>At the right dosage people can be awake yet very little to none of their experience during intoxication is stored into memory.
Now that's something. Yeah, similar to "black-out drunk", where they simply don't form any lasting memories of their actions.
KEY FACTOR: They do not RETAIN any memory of events. Hand someone wacked out of their gourd a banana phone and say "ring ring" and they'll answer it. For that to happen they have to have at least some persistence of state between "that's a phone" and "what do I do when I answer a phone". And that state is stored in memory. They're not brain-dead. GHB impairs memory. It doesn't just stop memory all together. ...Yeah, this has been studied. The booze stops the transfer from short-term to long-term memory. Remember what I said about memory being "of any sort"? Even if you later forget, it doesn't mean you weren't conscious when it happened.
I mean, that's a real good try. But the science doesn't back it up.
>How are they different? > both are biomechanistically determined?
...movement? wtf does the mechanical properties of biology have to do with sleeping? We lay still when we sleep? Surely you're trying to talk about something else. Bruh, don't attempt to pull wool with dem dar big'ol words. You're chatting with someone who can call bullshit on it.
>Consciousness seems to be an emergent property of episodic memory
(And sensory input going in otherwise it's all just solipsism. And something to make sense of it. YEAH! Isn't it GREAT when we find out we're all on the same page and agree with each other? )
>and linguistic (or perhaps symbolic?) activation thereof.
I'm willing to posit that whatever you think "symbolic activation of memory" entails, it might as well be called "intelligence". Consider, an image of a snake. If a cows sees a snake, there's a jumble of electrochemical signals which the cow has been trained to know SYMBOLIZES a danger.
Language though? My first blush is to call that out as just plain silly. What's special about language? Humans (and most social animals) have portions of our brains dedicated to language, sure. But this is a weird thing to hinge consciousness on. Social sharks are conscious, while solitary polar bears are not?
>We can talk ourselves into accessing our memories
I mean, so can smells. Sounds. Being in the dark. We've taught children raised by wolves language later in life and they confirm there's still memory even without language. I mean, how else would anything ever learn. I'm really not following this marriage between language and memory that you've made.
>> Show me how your consciousness is fundamentally different than that of a cow.
>We have episodic memory
Why on earth would you believe cows don't? (You understand "episodic" just means long-term memory that we can review, like an episode, right?) This is real silly for anyone who's ever put a cow inside an electric fence. They certainly learn how the fence works. Likewise, smart cows are a problem in feedlots and such. When one learns how to get a latch open, the others all learn it. And, you know, retain that knowledge. In long-term memory. Which can be handy for the later when they try to open a latch.
>and symbolic language to access it
Animals have language. ...no promises about cows specifically though. I mean, they're pretty dumb. But moving the discussion to crows doesn't change much here.
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