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[Great Order]

I'm tired and this is something that's bothered me for a while. I'm not expecting answers, but I'm interested in the discussion. You'll have to forgive the Scoops Novel nature of this thread, but I assure you it's not spreading.

What exactly *is* consciousness? Is it a continuous process? Some sort of metaphysical phenomenon? Is it just an illusion created by a sufficiently advanced information storing/sorting/analyzing mechanism?

Or, to put it simply, what makes us an actual being as opposed to just electricity floating around a meat PC? I'm curious what other people think.

[EuchreJack]

I Think Therefore I Am?

If you can lose sleep over this, you're more than electricity floating around a meat PC. That much I'm sure.

It might help to know the part that is bothersome.  It would also be less Scoopian.

[Frumple]

I think people have been failing to figure that one out longer than any of us has been alive... or any nation has managed vaguely contiguous existence, for that matter. We don't know, and to all appearances don't yet have the tools necessary to find out. Lots of conjecture and argument, no conclusive answers beyond there being no conclusive answer.

Add on that its exact nature is also substantively irrelevant (most folks are still going to act exactly the same even if there is some kind of answer to exactly what consciousness is, and the lack of definite answer for the last <entirety of human existence> hasn't stopped folks from going about their day to day)... and that roughly puts it in the same place as theology: Fun to talk about, but also remarkably useless

... mostly I'm just wishing I could remember the formal term for study of consciousness (in philosophy it's something adjacent to epistemology, iirc, no clue about neurology and whatnot) so I could stick apa- in front of it, so I'd have something hang besides the apatheism. There's definitely a specific word for it, but gods know I don't remember it right now.

[McTraveller]

Easy! Consciousness is just awareness.

The question is really not “what is it” but “why is it” or perhaps “how is it”.  What mechanisms or phenomena give rise to awareness. It’s fun to think about…  if it is purely natural (as opposed to supernatural) what mechanism can be constructed so that it is aware of itself…

[MorleyDev]

Is this consciousness in the room with us now, Jeremy? Can you point to it?

[Frumple]

Easy! Consciousness is just awareness.

tautologies are -2 points and a whomp with the nerf bat in any discussion not involving formal logic

*brandishes nerf bat menacingly*

[Telgin]

This reminds me of a news article I read recently where somebody proposed that relatively caused consciousness because our perceptions would be different from outsider perceptions.  It was total nonsense and while I don't remember if there was a journal paper attached, I hope it didn't make it into any real journals.

Anyway, I don't think we're really close to being able to answer this.  It seems pretty self-evident that electrical interactions in our brain cause it, but they aren't it.  Much like the electrical interactions in transistors cause computers to work, but the programs that run do so much more than that could imply on its own.  It's still not enough to say that consciousness is simply a program running though, so it's almost like a layer on top of that.  The experience of consciousness kind of defies any attempt to break it down into any discrete components or steps.

It really gets weird when you think about it from a p-zombie point of view.  I'm somewhat of the mind that a p-zombie isn't possible to make and any attempt to do so would essentially recreate the consciousness it's emulating, but I don't have any evidence for that.

When you start comparing people to machines and computers it gets so... muddy and strange.  A mechanical switch seems to be blatantly inert and possessing no consciousness.  A transistor is no better.  A hundred billion transistors (or mechanical switches) can run a program that can make decisions based on input though.  It can start to look like thought and consciousness.  If you add memory to the process it could become even more like a conscious being by learning and remembering.  At what point does it become conscious?  Maybe never... or maybe it always was, like consciousness is an emergent property of the universe only apparent at a certain scale?  That's getting into animistic philosophical nonsense, but it's an idea I'm using as a minor plot point in a story that contains robots, so it's at least something to ponder.

[hector13]

I lose consciousness very briefly every few seconds.

[MaxTheFox]

As a Christian, I think souls cause consciousness. Which is a lot easier to reconcile with free will than if we were just a bunch of neurons.

For the record, I think AI or aliens would also have souls.

[Frumple]

I lose consciousness very briefly every few seconds.

Now there's a question: If someone habitually blinks asynchronously, do they never lose consciousness while awake? If you only blink one eye, do you lose (1/however many senses you care to count) of a consciousness at a time?

As a Christian, I think souls cause consciousness. Which is a lot easier to reconcile with free will than if we were just a bunch of neurons.

It's exactly as easy to reconcile with free will as if we're just a bunch of neurons, actually. They're observably identical states of being

E: Though for a fun time, give a hunt for the christian denominations that don't think souls exist. It's a non-zero number, iirc the scriptural interpretation revolves around reading parts of the end-times resurrection as a literal one of the physical body, which is later transported to heaven (or earth is turned into one, something along those lines). Materialist christian theology can be pretty neat, it has fun overlap with panentheistic/omnipresent interpretations of god.

[King Zultan]

The opposite of unconsciousness.

For the record, I think AI or aliens would also have souls.

I can see aliens having souls but AI seems a bit of stretch.

[MaxTheFox]

I lose consciousness very briefly every few seconds.

Now there's a question: If someone habitually blinks asynchronously, do they never lose consciousness while awake? If you only blink one eye, do you lose (1/however many senses you care to count) of a consciousness at a time?

As a Christian, I think souls cause consciousness. Which is a lot easier to reconcile with free will than if we were just a bunch of neurons.

It's exactly as easy to reconcile with free will as if we're just a bunch of neurons, actually. They're observably identical states of being

E: Though for a fun time, give a hunt for the christian denominations that don't think souls exist. It's a non-zero number, iirc the scriptural interpretation revolves around reading parts of the end-times resurrection as a literal one of the physical body, which is later transported to heaven (or earth is turned into one, something along those lines). Materialist christian theology can be pretty neat, it has fun overlap with panentheistic/omnipresent interpretations of god.

Fair. I was talking from the POV of a non-fringe denomination.

The opposite of unconsciousness.

For the record, I think AI or aliens would also have souls.

I can see aliens having souls but AI seems a bit of stretch.

To me if it's sapient, it has a soul. End of. I don't think any "AI" we have made so far is sapient and thus worthy of rights, however. The LAMDA thing was dumb and Google was right to fire that idiot, by the way.

[Quarque]

The opposite of unconsciousness.

One of the most interesting angles to attack the question, actually. What exactly happens during sleep or during a dream? It could give us more insight in the question what makes the difference between consciousness being present or not.

[NullForceOmega]

Because words are stupid, consciousness means different things based on usage.

But because that answer is almost as useless as the base question, I'll tray to give a perspective on the implied meaning.

Consciousness is a state of being which combines our perception of the world (subjective) with past experiences.  Using those past experiences the sloppy organic computer that is our brain assesses incoming data in order to formulate actions and responses.  It is worth noting that nothing short of brain death actually ever stops the processes of our brain.

I can't really think of a better explanation that that.

[Great Order]

I think people have been failing to figure that one out longer than any of us has been alive... or any nation has managed vaguely contiguous existence, for that matter.

Oh yeah no, I'm not expecting an answer, I just want conjecture here.

I lose consciousness very briefly every few seconds.

Loss of vision isn't loss of consciousness, humans are heavily reliant on vision which is why we find blindness pretty debilitating (As other senses can't really compensate for its loss unless you're one of the lucky people to develop/learn echolocation), but consciousness is a lot more than vision.

Unless you're literally falling unconscious, in which case you need a doctor.
EDIT:

If you can lose sleep over this, you're more than electricity floating around a meat PC. That much I'm sure.

It might help to know the part that is bothersome.  It would also be less Scoopian.

The whole... what makes me, me? Like I know I exist, but I can't really pin down what exactly that is, beyond the most basic Cogito Ergo Sum stuff. Why am I not just a bunch of unaware processes all producing the same effect? What's given me that exact spark to go from processes to a being? Is there something, or is consciousness actually a sliding scale? Is there something, or is it just, as I said in the OP, an illusion that our processes produce and we're actually unaware but we're unaware that we're unaware?

And I'm losing no sleep, it's just one of those existential questions that's like a splinter in the back of my mind. I'll ignore it, then something suddenly makes me aware that it's there and I can't help but notice it.