Talk:Consciousness Studies/The Description Of Consciousness

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

Jump to: navigation, search

Definition: "Consciousness is experience itself." What is experience? Right now I am looking at my computer monitor and typing. My seeing the monitor, feeling my fingers on the keyboard, etc. is my experience.

Good point, this is the subject of the section http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Consciousness_studies:_The_conflict RobinH 10:40, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

MISTAKES

"and most other empiricist authors in this field" is used right after a list which includes Descartes! I'll delete it.

Descartes was not an Empiricist but no-one can deny that his descriptions of consciousness are empirical. I have left the deletion because someone else is likely to also misinterpret the sentence. RobinH 13:01, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

The bit on naive realism is just plain wrong and should be corrected ASAP.

Why? RobinH 13:01, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I deleted a section at the bottom because it was simply the authors POV. It was philosophically incomprehensible. This whole page desperately needs someone with an actual Ph.D in philosophy to take a look at it, since various people have used it to showcase their own unpublished viewpoints, apparently written without any comprehension of the meaning of relevant terminology and ideas.

Personal attacks are not allowed in Wikibooks. Please stop this immediately. The correct way to proceed is to describe what is wrong and to discuss it then fix it.
I would stress that this book is, as mentioned in the introduction, largely about phenomenal consciousness. This section describes how philosophers have described the phenomenon of consciousness in the past - what it is like to be conscious. You may not like it but it is fully referenced. What is contentious is whether phenomenal consciousness is credible, but that discussion does not belong on this page. I have a degree in philosophy and a PhD in Biophysics. RobinH 11:29, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I added "Experiences presuppose space and time as pure concepts of reason." to the part on Kant. IMHO this is of essence in understanding "experience" in The Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der Reinen Vernunft). I base this on Kants Prolegomena. Phenomena 15:22, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

This section seems to be using the terms "definition" and "description" interchangeably, however, while there is a description of some aspects of consciousness, I see no clear definition of "consciousness." Now, there is an attempt to define it, but:

Consciousness is a multidimensional manifold with vectors pointing towards the centre (the apparent observation point).

does not strike me as a clear or useful definition, and instead comes off as a less than useful jumble of jargon (no offense intended) that uses other undefined objects ("multidimensional manifold," "vectors," and an "apparent observation point") as part of the definition. Someone should probably either change all instances of "definition" to "description" or add a clear and concise definition of "consciousness." Since the section starts off saying, "Before embarking on the analysis of consciousness it is important to have a definition of what it is that we are attempting to explain," I would prefer seeing the latter though I realize it might be a bit of a tall order since it is so hard to define. -- HiEv 76.99.67.77 09:31, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Green's description was definitely intended for mathematicians and physicists. I have added the following translation: "A non-mathematical description of consciousness is: a collection of events arranged in time and space that form directed elements that all point at the same place and instant." The reason I chose Green's description was that it did not belong to any current "fad", is well supported by references to the literature and strikes a chord of recognition for a physical scientist. It is is probably a more general description than "intentionality" or "reflexivity" and is able to contain these ideas as well as ideas about the specious present etc. It is also one of the few extended attempts at extracting a description of consciousness from established sources rather than making up a new description. On the down side, it verges on the banal: "consciousness is this stuff everywhere and when!" RobinH 13:14, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
I enjoy philosopher John Searle's common sense definition. It is partly a negative definition (i.e. listing what it is not) and since it is derived from common sense, it is merely a description. I quote:
Now people always tell me it was very hard to define consciousness, but I think if you're just looking for the kind of commonsense definition that you get at the beginning of the investigation, and not at the hard-nosed scientific definition that comes at the end, it's not hard to give a commonsense definition of consciousness. Consciousness consists of those states of feeling or sentience or awareness; they're the kind of things that start in the morning when you wake up from a dreamless sleep; they go on all day until you get knocked on the head and become unconscious, or you fall asleep again, or you die, or otherwise your consciousness is shut down. And on this account, I hope it's obvious, dreams are a form of consciousness.
Searle, John. (20 January 2007). The question of consciousness. ABC Radio National [radio transcript, electronical resource]
I think this account is useful and simple as a starting point.Phenomena 09:55, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Talk:Consciousness_Studies/The_Description_Of_Consciousness"