Post by John E on Feb 7, 2010 18:57:34 GMT -5
Umm... because we can study the brain and fuck around with it. We have scanners, we can monitor the effects of drugs on it, we can categorise behaviours and perceptions, compare them, etc. Fucking hell, we've even figured out how memory forms in the brain, reliant on both chemicals and the establishment of specific neural pathways. Example and Example 2
I'm seeing behavior, perception, memory... not consciousness.
Wrong. There are particular processes that can be monitored and tested against which have indicated that in order to have self-referential cognition, particular processes must be present and experiments have shown that these facilities are a part of complex cognition.
Self-referential cognition is not the same thing as subjective experience. I'll grant you it's not a stretch to assume the two are closely connected, but it's still just an assumption.
So I ask you, how is consciousness something separate from our brains?
Didn't say it was.
What makes the aspect of self-reference and self-awareness as a quality that can't be measured?
Self reference and self awareness, in the sense of being able to perceive and report information about yourself and your surroundings is a measurable ability, but that's not what I'm talking about. Those abilities could conceivably exist without actual subjective experience.
Okay then, how do you know that I am conscious? What makes you so sure that you are talking to a conscious person? Don't you have mechanisms to allow you to gauge at least whether the person you are talking to is conscious?
I don't know for sure that I'm talking to a conscious being. I assume I am.
We establish first a framepoint, a common viewpoint on which a group of experiences can be correlated against. [...] At least in building a picture of the subjective aspect of experience, then that's a good start.
That's all well and good, but like I told Vene, I'm not disputing the existence or provability of subjectivity.