Posted: Nov 20, 2014 10:17 pm
Macdoc wrote:don't think there is a continuum of consciousness. The brain isn't an inherently subjective entity. I think we experience only what the brain works out as conscious experiences, and if it doesn't do that for any moment then you have no experience of that moment. Not falling out of bed doesn't require subjectivity.
Not falling out of bed requires the brain being aware of its surroundings yet your consciousness is mia.
I guess you may have not played with lucid dreaming but there is an entire strange world in there that was the basis of some of Poe's writing.
There is a huge exchange of information going on below the immediate awareness level just as things are on the edge of your eyesight and a movement may bring you to focus on them ( likely a hunting benefit being able to ignore distractions and focus.....an extreme example is the tunnel visions that police and others experience in high stress situations.
Trying to set up an either or state for our neural net is in my view a complete dead end.
You don't think about typing for instance unless it's an odd word - your fingers get there....driving much the same - many km can go by without any memory or awareness of what you did.....you don't focus on walking unless the footing is treacherous....then you focus on your footing.
It is not and either or state.
Your's are good examples of my point, easily explained by the brain not selecting those activities to represent to itself as conscious subjective events.
We don't have to consciously experience thinks like those. Those responses don't have to be represented in phenomenal consciousness.
An analogy that makes the point is to think of conscious experience as a sort of non-verbal narrative of what is happening to you. If the 'story' stops being told things can go on 'unrecorded'. Consciousness is absent.
It is a big assumption that phenomenal consciousness drives action and that therefore any 'smart response' must be driven by some low-level of phenomenal consciousness. But challenge that assumption and the automatic non-conscious neural processes drive action, and 'narrate' some of the activity as experience. Much of the time your brain can run things perfectly well without having to generate subjective experiences.