The Meaning of Life and Other Vegetables

Hello.

Before delving any further into RSU, and addressing some very necessary challenges, I’d like to pause; and talk about consciousness more generally. The following is not an integral part of the discussion about Hoffman’s abstract reality or my take on it; please read it more as an open, free-standing discussion about the nature of consciousness. I believe it is, however, necessary for continuing to develop that theory, and I intend to refer back to the following in future posts. Here we go:

What does being conscious mean?

First, conscious it not the same as self-conscious. The latter is a specific instance of the former. If we can establish what being conscious means, we might be able to apply the same to the self, to find out what being self-conscious means.

As a starting point, being conscious is not the same as being aware. To me, being aware indicates the following:

• The subject (who is aware) has some input channel / sensing abilities;
• The above input channel is on (able to receive); and
• The subject is recording or utilising the input from its input channel.

The above can be completely automatic, though. No thought process is necessary, no reflection and no abstraction. A cockroach is perfectly capable of being aware that the light in the kitchen has been turned on. It might act on that awareness and run for cover.

To me, being conscious implies, in addition to being aware, some level of thought; or at least some level of memory recall, evaluation of the received input against a memory (that memory might consist of pre-stored evaluation criteria), weighing of likelihoods/probabilities (mostly intuitively), prioritization, or the likes; before the result is committed to memory or otherwise acted upon. Hence, being conscious requires “a thinking facility”.

This begs the question, what exactly is a thought? Intuitively, we all know the answer. We’re all familiar with that imaginary voice in our head, constantly narrating (unless we manage to quiet it down, which is quite hard; otherwise meditation classes wouldn’t have sold so well). Do thoughts necessarily require words? I tend to reply “yes”. But then, does a baby, who hasn’t yet acquired language, have no thoughts?

It’s a difficult question. Maybe babies have thoughts in pure visual (image) or aural (sounds that are not spoken language) form…? I am willing to run with this idea, provided that those thoughts are distinct from the baby’s actual sensory input (sight and sound), and that they don’t replace that input for extended periods. Otherwise, they’d be the equivalent of hallucinations. Or the baby would be an escapist…?

Do dogs have thoughts? I think it’s even harder to tell. I certainly don’t know. It’s quite safe to say that if we require thoughts to be verbal, dogs don’t have them. For sure, placing such a limitation on what thoughts are would make the argument much simpler for me. I would then simply describe thoughts as an ongoing commentary on everything that is going on (that the thinking being is aware of). Being only-aware doesn’t involve that kind of commentary; but being conscious does.

So, being conscious requires verbalizing, or otherwise abstracting with/about the sensory input. I feel that the latter possibility is more universal – there may be ways of abstracting that are purely visual, aural and maybe even via smell and taste, for example. If that is the case, this would allow babies to be conscious from very early on. It would still not solve the mystery regarding dogs, though, unless dogs are capable of abstracting in ways I’m not aware conscious of (pun intended).

Based on the above, being self-conscious could be understood in two ways.

The first is quite simplistic. If being conscious means having a switched on input channel + abstracting with/about the input, in general, being self-conscious (conscious about the self) could be a subset that relates to input from the self; meaning, input related to what is happening to or inside the self (one’s body or mind).

The second interpretation is a little more subtle. It involves receiving the initial abstraction/thought products as raw materials (input); and then abstracting with/about that input. In simple words, being conscious of one’s consciousness. If we go back to the relentless commentator in our head, being self-conscious means having ongoing (or intermittent) commentary about our own thinking (or abstractions), which can include anything going on in our mind – including feelings, emotions, non-verbal stock (like smell, which is extremely potent), and so on. If we accept that approach, babies can begin to become self-conscious only when they start acquiring some language; I have a gut feeling that it would be quite complicated (though not impossible) to abstract by non-verbal means, then abstract non-verbally on those non-verbal abstractions…

Conveniently, the above concept also yields the result that chimps and orangutans may be/become self-conscious (they have the ability to acquire language, which might not be necessary but may be an indicator of the existence of necessary faculties); but dogs are not likely to. Apologies to all dog lovers.

An interesting question, in checking the viability of the above framework, is what does being unconscious mean, and how does the subconscious fit into all of that? I’ll speculate that being unconscious means having the commentator on mute (without lip-reading either). A lot may be going on, but no commentary (or abstraction) is available around that.

The subconscious is a more delicate concept, based on the above. It only applies to self-conscious beings. I speculate that the subconscious is the facility that self-conscious beings have, which carries out the more “basic” function of being conscious. To clarify this statement, you could think of beings that are conscious but not self-conscious (dogs for example) as having only the equivalent of our subconscious. They have the basic layer of consciousness, but the one on top of it is missing. For self-conscious beings, having feelings and concepts (intuitions?) in the subconscious means they have not yet been fished out by “the commentator” that it the self-consciousness, and are therefore still hidden beneath the surface. This idea can be further elaborated (dreams may be a very interesting feature/aspect to discuss), but I’ll leave it to another time.

That’s all for today.

Peace to all.