Book Review: Consciousness and the Brain

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-consciousness-and

by feross • 4 years ago

74 14 4 years ago

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Syzygies2• 4 years ago

This means that tasks which require working memory can not be performed unconsciously.

There's an old chestnut that one can't have thoughts without words. As a visual thinker, I always found this assertion preposterous.

How does one explain the common experience of mathematicians and scientists of awaking to a fully formed revelation, of complexity far greater than the one bounce memory echo of 12x13?

lukasb• 4 years ago

We’re also capable of kinesthetic reasoning - I often think in kind of physical metaphors. Language can’t perfectly represent these kinds of thoughts.

Syzygies2• 4 years ago

Yes, sometimes when I've tried to get to sleep on a strong body-high indica cannabis, analysis starts to make much more sense. Branches of mathematics are likely organized by which senses we appropriate.

psyc• 4 years ago

Sleep isn’t all unconscious. Dreaming, at the least, is a state of consciousness. I have occasionally done arithmetic in a dream, then immediately on waking verified the calculations. My brother, who is way more into dreaming in general, reports the same.

galaxyLogic• 4 years ago

Sleep is a form of thinking. We basically "see a movie" when we dream. The entities we perceive interacting with each other in the dream, what are they? Like say there is a person I am am talking to in my dream. Or a crocodile? Or a car I drive in my dream. What are they?

I can think of no other answer than that they are "thoughts". They are thoughts I think in my dream. But they are visual, not verbal thoughts. And verbal thoughts? They are typically "audible" thoughts, I hear them in my head.

It's been reported that what people seldom dream about is reading some text, which is curious. Maybe there's no need for that because brain can dream words directly, as spoken words you hear in your head.

hyperpallium2• 4 years ago

Working memory isn't just for words.

Perhaps revelations don't require working memory, but are connections between known things? Hence their instantaneousness. The expression "fully formed" suggests a whole, without steps.

Shugarl• 4 years ago

How does one think visually ? I've tried it, but I feel like I just think verbally first, and then try to imagine an image that represent what I just said in my head

worik• 4 years ago

ELIZA never passed the Turing test.

gilbetron• 4 years ago

Love this book - I recommend it to all kinds of people. It really isn't about "Big C" Consciousness, but more about how our brain is doing all kinds of stuff without us knowing about it. Really fascinating experiments described and an examination of the implications. I walked away from it having a profound appreciation for how my brain is constantly chewing on things without my awareness.

zozbot234• 4 years ago

This book review would benefit from an express reference to the idea of "impermanence of conscious phenomena", which is inherent in the original treatment and has the advantage of greatly simplifying the scope of the so-called "Hard Problem" since all subjective qualia are per se momentary and impermanent, and can only ever relate or refer to previous memories, not to other qualia as such. There is no individual "self" inherent to any conscious phenomena, because consciousness has no capability for self-reference or self-perception.

visarga• 4 years ago

There is no individual "self" inherent to any conscious phenomena

I agree the self is not at the level of phenomena. It's higher up.

What makes a self a self is having its own goals distinct from the goals of others. Each self needs to assert their own values in order to succeed. The self emerges from the goal-game interaction, if we can metaphorically describe life as a game.

achow• 4 years ago

The book: https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Brain-Deciphering-Codes...

Publication date: Dec 2014

Book Review: Consciousness and the Brain

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