The Meaning of Consciousness

[Daniel Swords]

Others on this forum may enjoy reading this thread on consciousness:
Are we ready to study consciousness in crabs and the like? | Aeon Essays

I have a much simpler philosophy, I believe our thoughts are or souls, that any being that has thoughts therefore has a soul, that all beings are alike as products of Nature, and that humans differ in their ability to always choose Kindness. Therefore I strive to be a vegan and to be kind to all animate beings. Striving is not accomplishing; but my Golden Rule is that “Kindness is always the right choice.”

 

[Graeme M]

That was interesting, thanks. I see in the comments a remark from Arthur Reber with whom I have had conversations in the past about his cellular theory of consciousness. His books are worth reading for anyone interested. Part of what is confusing with the kinds of ideas in the article is that we have to know what we mean by consciousness in the first place. Much depends on the definition we choose. For myself, I don't see consciousness as at all magical, but rather the simple results of "computational" processes. A lot of people think consciousness is some kind of spooky quantity, but I am with Dennett that this is an illusion of sorts. Mark Solms' recent book ("The Hidden Spring") and papers about consciousness being essentially "affect" is one of the best attempts to explain consciousness that I have seen. He proposes that affect (ie the "what it feels like" of experience) is evolutionarily very old and driven by very primitive structures in the brain. Affect is basically what we call the ability of certain systems to "compute" abstractions about sensory data and drive behaviour as a result. That seems about right. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that even c. elegans has feelings of a sort, but whether they are enough for us to worry about morally is a different question.

I don't believe in souls, but I think it is very much better when we do. I wrote about this a while back on my blog:

Do animals have souls?

Many people believe that they have a soul, an inner being which transcends the physical nature of our world. Perhaps it even transcends death. Some also believe that other animals have souls as wel…

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