I spend a lot of time thinking about consciousness. Perhaps too much time. But I can’t help it. It might just be one of the most fascinating—as well as one of the least understood—things in the universe. And it's part of us; our essence as individuals and as a species. Even as I read more and more about the topic (
1. You are who you are at the age that you are right now.... then reset to a parallel universe where you somehow ended up on the doorstep of a couple in Bangladesh. Born as you were, but for some inexplicable reason dropped on the doorstep of another couple in another continent...Now move forward in that life to the age that you are now. Are you the same person that in another vector would have been the 'you' that 'you' have a sense of propriety over? Is that even a meaningful question? So what is the 'you' that COULD HAVE been someone else yet still have come from an "original inevitable state' ?
YOU don't exist. That's the only way to answer this paradox.
And here is the thought experiment that I came on up with that I really hate. Because it's so damn creepy.
You are at a large gathering of family and friends at a picnic. At one end of the space that you are having your get together at is a small shed. You walk into the shed and the door closes behind you. You notice a mysterious stranger sitting in a chair in the middle of the shed. The moment that you notice this stranger, you also realize that you have been duplicated. There are two of you. Neither of you came from the other. Both of you are as identical as a dividing amoeba. Both of you have equal claim to Being the original. Immediately you are made aware of the fact that only one of you will be allowed To exit the shed. The mysterious stranger will flip a coin To determine which of you will be executed and which of you will be allowed to go back to the festivities. Both copies of you share identical hopes and dreams and memories With each other. But one of you will die Before one of you will exit.
Question: What is lost?
And to make it even worse, the copy of you that emerges will have no memory of what happened in the shed.
Someone fucking died. But what was lost?
Erg... I don't like this one. I wish I hadn't thought of it
I like to think that I coined this quip encapsulating consciousness, but I can't see how that is possible. I'm sure I read it somewhere and claimed it as my own but here it is:
The emergent 'I'
It's that even if consciousness is an illusion there's no way to bootstrap yourself out of the illusion. There is no way for you to not feel that who you are and what you are is inevitable on some level. The 'I' Is emergent. But invisible to the processor. The one thing That stood out to me in Daniel Dennett's book "consciousness explained" (The wink at hubris being intentional in the title) Was when he tacitly admits that the question of consciousness in itself is a boring question. Simply because there isn't an antithetical to weigh it against. It was specifically in his take on Qualia. The basic irreducibles on what it means to feel or sense something. He basically suggested that it was only superficially profound. Simply because there is no way into that experience EXCEPT BY comparison. The idea that different people experience 'red' differently as a nonstarter as an example.
I remember a thought experiment where someone has to explain the color red to someone who is colorblind. You have to take it one step further and then try to explain the color red to someone else who is fully capable of seeing red you can't do it. All you can do is say, red like an apple, red like a firetruck, red like blood. so ultimately there is no there there. But it's totally there, and totally real. The very definition of paradox
Oh, and here is one that I do think is 'mine'
The notion of free will is indistinguishable from 'not knowing' the future.
Via the paradox presented by Kurt Vonnegut's Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse 5
Knowing all of what was and what is to come is a form of death and stasis. So in that way, consciousness, even if illusory, IS 'life'...in more ways than one. Or more to the point, it is an ACTIVE vector EVEN IF one were to ascribe to abject pre-determinism. i.e. Everything in the universe would unfold exactly the way it has if it were started from an earlier point.
Lot's of interesting thoughts here! I have read other works fro Dennett but not not Consciousness Explained, although Hofstadter and he were close friends and Hofstadter mentions him a bit in I Am A Strange Loop (amazing read on consciousness).
Your thought experiment is definitely something that has been played with in sci-fi content in the past and might even be a good Black Mirror episode.
Sam Harris also deals with a lot of these ideas in his meditations and his wife wrote a book on consciousness as well that was interesting (I forget the name off hand).
Your point on consciousness IS life I think crosses both Voltaire and Buddah. Perception is reality. The present moment is all we have, etc. etc.
Fascinating things to ponder even if unknowable (like "Is There A God" ?).
Also thought experiments are the bomb!
1. You are who you are at the age that you are right now.... then reset to a parallel universe where you somehow ended up on the doorstep of a couple in Bangladesh. Born as you were, but for some inexplicable reason dropped on the doorstep of another couple in another continent...Now move forward in that life to the age that you are now. Are you the same person that in another vector would have been the 'you' that 'you' have a sense of propriety over? Is that even a meaningful question? So what is the 'you' that COULD HAVE been someone else yet still have come from an "original inevitable state' ?
YOU don't exist. That's the only way to answer this paradox.
And here is the thought experiment that I came on up with that I really hate. Because it's so damn creepy.
You are at a large gathering of family and friends at a picnic. At one end of the space that you are having your get together at is a small shed. You walk into the shed and the door closes behind you. You notice a mysterious stranger sitting in a chair in the middle of the shed. The moment that you notice this stranger, you also realize that you have been duplicated. There are two of you. Neither of you came from the other. Both of you are as identical as a dividing amoeba. Both of you have equal claim to Being the original. Immediately you are made aware of the fact that only one of you will be allowed To exit the shed. The mysterious stranger will flip a coin To determine which of you will be executed and which of you will be allowed to go back to the festivities. Both copies of you share identical hopes and dreams and memories With each other. But one of you will die Before one of you will exit.
Question: What is lost?
And to make it even worse, the copy of you that emerges will have no memory of what happened in the shed.
Someone fucking died. But what was lost?
Erg... I don't like this one. I wish I hadn't thought of it
I like to think that I coined this quip encapsulating consciousness, but I can't see how that is possible. I'm sure I read it somewhere and claimed it as my own but here it is:
The emergent 'I'
It's that even if consciousness is an illusion there's no way to bootstrap yourself out of the illusion. There is no way for you to not feel that who you are and what you are is inevitable on some level. The 'I' Is emergent. But invisible to the processor. The one thing That stood out to me in Daniel Dennett's book "consciousness explained" (The wink at hubris being intentional in the title) Was when he tacitly admits that the question of consciousness in itself is a boring question. Simply because there isn't an antithetical to weigh it against. It was specifically in his take on Qualia. The basic irreducibles on what it means to feel or sense something. He basically suggested that it was only superficially profound. Simply because there is no way into that experience EXCEPT BY comparison. The idea that different people experience 'red' differently as a nonstarter as an example.
I remember a thought experiment where someone has to explain the color red to someone who is colorblind. You have to take it one step further and then try to explain the color red to someone else who is fully capable of seeing red you can't do it. All you can do is say, red like an apple, red like a firetruck, red like blood. so ultimately there is no there there. But it's totally there, and totally real. The very definition of paradox
Oh, and here is one that I do think is 'mine'
The notion of free will is indistinguishable from 'not knowing' the future.
Via the paradox presented by Kurt Vonnegut's Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse 5
Knowing all of what was and what is to come is a form of death and stasis. So in that way, consciousness, even if illusory, IS 'life'...in more ways than one. Or more to the point, it is an ACTIVE vector EVEN IF one were to ascribe to abject pre-determinism. i.e. Everything in the universe would unfold exactly the way it has if it were started from an earlier point.
Lot's of interesting thoughts here! I have read other works fro Dennett but not not Consciousness Explained, although Hofstadter and he were close friends and Hofstadter mentions him a bit in I Am A Strange Loop (amazing read on consciousness).
Your thought experiment is definitely something that has been played with in sci-fi content in the past and might even be a good Black Mirror episode.
Sam Harris also deals with a lot of these ideas in his meditations and his wife wrote a book on consciousness as well that was interesting (I forget the name off hand).
Your point on consciousness IS life I think crosses both Voltaire and Buddah. Perception is reality. The present moment is all we have, etc. etc.
Fascinating things to ponder even if unknowable (like "Is There A God" ?).
Thanks for commenting!
Thank you!