Psience Quest

Those who do not ‘see’ their own consciousness: can argument help?

Arthur Haswell, BA

Quote: ...In his latest book, the neuroscientist Christof Koch relates Cotard’s syndrome with the “strident denigration or even outright denial of subjectivity” and experience that he suggests is dominant in “Anglo-American philosophy departments” [12]. We don’t have to look very far to find attitudes reminiscent of this mindset. Richard Dawkins famously described human beings as “lumbering robots” [13] and “survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes,” a “truth” that he says fills him with astonishment [14]. Similarly, Daniel Dennett once remarked, “Yes, we have a soul. It’s just made of lots of tiny robots” [15]. Anil Seth, one of the most prominent voices in the contemporary consciousness discourse, insists that we are “beast machines.” He is open about drawing on Descartes’ views on animals and the philosopher’s “primary claim” that they lack “rational, spiritual, and conscious attributes” [16]...

Quote:...Perhaps another way to characterise the contemporary zeitgeist is as deeply necrophiliac. The social psychologist Erich Fromm, in The Heart of Man, describes the necrophile as someone who “loves all that does not grow, all that is mechanical. The necrophilous person is driven by the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic, to approach life mechanically, as if all living persons were things.” [22] He suggests that the necrophile “loves control, and in the act of controlling he kills life. He is deeply afraid of life, because it is disorderly and uncontrollable by its very nature” [23]. Fromm further observes that “features of a necrophilous orientation exist in all modern industrial societies, regardless of their respective political structures” [24], and that “intellectualization, quantification, abstractification, bureaucratization, and reification—the very characteristics of modern industrial society, when applied to people rather than to things, are not the principles of life but those of mechanics” [25].

There is value in arguments that detail the unsoundness of the hylomaniac worldview; arguments that expose why a purely quantitative understanding of reality can never be exhaustive, or why reality cannot solely be constituted of non-mental stuff, or why mind is not merely a function of matter. Many people become ardent hylomaniacs in their adolescence and complacent ones in adulthood, but can become unsure of their metaphysical presuppositions when confronted with arguments that highlight their absurdity. Then, after a period of uncertainty and disillusionment, they find themselves filled to the brim with spirit and the living world, with a fresh distance from the necrophilous perversion endemic to modern society. Some, however, seem to be incapable of making such a shift.

Let us return to the doctor’s office...

I think it's obvious that consciousness exists but it is also misunderstood.

I think you have to separate the problem into different parts:

1) Are we biological robots? I don't believe so, consciousness is not something that comes from any physical process. But that doesn't mean we aren't non-physical robots.

2) Does consciousness, subjective experience, mean personal entities exist? 

You feel like you have free will because you experience impulses before you do something or decide not to so something. But where do the impulses come from? How is the decision made to do or not do it? Those things come from unconscious processes and they just appear in the mind. So how can consciousness be said to have free will if any free will that may exist really belongs to unconscious processes?

If you observe the stream of consciousness you will see that it is a sequence of cause and effect where one thought, emotion, impulse, sensory experience, leads to another due to memory, association, or reason and there is no conscious entity actually controlling that sequence of cause and effect.

But you feel like an entity, an observer, because you perceive sensory experiences and subjective experiences, but that idea or feeling or being an observer comes from the same unconscious processes that all other thoughts and feelings come from and from where they pop into awareness fully formed unasked for and uninvited. The feeling comes and goes, if you hear a loud noise and turn to look to see what caused it, you are not thinking "I feel like an observer because I perceive sounds", you are not thinking anything, you are just looking, and when you are not thinking you don't feel like an observer. The the thought or feeling of being an observer disappears because it is not an entity, it is just a thought or feeling. 


If there were nothing objective or subjective to observe, there would be no sense of being an observer. The "observer" only exists when there is something to observe.


The self we think we are is the self-image. It is imagined.

How can this be? The Buddha compared it to a magicians trick.

This should not make anyone feel depressed. You are what you are, facts you didn't consider don't change anything, they were always true, even when you didn't know them.

But if you consider the self, the "I", that you think of when you think "I want this" and the self you think of when you think "I don't like that" is imaginary, like a character in a movie or novel, then there is no reason to be upset about anything. 

That doesn't mean you ignore problems, it means you can react with compassion and reason rather than selfish emotions.

(2025-03-14, 05:19 PM)Jim_Smith Wrote: [ -> ]If you observe the stream of consciousness you will see that it is a sequence of cause and effect where one thought, emotion, impulse, sensory experience, leads to another due to memory, association, or reason and there is no conscious entity actually controlling that sequence of cause and effect.

How does one example in the set of "thought, emotion, impulse, sensory experience" cause another?

The observer also seems distinct from that set? ->

Quote:[Wittgenstein] suggests that if you wrote a book called The World as I Found it, there is one thing that would not be mentioned in it: you. It would include all of the facts you found, including all the facts about your body. And it would include psychological facts about yourself as well: your character, personality, dispositions, and so on. But you – the subject, the one to whom all this appears, the one who finds all these facts – would not be found

 - Norman Melchert, A Historical Introduction to Philosophy

I'm also not sure if Buddha ever gave a clear answer to whether there was or wasn't a Self? AFAIK he even once demurred on the question when directly asked, but not sure if I am remembering this correctly.

If nothing else, it seems to me Buddha is imploring immortal Persons to practice detachment as there has to be a Person for there to be Liberation? 
->

"Which is greater, the tears you have shed while transmigrating across lives & wandering this long, long time - crying & weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing - or the water in the four great oceans? Which is greater, the blood you have shed from having your heads cut off while transmigrating & wandering this long, long time, or the water in the four great oceans?

From an in-construable beginning comes lifetimes of transmigration. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating and wandering on. Just as a stick thrown up in the air lands sometimes on its base, sometimes on its side, sometimes on its tip; in the same way, beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving, transmigrating and wandering on, sometimes go from this world to another world, sometimes come from another world to this.

Long have you thus experienced suffering, experienced pain, experienced loss, swelling the cemeteries - enough to become disenchanted with all fabrications, enough to become dispassionate, enough to be Liberated."
 -Assu Sutta

I am not saying there is no self. I am saying there is no entity that is separate from the unconscious processes that produce thoughts emotions etc.  So consciousness exists, individuality exists. But the entity you think of when you think "I want this" or "I don't like that" is imagined, it is an assumption based on a superficial examination of conscious experience that is not justified when you look more closely at how the mind works. When you stop believing in this I, you don't have to defend it from insult and injury and you suffer a lot less.

The analogy the Buddha used is that a chariot is made of parts and there is no "essence of chariot" anywhere you can find among those parts. Consciousness is like that. It exists, there are individual consciousnesses, but it is made of separate parts (thoughts, emotions, impulses, etc) that don't share any essence. People have conflicting emotions, they sometimes undermine conscious goals because of unconscious fears, they want to eat junk food at the same time they want to lose weight. The individual parts react to the environment, so they might have free will, but they are not what we think of when we think "I".

Do Buddhists believe in a soul:

https://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2023/12/do-b...-soul.html

Quote:In Buddhism consciousness is believed to continue after death, and can be reborn, and experiences karma (experiences the consequences of one's action) from previous lives. However consciousness flows/propagates as a sequence of cause and effect and is not a property of some constant separate unchanging thing. Like a wave that flows through water is not separate from the water. The first stage of awakening, stream-entry, occurs when you are freed from identity-view - the belief that the self is a thing.

Jim, you're talking nonsense. Experience is contingent on a self (experient), not the other way around.

(2025-03-14, 11:30 PM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]Jim, you're talking nonsense. Experience is contingent on a self (experient), not the other way around.

What happens to your self when you are sleeping?

Most people recognize that there is something odd about consciousness. They know they don't choose their emotions. They know when they try to concentrate they get distracted. They know they can have conflicting opinions and emotions and desires. They know their sense of self changes with their situation (student, worker, child, parent, friend, teammate, rival etc. etc.), and with their emotions (proud, humble, arrogant, ashamed, happy, unhappy), and with their sensory experience (hot, cold, comfortable uncomfortable) But they imagine a continuous constant self that is somehow in control when it doesn't control thoughts, emotions or impulses, and appears at times and disappears at other times. So they have a self image that is inconsistent with these obvious facts. If they would look deeper (as many people have done) they would see the other phenomenon I wrote about that are inconsistent with the self image are also true.

I am not saying consciousness and individuality don't exist. I am saying consciousness is not what most people think it is.

There is a phenomenon that can occur during meditation called cessation. Many people have experienced this.

https://web.archive.org/web/201503150432...cessation/

Quote:As you reflect on it you see that there was something truly amazing about that moment. In that instant everything disappeared, including you. It was a moment of complete non-occurrence, the absolute opposite of everything that has ever happened in your life up to this moment, because it could not really be said to have happened to you. No doubt, it is a weird realization, but there it is. Following the experience of this absolute nothing is what my teacher aptly calls a “bliss wave.” For some time following this moment of alighting upon Nirvana you feel really relaxed and fresh. These two experiences, seeing that you disappeared and that you also feel great because of it, lead to a very important discovery that will shape how you view yourself from this point forward. You begin to understand in a very deep way that there really is something to this whole idea that the cravings of a “self” are the root of suffering. When it was gone, even for an instant, life suddenly got much better.

(2025-03-14, 05:19 PM)Jim_Smith Wrote: [ -> ]I think it's obvious that consciousness exists but it is also misunderstood.

I think you have to separate the problem into different parts:

1) Are we biological robots? I don't believe so, consciousness is not something that comes from any physical process. But that doesn't mean we aren't non-physical robots.

What exactly is a "non-physical robot"? Consciousness, mind, soul, itself cannot be.

(2025-03-14, 05:19 PM)Jim_Smith Wrote: [ -> ]2) Does consciousness, subjective experience, mean personal entities exist? 

You feel like you have free will because you experience impulses before you do something or decide not to so something. But where do the impulses come from? How is the decision made to do or not do it? Those things come from unconscious processes and they just appear in the mind. So how can consciousness be said to have free will if any free will that may exist really belongs to unconscious processes?

We have the free will to choose how we respond and react if we remain actively aware of what is happening in our minds, so we can thus veto impulses and compulsions that may arise from unconscious habits. But we must practice mindfulness, so to speak.

Impulses don't just "appear" in the mind ~ even if they appear to. But that's just appearances, after all ~ they actually come from the unconscious, which is also part of our mind, that we are just not conscious of.

Jung's goal of individuation is to make the unconscious conscious so that we are free from impulsiveness, from habits not of our conscious choosing.

(2025-03-14, 05:19 PM)Jim_Smith Wrote: [ -> ]If you observe the stream of consciousness you will see that it is a sequence of cause and effect where one thought, emotion, impulse, sensory experience, leads to another due to memory, association, or reason and there is no conscious entity actually controlling that sequence of cause and effect.

There only appears to be no conscious entity controlling the sequence ~ but in reality, where do these habits, patterns and complexes of behaviours, thoughts, emotions, impulses and such come from? They must have an origin ~ it is consciousness, mind, that chooses these patterns and complexes, even if we do not recalls making those choices.

None of these things even just happens just because. This has never been observed. All new behaviours come from conscious choosing. Free will, even if they later go out of our control as impulses.

(2025-03-14, 05:19 PM)Jim_Smith Wrote: [ -> ]But you feel like an entity, an observer, because you perceive sensory experiences and subjective experiences, but that idea or feeling or being an observer comes from the same unconscious processes that all other thoughts and feelings come from and from where they pop into awareness fully formed unasked for and uninvited. The feeling comes and goes, if you hear a loud noise and turn to look to see what caused it, you are not thinking "I feel like an observer because I perceive sounds", you are not thinking anything, you are just looking, and when you are not thinking you don't feel like an observer. The the thought or feeling of being an observer disappears because it is not an entity, it is just a thought or feeling. 

All of these things require an observer ~ the self, the soul, is an observer, even of our unconscious. Our minds have limited attention spans, so our minds require habits and patterns to that we can more efficiently and effectively use that limited attention span.

(2025-03-14, 05:19 PM)Jim_Smith Wrote: [ -> ]If there were nothing objective or subjective to observe, there would be no sense of being an observer. The "observer" only exists when there is something to observe.

Well... all sensory observations are subjective in nature, after all... but even an experience of a void is still an experience. Observations are simply a form of experience, and there is no evidence that experience ever really ceases ~ it only changes form.

(2025-03-14, 05:19 PM)Jim_Smith Wrote: [ -> ]The self we think we are is the self-image. It is imagined.

The self we think we are is the incarnate ego-self, along with the persona, the mask we present to the outside world. We can even get so caught up in pleasing others that we identify with that mask.

(2025-03-14, 05:19 PM)Jim_Smith Wrote: [ -> ]How can this be? The Buddha compared it to a magicians trick.

The Buddha is not the final arbiter of anything. He was just another wise man whose words have been misinterpreted and garbled by his disciples who could not agree on how to interpret them. The wise man's quiet despair, perhaps, when those who do not share that wisdom interpret that wisdom through their own perspectives, leading to a garbled interpretation.

(2025-03-14, 05:19 PM)Jim_Smith Wrote: [ -> ]This should not make anyone feel depressed. You are what you are, facts you didn't consider don't change anything, they were always true, even when you didn't know them.

It is depressing if meaning and purpose is stripped away from us. You cannot change how people react to or interpret your words ~ if they depress someone, then that's that. And then it's up to you to respond appropriately ~ if don't mean to depress, then how do you communicate clearly so as to not do so?

(2025-03-14, 05:19 PM)Jim_Smith Wrote: [ -> ]But if you consider the self, the "I", that you think of when you think "I want this" and the self you think of when you think "I don't like that" is imaginary, like a character in a movie or novel, then there is no reason to be upset about anything. 

Every individual has their own reasons ~ and their own interpretations of who they are. Your interpretation is not another's.

(2025-03-14, 05:19 PM)Jim_Smith Wrote: [ -> ]That doesn't mean you ignore problems, it means you can react with compassion and reason rather than selfish emotions.

If there is no self, then there is no-one who suffers, therefore suffering isn't really happening, therefore compassion becomes rather redundant. That's the logical end conclusion of modern Buddhism.

(2025-03-14, 11:19 PM)Jim_Smith Wrote: [ -> ]I am not saying there is no self. I am saying there is no entity that is separate from the unconscious processes that produce thoughts emotions etc.  So consciousness exists, individuality exists. But the entity you think of when you think "I want this" or "I don't like that" is imagined, it is an assumption based on a superficial examination of conscious experience that is not justified when you look more closely at how the mind works. When you stop believing in this I, you don't have to defend it from insult and injury and you suffer a lot less.

This belief that there is no unitary self is itself an assumption based on a superficial examination of conscious experience that is not justified when you look more closely at how the mind works.

The Self is denied by Buddhism in the same way that Illusionism denies the Self. Yes, Buddhists are the original Illusionists, I dare say.

(2025-03-14, 11:19 PM)Jim_Smith Wrote: [ -> ]The analogy the Buddha used is that a chariot is made of parts and there is no "essence of chariot" anywhere you can find among those parts. Consciousness is like that. It exists, there are individual consciousnesses, but it is made of separate parts (thoughts, emotions, impulses, etc) that don't share any essence. People have conflicting emotions, they sometimes undermine conscious goals because of unconscious fears, they want to eat junk food at the same time they want to lose weight. The individual parts react to the environment, so they might have free will, but they are not what we think of when we think "I".

The Self is no illusion of "parts" ~ the Self, rather, the unitary ground of being upon which different aspects become and are.

In Buddhism, even the Skandhas are themselves essentially illusions that popped up for no particular reason.

But... illusions, in reality, require a real entity who can be fooled. Descartes' Demon comes to mind.