[RD] Your Body is Only a Shell: Naive or Truthful?

[warpus]

Deciding arbitrarily that some other being is not self-aware is very dangerous conceptual territory..

Ah, but any sort of "self-aware or not?" test is going to have to be arbitrary. No way around it.

The mirror test seems to be a good start.

 

[Hrothbern]

This reminded me of something from an introductory linguistic anthropology class. Vervets have various calls. One is basically "good food over here!". The rest of the group come join the discoverer. "there's an eagle up in the sky!" - no one wants to get eaten so they all get out of the trees onto the ground. "Watch out for the leopard!" and the rest of the group gets up into the trees asap. Now the interesting part is that sometimes a vervet finds something really tasty that it doesn't want to share. If it's up high in a tree is will holler "eagle!" so everyone else jumps down and doesn't see it munching away up high. If the tasty bits are on the ground the greedy vervet will holler "leopard!" so everyone moves away up high. I think the ability to choose self over social group, and to lie about it, are symptoms of self-awareness/consciousness.

The magic power of a word indeed

I heard once a story of a parrot that was quite jealous on another parrot that later came (parrots are notoriously jealous).
The parrot is in the kitchen when a whole chicken is put in the furnace
and the parrot looks at the owner and says the name of the another parrot ending with the higher pitch => as a question
and then makes the noise indicating a kind of laughing.

I think humor belongs also to the early awareness indicators
and understanding joking an elementary part of our social consciousness

 

[Blue Monkey]

The mirror test seems to be a good start.

Just to stir the pot - a blind human being couldn't pass that test.

Spoiler :

 

[Borachio]

If so, I agree with your assertion that it is not. Consciousness implies the awareness of the brain of itself and of the universe (in some capacity). So a worm will respond predictably to stimuli as you imply and can't really be said to be aware of itself or much of anything. It is just going through biologically induced programming. IMO its brain (and/or nervous system) is too simple to house that sort of complexity required for a being to be able to ask those sort of questions. And in fact to be able to ask any questions at all, really. It can't ask "to be or not to be" so it lacks consciousness.

Are you saying that only creatures with language have consciousness?

Seems a rather strange and restricted position to take. But still.

I incline to a much wider (and probably too wide) interpretation myself. For me, the worm responding predictably to stimuli implies being certainly conscious, and maybe even self-conscious.

I mean, a worm is going to actively seek out food and avoid danger. Those two imply an awareness of its internal state. And hence, I suggest, consciousness.

 

[bernie14]

Fun stuff guys and girls...more specifics later....but to further complicate matters, get ready to blow your minds (and/or) brains!?!?!

 

[Hygro]

What other parts do you consider essential for consciousness?

Something to be conscious of, so sensory input.

 

[Hrothbern]

This is a very interesting thread. i don't usually comment in off-topic forum discussions, but this one got me. My "day job" is as an anthropologist studying virtual worlds. The anthropological vocabulary used around the issue raised in the opening post has two key terms - "embodiment" and "habitus".
Habitus is a much more difficult term to explain simply. Habitus has to do with the way that outside forces determine how we are allowed to express ourselves through our bodies, and how our bodies determine our sense of self. There are plenty of movies around that use the body-swap motif for comic effect. But there are also real-life situations in which wearing different clothes,changing postures, gestures, etc. are critically important. For example, when i lived in another country I began to dress, walk, talk and so on like the people who were born there - more and more as time went on. To the extent that people from my own country did not recognize me as one of them and would try to talk to me in a "foreign" language that was awkward for them, and were shocked when I fell back into the habitus of my homeland - revealing me as "one of us". I say I changed habitus because my posture, gestures, tone of voice all changed, not just the switching speech back to my first language. But it's much deeper than that. How we walk and talk is affected profoundly by how we were indoctrinated by parents and others - from before we we were born in many cases. Our sense of self is being molded at the same time, by the same people, through the same experiences. Most of that indoctrination we are no longer aware of. We don't usually stop to think "who am I if i wear this shirt?" or "am I truly chewing this food as my innermost myself, or because this is how I was taught an -------- chews?" If innate posture, vocal expression, and a thousand other things I'm not aware of influence how I experience myself as being in the world, and those things were imposed on me by other people's sense of what the proper way for my body to be is, then to what extent is my body me? When my body is in some way an imposed constraint on myself over which I have no control is it still me? Or is my body a prosthetic I'm more or less permanently attached to?
No easy answers to those questions.

On habitus
The eyeopener for me on habitus changes and the impact on self-existence was the story of Richard Wilhelm, who brought us in the west the I Ching.
I was studying biochemistry in Amsterdam and we talk the early seventies last century. Everybody at that time just had to experiment with the I Ching and all other Asian spiritual stuff and so did I. And I had the habit to dig in the author of a book when the book made a great impression on me.
Richard Wilhelm (1873-1930), was a spiritual person and a missionary that lived for many years in China. Also a highly educated man, a theologian and sinologist.
He was someone who got very deep in the Chinese soul, did several translations into German of chinese literature including the I Ching that became famous.
His other famous book was the secret of the golden flower. Both books got a foreword of Carl Gustav Jung.

The habitus conflict exhausted him completely. A deeply spiritual christian fully immersed in the soul of chinese philosophy.
I found this link that describes that conflict much better than I can.
https://schoolofwisdom.com/about/richard-wilhelm-one-of-the-school-of-wisdoms-most-notable-teachers/

EDIT

I think BTW that the current globalisation of cultures, with generation gaps between young people in a more global habitus with their feet and parents still in their root habitus, is causing similar issues on a smaller scale.

 

[bernie14]

Do you mean consciousness and not awareness

I think we are sort of on the same wave length.... I was making a distinction between a living organism's ability to respond to a stimulus (judging that as NOT conscious) compared to "being aware as to a why" or cognizant (and judging this to equate more with consciousness). it is a biological argument....so we know that very simple one celled organisms respond to stimuli such as light, temp, chemicals (food and noxious) etc. most of us would say that this sort of life is not self aware (simple tropic response)....as organisms become more and more complex, these simple receptors specialize more and more to become sensory organs...yada yada...consciousness. this argument is consistent with the brain IS the mind IS consciousness. the yada yada is what we don’t know...

I think first we would have to define the meaning of the word "voluntary"

hard to answer as well...biologically, how and when does the ability of an organism to decrease entropy become "volition"?...."gut feeling" is cool..you have many more serotonin receptors in your gut than in your brain (then again, that may be completely inconsequential to the question of "consciousness")

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-have-fun

Pretty kewl essay on consciousness for any interested

I enjoyed the article very much but still, i tend to think that until the mind (and/or) brain can be separated from our shells, lobsters and fish are delicious and being an individual is lonely business (what a downer!!!!)

 

[Hrothbern]

Ah okay, that puts your earlier comment into a clearer context for me. Makes sense, yep.

I think first we would have to define the meaning of the word "voluntary"

I personally believe that we have some voluntary power to override our biological programming, but that most decisions are made up for us in our subconscious. IMO your brain is basically making a crazy amount of decisions every second and it's way too much for the conscious part of the brain to pay attention to. IMO the conscious is removed from most decisions made because otherwise it would go crazy.. plus most decisions made are low-level operating system type operations anyway. IMO we only get a tiny glimpse of what our brain is doing, and we have the power to override some of the higher-level decisions, such as whether to turn left or right or buy the sofa or the loveseat, and to us it might seem like we are making decisions, but in reality the decision to walk to the bathroom was already made by your subconscious a couple milliseconds ago by an incredibly complicated algorithm and set of decisions you had no idea about. IMO that's where "gut feeling" comes from

Jip,
our subconsciousness does the bulk of the work.

On that subconscious decision to go to the bathroom.
Say that in my subconsiousness there are the competing goals: go to bathroom, have breakfast, have a cup of coffee.
My consciousness is on autopilot and the bathroom variant was shouting the loudest, so I go direction the bathroom.
I pass the big clock and I become aware of the time (still subconscious) but it triggers a reflex that wakes up my consciousness: it is 7.20 and I know that my daughter always goes at 7.30 to the bathroom to doll up before going to work.
So... my consciousness asks himself "what now ?".
My subconsciousness delivers still the choice between breakfast and coffee, with coffee winning.

For myself I see my consciousness as the big chairman, who is quite happy if the rest of the board (the various subconscious interests) can handle sorting out what is most important, and what to do.
I have not the time to do what they can do for me, I have not their intimate knowledge unless I really dig in.
Awareness is my own todo list for the meeting or my PA tapping on my shoulder. If that necessates taking control, my consciousness really comes in action.
And after all, I have the agenda to put them to work to either get a consensus gut feeling, or get info that I process by logic to make conscious voluntary decisions.

 

[bernie14]

Jip,
our subconsciousness does the bulk of the work.

On that subconscious decision to go to the bathroom.
Say that in my subconsiousness there are the competing goals: go to bathroom, have breakfast, have a cup of coffee.
My consciousness is on autopilot and the bathroom variant was shouting the loudest, so I go direction the bathroom.
I pass the big clock and I become aware of the time (still subconscious) but it triggers a reflex that wakes up my consciousness: it is 7.20 and I know that my daughter always goes at 7.30 to the bathroom to doll up before going to work.
So... my consciousness asks himself "what now ?".
My subconsciousness delivers still the choice between breakfast and coffee, with coffee winning.

For myself I see my consciousness as the big chairman, who is quite happy if the rest of the board (the various subconscious interests) can handle sorting out what is most important, and what to do.
I have not the time to do what they can do for me, I have not their intimate knowledge unless I really dig in.
Awareness is my own todo list for the meeting or my PA tapping on my shoulder. If that necessates taking control, my consciousness really comes in action.
And after all, I have the agenda to put them to work to either get a consensus gut feeling, or get info that I process by logic to make conscious voluntary decisions.

I don't know if any of this is true but it is certainly healthy

 

[Hrothbern]

I don't know if any of this is true but it is certainly healthy

IDK neither, but it is a very practical and comfortable working thesis for me that I actively use to save time and or focus

For example
When in need of a bigger decision I seldom start to think much about it
I just think shortly to list up what considerations & info are needed
to control the setting of my subconscious meeting on that issue
sleep a night over it
and get answers when under the shower the next morning

 

[Blue Monkey]

His other famous book was the secret of the golden flower.

Reading your post I recognized Richard Wilhelm but couldn't remember where from. Then You mentioned the golden flower, which I read in English translation.

You are right that moving between the habitus of one culture and another is very stressful. This is one reason first generation immigrants have a hard time. Their grand-children are the ones who have no problems in the new culture, they were born to it.

You are also right on the mark about global changes. A term that is currently popular in anthropological circles is "worlding" which means constructing a world (in the social sense) based on your own (inner & social) place in the world, rather than any culture you may come from or any culture you currently live in. Small clusters of people in similar situations tend to form a "worlding" community if that makes any sense.

And, in so far as a sense of self is culturally determined, worlding includes construcing a person, not just constructing a lifestyle.

 

[Hrothbern]

Reading your post I recognized Richard Wilhelm but couldn't remember where from. Then You mentioned the golden flower, which I read in English translation.

You are right that moving between the habitus of one culture and another is very stressful. This is one reason first generation immigrants have a hard time. Their grand-children are the ones who have no problems in the new culture, they were born to it.

You are also right on the mark about global changes. A term that is currently popular in anthropological circles is "worlding" which means constructing a world (in the social sense) based on your own (inner & social) place in the world, rather than any culture you may come from or any culture you currently live in. Small clusters of people in similar situations tend to form a "worlding" community if that makes any sense.

And, in so far as a sense of self is culturally determined, worlding includes construcing a person, not just constructing a lifestyle.

As eyeopener two new levers/magic words for me in finding/developing/being yourself and positioning in the outside world: worlding and lifestyle.
Thanks
Worlding kind of embryonal when I search on internet with it.

If I assume that the social group instinct we have evolutionary, demands to be satisfied
that could go so far as that there is no self when you have not positioned your body & brain/mind in the social environment around you.
Whereby that "social" environment can very well in extreme cases exist out of "persons" from books that you did read, or your father, etc ingeneral entities that stay in your head and you can talk with.
All the more because that self, that consciousness, likely developed as an abstract product of social interaction (primarily language from words and facial->body expressions)

Changing/widening the OP question