Consciousness is always awareness-after-the-fact

Thanks for accepting,Con asks us to consider the case of "Intellectual awareness of ongoing events".Con cites three examples and I'll wrestle with them all:1. Being consciously aware of the rotation of the Earth I'm not sure that one can be consciously aware of the rotation of the Earth. I can be aware of the concept that the Earth rotates; I can dwell upon that concept. I could watch a live feed of the Earth from the International Space Station. I can focus all my attention on this notion that the Earth is spinning... all the while the Earth is spinning. But what if it weren't? I could conceivably be light seconds away from Earth watching this live feed from the ISS, when the Earth blew up. I'd still be considering the rotation of the Earth whilst it wasn't, in fact, occurring. I have no way of being instantly connected to the knowledge of the Earth spinning in a way that I feel Con has already acknowledged.So, what of my mental model? In there, somewhere, buried between my ears, I can concentrate on an idea for a while. What makes me decide to do so? Whatever you do, don't think about elephants in space. No, really stop thinking about them. Now, take that silly bubble-helmet off that pachyderm! What would you to do with the trunk? No, I'll stop that game now but really try not to think about it. Take conscious control of your own thoughts. It's not a thing that one can do. One becomes aware of ones thoughts AFTER one has them. Therefore your self-awareness module, if you will, cannot control your thoughts. They fly through your head like untold dreams, growing, shrinking, being fed by other thoughts or dwindling into insignificance. You (conscious you, that is) can't control them any more than you can control the waves on the ocean. When would you have decided to stop "being consciously aware of the rotation of the Earth" from before? When did you? Was it a conscious choice to stop thinking about the rotation? No such thing! Your brain might have been distracted, either by a sensory input or by some inner stirring growing in strength enough to drown out the clammer of thoughts of rotation... but that was not a conscious thought. Thoughts come and go unbidden. When did you stop thinking about elephants? Why? Was that decision conscious?2. the ebb and flow of the tidesHow beautiful it is to dwell upon the ebb and flow of tides... and how cryptic that you cannot tell, at first, which direction that process is going... sit awhile at a beach in your mind, if you will, and watch the tide come in. Really see it. You're sitting on a cliff, looking down a curving beach; the sea is lapping up onto the rocks underneath you, spraying salty flecks into the electrically charged air. You watch as the deep sea creeps up the beach in rolling, lapping, panting motions; wave upon wave upon wave... water moving at once in, at once out. Different parts of the beach being hit by the same waves at different times. Now, tell, me... later on, when the tide is going out, the sea retreating into the distance, quieter now, night seeming to come close as the sea returns to Poseidon's keeping away in the deep dark distance... at what point did the tide turn, from in to out? Where was it's peak? Which was the last wave that was from the army of "coming in waves"? Which was the first from the "going out waves"? Which wave was on the cusp? Which point, which moment? This is like what youness is like: your self-conscious is a bit like the beach and the waves approaching are little ideas... little ideas that, as a group, form a vast purposeful lunge... the tide comes in and you are conscious of a host of microthoughts pushing in one direction... how many of those microthoughts belong to the thrust of the idea coming in, how many to the thrust of moving onto the next thought? Which microthought turned the tide? Will you even know about it until it hits the shore? Where did the waves COME from? Far, far away in the dim, dark, wet subconscious. The waves have to travel to the shore. That takes time. And they are in a race with many other thoughts, all jostling for prime position, to get to the beach first, having picked up strength from riding on the backs of other thoughts.3. generation of electricity, etc.Unfortunately, I don't know what Con means when asking us to consider "intelectual awareness of the generation of electricity". How dare I accuse Con of being cryptic after my meandering monologue? Sorry!Pro's second counterexample, I hope, is more promising; I'll try to stick to the point, now :)Con says:The neurons that are doing the "thinking" are also "firing" while thought occurs. When we dwell upon this physical phenomenon, the distance between the physical phenomenon and the perceiving tissue is exactly zero. There is zero delay between perception and awareness for this case. But this belies a very false way of thinking about consciousness. Are you trying to identify one neuron that represents the self-conscious? That's like trying to find the wave that turned the tide. Consciousness is an emergent property that requires more than one neuron. Otherwise, I suppose that you think worms are self-conscious... indeed, how about amoebas? Some amoebae [1] are single-celled animals that build shells to protect themselves. This is a competence without consciousness!Consider that whilst the amoeba is one cell (and almost certainly never thinks "I feel naked and vulnerable, i must build a shell"), the human brain is comprised of maybe 100 billion cells (each as complex as the amoeba, if not more so)... no one brain cell experiences consciousness. Consciousness is an emergent property that requires the interaction of many cells. Like the beach, you cannot say which wave was the turning point.When Con says "the distance between the physical phenomenon and the perceiving tissue is exactly zero", this is not true... but worse, it's not even wrong. Neurons do not perceive anything. What is "perceiving tissue"? It sounds rather magical. Can I get a petri-dish full of "perceiving tissue"? Is it unethical to smash that petri-dish?Consider an ant colony; when one ant finds a food source, it can tell other ants to "come, feast" using chemical markers. These may be related to the size and quality of the meal. What would happen if you put two competing food sources into range of an ant colony? Imagine that some ants went for one source, but more ants went for the more energy-rich source (that path got reinforced by more chemical stimulants of ants triumphantly returning home with some sugary treat). Now, could we say that the ant colony decided to dedicate more ants towards the sugary treat? WHEN did the ant colony DECIDE to PREFER the sugary treat? Can we find that decision in a certain ant? Should we even be looking? When did the brain decide to think about elephants in space? Which neuron did that? Should we even be looking? When will your neuron-colony find a more compelling treat to devour than space-elephants? When it does, at what point would it have decided to dedicate more neurons to another task? Was any one neuron responsible for this change? Can we disect it to find a unit of consciousness? Self-conscioussness can only occur after the self has thought a thing. Your noticing a bunch of neurons in your head responding (en masse) a certain way is a bit like you in the thought experiment observing a bunch of water molecules responding (en masse) a certain way... except we can't have you sitting up on a cliff, for fear of infinite homuncular regress..."You" do have to be the sea, in a way (which is what Con is talking to when saying that perceiving IS the physical phenomenon)... I agree 100% that the phenomenological experience is caused by neurons firing (or some such physical process)... but you can't zoom in on one neuron's activity and see contemperanous consciousness... and a "thought" is more than a neuron firing... a bit like a wave is more than one water molecule moving... oh, I agree that molecules move when the sea waves... I just don't think that you can define everything that's going on by studying a single water molecule... somehow, there is a transference of energy through the sea, or meaning through the brain... via moving molecules or firing neurons... but, this is the weird thing... we don't really experience consciousness in the way that we have traditionally told the story to ourselves.Once you realise that no decisions are conscious (even what to think about, even thinking), I think that helps clear up the confusion. Do not think that you do any thinking in your conscious mind. If you think that anything is *going on* in consciousness, I think we're back to infinite homuncular regress. Consciousness itself strikes me as an illusion, in a way...If your brain becomes overwhelmed by one wave (like a tsunami), later on this fact will remain in short-term memory. Self awareness is really the trick that the brain achieves by using what's going on in itself as an input (like sensory input).Consider that if you accidentally burn your finger, your spine may have made a decision to recoil your hand before your brain has even become aware of the unfolding drama... by the time your brain starts to receive information regarding a possibly burning finger, the signal is well on the way to the arm to recoil... well, I think consciousness is a little like this... except you have no homunculus.Consider this: if you looked at a single water molecule, it just travels up and down... which way is the wave passing through it to make it bob so? One molecule may stay still as two waves pass in different directions through that molecule. Neurons are like this. Thoughts are more than individually firing neurons; they are like waves.Consciousness is distributed! The beach is not really a good analogy; you are the entire ocean.[1] [2] http://en.wikipedia.org...