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by incadenza
3132 days ago
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I do agree, but to be fair, Epiphenomenalism makes a slightly stronger point. Not only is consciousness entirely a physical process, but the 'events' of consciousness (any thought, feeling, emotion, sensation you've ever experienced) has absolutely no impact on behavior. There is no feedback loop here. So, instead of Touch hot flame -> Feel sensation of pain -> Move hand It's... Touch hot flame -> brain processes event and sends signals to move hand -> You experience all of this but it had no relevancy to the chain of events. EDIT: This does beg the question 'why do we have consciousness, then?' or slightly related 'how could we talk about it?'. Which are interesting questions, and probably explained by darwinian processes, but don't really get at the heart of it. My thoughts anyhow. |
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All of this is at least intuitively easy to explain with added language and complexity in the brain. So like the chain would become:
Touch hot flame -> brain processes event (and then does complicated language processing, and complicated memory and emotion processing) and THEN sends signals to move hand or not move hand -> You experience all of this but it had no relevancy to the chain of events.
Where I would ponder the relevancy of consciousness is when it comes to attention and remembering things. Just from personal experience, I can read a book, watch a movie or listen to music and I will not remember a thing if I wasn't aware of it. Is awareness and consciousness the same thing? I don't know, but at least we are conscious of everything we are aware of, by definition, and not necessarily vice versa.