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Comment by cortic | Hacker News Reader

>[what is..]consciousness

Isn't this an answered question? Consciousness is the sensation we get when we point our ability to predict others actions back on itself. The inverse of putting our-self in someone else's shoes. This was scientifically confirmed by both the decision delay experiments, as well as brain imagery that showed the same circuitry activate whether you ask someone why they did something; or why someone else did something.

That is not to say all the secrets of the brain have been understood or uncovered, but this seems to be searching for a more feel-good answer to a question that has largely been answered.

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To playfully tease, this is exactly what a Flatlander might say. But while you describe the behavior of consciousness, the article describes its other aspects: its shapes, how neurons collaboratively make it and how it is unmade. This not searching for a more feel-good answer, it is a search for deeper understanding which is what science is all about anyway.

I accept the rebut. There maybe a deeper understanding to consciousness that is not obvious from our perspective. Still, calling this the 'greatest mystery of them all' feels disingenuous, as there may not be a mystery.

Generally we are asking for more information than a definition when we ask “what is something?” Humans knew that “the stars” were those little points of light in the night sky long before we knew much about their composition or evolution.

The experiments you mention are woefully inadequate compared to the complexity of the problem.

Especially, the decision delay results have not been reproduced once the decision presented was no longer random. In fact, the best explanation of the original experiment seems to be that, when presented with a random decision, we act when the noise of our brain activity has a large enough random spike.

Either way, even the ways we are collecting information about brain activity are still far from certain to be correct. Drawing grand conclusions about consciousness when we barely understand language is at best reductionist.

This still leaves the core problem - how does anyone (or anything) experience anything at all?

You'd have to go in deeper. What does it mean to experience something?

The evidence suggests we don't feel anything at all, its more accurate to say we rationalize ourselves with feelings and intentions than it is to say we have feeling and intentions.

I've never actually tried to explain that before, having done so i understand why we are appearing so desperate to find another answer.

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