The Qualities of Awareness

[SalixIncendium]

I believe that awareness can be viewed as a skill that can be improved. Meditation, asking yourself questions like "how did that situation feel?", journaling and so on can all improve one's awareness. And meditation can be taken into physical activities as well. You can notice how you're performing physically without judging..

So it appears you are saying awareness is a skill. How can one measure improvement in awareness without judging it? Also be what measure is one able to assess improvement in awareness?

 

[SalixIncendium]

I keep it simple - awareness is the ability of something (whether or not it is considered "alive" by humans) to sense and respond to its environment. Understanding it this way eschews the messy and problematic concept of "consciousness" and rightfully recognizes that all biological life (at a minimum) possesses awareness. It has to in order to survive and navigate its environment.

Does it really eschew the hard problem of consciousness if one is unable to define or pinpoint what the "something" is that is aware?

 

[Quintessence]

Does it really eschew the hard problem of consciousness if one is unable to define or pinpoint what the "something" is that is aware?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but the "something" that is aware is very definable - at a minimum, all biological life forms since all biological life can indisputably sense and respond to its environment in order to survive and replicate. I don't know what that has to do with the "hard problem of consciousness" because I don't know what that is. The furthest I get with the word "consciousness" is "awake (as in not sleeping); aware of one's surroundings and able to respond to it." I haven't found any other way of using that word useful.

 

[SalixIncendium]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but the "something" that is aware is very definable - at a minimum, all biological life forms since all biological life can indisputably sense and respond to its environment in order to survive and replicate. I don't know what that has to do with the "hard problem of consciousness" because I don't know what that is. The furthest I get with the word "consciousness" is "awake (as in not sleeping); aware of one's surroundings and able to respond to it." I haven't found any other way of using that word useful.

Wouldn't it be more correct to say that all biological forms have awareness rather than saying awareness is all biological forms?

I'm not asking in this thread who or what has awareness. I'm asking what that something that is awareness actually is. What are the qualities or attributes of awareness?

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem with explaining how or why biological beings have phenomenal experiences and qualia that relate to them. And to expand upon that, why they have what appear to be sense experiences in a dream state rather than only in the waking state, what you call "consciousness."

 

[shunyadragon]

So you're saying bias is a quality or attribute of awareness?

If you are aware of the bias, how can it be an attribute to awareness?

This does not reflect my post, but I will give it some thought and respond.

 

[MonkeyFire]

Awareness is the closest thing to a self we have, when we are done with our physical body it returns to nature which it was taken and our conci splits and is now a free spirit and you now have a self.

 

[blü 2]

What qualities or attributes does awareness have?

When I speak of awareness, I am speaking of that one that is aware. That one which is aware of objects of the senses, such as what is seen, heard, tasted, felt, and smelled, but is also aware of the organs of the senses; the eyes, the ears, the tongue, the skin, and the nose. That one that is aware of the functions of the body and the mind. That one which is aware of memories, of thoughts, of ideas, of knowledge, of feelings, etc.

Can you list these qualities or attributes that awareness has?

Being awake / aware of self / aware of surroundings / alert / thoughtful / focused ─ there are various degrees to consciousness.

But we know from >experiments in the first decade< of this century that the brain makes decisions which the consciousness isn't aware of till many seconds later.

Indeed, the brain is constantly doing things that the conscious part isn't aware of at all. The ideas I'm expressing are selected, organized and put into words for me automatically by my nonconscious brain, whether I speak them or write them. If I speak them, my brain controls my organs of speech ─ tongue, lips, vocal chords &c ─ and the particular breathing that makes them possible. If I write them, my brain sends the signals to my fingers to manipulate the keyboard, just as it can also have them wield a pen. Sometimes the editor / censor in my forebrain will bring aspects of this process into my consciousness; mostly it won't, Meanwhile it monitors my surroundings, controls what my eyes look at and focus on, and asks for coffee.

Some parts of the body are quasi-autonomous. The gut and the heart each have their own neural systems to monitor those functions. We breathe, salivate, eat, drink, sweat, shiver, grow hair, repair skin, bones, organs, automatically adjust body temperature, salt balance, water balance, oxygenation of the blood, chemicals for food digestion, the release of appropriate hormones for society, sport, danger, affection, copulation and much more.

The nonconscious brain reminds me I have an appointment at 11, when I'm shopping that I need more oatmeal, it sneaks all that sugar stuff into the shopping basket as well, it remembers and reminds of birthdays, plans, needs, and the like, it jumps if it smells unexpected smoke, it withdraws my hand when I touch the hotplate, it catches the flying ball, it bowls the strike (and the others), it looks both ways before crossing the street, it arrests the handshake and substitutes the elbow bump for Covid, it drives while you talk, walks while you watch, decides to hurry, makes your moral decisions, realizes when you need more information about something, on and on and on.

In the end, only a tiny amount of what it does involves the conscious brain. The >Global Workspace< idea of the uses of consciousness is, or was when I last checked, still the leading hypothesis in the field.

 

[Quintessence]

Wouldn't it be more correct to say that all biological forms have awareness rather than saying awareness is all biological forms?

Hmm... that's fair. I could see it being interpreted either way, though. There are schools of thought who tell the story that life is the universe perceiving (aka, being aware of) itself and in that sense, life is awareness. Might be something to that particular story.

I'm not asking in this thread who or what has awareness. I'm asking what that something that is awareness actually is. What are the qualities or attributes of awareness?

I think I'd still refer to awareness being the ability to (or quality of, or attribute of - however one wants to put it) sense and respond to an environment. This does have a few implications, though, that maybe are more what you are trying to get at with "qualities" and "attributes" maybe.

For one, awareness requires a differentiated state and cannot exist in a homogenous state. Put another way, it requires at least two differentiated subjects/objects - that which is perceiving (subject), and that which is perceived (object). Whether or not this differentiation is actual or illusory goes down a rabbit hole I don't think we want to go into, and for my part, I tend to assume that yes, the universe is composed of different, distinct things (of course I do - I'm a polytheist and a substance pluralist).

For two, awareness requires an interaction between these differentiated states (aka, between the subject and object). There are many words one could put to this, but I would call it an exchange of information: communication. Somehow, information about the object has to reach the subject via some form of communication. This we could perhaps call a third requirement: awareness requires some sort of medium for this communication or exchange of information. It could be light, sound, tactile, or whatever, but there has to be a carrier. If the subject and object have no way of communicating, there is no awareness.

There's a more esoteric way I could frame all of this, but going into that would get... complicated and too long-winded. It suffices to say that if one follows these ideas down a particular path, it becomes a philosophical framework for animism, and the notion that the entire universe is "aware" on a fundamental level.

 

[Clara Tea]

I walked out of my house, and the world was quiet and still. Then I listened harder, and found the world abuzz with activity. Train whistles blew in the background, an upset dog was barking at a stranger, a little girl was screaming and running down the street because a masked stranger was standing there with pruning shears (trying to trim his bushes, and the shears were for the bush, not her).

If all that was revealed by merely trying to listen, just what else are we missing out on? Perhaps we possess ESP, and don't even notice it? We seem to forget our dreams. Suppose we make it a priority to record our dreams, as silly as that may sound, and see if someone or something is trying to communicate with us?

If God is talking, and no one is listening, it is as if God isn't really talking at all.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

What if everything in the universe is an expression of the universe, the one that is all? If one meditates on this, it may turn out that at some deeper level of awareness, one realizes that our source is the universe, and it may become possible to experience a sense of out of body awareness whereby one's normal state of self identity with the body is transcended. This is what mystics have always said, the kingdom of God is within, the body is a temple of God.

 

[AgnosticGuy]

What qualities or attributes does awareness have?

When I speak of awareness, I am speaking of that one that is aware. That one which is aware of objects of the senses, such as what is seen, heard, tasted, felt, and smelled, but is also aware of the organs of the senses; the eyes, the ears, the tongue, the skin, and the nose. That one that is aware of the functions of the body and the mind. That one which is aware of memories, of thoughts, of ideas, of knowledge, of feelings, etc.

Can you list these qualities or attributes that awareness has?

Awareness is subjective or private. It is insensible in that it can not be detected or observed by anyone.

 

[AgnosticGuy]

It seems that Salix makes a distinction between the mind and consciousness. If that were not the case, then I could even make more distinctions. For instance, some attributes of thoughts are that they involve information in various forms, from pictorial (mental imagery, dreams, etc.) to symbols (words, numbers, etc).