Consciousness

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So my teacher responded to me today... he told me that it wouldn't count as consciousness unless there were words to describe the picture.

In my humble, unbiased opinion, the teacher is an idiot.

What this means is that his language is incapable of describing consciousness, so he has chosen to substitute a (relatively) less complex alternative and redefine it as the thing thing he cannot name or understand.

This is like George Bush declaring victory on the aircraft carrier deck. What George and the teacher fail to realize is that saying it loudly and in tones of authority just won't make it true. Can you switch to another class that isn't taught by an idiot? Or get a refund to apply to another class at some future date when the idiot won't be your teacher?

I'm not paying for it... The college has a program going on with my high school, so I can take classes there for free. Most of what he says seems right... except for that part. I don't know what I should do. I don't know what to say to him about it either.

Ohhh the scary.
Well, if I were you, I would bring up several examples of animals displaying consciousness (and I think he needs to define what consciousness is, it's clearly something different in his mind, he is probably confusing it with cognition) and ask him what processes rats use to learn from their mistakes and bypass very complicated challenges in order to get to the reward (google it there will be loads of rat experiment examples, ditto monkeys etc.) Then ask him if he still has consciousness when he is asleep. And also where did he get his degree. OK not that last one, he will have a melt down and hate you for ever.

IMHO conscious is verbal not completely true but has it's point. For example to understand something you need to have a concept about thing... However I can consciously feel my body, sounds, taste and try to listen to my thoughts flow. But it gets recursive and overflow, so you just forget and lose conscious control.

Imagining pictures maybe conscious effort. So it's frustrated what is really consciousness as a concept. But it for sure don't need to be verbal. Define verbal? Not just a language, right?

I like Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky it gives some alternative view on mind structure.

I understand consciousness as self observant ability that brings you some feel of meaning of some actions. It's higher layer of neural network that can change behavior and control of lower level networks. Which makes your behavior more complex in general then animal instincts and reflexes. Consciousness some sort of higher control over your body and actions. But too much control leads to brain overflow and lose of control at some parts... It's called deep focus or concentration

I don't think that any drug can help improve ability to get way higher self control then average human... Can consciousness be connected to IQ?
It's sad that we are limited with our brains structure and illusions of higher self control than actual multi-task higher control.

I like this comment. So consciousness maybe non-verbal but it will be lower level of consciousness. Language also can be internal, not only social. We can create our own language for our-self... But social language provides much more information and knowledge abilities... As cognitive abilities multiplies by number of humans involved. But it has some limits. In software development or mathematics it maybe more effective to develop own language and then after getting some results society will adopt to it.

In case of mathematics words maybe coded as graphical symbols in imagination and not necessary by sounds. But they are still words, right?

So if words are higher concepts that help to get precise meaning from sensory input, emotions or previous mind states then words are part of higher consciousness. So teacher is definitely right

Maybe it doesn't assume telling right away. Maybe you just aware of it. Then you may spend day or week to prepare text to form that teacher can process. But if you are not aware or forgot about it than it wasn't conscious.

It's funny if you can't remember if it was conscious than everyone including you by default assumes it wasn't conscious.
For example really drunk... Or memory lost.

Professors almost always pitch in their side 2 cents. Sometimes it's worth more, sometimes you want ten or fifteen minutes of your life back. This sounds like the later.

Not a theory. It varies based on when the person became deaf, but those born deaf who have learned only sign language do in fact think in signs. Sign language is a natural language, as well.



Not really. A language could be non-verbal, for example entirely symbolic, and still allow for the same level of conciousness. I would imagine it's better defined by the amount of complexity the language allows for.

On a side note, I like how different high-level programming languages implement/adhere to different paradigms, and how differently one approaches describing algorithms across paradigms. Its amazing how different paradigms can vary in terms of efficiency in particular tasks. A 6 line quick sort implementation in haskell will take 40 or so in c++ given your average developer. I love the idea of applying the same concept to natural languages. Have a base language with grammar subsets for certain applications. A subset devoid of ambiguity and highly logical would be great for a lot of sciences (and possibly aspie's haha).


Mathematics is better suited to being described as a formal language rather than as a natural language. As such, I'd say symbols.



Its an interesting premise. I'd say a framework to describe entities and articulate concepts is a defining part of our consciousness, although that does not necessarily have to rely on words, removing the requirement verbalising. Though I'd imagine the teacher used verbalise in the sense of "express", not "express in words". Well, I hope.