But understanding couldn't occur without the conscious experiences I did have:
"Wow! That's tough... Now wait ... Hmmm ... What??? Ohhhhh
.. Now I see."
Which didn't seem immediately essential to the understanding I gained as that was ucs... Don't jump in with EF Soupie... You can't guide what you don't understand... Yet we often know when we are about to get something.
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I'm not conflating EF and consciousness. And I'm not suggesting that consciousness is an executive function.
I don't think consciousness has a physical function. In my (current) way of thinking, consciousness is more fundamental than the physical, which is a product of our perceptual system.
So while consciousness may have a cause, it won't be a physical cause.
Ive been wanting to speculate some more in the metaphysics of consciousness.
Velmens has framed theories of consciousness into two categories: continuous and discontinuous.
Continuous theories posit that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe. It has no physical cause nor does it emerge from physical causes.
Discontinuous theories on the other hold that consciousness either has a physical cause and/or emerges from physical processes.
As chalmers has illustrated with his explication of the hard problem, there are major problems with discontinuous theories. We've covered those extensively in this long discussion.
I'm skeptical of discontinuous theories for two main reasons: (1) consciousness does not appear to be physical and thus cannot have a physical cause, and (2) the perceived physical features of reality are products of the human perceptual system and are thus only indirectly related to reality.
However, there are also problems with continuous theories.
Namely, despite the metaphysical problems with discontinuous theories, consciousness does appear to be discontinuous!
Phenomenologically, my memories of experience only extend back so far leading me to believe there was a time when my consciousness did not exist (namely before I was born), I've also undergone anesthesia twice during which I had absolutely zero conscious experience, and I also frequently have dreamless sleep when consciousness is not present.
How can consciousness be continuous and simultaneously discontinuous?
A la Hoffman, and emerging paradigms in the field of perception, we can recognize that reality and our perception of reality are distinct. I'll refer to reality as what-is and our conscious perception of reality as the user interface.
We can say that continuous theories of consciousness do not work in what-is nor the user interface. If consciousness were continuous, then it would never cease, not even for a moment. But it does as described above.
If one would argue that consciousness does indeed always exist but not in the form of a POV, then one would have to tackle the combination problem. How does non-POV consciousness form into POV consciousness?
Secondly, discontinuous theories of consciousness run straight into the hard problem. However, this is only a problem for physical discontinuous theories. That is, there are no physical theories approaching an explanation of how consciousness could be caused by or emerge from physical processes.
However, discontinuous theories are still available for approaches such as Hoffman's which deny that the fundamental substrate of what-is is physical/material.
Discontinuous theories are therefore still on the table.
But if what-is is not fundamentally physical/material (i.e. Little billiard balls numbing into each other) what can we say about it?
Not very much I don't think. I think we can say that it evolves and differentiates. I think we can say it unfolds according to some laws/patterns. I don't know that it follows a causal flow as we conceive causality physically. And I don't know that it's determined.
I do think it's the level at which consciousness emerges and/or dissipates. However the laws governing the emergence and/or dissipation of consciousness are not the physical laws that appear in our user interface with what-is.
So I do think consciousness is discontinuous, but as consciousness exists at a level prior to the physical (which is a manifestation of our human perceptual system), the variables leading to its emergence are currently beyond us.
One note: the fact that conscious perception seems to correlate with top-down brain processes that are broadcasting a prediction of what the organism is perceiving in what-is is very fascinating.
However it still begs the question: what function does the consciousness serve? Couldn't a zombie conceivably have the same top-down brain processes albeit sans the consciousness?
But while the answer is yes, it's still exciting that neuroscientists are homing in on the brain processes most tightly correlated with conscious experience.
