[split] Consciousness, et cetera.

[Phi]

Phi: I'm not arguing that tulpae aren't constructed by the unconscious. I believe the unconscious contructs an identity which becomes self-aware when it constantly receives affirmations that one exists -- first, when your parents talk to you as a child; again, if you constantly talk to a tulpa. My argument is that both are self-aware, and neither is just a non-aware subconscious projection.

 

A baby knows that it exists, it doesn't need mama and papa to talk to it to understand that, it only needs mama and papa to talk to it so it can learn language. It is already self-aware.

Other than that your theory is plausible, it's just that the other theory is just as plausible.

[SSaint]

Okay, ignoring all the philosophy over free will and consciousness (Compatibilist, for the record), I got a question.

 

If a tulpa is not just an emulation of a personality controlled by our own subconscious expectations, but in fact its own thing that lives beside you in your mind, then how does your brain house it? I'm no neuroscientist so I could be completely wrong here, but I don't think that the brain has the capacity to hold two separate people with separate personalities and opinions and memories and perceptions and et cetera.

 

I don't think we're going to get a real answer into the true nature of a tulpa, and what exactly it is, until there is some serious psychological and neurological research done into it. Until then, it just doesn't make sense to me how a tulpa could be its own fully-fledged person.

[Asgardian]

 

A baby knows that it exists, it doesn't need mama and papa to talk to it to understand that, it only needs mama and papa to talk to it so it can learn language. It is already self-aware.

Other than that your theory is plausible, it's just that the other theory is just as plausible.

Yes and no, or rather, partially.

 

As I already implied are there different degrees of self awareness, and a child is not born with most of them, they develope one after another in times the child is already under the influence of the parents, so a surprisingly big chunk of the self awareness is technically learned.

 

It is true, you are right on that, that the child does exist to some degree already based on what is genetically there (and it perceived in its mother womb).

 

Okay, ignoring all the philosophy over free will and consciousness (Compatibilist, for the record), I got a question.

 

If a tulpa is not just an emulation of a personality controlled by our own subconscious expectations, but in fact its own thing that lives beside you in your mind, then how does your brain house it? I'm no neuroscientist so I could be completely wrong here, but I don't think that the brain has the capacity to hold two separate people with separate personalities and opinions and memories and perceptions and et cetera.

 

I don't think we're going to get a real answer into the true nature of a tulpa, and what exactly it is, until there is some serious psychological and neurological research done into it. Until then, it just doesn't make sense to me how a tulpa could be its own fully-fledged person.

 

I think you are underestimating your brain there, especially considering, that its processing power rises exponentially with the amount of dendrites and axons.

On top of that is most of your brain rather indirectly involved into what you perceive as you (it enables you to do so, though). Around a third of the brain is analyzing and processing visual data, exempli gratia.

 

Obviously is it doubtable, that the tulpa has whole areas only assigned to it, the brain does not work this way, either way.

Personally I assume, that the already present areas are used with different input, that is enough to create entirely different processes.

 

So tulpae with full fledged personality are as plausible as emulations and things propably in between the point of views.

 

As both are neurologically possible, I'd personally rather assume they are partially independant (as there is much connection between host and tulpa, a good deal most likely comes from sharing a brain). The whole creation is just startling similar to the culturalization of a childs mind.

[bila bila]

I can't even read this shit anymore. WHAT THE FUCK GUYS!

[Asgardian]

I can't even read this shit anymore. WHAT THE FUCK GUYS!

 

I was about to say get on my level, then I decided to hide it behind a formulation implying I decided not to say it, even though I did, and then politely hinting at an personal incredulity fallacy you just commited.

 

/thread xD

[bila bila]

 

I was about to say get on my level, then I decided to hide it behind a formulation implying I decided not to say it, even though I did, and then politely hinting at an personal incredulity fallacy you just commited.

 

/thread xD

 

I don't matter, I wouldn't have even got it.

[Virgil]

I don't think a property should be defined by the test for that property.

I think it should, because it's often the most tangible means of determining or measuring it. Sure, the test is burdened by many problems, but to me it's still better than the alternatives.

Your definition, albeit quite accurate, is very hard for me to grasp, mainly because it depends on another abstract and quite subjective idea, existence. With nothing tangible to substantiate it, self-awareness becomes, to me, just another useless philosophical idea. Needless to say, philosophy is damn beyond my understanding.

 

> A current definition for self awareness, proposed in the 1970s by Gordon Gallup, is known as the mirror test.

Ha, Wikipedia is on my side,

which doesn't matter, because Wikipedia often contradicts itself

.

 

See, here's the problem, though.

In my previous post, it might appear I used the term consciousness synonymously with self-awareness, but in fact I didn't. The second part was just an addition I thought interesting and worth considering. That's why I used a broader term. It wasn't meant to be a counterargument.

There isn't any problem actually, save your meaning of consciousness. Your message doesn't contradict what I wrote. I even agree with it. Self-awareness is an innate potential ability that is learned through social interaction.

Now back to consciousness: Like self-awareness, consciousness originated in philosophy, and was long considered too crappy a concept to be worthy of scientific research. Even today, it still fuels dissent among neuropsychologists.

 

In this community, people often differentiate between two kinds of mind, conscious and subconscious (or unconscious), and everyone knows intuitively what conscious means, but there is actually no accepted scientific definition. There's one operational definition (the most useless kind of definition) — it considers the state of a brain, any brain, and changes in the state to be consciousness. This definition is clearly useless if we're to discern more than one conscious mind in a single brain or even to differentiate it from the subconscious.

 

How about we go with the one bellow? It's convoluted as hell, but better than mere intuition.

Consciousness a process that employs the executive system, it makes decisions, can plan for the future, and enables cognition— it's that thing that thinks. It is suspended, usually along with many unconscious processes, when one loses consciousness. The conscious mind is the faculty that generates consciousness. Also, let's treat the transition between these two concepts (conscious—unconscious) as continuous and gradual.

There are also several neural characteristics that consciousness exhibits, and it has neural correlates, but I won't discuss any of that here.

---

 

Interesting you mentioned feral children, because I'm somewhat familiar with some of the studies. In fact, I got interested in research on victims of severe social isolation just due to the tulpa phenomenon.

Genie, for example, even passed the mirror test. She definitely showed some (damn, I'm using a quantifier for an unquantifiable quality again) signs of self-awareness, but she clearly lacked theory of mind.

[mouse_]

SSaint: you're also overestimating consciousness as a process. Apparently (though I can't find anything besides sensationalist news articles to back it up) consciousness only takes up 5-9 bits of information at a time. Easily doable. If that's even right.

 

 

Virgil: I've been consistently misusing almost every term I've thrown out there, and I'll try to clean it up. I've been trying to prove all along that tulpae are sapient beings like us, and I was using self-awareness as a metric. I think I fucked up there -- especially when one of the feral children passed the mirror test. What I was going for when I used that term was a lot like theory of mind; cognition about cognition -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition. Where I think 'self-aware' fails for me is that awareness of body counts. I'm looking for awareness of mind. But, then, there's that unprovable and philosophical concept again. That's the difficulty between us I think.

 

for the second part:

 

I was using self-aware to indicate sapience, which is wrong. So I'll tighten the requirements and say that having metacognition (awareness of mind) indicates sapience -- which is an accepted definition. I was also using consciousness wrong -- I meant it more strongly than the definition you provided, to mean that a conscious being is sapient. I'll stop doing that.

 

So, rewritten in hopefully less retarded language:

We are sapient (clearly).

The tulpa appears to act sapient, and can be philosophically proven to be so as long as the metaphysical stays out of it.

--Impossibility of p-zombies under physicalism

--Relies on the assumption that they do truly act sapient and demonstrate metacognition -- impossible to prove, but easy to intuit.

 

To further the idea that we are tulpae:

Feral children, without language or interaction, do not develop sapience.

--Ability to think remains -- conscious by your broader definition

--Self-awareness may remain (meaning of body, not of mind)

Normal societal conditions (interaction, particularly language) give rise to a (evidently) sapient being that needs not exist, as demonstrated above. Us.

--Speaking to an entity which does not yet exist creates a sapient entity

Repetition of the above (speaking to non-existant entity) results in a tulpa -- a seemingly sapient being.

-- Roughly same creation conditions mean our sapience could be (cautiously) extended to tulpae

 

Ok...Let me know if anything in there is broken. Sorry for the nonsense I've been spewing.

Want to clean up the theory.

[Lunanite]

I saw that I somehow made this thread... just realized it was a split thread. *wipes his brow* Worried about my account...

[Aviar]

 

The problem is is that the subconscious is unaware of itself. For someone to say that a tulpa is subconsciously controlled means that a tulpa is just a... puppet that acts self-aware, acts as if it has free-will, acts conscious, but simply isn't. If you asked it "Do you think?" -- it would answer "yes" but it would be 'wrong' somehow.

 

The 'normal' conscious mind arises out of the same subconscious soup under many of the same conditions that a tulpa arises from. To then claim that tulpae truly aren't conscious and don't deserve ethical consideration, all whilst holding our own consciousness on a pedastal -- while citing Freud of all things -- is dangerous, unethical, and fucking retarded.

 

Also, not directing that angry rant at you. There's only a select few running around claiming these things.

 

Good point by WhiiteRussian, also. I'm only trying to get tulpae to be considered on our level. What that says about consciousness and free-will in general? Not very much.

 

Not sure anyone ever narrated me into conciousness. Furthermore, theres the small fact (well, commonly observed phenomenon) that tulpa 'degrade' over time if ignored. If people ignore me, I might develop an inferiority complex or some social awkwardness, but I don't think I will disappear.

 

Furthermore, I laugh at your interpretation on the validity of citing Freud, not to mention interpreting its ethics. Really, we should only be allowed to cite people that agree with you or help your position?

 

Shall I mention the fact that there are more than a few people that openly state that belief is a factor in tulpaforcing, and time to sentience?

 

Since apparently linking to only supporting material is all the rage, please read Do we have free will? at the following link: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/

It quite nicely states what I try to state, that is, independent of subconcios/unconcious details, the Concious may override the Unconcious, though not necessarily manage its actions. That means that a tulpa can begin as a concious process, then through reinforcing a stimulus or belief become unconcious, whereupon it may act in a manner that is accordant with free-will and still be managed through Concious effort.

 

Even if Freud was completely correct (ha), his theories have very little to do with where consciousness comes from and whether or not it is really self-aware. I have a problem when people say: tulpa would be an unconscious process, because Freud. I only see one legitimate theory, because I've yet to see anyone even try to back the other one up.

 

Black/white fallacy? Remind me again how something can be partially self-aware. That's a pretty clear cut dichotomy.

 

Correct, Freud did not state where conciousness comes from, or whether conciousness is self aware (whatever you may mean by that). He tried to attribute actions and properties, thus creating a functional model.

 

To your link on feral children which attempts to base its idea of blank slate (partially) on Joseph Singh, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child (just go to reality portion).