Do we know how it works? If we don't know how it works, do we really know what it is?
Peter Hacker has rather convincingly argued that the most fruitful line of inquiry regarding your second question is to pay attention, in Wittgensteinian spirit, to the manner in which we learn to use the word "consciousness" (and related words such as "attention" and "awareness") and the intersubjective criteria that guide our applications of them. Chapters 9, 10 and 11 in Bennett and Hacker Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience are devoted to such an examination.
I'm sure it would have been correct to say that even before any scientific enquiry we knew what water and trees were. An understanding of particle physics doesn't seem necessary. So in this sense it could be correct to say that we know what consciousness is – even if we don't know anything more.
'm sure it would have been correct to say that even before any scientific enquiry we knew what water and trees were. An understanding of particle physics doesn't seem necessary.
Does this work for all kinds of things? Either we are talking about doors or about the concept of numbers what you said applies? Aren't there things that we need to know how they work in order to say that we know what they're really are?
For example, if we don't know how water is constituted, we might think that it is the substance out of which everything is constituted and then say that this is what it really is, not just something for us to drink.
Does this work for all kinds of things? Either we are talking about doors or about the concept of numbers what you said applies?
I don't know what you mean here.
Aren't there things that we need to know how they work in order to say that we know what they're really are?
For example, if we don't know how water is constituted, we might think that it is the substance out of which everything is constituted and then say that this is what it really is, not just something for us to drink.
The point is that even before any scientific enquiry we were able to distinguish water from other things like trees and fire, and knew what to do with it. We might not have known anything about hydrogen and oxygen atoms, and so we didn't comprehensively know what water is, but I don't think we need to comprehensively know what something is to know what it is.
I know who my parents and my friends are even though I don't know everything about them.
Yes, we knew that water wasn't a tree but we couldn't know that the tree wasn't somehow made of water. We can distinguish between water and trees when someone talks to us about trees, but if we don't know what water really is, can we distinguish between water and the ultimate substance of the universe when someone talks to us about the ultimate stuff of reality? Now that we know what it is made of, we know it is not the basic stuff of the universe, before that we couldn't tell (this is maybe what Pierre-Normand is talking about?).
Sorry if I don't express myself clearly, I'm still learning english and I find these thoughts really confusing :P
Pierre-NormandFebruary 14, 2017 at 10:25#548770 likes
Do you mean that what it is depends simply on the context of our discussions? Can't we just use the word wrongly?
Yes, we can use the world wrongly. But when we are simply ignorant of hidden features of the objects or phenomena that we are talking about, this need not signal that we are misusing the words and don't really know what we are talking about. Maybe science can enlighten us on underlying mechanisms, or the way known phenomena are realized, or disclose hidden properties that they have. But this would not necessarily show that we have initially misidentified the objects or phenomena talked about, as Michael's examples illustrate.
Also, there is another way to misuse a word which is to use the name a phenomenon talked about in ordinary life (i.e. in non-scientific discourse), theorize about its referent, and then confuse the phenomenon of ordinary life with the theoretical entity postulated for purpose of scientific theorizing. Hence "consciousness", for instance, which was not originally conceived to be designating an object of awareness when we understood what it means for someone to be conscious, or unconscious (intransitive use) or to be conscious of something (transitive use) comes to seem to designate an object of private acquaintance. This is because the semi-technical uses fostered by the philosophy of mind, or by cognitive science, led us to misuse the original term, and we lost track of the familiar phenomenon that we originally were intending to explain.
If in daily someone asked me, I would say that to be conscious is to recognize that I'm having an experience. But this implies that I'm also aware of myself, so then how is self-consciousness different from consciousness? And how science or philosophy use these words differently?
Pierre-NormandFebruary 14, 2017 at 10:48#548790 likes
If in daily someone asked me, I would say that to be conscious is to recognize that I'm having an experience. But this implies that I'm also aware of myself, so then how is self-consciousness different from consciousness? And how science or philosophy use these words differently?
Well, self-consiousness is the topic of the next chapter in Bennett and Hacker's book. This may not be a phrase that has had an ordinary use before philosophical and cogsci theses began to seep into popular culture. I may surmise that nobody has a view on what "self-consiousness" refers to which roams free of some loaded theoretical standpoint or other.
Sebastian Rödl wrote a very nice book titled Self-Consciousness. His approach is resolutely Kantian, and he has no concern for qualia or for passive introspection onto the quality of ones own private mental life. "Self-consciousness", in his book, rather refers to the tacit a priori knowledge that rational agents have of formal features of their own perceptual and agential abilities.
Do we know how it works? If we don't know how it works, do we really know what it is?
Consciousness is awareness of the outside world and that is immanent in all living things.
We have some idea as to how it works e.g. there's a great deal of progress in the analysis of logic, psychology, etc. The complete picture is missing though. Maybe there's something wondrous hidden in the darkness of human ignorance.
Reply to Pierre-Normand Thank you, even though I don't understand at all what you mean in your second paragraph :-#
Everytime I come here I think I'm leaving more perplexed than before :P Most people use too advanced language for someone like me who hasn't read philosophy and when I try to search for the things they say, usually to understand the explanations, I have to search for other explanations because again it's given in a language I don't understand. Are these books you mentioned easy to understand? Or do you know any other books or sites where I can read about philosophical ideas in easier language?
If plants are conscious but their reactions are just automatic, then a robot which is programmed to react to certain things is conscious. But that is clearly false, robots are not aware, they are programmed. I thought that what we mean by "aware" is "not-automatic" :P
Pierre-NormandFebruary 14, 2017 at 11:59#548990 likes
Are these books you mentioned easy to understand? Or do you know any other books or sites where I can read about philosophical ideas in easier language?
The book by Sebastian Rödl is quite technical and requires some philosophical background. The book by Bennett and Hacker, though, is written in very plain language and is intended for a broad audience of non-specialists. It is a very fine introduction to the philosophy of mind and of cognitive sciences.
Thank you, even though I don't understand at all what you mean in your second paragraph
I meant to explain that there is a sense of "self-consciousness" that doesn't refer to the mere outcome of turning one's own gaze inside, as it were, and contemplate what it is one is feeling, experiencing, etc., but rather is a form of critical reflection on what it is that is required to make sense of one's ability to know the world on the basis of experience, or to know what it is one ought to do (and that one is actually doing or intending to do -- i.e. practical self-knowledge) on the basis of practical deliberation, and that reveals explicitly features of our rational abilities that are necessarily operative in every mature human being, including those who don't critically reflect on them. Immanuel Kant is one fellow who pioneered this sort of reflection and Sebastian Rödl is traveling a parallel path.
Pierre-NormandFebruary 14, 2017 at 12:18#549070 likes
If plants are conscious but their reactions are just automatic,
The recent movie Sausage Party makes the case that some edible plants (and other food items) may achieve self-consciousness at the moment when they arrive to the supermarket.
I meant to explain that there is a sense of "self-consciousness" that doesn't refer to the mere outcome of turning one's own gaze inside, as it were, and contemplate what it is one is feeling, experiencing, etc., but rather is a form of critical reflection on what it is that is required to make sense of one's ability to know the world on the basis of experience, or to know what it is one ought to do (and that one is actually doing or intending to do -- i.e. practical self-knowledge) on the basis of practical deliberation, and that reveals explicitly features of our rational abilities that are necessarily operative in every mature human being, including those who don't critically reflect on them. Immanuel Kant is one fellow who pioneered this sort of reflection and Sebastian Rödl is traveling a parallel path.
I'm still not sure I understand this :P
What I meant wasn't that self-consciousness is to think about what I'm feeling or experiencing but just to notice that I'm here, I'm someone, to be aware of myself. And then I think that it is difficult to be conscious of something else and not to be conscious of myself or to be conscious of myself and not be conscious of other things. I think that one implies the other. You mean that these philosophers say that self-consciousness is not about that?
And then I think that it is difficult to be conscious of something else and not to be conscious of myself or to be conscious of myself and not be conscious of other things. I think that one implies the other. You mean that these philosophers say that self-consciousness is not about that?
No, I think you're right about that. Your being aware (i.e. having the perceptual knowledge) that there are objects in the world that exist independently of your perception of them requires awareness that you can potentially experience them -- i.e. that they be potential objects of experience. You arrived at this conclusion without Kant's help. Congratulations!
According to neuroscientist and quasi-philosopher, Antonio Damasio, consciousness is self-awareness + awareness of one's environment (i.e. immediate surroundings).
According to neuroscientist and quasi-philosopher, Antonio Damasio, consciousness is self-awareness + awareness of one's environment (i.e. immediate surroundings).
That sounds right. I wanted a distinction between ''awareness of environment'' and ''awareness of self''. I guess the two cannot be meaningfully separated. Consciousness does need both.
First, we do not know how consciousness works. However, not understanding the perfect interworkings of something does not prevent up
As to the general point, "what is consciousness", I do not know. It seems to be some sort of awareness, but we run into some problems. For example, I would say machines have awareness of things, but machines are not conscious.
The "awareness of self" condition also runs into problems when we try to attribute consciousness to things because what exactly does awareness entail in this case? Distinction from other things?
Reply to TheMadFool Because plants turn toward the sun doesn't make them anymore "aware" than a leaf that is blown in the wind or an apple that falls to the ground. Physical reaction is not equivalent to awareness.
I thought of that too but there's a problem in this. We can't distinguish between real consciousness and simulated consciousness (I suspect you want to make this distinction). Having access only to the external behavior of matter, I'm forced to conclude that plants have consciousness.
I thought of that too but there's a problem in this. We can't distinguish between real consciousness and simulated consciousness (I suspect you want to make this distinction). Having access only to the external behavior of matter, I'm forced to conclude that plants have consciousness.
That's a really good conclusion. I'll keep that in mind so that every time you say something questionable, I can offer the retort, "but then again, you think plants have consciousness."
Have you considered that purposeful physical events can occur unconsciously, like your heart, for example, as it pumps blood through your body. And do we really need to give examples for why you might not conclude that plants have consciousness when in truth you really don't believe they do. If you insist, though, that plants are conscious, then I think we need a new word for how I use the term, considering I really do see a distinction between how I respond to the sun and how a plant does.
Reply to Hanover I think we don't agree on the meaning of the term ''consciousness''. You seem to think, and that is expected, that consciousness is a phenomenon that only animals have. Perhaps you even think humans have the most evolved form of this faculty.
I have no issue with that. I think animal consciousness is unique too and deserving of distinction between it and the rest of phenomena and the term ''consciousness'' is appropriate and exclusively applied to it.
However, how do we come to know whether something is conscious or not? We have access only to external behavior. We can't directly experience the consciousness of another entity, can we? So, a plant growing towards the sun and a man looking for shade in the hot sun are indistinguishable.
I am capable of distinguishing the two. In fact, it's far more difficult to find similarities than distinctions
How then are they separable as distinct from each other? We don't have direct access to the minds of other animals. All we have is their external behavior (how they respond to the environment). Again I think we have very different conception of the term ''consciousness''.
How then are they separable as distinct from each other? We don't have direct access to the minds of other animals. All we have is their external behavior (how they respond to the environment). Again I think we have very different conception of the term ''consciousness''.
That is actually a big problem. The problem of other minds takes on a new meaning when we start to think about animals. I think it is clear that some animals have consciousness, but the problem is that we cannot know what it is like to be said animals. We have no idea which animals and which behaviors are unconscious reactions and conscious decisions without using specific measures. These measures, like an animal recognizing itself in the mirror, are only available for animals with relatively high mental capabilities, like dolphins and some primates.
Harry HinduFebruary 17, 2017 at 02:31#553150 likes
And then I think that it is difficult to be conscious of something else and not to be conscious of myself or to be conscious of myself and not be conscious of other things. I think that one implies the other. You mean that these philosophers say that self-consciousness is not about that? — mew
No, I think you're right about that. Your being aware (i.e. having the perceptual knowledge) that there are objects in the world that exist independently of your perception of them requires awareness that you can potentially experience them -- i.e. that they be potential objects of experience. You arrived at this conclusion without Kant's help. Congratulations!
Don't you have to first establish that the sensations and experiences you have are about, or of things that exist independently of your perception of them to even say that awareness is happening? For instance, idealists and anti-realists state that their experiences aren't about some world that exists independently of their mind. The contents of their mind aren't representations of some external world but are things themselves - similar to how a universe with no observers would be. If there is no aboutness to the sensations you experience, then how can you say that you are aware of anything? What would you be aware of?
Many conflate self-awareness with consciousness. Being aware of yourself is simply one of many things to be aware of. I am also aware of my wife, a tv show, a philosophy forum, scribbles on a screen, etc. At any moment my attention is focused on certain things. What I'm focused on is what I'm aware of, so it seems to me that to be conscious requires attention - of filtering out certain sensory impressions in favor of others in order to accomplish the current goal.
I believe that animals with a central nervous system as opposed to a nerve net (like jellyfish or starfish) are conscious. The brain provides a central location where all sensory inputs come together into a whole experience - or an information architecture that represents the immediate environment. Humans seem to have accomplished the feat of turning their thoughts back on itself - of thinking about thinking - of being aware of being aware.
We could possibly design a robot to be conscious like humans. If they could create a model of sensory information and use that model to navigate the world and to contemplate themselves being aware of their world, then why would we say that this robot isn't conscious, or self-aware?
Pierre-NormandFebruary 17, 2017 at 03:40#553250 likes
We could possibly design a robot to be conscious like humans. If they could create a model of sensory information and use that model to navigate the world and to contemplate themselves being aware of their world, then why would we say that this robot isn't conscious, or self-aware?
For sure. Such a robot would be aware that there are objects its world. This sort of objective empirical knowledge is dependent on the existence of a form of reflexive self-knowledge about ones own capacity for empirical knowledge (and of its fallibility -- the possibility of illusion). This robot's awareness, accompanied by self-awareness, would be qualitatively distincts from a cat's mere awareness of mice in its vicinity. That's something that falls short from an awareness that there objectively are mice in its vicinity.
There is more to having the relevant form of self-consciousness than possessing a descriptive "self-model", though. (Aristotle hints at the relevant distinction with the example of the physician who heals herself. There are two distinct ways one can heal oneself: as one would also heal another, through "prescribing" oneself exercise or some medicine, say, or spontaneously, through merely facilitating the natural process of cicatrisation, say. The relevant sort of self-knowledge that grounds empirical knowledge is likewise "spontaneous", in a sense. It characterizes the form of empirical knowledge -- that is: the form of the conceptual activity involved in the shaping of the experience, with the tacit self-acknowledgement of the epistemic responsibility from the knowing subject in bringing to bear the right concepts to her experience -- rather than just specifying its object by description as just one more item in the world who merely happens to refer to herself as "I".
How then are they separable as distinct from each other? We don't have direct access to the minds of other animals.
First of all, we weren't talking about animal consciousness. We were talking about plant consciousness. Second, we don't have direct access to any mind other than our own, which means we can't conclude the existence of any mind other than our own. To the extent we use behavior to determine the existence of other consciousness, we can look at the behavior of plants and recognize their behavior as distinct from animals. The simple fact that a branch bends towards the sun is not sufficient to prove the plant is conscious.
I could, I suppose, list the various differences between plants and people in order to point out how the former lacks the behavioral manifestations of consciousness, but I'd not be proving anything that isn't already fully accepted, and I don't feel like performing a mindless academic task.
First using gravity, and then light to balance themselves. A hell of a lot more impressive than that though, is that plants release odors that attract predators of things that prey on them, and release different ones depending on what's attacking them. Implying not simply a stimulus, and reaction, but stimulus, some kind of identification/differentiation/discernment must also be at play, then reaction.
Saw it on The Nature of Things. Thanks David Suzuki!
I see a big difference between things with brains though. I prefer "intention" or "emotion" as what I'd call fundamental to living things, and not really consciousness. Consciousness is too wrapped up in brain stuff. Plants don't have an internal nexus/singularity to which all things in its being move towards, and orbit. They don't have mirror neurons with which to reflect, and represent things to themselves.
They definitely aren't self-conscious, they lack the... ahem... equipment.
For me something is conscious if said thing responds to its environment.
Everything responds to its environment. The sea that responds to a strong wind; the metal that responds to magnets; the plates on the table that respond to me pulling the cloth out from under it...
Seems to me that what you mean by consciousness isn't what the rest of us mean. So I wonder how you've come to use the word this way. Was it an intentional change from the norm? If so, why?
I'm not really clear on what you are saying here. Prescribing oneself exercise or medicine is a conscious, willful act and cicatrisation isn't voluntary at all, but simply a response to certain environmental conditions and the body is the mind's immediate and most important part of the environment to have information about.
The integral parts of consciousness are simply memory and attention. Memory is what allows the temporal flow of consciousness as it retains and forgets certain bits of information over time. Attention is what provides the "subjective" feel of consciousness - of focusing on certain bits of sensory information over others that relate to the goal currently present in the mind. That is all that is needed. Self-awareness is simply a group of sensory impressions that are the focus of the attention as opposed to not being the focus. It isn't necessary for defining consciousness, as we are merely talking about the focus of one's attention on certain bits of sensory information. A cat or a mouse can both be conscious if they have a memory and attention. A computer has memory and a central executive that focuses on certain bits of information in it's memory at any moment in order to accomplish a certain goal. They are self-conscious when anything their attention focuses on is related to their mental or bodily processes.
Cats may not be able to recognize themselves in the mirror, but they certainly seem to recognize their own "meow" and smell, as they don't act like there's another cat in the vicinity when they hear there own "meow" or smell their own urine and feces. It is simply a categorization of certain sensory impressions as belonging to the self, and not others.
I could, I suppose, list the various differences between plants and people in order to point out how the former lacks the behavioral manifestations of consciousness, but I'd not be proving anything that isn't already fully accepted, and I don't feel like performing a mindless academic task.
I actually think this would be an interesting exercise. I struggle to maintain the distinction that apparently seems so clear to you, namely between behaviour which is evidence of consciousness and behaviour which is not. I'd be very interested in your method for placing a behaviour in one category or the other.
Michael OssipoffAugust 18, 2017 at 20:35#983200 likes
Comments (48)
Peter Hacker has rather convincingly argued that the most fruitful line of inquiry regarding your second question is to pay attention, in Wittgensteinian spirit, to the manner in which we learn to use the word "consciousness" (and related words such as "attention" and "awareness") and the intersubjective criteria that guide our applications of them. Chapters 9, 10 and 11 in Bennett and Hacker Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience are devoted to such an examination.
What would you say it is in this sense?
Does this work for all kinds of things? Either we are talking about doors or about the concept of numbers what you said applies? Aren't there things that we need to know how they work in order to say that we know what they're really are?
For example, if we don't know how water is constituted, we might think that it is the substance out of which everything is constituted and then say that this is what it really is, not just something for us to drink.
I don't know what you mean here.
The point is that even before any scientific enquiry we were able to distinguish water from other things like trees and fire, and knew what to do with it. We might not have known anything about hydrogen and oxygen atoms, and so we didn't comprehensively know what water is, but I don't think we need to comprehensively know what something is to know what it is.
I know who my parents and my friends are even though I don't know everything about them.
Sorry if I don't express myself clearly, I'm still learning english and I find these thoughts really confusing :P
Yes, we can use the world wrongly. But when we are simply ignorant of hidden features of the objects or phenomena that we are talking about, this need not signal that we are misusing the words and don't really know what we are talking about. Maybe science can enlighten us on underlying mechanisms, or the way known phenomena are realized, or disclose hidden properties that they have. But this would not necessarily show that we have initially misidentified the objects or phenomena talked about, as Michael's examples illustrate.
Also, there is another way to misuse a word which is to use the name a phenomenon talked about in ordinary life (i.e. in non-scientific discourse), theorize about its referent, and then confuse the phenomenon of ordinary life with the theoretical entity postulated for purpose of scientific theorizing. Hence "consciousness", for instance, which was not originally conceived to be designating an object of awareness when we understood what it means for someone to be conscious, or unconscious (intransitive use) or to be conscious of something (transitive use) comes to seem to designate an object of private acquaintance. This is because the semi-technical uses fostered by the philosophy of mind, or by cognitive science, led us to misuse the original term, and we lost track of the familiar phenomenon that we originally were intending to explain.
If in daily someone asked me, I would say that to be conscious is to recognize that I'm having an experience. But this implies that I'm also aware of myself, so then how is self-consciousness different from consciousness? And how science or philosophy use these words differently?
Well, self-consiousness is the topic of the next chapter in Bennett and Hacker's book. This may not be a phrase that has had an ordinary use before philosophical and cogsci theses began to seep into popular culture. I may surmise that nobody has a view on what "self-consiousness" refers to which roams free of some loaded theoretical standpoint or other.
Sebastian Rödl wrote a very nice book titled Self-Consciousness. His approach is resolutely Kantian, and he has no concern for qualia or for passive introspection onto the quality of ones own private mental life. "Self-consciousness", in his book, rather refers to the tacit a priori knowledge that rational agents have of formal features of their own perceptual and agential abilities.
Consciousness is awareness of the outside world and that is immanent in all living things.
We have some idea as to how it works e.g. there's a great deal of progress in the analysis of logic, psychology, etc. The complete picture is missing though. Maybe there's something wondrous hidden in the darkness of human ignorance.
Everytime I come here I think I'm leaving more perplexed than before :P Most people use too advanced language for someone like me who hasn't read philosophy and when I try to search for the things they say, usually to understand the explanations, I have to search for other explanations because again it's given in a language I don't understand. Are these books you mentioned easy to understand? Or do you know any other books or sites where I can read about philosophical ideas in easier language?
Do you mean that plants are conscious the same way humans are?
Plants are aware of their surroundings: the branches grow towards the sunlight.
Humans are also aware of their surroundings but one extra bit humans have is self-consciousness
How can I understand that the sun is there and move towards the sun but not understand that I'm moving toward the sun?
Also, why don't you think that the way plants grow is just programmed and automatic?
The answer to the above question is below:
Quoting mew
If plants are conscious but their reactions are just automatic, then a robot which is programmed to react to certain things is conscious. But that is clearly false, robots are not aware, they are programmed. I thought that what we mean by "aware" is "not-automatic" :P
The book by Sebastian Rödl is quite technical and requires some philosophical background. The book by Bennett and Hacker, though, is written in very plain language and is intended for a broad audience of non-specialists. It is a very fine introduction to the philosophy of mind and of cognitive sciences.
I meant to explain that there is a sense of "self-consciousness" that doesn't refer to the mere outcome of turning one's own gaze inside, as it were, and contemplate what it is one is feeling, experiencing, etc., but rather is a form of critical reflection on what it is that is required to make sense of one's ability to know the world on the basis of experience, or to know what it is one ought to do (and that one is actually doing or intending to do -- i.e. practical self-knowledge) on the basis of practical deliberation, and that reveals explicitly features of our rational abilities that are necessarily operative in every mature human being, including those who don't critically reflect on them. Immanuel Kant is one fellow who pioneered this sort of reflection and Sebastian Rödl is traveling a parallel path.
The recent movie Sausage Party makes the case that some edible plants (and other food items) may achieve self-consciousness at the moment when they arrive to the supermarket.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
I'm still not sure I understand this :P
What I meant wasn't that self-consciousness is to think about what I'm feeling or experiencing but just to notice that I'm here, I'm someone, to be aware of myself. And then I think that it is difficult to be conscious of something else and not to be conscious of myself or to be conscious of myself and not be conscious of other things. I think that one implies the other. You mean that these philosophers say that self-consciousness is not about that?
I mean consciousness is simply being aware of the enivornment we're in. A plant growing towards the sun is ''aware'' of the direction of sunlight.
Robots in a maze are aware of their environment.
Awareness of the environment is a basic feature of consciousness.
What is then the difference between awareness and consciousness under this view?
No, I think you're right about that. Your being aware (i.e. having the perceptual knowledge) that there are objects in the world that exist independently of your perception of them requires awareness that you can potentially experience them -- i.e. that they be potential objects of experience. You arrived at this conclusion without Kant's help. Congratulations!
Awareness, as indicated by behavior, is sign of consciousness
That sounds right. I wanted a distinction between ''awareness of environment'' and ''awareness of self''. I guess the two cannot be meaningfully separated. Consciousness does need both.
As to the general point, "what is consciousness", I do not know. It seems to be some sort of awareness, but we run into some problems. For example, I would say machines have awareness of things, but machines are not conscious.
The "awareness of self" condition also runs into problems when we try to attribute consciousness to things because what exactly does awareness entail in this case? Distinction from other things?
I thought of that too but there's a problem in this. We can't distinguish between real consciousness and simulated consciousness (I suspect you want to make this distinction). Having access only to the external behavior of matter, I'm forced to conclude that plants have consciousness.
That's a really good conclusion. I'll keep that in mind so that every time you say something questionable, I can offer the retort, "but then again, you think plants have consciousness."
Have you considered that purposeful physical events can occur unconsciously, like your heart, for example, as it pumps blood through your body. And do we really need to give examples for why you might not conclude that plants have consciousness when in truth you really don't believe they do. If you insist, though, that plants are conscious, then I think we need a new word for how I use the term, considering I really do see a distinction between how I respond to the sun and how a plant does.
I have no issue with that. I think animal consciousness is unique too and deserving of distinction between it and the rest of phenomena and the term ''consciousness'' is appropriate and exclusively applied to it.
However, how do we come to know whether something is conscious or not? We have access only to external behavior. We can't directly experience the consciousness of another entity, can we? So, a plant growing towards the sun and a man looking for shade in the hot sun are indistinguishable.
How then are they separable as distinct from each other? We don't have direct access to the minds of other animals. All we have is their external behavior (how they respond to the environment). Again I think we have very different conception of the term ''consciousness''.
That is actually a big problem. The problem of other minds takes on a new meaning when we start to think about animals. I think it is clear that some animals have consciousness, but the problem is that we cannot know what it is like to be said animals. We have no idea which animals and which behaviors are unconscious reactions and conscious decisions without using specific measures. These measures, like an animal recognizing itself in the mirror, are only available for animals with relatively high mental capabilities, like dolphins and some primates.
Don't you have to first establish that the sensations and experiences you have are about, or of things that exist independently of your perception of them to even say that awareness is happening? For instance, idealists and anti-realists state that their experiences aren't about some world that exists independently of their mind. The contents of their mind aren't representations of some external world but are things themselves - similar to how a universe with no observers would be. If there is no aboutness to the sensations you experience, then how can you say that you are aware of anything? What would you be aware of?
Many conflate self-awareness with consciousness. Being aware of yourself is simply one of many things to be aware of. I am also aware of my wife, a tv show, a philosophy forum, scribbles on a screen, etc. At any moment my attention is focused on certain things. What I'm focused on is what I'm aware of, so it seems to me that to be conscious requires attention - of filtering out certain sensory impressions in favor of others in order to accomplish the current goal.
I believe that animals with a central nervous system as opposed to a nerve net (like jellyfish or starfish) are conscious. The brain provides a central location where all sensory inputs come together into a whole experience - or an information architecture that represents the immediate environment. Humans seem to have accomplished the feat of turning their thoughts back on itself - of thinking about thinking - of being aware of being aware.
We could possibly design a robot to be conscious like humans. If they could create a model of sensory information and use that model to navigate the world and to contemplate themselves being aware of their world, then why would we say that this robot isn't conscious, or self-aware?
For sure. Such a robot would be aware that there are objects its world. This sort of objective empirical knowledge is dependent on the existence of a form of reflexive self-knowledge about ones own capacity for empirical knowledge (and of its fallibility -- the possibility of illusion). This robot's awareness, accompanied by self-awareness, would be qualitatively distincts from a cat's mere awareness of mice in its vicinity. That's something that falls short from an awareness that there objectively are mice in its vicinity.
There is more to having the relevant form of self-consciousness than possessing a descriptive "self-model", though. (Aristotle hints at the relevant distinction with the example of the physician who heals herself. There are two distinct ways one can heal oneself: as one would also heal another, through "prescribing" oneself exercise or some medicine, say, or spontaneously, through merely facilitating the natural process of cicatrisation, say. The relevant sort of self-knowledge that grounds empirical knowledge is likewise "spontaneous", in a sense. It characterizes the form of empirical knowledge -- that is: the form of the conceptual activity involved in the shaping of the experience, with the tacit self-acknowledgement of the epistemic responsibility from the knowing subject in bringing to bear the right concepts to her experience -- rather than just specifying its object by description as just one more item in the world who merely happens to refer to herself as "I".
First of all, we weren't talking about animal consciousness. We were talking about plant consciousness. Second, we don't have direct access to any mind other than our own, which means we can't conclude the existence of any mind other than our own. To the extent we use behavior to determine the existence of other consciousness, we can look at the behavior of plants and recognize their behavior as distinct from animals. The simple fact that a branch bends towards the sun is not sufficient to prove the plant is conscious.
I could, I suppose, list the various differences between plants and people in order to point out how the former lacks the behavioral manifestations of consciousness, but I'd not be proving anything that isn't already fully accepted, and I don't feel like performing a mindless academic task.
First using gravity, and then light to balance themselves. A hell of a lot more impressive than that though, is that plants release odors that attract predators of things that prey on them, and release different ones depending on what's attacking them. Implying not simply a stimulus, and reaction, but stimulus, some kind of identification/differentiation/discernment must also be at play, then reaction.
Saw it on The Nature of Things. Thanks David Suzuki!
How do you define ''consciousness''?
For me something is conscious if said thing responds to its environment.
They definitely aren't self-conscious, they lack the... ahem... equipment.
Everything responds to its environment. The sea that responds to a strong wind; the metal that responds to magnets; the plates on the table that respond to me pulling the cloth out from under it...
Seems to me that what you mean by consciousness isn't what the rest of us mean. So I wonder how you've come to use the word this way. Was it an intentional change from the norm? If so, why?
Well, I think the domain of discussion is ''living things''. Does my definition make sense now?
I'm not really clear on what you are saying here. Prescribing oneself exercise or medicine is a conscious, willful act and cicatrisation isn't voluntary at all, but simply a response to certain environmental conditions and the body is the mind's immediate and most important part of the environment to have information about.
The integral parts of consciousness are simply memory and attention. Memory is what allows the temporal flow of consciousness as it retains and forgets certain bits of information over time. Attention is what provides the "subjective" feel of consciousness - of focusing on certain bits of sensory information over others that relate to the goal currently present in the mind. That is all that is needed. Self-awareness is simply a group of sensory impressions that are the focus of the attention as opposed to not being the focus. It isn't necessary for defining consciousness, as we are merely talking about the focus of one's attention on certain bits of sensory information. A cat or a mouse can both be conscious if they have a memory and attention. A computer has memory and a central executive that focuses on certain bits of information in it's memory at any moment in order to accomplish a certain goal. They are self-conscious when anything their attention focuses on is related to their mental or bodily processes.
Cats may not be able to recognize themselves in the mirror, but they certainly seem to recognize their own "meow" and smell, as they don't act like there's another cat in the vicinity when they hear there own "meow" or smell their own urine and feces. It is simply a categorization of certain sensory impressions as belonging to the self, and not others.
I actually think this would be an interesting exercise. I struggle to maintain the distinction that apparently seems so clear to you, namely between behaviour which is evidence of consciousness and behaviour which is not. I'd be very interested in your method for placing a behaviour in one category or the other.
Sure we do. It's an imaginary fiction created by Western academic philosophers so that they can have a "problem" to write about.
There's the animal. That's it. Regard the animal as a unitary thing, instead of artificially dissecting him/her into body and "Consciousness".
Michael Ossipoff