We're conscious beings. Why?
WHY is there consciousness? As computers become more and more capable and can interact with people and other computers in complex ways, we as yet have no indication at all that they are the least bit conscious, that consciousness comes with complexity.
When I talk of consciousness, I'm talking of consciousness=having experiences.
So, why are we conscious? In addition to humans, evolution also produced plants, and while plants can react to their environment in stimulus/response fashion, there’s no indication whatsoever that plants are aware of themselves as beings.
Just exactly WHY are humans (and higher animals as well) conscious at all? It seems totally unnecessary and seems to have no survival value, either.
Is it just an accident of evolution that ended up having no negative survival value? A fluke?
I can't think of any reason why we need to be having experiences. Can you?
When I talk of consciousness, I'm talking of consciousness=having experiences.
So, why are we conscious? In addition to humans, evolution also produced plants, and while plants can react to their environment in stimulus/response fashion, there’s no indication whatsoever that plants are aware of themselves as beings.
Just exactly WHY are humans (and higher animals as well) conscious at all? It seems totally unnecessary and seems to have no survival value, either.
Is it just an accident of evolution that ended up having no negative survival value? A fluke?
I can't think of any reason why we need to be having experiences. Can you?
Comments (341)
There is the famous mirror test - they paint a spot on an animal and put the animal in front of a mirror and see if it rubs the spot - ants pass this test - so consciousness is something quite primitive / ancient.
Because the very reason you're posing the question about consciousness comes from an illusion born of the fact that we forget that a few hundred years ago we decided to arbitrarily carve up the world into inanimate and animate, sentient and non-sentient, for the purposes of doing science, . We made a problem out of consciousness by dividing the world in such a way as to make both sides inchoherent.
"Many philosophers have argued that there seems to be a gap between the
objective, naturalistic facts of the world and the subjective facts of conscious experience.
The hard problem is the conceptual and metaphysical problem of how to bridge
this apparent gap. There are many critical things that can be said about the hard problem
(see Thompson&Varela, forthcoming), but what I wish to point out here is that it
depends for its very formulation on the premise that the embodied mind as a natural
entity exists ‘out there’ independently of how we configure or constitute it as an
object of knowledge through our reciprocal empathic understanding of one other as
experiencing subjects. One way of formulating the hard problem is to ask: if we had a
complete, canonical, objective, physicalist account of the natural world, including all
the physical facts of the brain and the organism, would it conceptually or logically
entail the subjective facts of consciousness? If this account would not entail these
facts, then consciousness must be an additional, non-natural property of the world.
One problem with this whole way of setting up the issue, however, is that it presupposes
we can make sense of the very notion of a single, canonical, physicalist description
of the world, which is highly doubtful, and that in arriving (or at any rate
approaching) such a description, we are attaining a viewpoint that does not in any way
presuppose our own cognition and lived experience. In other words, the hard problem
seems to depend for its very formulation on the philosophical position known as
transcendental or metaphysical realism. From the phenomenological perspective
explored here, however — but also from the perspective of pragmatism à la Charles
Saunders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, as well as its contemporary inheritors
such as Hilary Putnam (1999) — this transcendental or metaphysical realist
position is the paradigm of a nonsensical or incoherent metaphysical viewpoint, for
(among other problems) it fails to acknowledge its own reflexive dependence on the
intersubjectivity and reciprocal empathy of the human life-world."
Evan Thompson
Think of a Turing Machine simulating a human but with "nobody home" as far as having experiences. Now, put it in a flesh and blood body. In a way, that's what we are except I (and I assume, you) have experiences.
On a more practical level, in the interest of making this an active discussion with a lot of participants chiming in, let's keep posts relatively short and to the point. It takes very little time to dash off a long post, and about the same amount of time to read it, but responding point-by-point can be time-consuming, tiring, and daunting. Long posts can thus stifle discussion and discourage participation.
Also, as a matter of my own philosophy of philosophy, I'm an ordinary language kind of guy. What this means to me is that if you can state a problem so that even a layperson can understand it, only a solution that a layperson can also understand is a satisfactory solution. Thus, "Go read (this or that) book by (Dennett, Dawkins, Kant, Wittgenstein, or whoever)" isn't a discussion. If you feel they have a point, lay it out succinctl8y and clarly, don't give us reading assignments.
I'd love it if well-informed nonphilosophers participated along with the philosophers.
“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.”—Albert Einstein
I think self-awareness at a basic level is the ability to differentiate oneself from the environment. No easy task. Imagine having to create a computer that could do it? Yet tiny animals with a few hundred neurons are self aware.
Quoting Unseen
I think emotions and instincts are pre-conscious signals that are interpreted by our conscious minds.
Maybe we started as very primitive animals with our emotions/instincts hard wired to reactions. For example: sense pain -> react by moving. As evolution progressed, perhaps the circuitry connecting our instincts to actions became more complex and evolved into the conscious mind. Perhaps the processing of the pain signal evolves to 'move then scratch' then to 'move or scratch' and onwards towards more complex logic (and consciousness).
A conscious computer. Consciousness stems from the need to survive in a potentially hostile environment. How would we endow a computer with self-survival instincts I'm not sure. It would need to sense danger and pain.
I suppose the nearest everyday equivalent to a computer consciousness is an operating system. It is constantly active (or at least active one every 1/60th of a second or so) and controls the running of the whole computer. An OS is not self aware though. They do not have a nervous system.
My current understanding of consciousness is a work in progress (read: crazyism), but it draws from process philosophy and integrated information theory. I’m in the process of trying to formulate it in ways that might eventually make it testable, but I think I’m a long way off, so I’ll just outline the basic idea, and we can go from there...
A rock lacks consciousness as described, however each molecule in that rock has the capacity to receive some information about its environment - even if that environment consists only of other rock molecules - as well as the capacity to respond to that information. If I pick up a rock from the riverbed and hold it in my hand, the molecules on its surface will respond to a change in temperature, causing a change in adjacent molecules, until the entire rock has responded (only not as a rock). If I break that rock with a hammer, each molecule will respond to the vibration of the impact, but certain rock molecules will also ‘experience’ a change in environment, new information, and respond accordingly (oxidation, etc).
Does this mean a rock molecule is conscious? Not in the sense of having experiences, because it could only ever be vaguely aware of a momentary interaction with ‘more’. It has nothing to relate each piece of new information to except the sense of this/here/now that constituted its entire universe. This is what I refer to as one-dimensional awareness. Each interaction is a momentary and unrelated transfer of information from one molecule to the next. Anything non-living has one-dimensional awareness.
Most animals have developed a two-dimensional awareness: they can relate these momentary interactions to each other, and use the information they receive to make sense of their environment in terms of space (in front, behind, above, below, etc) and time, as well as other sense data. This awareness is a matter of distinction - they can prefer certain stimuli based on memory and respond accordingly, but not define or evaluate possibilities at this level. There is no self awareness at this level.
Humans (and higher animals) have gone on to develop a three-dimensional awareness: they can relate these interactions and the wealth of information they offer to each other and to previous scenarios, and determine a sense of ‘value’ in spacetime. They can develop the capacity to define, quantify, measure and evaluate the ‘best’ of possible responses (based on past experiences and detailed sense data) for future reference. Self awareness occurs at this level, but I would argue that this has created certain problems (eg. a flawed evolution theory).
There is a four-dimensional awareness, too. Humans have developed the capacity to relate these detailed interactions to each other, to all their previous experiences, and to the experiences of others as communicated to them through various means. This enables us to make sense of the universe well beyond our own existence in spacetime, to empathise with others, understand our place in history, imagine possible worlds, get creative or suggest an explanation for consciousness.
There may very well be further dimensions...
What's your evidence for this belief?
Thoughts and decisions seem to be made pre-consciously before we become conscious of them. Ditto for actions. That implies that consciousness is inactive, passive, and really unnecessary, so why do we have the experiences of feeling in conscious control.
I don't take or issue reading assignments, but it sounds like you might be interested in aScientific American article titled There Is No Such Thing As conscious Thought by philosopher Peter Carruthers..
I believe the state of being consciousness is an extension of one being sentient.
Quoting Unseen
The frame of questioning is on par with asking the question of why there is life on this planet? I personally cannot give a definite answer and I don't think no human here could. Although inferring as to why, one could speculate that consciousness by being a byproduct of sentience, is a consequence of the spontaneity of the existence of life on this planet. As for your idea of "survival value" I think the very fact you're using an instrument of a human design to convey your thoughts you deemed important enough to start this conversation, is evidence that there is a value in why humans survived.
Quoting Unseen
I personally do not think life was an accident. As a healthcare worker I firmly believe there is a Creator far beyond any text that man can conceive of to describe it, and far too beyond the comprehension of any human language to speak of it. But this is my personal belief to which I concede amounts to my own faith.
Quoting Unseen
As I've said already these things have different answers and to ask why we need to have experiences is on par with asking why does life exist?
I'll make this short and sweet, as is my preference (hoping you've read my prior thoughts on responding to lengthy posts), so I won't respond to every one of your points, just the ones I have thoughts on and which I think help us understand what's going on.
First, "sentience" is the condition of having sensory inputs. We have lots of sensory inputs we aren't conscious of, which never turn into experiences. We can see without really attending to everything in our visual field. Something is going on in the pre-conscious mind filtering what we see (by which I mean attend to or notice).
You may be hinting that we are conscious because our creature gave that to us. This may work for those who believe that the universe was created by a cosmic sorcerer through an act of magic, but I don't believe in magic. You;d have to prove that creator's existence to me first, but I apply Occam's Razor to eliminate an idea that raises more questions than it solves.
Of course, a great example is the brain stem and its function. But it doesn't change the fact that sentience is a byproduct of consciousness. Why is it necessary to have sentience along with consciousness? Why is it necessary for a mammal to have sentience if, as you say we can maintain some sensory input without the need of a faculty in this case vision as you say. I only mentioned God in relation to my own explanation, not to make my explanation as an answer to your question.
If your question is broader and asks why at all is there consciousness, then it’s not satisfyingly answerable (just a brute fact, like the existence of charges and mass) and -imo- on par with asking why is the universe this way instead of some other possible way or why am I me and not you.
Sentience is there prior to conscience. Something in the pre-conscious selects what becomes part of our experience. My definition of consciousness is the state of having experiences.
No, you miss my point entirely. I'm asking why we are conscious when all of our thoughts and activities originate on a pre-conscious level. Consciousness, thus, seems gratuitous. We could function as we do without having any experiences whatsoever. So why do we have them. Why aren't we like plants?
Very interesting. Thanks.
You wrote: Firstly not every decision has been demonstrated as temporally decoupled - those decision experiments are for in-the-moment predictions using available sensory cues, they don’t demonstrate the same for future-oriented goal making or for deliberative reasoning. Secondly, I don’t think a time delay definitively decouples what imparts consciousness from, say, decision making systems or sensory input: the thing which causes the time delay may simply be the time it takes for the signal reach and effect the speech and motor centers involved in providing the response to the behavioral task. But say they really are decoupled, why couldn’t consciousness play important roles in other mental processes - goal setting and goal refining, socializing and interpersonal interaction, meta cognitive reasoning. Maybe it just gets the salient and relevant inputs as prepackaged and refined representations for those roles. If that’s the case then while the consciousness imparting system is distinct, it is involved in some other important processing going on and so has a reason to be there.
My reply: You feel you are doing these things because you are conscious of doing them, but something is presenting these "perceptions" to the consciousness. Have you ever been driving and realized at some point that miles have gone by, with actions and decisions being made, and yet you know that the conscious "you" was operating on auto-pilot? When you argue by giving me questions rather than facts (e.g., " why couldn’t consciousness play important roles in other mental processes") that is just speculation and doesn't really answer why. Remember, I'm not denying that we're conscious. I'm not even denying that we may need to be conscious to function. I just can't figure out why we need to be conscious. Many plant species preceded higher mammals on Earth and, thus, have longer records of evolutionary success, proving that consciousness need not have any survival value at all.
But I disagree that ‘survival value’ is the motivating force behind evolution. And it’s not an external Creator Being, either.
Quoting Unseen
That depends what you mean by ‘function as we do’. I’m not sure about you, but there are plenty of my normal daily activities that require me to have experiences.
So, a sophisticated Turing Human couldn't function simply in terns of executing a program, but we'd have to give such a human the capacity to have experiences?
Explain.
My daily activities are not restricted to conversations on a computer, for starters - which is, I believe, the limit of the Turing test at this stage. Correct me if I’m wrong.
I’ll admit I’m struggling with information theory, but I think IF you gave a computer system the capacity to process information from experiences in the same elaborately complex, 4-dimensional manner as humans have worked their way up to, you could hypothetically end up with a better example of human potential. In my opinion, we took a wrong turn with the concept of ‘self’ and we’ve been struggling with one hand tied behind our back for millennia.
But that’s a very big ‘IF’. The biggest problem I see is with our capacity for interconnectedness: humans can potentially feel a connection to the universe on a complex cellular or even subatomic level that I’m not convinced can be replicated digitally. That we often dismiss or oppress experiential information gleaned in this manner is beside the point - the dialectic is part of what makes us human.
Having said that, humans ‘function’ at a wildly diverse range of awareness levels every day, and we still call most of them ‘human’. Consciousness is arguably unnecessary for survival of the species at this point, but I would argue that a lack or deficiency of consciousness is threatening continued success for the diversity of life on a global scale, at least.
Consciousness has value in the sense that there are experiences that make consciousness worth it, there are experiences that make you glad to be alive rather than dead.
As to the survival value of consciousness, any answer will depend on unprovable assumptions, so an answer that will satisfy you will depend on what you are willing to believe.
If you assume that each conscious experience maps to a specific pattern of electrical activity (motion of electrons) in the brain, then you see consciousness as an epiphenomenon that cannot cause anything, and so from that point of view it seems unnecessary, redundant.
But how can you know whether consciousness reduces to that? Our perception is limited. We can't 'see' the consciousness of others, we're just measuring electrical activity of their brain, we're just seeing their facial expressions or behaviors, we can't see what they experience. So if our perception is limited in that way, it's very possible our consciousness doesn't reduce to motions of electrons in our brain, that it is more than that, and that even if you assembled what you perceive to be a copy of your brain, it's very possible there would be a necessary ingredient missing for that copy to have the same consciousness as you, or for it to have consciousness at all, because you wouldn't have assembled correctly the part that you don't perceive.
Maybe consciousness is necessary in ways that the eye can't see.
You're not wrong, but I'm asking you to suppose AI proceded from there to the next level. Japan is already producing some remarkably (creepily) realistic robots.If Turing machines reach a point where all they need is a "social stimulus value" (looking and behaving like people), it doesn't strike me they'd necessarily need to be conscious and having the experience of BEING. They could simply be executing software.
Reflexive actions aside, it seems ALL of our sensory input is processed and filtered in ways we are unaware of, automatically and beyond our control, as it were.
But how can you know whether consciousness reduces to that? Our perception is limited.[/quote]
Yes, our perception is limited. Limited to what the pre-conscious mind—which is actively filtering our sensory input and making the actual decisions—gives us.Remember, research shows that decisions we make are made before we become aware of them by anywhere from a fraction of a second to several seconds. Our decisions come into our conscious mind, our experience, as faits accompls.
Unless that research is disproven, your conscious mind is totally passive and does nothing.
Perhaps we can think of the conscious mind as CEO, with the majority of the work carried out by other systems that have been trained or trusted to do so - because it doesn’t really provide us with any vital new information. Many decisions come into our conscious mind not so much as a fait accomplis, but as a formulated plan awaiting executive sign-off. We can trust it’s all been taken care of, we can go back over the data ourselves and make sure, or we can apply new information as it comes in - even in that last fraction of a second. Prediction accuracy in the research shows that the conscious mind can still change the outcome.
When I say ‘informative’, I mean information we don’t already have. We take note of changes in the environment, but this information has usually been assigned as a rule to particular systems to ‘take care of it’. It’s easy enough to train these systems to retain more or less of that sensory information (not the raw data) within reach of our conscious mind, if we want. It requires the time and resources of our conscious mind to put it in place, though.
Suffice to say, I disagree that the research proves your conscious mind is totally passive and does nothing.
As for the Turing machines, I think it’s possible for computer software to eventually trick most humans with an imitation, but how long they can be fooled for depends on how conscious they are in that moment of certain subtle differences in how we respond to experiences, that cannot be replicated.
We may eventually have to train our minds to detect this artificiality, in the same way we’ve learned to detect when an email from the bank is fake. It starts with consciousness.
Any citations of researchers who support this view?
Also, with all due respect, please be more brief. Einstein once said, “If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.”
Well I think here you're mixing up attention with consciousness. You're still conscious [having experiences] of the road and what actions you are doing, just not focused or attending to them. These are being triggered by the intrinsic circuitry which simply has qualia associated with it or causes qualia. Secondly, I don't think just because most reasoning and decision making can be done on autopilot doesn't mean all forms of reasoning can. Decisions involving self inhibition - stoping yourself from reaching for the cookie; deliberative reasoning involving language, future and goal oriented reasoning-- are things that I think require heavy attention-load and intentional decisions.
Well, so evolution is not a convergent process; there's nothing restricting successful organisms from having different design plans-- anything that can survive and reproduce will. Secondly just because consciousness is not advantageous for a certain kind of organism doesn't mean it isn't advantageous for another. Plants and animals have completely different metabolisms- plant's don't need to do more than extend leaves out for their energy while animals need move around and search through their environments to find their food and survive. Clearly a certain kind of nervous system is needed for conscious experiences -- and that kind happened to work in a way that either promoted or did not effect survival in any negative way.
You could argue plants are conscious under the definition of OP simply by understanding an event unfolding, plants have a complex of biochemical communication...
But they are not conscious in that anthropocentric definition... I think the amazing things about humanity and their consciousness is to create and impute meaning. Trying to build these faux premises ambiguous semantic universals as empathetic signifiers of significance is just a bit myopic.
Whatever happened to joy for joys sake or experience for experience sake....
For argument sake if on the 25th of december the materialist consciousness professor says he cracked the hard problem finally.... Would you live your life significantly differently? Would it ruin Christmas?
What human beings call consciousness, meaning and truth seems tied to human beings unique abilities of language use and impute meaning. I would say our minds are more geared for strategy than some 21st century conception of ego just as I question whether we are designed for truth.
More likely our truth/falsehood is an assessing mechanism to refine the industriousness of our endeavours in filtering signs.
The looking for the future divination in goats bowels and looking for the broken brush as evidence of where prey items in which to hunt is an extension of the same kind of all too human assignment of meaning in different contexts.
Presumably it is a product of biological evolution. Should we ask why marsupials have pouches for their young, or why anteaters have long skinny tongues? The existence of these various adaptations do not imply there's a teleological reason for it. Rather, it just seems to be a product of chance adaptation to chance environment.
Let me ask you something, do we need anything? Do we even need to live?
Anyway, explain how your question relates to answering mine. I'm drawing a blank.
But that choice isn't active until you're alive.
Why are you alive to begin with?
Quoting Unseen
It's simple.
The existence of a thing necessitates its existence. Every other reason, is a confabulated relation to another thing.
In evolutionary terms we can see the benefits for reproduction, future planning and environmental adaption - all these things require an “appreciation” of environment. The more refined this “appreciation” the better it appears creatures can sustain and reproduce.
The kind of question you are asking is something liking why do rivers emerge. We can answer this question in a variety of ways, but underneath it appears to be an infinite reduction - that says to me that we lack a certain conceptual frame to deal with such questions (or rather to reiterate them in a meaningful manner).
The Primacy Of Consciousness:
The Scientific view of Consciousness is that it is some kind of byproduct of Neural Activity in the Brain. Most Scientists believe that Consciousness is not very important and some go so far as to say that it is just an Illusion with no real purpose. Philosophers have invented the Philosophical Zombie as a tool for thinking about Consciousness or the lack of Consciousness. The P-Zombie is supposed to live and interact with the World just like any one else except that it would not be Conscious.
But from the Inter Mind Model (http://theintermind.com) point of view the P-Zombie would be blind and would not be able to interact with the World. The Inter Mind (IM) and the Conscious Mind (CM) are further processing stages that are absolutely necessary for Sight. Neural Activity is not enough. All we know about Seeing is through Conscious experience. We experience the Conscious Light (CL) that's inside us. Take away the CL experience and what's left? Blind Neural Activity is all you have. You will not See anything. The Primacy of the CL experience for Sight is undeniable, and the same is true for every other Conscious experience that you have. You don't know anything about the Physical World except that which you obtain through your own internal Conscious experiences.
Scientists need to find a way to understand and study Consciousness. They have to stop hiding their inability to study Consciousness by trying to minimize its importance. The Primacy of Consciousness must be understood.
It's going to be difficult to ever say if they're really conscious rather than simply just good emulators from a behavioral perspective, but on the other hand, the difference can have so little practical value that it hardly matters. The same goes for other people, really, as it is.
Quoting Unseen
It's extremely useful to survival that animals are able to do things like formulate type abstractions (so that they can recognize things in the environment that are dangerous versus not dangerous, for example). So consciousness definitely has survival advantages. With creatures like humans, we'd have to be very, very different than we are, with very different capabilities, to be able to survive long enough to reproduce without consciousness.
I would argue consciousness is the product of a central all spanning consciousness. Each person and animal is a subset (keyword subset) of the central organism. Just as we are complex thinkers with many brain cells the central organism is also extremely complex. This is a common notion in new age religions as well as some eastern religions.
Really? Doesn't consciousness allow us to deal with the world we live in, better than it was before we were conscious? For, in our evolutionary journey to our current state, there was a time when we weren't conscious. :chin:
Yeah i would say the book "Sapiens" by Noah Harrari attests to this and various other books on evolution.
One thing that people forget is that the brain operates on particles small than the electron. (Quantum particles). Evolutionary process was not limited to the technologies of the 1800s.
What would that idea be based on?
just speculation. Science can't answer all of our questions with our current understanding of scientific evidence. At any given point in time we have make decisions on the information that we have at that point in time. Proverbs chapter 1 from the jewish bible or christian bible says a wise man seeks after knowledge. I wish you the best.
So just make up some fantasy that we like the idea of?
Yeah, why not? what are the consequences of just making stuff up as you go along.
Read my profile if you like. Click on my name if you like. No wrong answer from me.
i stated my theory. Do you have a counter theory? Saying you don't know is completely fine.
If this is a comment on something I said then I don't know which of my posts you are referring to. If it is just a general statement of fact then I agree with sentence #2 but am not quite sure about sentence #1.
thats fine. Mostly subjects such as this are conjecture. We can't assume we've hit the point in human history that satisfies our own conception of the threshold of necessary truth. Do you dig me? Any given species is limited by time in my own opinion.
See my profile or click on my name. no wrong answer.
I agree that Conjecture and Speculation are all we have with regard to what Consciousness is. Everything is still on the table. Science knows absolutely Nothing about the Phenomenon of Consciousness at this point in time.
i would agree with that for the most part.
I hoped that my previous posts explained why the Neural Processing is not enough. Maybe Brains can evolve that don't need Consciousness but our Brains have evolved to need Consciousness. Consciousness is a further processing stage beyond the Neural Activity. We are effectively Blind without the Conscious Visual Experience. The P-Zombie is a standard Philosophical tool for talking about the necessity of Consciousness.
Individual Cells might not have consciessness. Our desire to procreate is what makes us procreate. A robot is predestined to react how its maker/creator/builder built it IMO.
its hard to say. To me it seems like there needs to be a better explanation than just say pondering it is superflous.
I think the general idea is that preconscious and conscious is being viewed as one and the same on this particular forum topic. Ofcourse when you get into more detail you are right.
Do you really think you would be able to move around in the World without bumping into things if you had no Conscious Visual Experience? The Visual Experience is a further processing stage that is essential to Sight.
Yes Robots have no Volitional input capability. You cannot create Volition with programs. Rather, we need to make special Volitional connections to Machines to enable Volition.
Do you really think you are not using your Conscious Visual Experience when you are absentmindedly driving, or are you just not remembering all the driving decisions you made during the trip? Absentminded driving is more about Memory than about "at the moment" Visual Experience. You would not be able to drive absentmindedly or drive with full awareness without the Conscious Visual Experience. You would be Blind without the Conscious Visual Experience.
Quoting Unseen
But is it really? How would you know without a detailed study of the role that conscious experiences play in our functioning now and in our evolutionary past? Such rhetorical questions are too glibly thrown around in philosophical discussions that are far removed from their proper scientific context. And it's not like scientists haven't taken a crack at answering them.
you said it better.
If consciousness was "helpless to do anything", there would be nothing it could do. So it would, in effect, not exist. Since there is something there (that we label "consciousness"), I must label your comment as 'exaggeration'. :wink: As we learn more about the process by which we perceive things, we are coming to understand how sensory data are dealt with. In visual data, processing begins in the eye, and with the optic nerve, so that some processing has already taken place by the time the data reaches the brain itself. And then lots of stuff happens, in the rest-of-the-mind*, resulting in us perceiving something.
* - We conventionally split the mind into conscious and unconscious. But without clarification, it might appear that the two are equal partners. Not so. The unconscious mind is that part of our minds which is not the conscious part, which is most of it. The conscious mind is a small, later, addition. So rather than refer to the 'unconscious mind', and make it sound like something equal in size and effect to the conscious mind, I say 'rest-of-the-mind' to convey what is actually meant.
So you are quite right (AFAIK) to observe that much processing takes place outside of the conscious mind, but I think it's worth stipulating that all of that processing is distributed throughout the brain and its 'peripheral devices'. When the clever parts of our minds are done, the resulting information is passed to the conscious mind. By that time, as you say, much has already been done, outside of our awareness.
not sure what that means. I'll have to scroll through all the posts to see what that means.
Mind and matter are one and the same thing.
That's another glib statement that doesn't help the discussion. Sure, science doesn't know everything there is to know about consciousness, but who does? I don't think laymen or philosophers are more privileged than cognitive scientists in this respect.
Meanwhile you are asking a scientific question when you are wondering why consciousness evolved and what fitness advantages it might have offered. (Or rather you are not asking but already presuming to know the answer, without offering any reasons for it other than sheer incredulity.)
Quoting Unseen
Your conclusion doesn't follow. What we fancifully call "artificial intelligence" does not come anywhere close to emulating human intelligence, so why would you expect it to have comparable experiences? And how would you know whether an AI is having a subjective experience? Just because we create it doesn't mean we know all about it.
Consciousness doesn't require an explanation because no knowledge is possible at all without it. We couldn't be here asking the question without it. There's no evidence of anything existing at all outside of subjective experience.
What really requires an explanation is that assumption that physical matter exists apart from consciousness. Because there's zero evidence of that ... and there never can be any. In principle. Because evidence is empirical, empiricism is experience-based and experience is conscious.
So you are able to move around when there is a Conscious Visual Experience. You seem to be saying that the Pre-Conscious processing is not enough.
"A team of researchers from Yale University and Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute recently set off to determine the answer. During May and June of 2016, they polled hundreds of industry leaders and academics to get their predictions for when A.I. will hit certain milestones.
"The findings, which the team published in a study last week: A.I. will be capable of performing any task as well or better than humans--otherwise known as high-level machine intelligence--by 2060 and will overtake all human jobs by 2136." Source: https://www.inc.com/kevin-j-ryan/elon-musk-and-350-experts-revealed-when-ai-will-overtake-humans.html
I move around based on what the pre-consciousness deems to be worthy noticing and actin on. It also decides what to let me observe and feel.
No. You don't even need to develop AI in order to have a computer that can solve certain problems as well as or better than people can - that's what calculating devices were developed for in the first place, starting with slide rules and mechanical adding machines and on to modern "non-intelligent" computer programs that do all sorts of calculations, data manipulations and decision-making orders of magnitude faster and better than people can. But none of them approach the complexity or the functionality of human intelligence.
Most AIs aren't even intended to emulate the way people think; the goal instead, as with "non-intelligent" programs, is to solve specific problems by any means. And even with the most advanced research programs that do have the goal of eventually creating something approaching human intelligence, there is no agreement as to whether they are on the right path.
I can't argue with that considering i'm not exactly a scientist.
It has been known for a hundred years that Conscious Experience is related to Neural Activity. You think that the only thing you need is pre-conscious Neural Activity in order to See. I think it is obvious that you will not See anything with just Neural Activity. You will need the extra stage of the process which is the Conscious Visual Experience. The Conscious Visual Experience is simply another stage in the processing chain after the pre-conscious Neural Activity. The example I gave about Functional Blindness explains the situation.
You don't just Observe the Conscious Visual Scene that you are Seeing. The Conscious Visual Scene is the thing that you actually use to move around in the World. You are Functionally Blind without the Conscious Visual Experience. It's an essential component in the Visual processing chain.
With regard to the pre-conscious Neural Activity:
It does not appear that the Visual Areas are processing the Light information with the goal of creating the integrated Conscious Light (CL) Scene that we experience. Rather the Brain seems to deconstruct the image with the goal of detecting elementary properties of the image like lines, edges, motion, and color. There do not seem to be any downstream Visual Areas that are involved with reconstructing the CL Scene that we experience from all the deconstructed properties that the Brain detects. The only place where there is a good undistorted image is on the Retina of the Eye. The other various stages of processing are highly warped and distorted maps of the retina. The highest stages don't really even map at all. The highest stages seem to be involved in image recognition and the lower stages seem to be for mechanical control of focus and eye convergence. But we find that there are artifacts from the downstream processing stages that become visible in our CL Scene. For example there are some edge enhancement and shading effects that are generated in V1 that can be experienced in the CL Scene. Also if there is a damaged area in V1 then an equivalent blacked out area will appear in the CL Scene. Similarly if there is damage to the Color areas then the Color experience will be impaired or completely missing. So it seems that whatever is creating the CL Scene must use and be in contact with all the processing stages at the same time. The actual CL Scene is a kind of overlay of all the areas. It seems that the data available at these processing stages are hints as to what the CL Scene should look like. This data must be the input to the Conscious Mind (CM). It seems that there is a lot of processing that has to take place to reintegrate all the Visual Area processing results into the seemingly perfect CL Scene that we experience. There is a Processing Gap. There does not seem to be any areas in the Brain that operate to perform this data reintegration. The Conscious Visual Experience of the Scene is however a reintegrated version of the Visual Area processing results. No one knows how the Brain does this reintegration to produce the Conscious Visual Scene Experience. This is called the Binding Problem of Conscious Experience. There simply are no Brain Areas identified that can do this. The Conscious Visual Experience contains massive amounts of Visual information all combined into that Conscious Visual Scene that we are so used to Seeing.
The reason consciousness evolved is because consciousness allows learning, which allows the fine-tuning of one's behavioral responses to specific stimuli several times over ones life-time, whereas fine-tuning one's morphology to one's environment takes generations.
Natural selection acts on both our bodies (our genes) and our minds (once central nervous systems evolved). Natural selection filters our behaviors through learning about the environment which enables us to respond to stimuli on the fly rather than responding over generations with the accumulation of new genetic codes over generations. Consciousness allows us to respond to more immediate changes in the environment, as opposed to the slower, geological changes. So basically, consciousness evolved to allow organisms to respond to environmental changes on much shorter time scales than evolving your morphology to respond to environmental changes that occur on much larger time scales.
But intelligence doesn't need consciousness. If I were to create a successful Turing machine, it's absurd to suppose that it's anything other than a successful simulation, not a being having experiences.
Before the appearance of consciousness in humans (for it has not always been there), it seems we must have got by with what we had before. :up:
Are you saying that no knowledge is possible without consciousness, or am I misreading your words?
The brain is physical, while consciousness is not. Confusing the two will only lead to confusion, I suspect. For this to make sense, you need first to describe the relationship between brain and consciousness, so that we can see what you mean. This would derail this thread, of course, as we detour into the fraught realm of explaining consciousness.
Perhaps it would be easier to bypass that particular burden, and say instead "It would seem that the learning is done in the mind, not the consciousness"?
If that's all you think of that then Ok, Good luck, Bye,
? Albert Einstein
I meant to say that we humans have not always had what we call our conscious minds. Before that, we had minds, of course, but were mainly instinctive, like most other animals. The development of our conscious minds took place somewhere between being slime moulds and reaching the pinnacle of apehood.
Unnecessary? Yes, I suppose. We managed without one. But, even if they're unnecessary, perhaps having a conscious mind is beneficial, compared with not having one? That would be enough for evolution to select for it. :chin:
These are nothing but bland assertions. How do you know that human-like intelligence can go without consciousness? Why is it absurd to suppose that an artificial intelligence can have experiences?
Even as of now we could say 99% of life (microscopic life, insects and some animals even) lack human-level consciousness. In other words consciousness, a good measure of which I equate with self-awareness, isn't necessary.
That said I want to mention one thing. If life ever is to step beyond depending on random mutations for survival, consciousness is required to self-analyze, to understand pros and cons and improve the odds of survival and isn't that what humans (conscious beings) are doing? Through our consciousness we've realized that no species exists in isolation - we're all connected even if that's just a food chain - and the survival of all life depends on each and every species in the ecosystem. This understanding has made humans a major player - possessing knowledge of how to ensure a healthy ecosystem which is life itself and with the power to do something about it.
In this respect consciousness, even if unnecessary, becomes a valuable ability for not only humans but all life itself. Don't our telescopes scan the sky for asteroids that could cause another mass extinction? This became possible only by dint of our consciousness.
The problem is that consciousness appears to be passive, so self-analysis, when t happens (I believe it does) goes on in the pre-conscious mind, and when that's done, the pre-conscious mind decides what shall appear to consciousness.
Scientific American article: There Is No Such Thing As Conscious Thought
The proof that we can go without consciousness is that it actually does nothing. Whatever the mind does, it does in the pre-conscious mind with the conscious mind finding out about it after the fact, anywhere from a fraction of a second to a few seconds later.
Actually, the pre-conscious mind drives your car for you while your mind wanders to thoughts about a problem you are having or what's in the fridge for dinner. But even that is going on pre-consciously with you finding out about it a bit later.
While I agree that consciousness isn't all roses. For instance suffering and dying become that much more difficult but the upside, if you can call it that, is we can consciously, therefore efficiently, direct our efforts to our betterment and survival.
You used the term pre-conscious which I take it to be like contemporary computers - simple logical processors. You know that computers aren't capable of self-improvement precisely because they aren't conscious. So, I think we, not just humans but ALL life, need consciousness to enable us to build a sound strategy for our survival. The pre-conscious simply lacks such capabilities and that spells extinction in my book.
As a simple example put a man and a mouse in the same maze. Who has the better chance of solving the puzzle? The answer is obvious and it's consciousness that makes the difference.
It's much like computers. Driving can be reduced to an algorithm and so can be relegated to the subconscious, like walking. However, you must've noticed, new data e.g. a puppy running across the road immediately engages your consciousness because it's only conaciousness that can develop a strategy, be it short-term or long-term.
That's not proof - that's just the same baseless assertion.
It doesn’t make sense to suggest someone else is a dualist after making a dualistic claim - that being the disjunct between “brain” and “consciousness” you present as apparent without need for explanation. You seem to be saying some forms of dualism are okay and others are not? If not can you explain beyond taking the backdoor exit of “epiphenomenalism”? I don’t see how referring to “body” and “soul” is much different to saying “brain” and “consciousness”.
Of course we’re dealing with the so-called “explanatory gap” here. All forms of dualism are basically saying “I dunno, but I call it ‘wibble’”. For the sake of transparency I prefer to take on a phenomenological approach most of the time and simply bracket out the whole distinction so I can deal with what “phenomenon” is on a subjective front and then see what use that can be in a more objective sense when dealing with cognitive neuroscience.
More simply put there are several approaches to the problem of the “explanatory gap” and no singular one seems to get anywhere or say anything much without contra-appreciation of other more/less disparate ideas.
The mouse lacks efficiency.
How about this: Consciousness is simply a byproduct/side-effect of logical ability. It's a package deal. You want to buy a PC (rational ability) but you'll also need to buy the battery (consciousness). Do you like this ''offer'' better or, more importantly, can you reject it?
No, I think epiphenomenalism is better addressed headon and shown to be a non-issue. The principle of causal exclusion, which is what is often used to justify it, is misapplied here.
Quoting Unseen
You just keep asserting the same thing. Can you provide some substance, please, in addition to your insistence that it is (must be) so?
and
Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before you Make Them
Cut the jibber-jabber.
Maybe because you keep making the same assertions, over and over, without listening to what others are trying to say to you?
Quoting Unseen
Science has shown no such thing. Quite a few things that are similar, but less dogmatic and all-encompassing than your assertions, have been discovered. And work is progressing. But our understanding is not complete or universally accepted yet. The rest-of-the-mind does much more than we ever imagined, including making some decisions that we thought were conscious. But you go farther, and assert that the conscious mind does nothing and has no function. This is not among the things that science has SHOWN us.
Quoting Unseen
I have no intention of trying, as this is not what I believe, and not what I (or anyone else posting here) is saying.
What logic? Please elucidate.
Cut the jibber-jabber. Put up or shut up.
If you're not convinced, tell me what WOULD convince you that the consciousness is simply a passive observer of goings on over which it has no control?
Why would anyone be convinced by assertion without persuasion or argument? You seem to be relying on your co-respondents to go and read the articles you have read. Do you also expect us to take up these issues with the authors of these articles, who might at least be able to discuss them, and even offer some justification?
Why don't you tell us why you think that "consciousness is simply a passive observer of goings on over which it has no control"? I'll start, if you like: I think your dismissal of consciousness is going too far. While it is true that the conscious mind does much less than we thought, it still has a function; it still does stuff, and thereby makes its contribution. If it made no contribution, we should already have seen it fading away, as evolution selects for other, more useful, traits, no?
What do you mean by this, "indication... aware of themselves as beings"? And what designates or determines consciousness to be in some but not others?
What is the relation between consciousness and life or life-forms? Can life or life-forms lack consciousness (even just rudimentary levels of it)?
What is self-awareness? At what stage of animal life does the self-awareness begin? Is recognition and response of stimuli part of self-awareness? Is self-preservation mechanisms in response to conditions (both internal and external) affecting a life or life-form part of self-awareness?
What I'm trying to get at is if you're just referring to consciousness from an uncritical or casual (layperson's) point of view or is it something that you have thought through and can give insight into your analytical process. How have you arrived at what consciousness is and how have you characterised it in relation to those that possess it?
If you want to maintain that consciousness is an entity unto itself and not merely an epiphenomenon of brain activities, where is it if not in the brain. How can it be in the brain and yet separate from it and in control of it like a driver drives a car? It's hard to avoid a mind/matter dualism if you want to go down that road.
Remember, we are discussing WHY we are conscious and not whether we are conscious or how it works or is produced.
Why are we conscious since it appears to be gratuitous? The brain could carry on without conscious and does so very much of the time, processing info we are unaware it's processing.
You also wrote: "What I'm trying to get at is if you're just referring to consciousness from an uncritical or casual (layperson's) point of view or is it something that you have thought through and can give insight into your analytical process. How have you arrived at what consciousness is and how have you characterised it in relation to those that possess it?"
I don't think we can have much more than a layperson's analysis of consciousness. I think it's probably a so-called "primitive" (primary, unanalyzable concept, known directly and in no other way).
You can only know consciousness by experiences because having experiences is, basically, all consciousness is.
My changes indicate where I think you're over-stating your case. You are describing work in progress. Work that, one day, might justify your conclusions. But today, your conclusions are premature and unfounded.
No! Not "you will be right" but "you may be right".
Quoting Unseen
Some sort of empirically informed analysis, not just your say-so. But you have already dismissed science and philosophical analysis as suitable tools, and your entire pattern of posts in this thread consists in repeating the same primitive slogans over and over again, so I am not holding my breath.
Why? Because consciousness is the source of everything, and it's what unifies everything. There, I just gave you what will someday be one of the greatest discoveries of all time. :gasp:
I have given you the science that shows that what is present in the consciousness is old news, having been processed in the brain a short time earlier. I don't know what sort of "philosophical analysis" I could do, especially since it doesn't seem necessary to analyze the obvious.
There's no evidence whatsoever that consciousness can do anything since deeds are decided upon before the consciousness finds out about them. How COULD the consciousness do anything? Are there buttons to push or levers to pull? How can something immaterial do anything, since all that consciousness is is a series of experiences.
Consciousness can manifest itself in a variety of ways, one way is through a body of some kind. Moreover, there are different levels of consciousness, and at some levels very little can be done, at other levels things can be done that are beyond your imagination. Essentially when we refer to consciousness we're talking about a mind or minds.
I have levels of consciousness. Two of them. The pre-conscious "mind" which is in control, and the conscious mind watching whatever the pre-conscious mind sends its way.
Does this refer to sensory awareness?
Quoting Unseen
Is thinking carried out by the brain or consciousness?
Quoting Unseen
If the brain is the centre of sensory input and processing, what is consciousness and how does it observe brain activities?
Quoting Unseen
First, there's the consciousness that is a state of attention or focus in awareness. By this I mean, being conscious or not conscious of something.
Secondly, there's the consciousness that is a collective aspect of our mental faculty. This not only involves sensory awareness but also our perceptions and conceptions and all the processes and relations involved including thinking, belief, knowledge and understanding.
Thirdly, there's the consciousness that denotes our ultimate presence in reality. That is, what we are fundamentally in relation to what is. This goes beyond what we currently know or are aware of and is determined by how best we can represent the relation between the absolute of reality and our individual selves participating in that reality.
I think, if properly characterized and defined, then coupled with the appropriate logical connections, any hypothesis on consciousness may be said to be beyond a layperson's babble. And it may be the way to make it relevant or the least bit credible as a subject/object of consideration.
Haven't you realised? Sensory data cannot be processed in zero time. By the time it has been processed, and reached the conscious part of the mind, about 250 msec has passed. We live a quarter of a second in the past, for this reason.
I know that this isn't the delay you're so hung up on, the one that shows some decisions can be made earlier than we might think. But time delay is intrinsic to the mind, because mental processing takes time. And this delay (the 250 msec) is the one you refer to in the above quote, although I suspect you don't realise it.
So it's the brain that controls the body, in your world? Does the (immaterial) mind have no place in your scheme? Forget for a moment that the 'conscious mind' is part of the mind, and consider the mind as a whole. Every criticism you have levelled at consciousness seems also to apply to the mind as a whole. So, is the human mind just a figment, a frippery? After all, according to you it can do nothing...?
:razz: Trick question! :smile: Philosophers since Hume, and probably long before, have struggled with this one, as you surely know. :naughty: :wink:
Yeah, but it's different for us now, thanks to them. I'm asking what "consciousness" they're talking about. Even if they don't know what consciousness is, they should know what they're trying to say and mean - what their reference is in relation to the subject/object in question. I'm trying to establish a common language so that we don't have an argument where we're both discussing different things while insisting they're identical.
— Unseen
Does this refer to sensory awareness?
Me: That, yes, and also in reference to the goings on in the brain..
You: and experiments show that the brain has made the decision before the consciousness thinks it has made it.
— Unseen
Is thinking carried out by the brain or consciousness?
Me: Consciousness is the state of having experiences. It is a passive state. I use the analogy of a person seeing a movie.
You: It follows from those things that the consciousness is merely an observer of brain activities.
— Unseen
If the brain is the centre of sensory input and processing, what is consciousness and how does it observe brain activities?
Me: How the brain effects (in the sense of "makes" or "brings about") consciousness is and may forever remain a mystery and we may have to be satisfied with "Well, somehow it happens," but the conscious mind simply gets what it is revealed to it. Obviously, the brain knows much more than it sends along to the conscious mind in the form of experiences.
(This is all I have time for but I think you can apply most of it to the rest of your post.)
Quoting Unseen
You have said this a number of times, in different ways. You always refer to consciousness as a passive thing. Consciousness is "being in the state of having experiences", as you say. But surely there is an active aspect to this too? Empirical observation confirms that we also initiate or create experiences, for ourselves and for others. As conscious entities, we experience stuff, and we interact with the world so as to create experiences too, don't we?
All the things you are attributing to consciousness are done by the brain in an activity we can all pre-conscious mind (a mind behind the mind we experience). There appears to be no need for a conscious mind.
The mind is a production of the brain.
1. The subconscious that ''automatically'' drives
And
2. The conscious that thinks about other things while 1 is doing the driving.
And the brain is a collection of atoms.
Whose comment is the least useful and relevant? It's a close-run thing, I think. :wink:
Quoting Unseen
I wonder if you have gathered, from the article you read, that all actions taken by the mind are taken by the rest-of-the-mind, leaving the conscious mind as a passive observer? I believe this is possible, given our current knowledge, but I'm pretty sure that your conclusion has not yet been reached by the scientists working on it. The evidence does not (yet) say what you say. You seem to have latched onto one particular thing, and applied it a little too widely.
Yes, but it is the brain/pre-conscious mind doing that. It could be doing that without you being conscious (having experiences) at all!
Scientists often do not see the implications of their work on philosophical issues, and thus don't draw conclusions. How many scientists depend upon a deterministic world to carry out their formulae but don't sit down and ask, "Does cause and effect imply that my brain is imprisoned by causality as well?"
Quoting Pattern-chaser
Well, that is pretty much my position. The real action goes on whether like it or know it or not, but we only find out about some of it. Since it's all going on before we find out about it, it's beyond our conscious control, so the conscious experiences we have are just evidence of what's going on in our mind, and we have no way to exert control. Humans, cats and dogs, and other mammals and higher life forms could live out their entire lives, acting in exactly the same ways, and all the while experiencing nothing at all. Like plants.
When you say ‘have experiences’, can I assume you mean ‘be aware that you are having experiences’? Experience itself, or participation in events, is necessary for the physical universe to exist. But is it necessary to be aware that we are having experiences? I think that depends on how much experience we have with an experience.
When you first learn to drive, it is impossible to make the necessary connections in the brain required to drive a vehicle unless one is first aware that the information received from the senses correlates to the organism participating in the operation of a moving vehicle at a particular speed in a particular environment. Every thought, feeling and action related to driving a vehicle - including your visual attention, the pressure under your right foot and its relative position, the distance between buttons and levers and what they do, the rapidly changing placement of the vehicle on the road and in relation to stationary or moving obstacles - would have initially been consciously experienced, with each decision made in full awareness, and all relevant new information then processed in the brain for future reference.
As you acquire more driving experience, most of the operations and related decisions are gradually based more on stored information, and subsequent driving experiences of the organism, including visual and spatial cues, no longer need to occupy consciousness to trigger decision-making protocols. But if a kangaroo suddenly jumps in front of your car, then whatever else is going on in your life is probably going to quickly take a back seat, and you will once again become acutely aware of the rapidly changing placement of the vehicle on the road in relation to the kangaroo and other moving or stationary obstacles...one would hope...
I think the preconscious mind of an adult could indeed function very well for the majority of the time without consciousness - and I’m inclined to think that many of them do just that. If SURVIVAL is your main purpose in life, then consciousness isn’t necessary at all once you’ve reached adulthood, is it?
For me personally, I’d prefer to have conscious experiences - seeking new information, more complex understanding and new connections with the universe - than not have them. But then, I would argue that SURVIVAL VALUE serves as a limiting rather than motivating factor in evolution - it’s certainly not the ‘be all and end all’ of evolutionary progress.
Although this discussion includes "conscious" in its title, I wonder if it is helpful to suggest that you start looking at humans as embodied minds, and stop concentrating so heavily on the conscious part of our minds? For, despite all you say - i.e. whether it's accurate or not - it's our minds that control our bodies. Is it really so important to us, as humans, which part of our minds do what, when it's only the actions of our minds that are central to this discussion?
Yes, we are discussing why we are conscious (beings), as the OP asks. But is one small part of our minds - even though it is the conscious mind, and we're considering why we're conscious beings - really so important as to dominate the discussion, and have us ignore the rest of the mind, and the bodies in which they reside?
I'll stop you right there. The universe literally would not exist without someone to perceive it. That is the position known as idealism (vs. materialism), the view that nothing exists apart from mind. Is that really your view? Very few philosophers hold that position anymore.
As we observe brain function in progressively greater detail, our 'conscious' impression of sequential events and our response to them is shown to be quite inaccurate. Apart from our awareness, our billions of neurons process signals much like any programmed system. Decisions are made, we're told, based on that programming before we consciously decide. All decisions. Before we do what we consider to be logical and moral analysis and weighing, the choice is already made.
The logical conclusion from practical science is that consciousness and choice are largely imaginary. Dealing with those difficult facts perhaps precedes the philosophical discussion which exists only in that 'imaginary' context. While we might labor through the questions in great detail, the engine driving the process sets the boundaries. Or so the science would have us believe.
No soul, no free will, no person apart from the programming ... thoughts?
And I’m not one of them. The way I see it, there is a difference between participation in events and mental perception.
With quantum physics and process philosophy, it’s no longer a question of idealism vs materialism. The role of the observer in the unfolding of the universe need not be considered passive in a materialist perspective, as far as I’m concerned. It depends on how you think consciousness evolved from non-living matter to plants and animals to humans.
I don't think it evolved the way the eye evolved. I think it is a mutation that was never eliminated. The reason I believe this is that I see no need for consciousness in order to survive. Some of the most successful creatures on the planet, in terms of survival, are not conscious. Bacteria, the entire plant family.
If survival were the ultimate pinnacle of evolutionary success, then there would have been no reason to evolve past bacteria and plants. The fact that life did, you seem to consider as a series of mutations that animals are just trying to make the best of in the ultimate battle for survival. If that’s the case, then as humans we make very little evolutionary sense at all.
If survival were the ultimate pinnacle of evolutionary success, of life itself, then congratulations: you’ve already made it, and all you have to do is make sure you don’t die. Good luck.
As I described before, however, when that kangaroo jumps out in front of your car and your survival is on the line, your consciousness is not just a passive observer anymore. Whatever you pay conscious attention to in that moment can be crucial to your survival. If you’re still thinking of whatever else is going on in your life, your pre-conscious mind is not going to get the job done on its own, because it has no precedence (unless you’re extremely well practised at dodging kangaroos, of course).
So consciousness may not be necessary to live (depending on how you live), but in a continually changing world and when the chips are down, it is necessary in order to survive.
Consciousness is more than simply having experiences, then, isn’t it? Perhaps it has something to do with not simply receiving and processing information, but also physically incorporating or embedding that elaborately processed information into the organism. A computer must store information, then retrieve it and communicate it to the system each time the CPU determines that it’s required. A living body, however, doesn’t require the CPU for all of its operations. Muscle memory, habit, impulses, instinct, etc - all of these are examples of information embedded in the somatic systems over time, rather than controlled by the brain. But it is through consciousness that this information is so elaborately processed before embedding as a pre-conscious sequence of events.
In my view, consciousness has evolved in matter from a one-dimensional information processing system that simply receives and incorporates the information (like a water molecule receiving heat), to a four-dimensional processing system that relates information to each other in spacetime (2D), quantifies, measures and evaluates that information (3D) and also has the capacity to relate the information beyond the existence of the organism to an understanding of the universe across all spacetime BEFORE embedding it into each molecule of the organism as required.
This is an assumption. You can't possibly know it with certainty.
Why do you think a nervous system is necessary for consciousness?
Because alteration of an organism's nervous system predictably affects its consciousness.
It does, but what follows from that? That's perfectly consistent with the idea that alteration in the functioning of a plant, or a rock, or a cell, or a plastic bottle, or whatever, likewise affects its consciousness.
As I noted, the only reason I believe any object other than myself has consciousness is by observing its behavior. Consciousness cannot be seen directly and the only consciousness I can actually experience is my own. I therefore have no reason to believe rocks have consciousness.
OK, so what is the relevant difference between the behaviour of humans and the behaviour of rocks, such that you attribute consciousness to the former but not the latter?
Why it would come into existence from nothing may be because it's possible to experience sense data at a certain level of environments, and environments manifest in the deepest times.
A system where you are rewarded or punished predicts the outcome of babies and injects consciousness.
Consciousness is hardly strange, but the universe may confuse you having so many experiences.
Consciousness is the exoplanets feat, but it shows the potential of the universe, so may outdate this universe.
I suppose it comes into existence naturally, because it's such a useful and productive experience.
Since you can decipher my behavior from a rock, why not use the distinctions you recognize to answer your own question.
That's a how answer masquerading as a why answer. A genetic mutation, for example, might explain how some life got consciousness gratuitously, for example Plants can be very highly evolved, having elaborate self-defense systems, for example, as well as ways of tricking insects into pollinating them or becoming plant food for predatory plants. Our brain should be able to navigate the world and make decisions and choices based on sensory data with no assistance from the conscious mind, and in fact does this sort of thing below our level or awareness all the time.
Do you believe that a rock molecule has the capacity to receive an isolated bit of information from its environment (eg temperature change, directional force) that it embodies, and in doing so transmits information to its environment - whether or not it is aware of that information AS temperature change or directional force as such?
So, do you believe that consciousness simply appeared as it is, or developed from something simpler?
Bacteria have the capacity to sense their proximity to a desirable or undesirable chemical and adjust their movement accordingly (chemotaxis). Their ‘experience’ is extremely simple, but it is an experience nonetheless. I wouldn’t call this ‘conscious’ as such, but the capacity to process information (relate one bit of information to another) before incorporating or ‘responding’ to it could be seen as a precursor to consciousness, depending how you think it may have developed.
It is presumptuous to assume there's a reason for consciousness BESIDES the how. Why think that? Are you looking for an excuse to believe it "had to be" a product of design?
I'm not going to insist it CAN'T be design, but you need to make a case for it and not merely ask a leading question.
You use the term 'certainty' differently to me. I'd say you have a working hypothesis based purely on assumptions.
No
I can't. The differences in your behaviour from that of a rock do not allow me to make any general conclusions about consciousness, as far as I can tell. But you may have noticed something I have missed. That's why I am asking you (and Unseen if s/he cares to answer).
What is the relevant difference between the behaviour of humans and the behaviour of rocks, such that you attribute consciousness to the former but not the latter?
It only seems close to personifying from your perspective, in which only persons have experiences. But try to keep an open mind.
A Roomba has a central processing unit that does all the work: ‘receiving’ the information from sensors and then transmitting that information as instructions to the mechanical systems according to sophisticated programming. I’m not entirely sure how it works, but I can safely say that none of the Roomba parts are changed by the information they receive (except perhaps in temperature). There is no change occurring in the Roomba - only in those parts of its program that are open to new information. I imagine you could swap out the CPU in a Roomba without any problems.
Bacteria doesn’t work like that, though. It experiences the environmental condition precisely because its reaction is chemical. A change occurs to the cell itself - not simply to the information that cell receives or transmits. Not only that, but it occurs based not on a single bit of information, but on the relationship between two bits of information: enabling it to respond in time according to the direction in which the desired chemical condition is stronger.
The behavior of a rock differs not so slightly from the behavior of a person. I understand that every object is subject to physical laws, but surely you see a difference between a ball bouncing off a wall and a person throwing a ball.
So this conversation isn't interesting. It is based upon the false premise that you cannot decipher a meaningful difference between rock behavior and my conversation with you here and that has somehow caused you to wonder whether rocks are thinking, conscious things. I suppose the task you're assigning me is that I offer up some distinction and we go round and round with some nonsense Socratic attempt for you to show me that people and rocks aren't too terribly different in terms of consciousness. It's no more interesting for me to do that than it might be for me to assert that actually rabbits are planets and then we can go round and round where I point out that all the distinctions you provide are vague and subject to ad hoc corrections, so maybe rabbits and planets are just the same. Definitional imprecision is a universal objection, but it hardly means we really can't distinguish cats from dogs.
Is it? You could always try asking me rather than assuming what I think. I can, of course, decipher many important differences between you and a rock. And I certainly don't think a rock can think and experience the kind of things that you can. But that's not what is at stake. We're not talking about differences of content of experience, we're talking about the difference between some experience and no experience at all. And that, it seems to me, is a harder line to reasonably draw. And it seems you have no appetite to attempt to draw it, even though you seem to take this view on a philosophy forum and engaged me in conversation about it. I'm not sure what you are doing here or why you answered my question to Unseen if you find this stuff uninteresting.
Quoting Hanover
I can see how this makes sense for you. It’s hard to believe an organism can be conscious if it can’t feel pain. But I get the feeling it’s because we keep drawing lines like this against what we assume cannot be conscious that we have so much trouble understanding what consciousness actually is.
My argument is NOT that there is no difference - it’s that we need to better understand and explore the many, many, MANY incremental differences in how information is processed and embodied between a rock molecule and human being as an evolution rather than as a single line in the sand.
The OP is a question; WHY are we conscious and the only assumption embodied in it is that we ARE conscious. Of course, maybe we're not.
Yes, that's not a bad analogy to show some of the fallacious reasoning, I think. Need to think about it a bit more.
You're not certain that you are conscious? You've lost me.
The scientific record doesn't support a theory of higher and lower order rocks where marble, for example, can be shown to have ancient granite ancestors. Much of this has to do with rocks not being able to reproduce, much less actually having DNA.
Rocks don't process information in any literal way. This conversation remains ridiculous regardless of how much you wish to stubbornly maintain it.
It's not interesting because it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous to assert that maybe rocks have experiences, even if you wish to admit their experiences are of a different degree than humans. I'm not sure why you want to admit that though, considering you have no way of knowing that rocks don't have rich mental states and are laughing at the simplicity of humans.
How is it that you know that rocks don't know all sorts of things and aren't silent omniscient gods?
The better question, and the one I assert, is why would I think that? The onus seems to be the one on making the claim.
This is the dualist's quandary: How does the conscious affect the body and vice versa. I don't think this should lead us to wonder whether rocks have a conscious. This is the flip side of the solipsist who wonders whether he's the only conscious being in the universe, where one wonders if everything has a conscious, including rocks. Both positions seems to involve a waste of thought.
The relevant difference between the behaviour of humans and the behaviour of rocks is the expressive ego; something that is presumed as the base of sentience. It's not.
Consciousness doesn't denote expression.
Just like how the body is constantly conscious, even during deep sleep, but isn't expressive without commands from the ego.
The consciousness of rocks is no different from the consciousness of the dreaming man; aware but non-controlling.
That's a perfectly good question, and one we could discuss if you want. I've gone over it many times on this forum and the old one, and I can do it again if you like, but I suggest starting another thread so we don't derail Unseen's too much.
However, that's not how this conversation got started. If you remember, I asked a question of Unseen, specifically, "Why do you think a nervous system is necessary for consciousness?" to which you gave an answer that raised further questions, which you find uninteresting and are disinclined to answer.
Quoting Hanover
Why? Is it just the burden of proof point? Is it that you perceive that you have no odd claim to defend, and there is no case to answer until I make the case for panpsychism? Is that all?
I don't understand 'expressive ego'.
Quoting Shamshir
OK, I think I might know what you mean. Consciousness is necessary for expression or behaviour, but expression/behaviour is not necessary for consciousness. Is that the idea?
Quoting Shamshir
Maybe. I favour a version of panpsychism in which all behaviour is caused by will, although much behaviour is a mechanical emergent of many wills interacting. Indeed the behaviour of a rock would be such a mechanical emergent I think, so the whole-rock-consciousness may indeed be as you say, I'm not sure.
Of course, but you don't seem to be consistent.
You say that your belief that you are conscious is an assumption but you believe with certainty that some creatures are not conscious.
It seems to me that the first is self-evident whilst the second is, and can only ever be, a pure assumption.
Let's compare the ego to water.
Water by itself is formless, so it is without context, lacking an expression.
It expresses itself in the forms it takes: oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, etc.
Quoting bert1
That's the idea.
Thinking something doesn't mean you'll speak it.
Speaking it, means you think it.
Quoting bert1
Everything wills, but not everything is willed.
It may sound confusing, but it is as simple as going with the flow.
In part, some things are strongly willed and steered.
But on the whole, things go with the flow - willingly, but not willed.
Think of many wills interacting as creating a swirling current, which simply drags those wills around.
This motion is inertial and doesn't need to be willed or maintained; that's the essence of a dream.
So when I say that the conscious rock and the dreaming man are the same, you may think of it as 'experiencing' the world, rather than 'molding' the world, which is what the ego attempts.
I am fairly certain you have direct experience of free will. It's what you experience when you act.
Quoting Unseen
But only for empirical questions and only because the proof is itself based on assumptions.
Quoting Hanover
You and others aren't getting anywhere because "consciousness" hasn't been clearly defined. Do rocks and balls have memories that they can recall? Can rocks and balls form categories (concepts) of "humans", "rocks" and "balls" in their consciousness? Are rocks and balls self-aware? If we were to design a humanoid robot that behaves and responds like another human, would that robot be conscious?
Are you saying all behaviors are instinctual, and that free will is an illusion and really just another instinctual response to our perceptions?
Free will is not an illusion, but its freedom is limited.
A chess piece can only move within the confines of the chessboard, and free will whilst free, is confined by the absolute possible.
Does free will govern behaviour? In part.
Free will is pushing the ball off the top of the hill, then it gets lost for a bit in the inertia of being.
At some point the ball stops, and then free will is in control again.
A ‘sense’ is the faculty by which a body receives an external stimulus.
A ‘response’ is the reaction to that stimulus.
Just because it isn’t processed by a nervous system as such, doesn’t mean it cannot ‘sense’ the environment to some extent.
LOL - I probably asked for that one. FWIW, I don’t believe a rock as such is conscious, neither do I believe it can evolve.
By evolution, I don’t mean Darwin’s theory of ‘chance’ variation and the limitations imposed by natural selection, either. I mean a gradual development of information systems from non-living matter (eg. Carbon) to chemical processes, to biochemical processes, to biology and to humanity. I could substitute ‘carbon atom’ for ‘rock particle’, but the only relevant difference is in our perception of their potential for life.
My particular train of thought developed mainly after reading Carlo Rovelli’s “Reality is Not What it Seems’, and in particular Chapter 12: Information.
It’s not really worth defining interaction as an experience on the part of a rock particle - I’ll grant that. But to dismiss it as having nothing at all to do with consciousness is ignorance, in my opinion. You can quibble about my use of language that suggests panpsychism or personification of rocks or carbon atoms or amoeba, but that’s just fear talking, really. I personally maintain a largely materialist (as opposed to idealist) perspective in relation to consciousness.
Freedom in the sense of lack of constraints, even combined with a sensation of being free, is no proof of free will, for all of that is the product of a brain operating under the same deterministic rules as everything else in the universe (above the subatomic scale, where randomness seems to rule). Experiences are helpless to rescue free will.
My arguments don't rely on assumptions. They argue against the notion that consciousness is somehow necessary which appears to be merely an assumption without factual foundation.
I thought you did:
Quoting Unseen
The point is that you know what free will is, because you experience it. You can claim that this experience is an illusion, but we know what free will is just as we know what consciousness is.
‘As humans understand them’ - this is where your problem is. My definition of ‘sense’ is from the Oxford dictionary. Your anthropocentrism is getting in the way of your understanding of consciousness.
This takes me back to the query I had before: When you define ‘consciousness’ as ‘having experiences’, it seems like what you mean is ‘being aware that you are having experiences’, which in my view is a definition of self-awareness, NOT of consciousness.
Do you believe it is possible for consciousness to exist without self-awareness?
Quoting Possibility
What does self-awareness consist of, factually? If I'm having experiences, they are given to me by my brain, my pre-conscious "mind." The only sense in which they are "mine" is that I'm experiencing them, but perhaps I'm being fed someone else's experiences or artificially-produced experiences.
I don't know what this "experience of free will" is. Sure, I raise my arm, but my brain knew I'd be doing that and set up the action before my awareness or experience. Was my brain free? How? I can't even plead lack of constraints, for it's constrained by the laws of physics.
But you decide to raise your arm. Every time you make a decision, you experience yourself as free. Otherwise, making a decision would be impossible. You can only act at all by assuming that you have some degree of control over your actions.
Ok but you did say you assumed "we" are conscious not that others were conscious.
So it seems that you assume others are conscious but you are "certain" that some others (creatures) are not conscious. My point is that both these beliefs are assumptions (you have no unassumed evidence of consciousness/lack of consciousness in any human/creature).
If I lose myself in thought, is it free will, or not because the process is automatic? Part of it is free, but part of it is that I can be trapped in thought process.
Free will regarding the experience doesn't at all reflect the activity of the experience, which is that will is opposed and free at times, and the reason it is this way is physical. Better called will than free will.
Feeling free isn't BEING free. And while I, on the conscious level, FEEL free, I have no idea at all what my pre-conscious brain/mind feels. If, indeed, it feels anything. That part is beyond my direct experience.
There's plenty of evidence--behavioral, structural, etc. It just doesn't support a conclusion that's certain (or proved--but that's a truism with empirical evidence period) and people fall back on that completely ignorant "either certainty or it's a stab-in-the-dark guess" dichotomy.
I'm telling you what i meant. Nobody else can do that. Not even you. LOL
Assumptions can be justified. We base assumptions on evidence. My cat seems conscious like me arguing from analogy to myself, which is how I assume others are conscious, too. By contrast, my coleus plant on the window sill seems alive but not to be experiencing anything. It wilts if I forget to water it, but that's hard to build an analogical argument for consciousness on. It seems about as conscious as the rock on the window sill next to it.
If I'm wrong about other people, I'm unique and alone in the world.
Where is your answer to the OP? WHY are we conscious?
Ok then - I’ll rephrase the question:
Given that an experience is defined as ‘practical contact with and observation of facts or events’ or ‘an event or occurrence which leaves an impression on someone’, do you believe it is possible to have an experience without self-awareness?
"People" may fall back on that simplistic dichotomy but I'm not aware that I've fallen into that trap. I'm simply saying that beliefs about consciousness in any entity other than ourselves are, by necessity, assumptions. It's the Opening Poster who claims that some creatures are not conscious is a certainty and not an assumption.
If "assumptions" can be things we believe on plenty of good evidence, though that seems like an unusual way to use that term.
Sure but I'm simply responding to your words. In your first response to my claim that your belief that some creatures are not conscious you replied:
But you now seem to be saying that this belief is in fact an assumption that, in your mind, is justified:
Quoting Unseen
Well of course they can! But this assumption is based on the complete absence of any concrete evidence of consciousness in any entity other than ourselves.
All I'm objecting to is your introduction of the notion that other (presumably non-human) evolutionarily successful creatures are non-conscious is a given. It's not. It's an assumption.
If you think assumptions about consciousness in other creatures are based on "plenty of good evidence" when no one has any concrete evidence of consciousness in any entity other than ourselves, then we disagree about what constitutes "good" evidence.
Quoting Unseen
Quoting Unseen
Quoting Unseen
Quoting Unseen
Can I play?
The ability to self-move I think. Just as our own behaviour is determined by our values, thoughts and feelings, so is the behaviour of fundamental particles and fields is attributable to some kind of value and feeling.
I think this is a solution to the problem of under or over determination in macro-behaviour of creatures which everyone agrees have minds, such as humans. The problem is about deciding what determines behaviour. Do we tell a physical story about photons, retinas, neurons and synapses, adrenaline and motor responses? Or do we tell a story about seeing a lion, feeling fear and running away? Presumably both of these apply in some sense, but how are they compatible and what is their relationship? A panpsychist answer is that the physical is reducible to the psychological. All the particles and forces involved in the 'physical' story are doing what they are doing because of how they feel, and if they felt nothing they would not exist, because to exist is to behave in a persistent way for a while, and no such behaviour could happen without conscious will.
At such a fundamental level, there is no 'how' in terms of mechanism. Mechanism is a higher-level development in which conscious entities all doing their own thing interact in regular predictable ways, and these can then be manipulated. Consider that you could make a light switch out of thirsty human beings. Get a giant tray, pivoted in the centre. Put half a dozen people on the tray. Have electrical contacts under each end. Then put a bottle of water at one end of the tray. The thirsty humans move toward the water. The end they move to goes down and makes a contact. Then put the bottle of water at the other end, the humans move and the contact is broken. This switch would not work if the humans did not feel thirst and did not will to survive. And from an alien perspective, this might look like the mechanical movement of insentient particles obeying some kind of impersonal force. The panpsychist point I'm suggesting is that everything is like the human light-switch, only we don't realise it. When we look at the mechanical behaviour of relatively simple matter, we are like the aliens who don't realise that humans are conscious, and name regular behaviours in terms of impersonal laws. The panpsychist idea is that there are, in fact, no impersonal forces at all. All behaviour is ultimately, and most accurately, attributable to will.
I haven't argued for panpsychism here, I've just explicated (one version of) it a bit to try to answer your question.
EDIT: typos
But I just told you the evidence we have. What's the objection to it? (And the evidence had better not amount to it not being certain.)
I don't have any objection to it - I just don't think it's "good" evidence.
I assume that you agree that all our beliefs are supported by varying degrees of evidence (ranging from pretty tenuous to to pretty much cast iron). I just think that the evidence for any belief that "Some of the most successful creatures on the planet, in terms of survival, are not conscious." is more tenuous than cast iron.
For me, to be conscious is to be having experiences, and they are given to me by my pre-conscious mind. My brain. The only "contact" is the passive one in which the brain offers up an experience. In the case of conscious actions, the brain gives me the impression of both initiation and follow through.
Based on everything we know, it's a reasonable a justifiable assumption that amoeba can't have experience. I can't make assumptions on what I don't know.
I can't fight Cartesian skepticism. Maybe the truth is that the Evil Genius he invoked is feeding me lies, but based on what I know, amoebae are no more conscious than a rock.
Do.
You may be new to this discussion, so you may not know that I don't respond to article-length bedsheet tracts. I'm responding to several others and I don't intend to let this forum take over my life.
So, if you have a point, make it again briefly and in plain language. Remember that Einstein once said "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."
So that we ensure that we're talking about the same thing here...
What is the criterion for consciousness such that when it is met by any and all candidates, those candidates and only those candidates are the ones sensibly said to have consciousness whereas any and all candidates that do not meet the criterion are likewise sensibly denied to have consciousness?
Your turn.
Einstein was not a god... assuming the veracity of the quote.
I completely agree with the demand of explanation coming in the simplest adequate terms.
Based on a definition of experience as ‘an event or occurrence which leaves an impression on someone’, it’s a reasonable and justifiable assumption that amoeba CAN have experiences. We know that because we can reliably attribute a specific activity of amoeba as a physical response to a specific event or occurrence. The response is evidence that this event leaves an impression on the amoeba.
So what is it that prevents you from recognising response to stimuli as experience?
For the record, this is a poor justification for insistence on brief and plain language. Clearly we are not attempting to explain this to a six year old, but to an adult who stubbornly refuses to accept anything he doesn’t already know. There’s a big difference. Have you even read any of Einstein’s papers?
You seem to make a marked distinction between ‘me’ and ‘my brain’, as if they were two separate entities. How do you justify this, and what do you think ‘me’ is if it is not the brain or body?
Because amoebas are people too.
Having an outdoor lighting system which responds to physical stimulus.
Quoting Unseen
It's this that I take issue with.
It makes sense to assume that a stimulus and response involves the system as a whole, but it’s a different story in reality, when you think about it.
It’s likely that a reverse bias photodiode enables an electrical current when the sunlight level drops (or something similar), switching your outdoor lights on at night. The essence of the stimulus and response you’re referring to occurs at the level of the electrons in the space between the anode and cathode. The event leaves no impression on any part of the lighting system itself.
In an amoeba, however, irreversible chemical process takes place within the integrated system as a direct result of an event outside the system. You cannot say that the event leaves no impression on the amoeba. This is the essence of an experience, whether it’s possible for the amoeba itself to be aware of having the experience or not (I don’t think it is aware, mind you - but that’s not the question).
You might enjoy this lecture by Peter Watts on the exact question you proposed.
The TL:DW is "No one knows, maybe consciousness is a parasite?, anyway it's a really good lecture and I highly recommend watching it entirety (don't be discouraged by the low amount of views)
Looks interesting. I will take a look.
No, why do you ask?
I'm simply saying that your claim to know that some creatures are not conscious with the same certainty that you know you're not on the surface of the moon is an unjustified leap of faith.
The reasonable approach, given the impossibility of any direct evidence, would be to keep an open mind.
I'm not sure what we're referring to re "some of them are not conscious."
Why ask me? It was Unseen's claim:
Quoting Unseen
I was actually responding to a misread. I thought you said, "You assume that other creatures ARE conscious."
Special pleading. I'll ask you the same question I asked the OP.
What is the criterion for consciousness such that when it is met by any and all candidates, those candidates and only those candidates are the ones sensibly said to have consciousness whereas any and all candidates that do not meet the criterion are likewise sensibly denied to have consciousness?
You may replace consciousness with experience if you'd like.
Stimulus/response is inadequate. Experience takes more than that. The definition you've invoked references impressions on humans.
This is where the problem has been in this, and continues to be in many discussions about consciousness. The OP defined consciousness as ‘having experiences’, yet the impression I got from the discussion was that ‘being aware of having experiences’ was what they meant. I only wanted to clear up the confusion.
If ‘consciousness’ is defined as ‘having experiences’, then I would argue that all living entities may be considered conscious. If, however, consciousness was defined as ‘being aware of having experiences’, then only those animals that exhibit self-awareness would be considered ‘conscious’.
Quoting creativesoul
I agree on both counts. The term ‘someone’ implies human only, but doesn’t state it explicitly enough to rule out non-humans, in my opinion. The definition was quoted from the Oxford dictionary, and invoked to try and clear up the confusion I described above.
Personally, I don’t see consciousness as defined by a set of criterion or a line below which nothing is conscious. To me, consciousness describes a gradual development in the way that matter integrates information.
We are conscious (at the level we are conscious at) because God is creating a man in His image.
If you irrationally presuppose that your existence is a result of "randomness", your question is arbitrary, because everything, including consciousness, would ultimately result from "randomness", which would be the answer for the question. What hinders you is that you not only seem to presuppose that your existence is a result of "randomness", but that "survival value" is a thing in such case, which it cannot be with "randomness" as the root cause. So you shouldn't be perplexed about consciousness' role in adding or subtracting "survival value".
So, like man, God has a pre-conscious mind feeding his passive conscious mind experiences? Weird.
BTW, I'm assuming the God you're referring to is Zeus. Or is it Ahura Mazda?
Oh, so you claim to understand inner workings of God.
Quoting Unseen
Don't sweat it, you'll know when the time comes.
Didn't you say we were created modeled after him? That how human beings work.
Yes. We agree that those are consequences of those starting points and neither is adequate.
An event that leaves an impression on someone needs to be parsed in terms of what such an impression consists of and what those things are themselves existentially dependent upon.
Some impressions are left in a fluent listener by hurtful language use of a fluent speaker. Those impressions are existentially dependent upon language use. Such experience cannot be had by a language less creature, let alone an amoeba.
Not a problem. We're on the same page.
Interesting suggestion...
"In the way that matter integrates information"
I would say that that is also inadequate. It would hinge upon what the integration of information requires.
I say that - at a bare minimum - all experience takes a creature to whom the experience is meaningful. In short, all experience consists of and/or requires thought/belief about what's happening.
I readily agree that experience comes in 'degrees'(for lack of a better description).
"Creating in likeness of x" is not "creating exactly x". And "creating" is an active tense, work in progress.
And, by the way, a theory of how consciousness works is not necessarily how things are. Mind is quite an enigma for us. For example, you actually believe there is such a thing as "survival value" in a universe established by "randomness".
I understand what you’re saying here, and I do agree - however if we’re trying to get to an understanding of what consciousness is and how it emerges or evolves/develops, then exploring it (or experience) from the top down, so to speak, is a bit like trying to understand algebra by reading an advanced level university textbook on the subject, starting with the final chapter. It might be possible to eventually work it out, but that’s gotta be one of the most difficult and convoluted ways to do it, in my view. To parse an impression left on someone at such a complex level of experiencing without grasping what happens at the most basic level of ‘someone’ (however you may interpret this) during the simplest ‘experience’ (event that leaves an impression) is going to be guesswork at best.
Quoting creativesoul
Not necessarily. If we go back to the example of bacteria chemotaxing towards a chemical gradient, the experience of receiving the chemical gradient stimulus would have to be ‘meaningful’ to the bacteria in order for it to respond in this way, even without thought/belief about what’s happening. The event leaves an impression because the bacteria expends energy (an irreversible process) in changing its movement action according to two-dimensional information received: relating a chemical stimulus to direction.
Quoting creativesoul
FWIW I tend to see experience as coming not just in degrees but in dimensions of awareness.
Randomness generates new possibilities which natural selection can keep or reject.
Natural selection keeps or rejects? Like, mother nature, a conscious being, keeps or rejects something? But you don't really mean it, it's a figure of speech, right?
It's a spell you are under.
There is no other deciding factor to "random universe" than "randomness". A combination of various random elements, which some men decided to group and label nature, doesn't reject or keep anything. It's all, ultimately, random event. In such world, when something exists, it's random existence. When something dies, it's random death. And that's all it is. The problem is, probability that you exist through, ultimately, a random event, is mathematical or absolute 0%.
You mean like "figure of speech" is a figure of speech?
Quoting Henri
If by nonrandom elements you are implying a deity, you're correct. The notion that the entire universe was created by a cosmic sorcerer through an act of magic is absurd on its face the moment one REALLY begins to consider it intelligently.
But the universe is a mix of lawful activity and randomness. No getting around that.
The universe has no purpose whatsoever and a life has only the purpose you give it.
Cosmic sorcerer and magic aside (you look like you’re having fun here), what if there were more lawful activity and less randomness than we currently realise? What if the purpose we think we are choosing to give our life actually stems from laws that we have yet to discover because they require a broader awareness of the universe than we currently have?
I typically reject dichotomies. I mean, it's become almost unconscious, but for sound reasons. The notions of "top down" and/or "bottom up" have the same inherent inadequacy that nearly all other dichotomies suffer from. All dichotomies are incapable of taking proper account of that which consists of both, and is thus... neither. We're involved in very complex assessments. This endeavor/project is neither top down nor bottom up regarding it's methodology. It is both and quite a bit more. That said, despite what seems to be differences(mainly regarding criterion for experience/consciousness), it does seem that there is quite a bit of agreement governing both attitudes. I think we both realize how crucial a role that our criterion for what counts as "experience" plays in all this.
Yes and no. If our criterion for what counts as experience can only be met by creatures with complex written language replete with metacognition and/or metacognitive ability, then we will certainly not be in good enough position to say much at all about how creatures' without metacognitive ability experience the world.
You mentioned the requirement for consciousness/experience to be able to first emerge and subsequently evolve. I could not agree more.
The bacteria candidate suffers from the same fate as the amoeba. Stimulus/response is adequate to explain the exhibited behaviour. Cause/effect... the "impression". In order for a creature to relate a chemical stimulus to direction it has to make a connection, draw an association/correlation between the two. Amoebas cannot do this. They have no notion of direction. They have no notions at all. Talking about what they can experience requires the strongest possible justificatory ground.
Criterion, criterion, criterion...
Rocks can be literally left with an impression on them.
I'm just curious here. The "not necessarily" part above... are you going to argue/reject the criterion I've put forth based upon possible world semantics and/or modality(necessity/contingency)?
You realize that it does not follow from the fact that one has imagined that Donald Trump is not the president, that Donald Trump is not the president.
The criterion aspect needs to be discussed more.
Indeed, the randomness we perceive may BE lawful if we could but understand those laws, but the impediments to doing so are massive, and so we use statistical methods with a lot of success. If you're making some sort of point against me, I'm missing it. Clarify.
You seem adamant that amoeba and bacteria cannot relate chemical stimulus to direction, and yet the process of chemotaxis disputes this. I’m talking about the most basic information processing systems - not ‘notion’ but chemical process. Bacteria without polarity employ a trial-and-error process, by which they can alternate between tumbling and straight line action, effecting random changes in direction until they ‘sense’ an increase in chemical stimulus. They have the capacity for temporal sensing: they relate chemical stimulus changes over time. Those with polarity, however, are able to adjust their ‘facing’ direction until it aligns with the chemical gradient: a recognition of change in chemical stimulus received between a ‘front’ and ‘back’ of the cell. In both cases, two bits of information can be correlated upon integration.
This is not imagination. It’s biochemistry. I’m not going to conclusively prove experience in order to disprove your assumptions about amoeba and bacteria. I’m only suggesting you keep an open mind and remember that experience and consciousness must have evolved from something that we don’t currently refer to as ‘experience’ or ‘consciousness’.
Quoting creativesoul
The ‘not necessarily’ part was in reference to your leap from “all experience takes a creature to whom the experience is meaningful” to “all experience consists of and/or requires thought/belief about what’s happening”. It helps in this discussion to be mindful of anthropocentric assumptions and language, so we don’t seal off areas without searching them first. To be meaningful is to have an important or worthwhile quality. No thought/belief about ‘what’s happening’ is necessary.
We’re a long way from being able to decide or judge who/what is/isn’t ‘conscious’ besides ourselves. We’re always so keen to rush out and make judgements and decisions based on what little information or awareness we have. It’s a constant source of suffering in the world. I’ve rejected all criterion on the grounds that they tend to be more of a barrier to understanding than a tool. I realise you’re keen to get to the decisive stage, but I think it’s going to take some time being more open minded first, if you’re willing.
I'm willing. You're attributing agency where none is warranted.
Quoting Possibility
They are not assumptions. They are conclusions.
So...
We need to back pedal a bit.
Criterion.
You offered one. I negated it with actual example that met the criterion and is certainly not a case of impression, consciousness, and/or experience.
I offered one and you objected. Since, you've asked for subsequent reasoning.
You're describing behaviours that stimulus/response and cause/effect explain without loss.
That is a highly problematic line of thought.
To be meaningful is to be meaningful to a creature. Current convention shows that all theories of meaning presuppose symbolism. That presupposes something to become sign/symbol, something to become symbolized/significant, and a creature capable of drawing a correlation between the two.<-------------that is thought/belief formation. The content of the correlation exists in it's entirety prior to becoming part of the correlation.
So, while we ought take care in our discrimination between candidates, we must take care to not redefine common terms as a means to support our thought/belief.
You are wanting me to agree to a criterion for experience that does not include thought/belief.
I cannot.
Saying that an amoeba relates something to direction is to say that an amoeba has a sense/notion of direction. It is to say that an amoeba draws correlations between chemical stimulus and direction. It doesn't. It responds to physical stimulus and does so in predictable ways.
Wind vanes respond to wind direction.
To say that bacteria use trial and error is to impute/imply intention that is devoid of agency. Bayesian reasoning requires quite a bit more complexity in thought/belief than such simple cellular structures facilitate and/or will allow.
Flower petals tumble through the air at times. Other times they glide. Some things exhibit more than one behavioural pattern. It does not follow from that and that alone that they are engaged in trial and error activities.
Bacteria?
:worry:
Biology is required for experience. To what extent and how do we arrive at that conclusion?
That seems to be what's in contention.
What you call "lawful activity" would be a collection of randomly created random laws, ultimately, randomness. Statistically, it is more probable by the order of magnitude that you are insane and don't know the extent of it, than that you came into existence through, ultimately, randomness (including randomly created random laws).
And that impacts the ethical question how?
What do you mean by "would be"? Why not "could be"? or "is"? "Would be" is typically be followed by something like "except for," so the use of "would" seems to imply a follow up of some sort. What is it?
I meant - it would be if this is random-based reality.
In that sense, regarding your ethical question, one from the OP I guess, in random-based reality everything exists and ceases to exist, ultimately, randomly. There are no principles of survival that govern such reality. So there is no need to be puzzled why we would have this or that. We would have it just because. And it would be to our advantage or disadvantage just because. Like some presumably failed species, in evolution story, that randomly got some attributes which put them on the path to extinction.
Now, if you see that this is a purpose-based reality, question becomes, "Why did God give us consciousness?" You don't ask that question because you assume there is no God, but that's absolutely illogical assumption.
But on the gross (atomic level and above) level, the universe is overwhelmingly law-driven. Randomness doesn't hold planets in orbit or enforce the inverse square law. The same laws make some mutations fail while others succeed. The only random thing about mutations is that they are unexpected, unforseen, outside general normality. Cosmic rays hit DNA and cause mutations, for example.
As usual, introducing God explains nothing but rather introduces even more problems. The only way it doesn't is if you don't ask any questions about God.
You use the word "God" as though there's only one to consider. Yahweh? Ahura Mazda? Krishna? Zeus? Jupiter?
What does 'law' refer to, for you, in this context?
Quoting creativesoul
I don’t believe I’m redefining the term, rather highlighting one particular dictionary definition of meaningful that suggests ‘current convention’ may be limiting our understanding of the topic in favour of anthropocentrism. It wouldn’t be the first time.
I agree that meaning presupposes both a sign and what it signifies. But in my view the creature need not have sufficient awareness to correlate between the sign and what it signifies for the creature in order for the sign to be meaningful to the creature.
Humans perform acts or pursue experiences every day, which they claim ‘bring meaning to their lives’ without understanding why - only that it gives them a sense that they’re ‘on the right track’, that it gives them ‘purpose’, etc. Like bacteria, they may have insufficient awareness to make a correlation between an experience that means something to them and the specific something that it means - but they maintain that the experience is meaningful, nonetheless.
Many of us are uncomfortable with this situation of not knowing, though. Either we find or attribute meaning in relation to our thoughts/beliefs, or we deny the experience on the grounds that it has no meaning, because we can’t find one that fits with our awareness/thoughts/beliefs. We simply cannot imagine being unaware of what the significance of our experience might be for us, even though we’re certain that bacteria is unaware of the significance of the chemical stimulus it pursues.
Granted, this is not technically ‘trial and error’ - it’s the description given in science journals, mind you. Given the initial concentration reading of chemoattractant as A, if the subsequent reading B shows that B
I’m not trying to imply that bacteria employ reasoning. But they do employ basic correlation in the way they integrate information through chemical processes. At the very least, they’re aware of a distinction between two stimuli in spacetime. This is the foundation of awareness in all living things, as I see it.
Here, it seems there is some agreement between us. I agree that a thinking/believing creature need not be aware that it is drawing correlations between different things in order to be drawing them. Perhaps we can work with this...
Avoiding anthropomorphism is imperative on my view, and that is not an easy task. In order to avoid attributing human qualities, features, and traits to non-human creatures we must be able to compare/contrast between human qualities, features, and traits and non-human. Without getting too far into the details yet, in this discussion we're talking about the differences between human experience and non-human experience.
To do this, we must know what human experience consists of and/or is existentially dependent upon. We must have some basic understanding of human experience. Once that criterion is established to our satisfaction, we must then assess whether or not the candidate under consideration has what it takes.
Follow me?
For example, you might ask WHY you asked that question, as you would have s reason for it. You can ask why did you shoot that person.
But there really is no answer as to why we have evolved consciousness. You can ask HOW do we have it. And the answer can be given in evolutionary terms, with the emergence of specialized neural matter.
So the only answer is that we have consciousness because we have brains.
Brains have been mapped out, areas of different functionality have been determined. You can change a mind, make it feel different, with various inputs, sensory, hormonal, and pharmaceutical.
There is no doubt that the sole source of all consciousness and mindfulness is inherent in neural matter. And although we know more each year, we may never know the whole picture and are forced to accept that there are gaps in understanding.
First I have to clarify that I’m talking about anthropocentrism, rather than anthropomorphism, because I think the distinction is important before we continue. By anthropocentrism, I’m referring to the tendency to distinguish humans (us) as separate from non-humans (them). This leads to a difference in our terminology for qualities, features and traits that blinds us to what may be common to both/and - particularly when it comes to experience and the development of thought/belief. Recognising primitive pre-cursors to thought/belief without labelling them as such is tricky business when you have ‘human experience’ and all our related features and traits up on a pedestal.
You say that you typically reject dichotomies - I’m proposing we reject the human/non-human dichotomy for the purpose of this discussion. This means we either we embrace/forgive anthropomorphism (and I understand your resistance), OR we abandon ‘human’ as a distinct category (along with all its anthropocentric terms). I find there is very little common terminology available to explore the gradual development of experience and consciousness between the two.
In my view, it’s more important in this discussion to talk about the similarities and development of ALL experience: both human and non-human.
It refers to predictable and reliable regularity in how things in the world and universe behave.
Thank you for pointing that out. I had been misreading "anthropocentrism" as "anthropomorphism".
I would like to broaden the notion of anthropocentrism. There are quite remarkable differences between humans and other animals. Denying that is unacceptable, and surely results in anthropomorphism. That said, the other extreme is to deny all other animals any and/or all abilities that we commonly attribute to ourselves such as thought/belief. I take it that this is the extreme that you are trying to avoid, and I don't blame you. Rather, I joined you long ago in that fight.
However, despite that very strong agreement, I simply cannot agree with an outright rejection of the human/non-human dichotomy. That would pull all justificatory ground out from under our own feet, It would be like climbing high up into a tree, scooting out on a branch far from the trunk, and then proceeding to cut it off behind us. Human experience is the only acceptable comparative standard here, for both of us. Without establishing a criterion for all human experience, there can be no comparison between human experience and non-human experience. That's all we have to work with.
That said, I agree totally with what I understand to be your underlying concerns. There is very little common terminology available to explore the gradual development of experience/consciousness. The conventional frameworks quite simply won't allow it. Blame the philosophers who came up with the notions of human perception, apperception, conception, thought, reason, and belief. The consequences include an inherent inability to take account of thought/belief in terms amenable to evolution. None of them drew and maintained the actual distinction between our own rudimentary thought/belief and the far more complex linguistically informed varieties stemming from thinking about our own thought/belief(metacognition, reasoning, doubt, suspending judgment, etc.) Only humans are capable of these metacognitive endeavors.
Setting out the differences between rudimentary basic thought/belief and more complex thought/belief is required for being able to parse non-linguistic thought/belief. However, drawig and maintaining that distinction requires first taking proper account of the more complex, because that's precisely where we are. That's exactly what is available to us. A proper account of our own highly complex thought/belief will be parsed in terms amenable to evolution, and as such it facilitates understanding not only that non human animals have thought/belief, but also how and to some extent what the content of their thought/belief is, and/or could possibly be.
All reports require something to report upon, someone to give the report, and a means for doing so. All reports of human thought/belief require pre-existing human thought/belief, someone to report upon it, and a means for doing so.
Some of our own thought/belief are prior to our reporting them. The first report needed something to take account of. Thus, some such thought/belief are prior to our awareness of them, and prior to our considering them as a subject matter in their own right; prior to our naming them "thought" and "belief". No such pre-reflective thought/belief requires our awareness.
Some language use is adequate/capable of accounting for that which exists in it's entirety prior to our account and some is not. Our aim is knowledge of that which is capable of existing in it's entirety prior to our awareness and/or reporting upon it. In this case, we're aiming at pre-reflective and/or pre-linguistic thought/belief.
Criterion, criterion, criterion...
What do all known examples of thought/belief have in common such that it makes them what they are? What does all thought/belief consist of such that it can autonomously emerge onto the world stage in it's entirety in the simplest possible 'form' and continue to autonomously grow and/or gain in it's complexity all the way up to and/or including common language acquisition and/or mastery?
Would you at least agree with positing that there are such basic requirements, given the subject matter is human experience and consciousness?
A non-linguistic creature can recognize and/or attribute causality. If our knowledge that such a creature attributes and/or recognizes causality does not warrant further asserting that that animal has formed and/or holds thought/belief, then we're forced to admit that recognizing and/or attributing causality does not require thinking about what's happening.
A non-linguistic creature can learn that fire hurts when touched by virtue of drawing a correlation between touching fire and the ensuing pain. The creature's thought/belief is not propositional in content. My report most certainly is. The creature's learning experience does not require my report. The creature's thought/belief is correlation. All correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content. The event leaves a long-lasting impression by virtue of affecting the subsequent cognition. The creature avoids fire thereafter.
I couldn't agree more. The language used to talk about both ought be based upon a criterion that is amenable to evolution, has the strongest possible ground, and is adequate in it's explanatory power to exhaust both.
Oh...
And does not result in a reductio and/or special pleading.
Ok, thanks that's a nice clear answer. I'm not agreeing with Henri in general, but it seems that your claim that the universe is law-driven is a figure of speech in the sense that what you mean by 'law' is not a kind of force that drives things. I do think the universe is law driven, but I mean it more literally, in the sense that I think it is will-driven. Regularity of observed behaviour is a function of persistent will. Are you OK with pillowcase length answers?
I used to think there is some sort of general or nominal will that drives the universe, or that every piece of universe has some part of that will, or some will. But that's also randomness, in effect. Like a rabbit chewing on a cord, cord breaks and a door that cord held open closes. So, we have a door closing as a result of an action of a conscious being, yet the act of the door closing is random. The same problem remains - probability for us to exist, as a result of randomness, regardless of a form through which randomness executes, is mathematical or absolute 0%.
But don't you see, even if you believe that a will enforces that we call laws, that is also random in the sense that one might say "Well, natural laws could be will-driven or they simply could be there, a feature of the universe we find ourselves in, built-in as it were. We got the will-driven one more or less on the toss of a coin."
But as I've said in another post, invoking God is basically invoking a magical solution and that's an explanation that raises more issues than it solves. It's easier, by Occam's Razor, to simply accept that this is the way things are.
Yes, I think I see what you mean.
Actually, it is a definition of crazy to accept that one with 0% chance is how things are. Ironically, randomness is one which is magical in your vocabulary, and God, who is the existence, is actually easier to accept. If normal thought is applied.
By the way, you keep mentioning Zeus, for example, in your inquiry about who is God. You should at least be aware that Zeus is a claim for a god in certain sense, just as Michael Jordan is a god to some people, in certain sense. But Zeus is not a claim for God. And God is not a god. At least understand a claim when you pretend to argue about it.
Anyway, it's nonsense piled upon nonsense, starting from first post, and people are reading it and nobody says a thing.
If the door closing is the result of something else happening, then it is not random.
The bit about the probability for us to exist being a mathematical and/or 'absolute' 0% is rubbish. In order to know the probability of an outcome/event one must know all of the influencing factors as well as all of the possible outcomes.
You do not, nor does anyone else.
So you are saying that in order to know probability you have to know all?
Then, sorry, but you don't understand what probability is. Probability is method for understanding outcome based on incomplete information. And based on information available to us, which is incomplete, we can calculate probability, because, again, that's what probability is - a calculation of outcome based on incomplete information. And that result, for case in point, is mathematical or absolute 0%.
But can you understand that probability for random-based existence is mathematical or absolute 0% when you don't understand what probability means?
How many outcomes are possible?
What are the factors influencing and/or determining each?
Are you saying that you need not know the answers to the above two questions in order to know the probability of an outcome?
As it stands this is a gratuitous assertion.
Show your work.
?
I am saying that you can calculate probability with whatever information you have. That's what method of probability is for. The more information you have, the closest is result to the fact. It's a probability. Not a fact. But when you can calculate, with the information we have, 0% probability, that's game over, although it's still not a fact. It's a probability.
Show your work. Gratuitous assertions are not acceptable here. I don't think you know what you're talking about. Prove me wrong.
Show how you arrive at the probability. Show the info you used, the calculations performed, etc...
Show your work.
Based on what I see being presented here, I doubt that's the case.
Anyway, there are many calculations, done by both mathematicians and physicists, which you can research. You don't need me. You can start with understanding what probability is and go from there. I won't even present names you can research, to not be biased. Everybody can have his favorite scientist.
The thing is, various calculations, including one you could ultimately do, vary. But all are pointing towards 0%.
The small probability is incomprehensible for us.
Here's an example of the scope.
There are millions of information in a DNA. They have to be in correct order to produce something meaningful. If they are not in correct order, which is vast amount of possible combinations, they produce nothing. Like a software that has to be correct to produce something, or produces nothing if it's just some random collection of characters in a file. (And there are much more possibilities for garbage file than meaningful code.)
To grasp how improbable DNA creation is, let's not look at millions of information in an order, but at 10-note melody on a piano. How many 10-note melodies are possible on a piano? Answer is, about 60-80 with 18 zeros after. Like 60 000 000 000 000 000 000. To play every single 10-note melody available, it would take about 2 trillion years.
Now, if such a small collection yields such huge possibilities, taking 2 trillion years to execute each, one time, which is another impossibility for random system on top of it, how many possibilities are there to randomly order millions of information in a DNA?
We cannot even comprehend how small probability for functioning DNA is. The presumed age of Earth is about 4 billion years. To play all 10-note melodies on a piano, one after another, one time, takes 500 times longer than this presumed age of the Earth. But DNA is not a collection of 10 notes. It's a collection of millions of information, ordered in correct order (otherwise it produces nothing). Some calculations say probability for random DNA creation is 0.1 to the power of above 100 thousand. 0.1 to the power of 50 can be considered mathematical zero. This is 0.1 to the power of 100000.
And this is only about DNA. We have to include probability of Earth coming to existence, with water and other life-producing elements, etc... On the top there is a probability for a reality, with it's laws, which allows life as we know it to exist, which is mathematical 0% itself...
But you don't even need to do any calculation to grasp the truth of how rarely randomness produces things. You can be aware that randomness produces new complex units of reality at either rate that's almost zero or is absolute zero.
If anyone out there understands this gobbledegook, please explain what Henri thinks.
Plants have less of a struggle, if their immediate environment doesn't change too much. The propagation of plants doesn't result in consciousness; imagine how empty and meaningless the universe would be with no creatures to be aware of it?
I agree with this so far. At this point I’ll go back to my earlier reference to the way that matter integrates information. My thoughts/beliefs on this topic have been difficult for me to translate into suitable terminology, but they relate in the simplest possible ‘form’ to some elements of Integrated Information Theory (IIT) (as a work in progress), and also to Carlo Rovelli’s ‘Reality is Not What You Think’ - in particular Chapter 12: Information.
In any case, I disagree with your earlier statement that biology is required for experience, so I expect we have some discussion coming there. In my view, the simplest possible ‘form’ of experience emerges from the simplest possible interaction of matter. In reference to quantum mechanics:
How experience then evolves and develops from the interaction of protons to multi-dimensional human experience and consciousness is a wild ride...
It's likely sexual energy is the intelligence of sperm, so to speak, and it's how babies form, static created by sperm species in the womb mechanism.
I briefly read through the link. There's much to like, but there are some serious issues...
The above is an excerpt from the article. I like the notion of consciousness being existentially dependent upon groupings of basic elements(consciousness "requires"...). There seems a potential issue with talking about the groupings 'making a difference to themselves', and then calling that making of a difference to themselves "integrated information". Leaves me guessing how we can possible say that certain groupings of certain elements are even capable of 'making a difference to themselves'.
Existing from it's own perspective requires having one. Add Descartes to that, and you've added an additional requirement of taking account of oneself. Having a perspective requires having a worldview. Taking account of oneself requires common language use. So, if we're strictly following these guidelines, and leaning on Descartes, we've already delimited consciousness to self-awareness of language users.
The second axiom states that consciousness has composition. I would concur. However, the fourth axiom seems to contradict the second. If consciousness has composition, then it consists of individual elements. To know that consciousness has composition requires knowing what those elements are. Although, groupings of elements are not equivalent to individual elements, if consciousness has composition, it must consist of individual elements.
It seems that this distinction between the groups and the individual elements is what grounds the conclusion that individual elements are inadequate, whereas certain groupings have what it takes. I'm not at all opposed to that approach for establishing a criterion for consciousness.
The bit about all consciousness existing from it's own perspective seems to be a springboard from which the theory begins to make claims about consciousness that can only be satisfied by creatures capable of taking account of their own specific state. There's quite a bit of talking about consciousness in ways that we cannot sensibly attribute to anything other than creatures capable of language. The third postulate shows this...
It seems that that is and/or may be the result of taking Descartes too seriously...
Descartes makes a good argument for being aware of one's own existence by virtue of talking about ourselves. However, if we take this too strictly, and posit it as a necessary condition for all consciousness, then we'll have no choice but to deny consciousness to all non-reflective thought/belief, to all non-linguistic creatures, or find ourselves guilty of anthropomorphism.
The theory rests upon the idea that different groupings of basic elements are capable of 'making a difference to themselves'. That's a big problem if we extend this criterion to AI and other animals without language.
Probably not much on my end.
You don't need me to tell you that when you fart no genius melody comes out of your rear, randomly. It's just a fart, every single time.
I’m not sure I follow what you’re asking here. This reads like a cut and paste from Google translate.
And if we're looking for a definite answer to what the spirit is, it happened in the womb stage; an event that metaphorically, is encircling you.
Therefore, you can only trace experience to find a definite state of existence, of the encircling power(that was generated by an event in the womb).
I noticed this, too. As I said, it’s a work in progress. And I think relying on Descartes does the theory more harm than good. My earlier quote from Rovelli offers a different way of looking at it, by pointing out that we can only talk about ourselves in relation to our interaction with a system that is not ourselves. This is grounded in quantum mechanics and Shannon’s information theory. Applied to consciousness, it’ll make your head spin - but you may notice it doesn’t sit well with Descartes.
In my view, the ‘groupings making a difference to themselves’ make more sense understood in terms of basic chemistry. With physical stimulus-response, the interaction is instantaneous: there is no experience of time. But chemical process (as I see it) establishes a relationship of interaction between particles (I prefer to call it a relationship system) that produces entropy ([s]‘awareness’ of time[/s] directional ‘time’ information). This relationship is finite and dependent on the elements involved, their respective positions and velocity in spacetime, available energy, etc. While the process is active, the relationship system (or ‘grouping’) functions as an entity: it is able to interact with other particles or relationship systems and integrate information - and all of its elements have potential access to that information (ie. awareness) for as long as the chemical process lasts. Depending on the nature of that process, it could be over in an instant or last long enough for the relationship system to interact with several other entities across spacetime - and possibly even engage in other chemical processes, establishing a complex relationship system that has relationship systems operating within it...
My use of terminology might need refining, but hopefully you get the idea of where I’m going.
(EDIT: entropy is not ‘awareness’ of time at the initial level. This occurs in a relationship system of relationship systems, according to Rovelli’s statement.)
The mind/body dualism is completely unacceptable on my view.
I don't understand how that could be true. We do talk about ourselves with language, which satisfies the criterion, because language is a system that is not ourselves. However, we can talk about ourselves - using common language - in many other ways. So, if we can talk about ourselves without talking about the language we're using, then we're talking about ourselves in a manner that is not in relation to our interaction with language. We can. Therefore...
I do not understand how that could be true. QED.
Any theory of consciousness that leans on quantum mechanics for justificatory ground carries along with it a notion of disembodied cognition(yet another mind/body dualism). That is a consequence of an inadequate understanding regarding the mental ongoings that predate and facilitate language acquisition and it's subsequent use(pre and/or nonlinguistic thought/belief).
Having acquired a good grasp of what all human thought/belief consists of, I'm subsequently acquiring a relatively good grasp of how human thought/belief emerges, serves as a basis for subsequent thought/belief, is accrued, and gains complexity.
Could you explain this? I’m not talking about disembodied cognition, so I’m not sure where you drew this conclusion.
Quoting creativesoul
How do you see it, then?
No need for me to further explain my own mistaken account. If I've confused your position with some past memory(which is not at all out of the question), then I'll gladly apologize.
I've no obvious issue with the above revised version, aside from maybe a quibble regarding what sorts of things can be sensibly said to "establish a relationship".
However, all interaction has a duration. So, I cannot agree with the following snippet taken out of the above...
Not all interaction is experience.
What is the minimum criterion, which when met by a candidate of our choosing, will offer offer solid ground upon which to claim that all such candidates are capable of 'integrating information'?
What does all information consist of, at a bare minimum. What does integrating that entail?
I want to thank you for offering so much constructive criticism and pitfalls to consider. It’s been enlightening - the biggest lesson I think I’ve learned is how to protect intellectual property on forums such as these. I see enormous value in this type of academic discussion, but I now realise obviously there’s a knack to it that I still have to work on getting the hang of. You seem clearly well versed in it yourself - it took me a long time to work out where I was being led. Call me naive. I imagine you probably don’t realise you’re doing it, and might even say I’m reading more into your approach than is intended. I don’t think I am - I’m just operating on a value system that doesn’t protect the individual, and that clearly won’t get me far in academia. I do appreciate the demonstration, though. I’ll just have to be more careful in future.
The exchange was interesting. Too bad it has to end prior to getting into the details. I'm not sure about what much of your latest reply means, because it seems chock full of presuppositions and/or unspoken thought/belief much of which seems to be about me and/or my intentions...
which is rather puzzling given who I am
...but thank you for the pleasantries.
Intellectual property rights?
:wink:
It's funny you mention those here. I've had a few people express similar concerns to me, going as far as to ask if I was worried about it, and suggest that I ought be. I'm not. I've no dog in the fight, and I have no expectation regarding any sort of financial rewards or academic accolades.
I just find it all entertaining, stimulating, and in some weird sense soothing... especially when expectation consistently matches reality.
Be well.
:smile:
Because to be conscious is to be aware. And you can't have knowledge of X without being aware of X. Because being aware of something and having knowledge of it is the same thing.
So you think that the falling tree makes no noise, if there is no observer present to hear it? That seems to be the argument you're presenting. Is knowledge a personal possession, and not something that exists objectively (i.e. in a mind-independent way)? I don't argue one way or the other, but I wonder which fits your perspective?
Imagine an individual animal's information processing system as akin to a simple society of the form I am about to describe. In this society, there are only three professions. Either you are a mechanic, an engineer or a researcher.
The mechanics take care of all of the everyday jobs that need doing come what may. The engineers take care of the more difficult tasks. But, those task are still ones that may be completed with existing knowledge and practices - albeit some situationally novel decisions may need to be taken - but only within existing known conceptual constraints.
Finally, the researchers conduct blue sky research working out novel solutions to problems that either do not exist or whose existence is so recent and is sufficiently outside the remit of known concepts that relying on the repetitive skills of the mechanics or the higher order, but nevertheless conceptually constrained, skills of the engineers is not going to be sufficient to solve such problems.
The researchers, then, are for the most part superfluous to the functioning of the society. But, novel situations arise sufficiently frequently that, when they do, the researchers pay for their keep.
In the above metaphor, the researchers are akin to consciousness. Mostly superfluous. But, occasionally indispensable
So there is no knowledge unless there's a conscious entity there to be aware of it. OK. :chin:
Do you suggest that consciousness is bad for survival? Negative survival value is not the same as zero survival value.
Why do tetrapods have four limbs, why do we have two arms and two legs, instead of more? Is it the optimal number? Or maybe it's been just good enough to get by, given the rest of our selective advantages and good fortune.
The fact that artificial intelligence will one day imitate or surpass human intelligence without consciousness does not entail that, in the actual, concrete, historical course of animal evolution, there never has been any survival value for consciousness. It might just have happened that functions that could be satisfied without consciousness in another context got satisfied with consciousness instead.
As functions that could be satisfied by six limbs got satisfied by four instead.
There doesnt seem to be any other system, besides consciousness, to guide complicated fauna in its daily struggles.That should tell us that consciousness is the best game in town.
Yes... because to be aware of X and to know of X is the same thing.
Knowledge requires both rationality and consciousness. This is why neither rationalism nor empiricism can lead to knowledge.
A completely irrational fool cannot have knowledge of X because he doesn't understand X. A robot can't have knowledge of X because he's not conscious of X.
Quoting 3rdClassCitizen
I'm OK with the last bit, but I wonder if even facts exist in a mind-independent way? A fact is some sort of explanation about the world. I think that explanation originates with us, although the subject of the explanation exists mind-independently. :chin: But this is really a quibble. In general, I wouldn't argue against what you're saying. :smile: :up:
Look at it this way: Knowledge is *at a minimum* Justified True Belief (we can exclude Gettier cases for the time being because not every case is a Gettier case): Truth and justification is the objective aspect and belief is the subjective aspect.
The preconscious mind IS conscious in the required way. What call and perceive as consciousness is what that mind passes on to us as consciousness. So, to be paradoxical, we ARE conscious (in the way you say is necessary) without being conscious of it.
Ok. Let’s see.
Looks like a living thing has the natural tendency to alter its genes such that it’s offsprings can use the environment around them optimally to increase the chances of survival and reproduction, be it matter or energy. Both plants and animals can be observed to use these physical entities, matter like chemicals, water, gases, etc and energy like light, sound, heat, gravity, etc. But while such matter and energy was often used directly, such as in mineral observation and photosynthesis in plants, and metabolism and locomotion in animals, living beings had another way of conducting their lives in the planet, which is something called “sensing”. At first it is believed to have been rather primitive by our standards, some globule of chemicals that could identify a helpful chemical from a useless one, or could slowly swim itself towards some source of heat it sensed, but eventually thanks to evolution, some lineage of beings became equipped with such enormously complex and powerful organs as eyes and ears, supplying their central nervous system with detailed information about their environment. It is believed to have been a sort of automatic process, called instincts and habits. There was no mind in the brain of even the most complex animals like mammals, i.e. they could go to a river and drink some water, but didn’t know that. Eventually Homo Sapiens came along, and they differed from all other mammals in the regard that they could not only do that, but know what exactly they’re doing. Being conscious about it.
Now, why are Homo Sapiens conscious? It’s the same answer to the question why are plants green or why are birds restless? It’s because every living being tends to not only try to make the best use of its environment to survive and reproduce, but each of it tends to as a species try (sometimes successfully) to make its reproduced offsprings even better equipped for survival and further improved reproduction. But not all of them do it the same way. For some species it’s a lager paw while for others it’s a more reddish hue of its flowers. For some primates it was apparently a more advanced brain capable of consciousness, abstract reasoning, planning, language, and much else.
(Little must have nature herself guessed what would eventually happen when she first equipped some great apes with this singular capacity.)
OK. So, what is so special about organisms? It may be that they maintain atomic-level spontaneity, by being able to amplify the effects of events as small as a single electron excitation. It is not impossible for a single photon to initiate a cascade-response throughout the organism. This doesn't necessarily mean we are "tuned into" the quantum universe, but what it does mean is that organisms are vertically responsive -- whatever has guided our evolution has done it in a way that preserves the sensitivity of literally billions of micro-systems that make up our bodies, and enables these sensitivities to be marshaled into organism-level responses.
So, does this sensitivity cause sentience? A radio antenna does not cause radio waves, but we would be tempted to think it does if antennae provided our only evidence of them. We can apply the same argument to sentience. The micro-sensitivity of organisms is like a choir of a billion voices -- not in unison, but influencing and responding to each other. Organisms constitute the only example we have of this kind of complexity, but again, the complexity is not necessarily the cause of sentience; rather it is what enables organisms to participate "creatively" in whatever sentience is.
Now, we may speculate that sentience is everywhere, or we may speculate that every energy event has an experiential component; these would be two versions of panpsychism. Let's say that some version of panpsychism is true. Organic micro-sensitivity would enable organic systems, like nervous systems. to experience and amplify orchestrated sensitivity. While inorganic structures are not excluded from whatever sentience is, their inability to amplify micro-sensitivity would exclude them from any form of activity that reveals the presence of sentience.