Questions about consciousness

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In summary: So a coma patient still has awareness of what's going on around them, they just can't control their body and it's reactions.
  • #36
SamirS said:
Well it is assumed that plants only react to inputs, at least those which do "move" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_movements ).

It is assumed because plants lack a real nervous system and also a brain or any device to actually interpret information.

If a venus flytrap reacting to something landing inside its petals amounts to subjective experience, then a button that closes a circuit and moves some mechanical part could in theory also have this kind of experience. A light sensor doesn't need subjective experience to react to light.

So because plants lack any of the known required devices for subjetive experience, and the fact that they are based on the same laws as we are, it is very very unlikely that they have a subjective experience, which is for all intents and purposes the same as for now declaring they don't have it.

Precisely, all evidence points to them not having consciousness.
 
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  • #37
So because plants lack any of the known required devices for subjetive experience, and the fact that they are based on the same laws as we are, it is very very unlikely that they have a subjective experience, which is for all intents and purposes the same as for now declaring they don't have it.

I don't find this to be very sound reasoning. Plants have a respiratory system, but no lungs, a circulatory system, but no heart. Plants have stress hormones.

These systems are easy to identify by their functionality. Plants also have decision making capabilities in their apices:

http://ds9.botanik.uni-bonn.de/zellbio/AG-Baluska-Volkmann/plantneuro/pdf/NeuroPlantTZ-Biologia.pdf

so all the evidence based on functionality points to them adapting similar traits to us in order to survive.

Once you start talking about subjective experience, do you really know what you're talking about? Do you really know the physiological mechanism for consciousness? Is it even a productive question in science yet?
 
  • #38
Pythagorean said:
I don't find this to be very sound reasoning. Plants have a respiratory system, but no lungs, a circulatory system, but no heart. Plants have stress hormones.

These systems are easy to identify by their functionality. Plants also have decision making capabilities in their apices:

http://ds9.botanik.uni-bonn.de/zellbio/AG-Baluska-Volkmann/plantneuro/pdf/NeuroPlantTZ-Biologia.pdf

so all the evidence based on functionality points to them adapting similar traits to us in order to survive.

Once you start talking about subjective experience, do you really know what you're talking about? Do you really know the physiological mechanism for consciousness? Is it even a productive question in science yet?

There is nothing that shows that plants have a co-ordinating ability greater than that of local genetic and biochemical processes.

There still remains to be no evidence that plants possesses a consciousness. There is no observed mechanism of decision making or sensory processing etc

EDIT: although I do agree that subjective experience is a hard thing to analyse and discuss. It's easier to measure if things are conscious (as we would recognize it) and so for the purposes of answering the OPs question plants do not have consciousness.
 
  • #39
Pythagorean said:
I don't find this to be very sound reasoning. Plants have a respiratory system, but no lungs, a circulatory system, but no heart. Plants have stress hormones.

These systems are easy to identify by their functionality. Plants also have decision making capabilities in their apices:

http://ds9.botanik.uni-bonn.de/zellbio/AG-Baluska-Volkmann/plantneuro/pdf/NeuroPlantTZ-Biologia.pdf

so all the evidence based on functionality points to them adapting similar traits to us in order to survive.
Argument by analogy? Because we breathe air and they do, because we pump fluids and they do too, it follows that, since we think, they probably do too?

Come on Pyth.

Plants do not have a nervous system. Nor is there any suggestion that there's something we're missing in the makeup of a plant that could contain a subjective experience.
 
  • #40
I read somewhere, to perform the kind of activities like calculations, planning, speech etc etc the brain requires a intensive form of energy . I think we can distinguish between plants and humans (or animals in general ) one way is aerobic respiration, and only possible on this planet because of Oxygen, which gives us a enormous source of energy to maintain our brain activity . In fact our brain uses about 25 % of our total energy.

Each glucose molecule gives 18 ATP through aerobic respiration. But in photosynthesis the number of ATP molecules are much less.

So our consciousness (and intelligence ) comes at a very high price.
 
  • #41
So if plants are like mechanical machines then they DON'T sense?
 
  • #42
candydude357 said:
So if plants are like mechanical machines then they DON'T sense?

Plants do sense. They have faculties to sense light, chemicals in soil, gravity, mechanical forces etc etc but they do not have a consciousness with which to perceive and think about these sensory inputs.

In the same way as my laptop can adjust it's screen display brightness by monitoring light levels through it's camera but it is not conscious. It just reacts to it's input.
 
  • #43
So in order to be different from a computer, for example they would have to be conscious? What about babies? I always thought that they didn't have consciousness.
 
  • #44
candydude357 said:
So in order to be different from a computer, for example they would have to be conscious? What about babies? I always thought that they didn't have consciousness.

It's not clear cut what makes the difference between non-conscious and conscious. A baby is conscious. It doesn't magically gain the ability to think after a certain number of years
 
  • #45
ryan_m_b said:
It's not clear cut what makes the difference between non-conscious and conscious. A baby is conscious. It doesn't magically gain the ability to think after a certain number of years

Doesn't it develop it though?
Also I always thought there were mammals that didn't really have consciousness.
 
  • #46
candydude357 said:
Doesn't it develop it though?
Also I always thought there were mammals that didn't really have consciousness.

Your consciousness does not develop; your intelligence, knowledge, personality etc all do. By their very nature mammals have consciousness (they have a CNS)
 
  • #47
Wait, so the computer's reaction is also classified as sensing?
So if we could invent a way for computers to reproduce they would be classified as living?!
 
  • #48
candydude357 said:
Wait, so the computer's reaction is also classified as sensing?
So if we could invent a way for computers to reproduce they would be classified as living?!

Yes computer's sense, sensing isn't that big a deal. Reproduction is a whole different issue! If something can reproduce then yes it could be classed as alive (if it reproduced with variation it would even evolve)
 
  • #49
ryan_m_b said:
Yes computer's sense, sensing isn't that big a deal. Reproduction is a whole different issue! If something can reproduce then yes it could be classed as alive (if it reproduced with variation it would even evolve)

But if sleeping, or even people in a coma could sense sounds that would be different from how computers sense...?
 
  • #50
candydude357 said:
But if sleeping, or even people in a coma could sense sounds that would be different from how computers sense...?

I thought we'd already gone through this? People in a coma do not have conscious thought, contrary to popular belief sleeping people do have conscious thought (though perhaps not in all stages of sleep).
 
  • #51
What stages of sleep are completely unconscious?
Also where does anaesthesia come in with conscious/unconscious.
 
  • #52
candydude357 said:
What stages of sleep are completely unconscious?
Also where does anaesthesia come in with conscious/unconscious.

As far as I am aware NREM sleep is unconscious. When you are under anesthesia you are unconscious.

Put it this way, whenever you are not thinking you are unconscious
 
  • #53
But doesn't sleepwalking and other reactions occur in nREM?
EDIT: and non-lucid dreams
 
  • #54
candydude357 said:
But doesn't sleepwalking and other reactions occur in nREM?

Yes in the slow wave period of NREM however the sleepwalker is not in a full state of consciousness
 
  • #55
ryan_m_b said:
Yes in the slow wave period of NREM however the sleepwalker is not in a full state of consciousness

Does that mean COMPLETE lack of consciousness or "partial" consciousness?
 
  • #56
candydude357 said:
Does that mean COMPLETE lack of consciousness or "partial" consciousness?

Enough to mean you have no recollection, don't perform entirely rational acts and have a limited capability to respond to the environment
 
  • #57
DaveC426913 said:
Argument by analogy? Because we breathe air and they do, because we pump fluids and they do too, it follows that, since we think, they probably do too?

Come on Pyth.

Plants do not have a nervous system. Nor is there any suggestion that there's something we're missing in the makeup of a plant that could contain a subjective experience.

The argument is that you don't know, not that I know. It's a subtle difference, but with something like subjective experience, It's an important one.

I still haven't heard any mechanism for consciousness, so it's not really me who has the onus. I'm not claiming plants are conscious. I'm claiming it's not even a scientific question.

Though at any time, any of you are welcome to show me formally how matter can be conscious in the first place and simply prove me wrong.

Maybe I just missed that breakthrough.
 
  • #58
Pythagorean said:
The argument is that you don't know, not that I know. It's a subtle difference, but with something like subjective experience, It's an important one.

I still haven't heard any mechanism for consciousness, so it's not really me who has the onus. I'm not claiming plants are conscious. I'm claiming it's not even a scientific question.

Though at any time, any of you are welcome to show me formally how matter can be conscious in the first place and simply prove me wrong.

Maybe I just missed that breakthrough.

We don't require an understanding on the mechanism of consciousness to characterize and recognize it anymore than we need to understand the mechanisms of digestion to recognize what it is, what it isn't and what is required or not. Psychology and cognitive neuroscience are devoted to studying aspects of consciousness, are you going to say their efforts are unscientific because they do not understand the mechanism?
 
  • #59
Pythagorean said:
The argument is that you don't know, not that I know. It's a subtle difference, but with something like subjective experience, It's an important one.

I still haven't heard any mechanism for consciousness, so it's not really me who has the onus. I'm not claiming plants are conscious. I'm claiming it's not even a scientific question.

Though at any time, any of you are welcome to show me formally how matter can be conscious in the first place and simply prove me wrong.

Maybe I just missed that breakthrough.
Perhaps I misunderstood. Or perhaps you were actually being sarcastic/facetious.

In your earlier post, you seemed to be arguing that plants might have a form of subjective experience, since they evolved along similar lines as higher life forms. I just don't follow that logic.

all the evidence based on functionality points to them adapting similar traits to us in order to survive.
 
  • #60
I'm trying to point out the difference between functional and phbomological.

All we have a grasp of in science (and this is the bio forum, not the philo forum) is functionality.

Sure, we play sound with consciousness in cognitive sciences, but that's more stamp collecting than mechanistic models.

The few successful models that can be argued from neuroscience (ie say selfridges pandemonium model) DON'T point to a correlated master controller as Ryan implied, they point to neural competition.

The point is not to bring plants up to "our level" but to bring us down to the level of, if all you could do was measure your physical states, you wouldn't guess humans are conscious besides for the very bias fact that you're conscious.
 
  • #61
Ryan, no. At one of my jobs, I characterize and classify infrasonic acoustic signals. It stamp collecting, it will be useful someday. But to claim I know the mechanism for how this signals arose without any ground truth would not pass peer reviews. I don't know the mechanism of te signals I study.

I can go now and make my own signals and correlate them, but there's mad degeneracy in the system.

Same is true with neuroscience (see Eve Marder)
 
  • #62
Sorry for crappy iPhone typos.
 
  • #63
Thought you were having a seizure...

Or proving a point about the deleterious effect of infra sound on neural processes...
 
  • #64
Pythagorean said:
Ryan, no. At one of my jobs, I characterize and classify infrasonic acoustic signals. It stamp collecting, it will be useful someday. But to claim I know the mechanism for how this signals arose without any ground truth would not pass peer reviews. I don't know the mechanism of te signals I study.

I can go now and make my own signals and correlate them, but there's mad degeneracy in the system.

Same is true with neuroscience (see Eve Marder)

Regardless of what you may have to do to pass peer-review you recognize that you don't have to understand the mechanism to characterize it.

We can define what we mean by consciousness and examine if things match this definition. We can say that consciousness includes memory, imagination, planing, decision making etc and examine to see what allows these (we know it's the brain) and what possesses these attributes.
 
  • #65
ryan_m_b said:
Regardless of what you may have to do to pass peer-review you recognize that you don't have to understand the mechanism to characterize it.

We can define what we mean by consciousness and examine if things match this definition. We can say that consciousness includes memory, imagination, planing, decision making etc and examine to see what allows these (we know it's the brain) and what possesses these attributes.
To play Devil's Advocate:

I think the point is that all of the above is self-fulfilling: we see that because it is what we expect to see where we look for it.

Is imagination required for there to be consciousness? If we come across an entity that doesn't have one or more of those things, does that mean it is not conscious?
 
  • #66
DaveC426913 said:
To play Devil's Advocate:

I think the point is that all of the above is self-fulfilling: we see that because it is what we expect to see where we look for it.

Is imagination required for there to be consciousness? If we come across an entity that doesn't have one or more of those things, does that mean it is not conscious?

Not necessarily, I see your point and I agree but we do have these phenomenon. We define them under a banner (consciousness) and then look to see if anything else has it. Whilst there may be different types of consciousness it is highly unlikely that plants have any kind of consciousness.
 
  • #67
Under this banner, humans that were conscious and suffering were assumed to be comatose.

Or did you have something mor sophisticated than the medical definition?

All I'm demonstrating is my lack of faith that you actually have the grasp of consciousness that you claim to.
 
  • #68
ryan_m_b said:
Not necessarily, I see your point and I agree but we do have these phenomenon. We define them under a banner (consciousness) and then look to see if anything else has it. Whilst there may be different types of consciousness it is highly unlikely that plants have any kind of consciousness.

Agreed. As with rocks and atoms, so it is with plants. Not only do we not see signs of consciousness, we are at a loss to even posit a plausible mechanism by which they might.

The onus lies on others to put it forth. Till then, Occam says case closed.
 
  • #69
Pythagorean said:
Under this banner, humans that were conscious and suffering were assumed to be comatose.

Or did you have something mor sophisticated than the medical definition?

All I'm demonstrating is my lack of faith that you actually have the grasp of consciousness that you claim to.

I'm sorry if you think I have an absolute claim of consciousness, I'm actually claiming that we can define and characterize consciousness well enough to conclude that plants do not have one (or in the unlikely chance that they do it's so utterly different to ours that it's is pointless referring to it as 'consciousness')

EDIT: cross-posted with Dave so to just add to what I said "What he said"
 
  • #70
I would take that as a non-reply. I specifically pointed out where a definition of consciousness failed (the medical one). I have a right to be skeptical that you (anyone) really even know what it means to be conscious to be able to judge other species in the first place. Being conscious isn't enough. In the words of Dennett, Everybody thinks they're an expert on consciousness because they're conscious. But they really have no scientific leg to stand on, only a philosophical and anecdotal one.

ryan_m_b said:
(or in the unlikely chance that they do it's so utterly different to ours that it's is pointless referring to it as 'consciousness')

this is why I used the words "subjective experience" rather than consciousness. We have a bunch of philosophical and emotional baggage attached to the word consciousness.

I still have no clue whether other life forms have subjective experience; I don't even know how it arises in humans. I think the onus is on either side to prove invertebrates do or don't have subjective experience. Until then, it's philosophy.

By the way, since you're confident, where do you draw the line? Do lower mammals have subjective experience? What about insects, fish, worms? Obviously you wouldn't think single-celled organisms have any kind of experience if you don't think plants do. So where do you draw the line?

Can we now start talking about mechanisms for consciousness rather than vaguely restating our positions?

You previously said something to the effect of "plants are just a bunch of chemical interactions". So what you're saying is that humans have a soul that sets them apart or something? I don't get it. Maybe you started using the word "consciousness" to mean "soul" and still haven't realized it? Prove to me that you're more than chemical/physical interactions.
 
<h2>1. What is consciousness?</h2><p>Consciousness is the state of being aware of one's thoughts, feelings, and surroundings. It is the subjective experience of being alive and aware.</p><h2>2. How is consciousness measured?</h2><p>Consciousness is a complex concept and cannot be measured objectively. However, scientists use various methods such as brain imaging, behavioral tests, and self-reporting to study and understand aspects of consciousness.</p><h2>3. Can consciousness be explained by science?</h2><p>While there is still much to learn about consciousness, scientists have made significant progress in understanding its neural basis and how it arises from the brain's complex networks. However, the full explanation of consciousness remains a mystery.</p><h2>4. Is consciousness a product of the brain?</h2><p>There is strong evidence to suggest that consciousness is a product of brain activity. Studies have shown that changes in brain function can directly affect one's level of consciousness, and damage to certain brain regions can result in altered states of consciousness.</p><h2>5. Can consciousness be altered or manipulated?</h2><p>Yes, consciousness can be altered or manipulated through various means, such as meditation, drugs, or brain stimulation. However, the extent to which consciousness can be altered and the potential consequences of such alterations are still being studied.</p>

1. What is consciousness?

Consciousness is the state of being aware of one's thoughts, feelings, and surroundings. It is the subjective experience of being alive and aware.

2. How is consciousness measured?

Consciousness is a complex concept and cannot be measured objectively. However, scientists use various methods such as brain imaging, behavioral tests, and self-reporting to study and understand aspects of consciousness.

3. Can consciousness be explained by science?

While there is still much to learn about consciousness, scientists have made significant progress in understanding its neural basis and how it arises from the brain's complex networks. However, the full explanation of consciousness remains a mystery.

4. Is consciousness a product of the brain?

There is strong evidence to suggest that consciousness is a product of brain activity. Studies have shown that changes in brain function can directly affect one's level of consciousness, and damage to certain brain regions can result in altered states of consciousness.

5. Can consciousness be altered or manipulated?

Yes, consciousness can be altered or manipulated through various means, such as meditation, drugs, or brain stimulation. However, the extent to which consciousness can be altered and the potential consequences of such alterations are still being studied.

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