To be fair, the assumption here is pretty much the same as the conclusion: assume that consciousness requires humanlike complexity, and then conclude consciousness is absent in things without humanlike complexity. Or in short: human complexity is absent in non-human complexities.Pythagorean said:You simply refuse to accept the assumptions.
You could be just as obstinate by requiring that I show the gravitational constant works at some precisely define r, m1, and m2 for which no experiment has been performed.
I didn't ask for assumptions, I asked for evidence. You said you don't have any. Who's trolling?Pythagorean said:Yes, all of neuropsychology, pretty much. You're trolling and bating at this point, as you obviously don't accept the assumptions behind the evidence.
pftest said:Im not aware of any examples of emergence in nature. Of course that could be because of my limited knowledge, but feel free to offer a clear example that we can focus on.
Feel free to point out where I am not being rational. You say rocks arent conscious and that rationality requires we dismiss it, but you left out the rational part. What is it?
Btw, if the universe turned out to be entirely rational, do you think this is incompatible with the idea that consciousness (which is the basis of rationality) is a universally found phenomenon? Quite the opposite id say.
Jimmy Snyder said:What experimental evidence do you have for or against atoms of iron having consciousness?
Isn't anyone willing to answer this question?
Pythagorean said:The assumption is Physicalism: that consciousness requires the complex processes provided by the physiology that life exhibits. You also have to accept the assumption that you can derive consciousness from behavior and cell dynamics. Then you would run the test on iron atoms (which would feel quite silly) and see that it failed.
Jimmy Snyder said:I didn't ask for assumptions, I asked for evidence. You said you don't have any. Who's trolling?
brainstorm said:Normally, I would assume this. However, what is so special about brain and nerve cells that would make them the only candidate for housing the kinds of electronic patterns that make it possible to consciously experience interactions between inputs and outputs?
...
Plants, for example, might be completely aware of everything going on around them but have absolutely no emotional investment in it, nor in their own existence.
Maui said:You are acting irrational. Even if everything we know is wrong, you will need to demolish all of science as we know it, to make a reasonable case on it. You aren't able and no one else is. Accept what our knowledge very strongly implies or join religions, mystics, or any other method of inquiring nature.
Maui said:You are acting irrational. Even if everything we know is wrong, you will need to demolish all of science as we know it, to make a reasonable case on it. You aren't able and no one else is. Accept what our knowledge very strongly implies or join religions, mystics, or any other method of inquiring nature.
We should agree on what consciousness looks like. As-we-know-it, consciousness involves at least the ability to make simple decisions and react selectively to stimuli.pftest said:assume that consciousness requires humanlike complexity, and then conclude consciousness is absent in things without humanlike complexity. Or in short: human complexity is absent in non-human complexities.
brainstorm said:Normally, I would assume this. However, what is so special about brain and nerve cells that would make them the only candidate for housing the kinds of electronic patterns that make it possible to consciously experience interactions between inputs and outputs?
Often people assume that "lower animals" have "a lower level of consciousness," but maybe it is other aspects they lack instead of consciousness. E.g. animals seem to have higher thresholds of pain and discomfort in many cases, but that could just be because they are not sensitized to the extent that humans are. They may also do less cognitive "thinking" than humans, but does that mean they are less aware of the things they pay attention to?
Animals might just be conscious entities like humans that do not think or feel as much. I.e. they could be like super-soldiers that block out thought and feeling to accomplish difficult and potentially traumatic missions.
Anyway, I guess I got off track from my initial point that consciousness might be possible in other media than living nerve tissue, but my point was basically that it's hard to imagine consciousness of different kinds of inputs and outputs than we are used to in human-situations, but that it might still be possible for other things to be conscious, except without self-perception, pain/pleasure, fear(of death), emotions, etc. Plants, for example, might be completely aware of everything going on around them but have absolutely no emotional investment in it, nor in their own existence.
Can we do a simpler example that is easier to understand? I fear the quantum one will open a can of worms about nonlocality and such. If everything is truly emergent, do you think an H2O molecule is a suitable example? If so, what is it that emerges from it?Maui said:Well let's start with the most obvious one - everything. The whole universe and everything that exists. Nothing at all in this universe is reducible to what it seems, all interpretations involve some form of implicit magic. Pushing reductionism leads to a new world, usually simply denoted as "quantum world" with different laws and principles. For some reason(don't ask why here, open a new thread, it's a philosophical question) nature seems to allow mathematical modelling of otherwise irreducible systems. The deeper we probe, the more mathematical and descriptive science becomes(i.e. often lacking causal explanations). Large parts of biology, quantum chemistry, condensed matter physics, etc. deals with collective behavior that is not there in isolated sytems. Let's take as an exmple the most disturbing one to our assumptions - entangled particles separated in space which can only be modeled as a single entity through a single wavefuncion.
Here it is assumed that biting and talking is a neccesary characteristic of being conscious. What about people that don't bite and don't talk?The rational part would be the belief that when i pick up a rock, it will not bite or talk to me or display any conscious trait. As far as the current scientific paradigm of how and what the world is supposed to be is concerned, rocks are not conscious. Even mentioning that they might be is considered irrational, as it contradicts all the observations we've accumulated so far of their static, inanimate state. Belief that they might be is an irrational philosophy, pending further evidence.
brainstorm said:I wasn't even following the discussion but there is absolutely nothing about critical skepticism that entails demolishing any science. The most fundamentally definitive scientific value is that skepticism and alternative hypotheses are constructive, not destructive. You are trying to make science into what the church was when Galileo and others were questioning its orthodoxies. There is no "accepting what our knowledge implies" in true science. There's only critical inquiry into tentatively held theories. If you want "acceptance," of knowledge, you're better off pursuing some kind of dogmatic faith than science.
[/quote]Maui said:The answer to these philosophical musings lies so far into the future that it's almost meaningless to post an opinion. But your points are valid nonetheless.
brainstorm said:I don't see the point of construing something as "philosophical musings" that "lie so far into the future that it's almost meaningless to post an opinion" except to discourage doing so. What's wrong with formulating hypotheses without having the ability to test them (yet)? Isn't it better to at least work toward legitimate theorizing instead of wildly speculating about whether rocks are conscious without rational analytics?
I use a theoretically neutral definition of consciousness:DaveC426913 said:We should agree on what consciousness looks like. As-we-know-it, consciousness involves at least the ability to make simple decisions and react selectively to stimuli.
Rationality is anti-dogmatic. Dogma is the rehearsal/recapitulation of knowledge without reason or critical comprehension. Why does it matter whether science is more, less, or equally dogmatic as Galileo's church? Claiming it's less dogmatic only implies that it is better because less dogmatic and therefore to accept whatever dogma it does promote. That's like using science to eschew science.Maui said:If everything in this universe is conscious, then consciousness IS everything. That would be the death of all we've come to know through science and the system of ideas we hold about the world. Science is far less dogmatic than the church on all levels. Some level of dogma is necessary if we are to remain rational.
The trouble with your definition is that we are outside observers, so we must have a definition that is external. How do we know something is having experiences?pftest said:I use a theoretically neutral definition of consciousness:
Consciousness = having experiences
Examples of experiences are those that all of us are familiar with: seeing, hearing, smelling, etc.
This is an adequate enough definition for all of us to understand what we are talking about.
pftest said:We must be very careful in defining consciousness in terms of what it looks like, since this is essentially the same as assuming a conclusion, by deciding up front which things are and are not conscious. If we agree that it looks like human brainactivity, then of course things without it won't be conscious. If we agree that it looks like electrons, then of course everything with electrons is conscious.
pftest said:Can we do a simpler example that is easier to understand? I fear the quantum one will open a can of worms about nonlocality and such. If everything is truly emergent, do you think an H2O molecule is a suitable example? If so, what is it that emerges from it?
Here it is assumed that biting and talking is a neccesary characteristic of being conscious. What about people that don't bite and don't talk?
Materialism is a metaphysical idea, its not science.
The idea that science relies on or supports materialism is not true. When Newton came up with classical mechanics, he did not include a paragraph that said "this mathematical equation describes a nonconscious system". There simply is no logic that implies that lawfully behaving objects must be nonconscious objects.
No, I think consciousness can be theorized as pure awareness of whatever activity is present without assuming vision, hearing, smell, feeling, emotions, pain/pleasure, or even thought. E.g. I assume my monitor is not aware it is on and in use but it could be, theoretically, without having any particular attitude or disposition about what's going on. Then it could become "unaware" when it goes to sleep or is turned off or unplugged, or maybe not even then. The question is what would/could make pure awareness possible.pftest said:I use a theoretically neutral definition of consciousness:
Consciousness = having experiences
Examples of experiences are those that all of us are familiar with: seeing, hearing, smelling, etc.
This is an adequate enough definition for all of us to understand what we are talking about.
You're being too definitional. The issue isn't defining consciousness as electrons and so everything with electrons is conscious. The issue is to analyze what could possibly be responsible for consciousness, preferably by beginning with the mechanics of the human nervous system and attempting to figure out why it perceives instead of just reacting to inputs with various processing and outputs.We must be very careful in defining consciousness in terms of what it looks like, since this is essentially the same as assuming a conclusion, by deciding up front which things are and are not conscious. If we agree that it looks like human brainactivity, then of course things without it won't be conscious. If we agree that it looks like electrons, then of course everything with electrons is conscious.
brainstorm said:Rationality is anti-dogmatic. Dogma is the rehearsal/recapitulation of knowledge without reason or critical comprehension. Why does it matter whether science is more, less, or equally dogmatic as Galileo's church? Claiming it's less dogmatic only implies that it is better because less dogmatic and therefore to accept whatever dogma it does promote. That's like using science to eschew science.
Why does science have anything to do with believing what is conscious and what isn't? How does understanding the mechanics of physical forces, chemical reactions and properties, or biological systems change if you think of the entities involved as having perception/awareness? It might be comforting to you personally to believe that science conclusively proves that most matter is dead and/or unconscious but I don't see what the conscious/unconscious dichotomy has anything to do with understanding the mechanics of physical matter.
brainstorm said:You're being too definitional. The issue isn't defining consciousness as electrons and so everything with electrons is conscious. The issue is to analyze what could possibly be responsible for consciousness, preferably by beginning with the mechanics of the human nervous system and attempting to figure out why it perceives instead of just reacting to inputs with various processing and outputs.
Ok i understand, no causation. But look at the bit I've bolded. Because consciousness-as-we-know-it entails brainwaves, isn't this just another way of saying "whenever we see brainwaves, we see brainwaves"?DaveC426913 said:Do not misunderstand. All I am doing is drawing a empirical correlation of observation. Correlation does not imply causation.
"Whenever we see consciousness-as-we-know-it, we also seem to detect brain waves. Places where we do not see consciousness-as-we-know-it, we also do not detect brain waves. No causation between the two is impllied or intended."
Ok temperature. Doesnt that just consist of particles in motion, and particles in motion have been around since the big bang? So what emerges with regards to temperature?Maui said:Temperature, surface tension, boiling and freezing point.
When i don't talk and bite, I am still conscious. There is no need to compare this with an invisible batman.What about Batman who is invisible?
With materialism here we are talking about the idea that consciousness arose in brains. To virtually all scientific ideas, except for a few about the human mind, it is irrelevant whether the brain is the origin of consciousness. It makes no difference to them whatsoever.Science is deeply rooted in materialism. This doesn't yet say if materilism is the final answer or not.
Lets hear it then. What observations and what rationale lead to this conclusion?Nature is the decisive factor and so far our observations lead to the rational(based on what we know about consciousness) conclusion that rocks are very likely not conscious.
I didnt mean to say that consciousness must involve vision, hearing, etc. The key part in my definition was "having experiences". This leaves open what kind of experiences, or who is having them.brainstorm said:No, I think consciousness can be theorized as pure awareness of whatever activity is present without assuming vision, hearing, smell, feeling, emotions, pain/pleasure, or even thought. E.g. I assume my monitor is not aware it is on and in use but it could be, theoretically, without having any particular attitude or disposition about what's going on. Then it could become "unaware" when it goes to sleep or is turned off or unplugged, or maybe not even then. The question is what would/could make pure awareness possible.
Ok. Id say that from a physical perspective, the brain does indeed just "react to various processes and outputs". Yet we are conscious. I think the more science understands the brain, the more it will become clear that it really is just an ordinary lump of matter doing what matter always does.You're being too definitional. The issue isn't defining consciousness as electrons and so everything with electrons is conscious. The issue is to analyze what could possibly be responsible for consciousness, preferably by beginning with the mechanics of the human nervous system and attempting to figure out why it perceives instead of just reacting to inputs with various processing and outputs.
BBruch said:If everything in the universe is for the most part made of matter, (to keep the idea simple we'll just say it's all protons neutrons and electrons although I understand you can get smaller with the protons and neutrons)stars, people, cars, oceans, planets.. EVERYTHING is made of the same small units of matter, how is it that some matter is conscious? For example people. We are made from the same matter as a wall of iron (on a subatomic level), so theoretically couldn't all matter could be conscious??
Jimmy Snyder said:What experimental evidence do you have for or against atoms of iron having consciousness?
Evo said:Dave, Pythgorean, Maui, etc... I am really surprised at all of you. Did none of you understand Jimmy's question in regards to the OP's question, which I bolded above? Come on guys, you're better than this.
pftest said:Ok temperature. Doesnt that just consist of particles in motion, and particles in motion have been around since the big bang? So what emerges with regards to temperature?
pftest said:When i don't talk and bite, I am still conscious. There is no need to compare this with an invisible batman.
Lets hear it then. What observations and what rationale lead to this conclusion?
I think this will happen with any emergent phenomenon you pick. It will turn out to not be emergent.Maui said:Electrons do not really move in atoms, this popular picture is slightly misleading, so we have to refrain from asking certain questions and adopt a partial explanation based on a model that we know is not true(dismissing the bohmian description due to the inherent magic involved). I now saw that an experiment has been made to ascertain the "temperature" of a single atom, so part of my motivation to include temperature as an emergent phenomenon is diminished.
It plays a role yes, but that is not the same as it being a requirement. The only evidence we have that a functioning brain is required for consciousness, is anecdotes of unconsciousness. Thats not robust evidence. We can find such anecdotes reporting the opposite aswell.Would that be reason to assume a rock that doesn't bite might be conscious? Conscious of what? Doesn't science very strongly say that a central nervous system plays a role in being conscious?
What do you accept as evidence of consciousness?Zero evidence of a nervous system or organs related to perception.
pftest said:I think this will happen with any emergent phenomenon you pick. It will turn out to not be emergent.
It plays a role yes, but that is not the same as it being a requirement. The only evidence we have that a functioning brain is required for consciousness, is anecdotes of unconsciousness. Thats not robust evidence. We can find such anecdotes reporting the opposite aswell.
What do you accept as evidence of consciousness?
Evo said:Dave, Pythgorean, Maui, etc... I am really surprised at all of you. Did none of you understand Jimmy's question in regards to the OP's question, which I bolded above? Come on guys, you're better than this.
pftest said:To be fair, the assumption here is pretty much the same as the conclusion: assume that consciousness requires humanlike complexity, and then conclude consciousness is absent in things without humanlike complexity. Or in short: human complexity is absent in non-human complexities.
This has nothing to do with jimmy's request directed at the OP. People in this thread have gone off on a tangent that has nothing to do with jimmy's post.Pythagorean said:The point has already been made that water and plasma (for instance) are made of the same subatomic particles, yet have much different emergent properties. Sharing the same matter doesn't mean anything, it's all about the interactions and dynamics. Physics is not materialism.
Did you know 99.9% of everything on Earth is made of up quarks, down quarks, neutrinos, and electrons (and the force carrier particles like photons, of course)? That's it, nothing else. And we have a hell of a range of diversity: people, cars, trees, rocks, weather, fire, fusion just from that small handful of particles.
So it's silly in the first place to indicate that things being made of the subatomic particles should all have the same emergent properties. We still need the periodic table, because adding just one electron and one proton (which is made of up and down quarks) can dramatically change the properties of a material (consider Hydrogen vs. Helium).
There's no reason for such an experiment, and I've outlined why we wouldn't (for the same reason) test that Newton's law of gravitation works for some specific values of m1, m2, and r.
And what does it have to do with jimmy pointing out that there is no experimental evidence of the OP's post? You guys seem to have completely missed jimmy's point.Pythagorean said:That's exacly the post I just summarized...
Evo said:And what does it have to do with jimmy pointing out that there is no experimental evidence of the OP's post? You guys seem to have completely missed jimmy's point.
So, you realize now what jimmy pointed out in his first post in response to the OP's claim below.Pythagorean said:We know from chemistry and materials science that iron atoms do not display any of the emergent behavior linked to consciousness: not the transients, not the information processing, no ability to predict.
The evidence is out there, it's just not explicit, because nobody expects to be challenged about iron atoms having consciousness: it's rather self-evident that they don't.
I'll excuse you since you came in on the tail end and probably didn't realize how badly jimmy's post was misunderstood.We are made from the same matter as a wall of iron (on a subatomic level), so theoretically couldn't all matter could be conscious??
Evo said:So, you realize now what jimmy pointed out in his first post in response to the OP's claim below.
I'll excuse you since you came in on the tail end and probably didn't realize how badly jimmy's post was misunderstood.
Jimmy Snyder said:Thanks. That's two no responses so far.
Sorry. I had asked people if they had evidence and two people responded that they did not. I meant that I had two "No" responses.Pythagorean said:he just responds ambiguously: "thanks for the non-reply".
pftest said:Ok i understand, no causation. But look at the bit I've bolded. Because consciousness-as-we-know-it entails brainwaves, isn't this just another way of saying "whenever we see brainwaves, we see brainwaves"?
Evo said:And what does it have to do with jimmy pointing out that there is no experimental evidence of the OP's post? You guys seem to have completely missed jimmy's point.
DaveC426913 said:Wait a minute. Are you saying that, ignoring all we know so far, since we have not actually explicitly tested atoms for consciousness, we can't know?
Does that likewise mean that, since we have not actually tested the molecules of Mercury, we cannot say that they are the same atoms we've put in our periodic table?
Jimmy Snyder said:I have read the posts presenting circular logical arguments masquerading as evidence and I fear for the future of science.
I prefer we focus on a single simple example of emergence. The emergence of space and time (if they emerged) arent good examples since they would not counter the idea that consciousness traces back to at least the big bang (a muddy and poorly understood phenomenon), and that no emergence has been happening in nature ever since. So let's focus on non-linear behaviour. Id like to understand what it is that emerges there.Maui said:Observed non-linear behavior and phase transitions are very unlikely to be reduced to more fundamental interactions unless new, unknown causal factors are discovered(basically a different type of physics). It's not that temperature is not emergent, it's that according to the latest knowledge, the field is fundamental and everything emerges from it(incl. space and time). Not a small conceptual issue by any standard. Moreover, the modern understanding of the transition between micro and macro does away with particles - particles are illusory appearances, left over in the process of decoherence. Basically, all we know intuitively is wrong to a large extent and in the process of finding out, we are seeing that what were once self-evident Truths(axioms), they turn out to be a case of human "baggage".
We have anecdotes of nonmaterialist experiences aswell. It doesn't matter, since i explained earlier how the evidence is not robust and open to many different interpretations than a materialist one.The point is we do have circumstantial evidence(what you call anecdotes) that points to consciousness being highly related to the nervous system. The opposite proposition has none at all, just baseless speculation.
You said that there is no evidence for consciousness in rocks. That means you are looking for a particular type of evidence and you did not find it. Thats why i asked what it is that you accept as evidence of consciousness?Any manifestation of the consciousness of rocks whatsoever. I am willing to pay to see the evidence.
Most neuroscience is about how the brain interacts with consciousness. Interaction between mind and brain is only indicative on monism, and not materialist monism in particular. The only evidence that points towards materialism, is anecdotes of unconsciousness, but this is as problematic as all anecdotal evidence and is wide open to non-materialist interpretation.Pythagorean said:You start proofs with assumptions; if they're wrong, you will get contradictions by applying them (or you can proof by induction, but this topic isn't formalized mathematically so that would be more difficult)
This is a long-term proof. It started with an assumption... all of the EVIDENCE so far has supported the assumption.
All of the evidence (experiments, measurements, observations, etc) are in cognitive neurosciences. People are studying the binding problem, people are studying qualia (in neuroscience). People are studying self-awareness.
The evidence has repeatedly shown that the complex behavior and cognitive moment all directly come from operations in the brain pertaining to neurons and how they communicate to each other. The matter they are made up of is just the means... the actual information transfer comes from the interactions between the billions of neurons.
Not unique to humans and mammals, but unique to living things. This is just how we use the term. Consciousness is attributed via evaluation wrt certain behavioral criteria. Nonconscious things are so called because they don't behave/respond in certain ways. This has been associated with certain structural characteristics, and so we're fairly confident in identifying hubcaps, tennis racquets, etc. as being nonconscious, nonintelligent, nonliving things (as differentiated from the behavior, or lack thereof, of unconscious, unintelligent, or once alive but now dead things).Pythagorean said:Is there any evidence, in the first place, that consciousness is something unique to humans/mammals/living things (whatever your personal bias)
The word, consciousness, is just a communicative convention. It's just a label associated with certain behaviors and physical forms. It doesn't require any empirical justification, or philosophical proof, other than that. We know that rocks and tires aren't conscious because of how we conventionally use the term. It's either that, or, consciousness is just a superfluous collection of letters with no particular communicative utility.Pythagorean said:My assumption may align with yours; I think that consciousness results from the higher complexity; I wouldn't be surprised if a single-celled organism had some limited form of consciousness, but rocks and tires don't seem to. However, that's not reasonable to just state it and leave it there. We still have to prove either philosophically that it must be, or empirically that it is.
This isn't a major difficulty because ultimately that's how any term (whether it refers to a relatively persistently ponderable object or a behavior) is unambiguously defined. It's been refined and incorporated into science as the practice of defining terms 'operationally'. Consciousness refers to behavior. And structural associations follow. If it looks like a duck, etc., etc., then we call it a duck. Consciousness isn't applicable to hubcaps or rocks because, afaik, they've never behaved in a manner that even remotely approximates any of the criteria that we associate with consciousness.Pythagorean said:The major difficulty is that already, you can't prove that any other humans are conscious unless you define it behaviorally ...
Then how would most philosophers define a behavioral term if not behaviorally?Pythagorean said:... (which isn't satisfactory to most philosophers).
DaveC426913 said:"Whenever we see consciousness-as-we-know-it, we also seem to detect brain waves. Places where we do not see consciousness-as-we-know-it, we also do not detect brain waves. No causation between the two is impllied or intended."
You may be calling it two different names, but i think you are referring to the same physical things.DaveC426913 said:No.
I've said "where there is A , we also see B".
You seem to be interpreting that as "yeah, but since A=B, we could say where there is A we also see A".
Which makes no sense to me.
Ok let me ask you: if 2 atoms 1mm apart move 2mm apart, is this emergence?Pythagorean said:The point has already been made that water and plasma (for instance) are made of the same subatomic particles, yet have much different emergent properties. Sharing the same matter doesn't mean anything, it's all about the interactions and dynamics.
