Is Consciousness Solely a Product of the Brain?

[Pythagorean]

Now here's a real problem... can we usefully define something that neither you nor I seem to care about?

I have the impression, from discussions in this forum, that some people strongly feel that they have the power to make decisions, but they also believe that this is somehow in contradiction to what physics tells us about the world. I think we've agreed there is no such contradiction?

yes, we have. When our prefrontal cortex is able to inhibit primitive behavior, based on social conditioning, we might say we have demonstrated willpower, which I don't argue against. Or when an organism is able to persists through threatening environmental odds, it may refer to it's will. I don't argue against this either (though we know this kind of will is limited, we can't defy the break the laws of physics no matter how bad we may want).

Rather, what is inconsistent with determinism (i.e. incombatibilism) is the notion of "free will". That some kind of soul makes a decision independent of the physical mechanisms of the brain.

 

[pftest]

Just as a comment, I don't think that nismar is claiming that there is some discrete jump from no-consciousness to consciousness at the human level. You may say that it is irrelevant at which scale the jump occurs. I don't know that we are ready to say that, looking at things apeiron says it would suggest a much more gradual process of "emerging" consciousness. One that would gradually gain in complexity.

Yes it is irrelevant at which scale the jump occurs. If something is non-existent, then it can't get gradually more complex either. So instead of the emergence of consciousness in brains (which implies that consciousness suddenly "flipped on" at some point, no matter how small the scale), it makes more sense that we have a very complex form of consciousness in brains, but that as we go back on the evolutionary timeline (and before), consciousness becomes gradually less complex. Most of us accept this is true when we go back to our apelike-ancestors, and that many other simpler organisms are conscious (cats, snakes, perhaps even insects). But as the organisms get really simple (or when we reach inanimate matter), many will think consciousness is no longer present. I understand the intuition behind this but it conflicts with the idea of a gradual increase in complexity.

Yes, you are right that as we take one grain of sand away at a time from a "pile" there is no defining line that says "300=pile, 299=conglomeration" or what have you. However, there does come a time when the word "pile" ceases to hold meaning. The only thing that, in my opinion, has been shown is that "consciousness" is a word much like "pile" that is lacking in precise defintion, a qualitative concept. But we shouldn't make ontological conclusions from a demonstration of the limitations of our language.

Now you are getting to the important point: language itself and the act of labelling things. Physically, the pile is just a collection of basic physical ingredients (elementary particles, etc.). But our senses think it is an entirely new/different phenomenon so we give it a new label (this is useful to communicate with other people). However, the pile is reducible, meaning that it can in principle be described fully in terms of basic physical ingredients. So the new label "pile" is actually redundant. "pileness" is not a physical property, it is merely a higher level description. The important part here is that labeling things and mistaking them to be new phenomena is a conscious activity. Consciousness is required to do it in the first place. That is why one says that consciousness is like "pileness", one in fact says that consciousness is a higher level description, and higher level descriptions require consciousness in the first place.

 

[pftest]

Evidence that "people believe the universe is alive" in accordance with PF standards for the statement you've made; "just google it" isn't in it, and you know better. The last time you took this kind of position, remember how well that ended? Let's please avoid that, and just follow the guidelines which exist for a reason.

I can't just say, "Snails love garlic butter and cook themselves, I hear people say." Then tell you to google it...

...and if you mean that some people believe ANYTHING, what was "some believe the universe is alive" doing in your posts here? You know I don't play these games.

The last few times i posted a handful of peer reviewed papers that supported my points (of course, they supported my points precisely because i often get my points from science). You didnt, and so it was pointed out to you by a mentor that the forum isn't an opinions column. Enough said.

Now I am afraid I am going to be a bit more brief with you because i see this isn't fruitful for discussions on PF. If you provide counterarguments then i will happily respond to them. Otherwise no.

 

[Pythagorean]

Evidence that "people believe the universe is alive"...

At what point does a bunch of little organisms become one organism? Where's the line between the consciousness of individuals and the collective conscious of a subculture (such as physicsforums)?

Where's the boundary between living things and the universe?

How do you bake a pie from scratch?

 

[JDStupi]

Now you are getting to the important point: language itself and the act of labelling things. Physically, the pile is just a collection of basic physical ingredients (elementary particles, etc.). But our senses think it is an entirely new/different phenomenon so we give it a new label (this is useful to communicate with other people). However, the pile is reducible, meaning that it can in principle be described fully in terms of basic physical ingredients. So the new label "pile" is actually redundant. "pileness" is not a physical property, it is merely a higher level description. The important part here is that labeling things and mistaking them to be new phenomena is a conscious activity. Consciousness is required to do it in the first place. That is why one says that consciousness is like "pileness", one in fact says that consciousness is a higher level description, and higher level descriptions require consciousness in the first place

While it is true that we can label things (and be mistaken) only if we are conscious, I still stick to my previous statement. "Consciousness" is not a term quite so easily given a definition. While the Being of consciousness (if you will allow me to speak in such vague terms) is given in experience, the concepts we form of consciousness are not. Exactly how we define consciousness is of the nature of a hypothesis. So, for all factual things that we label, we can be mistaken about the nature of the description applied. "Consciousness" is a concept we have labelled within experience, and as such the concept is capable of being mistaken.

That much I am sure you will agree with. Where we differ, is in re-defining the concept "consciousness". You hold that consciousness can be defined properly only if it is defined as being an intrinsic aspect of the "atoms" of this world (taken in the sense of elementary phenomena) because the opposite involves a contradiction.

The contradiction lies on the law of the excluded middle, and you are saying that something cannot by definition emerge from its opposite, for that would be a logical contradiction. Now we have a number of important tangent questions. Among them are "Can we use logical conclusions to make ontological conclusions?" and the related question "Is it not we who define the terms and use the logic?". So you see, my skepticism lies deeper in the application of the style of argumentation itself. While the law of contradiction may logically (or ontologically) hold true, it is we who create the distincition between opposites and so the choice of what is opposite is, to some degreee, arbitrary.

An example, so you may see where I am coming from, is the "Abstract-Concrete" dichotomy. Consider the genetic code, is it abstract or concrete? How do abstract operations arise from concrete interactions? It is concrete insofar as it requires specific complementary base pairs and molecules in order to be physically instantiated. It is abstract insofar as the "instructions" are by no means contained within the physics and the code is nearly "universal". We have a code that is transcribed and as long as the physics are equiprobable. (As you can see Thymine and Uracil are poth pyramidines and have similar molecular structure and these are typically interchangeable wrt Adenine) the information can be transmitted to different molecules, and yet is not identical or deriveable from any of them, as such it is abstract.
My reason for pointing that out was, the dichotomy itself may be ill-founded, it is we who given information, apply distinctions. So the distinctions cannot necessarily be used to proclaim ontological statements. That we believe p to be the case, does not entail p's being the case. That we believe the dichotomy to hold in this situation, doesn't imply that it must hold. Unless you are to demonstrate how we know the dichotomy holds, which I would say would be a difficult case and would most likely fall victim to Hume's problem of induction, considering we are applying a "truth of reason" to a "truth of fact".

Logic is a human endeavor, just like any other. We are applying a Boolean algebra to nature. Just like when we apply mathematical models to natural phenomena in Science, we cannot be sure that it is absolutley "true", the same goes for logically dichotomizing nature.

Given that, my problem simply lies with how I don't see how it clarifies anything as to the nature of "consciousness". It is kind of akin to when somebody says "The world is truth-functional of elementary propositions" or something, to which I say (maybe it is a limitation of my intelligence) "What does it mean for an "elementary proposition" to be true?".

Of course, always keep in mind that I may not convince you, nor you I, for we both have our non-rational inclinations and temperments. I am inclined towards not supposing that nature knows laws, wheras you may be inclined to the contrary.

 

[pftest]

While it is true that we can label things (and be mistaken) only if we are conscious, I still stick to my previous statement. "Consciousness" is not a term quite so easily given a definition. While the Being of consciousness (if you will allow me to speak in such vague terms) is given in experience, the concepts we form of consciousness are not. Exactly how we define consciousness is of the nature of a hypothesis. So, for all factual things that we label, we can be mistaken about the nature of the description applied. "Consciousness" is a concept we have labelled within experience, and as such the concept is capable of being mistaken.

Yes i agree, and also that being mistaken about something (or to have delusions, illusions, misconceptions) requires one to be conscious. Btw consciousness i always define as "having experiences". This leaves open who or what is having the experiences, what the experiences are like and whether they are material or not. It is therefor theoretically and metaphysically neutral. It just refers to experiences, of which everyone here knows what they are like.

That much I am sure you will agree with. Where we differ, is in re-defining the concept "consciousness". You hold that consciousness can be defined properly only if it is defined as being an intrinsic aspect of the "atoms" of this world (taken in the sense of elementary phenomena) because the opposite involves a contradiction.

The contradiction lies on the law of the excluded middle, and you are saying that something cannot by definition emerge from its opposite, for that would be a logical contradiction. Now we have a number of important tangent questions. Among them are "Can we use logical conclusions to make ontological conclusions?" and the related question "Is it not we who define the terms and use the logic?". So you see, my skepticism lies deeper in the application of the style of argumentation itself. While the law of contradiction may logically (or ontologically) hold true, it is we who create the distincition between opposites and so the choice of what is opposite is, to some degreee, arbitrary.

An example, so you may see where I am coming from, is the "Abstract-Concrete" dichotomy. Consider the genetic code, is it abstract or concrete? How do abstract operations arise from concrete interactions? It is concrete insofar as it requires specific complementary base pairs and molecules in order to be physically instantiated. It is abstract insofar as the "instructions" are by no means contained within the physics and the code is nearly "universal". We have a code that is transcribed and as long as the physics are equiprobable. (As you can see Thymine and Uracil are poth pyramidines and have similar molecular structure and these are typically interchangeable wrt Adenine) the information can be transmitted to different molecules, and yet is not identical or deriveable from any of them, as such it is abstract.
My reason for pointing that out was, the dichotomy itself may be ill-founded, it is we who given information, apply distinctions. So the distinctions cannot necessarily be used to proclaim ontological statements. That we believe p to be the case, does not entail p's being the case. That we believe the dichotomy to hold in this situation, doesn't imply that it must hold. Unless you are to demonstrate how we know the dichotomy holds, which I would say would be a difficult case and would most likely fall victim to Hume's problem of induction, considering we are applying a "truth of reason" to a "truth of fact".

Logic is a human endeavor, just like any other. We are applying a Boolean algebra to nature. Just like when we apply mathematical models to natural phenomena in Science, we cannot be sure that it is absolutley "true", the same goes for logically dichotomizing nature.

Given that, my problem simply lies with how I don't see how it clarifies anything as to the nature of "consciousness". It is kind of akin to when somebody says "The world is truth-functional of elementary propositions" or something, to which I say (maybe it is a limitation of my intelligence) "What does it mean for an "elementary proposition" to be true?".

Of course, always keep in mind that I may not convince you, nor you I, for we both have our non-rational inclinations and temperments. I am inclined towards not supposing that nature knows laws, wheras you may be inclined to the contrary.

Well i must start by saying that I am not declaring consciousness to be an opposite of, or distinct from the material. I am not saying there is a dichotomy. It is the physicalists/materialists who hold that consciousness is unlike rocks, atoms, etc. In their view only brains possesses consciousness, and whatever consciousness is, it is completely absent in non-brains.

While i do not understand all of apeirons arguments (and i have not read them all either), i do think his ideas are compabtible with the view that there is a degree of consciousness in everything. This is based on a brief conversation (see here) i had with him maybe a year ago.

 

[JDStupi]

Yes i agree, and also that being mistaken about something (or to have delusions, illusions, misconceptions) requires one to be conscious. Btw consciousness i always define as "having experiences".

Yes, I would agree with this definition. That is, how could we define the "Being of consciousness" without "having an experience" for the Being of consciousness just is the ground of all experience. It seems you could be seeing the Being of consciousness is the ground of all Being.

This leaves open who or what is having the experiences, what the experiences are like and whether they are material or not. It is therefor theoretically and metaphysically neutral. It just refers to experiences, of which everyone here knows what they are like

I agree with the first part and the second, so long as we are speaking about people. Once we extend the concept of "experience" beyond people, we don't know what it is like.

While i do not understand all of apeirons arguments (and i have not read them all either), i do think his ideas imply or are compabtible with the view that there is a degree of consciousness in everything. I remember i have had a brief conversation with him about this maybe half a year ago. I shall try to find it.

And this may be the case, because then you would say that the descriptions of the behaviors of the systems or what have you at various levels are extensionally equivalent to the word "consciousness". My problem is, as we know, extensional equivalence doesn't imply intensional equivalence, and the "connotations" of saying "Everything is conscious" is quite different from what most people would think that means. Simply saying "Everything is conscious" solves nothing.

Under your definition, it may be less problematic, but then it may simply be trivially true, insofar as everything must have its own POV on the universe, and if that is all that is said, then I agree. It's just the concept of "internal experience" being tied to how you or I experience, seems to lose its clarity the further from humanity we go. The only way we could extend the concept is with an abstract structure for inferencing similarities of what happens in conscious beings. This could be provided by apeiron's structures or other scientific models and then we would be able to speak about everything being "conscious", or not and in what way, but until then it doesn't seem very illuminating to say "everything is conscious". But who knows, maybe you weren't saying it was illuminating just that it was or could be and it took all of this to come to some understanding.

Funny, how we can argue so much and be not all that far off. We are just not seeing quite eye-to-eye insofar as the significance of the argument is concerned, but it doesn't seem our views are entirely incompatible or opposed. It seems we had to "show the fly the way out of the jar" and untie the "meanings" behind our speech. Even then we may not see quite eye-to-eye, but diversity is beautiful. So long as your thinking and I'm thinking and nobody is completely dogmatic (for we all have our unseen dogmas) then whatever, "Different Strokes".

 

[Math Is Hard]

Note: I've done a little pruning to back us away from the mystical angle. Carry on!

 

[nismaratwork]

The last few times i posted a handful of peer reviewed papers that supported my points (of course, they supported my points precisely because i often get my points from science). You didnt, and so it was pointed out to you by a mentor that the forum isn't an opinions column. Enough said.

Now I am afraid I am going to be a bit more brief with you because i see this isn't fruitful for discussions on PF. If you provide counterarguments then i will happily respond to them. Otherwise no.

OK, so provide them for someone else, and remember which of your posts were removed as well...

Still, here's the google you asked for!
#2 result is a locked thread... here: https://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-143833.html
#1 was Yahoo Answers asking if it is "alive or dead", which sets the intellectual bar nicely there.

The third is a reguritation of Smolin, in brief, and is just hand-waving about universal evolution.

The rest are either wrong search returns, Facebook, or utter crackpot sites (and I mean CRACKED).

Your turn.


@Pythagorean: Bigger and More, even more complexity doesn't mean alive. Life does certain things, one of which is to reproduce... I'm eagerly awaiting a baby universe. In fact, the notion of complexity as the basis for life is absurd in the view of complex inorganics, when some of those same inorganics COULD be the basis of life. Ask more, I'll offer more, offer more, I'll ask more. In the end, "the bigger it gets, the smarter it is" just doesn't hold water; only by invoking pure mystery, magic, or religion (magical mythology) does one land in a living universe.

 

[nismaratwork]

Yes i agree, and also that being mistaken about something (or to have delusions, illusions, misconceptions) requires one to be conscious. Btw consciousness i always define as "having experiences". This leaves open who or what is having the experiences, what the experiences are like and whether they are material or not. It is therefor theoretically and metaphysically neutral. It just refers to experiences, of which everyone here knows what they are like.
.

So, when a dog mistakes its reflection for another dog, it's proof of consciousness? When you clip the antennae of an insect, thus causing it confusion, it's conscious? Are you sure about that?

 

[Pythagorean]

Nismar,

I think you missed the point, which was that the line between us and the universe is not defined.

 

[nismaratwork]

Nismar,

I think you missed the point, which was that the line between us and the universe is not defined.

That isn't an argument for it being alive, any more than it is for us being inert, nor either being conscious. A lack of ability to draw precise definitions is wiggle room for mysticism, not a basis for serious thought in my view.

 

[pftest]

So, when a dog mistakes its reflection for another dog, it's proof of consciousness? When you clip the antennae of an insect, thus causing it confusion, it's conscious? Are you sure about that?

I don't think i understand your point here. You are asking me if dogs and insects that can see and have misconceptions would qualify as conscious beings according to my definition? They would. Anything that has an experience would qualify.

 

[nismaratwork]

I don't think i understand your point here. You are asking me if dogs and insects that can see and have misconceptions would qualify as conscious beings according to my definition? They would. Anything that has an experience would qualify.

To be fair, I ignored your definition in favor of what the word actually means. By your definition Watson is as conscious as an ant, just not in a way we recognize.

And the support to take the place of the miserable results google provided?

 

[Pythagorean]

That isn't an argument for it being alive, any more than it is for us being inert, nor either being conscious. A lack of ability to draw precise definitions is wiggle room for mysticism, not a basis for serious thought in my view.

And that's exactly my point about the idea of "self". Have you watched the TED video I posted in the other thread?

The point is that we can "turn off" the part of our brain that gives us the feeling that we're individuals separate from the universe. This is one of the many finding of neuroethology that implies a role for the brain in consciousness.

There's much neuropsychology research in this (the spatial aspect: finding parts of the brain that give us a reference frame) as associated with dissociative disorders. Once you lose the reference frame, you experience what Jill Bolte Taylor did. The semantic concept of "I" begins to evaporate.

So the idea of "self" is just as mystic as the idea of being "one with the universe". Where do we go from there (not implying panpsychism must be true, but that it's only as faulty as the alternative, still-lingering idea of a "soul" that is required to justify the "self" as independent from the universe).

 

[nismaratwork]

And that's exactly my point about the idea of "self". Have you watched the TED video I posted in the other thread?

The point is that we can "turn off" the part of our brain that gives us the feeling that we're individuals separate from the universe. This is one of the many finding of neuroethology that implies a role for the brain in consciousness.

There's much neuropsychology research in this (the spatial aspect: finding parts of the brain that give us a reference frame) as associated with dissociative disorders. Once you lose the reference frame, you experience what Jill Bolte Taylor did. The semantic concept of "I" begins to evaporate.

This is all very interesting fromt he POV of neurology, but others can still identify even the most dissociated individual as a discrete individual. The sense of being unique, or having a discrete self, or not, these are variable without the extremes of hemispherectomy. In my view, it's a side-show without any material insight except that taking chunks out of people's brains when they're not very young tends to end poorly.

People can lose the discrete sense of self through other means, but at no time to they experience a universal phenomenon of not BEING a self-contained "I", only their perception changes. For it to be something valid as more than the personal experience, I would expect others to be similarly aware of this loss of personhood. We're only aware of the changes in perception, and processing.

So the idea of "self" is just as mystic as the idea of being "one with the universe". Where do we go from there (not implying panpsychism must be true, but that it's only as faulty as the alternative, still-lingering idea of a "soul" that is required to justify the "self" as independent from the universe).

I disagree; the sense of self appears to be an adaptation for a social animal of our type, period. It implies nothing greater, anymore than a pile of sand ceasing to be pile-like implies anything more than a limit to our descritive abilities.

 

[apeiron]

Nismar,

I think you missed the point, which was that the line between us and the universe is not defined.

No, but as per #55, the point is that it gets defined. Life is defined by its ability to make that strong epistemic cut. That separation between nucleic code and protein, for example. The separation that creates that aspect of a complex system which is not subject to Newtonian determinism.

 

[baxishta]

dear Pythagorean and other participants,

i wonder if it would be useful to make a distinction between the property of existence and the property of reality. i don't mean actual existence and actual truth, but just the ideas of each.

it seems to me that we use the idea of a property of existence to refer to an either/or situation, a digital situation, such that we may say that a given thing either possesses this property or it doesn't, it either exists or it doesn't.

on the other hand, we may refer to various stages of reality. for example, most people would say that an hallucination is less real than a memory of something which really happened, which in turn is less real than, say, a car or a building.

so 'existence' is a digital property and 'reality' is an analog property. does this seem right so far?

bax

 

[JDStupi]

So, when a dog mistakes its reflection for another dog, it's proof of consciousness? When you clip the antennae of an insect, thus causing it confusion, it's conscious? Are you sure about that?

You see this is kind of what I was getting at in that the term "consciousness" is just not well-defined. I would say an animal is most likely conscious. Though, I would agree and say that most likely is not a sufficient condition for concluding consciousness. But again, the word is so fuzzy it may very well be true if we believe bios and mind are identical to some extent. Again, though this seems to require a more concrete inferencing structure (i.e. scientific model) and more information.

That isn't an argument for it being alive, any more than it is for us being inert, nor either being conscious. A lack of ability to draw precise definitions is wiggle room for mysticism, not a basis for serious thought in my view.

Yet another aspect of its loosness, I don't know if he was arguing the universe is alive, but then what is consciousness without life? Again, it seems to not mean anything, or atleast nowhere near whatever it means now. If it doesn't simply mean "Everything has it's own POV" which could be quite quantum, then I don't see what it means. I don't see how we could apply the concept of "internal experience" to atoms. Unless, as said before we argue on the basis of it having to logically be the case because the emergence of life from non-life involves a contradiction, but I already voiced my concerns about making ontological conclusions from logical concerns.

Essentially, it could or could not be true, depending on how it is meant as such it is tautologous and not useful. We simply do not know enough to delineate at the present the lines between conscious and non-conscious. We don't know enough about our own brains, we don't know enough about the origins of life and cells. It may turn out the definition of "consciousness" or "life" could require some degree of internal complexity and some mix of control processes and, being that inorganic matter doesn't have this it can't be classified as alive. Until then arguing that the whole world could be conscious seems like sophistry...I mean how do you actually "believe" not just entertain the notion of, but believe that the keyboard you are using right now is "conscious" in the sense that we now mean it. The monitor, everything.

Then imprecision is contagious. Now we have a situation where electromagnetic fields are conscious. Space is conscious. It starts to seem like conscious either means something completely different, or it means nothing.

Quantum fields, where particles "live" on the order of microseconds or whatever the number is, yep they're conscious too. ... I don't know, I can't make sense of it.

 

[nismaratwork]

dear Pythagorean and other participants,

i wonder if it would be useful to make a distinction between the property of existence and the property of reality. i don't mean actual existence and actual truth, but just the ideas of each.

it seems to me that we use the idea of a property of existence to refer to an either/or situation, a digital situation, such that we may say that a given thing either possesses this property or it doesn't, it either exists or it doesn't.

on the other hand, we may refer to various stages of reality. for example, most people would say that an hallucination is less real than a memory of something which really happened, which in turn is less real than, say, a car or a building.

so 'existence' is a digital property and 'reality' is an analog property. does this seem right so far?

bax

You mean: There is the internal experience, the internal disturbed experience, internal experience that is verified by external consensus (the car)?

@JDStupi: No doubt, it's not exactly a clear bright line, but science demands we don't leap to far ahead, or see ourselves as too unique or the epitome of conscious complexity. Still, for the universe to be alive, we would have to be a living part of the total system, along with every vacuum fluctation as you mentioned. If that IS the case, I doubt that we have the capacity to deteremine it, not to mention that recession velocities mean that the universe couldn't have thoughts that would ever fully permeate its... itself. There's a lot wrong with a "live fields/universe" concept... it's a leap too far in my view.

That however, does not clarify what it means to be conscious as a human, or a dog, or an ant. It SEEMS that we're sentient, dog's have their moments, and ants are basically genetic computers. I doubt that's the whole story in any of those cases, but it's certainly closer to convention.

 

[Pythagorean]

No, but as per #55, the point is that it gets defined. Life is defined by its ability to make that strong epistemic cut. That separation between nucleic code and protein, for example. The separation that creates that aspect of a complex system which is not subject to Newtonian determinism.

So then by this view, where is the self in a slime mold? In the individual cells? Or in the slug they become? Do each of my individual cells have a sense of self, then?

I disagree; the sense of self appears to be an adaptation for a social animal of our type, period. It implies nothing greater, anymore than a pile of sand ceasing to be pile-like implies anything more than a limit to our descritive abilities.

You say you disagree... but it seems to me that you exactly agree by the rest of your paragraph! To me, it seems that you previously wanted to give it a higher position than what you just said now.

 

[pftest]

I agree with the first part and the second, so long as we are speaking about people. Once we extend the concept of "experience" beyond people, we don't know what it is like.

And this may be the case, because then you would say that the descriptions of the behaviors of the systems or what have you at various levels are extensionally equivalent to the word "consciousness". My problem is, as we know, extensional equivalence doesn't imply intensional equivalence, and the "connotations" of saying "Everything is conscious" is quite different from what most people would think that means. Simply saying "Everything is conscious" solves nothing.

Under your definition, it may be less problematic, but then it may simply be trivially true, insofar as everything must have its own POV on the universe, and if that is all that is said, then I agree. It's just the concept of "internal experience" being tied to how you or I experience, seems to lose its clarity the further from humanity we go. The only way we could extend the concept is with an abstract structure for inferencing similarities of what happens in conscious beings. This could be provided by apeiron's structures or other scientific models and then we would be able to speak about everything being "conscious", or not and in what way, but until then it doesn't seem very illuminating to say "everything is conscious". But who knows, maybe you weren't saying it was illuminating just that it was or could be and it took all of this to come to some understanding.

Funny, how we can argue so much and be not all that far off. We are just not seeing quite eye-to-eye insofar as the significance of the argument is concerned, but it doesn't seem our views are entirely incompatible or opposed. It seems we had to "show the fly the way out of the jar" and untie the "meanings" behind our speech. Even then we may not see quite eye-to-eye, but diversity is beautiful. So long as your thinking and I'm thinking and nobody is completely dogmatic (for we all have our unseen dogmas) then whatever, "Different Strokes".

Yes i certainly did not mean that simpler things than humans brains still have humanlike experiences. The human brain is very complex so maybe i should call it complex C, while the simplest form of consciousness should be called simple C.

My argument currently is merely about whether C exists beyond brains, and not the practical value of such an idea.

 

[baxishta]

nismaratwork,

i'm sorry but i don't really understand how you're using those terms.

i'm just asking if it's reasonable to say that, when we wonder if something exists, we're usually picking between a 'yes' and a 'no'.

and that, when we wonder if something is real, we feel free to choose from more than two options.

bax

 

[nismaratwork]

So then by this view, where is the self in a slime mold? In the individual cells? Or in the slug they become? Do each of my individual cells have a sense of self, then?

They don't become a slug, they are just acting in concert at great proximity. At no point does an individual cell contribute to a greater awareness, only greater physical abilities in response to environmental cues.

You say you disagree... but it seems to me that you exactly agree by the rest of your paragraph! To me, it seems that you previously wanted to give it a higher position than what you just said now.

I'm sorry, I don't understand, truly I'm not being coy here. What do you mean?

 

[Pythagorean]

nismaratwork,

i'm sorry but i don't really understand how you're using those terms.

i'm just asking if it's reasonable to say that, when we wonder if something exists, we're usually picking between a 'yes' and a 'no'.

and that, when we wonder if something is real, we feel free to choose from more than two options.

bax

This is something dynamicists do with digital models: turn them into discrete models. This his been especially productive in neuroethology and even genomics: now gene expression is no longer "on" or "off"; we now have a molecular network based on the interactions between mRNA and transcription factors. There is a fuzzily defined "on state" and "off state" but it's recognized as a qualitative, human classification system of the many infinite states from "on" to "off" in that dynamic network.

 

[nismaratwork]

nismaratwork,

i'm sorry but i don't really understand how you're using those terms.

i'm just asking if it's reasonable to say that, when we wonder if something exists, we're usually picking between a 'yes' and a 'no'.

and that, when we wonder if something is real, we feel free to choose from more than two options.

bax

Think of it this way: all we know is what we experience within our brains, and our conclusions can be:

-Everything is in our heads (Solipsism)
-Everything we experience is in our heads, based on environmental stimuli, and internal actions.
-We experience distorted views of an external reality or figments of our minds, but they are not the norm, and are unique to the individual (hallucinations, paranoia, delusion, dreams etc). Often these are related to external stimuli, but they don't have to be.
-Our experience is personal and internal, but we believe what we see, and when others agree that we're looking at the same thing, we are confident that it has objective reality.
-Our experience is somehow diffuse, a shared experience, and we're each points in that field of consciousness (I do NOT believe this)

 

[Pythagorean]

Second option is "Ethology".

They don't become a slug, they are just acting in concert at great proximity. At no point does an individual cell contribute to a greater awareness, only greater physical abilities in response to environmental cues.

That's fair, but the transition from a unicellular community of organisms to a single multicellular organism did still happen, no? The question is still relevant.

I'm sorry, I don't understand, truly I'm not being coy here. What do you mean?

You said:

People can lose the discrete sense of self through other means, but at no time to they experience a universal phenomenon of not BEING a self-contained "I", only their perception changes. For it to be something valid as more than the personal experience, I would expect others to be similarly aware of this loss of personhood. We're only aware of the changes in perception, and processing.

You seem to starting with the assumption that self is fundamental.

And others do experience the loss of personhood. Dissociative symptoms are the third most common symptoms among general public that do not have mental disorders, after anxiety and depression.

And of course, as you may have gathered by now, I have had several dissociative experiences myself.

People can lose the discrete sense of self through other means, but at no time to they experience a universal phenomenon of not BEING a self-contained "I"

By the way, two things here. To your first point above, I didn't mean to say hemispheric rivalry was the only source of dissociation; just wanted to provide a concrete example.

To the second point, how can you know what others experience. Do you not believe the people who claim to have this experience, to lose their sense of self? How can you have a definitive answer about what other people experience while not trusting their reporting? Do you base it only on your experience? How do you know you're not one of the people that is say, right brain dominant, and that your personal feelings about "self" are more integrated into your world model than other people and so your more reluctant to let go of it?

 

[Pythagorean]

-Everything we experience is in our heads, based on environmental stimuli, and internal actions.
-We experience distorted views of an external reality or figments of our minds, but they are not the norm, and are unique to the individual (hallucinations, paranoia, delusion, dreams etc). Often these are related to external stimuli, but they don't have to be.
-Our experience is personal and internal, but we believe what we see, and when others agree that we're looking at the same thing, we are confident that it has objective reality.

actually, all three of these seem congruent with ethology.

 

[apeiron]

Well i must start by saying that I am not declaring consciousness to be an opposite of, or distinct from the material. I am not saying there is a dichotomy. It is the physicalists/materialists who hold that consciousness is unlike rocks, atoms, etc. In their view only brains possesses consciousness, and whatever consciousness is, it is completely absent in non-brains.

While i do not understand all of apeirons arguments (and i have not read them all either), i do think his ideas are compabtible with the view that there is a degree of consciousness in everything. This is based on a brief conversation (see here) i had with him maybe a year ago.

The problem with "consciousness" as has been so often said is that it conflates a whole lot of ideas. Like saying universe, it is a label so general that its meaning becomes vague in practice.

All terms, to be clear, must be dichotomously defined. The simplest way to achieve a dichotomy is as a negation. So if we have conscious, then its complementary condition must be...un-conscious. Or non-conscious. But very plainly, a simple negation does not actually say anything new. You are still left none the wiser about the meaning of the orginal term. You have created no context. You have suppressed no other meanings.

It is like saying a cat is a cat and anything that is not a cat is not a cat because it possesses the property of non-catness. Both true and trivial.

So you cannot use a term like consciousness in serious scientific or metaphysical conversation unless you have a formally complementary term that creates the matching context which can give your utterances meaning.

I can for example state "discrete" as a word with clear and unambiguous meaning because I have the complementary term "continuous". The same with atom~void, local~global, vague~crisp, and many other metaphysically valid terms.

But unless you (or anyone else) can spell out the formally complementary notion to conscious, then there just isn't a philosophical or scientific conversation going on.

There are many complementary pairings that do have enough validity to get useful conversations going.

We can distinguish between attention and habit. Or between ideas and impressions. Or anticipations and surprises. Or self and other. All quite straightforward and uncontroversial psychological dichotomies where we know what we are talking about because we have the neuroscientific models and the experimental evidence. "Consciousness" is no mystery when framed in those kinds of discussions.

Again, stepping back to a general systems perspective on complex systems, we have good dichotomies like Pattee's epistemic cut - the crisp divide into rate dependent dynamics and rate independent information. Or the global constraints and local construction of hierarchy theory.

Even mind and matter is a dichotomy. Or subjective and objective. They are of course not great as dichotomies because the notion of matter turns out to be poorly defined. And so does the notion of objective. If one end of a dichotomy is weak or vague, then so is the other.

But consciousness is a spectacularly ill-defined term as people use it without any kind of partner concept at all. This is why pan-psychism is so easily believed, why souls or spirits seem so plausible. With no crisp boundaries to prevent us, we can spread a word like consciousness as far as we like. A bad term covers all cases because it carries no proper sense of what it is not.

Metaphysics depends on robust dichotomies, ones that carve up the terrain of possibility into precisely complementary alternatives.

Consciousness is a word defined by "what it is like to be", which is what makes it so useless (except for perpetuating mysteries). To be any use, it would have to be clearly defined in terms of what it is not.

 

[JDStupi]

Yea, I agree. The concept only is meaningful if it is completely re-defined, but if it is then we need a word for what we now call consciousness. So why engage? Yea, haha what are the conclusions of special and general relativity and for the universe's thoughts?...And Bell's inequalities, haha..God is the Absolute Idea which is the Universal Consciousness pervading all of space and time, haha and you bet your bottom dollar that'll find it's way on some crazy website or New Age publication. And you can also bet that they'll all be Bohmians too, in order to avoid God not being able to determine himself, since he can do everything. That solves Free will too, since we are actually God we are determined by God...Black Holes are where god craps out universes...Woohooo, we have officially solved many philosophical problems

...It's entertaining . Haha, excuse me for my poor Cosmic Joke. But yea, I think that we shouldn't take huge leaps in the hopes of solving the problem. Conceptual clarification is a good thing, conceptual abuse is not.