Is Consciousness Solely a Product of the Brain?

[nismaratwork]

Second option is "Ethology".



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.

That's very much a matter of perspective, and I'd say you simply have a close colony acting in concert; to say that it becomes a multicellular organism is to equate a school of fish with a giant fish because of proximity and synchronized behavior.



You said:



You seem to starting with the assumption that self is fundamental.[/quote]

No, it's not fundamental, it clearly develops over time and is subject to alteration or loss without destruction of sentience and consciousness. It is however, fundamentally COMMON among humans, and even dissociative events due to drugs, trauma, or mental illness are not uncommon. Note that none of the change in internal perception of self would confuse another human from identifying you as a distinct and separate (if odd in terms of behavior) consciousness. No melding or sharing occurs, despite perceptions to the contrary, do you see what I mean?

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.

Anxiety, Trauma (anxiety in spades), depression (with co-morbid anxiety), and of course powerful psychedelics can cause dissociative experiences, or "ego death". This is to the conscious sense of self as epilepsy is to the conscious control of the body.

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

I hadn't, but it really has no bearing on the discussion. I don't think more or less of you for it, and I wouldn't pry for details in a public forum of course. Still, it does give you insight into the internal experience that relatively few share, and are still able to communicate.

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.

Gotcha, agreed.

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?

I believe that the loss of self, and joining with something MORE including others around them is not believable except as a valid internal experience. The event seems to provide no information that would not be present, merely a new perspective that COULD be found through other means. In short, if you feel at one with the universe, and the universe (including the people around you) don't experience you as being one with anything, I stick with the empirical angle.

If you (to quote a friend of mine who ate 'shrooms) are on a journey, but nobody else is involved and you come back with no more than when you left, it was an inwardly directed event, not an expansive one; it only felt like becoming diffuse and a part of something larger.

To your last point, I do indeed have a strong sense of self, but I've had the misfortune of being in a traumatic experience or two, and experienced brief if profound dissociation. I can't say that I found it to be anything meaningful except as a coping mechanism during a period of acute danger. By brief, I mean a few seconds by the way, I've never taken a hallucinogen.

Still, I'm not relying on personal experience or anecdote, so my own brain is really not much of an issue here (thankfully) and a good thing too, just ask some here how meager it is.

 

[nismaratwork]

actually, all three of these seem congruent with ethology.

I'm only familiar with Ethology in passing, via Darwin, so I'll take your word for it.

 

[apeiron]

That's very much a matter of perspective, and I'd say you simply have a close colony acting in concert; to say that it becomes a multicellular organism is to equate a school of fish with a giant fish because of proximity and synchronized behavior.

The idea of group minds and swarm intelligence is pretty respectable in science. Bodies are built on communication (apoptosis, etc).

So I have no problem seeing an ant colony as a form of "consciousness" - once that word is properly defined as a global state of intentionality that shapes the local actions of its parts.

 

[nismaratwork]

The idea of group minds and swarm intelligence is pretty respectable in science. Bodies are built on communication (apoptosis, etc).

So I have no problem seeing an ant colony as a form of "consciousness" - once that word is properly defined as a global state of intentionality that shapes the local actions of its parts.

I agree, but then I'd have to constrain my example to Bulldog or Bullet Ants, instead of social ants. It's not that I'm against the notion of emergent systems behaviour, but any definition of "conscious" is unlikely to include a group-entity that cannot reflect on its totality.

A human can ponder the process of apoptosis (programmed cell death for the non-bio people) as it happens, as a part of us. An ant colony's behavior is a sum of its parts, but without any reflective or experiential capacity.

 

[JDStupi]

To your last point, I do indeed have a strong sense of self, but I've had the misfortune of being in a traumatic experience or two, and experienced brief if profound dissociation. I can't say that I found it to be anything meaningful except as a coping mechanism during a period of acute danger. By brief, I mean a few seconds by the way, I've never taken a hallucinogen.

I haven't followed yours and Pythagorean's discussion enough to make any comments on it really. However I noticed this and I do wish to point out that not all Dissociative experiences are created equal. It also may not be a proper analogy to say "ego death" is to conscious experience what epilepsy is to bodily control. That is a highly negative connotation, and I'm quite certain it is not good. Many who report the experience of ego death can report it to be extremely peaceful and eye-opening and, though evidently mystical/spiritual experiences are still viewed skeptically in our society 100 years after William James, it wouldn't be wise to discount a whole type of experience because our Western minds don't like it. Dismissing different states of consciousness on the basis of it " just screwing up your brain" is to me philosophically naive. (Provided of course it is not like "Robo-tripping" or Dramamine which are used as deliriants and are actually doing no more than screwing up your brain, in the sense of damaging it.) A different state of consciousness can be valuable insofar as any different way of viewing things and gaining perspective is useful.


*edit* but in any case, I don't want this side-tracking your interesting discussions on group/individual consciousness and ethology

 

[nismaratwork]

I haven't followed yours and Pythagorean's discussion enough to make any comments on it really. However I noticed this and I do wish to point out that not all Dissociative experiences are created equal. It also may not be a proper analogy to say "ego death" is to conscious experience what epilepsy is to bodily control. That is a highly negative connotation, and I'm quite certain it is not good. Many who report the experience of ego death can report it to be extremely peaceful and eye-opening and, though evidently mystical/spiritual experiences are still viewed skeptically in our society 100 years after William James, it wouldn't be wise to discount a whole type of experience because our Western minds don't like it. Dismissing different states of consciousness on the basis of it " just screwing up your brain" is to me philosophically naive. (Provided of course it is not like "Robo-tripping" or Dramamine which are used as deliriants and are actually doing no more than screwing up your brain, in the sense of damaging it.) A different state of consciousness can be valuable insofar as any different way of viewing things and gaining perspective is useful.

I'm not in any way judging individual experiences, and I'm well aware of cholinergic toxidrome. To assign any value, positive or negative is only useful in asessing the lasting effects. If they're positive, it was a positive experience, if not, then not. That's a pretty lousy criteria by any scientific standard, East, West, North, South, or Fleem. (Fleem is JUST between North and Gorp, the eighth direction)

 

[Pythagorean]

That's very much a matter of perspective, and I'd say you simply have a close colony acting in concert; to say that it becomes a multicellular organism is to equate a school of fish with a giant fish because of proximity and synchronized behavior.

Yes, but I moved past the slug to something like, say, a human, prior to it becoming a "multi-cellular" organism. Do you think there was a discrete jump from from the single organisms to the collective organism or do you think there was a smooth transition?

Let's talk your way about your brain: it's a multicellulalr organ equatable to a school of fish because of proximity and synchronized behavior. This neuron triggers that neuron, some vesicle release, this neuron goes, saying to fire up this endocrine system, which sets off this population of cells. It's just a bunch of single-cells transfering matter and energy (with information embedded in it) just like the slime mold is. To inject your own personal feelings into the brain isn't scientific.

No, it's not fundamental, it clearly develops over time and is subject to alteration or loss without destruction of sentience and consciousness. It is however, fundamentally COMMON among humans, and even dissociative events due to drugs, trauma, or mental illness are not uncommon. Note that none of the change in internal perception of self would confuse another human from identifying you as a distinct and separate (if odd in terms of behavior) consciousness. No melding or sharing occurs, despite perceptions to the contrary, do you see what I mean?

I agree with you by that specific way you state it, yes. Sharing of experiences occurs from having the same (i.e. very similar) external and internal forces. More likely with kin, more likely to lead to cooperation.

Collective consciousness means all the knowledge you learn in school that you practice and enforce and live by but that you really have no personal experience with. Society has transmitted information to you so that you can indirectly experience something that your ancestors already experienced. So information gets carried with you that could be completely false and have nothing to do with your experiences or the real world at all. So a big part of you and who you are, your self, your consciousness, is determined by the information imparted on you by society. You're head has been filled up before you got a chance to fill it up yourself with a lot of the same information that is filling up other people's heads of your generation and nation.

Inside of you, there's another associate network that saves you the trouble of your ancestor's experiences on a less conscious level: the genetic network.

Still, I'm not relying on personal experience or anecdote...

But you are from my perspective... you're relying on your sense of self: your whole collection of personal experiences and anecdotes. Just like the panpsychists, the libertarians are relying on unfalsifiable assumptions.

Would you agree that your views are libertarian?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature#Free_will_and_determinism

 

[nismaratwork]

Yes, but I moved past the slug to something like, say, a human, prior to it becoming a "multi-cellular" organism. Do you think there was a discrete jump from from the single organisms to the collective organism or do you think there was a smooth transition?

Let's talk your way about your brain: it's a multicellulalr organ equatable to a school of fish because of proximity and synchronized behavior. This neuron triggers that neuron, some vesicle release, this neuron goes, saying to fire up this endocrine system, which sets off this population of cells. It's just a bunch of single-cells transfering matter and energy (with information embedded in it) just like the slime mold is. To inject your own personal feelings into the brain isn't scientific.

At no point can my brain operate as a "mini-brain" through separation of neurons, but rather it acts always as a cohesive system. Dysfunction in one area leads to global dysfunction, whereas in a school of fish that's just a dead fish. As we grow our brains increase in terms of complexity, but their nature is unchanging in the sense that it is operable only in the context of the whole organism.

Slime-molds join, then seperate, unchanged and still functioning; this is more to do with people giving one another a boost by hand over an obstacle than a melding of selves.

I agree with you by that specific way you state it, yes. Sharing of experiences occurs from having the same (i.e. very similar) external and internal forces. More likely with kin, more likely to lead to cooperation.

Collective consciousness means all the knowledge you learn in school that you practice and enforce and live by but that you really have no personal experience with. Society has transmitted information to you so that you can indirectly experience something that your ancestors already experienced. So information gets carried with you that could be completely false and have nothing to do with your experiences or the real world at all. So a big part of you and who you are, your self, your consciousness, is determined by the information imparted on you by society. You're head has been filled up before you got a chance to fill it up yourself with a lot of the same information that is filling up other people's heads of your generation and nation.

Inside of you, there's another associate network that saves you the trouble of your ancestor's experiences on a less conscious level: the genetic network.

True, but there is ample proof that such knowledge is highly conditional, subject to enormous change and interpretation including alteration upon successive recall and retelling. Even in a vacuum there should be an evolution of self, even if it's a terribly warped (by societal norms) sense of self. The genetic network imparts no knowledge without context, only instinct and reaction; hormones and neurotransmitter goads in other words.

But you are from my perspective... you're relying on your sense of self: your whole collection of personal experiences and anecdotes. Just like the panpsychists, the libertarians are relying on unfalsifiable assumptions.

Would you agree that your views are libertarian?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature#Free_will_and_determinism

[/quote]

No, I'm most certainly not any version of Libertarian; generally I'm a pragmatic authoritarian hypocrite with a Genghis Khan-ish bent.

Still, I'm not accepting my own personal experience as the norm, or even the collective as truth; I do recognize that in a world of all theories being wrong, our reality is largely verified by group experience. Beyond that we have tools to probe reality beyond the capacity of naked humanity.

 

[apeiron]

I agree, but then I'd have to constrain my example to Bulldog or Bullet Ants, instead of social ants. It's not that I'm against the notion of emergent systems behaviour, but any definition of "conscious" is unlikely to include a group-entity that cannot reflect on its totality.

A human can ponder the process of apoptosis (programmed cell death for the non-bio people) as it happens, as a part of us. An ant colony's behavior is a sum of its parts, but without any reflective or experiential capacity.

But in fact by breaking things apart in proper fashion, they become measurable. This is why good metaphysics underpins good science.

So if we are modelling "consciousness" as the degree of top down constraint - the ability of the ant colony mind to control the ant colony's parts - then we can now measure that degree of "mindfulness".

And as you say, already you can see different degrees at work in different ant species. This proves the case rather than undermines it.

Biofeedback experiments for instance measure the degree of mindful control humans can exert over their own bodies. If the right feedback (local~global) interation is set up, then the answer is surprisingly great.

But to accept this and then lapse back to a reductionist "the whole is the sum of its parts" rhetoric is unacceptable. It has just been demonstrated that it isn't.

Which is where a proper theory of the epistemic cut between local and global scales of causality in complex adaptive systems becomes essential. Again, it is framing your understanding in operational constructs - crisp dichotomies that in turn can be crisply measured.

Reductionism isn't the way to banish unclear thinking here. Forcing people to adhere to terms with exact meanings (because those meaning have been formed as limits of a dichotomy) is the way to move forward scientifically. It creates a clear picture of what must be measured out in the world.

 

[Pythagorean]

At no point can my brain operate as a "mini-brain" through separation of neurons, but rather it acts always as a cohesive system. Dysfunction in one area leads to global dysfunction, whereas in a school of fish that's just a dead fish. As we grow our brains increase in terms of complexity, but their nature is unchanging in the sense that it is operable only in the context of the whole organism.

Are you aware of cell differentiation in such cell colonies? A school of fish don't really exhibit differentiation, so yeah... a fish dying in the school wouldn't do much globally. But when there's a more intricate coupling between the members (as is the case in cell colonies) and differentiation occurs, then the functional role of the differentiated cells can become significant enough to where removal of those cells WILL lead to global dysfunction.

Even in a vacuum there should be an evolution of self, even if it's a terribly warped (by societal norms) sense of self.

I would challenge that! This is a falsifiable question. From the implications of experiments that deprive sensory organs at birth, it seems intuitive to me that if you completely cut off all perception (yet somehow keep the organism nutritionally supplemented) it will not develop much of a consciousness at all.

It is through primitive reflexes as a newborn and perceptive feedback through development that self-consciousness seems to come about. Take away the perceptive feedback and you have a purely instinctual animal. So far, their sense of self is yet to be detected (as opposed to higher mammals... and particularly social animals)

But this, I think, would be a good question to see if anyone has tried to answer experimentally. We should wager a non-monetary bet on it ;)

 

[nismaratwork]

But in fact by breaking things apart in proper fashion, they become measurable. This is why good metaphysics underpins good science.

Good metaphysics?... Hmmm... I always thought of it as the cotton padding that makes the current state of affairs a comfortable seat until we're forced to change by reality.

So if we are modelling "consciousness" as the degree of top down constraint - the ability of the ant colony mind to control the ant colony's parts - then we can now measure that degree of "mindfulness".

There is no control, only group behaviour there, and the lack of mindfulness is demonstrable. Ants can and will eat themselves out of house and home (so to speak), and their behaviour form a rigid and unchanging set that are dependant on their specific environment.

And as you say, already you can see different degrees at work in different ant species. This proves the case rather than undermines it.

I'm confused here.

Biofeedback experiments for instance measure the degree of mindful control humans can exert over their own bodies. If the right feedback (local~global) interation is set up, then the answer is surprisingly great.

In some systems yes, but try to stop the system as a whole through feedback, or try to exceed normal tolerances...

But to accept this and then lapse back to a reductionist "the whole is the sum of its parts" rhetoric is unacceptable. It has just been demonstrated that it isn't.

Still not sure about that, I think you may be ignoring the larger system as being part of the parts in summation. Still, the rhetoric is useless, no argument there.

Which is where a proper theory of the epistemic cut between local and global scales of causality in complex adaptive systems becomes essential. Again, it is framing your understanding in operational constructs - crisp dichotomies that in turn can be crisply measured.

Yep, I love those, pity I only see them in science and not in philosophy. Phil is just to personal and ad hoc in my view, to dependant on the state of science for any sense of validity. In short, it's a fine smörgåsbord of secular religions and ideologies.

Reductionism isn't the way to banish unclear thinking here. Forcing people to adhere to terms with exact meanings (because those meaning have been formed as limits of a dichotomy) is the way to move forward scientifically. It creates a clear picture of what must be measured out in the world.

The universe seems to have a beef with clear thinking, and reductionism to some extent always seems to be the spur of progress in science, with philosophy trailing behind.

 

[nismaratwork]

Are you aware of cell differentiation in such cell colonies? A school of fish don't really exhibit differentiation, so yeah... a fish dying in the school wouldn't do much globally. But when there's a more intricate coupling between the members (as is the case in cell colonies) and differentiation occurs, then the functional role of the differentiated cells can become significant enough to where removal of those cells WILL lead to global dysfunction.




I would challenge that! This is a falsifiable question. From the implications of experiments that deprive sensory organs at birth, it seems intuitive to me that if you completely cut off all perception (yet somehow keep the organism nutritionally supplemented) it will not develop much of a consciousness at all.

It is through primitive reflexes as a newborn and perceptive feedback through development that self-consciousness seems to come about. Take away the perceptive feedback and you have a purely instinctual animal. So far, their sense of self is yet to be detected (as opposed to higher mammals... and particularly social animals)

But this, I think, would be a good question to see if anyone has tried to answer experimentally. We should wager a non-monetary bet on it ;)

Bet taken, but I doubt we'll ever know... the closest would be the "closet-girl" phenomenon, and it's a far cry from sensory deprivation.

Maybe Hellen Keller would be one example, but she did have touch...

 

[apeiron]

Bet taken, but I doubt we'll ever know... the closest would be the "closet-girl" phenomenon, and it's a far cry from sensory deprivation.

Maybe Hellen Keller would be one example, but she did have touch...

Keller had all her senses to the age of two.

There is a ton of research bearing on this question. For instance, sensory deprivation experiments show how the sense of self and structured awareness generally falls apart with a lack of a world to interact with and structure your experience.

 

[nismaratwork]

Keller had all her senses to the age of two.

There is a ton of research bearing on this question. For instance, sensory deprivation experiments show how the sense of self and structured awareness generally falls apart with a lack of a world to interact with and structure your experience.

Yes... and though traumatized and damaged, it can be re-established in many cases.

 

[apeiron]

Good metaphysics?... Hmmm... I always thought of it as the cotton padding that makes the current state of affairs a comfortable seat until we're forced to change by reality.

The best modern philosophy is done by scientists. You probably just been reading the wrong books.

There is no control, only group behaviour there, and the lack of mindfulness is demonstrable. Ants can and will eat themselves out of house and home (so to speak), and their behaviour form a rigid and unchanging set that are dependant on their specific environment.

What, all of a sudden you haven't heard of peak oil? C'mon.

You need to study the ant colony literature perhaps to see that there really is a collective "state of mind" that can be measured.

Just because its quicker, here is a cut and paste of a bit I wrote for a Reader's Digest publication some years back...

Individually, an ant is a rather dumb creature. But collectively, do they form a group mind? After all, an ant nest is almost one organism genetically, a single queen living with as many as a million daughters. And all those eyes and jaws are linked like brain cells in a network of interactions that can respond to the world with sharp intelligence.

Watch a trail of ants and they are forever bumping into each other, pausing to touch antennae. In every brief meeting they are exchanging information about what they are doing. Their tiny brains then apply some simple rules. If an ant finds it is rarely meeting another employed in the same task – or alternatively, too many others doing the same task – then it will switch to a different behaviour. So from nest maintenance to foraging, or patrolling to rubbish detail . In this way, ants spread themselves out across their territory, doing what needs to be done as if the colony were conscious as a whole.

Deborah Gordon of Stanford University, who studies Harvester ants in the Arizona desert, has even found that colonies develop more intelligence as they mature. A colony sticks to the same sized territory as it grows in number, so creating a web of interactions that becomes ever denser and smarter.

When Gordon set problems by blocking foraging trails or messing up the nest site with toothpicks, she found that mature colonies were quicker and more reliable in their response. Younger colonies were erratic in their behaviour as if they had not quite learned what to do. The older colonies had also discovered how to get along with their neighbours. If foraging trails happened to cross one day, next day the ants would head in the opposite direction. But adolescent colonies always returned looking for a fight.

So it is unlikely that a glow of awareness emanates from that trail of ants coming in your back door. But there is a collective intelligence at work. Each ant may be as dumb as an isolated brain cell. But the trail, like our brain, at some level “knows” the world.

Yep, I love those, pity I only see them in science and not in philosophy. Phil is just to personal and ad hoc in my view, to dependant on the state of science for any sense of validity. In short, it's a fine smörgåsbord of secular religions and ideologies..

Again, c'mon. What else was greek philosophy about than establishing the basic dichotomies of nature.

And again, the best modern philosophers are scientists first.

The universe seems to have a beef with clear thinking, and reductionism to some extent always seems to be the spur of progress in science, with philosophy trailing behind.

Reductionism works all the way up to the limits. But then fails radically in modelling the limits. So when it comes to the creation of universes, the nature of minds, the genesis of life, and the other most interesting questions, reductionism let's you down dramatically. And let's in all the crank mysterians because suddenly it seems "science can't answer".

 

[nismaratwork]

The best modern philosophy is done by scientists. You probably just been reading the wrong books.



What, all of a sudden you haven't heard of peak oil? C'mon.

You need to study the ant colony literature perhaps to see that there really is a collective "state of mind" that can be measured.

Just because its quicker, here is a cut and paste of a bit I wrote for a Reader's Digest publication some years back...





Again, c'mon. What else was greek philosophy about than establishing the basic dichotomies of nature.

And again, the best modern philosophers are scientists first.



Reductionism works all the way up to the limits. But then fails radically in modelling the limits. So when it comes to the creation of universes, the nature of minds, the genesis of life, and the other most interesting questions, reductionism let's you down dramatically. And let's in all the crank mysterians because suddenly it seems "science can't answer".

You're reaching. When it comes to the nature of the universe, minds, the genesis of life, it may well be that reductionism has more to offer. In the meantime mystics have their place, but it's a compliment to go so far as to add "physics" to the "meta". Just call it what it is, a placeholder, something to talk about and entertain ourselves with until science evolves to a point where it can answer such questions, or render them meaningless.

More likely we'll all be long gone before that happens, and a few thousand years of deep thought will be lost as well, and unlike science, will have only yielded some fun reads and chats. I prefer a nice solid laser, or steel, or a Penning Trap to the vagaries of metaphysics. Philosophy has a lot to offer, just not in the endlessly tail-chasing arena of the imponderables, where we simply reflect on the abject failure of the human mind to handle such weighty concepts.

I'd add, the best philosophers, like Einstein? Perhaps had he been less philosophically inclined he would have believed the ramifications of his early analysis that light is quantized. What is metaphysics except the proverbial "eunuch in the harem," cousin to the critic? Truly, it is a marginal thing, and while this is all good for the mind, we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking it's more than our version of a hamster wheel.

edit: Allow me to quote a bright man I know, you may recognize him:

Tell that to the philosophers who railed against infinitesimals as the ghosts of departed quantities. Like Cantor's approach to infinity, what seems patently unreal as ontology has a strange way of becoming instead an ontological fact simply because an epistemological stance proves so effective.

 

[Ken G]

You're reaching. When it comes to the nature of the universe, minds, the genesis of life, it may well be that reductionism has more to offer. In the meantime mystics have their place, but it's a compliment to go so far as to add "physics" to the "meta". Just call it what it is, a placeholder, something to talk about and entertain ourselves with until science evolves to a point where it can answer such questions, or render them meaningless.

This is a standard take on metaphysics by scientists, but I'm not sure it is much more than wishful thinking. Basically, the idea is that science is some kind of inevitable journey, like Lewis and Clark seeking the Pacific, and all questions along the way are simply milestones to that progress. But it completely overlooks the possibility that many of the questions we'd really like answers to, including metaphysical ones which have considerable contact with science, are just plain not resolvable by science. To people outside science, like a painter or playwright or poet, that seems so obvious they couldn't even begin to understand how a scientist could have the hubris to imagine anything else. What we can all agree on is that, in facing the possibility that science simply does not answer certain questions, we can:
1) decide this is false, and science will answer all, eventually-- if humanity lasts long enough.
2) decide this is true, but only because those questions are ill-posed. It is not science's fault the question cannot be answered, it is the question's fault.
3) accept the premise as true, and get back to doing science for the things it was meant to do.

 

[nismaratwork]

This is a standard take on metaphysics by scientists, but I'm not sure it is much more than wishful thinking. Basically, the idea is that science is some kind of inevitable journey, like Lewis and Clark seeking the Pacific, and all questions along the way are simply milestones to that progress. But it completely overlooks the possibility that many of the questions we'd really like answers to, including metaphysical ones which have considerable contact with science, are just plain not resolvable by science. To people outside science, like a painter or playwright or poet, that seems so obvious they couldn't even begin to understand how a scientist could have the hubris to imagine anything else. What we can all agree on is that, in facing the possibility that science simply does not answer certain questions, we can:
1) decide this is false, and science will answer all, eventually-- if humanity lasts long enough.
2) decide this is true, but only because those questions are ill-posed. It is not science's fault the question cannot be answered, it is the question's fault.
3) accept the premise as true, and get back to doing science for the things it was meant to do.

That's a potential knock on science, but no endorsement for mysticism or metaphysics, anymore than it is for religion or blind faith.

 

[Pythagorean]

To paraphrase Galileo:

science is about error, not wisdom.

 

[nismaratwork]

To paraphrase Galileo:

science is about error, not wisdom.

Wisdom is overrated, just ask the alchemists and medieval barber/surgeons, priests, and others.

Errors can teach, wisdom is very much up for debate as to quality and quantity.

To paraphrase Galileo: "Hey, I'm telling the truth you zealots!"

 

[Pythagorean]

"Hey, I'm telling the [error] you zealots!"

:)

 

[pftest]

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.

With the definition given in this post, i think everyone will understand what is meant with the term. Its opposite would be a state of unconsciousness, where no experience is present. If i have to refer to something familiar to make it clear, one might think of being asleep or under anesthesia.

 

[apeiron]

With the definition given in this post, i think everyone will understand what is meant with the term. Its opposite would be a state of unconsciousness, where no experience is present. If i have to refer to something familiar to make it clear, one might think of being asleep or under anesthesia.

OK, 1) so unconsciousness is a lack of experience. And you claim that is not a tautological definition? Or are consciousness and experience different in some important way?

And 2) if being asleep or anaesthetised renders you unconscious, lacking in experience, then what is different in the you that is asleep/anaesthetised from the you that is awake and conscious? I mean how do I know the difference? What is it about your terminology that points to something I can measure?

And 3) how does the very fact that you are unconscious when asleep/anaesthetised gell with a panpsychic view of consciousness? Do you think some property of your atoms has altered? Again, what is the mechanism that makes a difference? What should I be measuring according to the terminology you wish to employ?

 

[pftest]

I believe that the loss of self, and joining with something MORE including others around them is not believable except as a valid internal experience. The event seems to provide no information that would not be present, merely a new perspective that COULD be found through other means. In short, if you feel at one with the universe, and the universe (including the people around you) don't experience you as being one with anything, I stick with the empirical angle.

If you (to quote a friend of mine who ate 'shrooms) are on a journey, but nobody else is involved and you come back with no more than when you left, it was an inwardly directed event, not

I would not expect someone with impaired brainfunction (and a distorted sense of self) to experience the same as with unimpaired brainfunction. And i would not expect others with unimpaired brainfunction to experience what someone with impaired brainfunction experiences. The other people do not report a distorted sense of self it precisely because their brains are functioning as normal.

 

[pftest]

OK, 1) so unconsciousness is a lack of experience. And you claim that is not a tautological definition? Or are consciousness and experience different in some important way?

And 2) if being asleep or anaesthetised renders you unconscious, lacking in experience, then what is different in the you that is asleep/anaesthetised from the you that is awake and conscious? I mean how do I know the difference? What is it about your terminology that points to something I can measure?

My definitions merely refer to our experiences in order to make one understand what is being talked about. Because all definitions ultimately refer to our experiences, if you accept any other definition of anything else, it means you are familiar with experiences. All definitions are ultimately circular because of the limited vocabulary of languages.

And 3) how does the very fact that you are unconscious when asleep/anaesthetised gell with a panpsychic view of consciousness? Do you think some property of your atoms has altered? Again, what is the mechanism that makes a difference? What should I be measuring according to the terminology you wish to employ?

One of the options is that it is merely a memory disruption: you were conscious but you don't remember it. Or in such a way that it has no relation to the everyday state of mind.

Both anecdotes of unconsciousness and non-brain consciousness can be interpreted differently and are not in anyway proof of a metaphysical position.

 

[ideasrule]

One of the options is that it is merely a memory disruption: you were conscious but you don't remember it. Or in such a way that it has no relation to the everyday state of mind.

The former seems implausible. Why would the conscious person not try to communicate? Has their brain lost the ability to control the body? The latter is pretty much unfalsifiable until we identify exactly how consciousness manifests physically, in which case we can simply do a brain scan.

 

[pftest]

The former seems implausible. Why would the conscious person not try to communicate? Has their brain lost the ability to control the body? The latter is pretty much unfalsifiable until we identify exactly how consciousness manifests physically, in which case we can simply do a brain scan.

Yes it is unlikely that the person has a completely normal human state of mind with just a memory problem. But a memory problem combined with an altered state of mind is not so unusual. This is what happens with dreams for example. Locked in syndrome, strokes, etc. When brainfunction is impaired this can distort the sense of self, memory, language, the ability to communicate, control the body, motivation, and basically any other of our mental faculties.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

I haven’t read the paper (problem with links) but have read some like it, and some of Strawson, and hope I have some gist of it.

In that assumptions are possibly mistaken, I like that ideas expressed in the OP challenge some assumptions. I also like that it seems to rely upon fewer, possibly mistaken, assumptions than some other ideas and is elegant and I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read. One assumption relied upon here would be that logic holds, which I think JDStupi mentions.

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.

Regarding the idea itself, reading from the start, JDStupi’s initial response was something similar to what I considered too, so I’ve just read along these lines for now.

“So it seems that we simply use the word "Experience" as a designator for all that exists, such that it loses its meaning. We have just attached a new word that doesn't offend our logical sensibility to "fundamental reality", but as far as explanation goes we seem to have done nothing.”

So, if experience is everything then saying “experience” would be as meaningful as saying “everything is everything”. From what I have read, I don’t think Strawson argues that experience is everything. I think instead, Strawson describes himself as an “experiential-and-non-experiential-monist”. This would be in line with the “pile” analogy, and with the idea that experience lies on a continuum of dilution and strength, as it would seem "experience" would need to be diluted with something other than experience. Strawson argues that the “monist” label can still be applicable. So, I think in this argument experience and non-experience, by constituting and opposing each other, are both internal and external to each other. Was this sort of thing described as circular?

On another note, I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read very much, but may have missed exactly how the title is related, especially as there seems to be more discussion by Strawson of information rather than explicitly creation or causation? Maybe the links I did read didn’t deal with that.

(Pftest, some time ago I struggled to find the words to express my view in a thread. You posted a better expression which I quoted. I don’t think we’ve crossed paths since so thanks, belatedly.)

 

[Pythagorean]

@nismar,

Put it this way. Do you think the words you use or the way you use them are completely your own? Do you think the skepticism you practice was your own idea? You are part of a collective consciousness and it does its work through you. You have your differences; minute emphasis differences in the information that was conveyed to you (that can lead to different conceptualizations).

Or what about when you're out in social situations and you change your behavior to adhere to the customs and standards of your company?

All of these are examples of outgoing information, not spawned from inside, but processed by the inside. It's information that, at one time, flowed from the outside as you watched, learned, and interacted throughout your past.

In early man, the first symbols themselves arose from nature (tracks in the snow, the profile of a buffalo on the horizon). Significant information flowing in.

Of course, I am not down-playing the internal forces (the genetic expression, the connectome shuffling) but these too were once only a homogenous neutronium before the stars compressed them into molecules that somehow found themselves oscillating around in a pattern based on the driving forces of nature present at abiogenesis (the primitive stimuli).

So as far or near as one goes back, the system was rather bland without the rich, exotic dynamics... the external forces that drive the system. It's through the interaction between the external forces and the internal forces that organism individuality is defined (otherwise monozygotic twins would be the same person) and as a society becomes more sophisticated and ordered, the newborn members of that society begin to receive more precise, unified external forces. We become more synchronized (note that many mammals are already synchronized through pheromone networks; not all the information that synchronizes us is handled by computations we're conscious of).

 

[nismaratwork]

@nismar,

Put it this way. Do you think the words you use or the way you use them are completely your own? Do you think the skepticism you practice was your own idea? You are part of a collective consciousness and it does its work through you. You have your differences; minute emphasis differences in the information that was conveyed to you (that can lead to different conceptualizations).

No, a collective consciousness in the sense that its spoken of in literature (and Jungian theory) wouldn't require that I learn skepticism, but that it's imparted through group experience. The collective unconscious or collective consciousness angle just kicks the can down the road, offering no new insight in my view. I learned through trial and error, interaction with people, and my own thoughts to arrive at the point I'm at today. The words are symbolic conventions I share with some portion of the population, passed down yes, but hardly collective in a grand sense.

We're a distributed consciousness that desperately tries to preserve more than base instinct.

Or what about when you're out in social situations and you change your behavior to adhere to the customs and standards of your company?

All of these are examples of outgoing information, not spawned from inside, but processed by the inside. It's information that, at one time, flowed from the outside as you watched, learned, and interacted throughout your past.

Fair enough, but how is this relevant?

In early man, the first symbols themselves arose from nature (tracks in the snow, the profile of a buffalo on the horizon). Significant information flowing in.

Of course, I am not down-playing the internal forces (the genetic expression, the connectome shuffling) but these too were once only a homogenous neutronium before the stars compressed them into molecules that somehow found themselves oscillating around in a pattern based on the driving forces of nature present at abiogenesis (the primitive stimuli).

All of the common origins and commonalities in the universe won't cause a system of discrete macroscopic entities to somehow collapse into a gestalt. My origins do not mean that previous iterations of me are somehow equally conscious, or a part of me in anything except the most fanciful and artistic sense. Yes, we're all stardust, but the arrangement matters, the flux or lack matters, the ability to produce a universal signal of "on/off" at will matters.

So as far or near as one goes back, the system was rather bland without the rich, exotic dynamics... the external forces that drive the system. It's through the interaction between the external forces and the internal forces that organism individuality is defined (otherwise monozygotic twins would be the same person) and as a society becomes more sophisticated and ordered, the newborn members of that society begin to receive more precise, unified external forces. We become more synchronized (note that many mammals are already synchronized through pheromone networks; not all the information that synchronizes us is handled by computations we're conscious of).

Again, we're back on familiar ground; nature and nurture both play an important role, and the complexity is hard for us to track... no argument there, but it doesn't act in support of your other points. Still, I agree.