RedStapler
Banned
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What else should it have?
The study of atoms in the brain doesn't explain the redness of red;Materialism = FAKE
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What else should it have?
MohamedTaqi
Thinker
Given that its nervous system is very simple compared to that of a human, I'd bet it cannot feel the world the way we do.
Whether it is just reponding to stimuli like a robot does, or that it has a minimal degree of internal conscious experience : I don't know.
RedStapler
Banned
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Look at the highlighted part: Not that I would agree with the word "robot", of course but what you describe... this is how it has been for over 100 million years on this planet, every living being before humans seemingly only existed to eat,sleep and procreate. What is the problem here? Of course other animals experience reality in a different way. If I had 8 or more eyes, I maybe would experience time in a different way. Still no reason to talk about 'qualia' because it's still just my brain and some signals that creates my consciousness
Maybe you are a bit too fixated on humanity.
Anyway: consciousness has been researched for many years. We know what we know. If this is not enough for you then that's your problem.
Insisting on some undefined, unexplainable 'gap' is a complete waste of time.
In reference to one of Joes excellent points: You don't come into a forum to talk about how it is an absolute mystery that your heart keeps beating or your lungs keep breathing while you sleep, do you? Why not?
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist
The most well-known thought experiment involves a bat (pdf link to Nagel's paper). Bats are a little more complex than bees, so it is more meaningful to say that they have a subjective experience than it is for a bee.
sir drinks-a-lot
Philosopher
And there's the added bonus of them using echolocation and spending a lot of their time in an environment that we rarely visit.
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist
Yes, which is why it is very difficult for us to understand what it is like to be a bat. We don't experience the same... for whatever this term is worth... qualia that a bat does.
MohamedTaqi
Thinker
Mammals certainly have consciousness, since we know that their brains are very similar to ours. This, we know for sure.
Reptiles have it too, but their brains are less developed compared to mammalian brains .. so, their conscious experience may lack something that we have.
On the other end of the spectrum , we know that bacteria don't have a conscious experience : for there is no nervous system to account for it.
Insects lie somewhere in between : They may have a limited conscious experience, they may not, this we do not know. And if they have it, then we are commiting an immoral deed when killing them.
I don't ask about how the heart beats, because You and Me, can both look at a heart, and see its beating, and give a full account for it .
But we cannot look at the same conscious experience, you look at yours, I look at mine, and we cannot give a full account for it. Yes, there is a gap in our understanding.
And if there is no gap, then there is another gap that makes us think there is a gap. If consciousness is explainable and there is no gap, then the gap is in the fact that we think it is not explainable.
That is, answers seem to be intellectually unsatisfactory , either because the problem lies in our imagination, or in our language, or in both.
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arthwollipot
Limerick Purist
Except that there really isn't that much of a gap in our understanding. We know that consciousness is the result of a working brain and nervous system. The more complex and developed the system, the more complex and developed the consciousness.
MohamedTaqi
Thinker
Yes I agree , the only gap is in the part of conscious experience that is self-referencial.
Just like trying to use a 3d printer to print itself, the part that is used to print it will never be printed. It will print itself, except that part. That's how I imagine the gap.
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist
There is no printer to print before it prints itself. A printer can print a complete new printer, but it cannot print itself.
And the part of conscious experience that is self-referential is no different from any other parts of conscious experience. It is just what a sufficiently complex system does. As you increase the complexity of a system, there is no point at which you can say "Here! Here is where the system becomes conscious!" Consciousness increases in complexity, which includes self-referentiality (that's a word now), as the system increases in complexity.
"System" here is a shortcut for "brain and nervous system" in case that's unclear to anyone.
MohamedTaqi
Thinker
I agree that complexity (and integration ) produce conscious experience.
It's just an example, I know a 3d printer can't print itself, but if a 3D printer were designed to do such a thing, it will only print 99% of itself, not 100% .. a part of it would be lost.
As for consciousness, there are levels of abstraction , first level neurons only fire when they detect corners, circles, lines, diagonal lines...etc. Then the result of this level, is propagated to a second level that fires when it detects more advanced concepts / abstractions, like the presence of a face, a hand, a wheele...etc. Then there are other levels until we reach a level of abstraction that cannot be easily expressed in terms of the lower level neurons.
At this point, the conscious experience that results, cannot make further abstractions to account for itself , it cannot imagine how it is possible to emerge from neurons and chemicals : because it needs a higher level of abstraction to account for that. You see what I mean?
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist
You can't design a 3d printer to do that. A printer that prints itself is an absurdity. Like a drawing that draws itself. It can't exist.
Yes I do, but that doesn't mean that there is a sudden discontinuity. It's not a point, it's a spectrum.
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David Mo
Philosopher
I know how to use Google. I asked you for a couple of articles to justify your claim. You could have at least searched for something on Google Scholar.
Do you know any of them or not? Because I have the unpleasant impression that you spoke without knowing much of what you were saying.
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist
Most peoples' understanding of most branches of science is at least 10-15 years out of date. I don't think that it's a particularly controversial statement.
Personally I keep up with general science news. I do have a very good book about it (Mapping the Mind by Rita Carter), but unfortunately it's about twenty years old now. Even so, it seems to me that in general, not referring to any particular person specifically, a lot of people I see talking about neuroscience on the internet would do well to read just that one book.
David Mo
Philosopher
Too simple. The experience of a flying object is not the awareness of myself seeing a flying object. Consciousness - in the sense we're talking about now - is experiencing or realizing the modifications of my own self in front of the world or internally. This includes the subjective element that Sir drinks-a-lot claimed and which is what escapes identification with wavelengths, atoms and neurons. This does not mean that it is not caused by them, but that it cannot be defined in terms of wavelengths, atoms and neurons.
Recognizing something as elementary as this does not mean introducing God, the soul or karma, but recognizing that there are levels of reality that force the use of different languages. Otherwise, articles of psychology would be indistinguishable from articles of chemistry or biology. Which is not the case, as anyone who knows a modicum of these sciences will know.
And this which is very easy to understand is not understood because some people does not want to understand.
David Mo
Philosopher
Define "definition", please.
David Mo
Philosopher
I often read psychology articles and would have liked to know what recent advances in neuroscience have changed our understanding of the nature of consciousness and subjective impressions in your opinion. I thought you had some particular information. I'm afraid I'll continue to be unaware of it.
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist
Yeah, sorry, I'm not qualified to read scientific journals. The main host of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, Steven Novella, is a practising neurologist, so I may have picked up some things in ten to fifteen years of listening to that podcast.
David Mo
Philosopher
At the bottom of this endless fight is bloody scientific positivism.
The claim that science explains everything is an illogical absurdity. Science cannot predict the next word I'm going to write. Science cannot explain in terms of neurons why my sister is a better poet than I am.
Science can explain the necessary framework in which the ability to write poems develops. It's the brain, of course. But that doesn't explain the infinite differences in mental activities between some men and others.
To what extent those differences can be explained depends on the creation of a language that will take elements from psychology and anthropology. And from neurology as well.
And that's what happens when we talk about human consciousness. The rest is to strive to put a philosophical doctrine -scientificist positivism- above data and common sense.
And it is funny that those who defend a dogmatic philosophical doctrine are the same ones who preach philosophical phobia.
Forgive them, my Lord, for they do not know what they are doing.
The claim that science explains everything is an illogical absurdity. Science cannot predict the next word I'm going to write. Science cannot explain in terms of neurons why my sister is a better poet than I am.
Science can explain the necessary framework in which the ability to write poems develops. It's the brain, of course. But that doesn't explain the infinite differences in mental activities between some men and others.
To what extent those differences can be explained depends on the creation of a language that will take elements from psychology and anthropology. And from neurology as well.
And that's what happens when we talk about human consciousness. The rest is to strive to put a philosophical doctrine -scientificist positivism- above data and common sense.
And it is funny that those who defend a dogmatic philosophical doctrine are the same ones who preach philosophical phobia.
Forgive them, my Lord, for they do not know what they are doing.
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist
If it is real, then it can in principle be examined by the methods of science, since by definition science is the tool that we use to examine reality.