My take on why indeed the study of consciousness may not be as simple

[RandFan]

Since when is "I do not know" an answer to a question.

Since always. More important it's honest.

 

[RandFan]

But now I am curious as to why you are not willing to suggest ways of trying to answer questions about the emergent property of consciousness?

It's not a question that we can answer. How many feathers are required for a bird to fly? It's a silly and absurd question. End of story.

 

[RandFan]

Then it certainly is an example of an answer from ignorance.

How many planets in the universe have liquid water?

Honest answer: I don't know. Admitting your ignorance isn't an answer from ignorance. Drawing conclusions from ignorance is.

 

[!Kaggen]

Honest answer: I don't know. Admitting your ignorance isn't an answer from ignorance. Drawing conclusions from ignorance is.

so that explains the questions in other thread you started

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=5265223#post5265223

and your participation in this one

your just on a fishing trip on a sea you know has no fish.

I think I'll take a rain check on this trip if you don't mind

 

[Dancing David]

"Matter" is not a verb in physics. The behaviour of the individual water molecules is of exactly the same significance as the switching effect of the dam.

The reason that this matters is that if there's a contention that a physical process is happening with a switch, then that physical process needs to be unambiguously defined.

Now this is the point where it gets just silly Westprog, and I don't mean that to be mean.

The signals sent in a wire are physical they are made of matter.

You are saying that there no way to physically tell a digital signal from an analog signal, correct?

Which is silly, the signal is physical, the arangement of the signals is a physical property. The signals do not exist in meta space, teh arrrangement of the signals does not exist in meta space. they are part of the physical realm, regardless of it's construction and ontology.

In terms of analogy you are stating that an oak tree can not be physically distinguished from maple tree.

 

[Dancing David]

*Looks at radical growth of thread since the last time he posted*

..... I think I have created a monster

Not really, there are certain term which lead to these dicussion: consciousness is a big one.

Penrose is also wrong for many reasons.

 

[Dancing David]

Then we are in agreement. I specificaly said "medium". A transistor composed of semiconducting material IS the medium.

Sure we agree, I know that and may not have conveyed my intent. i have been mainly responding to Westprog.

 

[Dancing David]

But our senses are digital.

How so? Sensation is based upom receptors which operate in a sort of on/off fashion but for the erasons of response time, recovery time, neuro transmitter depletion and recatures, attenuation and potentiation it is not exactly a digital signal. It is more fuzzy that than that.

I would say that you could model it either way and that neurotransmission is better modeled as a probablistic's analog model.

 

[Dancing David]

Not according to any concept of "digital" with which I am familiar.

Well, I tend to view it as a digital system that is best modeled as an analog.

Neurons are on/off but the interaction between them is possibly modeled as a sliding probability of interaction, so I am saying that the basis of transmission is similar to digital but in action it is closed to analog.

 

[Dancing David]

I think its problematic to refer to an emergent property without first defining this property and identifying at what stage it emerges.

Ah the crux of the matter!

the defintion of the emergent property is the main one.

Then we observe which systems meet the defintion. We can not a priori assign the value of which systems meet the defintion.

And then the defintion gets refined.

The question of Penrose and his thesis on QM being capable of explaining consciousness ?

Penrose makes many unsupported statements and assertions that is one, he also disagrees with a definition of artificial intelligence that is about 40 years old.

I do not believe it is consciousness that needs explaining, but thinking.

Enter neurology.

This can only be explained using thinking.

You can draw pictures as well, now an interpretive dance may not be as useful. Which kind of thinking specificaly are you reffering to?

We can confirm our thoughts on consciousness using the scientific method. In other words consciousness is a question for philosophy to unravel and science to communicate.

Well first we need that pesky defintion of consciousness.

 

[Dancing David]

One long strawman.

Not really, Randfan is pointing out that:
1. Consciousness may not be contrained to biological systems of brains.
2. Flight may have multiple pathways.

Now where you are going and where Randfan are going may be two seperate directions.

But the defintion of consciousness is the crucial one, you could have a system of ten cells that would meet some defintions of consciousness but not others.

Model:
one receptor R
one cell A that transmits to cell B
one cell C that links to cell B
one cell D that links between cell B and cell C

Now depending on the arangement of response we have a simple neural circuit, we have input and two reference cells, so we could set it up that cell D is a repository of the recent history, it could respond when B is on and C is off, and then dependent upon the defintion of 'self aware' we could argue that it contains the information of the state of the system, in that it can be triggered to display if the system is active or not active.

Now all we need to do is set a second system of cells that monitor that system state of cell D. You then have a system where the state of one set drives the state of the other set.

Now that is not exactly what most peopel would agree to as a definition of self aware but it gets at the idea in that you have a system which is driven by sensation and another system which is 'aware' of that system.

So it is dependant upon the defintion of the emergent property, not the arrangement of cells.

 

[Dancing David]

The issue I brought up by asking the numbers question is that I do not see why the concept emergence should bypass empirical scrutiny.

You brought up something completely unrelated to point to your own thoughts on neuroscience about the emergence of consciousness being the result of more than one thing and the emergence of flight being the result of more than one thing.

I never said that consciousness was only the result of brain cells, I only asked how many brain cells would be necessary for consciousness.

And that is dependant upon the defintion of consciousness, the way the cells work and the arrangement of the cells. Now in terms of biology we can look at the anthropomorphization of other critters

bacteria, sponges, plants, fungi: not conscious

arthropods, annelids, mollusks, insect, arachnids and other critters: probably not 'fully' conscious, but there are exceptions like the octopus and maybe some of the larger sea critters (craps and lobsters)

reptiles: (well the the anthropomorphization meets cultural/social prejudice here) I would say they are 'conscious' but many would disagree.

mammals: almost always viewed as conscious

Now we then get to the bugaboo of 'levels of consciousness' which in human medicine relates to levels of arousal, response to stimuli and interaction.

 

[!Kaggen]

Ah the crux of the matter!

the defintion of the emergent property is the main one.

Then we observe which systems meet the defintion. We can not a priori assign the value of which systems meet the defintion.

And then the defintion gets refined.

Penrose makes many unsupported statements and assertions that is one, he also disagrees with a definition of artificial intelligence that is about 40 years old.

Enter neurology.

You can draw pictures as well, now an interpretive dance may not be as useful. Which kind of thinking specificaly are you reffering to?



Well first we need that pesky defintion of consciousness.

Dancing David, why do you believe the definition of consciousness is elusive?

 

[rocketdodger]

Ahh... now we are getting somewhere.
You admit that we first need to find consciousness before we can measure it.
My question now is how do we find consciousness without measuring were it is, if we are to study it scientifically?

You can't.

But what you are ignoring is the fact that we measure where consciousness is all the time -- with our very own biological neural networks.

We have a tool at our disposal that has evolved over thousands and thousands of years to be very good at measuring whether something is like a human or not.

In other words, your "finding" and "measuring" collapse to the same thing. Thats how neural networks function.

And in fact this goes for everything else as well, you are just ignorant of it because we take for granted all the calculation that goes on in our heads. If you were looking for something else to measure, and you wandered around looking for one to measure it, when you find it you have already measured it in a subconscious way.

This is the kind of thing that makes me think everyone who is interested in concsiouness would be better off if they were an A.I. programmer. When you program an A.I., it is quite clear that "measuring" and "finding" are exactly the same thing.

 

[Dancing David]

Dancing David, why do you believe the definition of consciousness is elusive?

I am not, I am saying the way we define it crucial to the discussion, and usually that is the main issue.

How are you defining it? In terms of observable behaviors (which includes private behaviors).

 

[!Kaggen]

I am not, I am saying the way we define it crucial to the discussion, and usually that is the main issue.

How are you defining it? In terms of observable behaviors (which includes private behaviors).

Ok, I see what you mean.

Being aware of ones thoughts.

 

[!Kaggen]

You can't.

But what you are ignoring is the fact that we measure where consciousness is all the time -- with our very own biological neural networks.

We have a tool at our disposal that has evolved over thousands and thousands of years to be very good at measuring whether something is like a human or not.

In other words, your "finding" and "measuring" collapse to the same thing. Thats how neural networks function.

And in fact this goes for everything else as well, you are just ignorant of it because we take for granted all the calculation that goes on in our heads. If you were looking for something else to measure, and you wandered around looking for one to measure it, when you find it you have already measured it in a subconscious way.

This is the kind of thing that makes me think everyone who is interested in concsiouness would be better off if they were an A.I. programmer. When you program an A.I., it is quite clear that "measuring" and "finding" are exactly the same thing.

Your analogy of an A.I. programmer is interesting.
It is similar to what I have been saying.
We can only find/measure consciousness when we create it ourselves by thinking.

 

[!Kaggen]

I do not believe it is consciousness that needs explaining, but thinking.

Enter neurology.

and a conscious human being

This can only be explained using thinking.

You can draw pictures as well, now an interpretive dance may not be as useful. Which kind of thinking specificaly are you reffering to?

Thinking that producers thoughts/concepts/ideas.

 

[!Kaggen]

So it is dependant upon the defintion of the emergent property, not the arrangement of cells.

Which really is the same thing as saying consciousness is what we make it.
Which is why I think any questions addressing consciousness need to be first formuated by philosophy, then tested by science.

 

[rocketdodger]

Your analogy of an A.I. programmer is interesting.
It is similar to what I have been saying.
We can only find/measure consciousness when we create it ourselves by thinking.

Err, it wasn't an analogy. You misunderstand.

I am saying that when you program A.I., you realize that the A.I. "measuring" things and "finding" things is one and the same. For the A.I. to recognize anything it needs to measure stuff. "My depth traces are hitting something in front of me." "Is it a wall?" "The hit normals are facing me, and the hits are colinear, so it might be a wall."

And like it or not your neural network does the same kind of thing -- "Does that entity have a human-like face?" "Does it use language I can understand?" etc.

That is why I say people who are not educated in the relevant areas really take for granted just how much is going on inside their heads. Try programming an A.I. using the limited resources we have right now, and then compare what you can do with such limited resources to what you could do if you had the computing power of a human brain. When you do that, all this "hard problem of consciousness" stuff just doesn't matter anymore because you grok the nature of human consciousness.