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

[RandFan]

Randfan, I do realize this is a skeptics forum and I appreciate criticisms, as any skeptic should. However my approach is specifically aimed at drawing attention to observations not conclusions using a phenomenological approach. I prefer to leave the conclusions to further scrutiny by the scientific method of (observation), induction, deduction and testing. From my experiences in the academic side and the practical side of agriculture I have concluded that the gap between the two is frightening (sorry cannot think of a justified non-emotional description). Further thought has led me to believe that the reason for this gap is purely down to observational skills on both sides and hence my interest in phenomenology as a tool to develop these skills.

Academics ask only what conclusions can we draw and farmers ask what practical relevance are these conclusions. The approach of both is very much goal driven and I am not critical of having a goal only I have seen how this can blind one to the process of achieving that goal resulting in unnecessary and unforeseen consequences. The argument that science is self correcting and therefore all we need to do is keep at it is true, but improving our observational skills as scientists is not inconsistent with this view. After all we do have history of recognizing better "scientists". We have learn't how to make better athletes by developing "sports psychology" why not "scientist psychology".

The problem is that our language is too abstract to describe the observations resulting from the phenomenological approach the result being that these observations might read like conclusions, especially by a scientist and hence your scrutiny.

!Kaggen,

Logic and reason. You can either choose to use them or not. I'm not at all counter to any method or psychology to improve observation, perception, measurement, understanding, etc..

However, at the end of the day if your arguments are not logically valid then no amount of dancing will fix them. Appeals to a phenomenological approach won't resolve this particular problem for you.

You are asking a pointless question. I'm trying to explain to you why the question cannot advance the discussion or provide any enlightenment except to make plain a point of ignorance.

Assuming a materialistic (or physicalism) model of consciousness, like the gradient between day and night it is likely that there is a gradient between no consciousness and normative human consciousness. If this is true then it is very unlikely that there is a precise threshold above which there is consciousness and below which there is no consciousness. To state that there is would be to state that there is an exact point where before that is night and after is day.

Further, physics tells us that we cannot determine at what precise point of removal of atoms a table ceases to be. Likewise we cannot determine at what precise number of atoms is required in a wing of a plane before flight can take place.

Now, you can choose to believe that a materialistic (or physicalism) model is wrong. That's fine. However, in the end your question is an absurd one and tells us nothing nor does it lead us to believe that a materialistic (or physicalism) model is wrong. I don't mean to be rude. I'm just stating a very simple to understand and simple to argue point. If you don't wish to accept it because it offends your world view then that is your prerogative.

Best of luck.

 

[!Kaggen]

Another 2 observation about consciousness right there.
We as conscious minds talk about not meaningful as if it "is" something meaningful to have no meaning and saying which has no content but was said.

You are confusing a statement about language with a statement about consciousness.

I think there is a fundamental relationship between consciousness and language which can be explored by examining different languages and their speakers view of the world.

In any case are you certain that this is an observation about consciousness? Are you certain that associating meaning with a word is a conscious process?

Your second question relates to the first and that is my point. We often use language in such a way that we are "aware of our thoughts" meaning which we are communicating but these thoughts may have other meanings to another person when they make these thoughts there own by thinking.

No , but I have yet to understand a proof whilst unconscious.

I have yet to understand how consciousness can prove something.

Consciousness itself does not prove anything.As I have said before, we can only observe consciousness by being aware of our thoughts. However being conscious is a pre-requisite for thinking. And thinking is a pre-requisite for proof.

Metaphysical conclusions can only be drawn from metaphysical assumptions.
I do not see how thinking can be regarded as a metaphysical assumption as any metaphysics pre-supposes thinking.

The assumption "metaphysics pre-supposes thinking" is in itself a metaphysical assumption.

Now I know you are going to take this as further evidence that thinking is self-referential, but it is not. If anything it is evidence that metaphysics is self-referential.

Sure that is why its called metaphysics. Whereas thinking does have an effect in the physical world which can be measure.

 

[!Kaggen]

!Kaggen,

Logic and reason. You can either choose to use them or not. I'm not at all counter to any method or psychology to improve observation, perception, measurement, understanding, etc..

However, at the end of the day if your arguments are not logically valid then no amount of dancing will fix them. Appeals to a phenomenological approach won't resolve this particular problem for you.

You are asking a pointless question. I'm trying to explain to you why the question cannot advance the discussion or provide any enlightenment except to make plain a point of ignorance.

Assuming a materialistic (or physicalism) model of consciousness, like the gradient between day and night it is likely that there is a gradient between no consciousness and normative human consciousness. If this is true then it is very unlikely that there is a precise threshold above which there is consciousness and below which there is no consciousness. To state that there is would be to state that there is an exact point where before that is night and after is day.

Further, physics tells us that we cannot determine at what precise point of removal of atoms a table ceases to be. Likewise we cannot determine at what precise number of atoms is required in a wing of a plane before flight can take place.

Now, you can choose to believe that a materialistic (or physicalism) model is wrong. That's fine. However, in the end your question is an absurd one and tells us nothing nor does it lead us to believe that a materialistic (or physicalism) model is wrong. I don't mean to be rude. I'm just stating a very simple to understand and simple to argue point. If you don't wish to accept it because it offends your world view then that is your prerogative.

Best of luck.

Thanks for the post.
Its not so much that I am after that precise threshold. I am interested in the threshold we experience nonetheless and I do not assume measurements will give us a precise threshold, but it will tell us more about what is happening in our brains when we experience it happening.

You have got me thinking about the Libet experiments on readiness potential.
Surely these experiments assume a precise threshold?
Otherwise how did Libet know when to measure the readiness potential?

 

[RandFan]

You have got me thinking about the Libet experiments on readiness potential.
Surely these experiments assume a precise threshold?
Otherwise how did Libet know when to measure the readiness potential?

Your original question was about the number of brain cells needed for consciousness to emerge which is very different from "readiness potential". In any event it's fairly easy to determine when a signal has crossed the synapse gap and the threshold needed to cause the synapse to fire (see electroencephalography). Now you are asking a very different question.

Now here is an empirical question you could ask regarding the emergence of consciousness but again I'm afraid that it would not be so precise. I doubt that even what we could even possibly call normative brain function would result in a Bell Curve with error bars. We could anesthetize trained subjects, monitor brain activity and determine at what point they perceive that they are conscious by having them push a button but it's very unlikely that they would measure the same. Even if we could bypass self-reporting we would still likely get a range of data.

Oh, BTW, your question is akin to asking how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop.

 

[tsig]

And just how can you be sure of that? It's a great trick if you can manage it.

First I turn on the scope then I place the leads on the wires that have the signal I want to look at then I adjust the range control until I can see the signal.

Then you look at the screen.

 

[tsig]

If you think that, give me a physical definition of computing that excludes the rocks and the cooling fan, but includes the computer and the cow-counting pebbles.

delete

 

[tsig]

I may be missing something here (again) but is westprog asking us to define an abstraction in terms of things which are at a lower level of abstraction? And is this not what Russell's Theory of Types was about?

Sorry, westprog, I continually feel we are talking at cross purposes and a whiteboard and bottle of whisky would help.

As far as I can see he seems to think that rocks and brains are equivalent and after reading this thread I might agree with him in certain cases.

 

[yy2bggggs]

Alright... finally caught up with this thread, so I'm going to make a random point.

Rabbit DNA leads to rabbits due to chemical interactions of specific molecular arrangements. Dog DNA leads to dogs for the same reason. Rabbit DNA won't lead to dogs because the arrangement isn't correct.

The specifics of the arrangement leads to each presumably meaningful animal through chemistry. Chemistry is a special case of quantum electrodynamics, and QED is about the interchange of photons--these are the same photons, I presume, about which we're speaking of these signals.

So, in terms of the underlying physics, the means by which rabbit DNA leads to rabbits, if that does indeed happen, is by communication of digital information using photons between rabbit DNA and other molecules, and their constituent parts, and so forth.

Which means if a rabbit is different from a dog, it's because of the usage of these digital signals, and not their use to us in particular--unless you're using your dog to hunt rabbits.

 

[westprog]

First I turn on the scope then I place the leads on the wires that have the signal I want to look at then I adjust the range control until I can see the signal.

Then you look at the screen.

And you can guarantee that for any signal you can tell whether any kind of digital information is embedded in it?

 

[westprog]

And is an "exchange of rights" not a process built from other, more primitive physical processes?

No, obviously not. There is no commonality involved in the physical processes involved.

A debt can be cancelled simply by the debtor and borrower forgetting about it. It will cease to exist.

 

[westprog]

I do. Because he is not a physicist.

You have not said how he could become one. Being appointed professor of Physics at a prestigious university is clearly insufficient, so you must have some more demanding criteria in mind.

 

[westprog]

If you are going to make the claim that choice is a method of study then you should justify it.

Because you are beginning to sound very evasive on this subject.

It's hardly obscure.

I don't know how you make decisions in your daily life. Let's imagine a hypothetical Mr Smith who wants to feed his dogs. He can buy dog food at the local store, or he can cut up a homeless man and give the dogs the pieces.

Science will not tell him what he should do. Science will possibly tell him that the nutritional value of the dog food is higher than the human flesh, or that cutting up a body is more difficult than opening a can, but it won't tell him what he should do. That can only be done by assigning values to likely outcomes. Is the life of the homeless man worth more than the inconvenience of driving to the store? Is being locked up in jail for murder something to be avoided?

The only way to make choices is to assign values to the outcomes. These values cannot be determined by science, because science is value-free. If your question is "What will happen if I do this?" science is an excellent guide. If your question is "Should I do this, given that science predicts this particular outcome?" then you have to decide based on a choice of values.

 

[westprog]

You're barking up the wrong tree. Even a Turing machine doesn't need to be computing "constantly"; it's perfectly legitimate to execute one transition every ten minutes and then just sit there.

It's a more general problem. For example, if you've defined the rock as having two states (molten and solid), those two states are not, by themselves, sufficient to act as a Turing machine.
You would need some way of defining input strings, output strings, and a suitable storage mechanism (tape or tape-equivalent). And in particular, you'd need to show how a particular set of transitions from molten to solid and back acted in a way to operate on the storage mechanism in a manner equivalent to TM storage.

Simply saying "a rock has states, a TM has states, therefore they are equivalent" is not valid. A TM is actually a rather precisely-defined set of (mathematical) properties, properties that a rock appears not to have.

Any set of state transitions will be equivalent to the actions of a given Turing machine. It's not necessary to have a physical tape, any more than a computer needs a tape. And any rock will have as many state transitions within it as we choose to define. Variations in temperature are quite sufficient to give us an effectively unlimited supply of states and transitions between them.

 

[westprog]

Alright... finally caught up with this thread, so I'm going to make a random point.

Rabbit DNA leads to rabbits due to chemical interactions of specific molecular arrangements. Dog DNA leads to dogs for the same reason. Rabbit DNA won't lead to dogs because the arrangement isn't correct.

The specifics of the arrangement leads to each presumably meaningful animal through chemistry. Chemistry is a special case of quantum electrodynamics, and QED is about the interchange of photons--these are the same photons, I presume, about which we're speaking of these signals.

So, in terms of the underlying physics, the means by which rabbit DNA leads to rabbits, if that does indeed happen, is by communication of digital information using photons between rabbit DNA and other molecules, and their constituent parts, and so forth.

Which means if a rabbit is different from a dog, it's because of the usage of these digital signals, and not their use to us in particular--unless you're using your dog to hunt rabbits.

I'd agree with most of the above. The difference between rabbit and dog is not a matter of how we interact with the rabbit and the dog, it's a well-defined physical process.

Whether or not it can be considered digital isn't entirely clear to me. The interaction of the electro-weak force is mediated by (virtual?) photons, but there are no fixed number of such interactions in the operation of chemistry, and other considerations such as distance and time are not discreet, at least at the level of atomic/electrical interaction. This may be merely a semantic point.

 

[Dancing David]

Hi David

You have brought up a lot of questions regarding what I mean by certain things.
I have tried to summarize my argument again below concentrating on clarifying your questions.
I hope I have covered most of them and I am sure you will let me know what I have not covered.

Well, yes. My thinking as to why this is the case is similar to the reasons given by many non-western philosophy's as to the problem of consciousness, the "noisy" mind.



Starting out with the premise that consciousness is a reality and can therefore be be observed I have consciously been trying to refer to the most basic manifestation of the observation of consciousness using the definition , aware of ones thought .

How do I come to this definition?

Identifying first the most basic manifestation of an observation is an important principal of any scientific investigation.
In this case if we examined our own consciousness we could identify basic starting points for a scientific investigation.
As far as our own consciousness is concerned we can minimize perception (sensory input and all its related nerve functions to a minimum) by consciously removing that which would not be necessary from our minds and environment till the brink of becoming unconscious.
This is commonly known as "meditation", but I personally do not like this term as it has too much baggage.
Another useful exercise is to examine one's state of mind in the last moments before falling asleep and in the first moments of awakening.
It is important to note again I am only referring to perceptions of which we are aware.
What I have found by doing these things is that we can most easily reduce external sensory information.
Then if we want to reduce internal sensory information resulting from our body this involves more effort.
Of course having an illness or injury makes this part even more difficult if not impossible. So I will assume a healthy person.
My experience has been that immediately after balanced physical exercises (not too much not too little) in which one participates fully with delight one can get a feeling which many people would describe as "I feel great".
This really means they are not aware of there bodies being under the influence by gravity and any of the related aches and pains resulting therefrom.
They feel light, young and supple.
This is also an interesting observation as regards the consciousness of a child, but that is another story.
Yoga for instance is designed to get the body into this state by various well designed exercises and then whilst in this state to meditate by quietly stilling ones remaining thoughts using various techniques. Interestingly this stage is the most difficult if not almost impossible thing to do by far, eliminating all thoughts.
I believe the exercise of meditation of ultimately quieting the mind of thoughts can lead oneself to that point were I am fully aware right up to the point at which I pass from an conscious to an unconscious state.
Hence my basic definition of consciousness (being aware of ones thoughts).
Now you have routinely asked me what I mean by "thinking" and in the post I am addressing also you question that we are not aware of thinking when it occurs.
The question as to what I mean by thinking should be clearer now, in that even with conscious effort to reduce awareness as much as possible we are still left with thinking which does not want to "go away" as such until we are unconscious and we can no longer differentiate. Therefore thinking for me is that which makes us aware of being conscious, i.e. having a conscious mind which can tell the difference between itself and its thoughts.

Finally
The last and most important pose in any Yoga routine is Savasana (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savasana) which often induces one to become unconscious.
All this is done in order to bring attention to what consciousness is.
What I would be interested in is a scientific investigation, and hence the questions about numbers of brain cells earlier in this thread, as to what activity is happening in the brain under these conditions and how much brain tissue is involved.

I am trying to come to a response, I am pondering. I think it would be better if you addressed the questions i asked in the prior post.

You have delved into a lot of anecdote and I am not sure how to relate it to the issues at hand.

So a better response will be forth coming.

I will remind you that I asked two questions:

1. Is there not an element of recall in your previous descrption of 'awareness of thought'? have you now tried to unclearly reframe that?

2. Is there not awareness in the experience of thought?

Just so you know, I have a long standing practice in spiritual traditions of meditation, shamanism and ceremonial magic. So I am very familiar with many of the concepts and practices. i will have to return to your prior post and then reread this one, I do not think that it has been made clearer to me at all.

 

[Belz...]

If you can't provide a physical description, that's because it's not a physical property. It's not a matter of it being really complicated to describe. Computation is quite simple when described appropriately - that is, in functional terms. It's not possible to describe it in physical terms because it's not a physical process.

Function isn't physical ? I'm confused.

 

[Dancing David]

...
Academics ask only what conclusions can we draw and farmers ask what practical relevance are these conclusions.

overgeneralization.

...
The problem is that our language is too abstract to describe the observations resulting from the phenomenological approach the result being that these observations might read like conclusions, especially by a scientist and hence your scrutiny.

Perhaps your academics are very different than the ones I am familira with, I know many agricultural scientists who are directly involved in practical research into agricultural practices.

Sorry, this seems to have been mainly a piece of your personal opinion.

And you need to focus instead on what the scientists who research 'sonsciousness' are doing.

I will gently note that conceptual artifacts seems to dominate some of your posts in that there seem to be some preconceptions about the way things are.

 

[Dancing David]

Thanks for the post.
Its not so much that I am after that precise threshold. I am interested in the threshold we experience nonetheless and I do not assume measurements will give us a precise threshold, but it will tell us more about what is happening in our brains when we experience it happening.

You have got me thinking about the Libet experiments on readiness potential.
Surely these experiments assume a precise threshold?
Otherwise how did Libet know when to measure the readiness potential?

After a brief look at Liber and readinness potential, interesting exploratory work that is very old (for the field of neuroscience), the terms and measurements used are probably not up to the modern models and standards. Without having read it but having heard about it I know there is a modern pop psych book called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking which is a popularized version of some of the more recent research. But not specifically related to 'volitional' activity and potential. (I will have to do a literarure reveiw on theat.)

 

[Dancing David]

Consciousness itself does not prove anything.As I have said before, we can only observe consciousness by being aware of our thoughts. However being conscious is a pre-requisite for thinking. And thinking is a pre-requisite for proof.

And again, gently that there are many usages of consciousness that involve arousal and response to stimuli and ability to interact.

There are other ways to observe the behaviors that one might potentialy label as consciousness.

Did you mean to state :
"As I have said before, we can only observe our own consciousness by being aware of our thoughts."

 

[Dancing David]

Your original question was about the number of brain cells needed for consciousness to emerge which is very different from "readiness potential". In any event it's fairly easy to determine when a signal has crossed the synapse gap and the threshold needed to cause the synapse to fire (see electroencephalography). Now you are asking a very different question.

Now here is an empirical question you could ask regarding the emergence of consciousness but again I'm afraid that it would not be so precise. I doubt that even what we could even possibly call normative brain function would result in a Bell Curve with error bars. We could anesthetize trained subjects, monitor brain activity and determine at what point they perceive that they are conscious by having them push a button but it's very unlikely that they would measure the same. Even if we could bypass self-reporting we would still likely get a range of data.

Well that throws us right into the morass of behavioral defintions and observation.

And then gets to the really deep issues of :
Is a person with severe dementia or progressed Alzheimer's conscious? At whats tage are the fully conscious? (it is very easy the problem is that they don't meet some of the memory criteria, so they are often alert and responseive to stimuli, but they can't express the sensations very well.)

Oh, BTW, your question is akin to asking how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop.

Three!