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

[Maia]

A very good summary, but let's not forget:

UndercoverElephant Sometimes humans become sexually attracted to the "wrong" thing - members of their own sex, animals, dead bodies, inflicting pain or experiencing pain, and in at least one recorded case a white mini metro. I'd say all these are examples of a natural behaviour that has gone wrong.

and

You could make exactly the same argument regarding, say, beastiality. Why do some humans want to have sex with animals?

and...

oh, why go on.

 

[Robin]

I might also mention the quoting of a bigoted diatribe from a Christian newspaper for no apparent reason.

UndercoverElephant has been very quick to ascribe ulterior motives to those who see plausibility in the group selection theory, but has been full of mock outrage when anybody suggests he might have a similar motive himself.

 

[rocketdodger]

lol, "mock outrage," I like that

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I might also mention the quoting of a bigoted diatribe from a Christian newspaper for no apparent reason.

UndercoverElephant has been very quick to ascribe ulterior motives to those who see plausibility in the group selection theory, but has been full of mock outrage when anybody suggests he might have a similar motive himself.

I just can't believe the level of poor quality arguments I have been bombarded with in this thread, athough that comment is not directed at yourself. The only subject I have ever discussed on this board before which produces quite so much utter tripe as this one is the one this thread is actually supposed to be about. I could have posted "squares have four sides", and been bombarded with people insisting I had made an invalid assumption. DrKitten would then have come along, failed to read the exchange, and announced that everybody was doing a fine job refuting my silly arguments.

I am afraid this board has more than its fair share of [can't post the word but it means something like "large ego and masturbates a lot"]s.

 

[cyborg]

You seem unable to acknowledge the obvious deficiencies in the definition for living things you previously posted.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Oh wait... theres more:

UndercoverElephant Homosexuality, in humans or in other animals, is not and has never been associated with helping genetically-related humans pass on their genes. It is simply the normal human sexual drive which has for some reason gone a bit wrong.
Robin: So why do you say homosexuality is something that went "wrong"? In what sense do you mean that?
UndercoverElephant In the sense that it is a "misfiring" natural behaviour. There is an obvious reason why (most) humans have a strong sex drive. It is there to drive us to reproduce.
cyborg: Reproduction is accidential. A strong sex drive helps increase the accident rate.

UndercoverElephant: Reproduction is accidential. Of course it ****** isn't! Reproduction is the KEY characteristic of all living things.

I fail to see why you have posted this. Looks like several loosely-related statements, those of which were posted by me make perfect sense. Cyborg's statement looks like an attempt at humour and yours is a question. Care to explain what point you are trying to make?

On second thoughts, please don't bother answering. A discussion about consciousness would be a blessed relief after all the **** I've read in this thread, and I have fungi to find anyway.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

You seem unable to acknowledge the obvious deficiencies in the definition for living things you previously posted.

Funny that, given that there were no deficiencies. In fact I didn't even define "living things". I pointed out one of several key characteristics and then spent three pages having to defend myself from a co-ordinated strawman-attack which misquoted this as "the definition of a living thing is something which reproduces". Flight is a key characteristic of birds. It does not follow that you can warp this into "anything which can't fly isn't a bird" and then congratulate yourself on knocking down the argument.

I am not going to repeat myself any more times. If you're too thick to understand this, it's not my problem.

This will be the last time I post in, or read, this thread. Feel free to have a good group hug where you all tell each other how good your respective arguments were and how nothing I said made any sense.

 

[westprog]

Here is the link.

The discussion was about whether consciousness was computational.

Westprog was asking for a definition of computational and said that computation was not physical.

So:

Westprog: It's not possible to describe it in physical terms because it's not a physical process.
PixyMisa: Neither is gravity
Cyborg: Nor anything else. How can I describe an electron in physical terms without appealing to how it behaves - i.e. what is its function?
Westprog: Behaviour is not function. Two very different concepts. An electron has no inherent purpose.
Cyborg Nor does a human.Your point?
UndercoverElephant: A human has an inherent purpose: to make more humans. Humans exist as a means for human DNA to replicate itself. As a biological entity, our purpose is to reproduce.
drkitten: Really? So gay humans are purposeless?
UndercoverElephant : No, they are just failing to fulfill their (biological) purpose.
dlorde: Many (most) animals have homosexual and/or non-reproductive individuals
UndercoverElephant: Not by choice they don't.
dlorde Homosexuality is pretty common, suggesting that it may have some selective advantage in groups, or is at least neutral.
UndercoverElephant: Hard to see what the selective advantage is. I'm not sure this works genetically.


....and so on and so forth.

So you see it is all very relevant to consciousness.

Whoa! Are you saying that I'm responsible for the gay ant diversion?

 

[Robin]

Evolution may be smart, but not smart enough to include unnecessary suicide due to temporary circumstances as a positive strategy produced by group selection.

See here is, I think, the nub of the confusion.

Evolution is not smart. Not at all. It does not "include" stuff as a strategy. It does not have a strategy, positive or otherwise.

It is all just a bunch of stuff that happens. Some of it has an effect one way or the other on the transmission of genetic information and gets selected for or against.

I have no idea whether clinical depression once contributed to group selection or not but I don't see what it's treatability (in the modern era) or the fact that it is unnecessary has to do with the case.

As I said before you are personifying nature. But it's not Mother Nature. It's just nature.

 

[Robin]

Whoa! Are you saying that I'm responsible for the gay ant diversion?

Yep, entirely your fault

Well no, it is hard to pinpoint exactly what went wrong.

I said elsewhere that free will threads have a will of their own. Similarly consciousness thread seem to have a mind of their own.

 

[cyborg]

Cyborg's statement looks like an attempt at humour and yours is a question. Care to explain what point you are trying to make.

It was both humourous and serious. Robin explains it best - evolution is catagorically NOT trying to do anything, including reproduce. The point of evolution is that things that DO reproduce are the things that will have an impact on the next generation. But there is no try.

 

[Robin]

I fail to see why you have posted this.

Because someone asked what this had to do with consciousness.

Looks like several loosely-related statements,...

On the contrary, they are comments that were in answer to each other.

those of which were posted by me make perfect sense.

As long as you think there is a purpose behind evolution.

Cyborg's statement looks like an attempt at humour and yours is a question. Care to explain what point you are trying to make?

Just what I said ... how we got from consciousness to reproduction.

 

[Belz...]

Where in that sentence does it say "Any specific organism which can't reproduce does not qualify as alive"?

Packpedaling.

You said the most important characteristic of life forms was that they reproduced. How can something LACK the MOST important characteristic and STILL be alive ?

 

[westprog]

Yep, entirely your fault

Well no, it is hard to pinpoint exactly what went wrong.

I said elsewhere that free will threads have a will of their own. Similarly consciousness thread seem to have a mind of their own.

And it's impossible to predict what evolution threads will develop into.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Just what I said ... how we got from consciousness to reproduction.

OK...I'll answer this one.

Somebody (don't know who) made the comment "human beings have no inherent purpose". I replied "Yes they do, they have the inherent purpose of producing more humans." Another person then said "that means homosexuals have no purpose" and all hell broke loose.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I fail to see why you have posted this. Looks like several loosely-related statements, those of which were posted by me make perfect sense. Cyborg's statement looks like an attempt at humour and yours is a question. Care to explain what point you are trying to make?

On second thoughts, please don't bother answering. A discussion about consciousness would be a blessed relief after all the **** I've read in this thread, and I have fungi to find anyway.

It was a direct response to my question, "What has any of this got to do with the study of consciousness?"

BTW, thanks for the summary, Robin. I hope you were being facetious when you said that it's all relevant to consciousness!

It sounds like a severe case of topic drift to me, though thanks to Robin's summary I can follow the associations that led to these very off topic discussions.

 

[Robin]

OK...I'll answer this one.

Somebody (don't know who) made the comment "human beings have no inherent purpose". I replied "Yes they do, they have the inherent purpose of producing more humans." Another person then said "that means homosexuals have no purpose" and all hell broke loose.

I have no idea why you are saying this since it is all clearly in my post in the people's own words.

And I think that all hell broke loose when you took issue with dlorde's rather uncontroversial suggestion that homosexuality may have selective advantage in groups or at least be neutral.

Looking at your responses you do seem to become unreasonably agitated at the suggestion.

 

[Dancing David]

Why ask for a definition of consciousness whilst at the same time referring to neuroscience to explain consciousness? Neuroscience is the science of neurons. You want consciousness explained by the study of neurons, but you do not want to know how many neurons till you get consciousness.

I believe that I stated it is dependant upon three things:
-defintion of consciousness
-nature and number of neurons
-arrangement and interaction of neurons

I believe you have mistaken me for RandFan.

As for memory being essential for consciousness, how is this different than an awareness of ones thoughts. No awareness of ones thoughts->no memory->no consciousness.

So I am going to attempt progress at the neuron numbers thingy.
One brains neurons - the neurons in the hippocampus = no consciousness.

I think we might have to get to another thread, as this is in its thrid incarnation of derail.

I feel/think that phenomenology in the sense of just looking at the internal events is non productive.

Now looking at the events of phenomenology in the sense of sensations and models of the action of objects outside one's brain pan, specifically the action of other people/animals brain pans.

that is slightly more productive.

And consciousnesss is more than hippocampal function.

That is why terminolgy is so crucial, there are many ways we can approach it:
-levels of physical arousal (coma, sleep, drosy, sleepy, tired, unfocused, attentive)
-levels of interaction and choice making
-levels of cognition, sensation, perception, awareness, concentration
-levels of abstracxtion in cognition

 

[Belz...]

YET ANOTHER strawman.

I said that the ability to reproduce was one of several defining characteristics of living things. It does not follow from that that every single living organism is necessarily capable of reproduction.

Oh, no, no. That's not what you said. You said that reproduction was THE key characteristic of living things.

Now, since you admit that it doesn't follow that things that cannot reproduce aren't necessarily alive, why don't you simply and modestly admit that you were worded your opinion on the matter poorly ? Is it that hard ?

 

[Fontwell]

Interesting thread! I'm going to ignore all the "gay ants" and "key characteristics of life" stuff and go back to the OP.

As far as I'm concerned, the hard problem of consciousness i.e. the feeling of what it is like to experience something ( quale ) is the key issue and one which nobody has ever really adequately addressed yet. Now, QM has some weird stuff going on for sure. But in the end it seems to me that it is still just describing the behaviour of some physical bits of the universe. And however strange and unfathomable this behaviour may be, it doesn't get us one step closer to understanding where the experience of what something is like comes from.

The experience of qualia seems so unlike anything to do with the habits of sub atomic particles I just can't see how it could ever help, though I may be wrong. It reminds me of AI in a way;

There was a period when the limits of computing power were used as a reason by some people to explain why we couldn't produce real AI. Then we got all the computing we wanted and the problem didn't get any easier to solve.

Similarly, strange QM behaviour is being suggested as the solution to understanding consciousness. But I can't imagine what kind of strange behaviour of particles or waves, however bizarre, could ever succeed in bridging the gap between 'how things move' and the subjective experiences of qualia through our senses.