Explain consciousness to the layman.

[Leumas]

So, the elements formed together to form the first living organism. This much I understand, but what about consciousness? This is never really explained, besides "neurons firing together in the brain" to form it, but this explanation never goes further than that when I hear it.

I know this question has probably already been asked in a more eloquent and intelligent way, but that's why the title has the word layman in it. I also ask, because theists or people in the new age mind set usually put a lot of emphases on consciousness as proof of their beliefs. I want to know how it can be explained by physical laws.

This lecture by Daniel Dennett might be of interest.





This lecture too is interesting

 

[westprog]

Homunculus fallacy. Your eyes and ears don’t focus on anything. They, like the other sensory organs, respond passively to stimuli in the external world, allowing the brain to make a more-or-less informed guess about what that world might contain. The brain integrates this guess into the representation of a ‘you’ standing at the centre of a ‘field of vision/hearing’. Where the physics of the situation means there is likely to be more physical input, the guess may well be more accurate (but may not be – ever seen the ‘gorilla suit’ illusion?).

Clearly, the eyes and ears do focus on a spot inside your head. In the case of eyes, quite literally. You see something from a particular point of view, and that is from your head. You want to see from a different position, you move your head. This is fairly obvious. I don't know if there are animals where the brain isn't located at the focus of the sensory organs. If that were the case, it might be that the perceived location of the self was somewhere different.

 

[Matt the Poet]

Clearly, the eyes and ears do focus on a spot inside your head.

There is no ‘your head’. ‘Your head’ is a construct that a brain has evolved to generate so that the organism of which it’s a part can respond adaptively to external stimuli. It ‘imagines you’ as the central point of a field and generates the unshakeable sense that this wholly internal, simulated reality ‘is’ a physical body situated in an external world to which it has unmediated sensory access.

But it isn’t, and we know it isn’t because a) it can’t be – there is nothing in your brain that is directly feeding sensory input to the parts of the brain that generate ‘awareness’ in real time and b) we know the ways in which it can go wrong, or be fooled so that the simulation it generates doesn’t correspond to key and obvious elements of the outside world (the gorilla suit ‘illusion’) or integrates all the input successfully but ‘forgets; to generate the illusion (blindsight).

 

[Belz...]

I don't even know how humans came to believe that thinking was something that happened in one's head. It seems I can feel my thoughts stirring between my ears, but if I didn't know that's where my brain was, would thinking still feel localized?

I have no idea what you're on about.

 

[Wowbagger]

It seems to me that most of you dismissing the term "qualia" are sweeping the "problem" of private experiences under a rug, without explaining either: Where they come from and how they emerge; or if qualia isn't really real: then how the delusion of qualia comes about.

We want to understand the phenomena of private experiences. Not wave them off as a waste of time.

 

[Belz...]

"Qualia" is not an understanding or an explanation for those subjective experiences.

 

[Matt the Poet]

"Qualia" is not an understanding or an explanation for those subjective experiences.

Indeed, it may hinder understanding as there's no guarantee it 'cleaves nature at the joints' in terms of identifying an actual, measurable phenomenon.

 

[Leumas]

It seems to me that most of you dismissing the term "qualia" are sweeping the "problem" of private experiences under a rug, without explaining either: Where they come from and how they emerge; or if qualia isn't really real: then how the delusion of qualia comes about.

We want to understand the phenomena of private experiences. Not wave them off as a waste of time.

Watch the videos in this post for one explanation that does not need the term qualia in any way.

 

[westprog]

There is no ‘your head’.

Are you really saying that we don't have heads? That seems very poetic.

To clarify - when I say that eyes focus inside the head, I mean that very literally, just like saying a camera lens focuses onto the film or sensor.

‘Your head’ is a construct that a brain has evolved to generate so that the organism of which it’s a part can respond adaptively to external stimuli. It ‘imagines you’ as the central point of a field and generates the unshakeable sense that this wholly internal, simulated reality ‘is’ a physical body situated in an external world to which it has unmediated sensory access.

But it isn’t, and we know it isn’t because a) it can’t be – there is nothing in your brain that is directly feeding sensory input to the parts of the brain that generate ‘awareness’ in real time and b) we know the ways in which it can go wrong, or be fooled so that the simulation it generates doesn’t correspond to key and obvious elements of the outside world (the gorilla suit ‘illusion’) or integrates all the input successfully but ‘forgets; to generate the illusion (blindsight).

I'm not sure if you are claiming here that there is no external reality, in which case I am not necessarily disagreeing, but that's quite another topic.

 

[rocketdodger]

We name it an unspeakable chtonien horror ?




The way I see it defined, consciousness is jsut the assembly of multiple parallel process running in the network of neuron and their overal effect. it is nothing magic, jsut horribly complicated parallel processing. Qualia or whatever are not needed to know what consciousness is on a rough level. Now when you want to reproduce it , in say, software or hardware, to simulate it, that is not enough.N the problem is to get more detail when we have only very rough instrument which give us a very myopic view. We can#t really measure all the network, and all the neuron state. We have only instrument which either measure specific neuron, or big clump activities.

Yep.

Unfortunately, this stuff is simply impossible to grasp if you aren't at least moderately familiar with certain aspects of computing.

On the flip side, if you have any imagination at all, and just read up a bit on things like methods of logical inference in AI and certain artificial neural network topologies and their analogs in actual biological brains, you should start to see glimpses of where human consciousness *probably* comes from, at least in a fuzzy intuitive way.

some places to start:
general logic and how "thinking" can be spoken of in mathematical terms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inference_rules
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_chaining

neural network stuff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopfield_net
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_machine


By the time you read how associative memory works ( Hopfield network ) in a neural network context you should be saying to yourself "wow, that sounds eerily similar to how our minds seem to work ... maybe this isn't so supernatural after all." At least, that's what I said to myself.

In my view, it isn't that far of a stretch to imagine how a series of perceptron like input filters could feed into networks similar to boltzmann machines that are connected in ways that allow them to approximate inference rules. In fact it sounds a ton like what my perception of my own thoughts is -- I see, hear, feel something, it starts a chain of thoughts that reference each other by simple inference, and the thoughts are based on memory. From there everything is just details.

 

[Matt the Poet]

Are you really saying that we don't have heads? That seems very poetic.

I think that your and my sensation of having a head is a strong indication that we do, in fact, have one, but it’s not something we can be sure about.

To clarify - when I say that eyes focus inside the head, I mean that very literally, just like saying a camera lens focuses onto the film or sensor.

Which, as I say, is the ‘homunculus fallacy’. It isn’t true, and unless you’ve never, ever seen an optical illusion or had a sensory hallucination of any sort in your life you know perfectly well that it isn’t true.

I'm not sure if you are claiming here that there is no external reality, in which case I am not necessarily disagreeing, but that's quite another topic.

There is an external reality. And somewhere in that external reality there’s an organism, descended from generations of organisms who have lived long enough to reproduce, and therefore must have mechanisms that allow them to relate to other objects in the world in a way that facilitates this.

The random exigencies of evolution have equipped this organism with a specific mechanism for doing this, by means of which it integrates the data it’s getting from itself and the data it’s getting from the external environment into a best-guess simulation, tuned to the key tasks of survival and reproduction, of where it is in relation to everything else. To represent ‘where it is’, it has to differentiate between those bits of the world that belong to it and those that don’t

So it generates ‘you’ – or at least those bits of you about which it’s got reliable neural data (how does your spleen feel right now?) so that it can have something to which it can represent its rather less reliable data on anything that isn’t itself but which it might need to do something about.* In its simulation it gives ‘you’ a ‘head’ with eyes and ears etc. because that’s what it needs to do to make the whole thing work. It seems logical that this corresponds with whatever’s ‘actually happening’ because if your physical boundaries in relation to the world weren’t being represented as at least roughly what they actually are you’d bump into things a lot more than you do. But equally (if less plausibly), you could ‘actually’ be some kind of, say, vast, bubbling algal mat flopping through the atmosphere of a gas giant, and the whole thing could be a convenient fiction that just happens to be the best way to make sure ‘you’ get soft fruit and gazelle (or whatever ‘soft fruit and gazelle’ actually are in the objective world).




*IIRC, there’s some sketchy neurological evidence that what it actually does, bizarrely, is make a whole series of up-front guesses about what might be ‘in here’ and ‘out there’ and then does a ‘plausibility check’ against the incoming sensory data to select the one it’s going to run. Which sounds like exactly the sort of crazy, topsy-turvy result of evolution one would expect. And also provides a neat explanation for dreams as what happens when this guessing carries on without the checking step.

 

[westprog]

I think that your and my sensation of having a head is a strong indication that we do, in fact, have one, but it’s not something we can be sure about.

Then let's say that this hypothetical but "real" world exists. It needn't bind either of us to final commitment to the hypothesis, but it will allow discussion as if it exists.

Which, as I say, is the ‘homunculus fallacy’. It isn’t true, and unless you’ve never, ever seen an optical illusion or had a sensory hallucination of any sort in your life you know perfectly well that it isn’t true.

Since I know perfectly well that it is true, I am sure that we are at cross purposes in some way.

There is a physical object - an eye - which has physical properties. One of these is that it focuses light - just as in the simple diagrams in an optics textbook. The focal point of the lens in the eye is onto the retina in the back of the eye, which is physically located inside the head.

This has nothing to do with the homunculus. The same applies to a dead person with the eyes open.

There is an external reality. And somewhere in that external reality there’s an organism, descended from generations of organisms who have lived long enough to reproduce, and therefore must have mechanisms that allow them to relate to other objects in the world in a way that facilitates this.

The random exigencies of evolution have equipped this organism with a specific mechanism for doing this, by means of which it integrates the data it’s getting from itself and the data it’s getting from the external environment into a best-guess simulation, tuned to the key tasks of survival and reproduction, of where it is in relation to everything else. To represent ‘where it is’, it has to differentiate between those bits of the world that belong to it and those that don’t

So it generates ‘you’ – or at least those bits of you about which it’s got reliable neural data (how does your spleen feel right now?) so that it can have something to which it can represent its rather less reliable data on anything that isn’t itself but which it might need to do something about.* In its simulation it gives ‘you’ a ‘head’ with eyes and ears etc. because that’s what it needs to do to make the whole thing work. It seems logical that this corresponds with whatever’s ‘actually happening’ because if your physical boundaries in relation to the world weren’t being represented as at least roughly what they actually are you’d bump into things a lot more than you do. But equally (if less plausibly), you could ‘actually’ be some kind of, say, vast, bubbling algal mat flopping through the atmosphere of a gas giant, and the whole thing could be a convenient fiction that just happens to be the best way to make sure ‘you’ get soft fruit and gazelle (or whatever ‘soft fruit and gazelle’ actually are in the objective world).




*IIRC, there’s some sketchy neurological evidence that what it actually does, bizarrely, is make a whole series of up-front guesses about what might be ‘in here’ and ‘out there’ and then does a ‘plausibility check’ against the incoming sensory data to select the one it’s going to run. Which sounds like exactly the sort of crazy, topsy-turvy result of evolution one would expect. And also provides a neat explanation for dreams as what happens when this guessing carries on without the checking step.

 

[Minoosh]

We want to understand the phenomena of private experiences. Not wave them off as a waste of time.

The quest to understand consciousness strikes me as a pursuit in which we are especially trapped in our own frames of reference. "I wonder why I wonder why I wonder why I wonder," etc.

My quantum babble was a parody. Not of Penrose, but of others who have latched onto his theories because they aren't satisfied with the notion that consciousness arises in a formulaic way from the brain's complexity.

In the time I've spent reading "for the layman" accounts of quantum mechanics perhaps I could have acquired some real understanding. I certainly don't have it now. And, my point, neither do a lot of people who seem attracted to quantum theories of consciousness. I can just about put together a sentence or two describing the weird world of subatomic particles and how observation forces them to "choose" certain properties. But why that would explain anything about consciousness is beyond me.

 

[Minoosh]

AND I've never read "The Emperor's New Mind," but just snipped this bit from a review on Amazon:

"Penrose claims that there is an intimate, perhaps unknowable relation between quantum effects and our thinking, "

And it's the "perhaps unknowable" part that sets alarm bells ringing. It just seems too dang convenient for people who want to hold forth without really understanding what they're talking about.

 

[Complexity]

It seems to me that most of you dismissing the term "qualia" are sweeping the "problem" of private experiences under a rug, without explaining either: Where they come from and how they emerge; or if qualia isn't really real: then how the delusion of qualia comes about.

We want to understand the phenomena of private experiences. Not wave them off as a waste of time.

'Qualia' is a dead end. Find a much better path to understanding than that.

 

[Complexity]

AND I've never read "The Emperor's New Mind," but just snipped this bit from a review on Amazon:

"Penrose claims that there is an intimate, perhaps unknowable relation between quantum effects and our thinking, "

And it's the "perhaps unknowable" part that sets alarm bells ringing. It just seems too dang convenient for people who want to hold forth without really understanding what they're talking about.

Penrose has a definite woo streak. I find him to be not worth reading because of that - his better ideas simply aren't good enough to overcome his woo nonsense.

 

[Wowbagger]

"Qualia" is not an understanding or an explanation for those subjective experiences.

I know that. 'Qualia' is a word we can us describe what needs to be explained. As long as we leave out the "it's unexplainable!" part.

It might be a synonymn of "subjective experience", but I think it is more likely an emergent property of various aspects of the brain that generate different types subjective experiences.

Indeed, it may hinder understanding as there's no guarantee it 'cleaves nature at the joints' in terms of identifying an actual, measurable phenomenon.

I suppose if the word has sooooo much baggage associated with it, perhaps usage of this word would barely be worth pursuing.

But, I still think the word could be used in an entirely measurable manner.

Watch the videos in this post for one explanation that does not need the term qualia in any way.

I didn't watch those in their entirety, but I am familiar with the arguments.

I would argue that what Daniel Dennett is describing IS qualia. Even if he hates using that word to describe it.

My quantum babble was a parody.

That does explain a few things.

'Qualia' is a dead end. Find a much better path to understanding than that.

The 'better path' you are referring to is actually an explanation for what 'qualia' is. Even if you don't like that word.

Imagine if some said: "Every time we examine a single bird in a flock, the flock itself disappears from our observation. Therefore, studying flocking behavior is a dead end! Flocking can't really exist, and we should only continue to study the individual birds."

 

[PixyMisa]

We'd tell them to get flocked.

 

[Matt the Poet]

Then let's say that this hypothetical but "real" world exists. It needn't bind either of us to final commitment to the hypothesis, but it will allow discussion as if it exists.

OK, fair enough. I will go as far as admitting arguendo that a real world exists which has some kind of relationship to what our brains simulate. Let’s forget about the idea of algal mats evolved to percieve their world via an elaborate visual metaphor for now.

Since I know perfectly well that it is true, I am sure that we are at cross purposes in some way.

There is a physical object - an eye - which has physical properties. One of these is that it focuses light - just as in the simple diagrams in an optics textbook. The focal point of the lens in the eye is onto the retina in the back of the eye, which is physically located inside the head.

This has nothing to do with the homunculus. The same applies to a dead person with the eyes open.

Ah, but your original quote was this:

Your eyes and ears focus onto a spot in the middle of your head, which makes it seem like that's where you are.

It’s the part I’ve bolded that shows the homunculus fallacy. What things ‘seem’ like has nothing to do with where light happens to be falling on a retina, except to the extent that the simulation is likely to be sharper and better where the organism’s brain has the most data to integrate, and it would seem logical that the organism would be better adapted for its environment if the ‘you’ it generates was correctly apprised of where it’s primary sensors are so that it can avoid them being damaged. Eyes aren’t windows on the world.

 

[westprog]

It’s the part I’ve bolded that shows the homunculus fallacy. What things ‘seem’ like has nothing to do with where light happens to be falling on a retina, except to the extent that the simulation is likely to be sharper and better where the organism’s brain has the most data to integrate, and it would seem logical that the organism would be better adapted for its environment if the ‘you’ it generates was correctly apprised of where it’s primary sensors are so that it can avoid them being damaged. Eyes aren’t windows on the world.

OK, let me clarify. We do create a model of the world, based on sensory data. That model is three dimensional. In that model, we have a privileged position which it appears to ourselves that we occupy. The position of the "self" in the model appears to correspond with the "real" position of the brain in the "real" world. The point I was making was not that this is not an artificial model - it's that the location of the "self" is based on the focus of the eyes and ears, rather than where the thinking is going on.

Because we are so aware that the brain is what does the thinking, it's easy to imagine that the position of the "self" in the model is due to where the brain is. In fact, the position of the "self" is almost certainly due to the position of the eyes and ears. One wonders what the position of self would be for, say, a deaf/blind person - or even if such a person would have a spatial model at all in which to have a position of self.