On Consciousness

[PixyMisa]

Why is the brain just as active when we are asleep, and not even REM dreaming, as it is when awake?

It's not.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

It's been informative about the skeptical culture here. Many posters (in this thread at least), are comfortable with downright wooish claims: computers and cars are conscious. I expected more vigorous debate.

According to Pixy's definition of consciousness, sure. Thing is, Pixy is using a rather extreme definition. I doubt anyone but Pixy truly shares it. Yet it keeps coming up because no one's put forth a better one, only argued from incredulity as you are doing here. "I can't accept that cars can be conscious, therefore you are wrong" is a much weaker argument than "here is a better definition in which cars are not conscious, therefore you are wrong." If you want vigor, do your part and come up with something to debate.

 

[steenkh]

what is the brain doing when we are asleep?

Using the proper drugs, the brain can go on with practically no sleep. I had a colleague once who seemed never to sleep, and he was not even using drugs.

This suggests that sleep may satisfy some biological need, but probably not anything useful that is related to consciousness.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Using the proper drugs, the brain can go on with practically no sleep. I had a colleague once who seemed never to sleep, and he was not even using drugs.

This suggests that sleep may satisfy some biological need, but probably not anything useful that is related to consciousness.

Sleep is a major factor in learning consolidation (which is why you're told to sleep well before a big exam - not only will you not be exhausted, you really will remember better), and iirc the learning impairments accumulate regardless of how sleep is put off.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Using the proper drugs, the brain can go on with practically no sleep. I had a colleague once who seemed never to sleep, and he was not even using drugs.

This suggests that sleep may satisfy some biological need, but probably not anything useful that is related to consciousness.

I find this hard to believe. What drugs? You heard of fatal familial insomnia? These people go delusional after a week or two and die within (usually) a year at most. Some barely make a couple of months, there is dispute as to how sudden this lack of sleep comes on, some people think that people actually do get brief periods of non REM sleep even after they show symptoms. This is REM sleep that is disrupted, they can dream and achieve REM sleep when in a semi awake state (thus the delusion, they are dreaming when awake in effect) but it's the deeper stages of sleep like NREM and deep sleep that they can't achieve. Which causes their death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomnia

 

[Soapy Sam]

Anecdote:-
I once worked 71 hours , without any rest whatever and with a few hastily downed snacks.
At the end of that time, I was unable to correctly use and read a simple balance scale.
The record for staying awake without drugs is (I understand), 11 days.
That's a surprising degree of variation, but it does suggest there really is a requirement for sleep.

 

[PixyMisa]

I find this hard to believe. What drugs? You heard of fatal familial insomnia? These people go delusional after a week or two and die within (usually) a year at most.

Yes, but they don't just have insomnia, they have a terminal prion disease. Insomnia is a symptom.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Yes, but they don't just have insomnia, they have a terminal prion disease. Insomnia is a symptom.

Yes. Well done.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Using the proper drugs, the brain can go on with practically no sleep. I had a colleague once who seemed never to sleep, and he was not even using drugs.

Anecdote alert! Warning Will Robinson!!

This suggests that sleep may satisfy some biological need, but probably not anything useful that is related to consciousness.

How about living?

 

[Fudbucker]

According to Pixy's definition of consciousness, sure. Thing is, Pixy is using a rather extreme definition. I doubt anyone but Pixy truly shares it. Yet it keeps coming up because no one's put forth a better one, only argued from incredulity as you are doing here. "I can't accept that cars can be conscious, therefore you are wrong" is a much weaker argument than "here is a better definition in which cars are not conscious, therefore you are wrong." If you want vigor, do your part and come up with something to debate.

That's not required:

I can define dark energy as the energy produced by invisible unicorns frolicking all around us.

Nobody has to offer a "better" definition in order to ridicule mine. Sometimes "I don't know" has to suffice until more information comes in.

 

[Fudbucker]

Given the definition being used (per Dennett and Hofstadter), it's not only not wooish, it's easily demonstrable. See !Kaggen's posts on working with car engine controllers, for example.

Neither Dennett nor Hoftsatdter are relevant experts. One is a philosopher, the other is a physicist. Why would you think what they have to say is germane to the discussion? You seem particularly fixated on a couple books you've read (Strange Loop, GEB). Where are the peer-reviewed papers that support those ideas? They don't seem to exist.

One of the problems here is that there are obvious "camps". Belz, for example, ridicules philosophy, and then lets Pixy slide when he defers to a philosopher (Dennett) for an expert opinion. That's not skeptical, nor is it critical thinking.

If you have a problem with this definition, feel free to present it. But you should only bother to take issue with it once you've shown that you understand it - what it means and why it's accepted.

There are many problems with the definition:
1. It leads to absurdities no one takes seriously (conscious cars?)
2. It is undefined (self, information, and processing are unclear terms)
3. Authorities who study brains don't define consciousness as SRIP
4. It does not explain the phenomenon of subjective experience

It's not a bad starting point, but it's insufficient to explain consciousness.

 

[Clive]

Pixy, your claim is that consciousness is solely the result of computation of a particular type, and also that the human brain is a Turing Equivalent computer.

You claim that a Turing machine could (in principle) simulate all the computations of a particular biological brain (whilst also being provided all the appropriate "inputs"), and that the simulated brain will necessarily have *exactly* the same subjective experiences during this simulation as the matching real brain would have had given exactly the same "inputs".

Now suppose we were actually able to do this - to simulate an entire brain along with all the relevant initial conditions and inputs from the surrounding environment for some finite period of time, let's same one minute.

This simulation can be recorded as a sequence of integers - each integer encoding the state of the data tape and machine for each and every step of the Turing machine computation. In other words, if all your claims are correct, we can produce a finite sequence of integers that, in effect capture every detail of that simulation from start to finish.

Now, note that for any finite sequence of integers {y_0, y_1, ... y_n}, there is an infinite set of polynomial functions P = {p_0, p_1, ...} that will all produce the same sequence of integers. That is to say, p(0) = y_0, p(1) = y_1 ... p = y_n, ...., for any p in P.

My question for you is, when we compute the sequence p(0), p(1), ... p using any particular p from the infinite set P, does that sequence of computations also necessarily produce exactly the same conscious experiences as the Turing Machine simulation?

If so, why? (They are surely very different computations, and generally will not produce the same sequence outside of the "one minute period"?)

If not, why not? (What is the Turing Machine computation doing that "creates consciousness" that the polynomial sequence computation is not doing?)

 

[Tomas71]

Oh, I didn't think I was using Tammet as evidence of anything regarding consciousness, rather, just thought provoking.
...
It's still clear the brain does a huge amount of data processing we are completely unconscious of...

I think Tammet's case is more significant for consciousness than you give it credit for. As you say, it's clear that the brain is doing lots of processing that we are not consciously aware of. But how sophisticated is that processing?

Usually, unconscious processing is associated with relatively "simple stuff" (breathing, walking, reacting to the environment) and conscious processing is associated with complicated reasoning (like, say, calculating 13/97 to a hundred decimal places). If someone is able to show that they can unconsciously do that complicated reasoning, that's a big deal. It's very different to our normal experience of unconscious thought. Tammet's descriptions, if true, would provide some compelling evidence that the unconscious is capable of that kind of reasoning. And it's more or less unique - noone else claims to be able to describe that sort of process for calculation (being conscious of the coloured shapes but with the actual calculations being part of some kind of unconscious process).

Tammet's claims are an even bigger deal because he claims that he learned to do that complicated reasoning without lots of training. It's normal that the more training and practice you do on something, the more "unconscious" it becomes and the less you have to think about it. Tammet's claims are not consistent with this.

While I'm not an expert, I would have thought that these sort of claims would have significant implications for our understanding of consciousness, and indeed the first individual study of him was published in the "Journal of Consciousness Studies". The fact that some of the scientists in the field of consciousness studies seem so oblivious to the inconsistencies in his accounts makes me concerned that they are being led to the wrong conclusions.

And while there have been skeptics out there for many years pointing out the flaws in Tammet's account, it's been ignored by the relevant people in the scientific community. Scientific works are still being published that report on him in an uncritical way, such as the 2011 book "Brain, Mind and Consciousness".

It appears to me that the field of consciousness studies has found a case study that really could "blow away" some established theories, if it were all true. But the scientists involved haven't been skeptical enough, and have failed to investigate Tammet's colourful past.

Tomas

 

[Beelzebuddy]

That's not required:

I can define dark energy as the energy produced by invisible unicorns frolicking all around us.

Nobody has to offer a "better" definition in order to ridicule mine. Sometimes "I don't know" has to suffice until more information comes in.

Dark energy's actually a good analogy. We dont really know what it is, we can't detect it, but we know it has to be there because of its measurable effects. Whereas consciousness is something that everyone thinks they know what it is, but no one can detect it, and it has no measurable effects. It's a poor concept.

 

[Clive]

Whereas consciousness is something that everyone thinks they know what it is, but no one can detect it, and it has no measurable effects.

I can detect my own consciousness. Right now I am aware of a feeling on the back of my neck that I interpret as the sun shining on it. Are you a ZombieBeelzeBuddy?

 

[Mr. Scott]

what is the brain doing when we are asleep? Ya know, that state of mind that's uber-evolutionary as every living thing does it to an extent, the altered state of consciousness we spend half of our lives in.

Why is the brain just as active when we are asleep, and not even REM dreaming, as it is when awake?

Almost all mammals dream, but few or no other animals.

The understanding of dreams is pretty much solved as far as I'm concerned. It's the offline process of reconciling new experience with old memories.

NOVA's "What are Dreams" makes the function of dreams pretty clear, but it's no longer available for streaming. I've watched it so many times I've practically memorized it, so feel free to ask me about it. They had this awesome segment where scientists wired a computer to a rat, and could tell what it was dreaming about.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

I can detect my own consciousness. Right now I am aware of a feeling on the back of my neck that I interpret as the sun shining on it. Are you a ZombieBeelzeBuddy?

That's not consciousness, that's sensation.

 

[Fudbucker]

I can detect my own consciousness. Right now I am aware of a feeling on the back of my neck that I interpret as the sun shining on it. Are you a ZombieBeelzeBuddy?

Right, that jumped out at me too.

Dark energy really is a good analogy: we can detect it, we know it's there, but we don't know what it is. People who claim with absolute certainty to know what it is (either with consciousness or dark energy) raise all sorts of red flags, at least for me.

 

[Fudbucker]

That's not consciousness, that's sensation.

You can't sense that you're conscious?

 

[Beelzebuddy]

You can't sense that you're conscious?

Define conscious. Do you mean awake?