On Consciousness

[Dancing David]

So, I'll propose that consciousness be defined as receiving and processing external or internal stimulus.

I think it is a wee bit more, even at the base line of 'conscious' it involves a lot of prefontal processing, so I don't think that encompasses it.

 

[Dancing David]

The device you typed that on certainly receives external stimulus and via coding internal stimulus yet it by no understanding today should be deemed conscious.

We remain imo at subjectivity as the real attribute, and I await nomination of behaviors one observes in oneself that leads one to claim consciouness.

Please define 'subjectivity'.

 

[Mr. Scott]

I think it is a wee bit more, even at the base line of 'conscious' it involves a lot of prefontal processing, so I don't think that encompasses it.

Does it require prefontal processing? Are patients (or animals) without any prefrontal processing not conscious?

 

[AlBell]

Please define 'subjectivity'.

As discussed above, conscious of being conscious, and therefore not subject to real time third party validation.

IMO, verbalizing or other behavior after the fact doesn't count as 3rd party validation. ymmv.

Good question though. I'm interested in others' answers.

 

[dlorde]

In my earlier post, I mentioned internal stimulus. The technical term for this is feedback, in which some upstream part of the mechanism feeds back to a downstream part:

All well and good, there was internal feedback, so by that measure I was conscious; but in those situations I couldn't be specific about what I was conscious of, yet it didn't seem to render the whole idea of consciousness meaningless as you suggest it should.

... if we can't be specific about what we are conscious of, then the whole idea of consciousness is meaningless.

I was really wondering whether you could clarify what you meant in that respect.

 

[Mr. Scott]

In my earlier post, I mentioned internal stimulus. The technical term for this is feedback, in which some upstream part of the mechanism feeds back to a downstream part:

Oops I said that backwards. Feedback sends downstream information back upstream.

All well and good, there was internal feedback, so by that measure I was conscious; but in those situations I couldn't be specific about what I was conscious of, yet it didn't seem to render the whole idea of consciousness meaningless as you suggest it should.



I was really wondering whether you could clarify what you meant in that respect.

I'll work on it, but right now it's hard to think of a good way to reword it. I just can't imagine an entity being conscious if there's no input to the entity, e.g. a light, a sound, a thought, an image, a feeling, a memory, a dream. Can you? Eliminate all inputs, and I just don't see anything left to call conscious. Do you?

 

[Pulvinar]

I'll work on it, but right now it's hard to think of a good way to reword it. I just can't imagine an entity being conscious if there's no input to the entity, e.g. a light, a sound, a thought, an image, a feeling, a memory, a dream. Can you? Eliminate all inputs, and I just don't see anything left to call conscious. Do you?

If I may interject: How about a sense of the passage of time? I'd call it the ultimate minimum requirement for an inner narrative that can be recalled. In other words, we can't really say we were conscious during some interval unless we remember there being an interval. Note that this isn't equivalent to memory in general, since we can certainly recall facts that have no "timestamp".

 

[Mr. Scott]

If I may interject: How about a sense of the passage of time? I'd call it the ultimate minimum requirement for an inner narrative that can be recalled. In other words, we can't really say we were conscious during some interval unless we remember there being an interval. Note that this isn't equivalent to memory in general, since we can certainly recall facts that have no "timestamp".

Well, that's interesting. Tell me what happens in you when you sense the passage of time.

I'm recaling an interesting experiment I read about a long time ago, so it would be quite a challenge to google it, so here it is from memory.

A group of scientists asked subjects to estimate the passage of time. Say, to press a button after they felt 5 minutes elapsed. After this control test, they showed the subjects a miniature room, like in a doll house, and asked them to estimate the passage of time in that room, pressing the button again after 5 minutes in the miniature room elapsed. They found the subjects scaled the passage of time to match the size of the room, e.g. pressing the button after 2:30 for minutes sensed to have elapsed in a half-sized room. I'll be thinking about what that means to the consciousness of the passing of time.

I suspect there is some machinery in the brain that clocks out time. Maybe it's partly a sense of the sum of our breaths or heartbeats. Many people always have music playing in their heads. That might help.

If a machine needed to sense the passage of time, a clock would be added as, again, an input device, as there is one in most every computer today. I don't doubt the brain/body has a few timers analogous to the clocks in laptop computers.

Indeed, there's been a lot of progress in discovering the biological clocks in people, other animals, and plants. I encourage you to google this yourself if you are interested.

I'm finding that confidence that the mind arises from a machine makes solving it mysterious almost trivial.

Before I forget, is a person who's lost the sense of time definitely not conscious?

For that matter, is a being lacking an inner narrative not conscious, either?

 

[Pulvinar]

Well, that's interesting. Tell me what happens in you when you sense the passage of time.

I'm recaling an interesting experiment I read about a long time ago, so it would be quite a challenge to google it, so here it is from memory.

A group of scientists asked subjects to estimate the passage of time. Say, to press a button after they felt 5 minutes elapsed. After this control test, they showed the subjects a miniature room, like in a doll house, and asked them to estimate the passage of time in that room, pressing the button again after 5 minutes in the miniature room elapsed. They found the subjects scaled the passage of time to match the size of the room, e.g. pressing the button after 2:30 for minutes sensed to have elapsed in a half-sized room. I'll be thinking about what that means to the consciousness of the passing of time.

I suspect there is some machinery in the brain that clocks out time. Maybe it's partly a sense of the sum of our breaths or heartbeats. Many people always have music playing in their heads. That might help.

If a machine needed to sense the passage of time, a clock would be added as, again, an input device, as there is one in most every computer today. I don't doubt the brain/body has a few timers analogous to the clocks in laptop computers.

Indeed, there's been a lot of progress in discovering the biological clocks in people, other animals, and plants. I encourage you to google this yourself if you are interested.

I'm finding that confidence that the mind arises from a machine makes solving it mysterious almost trivial.

Before I forget, is a person who's lost the sense of time definitely not conscious?

For that matter, is a being lacking an inner narrative not conscious, either?

I hadn't heard of the miniature effect on time perception, but it makes sense. Even our recollection of the ordering of events can wrong in different circumstances. I don't know the actual way the brain perceives time, but storing an association of the current percept along with a crude measure of the interval since the previous percept would be efficient. More than just recording continuously, say as a tape recorder does.

A tape recorder does seem to have the necessary features to be minimally conscious: it can memorize at least one sense and then on demand recall and report what it was. Its sense of time is the running tape, even if it's blank.

Of course few would call a tape recorder conscious since it's missing every other attribute we have, and to most people, "human-like" is a necessary (if unstated) criterion for consciousness.

As for people losing their sense of time-- I lose mine every night, and consider myself unconscious then (at least between dreams).

If a person was truly lacking an inner narrative I don't see how they could pass a simple test that a tape recorder could pass: the equivalent of "remember this random word and repeat it back to me".

 

[dlorde]

... just can't imagine an entity being conscious if there's no input to the entity, e.g. a light, a sound, a thought, an image, a feeling, a memory, a dream. Can you? Eliminate all inputs, and I just don't see anything left to call conscious. Do you?

No, I don't. But that doesn't mean one must necessarily be specific about what these inputs are. It seems to me that one can be conscious without specificity, as when one is (conscious of being) confused and disoriented. It may render consciousness useless, but surely not meaningless.

 

[Mr. Scott]

No, I don't. But that doesn't mean one must necessarily be specific about what these inputs are. It seems to me that one can be conscious without specificity, as when one is (conscious of being) confused and disoriented. It may render consciousness useless, but surely not meaningless.

You are really mean a confused or disoriented state could be completely bereft of stimulus/input, external or internal? I'd say something on the inside is not functioning as it should, but it's still getting incoming data. It's just not processing it normally.

 

[Piggy]

I'll work on it, but right now it's hard to think of a good way to reword it. I just can't imagine an entity being conscious if there's no input to the entity, e.g. a light, a sound, a thought, an image, a feeling, a memory, a dream. Can you? Eliminate all inputs, and I just don't see anything left to call conscious. Do you?

Input is not necessary.

Of course, in the real world -- consciousness as it naturally occurs -- beings who can perform consciousness are the result of evolution, and so that's what we're used to. Even our dreams, which are internally created, are informed by our waking experience.

But it doesn't have to be that way. As long as the mechanisms are there to produce the hologram (speaking metaphorically with that last term) then you have consciousness.

Keep in mind that absolutely none of your phenomenology -- which is to say, the "qualia" of your conscious experience -- exists anywhere outside your brain. There are no colors "out there" in the world, or sounds, or pain, or nausea, or odors, or any of that.

Yes, your brain responds to various situations by producing colors, sounds, odors, and such, but this isn't essentially different from your body producing pain or pleasure as a response.

So if you were to build a synthetic brain that was capable of performing some sort of phenomenology -- nobody knows how at the moment, but hypothetically -- it would do so, without any input from outside the machine.

 

[Piggy]

If I may interject: How about a sense of the passage of time? I'd call it the ultimate minimum requirement for an inner narrative that can be recalled. In other words, we can't really say we were conscious during some interval unless we remember there being an interval. Note that this isn't equivalent to memory in general, since we can certainly recall facts that have no "timestamp".

I don't see why one would need to recall an inner narrative in order to produce phenomenology.

Biologically, I can't see a reason why consciousness of time in particular would be required for consciousness per se.

 

[Mr. Scott]

So if you were to build a synthetic brain that was capable of performing some sort of phenomenology -- nobody knows how at the moment, but hypothetically -- it would do so, without any input from outside the machine.

How was it decided that qualia and phenomenology were mandatory elements of consciousness?

 

[Piggy]

How was it decided that qualia and phenomenology were mandatory elements of consciousness?

That's like asking how it was decided that colored lights in the northern sky were mandatory elements of the aurora borealis.

There is nothing to consciousness except phenomenology and vice versa.

When you're asleep and not dreaming, there's no phenomenology.

When you wake up, the phenomenology begins, and so does consciousness. There is no difference between them.

 

[PixyMisa]

Keep in mind that absolutely none of your phenomenology -- which is to say, the "qualia" of your conscious experience -- exists anywhere outside your brain. There are no colors "out there" in the world, or sounds, or pain, or nausea, or odors, or any of that.

Colours are physical. Sounds are physical. Odours are physical. The brain represents them, models them.

 

[annnnoid]

Colours are physical. Sounds are physical. Odours are physical. The brain represents them, models them.

Vibrations through media occur. You can call them color and sound if you like, but they are not in any way shape or form what occurs as color and / or sound in the human brain (though...admittedly...it is not really known how any of these actually do occur in the human brain...so suggesting they are different is just as flawed as suggesting they are similar; the situation is a mystery [which...however much it may befoul the temperament of certain individuals...leaves enormous latitude for any variety of magic bean anyone may care to postulate]). Same with odor. One is not the other. The phenomenology of mind bears absolutely no resemblance to whatever it is that it coincidentally represents. Call it ‘physical’ if you want. The term is meaningless.

…and since we’re on the subject of ‘physical’ ( “…everything is physical…in its own way…” …wasn’t that a top-40 hit by Donny Osmond back in the Neolithic ????)….is mathematics physical?

 

[Pulvinar]

I don't see why one would need to recall an inner narrative in order to produce phenomenology.

We wouldn't-- it's the other way around. Our brains correlate and condense data into chunks (effectively, phenomena) in order to produce a compact narrative that we can later recall, and maybe make use of. If we recorded just raw data it would not only be expensive to store but useless for timely decision-making.

Biologically, I can't see a reason why consciousness of time in particular would be required for consciousness per se.

Can you give a counter-example?

 

[dlorde]

No, I don't. But that doesn't mean one must necessarily be specific about what these inputs are. It seems to me that one can be conscious without specificity, as when one is (conscious of being) confused and disoriented. It may render consciousness useless, but surely not meaningless.

You are really mean a confused or disoriented state could be completely bereft of stimulus/input, external or internal? I'd say something on the inside is not functioning as it should, but it's still getting incoming data. It's just not processing it normally.

I'm not particularly concerned with inputs, but was simply querying your original claim that if we can't be 'specific' about what we're conscious of, it's meaningless. It seems to me that you can be conscious without being specific about what you're conscious of.

Three tries is enough. I'll stop now.

 

[PixyMisa]

Vibrations through media occur. You can call them color and sound if you like, but they are not in any way shape or form what occurs as color and / or sound in the human brain (though...admittedly...it is not really known how any of these actually do occur in the human brain...so suggesting they are different is just as flawed as suggesting they are similar; the situation is a mystery [which...however much it may befoul the temperament of certain individuals...leaves enormous latitude for any variety of magic bean anyone may care to postulate]). Same with odor. One is not the other. The phenomenology of mind bears absolutely no resemblance to whatever it is that it coincidentally represents.

[My italics.]

You are deeply confused.