Am I the atoms that make me?

[Dancing David]

This says that the alcohol doesn't kill the cells they kill themselves.

http://www.cem.msu.edu/~cem181h/projects/98/magnet/index.html

 

[PixyMisa]

Very interesting. So raw matter and energy can be considered information, can't it?

Not exactly. The arrangement of matter and energy in space-time can be considered information.

In fact there might be some sort of consciousness (not like what we experience of course) in matter itself, and its organization into a brain is what makes that consciousness intelligent and sensible.

If you're talking about atoms or subatomic particles, then no, this is not only wrong (it's the fallacy of composition again, only taken in the other direction), but impossible. Quantum physics tells us exactly what the properties of particles and atoms are, and there just isn't room to squeeze anything resembling consciousness in there.

I've also wondered if individual cells might not also have a rudimentary consciousness. Again, nothing like ours, but a very tiny little bit of consciousness, unable to reason at a high level, but will some simple feelings.

Again, not exactly. Single cells can respond to stimuli, but that alone isn't consciousness. The way I see it, there are three essential stages: Stimulus-response, learning, and consciousness. For learning you also need memory, and the ability to compare stimuli to memory and modify both the response and the memory by the outcome of the comparison. Consciousness adds a layer of introspection on top of that, so that you can examine the process itself and use that in turn as feedback to adjust the learning process.

That's not all that complicated. You could build a circuit to do it with, say, a hundred or so transistors. Neurons are more sophisticated than transistors, so a couple of dozen neurons could do the same job. So a single-celled animal probably not, but something like a planarian flatworm might possess a rudimentary consciousness. (I don't know if they actually do; it also depends on how their brains are wired up, not just on the number of neurons.)

 

[rocketdodger]

There in no 'me', you are not the 'you' of the prior moment , nor are you the 'you' of the next moment , the continuity is an an illusion of the process.

I used to think this, but now I don't.

It seems to me that whatever data structures are used to carry a consciousness must necessarily be continuous -- I.E. a set of signals in our mind is the same set as it was in the prior moment, and is the same set it will be the next moment.

If our consciousness is discrete then I think it is at the information level rather than the temporal level. That is to say, between the times when signals are formed or propagated to a point in our brain, the consciousness is identical across time slices. Kind of like how in a computer the program is the same across time slices within a clock cycle.

 

[PixyMisa]

What rocketdodger said. Consciousness is a process, not an event. There is no you if there is no continuity.

 

[Dancing David]

I used to think this, but now I don't.

It seems to me that whatever data structures are used to carry a consciousness must necessarily be continuous -- I.E. a set of signals in our mind is the same set as it was in the prior moment, and is the same set it will be the next moment.

If our consciousness is discrete then I think it is at the information level rather than the temporal level. That is to say, between the times when signals are formed or propagated to a point in our brain, the consciousness is identical across time slices. Kind of like how in a computer the program is the same across time slices within a clock cycle.

Then who is a person with alzheimer's disorder. they do not concretise new memories. So are they the 'you' that existed with thier last new memory?

I ask because it is a salient point, Most people view memory as a crucial part of self consciousness, but even without alzheimer's memory is a tricky little bug that plays tricks on you.

The memory is not really storage like a hard drive, it is more a reconstruction of the past from limited data sets. And it is prone to error, change and confabulation.

Where does you go during anesthesia or after a stroke?

I am open to change but I have considered this a long time.

 

[PixyMisa]

Then who is a person with alzheimer's disorder. they do not concretise new memories. So are they the 'you' that existed with thier last new memory?

I ask because it is a salient point, Most people view memory as a crucial part of self consciousness, but even without alzheimer's memory is a tricky little bug that plays tricks on you.

It is a salient point, and memory is indeed a tricky little bug.

What this means is not that there is an identifiable instantaneous self, but that consciousness is also a tricky little bug.

The memory is not really storage like a hard drive, it is more a reconstruction of the past from limited data sets. And it is prone to error, change and confabulation.

Where does you go during anesthesia or after a stroke?

Much the same place it goes during sleep. Brain processing is suppressed, and conscious awareness is suppressed with it. Memory remains intact (essentially), and when we awake and processing starts up again, consciousness also starts up again. Like the sleep button on a laptop; you don't lose your place, but nothing happens while you're hibernating.

That's simplifying things a lot, of course; sleep isn't all the same and it's also distinct from other forms of unconsciousness.

I am open to change but I have considered this a long time.

We're agreeing on far more than we're disagreeing, so it might just be the way we've chosen to express our respective points. What I take rocketdodger as saying, and this is my view as well, is that when brain processing is suspended there is no you as such. We still refer to you as you only because we have an expectation (reasonable or not) that processing will resume.

So when you say continuity is an illusion, well, I'd say it is and it isn't. We expect our - and others' - perception of selfhood to change over time; that change is something we consider an attribute of consciousness. So with all these discontinuities going on - sleep, neurological change, mental change - we look for hints of continuities. Physical continuity - I look the same as I did yesterday, so it's still me. Mental continuity - yesterday I liked chocolate; today I like chocolate, so it's still me. It gets tricky when you start to play with thought experiments like replacing one neuron at a time, or worse, start using the new hi-tech neurons to duplicate the mind in another substrate.

 

[chris epic]

Then there is the legal question where topics like this fall into: could a person be held accountible for a murder they committed 30 years ago if, in that 30 years, the cells in their body from 30 years prior were completely replaced by new cells....not the same person, physically, anymore. And that's it- physical. Its all physical. There is no dualism. Dualism only exists in the confines of conversation, its not "real." Thoughts are physical, personality is physical, the brain is physical, the mind is the brain, or part of the brain...

 

[Roboramma]

Then there is the legal question where topics like this fall into: could a person be held accountible for a murder they committed 30 years ago if, in that 30 years, the cells in their body from 30 years prior were completely replaced by new cells....not the same person, physically, anymore.

Those sorts of questions can be dealt with entirely by taking a pragmatic view of the law as deterent rather than punishment. If we use it in that way, and understand how to do so as effectively as possible, the it doesn't matter if it's the same person or not.

Of course, this brings in questions of rights, and those questions do require an idea of "self".

And that's it- physical. Its all physical. There is no dualism. Dualism only exists in the confines of conversation, its not "real." Thoughts are physical, personality is physical, the brain is physical, the mind is the brain, or part of the brain...

However, if the person is represented, as others have pointed out, not by the particular matter that makes them up, but by the patterns that those things take - by the structure of the matter - then this problem goes away.

Dawkins had a good example with sand dunes. Over time every grain of sand in the dune is replaced by another grain. Yet, we can still say "that's the same sand dune". Anyone who can at least understand the idea that it's the same dune already understands the point, and only needs to think about what it is they're describing as the same dune from one point in time to another.
And the same is true of people.

 

[JetLeg]

A question has been bugging me lately. I am an agnostic/atheist, and don't really believe in a soul or an afterlife.

But if there is no soul, I wonder why I have this subjective experience. I think the brain is probably what is having this experience, but what part of the brain? Are the atoms that make up the brain having this experience? I know the stuff that makes up our bodies gets replaced a lot, but what about the stuff that makes up the brain? Are most of the same atoms that made up my brain 20 years ago still in there? Is there some kind of potential consciousness in matter itself that becomes concious when it becomes a part of a living animal?

If not, then why should I be experiencing the life of this one particular person? If it's just the brain experiencing this, and the brain in turn is just a bunch of matter, then aren't those particular atoms somehow me?

Here is a great resource

http://consc.net/online

 

[rocketdodger]

Then who is a person with alzheimer's disorder. they do not concretise new memories. So are they the 'you' that existed with thier last new memory?

I ask because it is a salient point, Most people view memory as a crucial part of self consciousness, but even without alzheimer's memory is a tricky little bug that plays tricks on you.

The memory is not really storage like a hard drive, it is more a reconstruction of the past from limited data sets. And it is prone to error, change and confabulation.

Where does you go during anesthesia or after a stroke?

I am open to change but I have considered this a long time.

My reply is basically what PixyMisa said. I am simply saying that if it were possible to effectively freeze the state of a person, like we can freeze memory in a computer, then at all instants during that freeze the consciousness would be the same one. Where by "effectively freeze" I mean anything that results in both no new neurons firing AND all signal states paused.

In other words, I think that even while impulses are propagating along axons, as long as no transmission between synapses happens the consciousness is the same. Just like the state of your computer doesn't change between clock cycles even though electrons are still flowing.

 

[Robin]

Then where is the consciousness? And why wouldn't a perfect simulation suck it in like a real brain does?

Because consciousness is produced by the brain, not "sucked in" by the brain.

A "perfect simulation" of consciousness would of course be conscious (otherwise it wouldn't be perfect would it?). But that is only trivially true.

The question is, could consciousness be created on any substrate capable of handling the speed and complexity of the calculations required? If I have a non-biological computer that can model every single element of a human brain would it necessarily be conscious?

My guess would be no, at least for some substrates. My guess is that it would not even behave as if it were conscious.

What if I slowly replace the brain with electronic modules? When does the consciousness disconnect?

It would be impossible to say, even if you could try it the results would be ambiguous. My guess, though, is that if you were to start to replace elements of the brain with electronic components then the person would start to behave like someone with advancing Alzheimers, eventually becoming a vegetable.

And, of course, how do I tell if someone else is experiencing what I think of as consciousness, except possibly by asking?

If somebody's brain were completely replaced by electronic devices that served the same ostensible purposes as the biological machinery of our brains, and they still behaved as though they were conscious, then it would be overwhelmingly more reasonable to conclude that they were still conscious.

But we the study of consciousness is still in very early stages, there is still a great deal to find out.

I am astounded at the posters here that speak as though they had something like certainty on the subject.

 

[Robin]

Is there some kind of potential consciousness in matter itself that becomes concious when it becomes a part of a living animal?

If anything at all happens in this universe then it seems obvious (tautological even) to me that there must have been the potential for it to happen.

So consciousness (whatever it is) happens. So the potential for consciousness must have always have existed in the universe even though consciousness itself did not.

Some people seem to think that this is a profound fine-tuning type argument, but I think it is pretty trivial.

 

[Dancing David]

My reply is basically what PixyMisa said. I am simply saying that if it were possible to effectively freeze the state of a person, like we can freeze memory in a computer, then at all instants during that freeze the consciousness would be the same one. Where by "effectively freeze" I mean anything that results in both no new neurons firing AND all signal states paused.

In other words, I think that even while impulses are propagating along axons, as long as no transmission between synapses happens the consciousness is the same. Just like the state of your computer doesn't change between clock cycles even though electrons are still flowing.

Okay, I can see that I don't agree with it but I understand it.

Wouldn't the biochemical charge state of neurons (pre-fire, just firing and post fire) give three potential states for each neuron? So they would be likely to be different during each 'freeze'.

I guess the main point I would have is that the brain is very different from a computer, neurons work more like analog circuits and the software is sort of made up as it goes along.

Memory can be and is confalbulated all the time. The process we describe as consciousness is very fluid and composed of many changing states, even the perceptions are not likely to follow the same path from sensations each time.

But it is just my POV.

There is continuity of a sort, but a very limited one in time and duration. Unlike the architechture of a computer the brains patterns are the information being transmitted at any given moment, the brain is like a parliment or government organization, different players have to agree or disagree in comittee on a single datum before it is sent on. So the perception of the same red apple, may involve very different sets of voters during each moment.

Just my POV. There is a body which has a limited sort of continuity.

 

[Dancing David]

Because consciousness is produced by the brain, not "sucked in" by the brain.

A "perfect simulation" of consciousness would of course be conscious (otherwise it wouldn't be perfect would it?). But that is only trivially true.

The question is, could consciousness be created on any substrate capable of handling the speed and complexity of the calculations required? If I have a non-biological computer that can model every single element of a human brain would it necessarily be conscious?

My guess would be no, at least for some substrates. My guess is that it would not even behave as if it were conscious.

It would be impossible to say, even if you could try it the results would be ambiguous. My guess, though, is that if you were to start to replace elements of the brain with electronic components then the person would start to behave like someone with advancing Alzheimers, eventually becoming a vegetable.

If somebody's brain were completely replaced by electronic devices that served the same ostensible purposes as the biological machinery of our brains, and they still behaved as though they were conscious, then it would be overwhelmingly more reasonable to conclude that they were still conscious.

But we the study of consciousness is still in very early stages, there is still a great deal to find out.

I am astounded at the posters here that speak as though they had something like certainty on the subject.

Perhaps we know more than you think, we have a fairly good idea of how sensations become perceptions. There is a lot of good work going on in all sorts of psychological fields of neurology. However there is still a lot of philosophy attached to the use of the words like 'consciousness' and 'qualia' that people feel is more imporatant that the actual mechanisms of biology.

There is still a lot of 'elan vitale' when people talk about psychology and people ignore the hard science out there.

The issue as I see it is the use of the word consciousness. It is a concept that has no real meaning. It can only be defined behavioraly and there is nothing special about it.

I am not saying that you think it is special, just a lot of people do.

 

[volatile]

There's a really fascinating chapter on this in Proust is a Neuroscientist by Johna Lehrer.

The questions you ask about brain cells relate to a fairly newly discovered phenomenon called neurogenesis. It had been believed for a long time that the brain did not grow new neurons, but recent research has shown this not to be the case.

 

[chris epic]

Those sorts of questions can be dealt with entirely by taking a pragmatic view of the law as deterent rather than punishment. If we use it in that way, and understand how to do so as effectively as possible, the it doesn't matter if it's the same person or not.

But its inaccurate that Law is a deterent. Of course, its supposed to be a deterent, but the most pragmatic use of law is punishment.

Dawkins had a good example with sand dunes. Over time every grain of sand in the dune is replaced by another grain. Yet, we can still say "that's the same sand dune". Anyone who can at least understand the idea that it's the same dune already understands the point, and only needs to think about what it is they're describing as the same dune from one point in time to another.
And the same is true of people.

But, like dualism, we fail to call a spade a spade. People subscribe to dualism because it is easier for people to grasp the seperation of the functions of the mind and the functions of the brain- even though they're one in the same. Its just easier to grasp that living things have continuity because that's how it "appears," and because it would ultimately be arbitrary to correct our language to accurately represent reality rather than perception. But isn't that what gets people in trouble anyway? Wouldn't it be truer to the cause of skepticism to promote language that accurately describes reality rather than perception? Or are somethings just better left in the grey area where any departure would just be nitpicking?

 

[Robin]

Searle is an idiot.

Ad-hom followed by straw man. This does not look promising

Consciousness is clearly an information process, because the only attributes it has are informational. Information processing is a physical phenomenon, because there isn't anything else in the Universe.

But Searle never argues anywhere that consciousness is not a physical phenomenon, on the contrary, he says it is.

Searle (and other thinkers like him) only run into difficulty because they ascribe magical properties to consciousness. If you ascribe magical properties to anything, you're going to have as hard a time explaining it as Searle does with consciousness.

Oh nonsense! Searle says nothing of the sort. Name me one magical property he ascribes to consciousness.

In fact it is his opponents who appear to ascribe consciousness as a magical phenomenon that can be conjured up using any old hardware.

Take his Chinese Room example. Does the Chinese Room exhibit consciousness? Yes, clearly. It acts, by definition, just like a native Chinese speaker. Searle argues against the obvious by failing to locate consciousness when he takes the room apart - which is the fallacy of composition that Tricky pointed out.

By definition? What definition are you using? If you define consciousness as the behaviour exhibited by a conscious agent then yes, but consciousness and the behaviour it produces are two separate things.

But are you really suggesting that the Chinese room is having subjective experiences?

Do you think it is possible, for example, that you are in fact a room full of people desk checking an algorithm that simulates consciousness?

 

[JetLeg]

My thoughts are that :

(1) Before making a scientific enterprise into what consciousness is, and how it is related to the brain, one must begin a philosophic enterprise to clear the meaning of consciousness. Can anyone here offer a definition?

(2) Phisicalists often accuse dualists of positing mysterious and\or supernatural entities. Probably because historically dualists posited a soul which they fail to define. I am a property dualist, and the property I think as not being identical to matter is our subjective experience. And there is nothing mysterious about that. We are all familiar with it first-hand. In the philosophy literature it is usually described as "qualia".

By the way, I think that the arguments for the existence of qualia in

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

are really good ones.

 

[Darat]

...snip...

A "perfect simulation" of consciousness would of course be conscious (otherwise it wouldn't be perfect would it?). But that is only trivially true.

...snip...

By perfect I am assuming you do not mean something like a duplicated brain built atom by atom but something like a computer program that for the same input gives the same responses as I do?

If so I'm still not convinced of this. I don't think it requires any "magical" extra properties to consider that "consciousness" as we experience it requires the physical interactions of all the atoms and so on that make up "me". The phrase I always use is "the map is not the territory".

An analogy would be to make an incredibly accurate computer model of a faucet connected to a water supply. When we use the model we get "perfect" results when compared to the measures we take from the real faucet however only one of them can provide the water to quench our thirst.

Given this I'm yet to be convinced that a simulation of the brain, even down to an atomic level would necessarily result in that simulation experiencing consciousness as we do. It could be that consciousness is a unique property of the actual arrangement of the actual "stuff" that makes up what we are.

 

[H'ethetheth]

It seems like that first statement is contradicted by the second. If there is no "self" then what exactly is limited to a physical body?

The events conflated with the self.

To add to what Dancing David said, this question is like asking: 'What makes the temperature of my tea limited to my tea,' or 'How do the calculations in my pentium know they have to be calculated by my pentium?'