Consciousness: The Fun Part. :)

[Third Eye Open]

Great, derailed in the first post :/

Nice try anyway Maia

 

[HypnoPsi]

Anyway, can we just take it as a given here that of course consciousness arises from the brain?

Nope. Science should not take anything as "given".

Show us exactly how glucose, oxygen and proteins gives rise to consciousness? Can we put them in a jar and get consciousness? Can we use other molecules? Must we have an electrical current? What about Daniel Dennett's thinking thermostats?

I'm not just dragging you off on some psi-related tangent here - I'm asking a very serious question about where do you begin and where do you end with consciousness?

I mean, if a materialist like Dennett is going to allege a thermostat has the 'thoughts' "too hot", "too cold" and "just right", what about the whole information system we call the Universe. Is it one big mind? If not, why not?

(Where else would it come from??)

Who knows? I don't. If you want to keep the discussion materialistic that's fine by me, but when you talk about consciousness you can't just talk about brains. There are people in this forum (staunch materialists obviously) who believe that a cock and ball toilet cistern is conscious... along with microwave ovens and fridges. (If I recall correctly, mouse-traps aren't believed to be conscious).

Are they wrong? How do you know or test they are wrong or that they are right?

~
HypnoPsi

 

[HypnoPsi]

Can we take it as a given that after it arises from the brain it is not trapped in the brain?

I want to know if we've also to take it as a given that silicone brains are conscious? (And why?)

~
HypnoPsi

 

[HypnoPsi]

Only if you present evidence of consciousness existing without a brain.

Skeptics don't accept the published evidence for psi - but at least we have puplished evidence.

How would you even test all the things that various people have claimed to be conscious (from toilet cisterns to fridges to brains)?

Are all brains conscious - or just primate brains?

What about insect brains? Gerbils? Elephants? What about the neural networks in earthworms?

Where do you begin and where do you end and why?

~
HypnoPsi

 

[HypnoPsi]

You may mean that but the quote from the OP asks about people who say their experience (conciousness?) is a stream of visual pictures of the world.

Actually, I don't think this visual thing has been fully justified here..

If I was asked to describe my conscious experience the last think I'd say is that it is a stream of visual pictures... I'd probably talk about my awareness of self or something else.

~
HypnoPsi

 

[Limbo]

What about the neural networks in earthworms

Ha!

Understanding the Unconscious Brain: Evidence for Non-Linear Information Processing

Abstract

Neuroimaging techniques have made breakthroughs in the field of conscious emotional processing possible. However, people process most emotional information at an unconscious level and this influences our daily life (Van den Noort, 2003). These unconscious processes still remain a great mystery. What are the limits of unconscious information processing? Neuroimaging- and skin conductance studies will be discussed to answer this question.

[...]

So far, little scientific research on animal non-linear information processing has been done. At the elementary level of biologic organization, cellular structures appear to have immediate knowledge of remote actions in the system, thereby enabling the emergence of spontaneous long-range cooperative organization in bio-molecules and membranes (Hameroff, 1987), in dendritic networks of cortical neurons (Shepherd et al., 1985), and in colonies of single-celled organisms such as bacteria (BenJacob et al., 2000).

At the level of multicellular organisms, a prestimulus response has been experimentally demonstrated in earthworms (Wildey, 2001). However, more scientific research on higher levels of life is definitely needed (Van den Noort, 2004b). These future studies on animals can perhaps explain the observations that were done directly after the large Asia earthquake last year? According to Wildlife officials in Sri Lanka, thousands of people perished in the quake and tidal wave catastrophe, but strange enough, almost no dead animals were found on the island nation (Bedi, 2004).

 

[HypnoPsi]

The question I find interesting about consciousness is "How could we tell if something was conscious if the scale of the entity were vastly different from our own?" For example, Douglas Hofstadter includes a character of an ant hill in Godel, Escher, Bach in some of the more whimsical portions of that book. Ever since reading it, I have wondered how we would be able to tell if an ant hill were a conscious entity.

I certainly don't believe that ant hills are a conscious entity - but this is an aboslutely marvelous point.

Let's say I have a few trillion artificial neurons lying around. How do I organise them to make them conscious? Do the connections have to be a certain distance from one and other? Does the system have to operate at a certain speed?

Is the internet conscious to a materialist? If not, why not? If so, why so?

As I see it, believing that phenomenal objects like brains (or whatever) give rise to consciousness casues many more philosophical and scientific problems than it solves....

~
HypnoPsi

 

[Maia]

Okay, okay. If it gets derailed into another discussion about whether or not consciousness can exist apart from the brain, then I guess that's what happens, but please, PLEASE, no algorithms, no computers, no evil, evil math!! Can we at least keep the conversation focused on ideas? The visual correlates idea was interesting. We could talk about lots and lots of other neural correlates. (So many of them!) Also, maybe we could talk about why the idea that quantum physics has something profound to say about human consciousness seems to be so compelling in the first place. The other thread has gotten extremely derailed from that. But no formulas... no weird symbols... no calculus... maybe some statistics, if absolutely necessary... (I have to take that class in the spring for professional development anyway.) Couldn't that just be for the other thread?

 

[Beth]

I certainly don't believe that ant hills are a conscious entity - but this is an aboslutely marvelous point.

Well, I certainly don't believe it either. But I find it one of the most interesting questions about consciousness. It doesn't seem any more bizarre an idea than that the universe is conscious or that the sun is conscious.

Let's say I have a few trillion artificial neurons lying around. How do I organise them to make them conscious? Do the connections have to be a certain distance from one and other? Does the system have to operate at a certain speed?

I don't know. It seems to me that in order to tell, you'd have to be able to examine it for signs of consciousness on it's own scale. I don't know how to do that.

Is the internet conscious to a materialist? If not, why not? If so, why so?

An interesting question. I don't know how to tell if it is or if it isn't. Do you think the internet is conscious? What would the signs of a conscious internet be when compared to one that isn't? Is the Internet alive? It's growing and undergoing constant change. Does that make it alive? As alive as our sun perhaps?

As I see it, believing that phenomenal objects like brains (or whatever) give rise to consciousness casues many more philosophical and scientific problems than it solves....

~
HypnoPsi

I don't know that it causes more. I don't think it causes any less.

 

[PixyMisa]

Okay, okay. If it gets derailed into another discussion about whether or not consciousness can exist apart from the brain, then I guess that's what happens, but please, PLEASE, no algorithms, no computers, no evil, evil math!!

Hate to say I told you so... No, wait, I love saying I told you so!

This is why we still need Daniel Dennett.

Also, maybe we could talk about why the idea that quantum physics has something profound to say about human consciousness seems to be so compelling in the first place.

That one's easy. The argument goes rather like this: We don't understand consciousness. We don't understand quantum mechanics. Therefore consciousness must be caused by quantum mechanics.

Kind of disappointing when someone as bright as Roger Penrose falls into the trap, but that's Engineer's Disease for you.

The other thread has gotten extremely derailed from that. But no formulas... no weird symbols... no calculus... maybe some statistics, if absolutely necessary... (I have to take that class in the spring for professional development anyway.) Couldn't that just be for the other thread?

Statistics are awesome.

(Are awesome? Is awesome? Whatever.)

 

[Hux]

Depends. We all have different standards of evidence. What I accept as evidence you might not.

I would not want you on a Jury then.

 

[Limbo]

I would not want you on a Jury then.

In a court of law analogy, I suspect parapsychology would be found innocent of the charge of pseudo-science.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

There are some ideas about consciousness that seem as if they'd be very interesting to discuss, but that other consciousness thread just doesn't seem to be the place for them.

Aawwww...... I thought it was a pretty decent thread


Nah. You are right. That thread was a happy (or unhappy) accident. I just started out trying to find out if Penrose's theory held any water and next thing I know, it grew oh-so-big.
But I know it has nothing to do with me. This subject just attracts everyone from every field, like flies

Anyway, can we just take it as a given here that of course consciousness arises from the brain?

For the purpose of the discussion, it would prove useful to take it for given if/until stronger evidence is shown to contradict it.... however, trying to separate the consciousness issue from the brain issue seems impossible with these discussions.

(Where else would it come from??)

And I would certainly watch out for that kind of argument, as it comes across as an argument of incredulity.

Then we don't have to spend all of our time hashing over that particular point and endlessly getting stuck at the starting gate, and we can actually start to talk about some interesting things. Maybe these would be the neural correlates of consciousness, maybe these would be discussions about whether or not different ideas were correct, who knows. One question that fascinates me revolves around what Susan Blackmore has to say in this article:



Well, the first thing that came to my mind was that a person blind from birth certainly wouldn't say this or anything like it. What would their neural correlate be? In fact, I wouldn't say it. I've had a lot of visual problems, and I already know just how inaccurate visual information really is. Isn't a subjective interpretation about consciousness being claimed even though it may not exist? Is this a basic problem with the entire "stream of vision" argument?

Discuss!

Well, I'm reminded of Feynman thinking about dreams and asking himself how is it that we have the experience of seeing when there's actually no light coming in through our retina. I have had several episodes in which I'm in a brain state where I'm beginning to fall asleep and all of a sudden, I see a surface which can be a wall or something. It is clearly not there, but the sensation that I'm watching something that's outside of my consciousness is very real. I feel I can direct my eyes toward any part of the surface, examine its texture and everything, and it feels so real. So a very relevant (and perhaps essential) part of what defines consciousness appears to be that which "seems" to be true. Dennett speaks of this in multiple occasions, such as the optical illusions: "Is there a part in your brain that activates the color pink? No, it just seems like the square is pink" and so on.

So there doesn't have to be any light coming in through the retina for you to experience "seeing a color". It just has to "seem like you're seeing a color" and you can get pretty much the same experience.

This seems to be at the center of the dualistic issue with consciousness, in that, it is a tool that both allows us to examine the real world, but because it has interpretative and re-creative powers, it is also a tool that can create the illusion that you're perceiving a world that isn't actually real.

This is where all the never ending arguments about Idealism and Materialism come to: Because how do you differentiate between what you perceive and what you think you perceive?
However, all it takes is a serious investigation into the crafts of Neuroscience, which permits us to establish well founded truths based on the multiple convergence evidence. We can tell someone is having a delirium tremens, because that person is drunk and because no one else in the room is seeing the cockroach he describes.

Aha, the Idealist says. Then reality is a shared delusion. It is about what the majority says is true.

Perhaps so, but if we're gonna take that claim seriously and study its veracity, to determine whether our reality is a delusion or not, then how do we determine that? Can we? If not, then we must go back to the "Matrix" principle: A reality that is, by its nature, absolutely indistinguishable from a simulation is, for practical purposes, a real reality"

So what we have here is the essence of the issue: what really matters is that which we can have some use for. If science is capable of making accurate predictions, then that's certainly useful for the welfare and evolution of mankind and that's what matters. Whether all of this is taking place within the enclosed confines of a cleverly, impossible to figure out, illusion is completely irrelevant unless/until we can peek through the mask of such virtual simulation and escape (if we want to).

I'm still baffled at what makes an organism conscious, or believe he is conscious (Then again, that raises another question: Does an organism need to be conscious in the first place to believe he is conscious?). I'm also ignorant as to whether there are other forms of consciousness, but until new evidence even suggests that there may be such thing, it would remain nothing but a myth.

 

[rocketdodger]

but please, PLEASE, no algorithms, no computers, no evil, evil math!! Can we at least keep the conversation focused on ideas?

...snip...

But no formulas... no weird symbols... no calculus... maybe some statistics, if absolutely necessary...

This is your problem -- it is exponentially (oops, sorry, I mean "much") harder to understand and/or discuss the issue if you can't fall on maths to express yourself.

That is why we have individuals like Frank and Hypnopsi vomiting word salad devoid of meaning into these threads.

Notice how Pixy, Paul, yy2bggggs, and myself are having a very productive side discussion in the other thread precisely because we are using maths. Compare that discussion with the rest of the thread...

 

[HypnoPsi]

Okay, okay. If it gets derailed into another discussion about whether or not consciousness can exist apart from the brain, then I guess that's what happens, but please, PLEASE, no algorithms, no computers, no evil, evil math!! Can we at least keep the conversation focused on ideas?

I wholeheartedly support this request - but I can't promise that others won't start to claim their computers/fridges (and just about anything that senses variance and has a goal directed purpose) are conscious.

The visual correlates idea was interesting.

Why? What about someone blind from birth?

We could talk about lots and lots of other neural correlates. (So many of them!) Also, maybe we could talk about why the idea that quantum physics has something profound to say about human consciousness seems to be so compelling in the first place.

What do you think that would be in physicalistic - or phenomenological - terms?

Let's hope the conversation does stay fun!

~
HypnoPsi

 

[HypnoPsi]

Well, I certainly don't believe it either. But I find it one of the most interesting questions about consciousness. It doesn't seem any more bizarre an idea than that the universe is conscious or that the sun is conscious.

Yes, exactly, Beth. Nobody seems to have any rules or or way of defining whether this or that is conscious in materialistic/physicalistic terms.

In non-physical terms it's a little simpler, but not much better.

Let's say I have a few trillion artificial neurons lying around. How do I organise them to make them conscious? Do the connections have to be a certain distance from one and other? Does the system have to operate at a certain speed?

I don't know. It seems to me that in order to tell, you'd have to be able to examine it for signs of consciousness on it's own scale. I don't know how to do that.

Exactly - nobody seems to have idea how to do something like that. That, along with numerous other reasons, is what makes me very suspicious of materialistic/physicalistic theories of consciousness to begin with.

Is the internet conscious to a materialist? If not, why not? If so, why so?

An interesting question. I don't know how to tell if it is or if it isn't. Do you think the internet is conscious?

Absolutely not. I believe we are conscious minds translating nothing other than laws into experiential/perceptual information.

Now, does that mean we are "souls"? I believe we are ultimately something very much like that - but I don't see how anyone can really prove it just yet.

For all I know consciousness itself might very well be a law of the universe - or it could be that in certain situations (such as where those laws of mass, volume, energy, etc.,,) come together to form brains - that is what gives rise to consciousness.

The bottom line is that I have, ultimatly, absolutely no idea what's at the bottom of the rabbit hole. Nobody does.

~
HypnoPsi

 

[HypnoPsi]

This is why we still need Daniel Dennett.

You need Dennett. Anyone who wants to believe consciousness arises in systems that monitor variance with a goal directed purpose (thermostats/toilet cisterns/fridges/microwaves) needs Dennett.

Nodody else does.

That one's easy. The argument goes rather like this: We don't understand consciousness. We don't understand quantum mechanics. Therefore consciousness must be caused by quantum mechanics.

I don't know why you have such a problem with that Pixy - after all, QM effects causing consciousness is still, I would say, an atheist solution - and you (if I recall correctly?) are an atheist.

~
HypnoPsi

 

[Beth]

The bottom line is that I have, ultimatly, absolutely no idea what's at the bottom of the rabbit hole. Nobody does.

~
HypnoPsi

Yes, but I've heard that those people who are certain they know are happier than those of us who are certain we don't.

 

[HypnoPsi]

Notice how Pixy, Paul, yy2bggggs, and myself are having a very productive side discussion in the other thread precisely because we are using maths. Compare that discussion with the rest of the thread...

Now that I find very hard to believe. Mutually re-inforcing projection of beliefs perhaps, but productive I very much doubt.

Addendum: I've just had a look and you all seem to be in total disagreement with each other about how you know 'this' or 'that' is conscious. Pixy's waving around the words "self-referencing" like they're magic and absolutely none of you have the slightest idea how to test something for qualitative and subjective sensibility.

~
HypnoPsi

 

[yy2bggggs]

Addendum: I've just had a look and you all seem to be in total disagreement with each other about how you know 'this' or 'that' is conscious. Pixy's waving around the words "self-referencing" like they're magic and absolutely none of you have the slightest idea how to test something for qualitative and subjective sensibility.

You're misrepresenting me.

Maia: I don't think this thread's a bad idea. The problem isn't with the thread, it's with the subject matter and the attachments people have with it.

I'm still mulling over Blackmore at the moment.