Has consciousness been fully explained?

[!Kaggen]

True enough, but not relevant.

The question at hand was whether consciousness simply arises from a critical mass of neurons. In other words, is it a true emergent property, like the whiteness of clouds -- none of the particles in a cloud is white, but you get enough of them together and the group as a whole appears white.

Consciousness certainly does not appear to be anything like this. Rather, it appears to be the result of the specific structure of the brain. Iow, you could wire up a synthetic brain with just as many parts and connections, but if you didn't wire it up right, it wouldn't do consciousness.

Just like you could take all the parts of a car engine and assemble them, but if you don't put them together in the right way, the machine won't drive down the road.

Consciousness is a result of the brain's specific structure, not a consequence of having a certain number of neurons or connections.

And as we saw in the study I cited, neural activity by itself may not be sufficient to produce this phenomenon. Other physical processes may be required, just as a computer requires logic and an appropriately designed physical apparatus to play a CD.

A Turing machine will never play a CD by itself, because it can't. Some other (non-magical, non-mysterious) component is required. And it may well be -- personally, I'd bet money on it -- that a Turing machine cannot be conscious for the same reason.

Why should consciousness not be defined as the interaction of a brain and its environment? Take away either - no consciousness.

 

[!Kaggen]

First, I wouldn't put Dancing David into the same group as PixyMisa and Rocket Dodger. I don't believe they're making similar arguments.

Also, I don't believe Pixy and Dodger are arguing for a WoC approach, or that the problems with their argument have anything to do with philosophy or social consequences.

The problems with their argument are:
1. It's hopelessly vague and does not actually explain anything (except in the way that "consciousness is an activity of the brain" explains things).
2. There is no evidence for it.
3. It has not produced any actual model of consciousness.
4. Even worse, when their approach is used, consciousness disappears from view (which is why we get claims such as "consciousness is a data set" when in fact it's a physical phenomenon) -- again, it's like trying to explain juicing in terms of oranges.
5. It leads to absurd conclusions.

In my book, when you've got a perspective that is not supported by any evidence, is hopelessly vague, hasn't produced results, leads to absurdities, and is actually incapable of describing the phenomenon it claims to be explaining, you've got a major problem on your hands.

Yeah superstition comes to mind...

 

[Dancing David]

Details of what? We don't even have a firm outline in which details can be filled in.

And I don't know what you mean when you say our brains "self sort".

I mean that the whole system sorts, say the retina, there is a layer of preprocessing before the optic nerve, where adjoining photo receptors are sorted, there is a network of 'flower rings'/center:surround where the information is sorted, the 'ring' may be red center green outside, or red center red outside, so groups or photo receptors are sorted by contrast on or contrast not before the data is transmitted to the optic nerve.

Of course my understanding is dated, I would have to read a lot to see where the research is 'ganglion retinal processing' seems to be rather ongoing from where it was in the mid-80s.

 

[Piggy]

Why should consciousness not be defined as the interaction of a brain and its environment? Take away either - no consciousness.

Take away the environment and the whole body ceases to function rather quickly.

But while environment certainly has an impact on what we might call the "content" of our conscious awareness (a term I hate to use b/c it's so misleading, but it's a handy shortcut), there's no reason to believe it has any role in the generation of conscious awareness.

We can imagine, for instance, a body kept alive by some elaborate contraption, but cut off from all external sensory experience. That body's brain would not simply cease to be consciously aware.

Or take dreams. Here we run into a problem of differing meanings of the term, but for our purposes, we are consciously aware of our dreams (even tho we say we're "unconscious" when we're alseep). The body normally screens out external stimuli while we're dreaming. Sometimes stuff creeps in, but even when it doesn't, we're in a state of awareness.

So no, consciousness is most accurately classified as a function of the brain.

 

[Dancing David]

Very few people in the real world, but on JREF it's quite a common position. Check the poll mentioned above for the people who don't think that they are conscious.

As stated earlier in this thread and by many in the other thread, I meet the criteria used by MDs to define consciousness, in that I exhibit the behaviors we label as 'conscious'.
As also stated I am not sure about the other defintions.

 

[Dancing David]

Yes, the way to deal with the difference between objective and subjective experience is to ignore subjective experience. That's a quick and easy solution to the wrong problem.

I am not ignoring the subjective experience, much of it is perception, what else are you thinking of?

 

[Dancing David]

You want a demonstration of qualia? Think about a fish. There you go. No laboratory equipment needed. Now explain that experience in terms of physics. No?

What, that one I don't get, do you mean the memories of things labeled as fish? The cognitions associated with the word fish? The learned and conditioned associations? Do you mean the social constructs conveyed by the word fish? (The one where a whale is a fish.) Do you mean some abstracted essence of fish?

I am not following.

 

[AlBell]

I am not ignoring the subjective experience, much of it is perception ...

And I suppose your self-report "I'm perceiving!" meets your medical definition?

 

[Dancing David]

The definition thing is often advocated as proof that it's something non-existent.

But consider - if everything is to be defined in terms of something else more fundamental, surely we must, eventually, come to something undefinable.

try that with physics, where does that happen?

 

[Dancing David]

First, I wouldn't put Dancing David into the same group as PixyMisa and Rocket Dodger. I don't believe they're making similar arguments.

.

I am not even sure where to put myself, I feel that consciousness is a physical process but that we certainly only have a grip on parts of it. It was only recently that people began to suggest and study the idea that memory is recreated rather than stored. So there is certainly lots of room for 'unexplained'.

I still believe that ;consciousness' is a rubric for a bunch of other processes, but I am open to change. heck if someone demonstrated non-physical consciousness I would consider it. And heck, my stance that the self is just a physical body is open to change.

Mainly I oppose semantic waffling as a door for 'magical mystical potrezeebie' consciousness.

Personally I do not agree that a thermostat is 'conscious', because it does not meet the definition used by MDs.


Heck the idea that Mercutio had that we meet the definition of a p-zombie is subject to change for me.

 

[westprog]

That's a quibble.

The broad reasons for the US-Iraq war are indeed understood.

But I don't know of anyone who would care to offer an explanation in terms of physics.

The underlying physics of the world is the same, regardless of whether the US goes to war with Iraq or not.

Or, if there is a way to aggregate it up, it would be so complicated that no physicist would actually attempt such an explanation in the first place.

So physicists will never offer us an explanation for the war. Historians, investigative journalists, politicians, and political scientists are the ones to do that.

Similarly, biologists and neuroscientists will be the ones who eventually crack consciousness, not physicists.

Any system that involves human behaviour will not be fully understood in terms of physics, because we don't fully understand human behaviour. However, extremely complex physical systems can be understood in terms of individual molecules. It's just not necessary to analyse them in that way. If we don't know what the molecules are doing in a system, then we haven't fully modelled it.

 

[westprog]

Why would a Physicist need one ? A physicist would simply say , the consciousness is one of the emergent process of the brain and leave it to a biologist.

I am not sure why you would involve a physicist here. Show a physicist a PC game in 3D, and ask him how to link a "how a transistor function" to the game, and you have exactly the same analogy as comparing consciousness with what a physicist knows.

That is a terrible example, because the hierarchy of how a PC game is 3D works is understood right down to the molecular level - much better, in fact, than examples from the natural world, because everything that happens in the computer world is designed by human beings, and if they didn't understand what was happening, the thing wouldn't work.

Obviously, an operation like "turn this pixel red" involves the aggregation of many smaller steps. However, a hierarchy could be written out, and each of the steps, right down to the movement of electrons in the transistor, would be understood by physicists according to the quantum model. There are no unexplained gaps. The entire tree could be built up from simple interactions on the atomic scale.

The workings of human tissue aren't as well understood, but a similar hierarchy could be drawn up for a human being, with chemical reactions in cells building up to movement of muscles. It would be far more complex than
the workings of the computer, but there's not a huge amount that is unknown. In principle, everything that we see human beings doing could be modelled in this way.

And where on this diagram would personal experience go? From what would it be built up? It simply would not be there. There would be no components from which the creation of personal experience could be created. The light hitting the retina, the optic nerve impulse, the reflex loop, the signal to blink, the muscle contracting - all this could be analysed right down to the molecular level. There's nothing in there that's a mystery to physics. There's no elan vital, there's no distinction between organic and inorganic chemistry - it all works fine according to the laws of physics as we understand them. But - consciousness isn't there. It doesn't explain anything, and it's not explained by anything. No hierarchy can be built up except to say "this seems to happen and we don't know why".

The bottom line is that it isn't a good comparison.

I am not even sure there is a self, an "experience attendent" or a consciousness, jsut a self feedback looping process horridly complicated and massively parallel , with separate stream. You would not need a physicist, as on the basic level there isn't much he could say you would not already know.

What you need a massively parallel "programmer" , one which don't yet exists, for which we may not even have enough theory or knowledge today.

If it isn't understood in physical terms, it's not understood.

 

[westprog]

I am not ignoring the subjective experience, much of it is perception, what else are you thinking of?

I mean your experience when you think of a fish.

 

[westprog]

What, that one I don't get, do you mean the memories of things labeled as fish? The cognitions associated with the word fish? The learned and conditioned associations? Do you mean the social constructs conveyed by the word fish? (The one where a whale is a fish.) Do you mean some abstracted essence of fish?

I am not following.

Possibly you don't know what it's like to think about a fish. Give it a try. The experience of what it is like to think about a fish is what I'm referring to.

 

[westprog]

try that with physics, where does that happen?

All of physics is ultimately defined as the effect it has on the human consciousness. We know that electrons exist because of the experience we have of the green dots on the screen. No experience - no electrons.

 

[Robin]

Now you've lapsed into nonsense.

Very few people suppose that consciousness does not exist. And the ones who dot are wrong.

But what do you mean by "consciousness exists"?

Do you mean that it has existence as sort of substance?

Or do you just mean "consciousness happens"?

 

[westprog]

But what do you mean by "consciousness exists"?

Do you mean that it has existence as sort of substance?

Or do you just mean "consciousness happens"?

Consciousness is what happens when someone thinks about a fish. Whether it's a verb or a noun isn't the critical factor. It could be an adverb or an article. The fact remains that when we think about a fish, something is happening somewhere.

 

[Robin]

All of physics is ultimately defined as the effect it has on the human consciousness. We know that electrons exist because of the experiencr we have of the green dots on the screen. No experience - no electrons.

Not so, physics requires more than one observer's experience or it is not science.

But your experience does not exist to me, only words that I attribute to you.

So all of physics is ultimately defined in terms of language, not experience.

 

[westprog]

Not so, physics requires more than one observer's experience or it is not science.

But your experience does not exist to me, only words that I attribute to you.

So all of physics is ultimately defined in terms of language, not experience.

If I repeat my own experience multiple times, that is science. When I record this and publish it, you might believe what I've written - but what makes it science is your ability to generate the same experiences yourself.

 

[Robin]

If I repeat my own experience multiple times, that is science. When I record this and publish it, you might believe what I've written - but what makes it science is your ability to generate the same experiences yourself

Right.

But when I read your paper it would be absurd to say - "this is westprog's experience". It is not, it is my experience of the words and numbers you have written.

So when I replicate your experiment I am not comparing my experience to yours - I am comparing my experience of the experiment to my experience of the words and numbers in your paper.

I might write up my replication and publish it and then a third party is reading it. But that third party has no access to your experience or mine - just our words and numbers.

So physics is ultimately done at the level of language, not experience.