On Consciousness

[Jeff Corey]

… From what I understand…consciousness itself has yet to achieve anything remotely resembling a universally accepted definition so it is likely premature to assign the category to dogs or anything else.

Including humans.

 

[Dancing David]

.…and, apparently, the folks behind this statement who can reasonably claim to represent a significant cross-section of the cog-sci community.

"We have no idea how consciousness emerges from the physical activity of the brain and we do not know whether consciousness can emerge from non-biological systems, such as computers... At this point the reader will expect to find a careful and precise definition of consciousness. You will be disappointed. Consciousness has not yet become a scientific term that can be defined in this way. Currently we all use the term consciousness in many different and often ambiguous ways. Precise definitions of different aspects of consciousness will emerge ... but to make precise definitions at this stage is premature."

Oh, quotes out of context that you don't give a citation for are just that.

Quotes out of context.

There are, quite obviously, fundamental disagreements. Which is the point. Dennet didn’t ‘explain’ it, he simply tried to (…explain it away…). Hofstadter tried as well.

And how does this become common to neuro-biologists or is this just some global warming/creationism style of argument.

Where is this a common belief held by neuro-biologists or will you admit that you are ignorant?

There is as yet no consensus on the issue, as the above statement clearly indicates.

WT Fred, are you really now making an argument from authority based upon a small sample of one?

The achievement of an explicit adjudication of the condition of human consciousness would be news multiple orders of magnitude greater than the Higgs Boson.

********. It just shows you don't know what neurologists and biologists call consciousness and have some magical phrase of special pleading.

Short of discovering evidence of God, such a thing would likely be regarded as the most significant discovery in the history of history. A Nobel would be a formality.

Did the discovery of anesthesia get a Nobel?

Do you know anything about neurology and medicine?

I have yet to notice an event of this magnitude. Have you?

Argument from popular media and incredulity.

Y’know Belz….there was a brief period after Tensor gave you that unexpected compliment that you started sounding like someone other than Pixy. That period appears to have expired. I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

I guess you don't have any data, evidence or an argument, when did Dennet become the Pope of Neuro-biology?

 

[Dancing David]

"We have no idea how consciousness emerges from the physical activity of the brain and we do not know whether consciousness can emerge from non-biological systems, such as computers... At this point the reader will expect to find a careful and precise definition of consciousness. You will be disappointed. Consciousness has not yet become a scientific term that can be defined in this way. Currently we all use the term consciousness in many different and often ambiguous ways. Precise definitions of different aspects of consciousness will emerge ... but to make precise definitions at this stage is premature."

More citations out of context.

More argument from ignorance, neurologists use the term consciousness everyday.

Global warming denial is not pretty when dressed up as consciousness denial.

So all the *********** professionals who use the term consciousness explicitly defined everyday don't matter compered to a quote out of context.

 

[!Kaggen]

DD take a chill pill or something your getting a bit too excited

 

[dlorde]

Wouldn't that just redefine the Turing model ?

If that was for me - yes, effectively it would extend the functional definition. It's just not the canonical version. I get the feeling there's some controversy about the whole Turing / super-Turing / computational semantics.

 

[tsig]

Originally Posted by tensordyne View Post
OK, tell me how you show that the way I experience red is the same as the way you do using what you think science is about.

Have you ever taken a test for color blindness?

I've given tests for color blindness. What is your point?

Since we can test for color blindness we have a scientific way to determine what red is perceived as by humans.

Not really. The test tells whether a particular human can discriminate between certain visible wavelengths when apparent brightness is controlled for. It completely relies on the measurement of observable behavior and can be accomplished in nonverbal animals such as the pigeon..

Are you saying that seeing red is more than discriminating between certain visible wavelengths?

No, I don't think so. What's your point?

The claim was made that we can't scientifically prove what red is I pointed out that color blind tests do just that and you questioned that by saying that the tests only tested human perception of red so I asked you if you thought red was something physical, at that point you seemed to lose the point of the discussion.

 

[dlorde]

…consciousness itself has yet to achieve anything remotely resembling a universally accepted definition so it is likely premature to assign the category to dogs or anything else.

Including humans.

Interesting point...

 

[tsig]

No, that's just you.

It seems to be a popular argument lately "We don't know everything therefore god*".

*or whatever woo you are peddling.

Kind of a scorched earth approach to argumentation.8

 

[dlorde]

The claim was made that we can't scientifically prove what red is I pointed out that color blind tests do just that and you questioned that by saying that the tests only tested human perception of red so I asked you if you thought red was something physical, at that point you seemed to lose the point of the discussion.

I guess it helps to clarify precisely which meaning of 'red' is being used. For example, after-image colours allow one to perceive red (the sensation of redness) without the retina being stimulated by light primarily in the red frequencies of the spectrum (look at a bright green object for a while, then at a plain white surface).

 

[Dancing David]

DD take a chill pill or something your getting a bit too excited

Whatever, it was still a stupid statement, the term consciousness is used everyday by professionals, including neurologists, the basis of consciousness is biological, it is biochemistry.

But the people who ascribe some foolish magical property to consciousness are still foolish. There is no dragon hiding under the carpet, there is nothing magic about consciousness, it is a process of the brain, it is biochemistry. It is not absolutely understood but there is no freaking mystery either.

If someone wants to make up **** I will call them on it, Dennett included.

I suppose these people are all idiots?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=neural correlates of consciousness

Maybe some of these are:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=attention consciousness

There are plenty of other professionals using the term consciousness all the freaking time, sp just because some foolish person wants to redefine it as some ineffable magic quality and say there is no common consensus in its usage does not mean that they are right.

"Consciousness' is a set of *********** behaviors, it is not some stupid Kantian meta-state that defies definition.

Now if this was in R&P I would ignore and argue with crap like that but in SMT I will attack magical thinking for its muddle headedness. Consciousness it not some entity of magical proportions that defies definition, it is a set of behaviors, and the fact that some people reify is nonsense.

There is nothing mysterious about consciousness, it has degrees of being understood but it is not magical and impossible to define. It is defined and used everyday, those who wish to say that it is not need to use another term.

 

[Mr. Scott]

The claim was made that we can't scientifically prove what red is I pointed out that color blind tests do just that and you questioned that by saying that the tests only tested human perception of red so I asked you if you thought red was something physical, at that point you seemed to lose the point of the discussion.

Whether or not one can discriminate between two colors is not the same as what those colors actually look like. Maybe it doesn't matter. Different people have different favorite colors, but that might be more because of association than how their color qualia are manifesting for them.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Put you cards on the table.

Yes, there certainly are some god and/or woo cards that are being held close to the chest here.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Are you saying that all the money people spend on rendering their dogs unconscious during surgical operations is money wasted?

Semantic error. Different definitions of consciousness.

The thread is about the seemingly magic ongoing process of awareness going on in human and, most likely, most vertebrate brains.

It's not about the consciousness of a wasp, for example, we'd need to knock out so it'd stop fidgeting during some kind of operation. The difference between an unconscious wasp and a paralyzed wasp would be important because we wouldn't want it to be on attack after an upsetting procedure, but that does not suggest it's consciousness is like a person's or a hedgehog's.

 

[Mr. Scott]

If we had a drug that temporarily altered the brain so that nothing at all became remembered, even for a split second, how different would that be from being unconscious, or a p-zombie?

 

[Jeff Corey]

The claim was made that we can't scientifically prove what red is I pointed out that color blind tests do just that and you questioned that by saying that the tests only tested human perception of red so I asked you if you thought red was something physical, at that point you seemed to lose the point of the discussion.

And I pointed out I have given those tests and you don't know what you are talking about, I didn't see an answer then, nor now.

 

[quarky]

If we had a drug that temporarily altered the brain so that nothing at all became remembered, even for a split second, how different would that be from being unconscious, or a p-zombie?

Well, various high mucky-mucks of Bhuddism might suggest that such a state would be Nirvana.
Evidently, you need to go through some time with memory and sequence first, so you know what you're getting into.
Raw observation is a possibility, with no storing or inner reflection or dialog concerning the perceptions implications.

Is there such a thing as anti-magical thinking?
Wherein you're so scientific and pragmatic, that the default state is one of rejecting everything that doesn't fit well into your prior understanding?

Somewhere between magical and anti-magical thinking, with luck, we'll learn new stuff. We'll be objective, but we won't have to become storm troopers or flower children.

From the onset, I thought this thread should have been in R&P.
Now, its devolved into petty insults and arrogance, as is often the case amongst all us geniuses.

Hippy chicks, under 25 years of age, to my mind, were the pinnacle of human achievement. The flowers were rather tolerable.

And you hard science dicks want to wreck that?


If you seek biological relevance, sometimes you need to go for a woo ride.

 

[PixyMisa]

.…and, apparently, the folks behind this statement who can reasonably claim to represent a significant cross-section of the cog-sci community.

Yep.

There are, quite obviously, fundamental disagreements.

Nope. There are disagreements, but not fundamental ones. Neuroscientists may disagree on the details, because after all this is an area still under study. But you are simply wrong

Which is the point. Dennet didn’t ‘explain’ it, he simply tried to (…explain it away…). Hofstadter tried as well.

What you mean is that he didn't invoke magic, which is precisely why his explanation is valid. Consciousness exhibits no magical attributes and requires no magical causes, just computation.

 

[PixyMisa]

I agree it is possible, in the sense that anything, short of magic, is possible. But AIUI there is no evidence of such non-computable functioning in the brain, no evidence that it is necessary for consciousness or self-awareness, and no evidence of any mechanism to support it. Having said that, I wouldn't be totally stunned if some form of 'super-Turing computation' is shown to occur, i.e. computational function beyond the standard Turing model; neural networks can apparently be configured this way (although there are some pragmatic doubts).

Yeah, sorry, no. Hypercomputers need to be able to complete infinite amounts of work in finite time, and that's physically impossible. Anything less - anything finite - is "only" Turing-complete.

 

[punshhh]

Yes, there certainly are some god and/or woo cards that are being held close to the chest here.

Has it not dawned on you yet, what is going on here?

Its quite simple, there are a few posters who presume that consciousness can be produced through computation.

In opposition to this are a few posters who are pointing out that this presumption cannot at this point be made.

Accompanied by a few posters who are not falling into one of these two camps, but taking an interest in points made here and there.

No woo anywhere as far as I can see.

 

[punshhh]

As simply as possible....King Lear meant something.

As for your questions...I'd speculate that something that exists cannot examine the existence of something that doesn't. As far as I know, 'nothing' has never been known to occur (at least nowhere near where I live). But then there is the nagging question of...out there. What actually does occupy all that empty space? How empty is it? Are there regions of....nothing? If so...what would happen if 'something' went there?

Exactly, as existing limited finite beings we are not in a position to examine "nothing", or "existence" or how one came out of the other or not.

We are entirely oblivious of the existence upon which our house of cards is balanced.

What is fascinating is that we are able to reason, to examine "nothing" and "existence" theoretically and create out of nothing a philosophy of metaphysics.

So we can say something about "nothing" after all, unfortunately we have no idea if what we say is correct or pie in the sky. Or if in fact we actually know anything at all.