On Consciousness

[Roboramma]

Are you conscious of what other people are thinking? If not, why should you be conscious of what your cells are doing?

This.

 

[annnnoid]

This.

Are you conscious of what other people are thinking? If not, why should you be conscious of what your cells are doing?

...but that’s not your argument is it Pixy. You are arguing that the thing and the process that creates it are one and the same. The medium is the message. Thus…anything that can be understood to involve the process known as SRIP is, by definition, conscious. Therefore the immune system is conscious. The digestive system is conscious. A cell in the process of repairing itself is conscious. The majority of car engines manufactured in the last decade are conscious A laptop is conscious. Etc. etc. etc. etc. Depending on how, exactly, the various meanings of those four words are defined (and they are not explicitly defined anywhere…just relatively…like everything else)….there may actually be nothing in the entire universe that is NOT conscious.

As for this nonsense….

So, no evidence then?

…that is...no evidence to support the conclusion that all instances of SRIP are not necessarily conscious.

According to Pixy... SRIP = consciousness. Where there is SRIP, there, also, is consciousness. Pixy has laid out his argument a number of times. As Clive (and others) have pointed out, there are holes in it. How big they are cannot be explicitly established (theories depend on philosophies... philosophies are not science). One thing that is safe to conclude is that the theory is not falsifiable. Lots of folks don't agree with it...as Beelzebuddy pointed out:

I doubt anyone but Pixy truly shares it (the SRIP equivalency).

...so we'll conclude that Beelzebuddy, for one, may not agree that if it's SRIP, it's conscious (as for the rest of the 'masses' who do not agree with Pixy, we'll overlook that for now).

….but, apparently, not just Beelzebuddy…

Christoph Koch:

“….there is no agreement about what it (consciousness) is, how it relates to highly organized matter or what its role in life is.”

We'll just assume that the position of one of the world's best known practicing cognitive scientists qualifies as evidence of something. Given that he states quite explicitly that there is no consensus (which agrees just as explicitly with another quote I’ve introduced….Beelzebuddy) it can hardly be reasonable to come to definitive conclusions about what is, or is not conscious…. except for the one thing that we know (by default) actually is.

Koch, therefore, is evidence that 'if it's SRIP...it's conscious' is a fallacy (how can we say a car [or any SRIP process] is conscious when there is no agreement about what consciousness is [except us] ????). It's an assertion and it's not falsifiable.

…but assuming Dr. Koch lacks credibility (how did you put it before Beelzebuddy….a sample of one ??????)….we have the three different medical defnitions which Fudbucker provided earlier (NONE of which included any mention of SRIP)

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8486678&postcount=2565

…or the one provided by Dancing David (no mention of SRIP)

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8486722&postcount=2567

…or the one provide by Mr. Corey (…again, no mention of SRIP)

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8486839&postcount=2573

So what we have are quite a number of definitions from various JREF contributors and relevant communities…medical, psychological, neuroscience, etc. …none of which refer to SRIP. That doesn’t mean SRIP is necessarily not relevant, it just means that these bodies typically utilize a functional definition according to which numerous processes that would be defined as SRIP would NOT also be defined as conscious.

That’s called evidence. It supports various positions...one of which would be: " just because it's SRIP it does NOT necessarily follow that it is conscious "! All of this 'evidence' was taken directly from the last few pages of this thread. I guess, Roborama, you were watching the Olympics or something when those posts were presented.

 

[blobru]

Yep.

Well.... Only one of them is conscious at the human level. All of them have subjective experience and are self-aware, they're just less complex.

Hmm... there are some slippery terms there, which I introduced, so I should define them, I guess. Alright. "Experience" is the integrated, constantly-updating sensory and evaluative map of ourselves and the world each of us has, and within which we deliberate (imagine possible courses of action and likely outcomes based on previous experience and relevant "knowledge" [abstractions of general experience]); "subjective" is just a category for one's experience or anything within it; "self-aware" implies knowledge that one is distinct from the world, a "self" (something that can have experiences) having experiences; "consciousness" is the state of having experiences.

Are those your definitions, or similar to? And what, according to the SRIP definition of course, would be some examples of less complex, "conscious" processes (in the human body, say; sorry if this is a rehash...)?

- As I've noted, I'm amenable to a definition of consciousness that holds SRIP as necessary but not sufficient. But why from some SRIP human consciousness emerges but not others is not complex: You add the other functions of the brain (speech, visual perception, memory) and that's what you get. The details, of course, are immensely complicated, but the overall picture is not.

Well, those pesky details are part of human consciousness, the only incontrovertible example we have. How many we can strip away and still have "consciousness" depends on how we define it of course. By mine, SRIP consciousness is too simple: there is no experience as I define it above, no translation of somatic and environmental input into an (to repeat myself) integrated, constantly-updating sensory and evaluative map of oneself and the world within which to deliberate. So for me SRIP is indeed necessary but not sufficient. However, that's just my own working definition; it happens to make the most sense to me in the most contexts; I don't get too worked up about definitions, 'cause however we choose to label what's going on, I have a sneaking suspicion what's going on could care less.

 

[Fudbucker]

Are you conscious of what other people are thinking? If not, why should you be conscious of what your cells are doing?

Other people are conscious. Is your position that cells are indeed conscious and we're just not aware of it?

 

[Fudbucker]

If you want to say that my definition is necessary but not sufficient to your definition, I'm amenable to that. But first you have to provide a definition, and a reason for preferring it.

I provided several definitions of consciousness the medical community uses.

I don't know what you mean "my definition is necessary but not sufficient to your definition".

 

[PixyMisa]

Other people are conscious. Is your position that cells are indeed conscious and we're just not aware of it?

My position is that if cells are conscious (I'd have to study cellular biology to see if they meet my definition) we would have no way to be aware of it.

 

[PixyMisa]

I provided several definitions of consciousness the medical community uses.

Pick one.

I don't know what you mean "my definition is necessary but not sufficient to your definition".

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

 

[PixyMisa]

...but that’s not your argument is it Pixy.

What?

You are arguing that the thing and the process that creates it are one and the same.

There is no "thing". That's a fundamental error. There is only the process.

Thus…anything that can be understood to involve the process known as SRIP is, by definition, conscious.

No. Anything that performs self-referential information processing is by definition performing consciousness. What you may or may not understand is irrelevant.

Therefore the immune system is conscious. The digestive system is conscious. A cell in the process of repairing itself is conscious. The majority of car engines manufactured in the last decade are conscious A laptop is conscious. Etc. etc. etc. etc. Depending on how, exactly, the various meanings of those four words are defined (and they are not explicitly defined anywhere…just relatively…like everything else)….there may actually be nothing in the entire universe that is NOT conscious.

No.

 

[PixyMisa]

We'll just assume that the position of one of the world's best known practicing cognitive scientists qualifies as evidence of something.

No. That's at least three logical fallacies in one sentence.

 

[Anders Lindman]

How to explain consciousness in scientific terms? Consciousness is a state of being aware. Then the question is: what does aware mean?

Is a video camera aware? If we define aware as meaning being able to process information and then produce actions based on that information, then a video camera with auto focus would be aware. That's not generally what we mean by being aware in the conscious sense.

Then what about a more complex machine? Instead of a simple video camera imagine a humanoid droid that has the thinking capability of a human and a sense of having an individual self. Is that droid aware? The answer is yes, but does the droid have consciousness?

Theorem 1: Any sufficiently advanced state of awareness is indistinguishable from consciousness.

Proof: Consciousness itself is a subjective state. Science deals with objective states only. Even when science is used for determining subjective states it's always objective measurements that are examined and modeled, and a sufficiently advanced state of being aware is from a point of measurement indistinguishable from consciousness.

 

[PixyMisa]

That's a valid take on it, yes.

 

[Dancing David]

...but that’s not your argument is it Pixy. You are arguing that the thing and the process that creates it are one and the same. The medium is the message. Thus…anything that can be understood to involve the process known as SRIP is, by definition, conscious. Therefore the immune system is conscious. The digestive system is conscious. A cell in the process of repairing itself is conscious. The majority of car engines manufactured in the last decade are conscious A laptop is conscious. Etc. etc. etc. etc. Depending on how, exactly, the various meanings of those four words are defined (and they are not explicitly defined anywhere…just relatively…like everything else)….there may actually be nothing in the entire universe that is NOT conscious.

As for this nonsense….




…that is...no evidence to support the conclusion that all instances of SRIP are not necessarily conscious.

According to Pixy... SRIP = consciousness. Where there is SRIP, there, also, is consciousness. Pixy has laid out his argument a number of times. As Clive (and others) have pointed out, there are holes in it. How big they are cannot be explicitly established (theories depend on philosophies... philosophies are not science). One thing that is safe to conclude is that the theory is not falsifiable. Lots of folks don't agree with it...as Beelzebuddy pointed out:




...so we'll conclude that Beelzebuddy, for one, may not agree that if it's SRIP, it's conscious (as for the rest of the 'masses' who do not agree with Pixy, we'll overlook that for now).

….but, apparently, not just Beelzebuddy…

Christoph Koch:

“….there is no agreement about what it (consciousness) is, how it relates to highly organized matter or what its role in life is.”

We'll just assume that the position of one of the world's best known practicing cognitive scientists qualifies as evidence of something. Given that he states quite explicitly that there is no consensus (which agrees just as explicitly with another quote I’ve introduced….Beelzebuddy) it can hardly be reasonable to come to definitive conclusions about what is, or is not conscious…. except for the one thing that we know (by default) actually is.

Koch, therefore, is evidence that 'if it's SRIP...it's conscious' is a fallacy (how can we say a car [or any SRIP process] is conscious when there is no agreement about what consciousness is [except us] ????). It's an assertion and it's not falsifiable.

…but assuming Dr. Koch lacks credibility (how did you put it before Beelzebuddy….a sample of one ??????)….we have the three different medical defnitions which Fudbucker provided earlier (NONE of which included any mention of SRIP)

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8486678&postcount=2565

…or the one provided by Dancing David (no mention of SRIP)

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8486722&postcount=2567

…or the one provide by Mr. Corey (…again, no mention of SRIP)

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8486839&postcount=2573

So what we have are quite a number of definitions from various JREF contributors and relevant communities…medical, psychological, neuroscience, etc. …none of which refer to SRIP. That doesn’t mean SRIP is necessarily not relevant, it just means that these bodies typically utilize a functional definition according to which numerous processes that would be defined as SRIP would NOT also be defined as conscious.

That’s called evidence. It supports various positions...one of which would be: " just because it's SRIP it does NOT necessarily follow that it is conscious "! All of this 'evidence' was taken directly from the last few pages of this thread. I guess, Roborama, you were watching the Olympics or something when those posts were presented.

Just as an aside Christof Koch seems to present that IIT is a way to measure consciousness, and I think the the integration of IIT might be related to SRIP, however Koch's promotion of IIT is little vague on certain details of IIT as a functional model and does support machine consciousness.


I am not a strict SRIP as consciousness person because of the conventional definition and the personal belief that consciousness is a rubric for a large number of processes. I believe that SRIP could be a component of consciousness.

 

[dlorde]

I provided several definitions of consciousness the medical community uses.

The main problems with these (in the context of this discussion) is that they're too vague and superficial. The first one is admittedly loosely defined ('awareness & response to stimuli' can be attributed to an amoeba) and aimed towards practical means to establish the clinically useful levels of human consciousness:

2. the somewhat loosely defined states of awareness of and response to stimuli, generally considered an integral component of the assessment of an individual's neurologic status. Levels of consciousness range from full consciousness (behavioral wakefulness, orientation as to time, place, and person, and a capacity to respond appropriately to stimuli) to deep coma (complete absence of response).

.
The second is vague, and 'not unconscious or subconscious' isn't helpful:

A clear state of awareness of self and the environment in which attention is focused on immediate matters, as distinguished from mental activity of an unconscious or subconscious nature.

.
The third is useless for our purposes, loosely defining only human sociocultural 'consciousness':

1. The state or condition of being conscious.
2. A sense of one's personal or collective identity, especially the complex of attitudes, beliefs, and sensitivities held by or considered characteristic of an individual or a group.

[not a definition]

The Standford covers it well.

 

[Roboramma]

...but that’s not your argument is it Pixy. You are arguing that the thing and the process that creates it are one and the same. The medium is the message. Thus…anything that can be understood to involve the process known as SRIP is, by definition, conscious. Therefore the immune system is conscious. The digestive system is conscious. A cell in the process of repairing itself is conscious. The majority of car engines manufactured in the last decade are conscious A laptop is conscious. Etc. etc. etc. etc. Depending on how, exactly, the various meanings of those four words are defined (and they are not explicitly defined anywhere…just relatively…like everything else)….there may actually be nothing in the entire universe that is NOT conscious.

As for this nonsense….

None of this has anything to do with what you quoted: I asked for evidence, and someone said that the fact that the cells in your body do "SRIP" (a claim that hasn't been verified, but that I'll accept for now for the sake of argument) shows that SRIP is not sufficient for consciousness.

That's just a non-sequitur. If the cells in your body were conscious, there'd be no way for your brain to know about it, and thus no way for you to be conscious of their consciousness. So what is this evidence of?

Pixy says "X". You say "that implies Y!" I say, "but you don't know if Y is true or not, so... if Y what, not X? How do you get there?"

 

[Belz...]

Other people are conscious.

How can you tell ? (serious question)

 

[annnnoid]

No. Anything that performs self-referential information processing is by definition performing consciousness. What you may or may not understand is irrelevant.

Sophistry at its most sublime.

Something that performs SRIP is performing consciousness. But somehow it is inaccurate to suggest that something that is performing consciousness is …conscious ….????

There is no "thing". That's a fundamental error. There is only the process.

There's only one kind of stuff. What do you think the definition is?

…what do you think the definition is? Is ‘stuff’ a ‘process’, or is ‘stuff’ ‘stuff’, or is ‘process’ ‘stuff’? I guess there is ‘only the process’…until there is ‘stuff’.

How can you tell ? (serious question)

We ‘know’.

It is surprising how blasphemous this sometimes sounds here, but there is another variety of epistemology that we human beings depend upon to adjudicate our world (besides the scientific one). Thus, we have the capacity to come to accurate, legitimate, and credible conclusions without a shred of ‘scientific’ input what-so-ever.

 

[PixyMisa]

Sophistry at its most sublime.

Something that performs SRIP is performing consciousness. But somehow it is inaccurate to suggest that something that is performing consciousness is …conscious ….????

Something that is performing consciousness is conscious. But something that "involves" (your phrasing) something that is performing consciousness may or may not be conscious.

…what do you think the definition is? Is ‘stuff’ a ‘process’, or is ‘stuff’ ‘stuff’, or is ‘process’ ‘stuff’? I guess there is ‘only the process’…until there is ‘stuff’.

Still waiting for you to say something sensible on the subject.

We ‘know’.

Nope. It is a learned behaviour.

It is surprising how blasphemous this sometimes sounds here, but there is another variety of epistemology that we human beings depend upon to adjudicate our world (besides the scientific one). Thus, we have the capacity to come to accurate, legitimate, and credible conclusions without a shred of ‘scientific’ input what-so-ever.

No.

 

[Belz...]

We ‘know’.

I don't doubt it, but it doesn't answer my question.

Thus, we have the capacity to come to accurate, legitimate, and credible conclusions without a shred of ‘scientific’ input what-so-ever.

And yet we are very often wrong about these conclusions. So I ask again: how can we tell that other people are conscious ?

 

[annnnoid]

Nope. It is a learned behavior.
.

…and what is ‘learned’ and what is inherited / intuitive / instinctual? Are these questions answered definitively somewhere?

No.

Sure Pixy.

I have a cousin who’s a professor of physics at Cambridge. Next time I need to decide whether or not to date a particular lady I’ll be sure and run the issue past him first.

And yet we are very often wrong about these conclusions.

Wrong???? ...these are not falsifiable issues here. We are also very often right about these conclusions. That, precisely, specifically, and explicitly, is what human life is all about. ' Know thyself ' I think it's called.

So I ask again: how can we tell that other people are conscious ?

We can’t. There does not exist a scientific test to resolve this issue (obviously...there isn't even a consensus on a definition for the word). There are simply judgments based on the best available knowledge.

We trust our observations / perceptions (science is a function of these faculties just as much as ‘non-science’). ALL conclusions are, ultimately, a function of faith. Beyond that…there is…we don’t know.

 

[Dancing David]

We ‘know’.

It is surprising how blasphemous this sometimes sounds here, but there is another variety of epistemology that we human beings depend upon to adjudicate our world (besides the scientific one). Thus, we have the capacity to come to accurate, legitimate, and credible conclusions without a shred of ‘scientific’ input what-so-ever.

Well that is not an answer for it is the same reasoning people use to justify a belief in god, sexism and racism.

I am not saying you believe in those things, it is the same logical fallacy.