I think it's important to distinguish between structure and behavior (i.e. function). I agree with Leon (for once ) that a "mind" doesn't exist as a "thing". The word merely describes the behavior of a living brain in the same way that "gait" describes the behavior of legs. Any other structure we can concoct to exhibit the same behavior can, therefore, also be said to possess a "mind" of its own.
I think we spend far too much energy examining introspection, which becomes nothing more than a game of endless recursion and leads nowhere. After all, while each of us will admit to introspective abilities, even though we can't really define what that means, there are billions of other, similarly constructed beings, for which we lack, and can never obtain, any direct evidence of such ability. We just have to take their word for it.
In other words, if something acts like it has a "mind" and communicates like it has a "mind", then we can safely say that it has a "mind", so long as we think of the word more in verb terms than noun terms. This is the basis of the Turing Test, and we really can't do better than that.
@Leon - I don't think anyone knows yet what "mind" is. There are glimmerings. I mentioned that there seems to be an idle state of the brain that we're beginning to learn about. We're also learning more about the modeling and rehearsing that's constantly going on in the brain.
I would say that "mind" is the functional manifestation in action of the physical matrix that is the brain. It includes the electrical and chemical states of the entire system. When I think of brain, I (and others) think in terms of structure, the neurons, glia, and other cells and their synapses and other connections. They are not equivalent.
As is the case with human acupuncture, there isn't a single properly designed study that shows that animal acupuncture is more effective than placebo.
Is there a paper in a reputable journal describing exactly how those surgical procedures under "hypnosis" were carried out?
What you think of as "mind" is just brain states, unless you are a dualist. Consciousness is the main problem in brain science at the moment, I don't think that anyone is studying "mind".
Phil:
Introspection as a psychological paradigm was abandoned early in the last century.
Leon
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Oddly enough, "Consciousness" has become one of the main, but not often talked about, problems in Physics. It all started with the double slit experiment, which very simplistically proves that when you do an experiment, you get an answer appropriate to the question you asked - even if you wait until after the experiment is completed to ask the question. Fun stuff if you like to stretch your brain!
What you think of as "mind" is just brain states, unless you are a dualist....
I am not a dualist, but I know that iron has an oxidation state. Do you believe iron nails know when they're rusting?
A rusty nail only has a couple of states. Brains have a vast number of states and can possess self-awareness. It's not known whether that is just a function of their complexity, or something else, though.
Leon
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People who live in a Newtonian universe have
a glob of meaningless goo inside their heads
that will someday dissolve back into the nothingness
from which it came.
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"Where am I? Where am I going? Why am I in a handbasket?"
Leon said...
...
...Brains have a vast number of states and can possess self-awareness. It's not known whether that is just a function of their complexity, or something else, though.
Leon,
I'm sure you are right about the complexity thing. And that's what baffles me most. How does piling complexity upon complexity give rise to a... um, okay so I won't say "mind" this time, I'll just say "awareness". Obviously awareness is not necessary for the brain to perform sophisticated tasks: consider the creative flash. So why do we have any kind of awareness at all? Why are we not extremely sophisticated, completely unaware creations of, say, mallred and company..... or.... or... oh my god, maybe we are???
Leon said...
What evidence do you have for the existence of an "ego"?
Leon,
Ignoring Freud's "ego" and just thinking of it simply as the human "I" ...
the device that proves the existence of the·"I" (or whatever you want to·call it), is called a·mirror.
·
To clarify the name-that-consciousness problem, the·experiment you can try -·when you're with a friend -·is to point to him or her and clearly ask: "me?" or "I?"
- this should give satisfactory, clinical evidence.
(And you won't even need·to hire a psychiatrist to witness·the magical event.·But, of course, if you do this experiment too many times in a row, your friend may try the power of suggestion that you may need to go see one.)
> How consciousness evolved is one of the biggest questions in science
Thank goodness, Leon -·I was beginning to worry that you would question the existence of consciousness!
Why would anyone assume that "consciousness" is somehow a separate thing from processing inputs, changing states, and producing outputs? If it exists at all as something distinct that we can give a name to, it lies along a continuum, from my toaster that has some, but very little, to us humans, who credit ourselves with a lot. But, really, "more conscious" means nothing more than "exhibits more complex behavior". It's certainly not something that's been breathed into our being or become crystalized at some magical instant in evolutionary history. It infuses every animate being, whether natural or manmade — but in various degrees.
So? What's the mechanism? Besides, "subjective" is very subjective. How do I know that you possess qualia? In fact, I don't. You may act like you do and say that you do, but there is no measurable critereon — aside from the Turing Test — for separating false claims from the real McCoy. It all comes down to behavior, for this is the only thing that we can observe directly. "Consciousness" and "qualia" mean nothing if we can only define them in anthropomorphic terms rather than functional ones.
...How do I know that you possess qualia? In fact, I don't. You may act like you do and say that you do, but there is no measurable critereon...
Phil,
perhaps it's true that I can't know whether or not another being has qualia or self-awareness or I-ness, but surely I know that I myself have it. In fact, it seems to me that my I-ness is the only thing in the universe that I can really be sure of - that I exist. You know, "I think therefore I am."? All else might be an illusion. And even if everything I perceive is an illusion, there still must be something (an I-ness) that is experiencing those illusions.
Of course, my I-ness is only a single data point, but it is one data point that proves one thing to me: in all this vast cosmos, there is at least one entity that has I-ness, and somehow the material world was able to produce it, therefore I feel compelled to ask: how is this possible and what does it tell me about the nature of the universe? I think to ignore my own personal direct observation of something I perceive in the universe would be kinda unscientific, especially in a situation that is set up like this: if what I perceive is a self-delusional illusory lie, there still must be an I-ness that is being lied to, deluded, made victim of the illusion.
So I agree that, from the outside looking in, it is pert-near impossible to say whether or not something I'm examining has I-ness. But I am part of the universe, and I am able to examine the existence of my I-ness as rigorously as I can examine anything else in this cosmos, and though I'm only a single data point, it's the strongest data point available to me, and I feel scientifically compelled to NOT throw away the best and only data I can truly rely on. (Though a test of a physical law might provide me with a sheet of reasonable-looking numbers, those numbers must pass through my I-ness in order to have any meaning to me, so if my I-ness is screwed up, then my interpretation of that physical law will be screwed up, too. So if I can't rely on my I-ness to provide reasonable explanations for things, I can't rely on anything else.)
To my feeble I-ness, the Turing Test seems reasonable for being "outside looking in" but what the heck am I supposed to do with all this other stuff I see when I look the other way?
My take on "I-ness" is that either everything possesses it, or nothing does. It can't be somewhere in between, else where do we draw the line? If I have "I-ness", then my cat, my PC and, yes, even my toaster must also possess it to a greater or lesser degree. But what is it, really? Maybe it's nothing more than a mental model of our place in the universe, a method named "me" that we call up when we need it.. Humans are complex enough and possess a large enough number of distinct possible internal states that such a model can be a homomorphism (i.e. a self-consistent abstraction). My toaster's "model" is likely to be more isomorphic, since it's "mental" states are limited to those which it manfests behaviorally. But the point is that consciousness, "I-ness" — whatever you want to name it — exists on a continuum. Our ability to look inward is nothing more than a manifestation of our complexity as it has emerged and grown from the primordial goo. It's not something that was suddenly endowed or fell into place along the way.
Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) said...
My take on "I-ness" is that either everything possesses it, or nothing does. It can't be somewhere in between.... the point is that consciousness, "I-ness" — whatever you want to name it — exists on a continuum. ...It's not something that was suddenly endowed or fell into place along the way.
-Phil
I don't disagree with that. It's possible that "I-ness" is in all things. It's possible that my I-ness is just a subset of some super big I, too. It's possible that my brain is some nifty little outcome of evolution that allows some unknown property of the cosmos to be twisted up like wool into a piece of temporary yarn that can turn around and look at itself for a few decades, then come unravelled. I really don't know. But personally I think it's improbable that the execution of a set of instructions is likely to produce I-ness. Of course, I could be wrong about that. I suppose it's possible that the cosmos is somehow process-oriented yet isn't too picky about the specific means of that process (in other words silicone chips work just as good as a squishy brain.) My guess is that consciousness is a wildly variable thing with many flavors and colors and- and- and that there are ant-consciousnesses, slime-mold consciousnesses, etc. and that beings on other planets have ways of thinking and referencing themselves that we could not possibly imagine because of the vast differences in our biological make-up and evolutionary environments. But I have a hunch that silicone chips and algorithms as we presently know them won't ever make the grade of genuine USDA high grade I-ness. That isn't to say, however, that we can't make some wickedly cool mimics! Phil, I'm still waiting for that Turing Machine you promised me that will clean my house, do my laundry and cut my grass! I is one lazy I-ness needs some help 'round here!
Some philosophers (a very small minority) don't believe that qualia actually exist. Something similar happened in psychology with behaviourism - behaviourists like Skinner maintained that observable behaviour was all that mattered; this was comprehensively demolished by Chomsky, from a linguistic viewpoint.
If consciousness and qualia are illusory, how do you explain humour and artistic appreciation? These are shared by more than one person and there are measurable effects from brain scans, hormone release, and so on.
Leon
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I-ness --> Binary either everything has it, or not. Wouldn't a piece of art then possess some element of it's creator that we are able to appreciate then, like we appreciate fine people?
Some philosophers (a very small minority) don't believe that qualia actually exist....
Yes, and I think Daniel Dennett en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett is one of the more celebrated ones. It seems to me that those philosophers against "qualia" often dismiss qualia as being an illusion of some kind, the product of "mirrors looking at mirrors" or some kind of recursive process, electronic loops of some sort, as though loops were that magical. I've never been able to grasp that argument because, to me, it seems like an illusion still needs an observer: at the end of the hallway full of mirrors, there still has to be an I-ness looking at that final mirror otherwise what have you done to explain I-ness? The infinite mirror argument sounds to me a lot like the old Hindu myth of the earth being atop the back of a turtle, which was on top of another turtle, which was on top of another turtle, and so on forever - they all move around, therefore we have earthquakes.
Other philosophers dismiss I-ness as being an epiphenomenon, saying that I-ness has no real influence or control over our actions nor does it control our thought processes but is merely a byproduct of the brain's biological process, like fart gas or uric acid. In other words, I-ness does nothing and can do nothing in the universe except be aware of what's happening around it: the brain and body do everything without the consent or control of our I-ness and so our I-ness just goes along for the ride atop its otherwise mindless machine. Think of yourself as being locked inside a tiny cage with no controls and riding atop a big elegant robot that clomps through the world doing its own thing and knowing nothing about you. I find this argument possible but, personally, not likely. (Actually, it's kinda creepy.)
In my humble opinion, the phenomenon of I-ness is scientifically too compelling to dismiss as a "nothing but". I could be wrong, but being wrong is part of the scientific process. You create a hypothesis (I-ness matters and must have something to do with how the universe works) and you stand up on stage and get a face full of rotten tomatoes. That sucks and isn't pleasant, but if I'm just a self-deluded recursive function riding atop a mindless robot with no control over anything whatsoever, then what's a few moldy vegetables?
An interesting consensus seems to be forming here.
Would it be correct to say that we are ALL in agreement that "consciousness" does exist in *some* form or process? (If we leave aside the how, where, and why.)
Such a consensus is significant. If it becomes an agreed on touchstone, every time we get lost in argumentation, we can can return 'back' to this point and try again.
Please consider this a moment: isn't it fascinating that we can even ASK such questions in the first place? As ElectricAye hinted at, our scientific curiosity, our search for 'knowledge', for the how and why, must be indicative of something unique. To me, that is this "I-ness." A focal point of "consciousness" that is self-reflective is necessary for each of us to even ask "why" in the first place. If we were not somehow a unique focal point, then *by that nature* we would not have need to ask at all - we would be embedded as a non-unique part of a totality. That we ARE separated somehow from the totality of the cosmos, is what gives rise to the whole "mind-body" problem, the entire "subjective-versus-objective" problem. This, in turn is really, IMO, what underlies the whole religion-versus-science problem... but let's not go there yet or again please for now. It is much more important to have a starting consensus about 'consciousness'.
So do we all agree that "Consciousness" (as we understand that word) does "Exist" (as we understand that word too)?
As soon as you posit the "existence" of qualia, I-ness, whatever, you have to have some idea of where it exists. If you're a dualist and state that these "mind things" exist outside the body and brain's physical reality, then the discussion ends here; and any extension to artificial intelligence is pointless to talk about. But if you accept that qualia, say, is a process in the physical universe, then you also have to accept that there's an underlying physical mechanism that produces it. Moreover, you must accept that such a mechanism is replicated, to a greater or lesser degree, in other organisms and mechanisms. In other words, we're not the center of the universe or separate from it, but as thoroughly embedded in it as he boulder in my yard.
Now I accept that one may wish to defer naming such processes "qualia" or "I-ness" until they reach a certain threshold or pass certain tests. That's okay. But my point is that once you escape the unreality of dualism and your feet resume contact with the ground, you become bound once more by the laws of physics. Some would sneer at such a point of view and call it reductionist. But I think that the recent work that's being done in non-linear dynamics and emergent complexity is an eye-opener to the possibilities and wonder that the comprehensible physical universe holds. And we can finally let go of the "man in the box" in our theory of mind, as we would an out-grown security blanket.
-Phil
[noparse][[/noparse]edit] Fixed spelling error.
Post Edited (Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)) : 9/10/2009 5:38:21 PM GMT
from your perspective then, given that we let go of the "man in the box", and given all those qualifiers you mention, would you be willing to "label" such a (vastly) complex, non-linear dynamic system with the term "consciousness" ?
CounterRotatingProps said...
...This, in turn is really, IMO, what underlies the whole religion-versus-science problem... but let's not go there yet or again please for now. It is much more important to have a starting consensus about 'consciousness'.
I agree that we can go a long way in discussing this issue without getting into religion, etc. I just hope I don't make someone upset by expressing what I think is possible. Nor do I want to cast aspersions on religious beliefs - for now, I think it's best to leave that out of the discussion. What I suppose we are doing here is talking about how our brains work and how that might relate to the machines we make.
One thing I've noticed when talking to scientists about topics like this: some scientists seem to have a very easy-going open-mindedness about I-ness and qualia and such. Other scientists seem to be a little more uptight about it, denying its existence even in themselves, or demanding ever more strict definitions, or physical evidence outside of their own experience of it, etc. It seems to me that the scientists who are most uptight about it are ones who grew up in households where religion was pressed upon them from an early age and part of their growing up involved unloading all that religious "baggage". The more qualia-friendly scientists seem to have grown up in households where religion wasn't pressed upon them, so they didn't have this internal science-vs.-religion thing to hassle over as they learned about the world. This is just my own observation, of course; I don't have any statistics to back it up. But I sometimes wonder: wouldn't it be profoundly ironic if some scientists feel compelled to ignore qualia simply because they are afraid such considerations will inch them too close to that old religious "baggage" that they felt compelled to shed in their youth? If so, that would mean that some scientists, because of their prejudice against religious ideas, are behaving quite unscientifically!
I have to say, you guys are making me think this week.
Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) said...
...If you're a dualist and state that these "mind things" exist outside the body and brain's physical reality, then the discussion ends here...
I don't consider myself a dualist but.... well.... I do entertain the idea that whatever the brain is doing might not be confined to its shell of bone or its little wires of nerves and such. If our consciousness is a product of electromagnetics and so forth, it's clear that we live in a vibrant soup of such stuff. So I'd be willing to entertain the idea that we are more spread out in time and space than we perceive ourselves to be. For example, how exactly wide is our experience of "now"? Is it a nanosecond? One tenth of a second? That seems too small. Yet, I'm pretty sure my experience of "now" is not one hour or even one minute. It's shorter than that. How about half a second? Hmmmm, I'm not sure. So where exactly in time is my "now"? And why is it like that and not something else? I feel all fuzzy when it comes to such ideas.
Post Edited (ElectricAye) : 9/10/2009 6:08:59 PM GMT
There have been experiments which show that the brain can initiate some action in response to a stimulus before there is a conscious experience. This isn't a simple reflex action which occurs when one picks up something hot.
Leon
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Leon said...
There have been experiments which show that the brain can initiate some action in response to a stimulus before there is a conscious experience. This isn't a simple reflex action which occurs when one picks up something hot.
Leon
Leon,
that's very interesting. I wonder if I-ness has something akin to inertia? Hey, maybe I-ness is nothing more than a brain still working long after the stimulus has stopped. Could our I-ness be little more than an overshoot phenomenon?
Comments
I think we spend far too much energy examining introspection, which becomes nothing more than a game of endless recursion and leads nowhere. After all, while each of us will admit to introspective abilities, even though we can't really define what that means, there are billions of other, similarly constructed beings, for which we lack, and can never obtain, any direct evidence of such ability. We just have to take their word for it.
In other words, if something acts like it has a "mind" and communicates like it has a "mind", then we can safely say that it has a "mind", so long as we think of the word more in verb terms than noun terms. This is the basis of the Turing Test, and we really can't do better than that.
-Phil
I would say that "mind" is the functional manifestation in action of the physical matrix that is the brain. It includes the electrical and chemical states of the entire system. When I think of brain, I (and others) think in terms of structure, the neurons, glia, and other cells and their synapses and other connections. They are not equivalent.
As is the case with human acupuncture, there isn't a single properly designed study that shows that animal acupuncture is more effective than placebo.
Is there a paper in a reputable journal describing exactly how those surgical procedures under "hypnosis" were carried out?
What you think of as "mind" is just brain states, unless you are a dualist. Consciousness is the main problem in brain science at the moment, I don't think that anyone is studying "mind".
Phil:
Introspection as a psychological paradigm was abandoned early in the last century.
Leon
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Post Edited (Leon) : 9/7/2009 9:21:05 PM GMT
Dave
Leon
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I am not a dualist, but I know that iron has an oxidation state. Do you believe iron nails know when they're rusting?
A rusty nail only has a couple of states. Brains have a vast number of states and can possess self-awareness. It's not known whether that is just a function of their complexity, or something else, though.
Leon
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Post Edited (Leon) : 9/8/2009 9:02:56 AM GMT
People who live in a Newtonian universe have
a glob of meaningless goo inside their heads
that will someday dissolve back into the nothingness
from which it came.
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"Where am I? Where am I going? Why am I in a handbasket?"
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Leon,
I'm sure you are right about the complexity thing. And that's what baffles me most. How does piling complexity upon complexity give rise to a... um, okay so I won't say "mind" this time, I'll just say "awareness". Obviously awareness is not necessary for the brain to perform sophisticated tasks: consider the creative flash. So why do we have any kind of awareness at all? Why are we not extremely sophisticated, completely unaware creations of, say, mallred and company..... or.... or... oh my god, maybe we are???
Leon
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Ignoring Freud's "ego" and just thinking of it simply as the human "I" ...
the device that proves the existence of the·"I" (or whatever you want to·call it), is called a·mirror.
To clarify the name-that-consciousness problem, the·experiment you can try -·when you're with a friend -·is to point to him or her and clearly ask: "me?" or "I?"
- this should give satisfactory, clinical evidence.
(And you won't even need·to hire a psychiatrist to witness·the magical event.·But, of course, if you do this experiment too many times in a row, your friend may try the power of suggestion that you may need to go see one.)
> How consciousness evolved is one of the biggest questions in science
Thank goodness, Leon -·I was beginning to worry that you would question the existence of consciousness!
cheers
- Howard
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-Phil
Leon
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So? What's the mechanism? Besides, "subjective" is very subjective. How do I know that you possess qualia? In fact, I don't. You may act like you do and say that you do, but there is no measurable critereon — aside from the Turing Test — for separating false claims from the real McCoy. It all comes down to behavior, for this is the only thing that we can observe directly. "Consciousness" and "qualia" mean nothing if we can only define them in anthropomorphic terms rather than functional ones.
-Phil
Phil,
perhaps it's true that I can't know whether or not another being has qualia or self-awareness or I-ness, but surely I know that I myself have it. In fact, it seems to me that my I-ness is the only thing in the universe that I can really be sure of - that I exist. You know, "I think therefore I am."? All else might be an illusion. And even if everything I perceive is an illusion, there still must be something (an I-ness) that is experiencing those illusions.
Of course, my I-ness is only a single data point, but it is one data point that proves one thing to me: in all this vast cosmos, there is at least one entity that has I-ness, and somehow the material world was able to produce it, therefore I feel compelled to ask: how is this possible and what does it tell me about the nature of the universe? I think to ignore my own personal direct observation of something I perceive in the universe would be kinda unscientific, especially in a situation that is set up like this: if what I perceive is a self-delusional illusory lie, there still must be an I-ness that is being lied to, deluded, made victim of the illusion.
So I agree that, from the outside looking in, it is pert-near impossible to say whether or not something I'm examining has I-ness. But I am part of the universe, and I am able to examine the existence of my I-ness as rigorously as I can examine anything else in this cosmos, and though I'm only a single data point, it's the strongest data point available to me, and I feel scientifically compelled to NOT throw away the best and only data I can truly rely on. (Though a test of a physical law might provide me with a sheet of reasonable-looking numbers, those numbers must pass through my I-ness in order to have any meaning to me, so if my I-ness is screwed up, then my interpretation of that physical law will be screwed up, too. So if I can't rely on my I-ness to provide reasonable explanations for things, I can't rely on anything else.)
To my feeble I-ness, the Turing Test seems reasonable for being "outside looking in" but what the heck am I supposed to do with all this other stuff I see when I look the other way?
-Phil
I don't disagree with that. It's possible that "I-ness" is in all things. It's possible that my I-ness is just a subset of some super big I, too. It's possible that my brain is some nifty little outcome of evolution that allows some unknown property of the cosmos to be twisted up like wool into a piece of temporary yarn that can turn around and look at itself for a few decades, then come unravelled. I really don't know. But personally I think it's improbable that the execution of a set of instructions is likely to produce I-ness. Of course, I could be wrong about that. I suppose it's possible that the cosmos is somehow process-oriented yet isn't too picky about the specific means of that process (in other words silicone chips work just as good as a squishy brain.) My guess is that consciousness is a wildly variable thing with many flavors and colors and- and- and that there are ant-consciousnesses, slime-mold consciousnesses, etc. and that beings on other planets have ways of thinking and referencing themselves that we could not possibly imagine because of the vast differences in our biological make-up and evolutionary environments. But I have a hunch that silicone chips and algorithms as we presently know them won't ever make the grade of genuine USDA high grade I-ness. That isn't to say, however, that we can't make some wickedly cool mimics! Phil, I'm still waiting for that Turing Machine you promised me that will clean my house, do my laundry and cut my grass! I is one lazy I-ness needs some help 'round here!
Some philosophers (a very small minority) don't believe that qualia actually exist. Something similar happened in psychology with behaviourism - behaviourists like Skinner maintained that observable behaviour was all that mattered; this was comprehensively demolished by Chomsky, from a linguistic viewpoint.
If consciousness and qualia are illusory, how do you explain humour and artistic appreciation? These are shared by more than one person and there are measurable effects from brain scans, hormone release, and so on.
Leon
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Yes, and I think Daniel Dennett en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett is one of the more celebrated ones. It seems to me that those philosophers against "qualia" often dismiss qualia as being an illusion of some kind, the product of "mirrors looking at mirrors" or some kind of recursive process, electronic loops of some sort, as though loops were that magical. I've never been able to grasp that argument because, to me, it seems like an illusion still needs an observer: at the end of the hallway full of mirrors, there still has to be an I-ness looking at that final mirror otherwise what have you done to explain I-ness? The infinite mirror argument sounds to me a lot like the old Hindu myth of the earth being atop the back of a turtle, which was on top of another turtle, which was on top of another turtle, and so on forever - they all move around, therefore we have earthquakes.
Other philosophers dismiss I-ness as being an epiphenomenon, saying that I-ness has no real influence or control over our actions nor does it control our thought processes but is merely a byproduct of the brain's biological process, like fart gas or uric acid. In other words, I-ness does nothing and can do nothing in the universe except be aware of what's happening around it: the brain and body do everything without the consent or control of our I-ness and so our I-ness just goes along for the ride atop its otherwise mindless machine. Think of yourself as being locked inside a tiny cage with no controls and riding atop a big elegant robot that clomps through the world doing its own thing and knowing nothing about you. I find this argument possible but, personally, not likely. (Actually, it's kinda creepy.)
In my humble opinion, the phenomenon of I-ness is scientifically too compelling to dismiss as a "nothing but". I could be wrong, but being wrong is part of the scientific process. You create a hypothesis (I-ness matters and must have something to do with how the universe works) and you stand up on stage and get a face full of rotten tomatoes. That sucks and isn't pleasant, but if I'm just a self-deluded recursive function riding atop a mindless robot with no control over anything whatsoever, then what's a few moldy vegetables?
Would it be correct to say that we are ALL in agreement that "consciousness" does exist in *some* form or process? (If we leave aside the how, where, and why.)
Such a consensus is significant. If it becomes an agreed on touchstone, every time we get lost in argumentation, we can can return 'back' to this point and try again.
Please consider this a moment: isn't it fascinating that we can even ASK such questions in the first place? As ElectricAye hinted at, our scientific curiosity, our search for 'knowledge', for the how and why, must be indicative of something unique. To me, that is this "I-ness." A focal point of "consciousness" that is self-reflective is necessary for each of us to even ask "why" in the first place. If we were not somehow a unique focal point, then *by that nature* we would not have need to ask at all - we would be embedded as a non-unique part of a totality. That we ARE separated somehow from the totality of the cosmos, is what gives rise to the whole "mind-body" problem, the entire "subjective-versus-objective" problem. This, in turn is really, IMO, what underlies the whole religion-versus-science problem... but let's not go there yet or again please for now. It is much more important to have a starting consensus about 'consciousness'.
So do we all agree that "Consciousness" (as we understand that word) does "Exist" (as we understand that word too)?
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Now I accept that one may wish to defer naming such processes "qualia" or "I-ness" until they reach a certain threshold or pass certain tests. That's okay. But my point is that once you escape the unreality of dualism and your feet resume contact with the ground, you become bound once more by the laws of physics. Some would sneer at such a point of view and call it reductionist. But I think that the recent work that's being done in non-linear dynamics and emergent complexity is an eye-opener to the possibilities and wonder that the comprehensible physical universe holds. And we can finally let go of the "man in the box" in our theory of mind, as we would an out-grown security blanket.
-Phil
[noparse][[/noparse]edit] Fixed spelling error.
Post Edited (Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)) : 9/10/2009 5:38:21 PM GMT
from your perspective then, given that we let go of the "man in the box", and given all those qualifiers you mention, would you be willing to "label" such a (vastly) complex, non-linear dynamic system with the term "consciousness" ?
- H
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-P.
I agree that we can go a long way in discussing this issue without getting into religion, etc. I just hope I don't make someone upset by expressing what I think is possible. Nor do I want to cast aspersions on religious beliefs - for now, I think it's best to leave that out of the discussion. What I suppose we are doing here is talking about how our brains work and how that might relate to the machines we make.
One thing I've noticed when talking to scientists about topics like this: some scientists seem to have a very easy-going open-mindedness about I-ness and qualia and such. Other scientists seem to be a little more uptight about it, denying its existence even in themselves, or demanding ever more strict definitions, or physical evidence outside of their own experience of it, etc. It seems to me that the scientists who are most uptight about it are ones who grew up in households where religion was pressed upon them from an early age and part of their growing up involved unloading all that religious "baggage". The more qualia-friendly scientists seem to have grown up in households where religion wasn't pressed upon them, so they didn't have this internal science-vs.-religion thing to hassle over as they learned about the world. This is just my own observation, of course; I don't have any statistics to back it up. But I sometimes wonder: wouldn't it be profoundly ironic if some scientists feel compelled to ignore qualia simply because they are afraid such considerations will inch them too close to that old religious "baggage" that they felt compelled to shed in their youth? If so, that would mean that some scientists, because of their prejudice against religious ideas, are behaving quite unscientifically!
I have to say, you guys are making me think this week.
I don't consider myself a dualist but.... well.... I do entertain the idea that whatever the brain is doing might not be confined to its shell of bone or its little wires of nerves and such. If our consciousness is a product of electromagnetics and so forth, it's clear that we live in a vibrant soup of such stuff. So I'd be willing to entertain the idea that we are more spread out in time and space than we perceive ourselves to be. For example, how exactly wide is our experience of "now"? Is it a nanosecond? One tenth of a second? That seems too small. Yet, I'm pretty sure my experience of "now" is not one hour or even one minute. It's shorter than that. How about half a second? Hmmmm, I'm not sure. So where exactly in time is my "now"? And why is it like that and not something else? I feel all fuzzy when it comes to such ideas.
Post Edited (ElectricAye) : 9/10/2009 6:08:59 PM GMT
Leon
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Leon,
that's very interesting. I wonder if I-ness has something akin to inertia? Hey, maybe I-ness is nothing more than a brain still working long after the stimulus has stopped. Could our I-ness be little more than an overshoot phenomenon?