[HN Gopher] Is Consciousness Everywhere?
___________________________________________________________________
Is Consciousness Everywhere?
Author : fortran77
Score : 132 points
Date : 2021-03-18 17:45 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
| frongpik wrote:
| This sounds like the bottom up approach, i.e. that
| "consciousness" is more like a medium that's everywhere, even an
| atom has a bit of this consciousness, and when such small bits
| assemble together, a bigger consciousness emerges. In this
| approach, I'm tempted to equate consciousness with the
| electromagnetic field - it's this field that allows us to
| experience the world.
|
| However human mind is something entirely different: it's a self-
| conscious something built on top of "raw consciousness".
| ryandvm wrote:
| I find the "individual atoms are conscious" to be kind of
| dopey, but I do like the idea that consciousness is a sort of
| gradient.
|
| I would describe consciousness as the ability for an
| information processing system to model the world around it, and
| importantly, said information processing system's place in it.
|
| As I sit here, my model of the world around me is humming along
| nicely. I believe I am quite conscious. My dog is sitting here
| beside me (awake) seems to be experiencing consciousness. My
| other sleeping dog is not conscious - perhaps it is dreaming,
| but that's not really modelling the world around it. And as we
| move down the scale, I become less and less convinced that
| various creatures are conscious. Birds? Sure. Fish? Maybe.
| Ants? Hmm. Bacteria? No.
|
| At the lowest level, creatures that simply respond to stimuli
| are not conscious. But there's a lot of wiggle room between a
| bacterium and me. Right before I wake up in the morning, my
| model isn't really working. I would say at that point I'm not
| conscious. But within a few seconds, the model is running and I
| understand my place in it. That isn't an on/off situation. It's
| a gradient that I quickly pass through; becoming ever more
| conscious along the way.
|
| And every night (or if I get a deteriorating neuronal disease
| and my neurons start to die off), the whole thing plays in
| reverse. My consciousness dwindles down to nothingness.
| visarga wrote:
| > I'm tempted to equate consciousness with the electromagnetic
| field
|
| There would be no point. Consciousness has a purpose related to
| replication, it's not just a background field.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| This channel has lots of content on this topic. Including
| interviews with all the top people.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/CloserToTruthTV/videos
|
| To me it seems like consciousness can only be passed from one
| being to another. And since we are all just a collection of
| cells, and everything that we are is coded inside a cell. It
| seems to me that consciousness must exist at the cellular level.
| skohan wrote:
| Is there a reason you think consciousness can't simply be
| explained as brain activity?
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| My thoughts on this:
|
| 1) Your brain cells are just a special type of cell. How
| these brain cells send and receive signals, interact and make
| connection, is coded at the cellular level. Software without
| hardware to run on, is just text.
|
| 2) You are born with certain conscious behaviours that you
| don't need to learn. This behaviour must be passed between
| generations using DNA/RNA. Therefore the coding for that
| later behaviour must already be present when you were just
| two cells.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| I don't think consciousness can be explained as brain
| activity. To me that would lead to consciousness being a form
| of computation.
| anthk wrote:
| Well, physics work on a cause-effect basis, so does your
| brain.
| KingFelix wrote:
| From what I remember Koch and Tononi measure consciousness in Phi
| ( and phi is complexity) I remember a conversation at Towards a
| Science of Consciousness conference about this. If Phi is
| measured in complexity you could make a glass window complex and
| that is conscious.
|
| Also during Tononi's talk a guy walked through the isle and said
| something along the lines of 'Phi is the answer, Phi is god,
| Tononi is our savior'
|
| Thoughts on Phi?
| django77 wrote:
| Can you really make glass window that much more complex? It's
| still the same molecular structure with maybe a more
| complicated shape, but how it interacts with the outside world
| is still pretty much the same
| hntrader wrote:
| "If Phi is measured in complexity you could make a glass window
| complex and that is conscious."
|
| If true, that sounds like a reductio ad absurdum of the
| hypothesis.
| animanoir wrote:
| I would recommend Llinas book "I of the Vortex" which explains a
| pretty interesting reason for the existance of "consciousness".
| Also Wittgenstein has some thoughts about it too.
| KingFelix wrote:
| Also I am a strange loop - Hofstadter
| tgv wrote:
| By what possible commonly agreed upon definition could
| consciousness be equal to experience? The only result of
| accepting that definition would be having to invent a new name
| for what I (and I believe many with me) call consciousness, as
| badly defined as it is.
|
| To put it in the words of Syndrome: if everything is conscious,
| nothing is.
| seph-reed wrote:
| This seems like another one of those debates where there's a
| spectrum and a bunch of people disagree about where on that
| spectrum it's okay to use a certain word.
| 613style wrote:
| > By what possible commonly agreed upon definition could
| consciousness be equal to experience?
|
| I'll turn the question around: What aspect of your
| consciousness is not an experience? What aspect of your
| experience is not a part of consciousness?
| warent wrote:
| > To put it in the words of Syndrome: if everything is
| conscious, nothing is.
|
| I think what you're using as a counter argument is really a
| foundation of buddhist emptiness or vedanta brahman. i.e. that
| the percieved duality is an illusion
| nickmain wrote:
| Metacognition may be a better term to differentiate from the
| lazy use of consciousness.
| driggs wrote:
| I've long pondered the idea that consciousness is inherent to all
| "things" - animal, vegetable, mineral; atom, planet, solar system
| - in that things experience _being_, whatever that means for a
| given thing.
|
| A recent oral surgery gave this hypothesis pause. I was given
| Propofol as an anesthetic, and upon awakening had an extremely
| impactful existential experience. My very consciousness had been
| extinguished, instantly, as if by a lightswitch, and for 45
| minutes there was nothing but oblivion.
|
| If consciousness is inherent to being, then how could it so
| easily be nullified to the point of oblivion, and then brought
| back online?
| asey wrote:
| I think that would be a question of memory rather than having a
| conscious experience though I think it raises the question of
| whether consciousness can exist without some mechanism for
| memory even if only short term.
| acruns wrote:
| There can be no oblivion if you experienced it. I would suggest
| reversing the idea that conscience is part of a being and
| instead suggest that consciousness is inherit in everything
| because it is everything. Within or without a being.
| driggs wrote:
| Pardon my inability to express accurately with words, but I
| most certainly did not _experience_ oblivion. I am using the
| word "oblivion" to describe the state of absolutely no
| experience whatsoever. It was practically
| religious/mystical/psychedelic in that it truly felt that I
| _had not existed at all_ during that time.
|
| (And, no offense, I get the George Harrison reference, but
| saying that consciousness "is everything" begs the very
| question of evaluating panpsychism critically. I'm posting
| this because it is _counter_ to my own longheld beliefs that
| consciousness is inherent to being.)
| loopz wrote:
| Separate the blank stage, from the actors and scenery. For
| something to fill and empty, you know there's a vessel. It
| is integral and unseparable. Feelings, thought, emotion,
| drama, will always change and are tools for seeking.
| acruns wrote:
| No offense taken. But isn't nothingness or no experience an
| experience? It seems you did experience something, that
| something might equate to nothingness or the void or
| oblivion but there was an experience? It sounds similar to
| "experiencing" a thought. It happens and we can all agree
| they do, but what is it to experience a thought? Can you
| smell, touch, feel a thought?
| visarga wrote:
| I don't think so. Let's be logical - consciousness, what is it
| good for? It protects the body, keeps itself alive. Then you
| can't have consciousness everywhere. It needs self replication,
| evolution and learning in order to exist. You need to have agent
| and environment in order to have consciousness, an agent with
| goals and needs, just any rock will not make a decent agent.
| tim333 wrote:
| I agree an evolutionary approach seems a good way of looking at
| the thing. Being conscious of what is going on around you is
| obviously an advantage over not.
|
| Also from a how the brain works point of view you have billions
| of neurons recognising things in parallel and the data seems to
| narrow down from that to awareness of a small number of things
| which you can logically reason about. I'd imagine a lot of the
| conscious experience comes from that - the neural net
| highlights as it were.
|
| Like if you're in the woods your pattern recogniser bits may be
| going there's a leaf there, there's a twig there, there's a
| bear attacking, there's some moss on the tree etc. and then the
| bear bit will get highlighted so you can think 'ah pepper
| spray' or what have you. The highlights being what we
| experience as consciousness.
|
| It implies you get human like consciousness from that kind of
| mechanism so yes for a mouse, no for a carrot.
|
| It also differentiates stuff going on in your brain that you
| are aware of and respond to but are not consciously aware of to
| that which you are. Say you are being chased by the bear and
| run. The logistics of running - path dips 2cm, raise left leg
| 5cm... you will not be consciously aware of because the
| highlights and logical reasoning bit will be busy with 'shit
| -there's bear what next?' type issues.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| What is a "maximally irreducible cause-effect structure"?
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| We all start as single cells. When does the consciousness fairy
| come and turn the global workspace on? When neurons fire? Because
| no emergent property seems powerful enough to produce feeling --
| and because both sheep and snails _seem_ to have different levels
| of feeling--i subscribe to the panpsychic view. For now.
| visarga wrote:
| What is feeling? It's an expectation of reward following some
| action and situation you are faced with. Feeling is dependent
| on the content, the "game" the agent is playing. It represents
| a way to evaluate good and bad actions in order to maximise
| reward. Thus, even though feeling is generated in the brain, it
| is not about neurons firing. Having a life, something to win or
| to lose will automatically be the source of feeling, the brain
| itself is just a component.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I think there is a lot more. I think a triangle feels
| different from circles. All forms have feelings in the
| embodied mind.
| loopz wrote:
| Either
|
| 1: Consciousness is everywhere and all.
|
| Or
|
| 2: Consciousness is nowhere.
|
| Who is it that is asking the question?
|
| The answer is purely existential.
|
| The question is childish!
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| My consciousness (I won't speak for yours) is integrated yet
| contains many parts. It is hierarchical -- and I am aware that
| there is much that I am not aware of. For instance, with some
| effort I can notice that a white wall is made of millions of
| blinking colored neuropixels. But normally that is below my
| awareness. When I meditate, sometimes I can notice that I'm
| thinking verbal thoughts--suggesting that verbal thoughts
| transpire subconsciously, as well. When I engage with people,
| there is a sharing of consciousness--and though I'm not aware of
| all that the others are experiencing, I recognize that my own
| experience is just the tip of the iceberg of "experience."
| bigpumpkin wrote:
| "For instance, with some effort I can notice that a white wall
| is made of millions of blinking colored neuropixels. "
|
| This I cannot achieve unless I'm staring at a white computer
| screen up close.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| > When I meditate, sometimes I can notice that I'm thinking
| verbal thoughts--suggesting that verbal thoughts transpire
| subconsciously, as well.
|
| Something similar was coming up recently in my meditation
| practice, where I'd be aware of a vague impulse of a thought or
| idea arising before it became verbalized. Then I realized that
| I had had that experience before, when I was a kid and playing
| music a lot, where I'd notice the sensation of a thought
| beginning to arise but would put it away before it could get
| verbalized, since playing music needs a lot of attention and
| discursive thoughts will certainly make you mess up.
|
| I'm not really trained in Zen, but in reading a book by Katsuki
| Sekida a while back he referred to thought impulses by varying
| degrees of 'nen', with the first 'nen' being a thought impulse
| of pure experience before it is recognized by a second or third
| degree 'nen'. This sort of felt related to that experience.
| retrac wrote:
| I have always had the rather unsettling feeling that my
| internal monologue is a post-hoc justification or
| rationalization for what my subconscious just caused me to
| do, and was not the cause.
| tomComb wrote:
| Unfortunately I think there is a degree of consensus that
| that is how it works, and this is used as evidence for the
| lack of free will.
| mehphp wrote:
| I'm not sure how free will would work, even in theory. If
| the universe is completely deterministic then of course
| there isn't freedom of will in that. If it is random,
| then that still wouldn't be freedom because it would
| still be out of our control.
|
| I can't think of a way that it could work without
| invoking the metaphysical.
| someguyorother wrote:
| It'd have to be like the libertarian incompatibilists
| envision it: that free will gives everybody a capacity
| to, to some degree, be a first cause.
|
| From https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/incompatibilism-
| arguments...
|
| "Free will...is the power of agents to be the ultimate
| creators or originators and sustainers of their own ends
| or purposes...when we trace the causal or explanatory
| chains of action back to their sources in the purposes of
| free agents, these causal chains must come to an end or
| terminate in the willings (choices, decisions, or
| efforts) of the agents, which cause or bring about their
| purposes. (Kane 1996: 4)"
|
| That might be metaphysical, but I don't see any other way
| free will could operate - that is, if it exists.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Well, if you take away the "I", so that it isn't the will
| of a singular being, but rather the free will of the
| elements of reality, manifesting itself-- it makes
| sense-- it isn't random, because it has coherence and it
| isn't deterministic--it is emergent. It isn't "me" that
| wills some reality into existence. It is the substance of
| the universe willing reality into existence. But even if
| you take the "I" away, it doesn't take away the utility
| or reality of the will. "Free will" emerges, like
| "wetness" emerges as a quality of water.
| mehphp wrote:
| Well I mean... you can't think a thought before you think
| it; so of course there would be a prior cause before you
| became aware of it. How else would it work?
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| Then you will really enjoy the work of Daniel Wegner. Most
| of his research is summarized in the book "Illusion of the
| Conscious Will".
|
| His main argument is that we have two causal models to
| understanding the world, direct physical ones and "agent
| based". The first is good for figuring out a thrown rock is
| about to hit you and the agent based models are important
| for understanding things like a tigers sneaking up on prey.
|
| Wegner proposes that when we apply this agent based model
| to our own actions we come up with the illusion of a
| conscious will. This is essentially the same as your post-
| hoc justification.
| mellosouls wrote:
| A nice summary from one of the main proponents of the pansychic
| approach, but curiously omits mention of David Chalmers and
| contemporary philosophy which the modern renaissance of interest
| in the idea owes so much to.
|
| Discussed regularly in this forum.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Whether one shares Christof Koch's views on consciousness,
| panpsychism and or agrees or disagrees with the other postulates
| he makes in this essay - and there's a great deal to argue about
| - one would have to conclude that this is a remarkable piece of
| writing.
|
| Koch not only writes from a position of possessing great
| knowledge of the subject but also he does so in a most coherent
| and lucid manner. Moreovr, he simultaneously conveying his own
| convictions with ease, eloquence and finesse.
|
| Koch's analysis is certainly the most comprehensive of any short
| analysis of this subject material I've read, it was also the most
| understandable and enjoyable.
| vaer-k wrote:
| Sam Harris' thoughts on free will in his books, app, and podcast
| transformed the way I think about consciousness. Alan Watts
| talked about the consciousness of a daffodil, and that too had a
| profound impact on my feelings about myself and the universe.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I tried a lot of guided meditation apps like Calm, etc. None of
| them - NONE of them - compare with Sam Harris' Waking Up app.
| To call it an "app" does not do it justice -- it is a container
| of content, to which he and others contribute regularly. The
| theme for all content is always consciousness.
|
| If you think free will exists, listen to Sam Harris's 1 hour
| series of audio on the topic. It will change your mind.
|
| I wish we taught introspection and self-examination in public
| schools.
| misterkrabs wrote:
| Why is this downvoted? Just honestly curious - I've never read
| these guys but I'm always hearing about Sam Harris.
| waterheater wrote:
| One of the stranger theories of consciousness I've come across
| over the years is that of John Grandy. His primary hypothesis is
| that DNA itself is the source of consciousness. He tends to self-
| cite (rarely a good approach and only weakens his ideas from the
| perspective of an independent observer), but comparing the ideas
| in OP's article with Grandy's has got me thinking.
|
| "The Role of DNA in Conscious Systems" by John Grandy:
| http://publicationslist.org/data/john.grandy/ref-42/The%20Ro...
| randomsearch wrote:
| What is consciousness?
|
| I have the feeling of experiencing things. Is it not possible
| that such a phenomenon can be produced within a machine?
|
| When I try to answer this question, after coding for decades I
| can't tell you how this phenomenon can be possible within a
| Turing machine.
|
| So it seems obvious to me that (a) brains must be machines and
| (b) a machine cannot be conscious and so I conclude that (c) I
| don't know what I'm talking about.
| proc0 wrote:
| Lol, I was thinking along those lines... we are talking about
| consciousness with language... which was created by it long
| before we posed the question. I'm trapped trying to explain to
| myself how explaining to myself is even possible without
| language which was created by that which I'm trying to explain
| with language.
| ohazi wrote:
| What is a feeling?
| visarga wrote:
| Have you ever had a moment when your program was more complex
| than you could grasp? Consciousness is just too complex to
| grasp, not transcendent. It's physical like everything else.
| ThothIV wrote:
| Yes but for the love of gods can you stop trying to become bees?
| AGAIN?!? Honey bees are not conscious. They use their hive for
| computation, it acts as half of one brain, for each bee has its
| own half.
|
| See thoth.substack.com.
| [deleted]
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| The claim that a more complex system is capable of a richer
| experience seems like exactly the sort of baseless chauvinism
| that the article begins by taking on. Also "richer" seems like it
| could use a definition.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| The Pythagoreans believed that soul (greek: "psyche") was
| different from conscious sensation. Philolaus, for instance,
| wrote that the interaction of soul and body produced feeling.
| Soul referred to the immaterial nature of eternal reality --
| immaterial and eternal in the sense of mathematics. For instance,
| spheres and triangles are never perfectly instantiated in the
| material world, yet they are very _real._
|
| This I find fascinating -- that perhaps a certain soulful
| software needs to interact with material phenomena in order to
| create feeling. I don't know that I believe it, but it is a
| sensible reason to believe that consciousness is not pervasive.
| visarga wrote:
| > perhaps a certain soulful software needs to interact with
| material phenomena in order to create feeling
|
| In other words embodyment is a necessity for consciousness. The
| ability to explore, interact, make experiments, test theories,
| they all depend on having an able body to move around and a
| rich environment to explore. A body also brings necessities -
| the agent needs to work to keep itself alive, and has goals,
| positive and negative rewards. These are ingredients without
| which there would be no point for consciousness to exist.
| Animats wrote:
| For small values of "consciousness". The author writes
| "Consciousness is any experience, from the most mundane to the
| most exalted." One could call that "input". Still, the author is
| a serious neuroscientist, not a philosopher. He did, however,
| start with a Jesuit education, which biases one towards thinking
| that humans are special.
|
| I personally think that trying to understand "consciousness"
| should be deferred in favor of trying to understand "common
| sense", or "how to avoid doing bad stuff in the next few
| seconds". Once we have a handle on that basic survival mechanism,
| seen in all mammals, then we might be able to address
| consciousness. Also, we could build robots able to keep
| themselves out of trouble. Biggest unsolved AI problem right now.
| It's the basic reason computers do stupid stuff sometimes.
|
| Trying to understand "consciousness" without the ability to
| emulate basic common sense results in philosophical tail-chasing.
| There's a lot of that around.
|
| I got too much of this going through Stanford CS in the
| mid-1980s. This was during the "expert systems" period, just
| about when expert systems turned out not to be that useful. The
| philosophers were still in charge. One exam question was "Does a
| rock have intention?", which gives a sense of where the faculty
| was coming from back then.
|
| (The reviewer meant "adduce", not "abduce". "Abduce" is just
| moving your limbs outward. The muscles that power such movements
| are called abductors.)
| visarga wrote:
| I agree about common sense and keeping safe. Without
| consciousness I would not wake up to eat something in the
| morning, and I would die in a few days. Consciousness keeps me
| alive.
| ilaksh wrote:
| What does he mean by causal? The normal connotation kind of
| implies that you feel something if you are an organism that acts
| on the world. Or something.
| Mattasher wrote:
| For those looking for a deep (audio) dive into the details of
| panpsychism, I interviewed author and researcher Tam Hunt about
| the subject last year:
|
| https://mattasher.com/2020/07/19/episode-11-tam-hunt-on-cons...
| ncmncm wrote:
| Saying everything is conscious is exactly like saying nothing is
| conscious. To make distinctions, you need differences.
|
| The confusion people experience around consciousness amounts to a
| language problem. We want nouns to refer to things, but nouns can
| equally refer to activities. What happens to your consciousness
| when you die? What happens to your breathing when you die? What
| happens to the speed when the car stops? If consciousness is an
| activity, then it can come and go, like sleeping can subside and
| be replaced by eating. The sleeping hasn't gone anywhere, there's
| nothing to go and nowhere for it to go to.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| I love this idea, and yet it seems completely useless,
| untestable, unfalsifiable. Maybe everything has experience. Maybe
| every subset of everything has experience. We can't know.
| gilbetron wrote:
| If you want to read a scientifically-based examination of our
| current understanding of conscious processes, I highly recommend:
| "Consciousness and the Brain" by Stanislas Dehaene.
|
| https://smile.amazon.com/Consciousness-Brain-Deciphering-Cod...
| jahnu wrote:
| If you'd like to start to understand the topic and the issues
| surrounding it this podcast episode is a discussion between Sean
| Carroll and a proponent of panpsychism, Philip Goff
|
| https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/11/04/71-p...
|
| Mindscape is the absolute best science, philosophy and culture
| podcast I've found so far.
| mssundaram wrote:
| To answer the title's question simply from a Hindu perspective -
| yes, definitely, consciousness (God) is everywhere and in
| everything.
| anthk wrote:
| prove it.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Before we can ask intelligent, falsifiable questions about
| consciousness we need a rigorous definition of what consciousness
| is. Personally I think the word is a vague term and that a
| rigorous definition is impossible. Therefore, if my hypothesis is
| true, we can not not scientifically investigate "consciousness"
| any more than we can scientifically investigate "divinity" or
| "spookiness." If you disagree with my hypothesis then I challenge
| you to define the term in a non-circular, objective way. My
| hypothesis is that consciousness is not an objective thing. It is
| merely an experience of the mind, thus it is an amorphous amalgam
| of feeling, memory, sensation, thought, embodiment.
| potatoman22 wrote:
| How are we supposed to define consciousness without first
| investigating it?
| carapace wrote:
| There can be no rigorous definition of what consciousness is,
| just names (experience, subjectivity, awareness, self, you)
| because it has no qualities.
|
| Consciousness is impossible to describe. It is neither hot nor
| cold, it has no size, and it experiences no passage of time as
| it is always now, eternal. There are no sides to it and no
| parts. It has no extent. It cannot be pointed to.
|
| It is beyond all possible signification, yet it is the
| significance of all acts and events and things.
|
| The closest thing you can get to a physical referent for
| consciousness is to notice that "consciousness" is a synonym
| for "now". (To spell it out: you have never once in all your
| life been conscious at a time other than now.)
|
| - - - -
|
| From my POV a very common mistake (TFA makes it, and you seem
| to as well) is to insist that the _contents_ of consciousness
| are the thing itself. It 's like mistaking the television
| program for the screen itself. The problem with that mistake is
| that there's no argument that can counter it. Reality of
| consciousness is an experiential thing that, once grokked,
| changes the nature of one's being, not a formula or
| measurement.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Ok I actually understand what you mean. You are defining
| "consciousness" to be the "essence of being" in that case I
| agree it exists but as you mention
|
| >[Essence of being] is impossible to describe. It is neither
| hot nor cold, it has no size, and it experiences no passage
| of time as it is always now, eternal. There are no sides to
| it and no parts. It has no extent. It cannot be pointed to.
|
| Therefore it is not amenable to scientific or logical study.
| Study of essence of being is a spiritual quest for the
| individual and the Universe as a whole.
|
| Maybe some "enlightened" or "adept" can use their insight or
| gifts but it is not a general technology that can be studied,
| measured, classified, boxed, etc.
| loopz wrote:
| There is a quality often associated with conscious
| consciousness. The ancients called it _light_ , ie. the inner
| light of perception, reasoning, voice, etc.
|
| Meditation is focus/defocus from even that.
|
| As beings, humans are mostly preoccupied with the changing
| phenomena however.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| And because consciousness is not physical, I can't fathom
| where it comes from.
|
| Like...I can grasp the idea of abiogenesis [0], the concept
| that organic molecules started self-replicating through
| chemical reactions that over millions of years started
| forming single-celled life that after a couple billion years
| turned into complex multi-cellular life and evolution has put
| us into the form we (and all other life) is today.
|
| But this understanding just makes life look like nothing more
| than a very specific set of chemical and electrical
| reactions. To a naive external observer, the human brain is
| essentially nothing more than a highly complex electrical
| circuit, and yet, it is conscious.
|
| We know what consciousness is, but it is very hard to define,
| because as you basically said, it is not physical. It exists,
| but can't be seen or even measured. You can see evidence of
| it by interacting with other life that appears conscious, but
| you can't prove it. If you could assemble a brain atom-by-
| atom, it could appear to be conscious, but would it? You
| won't know, and won't be able to know.
|
| Even if we created "perfect" AI and put it into a "perfect"
| artificial body that was indistinguishable from an actual
| human (I'm imagining the hosts in the Westworld TV series),
| most people would say it wasn't conscious, but you couldn't
| prove it either way.
|
| EDIT: In addition, we think about "conscious" decisions, but
| are your decisions truly made by consciousness? Think about
| how drugs will chemically affect the brain and can change
| behaviors. It makes me believe that free will is an illusion.
| Your consciousness doesn't make decisions, your physical
| brain does, and your brain can be altered. You're just a few
| million altered neurons away from an entirely different
| personality.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Well, remember, we can't even rigorously define something like
| "life". Doesn't mean we can't scientifically investigate it.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Sure we can. Biological life is something that replicates
| autonomously using DNA contained inside the apparatus of at
| least one cell. Viruses are not alive because they can not
| replicate on their own and do not produce their own cells.
| More abstractly life is something that follows the Darwinian
| program as demonstrated on Earth. If you had competing,
| replicating programs in a virtualised Earth-like environment
| I would say they were alive too if they could fully reproduce
| and establish resource economising ecosystems on their own.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| You seem to be able to, but it doesn't seem to generalize
| to scientists in general:
| https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-life-its-vast-
| diversi...
| morpheos137 wrote:
| I was creating an operational definition. Of course
| others disagree. That is how words work. They have
| narrower and broader meanings to different people or in
| different contexts. The fact the others disagree with my
| operational definition does not invalidate my operational
| definition which stands on its own.
|
| Gp asserted "We don't know how to define life." I put
| forth a closed definition of life that makes sense.
| Others may have a less restrictive definition...my
| definition demonstrated that sufficient conditions exist
| to define life.
| n4r9 wrote:
| The difficulty I think is not in proposing a coherent
| definition, but in capturing precisely the shared
| understanding of what people mean when they say something
| is "alive".
| tayo42 wrote:
| > Personally I think the word is a vague term and the a
| rigorous definition is impossible.
|
| I don't think its just you, there isn't a good scientific
| definition of consciousness.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Definitions
| srameshc wrote:
| > Some distinguish awareness from consciousness; I don't find
| this distinction helpful and so I use these two words
| interchangeably.
|
| We treat everything as an object, even mental thoughts and
| experiences. When we think of awareness, we objectify that
| awareness using one of the sense experience. But consciousness
| transcends awareness and in consciousness exits awareness.
| Consciousness is not an object of experience and that is why it
| is difficult to understand.
| statstutor wrote:
| I imagine my consciousness as a communion of all my cells... a
| central decision-making council, if you like.
|
| If my cells are in conflict or disagreement about what action to
| take (which I presume they often are), my consciousness resolves
| this by taking a decision.
|
| As such, I find it likely that this sense and experience of
| consciousness is shared by all, or almost all, multi-cellular
| organisms on the same evolutionary tree of life.
| boonware wrote:
| Test
| gverrilla wrote:
| Mit Press 2021
| geophile wrote:
| I have been hearing about Koch, and Tononi, and panpsychism, and
| phi for years now, in these articles summarizing consciousness
| for laymen, (a group that includes me). And these very long
| articles bloviate but never go any further than giving a facile
| description of phi, claiming that this IIT "theory" is testable,
| and then not saying how it could be tested. The articles from
| five years ago and this one seem interchangeable.
|
| I call bullshit. Could someone please explain what I'm missing?
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| A good place to start, if you are a firm skeptic and not
| willing to even attempt faith or your own empirical
| experiences, is a book called Entangled Minds. There is not a
| single claim made in this book which does not have a reference
| to a proper peer-reviewed paper attached to it, iirc several
| hundred papers in all. It firmly supports consciousness being
| in at minimum earthworms, and probably even ,,lower,,
| creatures.
|
| Once you actually open your mind to this idea, you will begin
| to see it everywhere, and with practice be able to connect,
| communicate, and derive mutual benefit. It,s up to you to take
| the first step, though.
|
| Of course, you can also choose to remain in the safe comfort of
| materialism. I know from experience that it can be a very
| lonely place. I wish you a happy journey, wherever it may lead.
| xVedun wrote:
| I would be curious to see how the author would respond to
| this fairly detailed criticism of his book: [1] One excerpt
| from this amazon review goes "If you are impressed by
| statistics, blips on fMRI screens, taking correlations as
| proof of causality and meta-analysis as equal to replication,
| then you might like this book. If you are interested in what
| wild speculations parapsychologists are coming up with these
| days, then this is the book for you. If you are looking for
| evidence that psi is explained by quantum physics, you'll be
| disappointed."
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/review/R2VIDRICPX3ROL/ref=cm_cr_sr
| p_d...
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| The other day I was riding the train and a guy called me an
| idiot. Are you also interested in knowing how I responded
| to his claim?
|
| why did you choose to post that particular review out of
| all the others? why not, for example, this one?
|
| "Consider the possibly that classical physics is not only
| wrong but way wrong." "A wild ride through the data
| supporting psi. I was for many years a reductionist like
| Michael Shermer. However, after reading more and books like
| this, my mind has accepted the reality that we know very
| little about where we came from and what really drives our
| human..."
| andi999 wrote:
| The Amazon description says: "Radin shows how we know that
| psychic phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and
| psychokinesis are real, based on scientific evidence from
| thousands of controlled lab test".
|
| Actually as far as I understand we know that telepathy does
| not work, and even more so with psychokinesis. Did you read
| the book, can you point me to the scientific evidence of
| psychokinesis?
| anoonmoose wrote:
| I can point you to probably the last time Radin's work was
| ripped apart on HN, at least.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26066233
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| fair enough, i,m not here to promote or defend his work,
| you,re free to think what you want. i shared what,s been
| helpful and enlightening for me personally, and it,s up
| to you to perceive it in your own way.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| yes, i have read the book, and it is full of detailed
| descriptions of experiments with references.
|
| as a hacker, you should have little difficulty finding
| these and reviewing them.
|
| unfortunately, i have not the time or motivation to be your
| personal research assistant.
| RichardCA wrote:
| Well, then, it's a real shame that he never tried to
| claim the Randi Prize.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Why would he give a rat's ass about someone's hostile
| contest?
| gowld wrote:
| Because he might like $1M
| tayo42 wrote:
| > There is not a single claim made in this book which does
| not have a reference to a proper peer-reviewed paper attached
| to it,
|
| I'm skeptical of this claim in general, there's a lot of
| research that either isn't reliable, biased or gets twisted
| to support a claim. Then this i think becomes pop science,
| low quality sounds realistic to me kind of things. When you
| have to emphasize "based on science" my bs sensor goes off.
|
| Idk if anyone else feels that way, I feel like have to
| approach a lot claims skeptically in fields I don't know
| enough about.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| well, from past experience, if i don,t address the ,,hard
| science,, aspect of it, i just get laughed at, especially
| at a place like here, where scientific beliefs reign
| supreme. that,s why i stress that fact.
|
| i found it not only convincing, but also to have practical
| applications which are not difficult to arrive at with a
| little thinking.
|
| if you are a well-intentioned tinkerer and hacker not
| limiting yourself to digital devices with a manual, you may
| find it intriguing.
| kharak wrote:
| Is there a good podcast or Youtube video for starters? Highly
| sceptic of the idea and therefore intrigued.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| not that i am aware of, sorry.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| You can start with the last time Radin's work was savaged
| in the comments of an HN article.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26066233
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they
| attack you, then you win :)
| geophile wrote:
| I have no doubt that lots of organisms are conscious, maybe
| even earthworms. And I certainly believe that I am!
|
| My only point is that in the popular articles I've seen on
| consciousness, that discuss IIT, I have not, over many years,
| seen any description of a test of the theory, or even a
| statement of how it could be tested.
| someguyorother wrote:
| There's probably a hard limit to how much you can know
| about consciousness in general.
|
| Say, for instance, that what IIT measures isn't
| consciousness but memory. It tells you that when you take
| general anesthetic, the IIT measure in the brain decreases.
| But it's hypothetically speaking possible that when you get
| anesthesized, you're still aware and feel everything that's
| happening to you (in the sense of having qualia), only that
| it never gets recorded to memory.
|
| The result is the same: it appears, in retrospect, that you
| lost consciousness. But you can't _prove_ that you actually
| did, only that your memory of the past behaves as if you
| did.
|
| This seems fundamental, unless we through some future
| discovery can nail down what consciousness is. The
| consciousness-status of past me is just as opaque as that
| of other people.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| How about a single neuron? After all, a single neuron is
| _far_ more complex than a worm--just like a company is far
| less complex than the people who compose it.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| A single neuron is not an independent self replicating
| organism so I would not say a single neuron is alive (on
| its own) per my definition, although it is part of a larger
| living creature.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Are people actually independent self-replicating
| organisms. We are all parts of a superorganism, no?
|
| Each of our experiences are composed of the experiences
| of (billions?) of other people. We aren't islands.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Do you suppose neurons consider the super organism they
| are part of? No. So why should humans. Yes "we" are all
| fragments of the unified human experience, but our role,
| as individuals is to live as individuals.
| [deleted]
| lurquer wrote:
| Excellent point, and one that many fail to grasp.
|
| Indeed, I've always suspected your observation may be the
| best definition of 'life' we currently have; namely, living
| systems are composed of parts that are more complex than
| the whole.
|
| It's a hard concept to articulate.
|
| But, as you obviously know, the principle is obvious.. it
| doesn't stop with the neuron; I would suspect the neurons
| membrane or its organelles are more 'complex' than the
| neuron itself.
| phcordner wrote:
| How? A worm is a whole multicellular organism. A neuron's
| just a cell, one that's specialized into a single function.
|
| All a single neuron does is pass a signal to the synaptic
| cleft in response to a chemical or electrical signal at the
| other end. It's a simple subunit of a larger system.
|
| Saying a single neuron is more complex than a worm is like
| saying a cat6 ethernet cable is more complex than a blast
| furnace.
| tayo42 wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment, but I think your selling
| neurons short. They do grow, develop and change over time
| as a response to their inputs.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Just because a structure is larger and contains complex
| structures does not mean the larger system is more
| complex. For instance, I can create a logic gate with
| some friends. The logic gate is way simpler than the
| people composing it.
|
| Neurons can have _millions_ of mitochondria [1], which
| they dynamically move about the cell. Neurons are like
| amoeba with dozens of pseudopods when young. Amoeba are
| more complicated than worms, in terms of degrees of
| freedom, no?
|
| Check this video of fetal neurons movin' about. So cute!
| https://youtu.be/hb7tjqhfDus
|
| [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncir.20
| 16.0002...
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Earthworms actually have a well developed nervous system,
| containing many neurons.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Yeah, but if this (below) is happening inside a single
| cell, doesn't it seem much easier to model a single worm
| than to model a single cell?
|
| Inner life of a cell: https://youtu.be/wJyUtbn0O5Y
| morpheos137 wrote:
| I am a non-materialist and I think consciousness is not a
| thing. So there's that position too. What do humans, mammals
| and earthworms have in common that AI or robots do not (as
| yet?) I would not say it is consciousness (because my
| position is there is really no such thing) but rather they
| have in common the fact that they are alive and subject to
| the Darwinian replication program and guided by common mental
| processes like, thought, emotion, memory, proprioception,
| sensation.
|
| By non-materialist I mean I do not see matter as distinct
| from information. I believe the only thing that exists is
| information. What is information? It is structure and meaning
| and pattern and potential. Information is entwined with
| entropy.
| mehphp wrote:
| Can you expand on consciousness not being a thing? You mean
| it doesn't exist at all or it isn't a physical thing?
| morpheos137 wrote:
| I don't believe consciousness exists in a meaningful way
| in the real world. It certainly exists as a word in a
| dictionary and as something for philosophical types to
| have woo debates over. I think the word is vague term
| that signifies different somewhat independent things that
| living organisms have to a greater or lesser extent
| (memory, emotion, thought, embodiment, etc). I believe
| attempting to have a scientific debate about
| consciousness is kind of like asking how many angels
| could dance on the head of pin.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I find that a very strange statement for a supposedly
| conscious being to make. Consciousness does absolutely
| objectively exist, or at least I can say it does for me.
| That its existence is not objectively measurable doesn't
| mean it doesn't exist, it just means that the philosophy
| of empiricism is not complete.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| >I find that a very strange statement for a supposedly
| conscious being to make.
|
| I don't claim to be conscious. I am alive and awake and
| thinking and sensing, etc.
|
| >Consciousness does absolutely objectively exist, or at
| least I can say it does for me.
|
| This sentence appears to confuse subjective experience
| with objective reality.
|
| >That its existence is not objectively measurable doesn't
| mean it doesn't exist
|
| If we can think of something that is not objectively
| measurable what suggests that it exists objectively as
| opposed to it being a subjective opinion?
|
| Can you define consciousness without invoking subjective
| conscious experience? You agree there is not evidence of
| objective existence and yet you say it objectively exists
| because you subjectively feel it does. Is this not self-
| contradictory?
| readbeard wrote:
| Is there any measurement or objective fact in the world
| that you can become aware of except by means of
| subjective experience?
| gowld wrote:
| OK, Consciousness is a subjective opinion.
|
| Are you claiming that subjective opinions do not exist,
| despite your own observations of your own subjective
| opinons?
|
| Also, imagine you live in a box with a yellow ball. And
| you can speak to other people outside your box. They tell
| you they also live in a box with a yellow ball. You will
| never have proof that they actually have yellow balls in
| their boxes. And they will never have proof that you
| actually have a yellow ball in your box.
|
| Would you say that yellow balls are merely a subjective
| opinion, and don't exist?
| morpheos137 wrote:
| First you have to define what you mean by "exist." Of
| course every idea that can be conceived exists in some
| sense.
|
| That does not mean its existence is realised or useful.
| Is it useful (consequential) and consistent that yellow
| balls exist? If yes, then they do. If no, then they
| don't.
| skindoe wrote:
| Agreed with the other commentor. In fact as Decartes
| claimed consciousness is the only thing that you can know
| that exists.
| [deleted]
| nynx wrote:
| How does believing that all things are information differ
| from believing all things are matter? Those sound just like
| two sides of the same coin to me.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Materialists see information as deriving (resulting) from
| a spatial - temporal - state distribution of matter or
| energy. Informational people see information as giving
| rise (causing) to matter and energy. I subscribe to the
| Mathematical Universe Hypothesis more or less and am
| sympathetic to Cyclic Conformal Cosmology. Thus cause and
| effect are reversed.
| anthk wrote:
| I always was more impressed on why information on the
| atoms (how interact between themselves) is not as
| researched as the matter itself, is truly fascinating.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| We think we have it so hard with our 9-5 jobs and 2 weeks
| vacation.
|
| Meanwhile, atoms have been working without as much as a
| fucking smoke break for literally billions of years! >_<
| slibhb wrote:
| > Of course, you can also choose to remain in the safe
| comfort of materialism.
|
| To me it seems that materialism (or physicalism or any
| monism) inevitably leads to panpsychism. If there's only one
| kind of substance, it's either conscious or it's not, so
| everything has consciousness or nothing does. Panpsychists go
| with the former, probably because _they_ think _they_ are
| conscious, material beings.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I don't follow... where does this argument fail when you
| replace "conscious" with "blue"?
| loopz wrote:
| The former is universal while the latter is limitation of
| perception.
| brighton36 wrote:
| We're eating the menu instead of the food.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| How do you even define the boundaries of a 'system' under IIT?
| fortunes_favors wrote:
| You're correct that the mathematical veneer proposed here is
| bullshit - however the philosophical argument presented is
| perfectly sound. In these matters it's a mistake to adhere to
| the scientistic fallacy that the only things that are true are
| those that can be directly observed or quantified.
| bnralt wrote:
| I think there's a sort of definitional sleight of hand going on
| here, a type that I see often these days:
|
| 1. [Word A] means [Concept X] to most people.
|
| 2. [Concept X] doesn't apply to [Item K], but [Concept Y] does.
|
| 3. By creating a new definition, finding an obscure definition,
| or twisting a current definition I can argue that [Word A]
| technically can mean [Concept Y], and then apply the term to
| [Item K].
|
| 4. Now that I'm using [Word A] for [Item K], most people will
| associate [Item K] with [Concept X].
|
| So when we say "consciousness," most people conjure up some
| concept about human like thought and communication. That's the
| reason why most people find the word compelling, and it
| obviously (almost by definition) doesn't apply to most of the
| stuff talked about in this article.
|
| When coming across arguments that rely on this type of sleight
| of hand, I think it's best to ask yourself what the article
| would actually be saying if the loaded term was replaced by
| another term or phrase that makes it explicitly clear what the
| other means. So when the author of this article writes
| something like this:
|
| > This is utterly frigid, hundreds of degrees colder than any
| temperature terrestrial organisms can survive. But the fact
| that the temperature is non-zero implies a corresponding tiny
| amount of heat in deep space. This of course implies a
| corresponding tiny amount of experience.
|
| It seems that he's arguing that consciousness is experience and
| experience is any activity, even at the atomic level. So if we
| remove the sleight of hand and ask "Is there some level of
| activity, even sleight activity at the atomic level,
| everywhere?" The answer might be affirmative (if we're using a
| loose sense of the word "everywhere"), but it's not a
| particularly surprising or even interesting question to answer.
| justinpombrio wrote:
| I don't think you're missing anything. Tononi made a formula
| related to how complicated a system is, and claimed that its
| measures consciousness. And what are you supposed to say to
| that, when no one can agree on what the word "consciousness"
| means, but people are still so attached to the word?
|
| For Scott Aaronson's take on "Integrated Information Theory":
| https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799
| tosser0001 wrote:
| Being able to model consciousness mathematically opens up
| some grotesque possibilities.
|
| Human suffering presumably has some sort of limit based
| purely on our physical makeup. Suppose though the very
| concept of subjective suffering could be modeled in some way.
| Is there any law in the universe that says there is a limit
| to suffering, pain (or pleasure)?
|
| Could an investigator of the future test out an algorithm on
| a conscious entity modeled in software, just to see what the
| mathematical limit of pain is? Maybe that's what Hell is...
| sorokod wrote:
| Has been explored in Altered Carbon ( the book ). Digitised
| conscience loaded into computer simulation and torture for
| practically infinite amount of time
| selestify wrote:
| It's interesting that our minds automatically turn to the
| worst possibility, even though this also implies that we
| could find out what the mathematical limit of joy is.
| Chances are, there would be a lot more processes simulating
| joy than pain.
| lobo_tuerto wrote:
| Why would there be more of those if it's "just" a
| simulation after all?
| geophile wrote:
| Excellent reference. I see that Aaronson is pointing to
| articles more than ten years old, so the lack of progress
| goes on longer than the five years I mentioned.
| geophile wrote:
| ... and I agree completely with your point about
| consciousness lacking a definition.
| cambalache wrote:
| You are no missing anything. Reputations in academy are not
| only made by being correct and inventive. You can go pretty far
| if you know how to dress-up bullshit.
| meepmorp wrote:
| I completely agree, and would only point out that the ability
| to get far on properly calibrated bullshit is a well
| established phenomenon throughout human history.
| namero999 wrote:
| But then the onus is on those who sense it to point out
| said bullshit.
| hawkice wrote:
| I mean, I just eat lunch while I read things, not sure
| why you think I've signed up to put a professional level
| effort into rolling my eyes at these guys.
| hntrader wrote:
| Burden of proof generally isn't on the skeptic.
| namero999 wrote:
| I think there is a difference between a proof and the
| refutation of an argument. I expect proofs from
| scientific theories, and if a theory of consciousness
| would posit itself as scientific, I would be in perfect
| agreement with you that proofs or testable predictions
| should be provided. But I think here we are well into
| philosophy grounds, where neither proofs nor predictions
| are required. If that is the case, a philosophical claim
| needs to be actively rejected. I will admit that I still
| have to make my mind whether IIT is purely philosophy,
| purely scientific, or neither. Currently I don't think
| it's a theory of consciousness, rather just a model to
| "quantify" consciousness, without explaining its origin.
| geophile wrote:
| The author of TFA disagrees with you: "Most importantly,
| though, IIT is a scientific theory, unlike panpsychism."
| geophile wrote:
| See above. TFA claims that IIT is testable, but does not
| say anthing at all about a test that has been published,
| a test that has been done, a test that some research
| group is doing, a test that is being considered, a test
| that could be done given some scientific or technological
| development. Nothing.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| See
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I love when I run into this, because I actually took two
| classes taught by Dr Peter Boghossian, the first was
| Critical Thinking, the second was Atheism. Checking
| Portland State's course catalog, he's still teaching
| those classes.
|
| Oh, and as you might imagine, there was a pretty
| considerable amount of material that existed in both of
| those classes.
| jbotz wrote:
| Don't "call bullshit" because _you_ can 't personally see how
| to falsify a theory by reading some popularized science
| articles. There are real papers with math behind these claims,
| and when you've read them and at least tried to understand the
| math, then you can call bullshit if you still think so.
| geophile wrote:
| I am not qualified to do so.
|
| The existence of "real papers with math behind thest claims"
| is sort of irrelevant. IIT is being proposed as a scientific
| theory, and the author of TFA claims that IIT is testable,
| but he has not said anything about actual testing. I cannot
| judge the math, and I doubt that I could judge a scientific
| paper describing a test. I'm simply asking: Is there any
| actualy testing, completed or in progress? TFA did not make
| such a claim.
| elektropionir wrote:
| Here is a talk in which he mentions specific experiments:
|
| https://youtu.be/LGd8p-GSLgY?t=3512
|
| This is a fairly old talk and if you do a bit more digging
| I think he has other talks with more experiments.
| geophile wrote:
| Thanks, I'll take a look.
| skindoe wrote:
| You should read Consciousness by Anaka Harris it's short read
| that may help you understand the position a bit better.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| I have one problem with consciousness is everywhere argument.
| Namely, if everything down to ants is conscious - how lucky are
| we to end up experiencing the world as humans? The chances are
| just too small for me to accept it at face value.
| namero999 wrote:
| An easy resolution of this doubt lays in definition. Do not mix
| up phenomenal consciousness with meta-consciousness or self-
| referential consciousness. Clearly, only humans are meta-
| conscious. Homo sapiens-sapiens, the man who knows that knows.
| It's our defining characteristic and leads to all sorts of
| amazing things are we can witness.
|
| Mere phenomenal consciousness is anywhere _in living creatures_
| so that even a bacterium can be said to be conscious (it reacts
| to light sources, for example, and is able to detect
| nutrients).
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > Clearly, only humans are meta-conscious.
|
| I like how you clearly define these differences. But tow do
| you know other creatures are not meta-conscious?
| namero999 wrote:
| Short answer: no other creature has developed complex
| languages, written books or made art.
|
| Long answer: there is a plausible argument that
| consciousness might be a gradient. Certain creatures might
| express some level of meta consciousness, yet still far
| from what humans can do. For instance, elephants, primates
| or even just a dog might express some sort of empathy or
| more subtle mental states that do not equate with the
| experience itself, which would be mere phenomenal
| consciousness, but they do not appear to articulate to
| themselves those mental states and do anything more than
| simple reactions with those states.
|
| Ultimately the claim comes from empirical observations:
| there's an immense evolutionary gap between humans and
| everything else, so that we can plausibly claim that we are
| the only fully meta-conscious creatures.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| This is a bit past me, I wouldn't define "reacts to light" as
| conscious. In that case my Roomba would be said to be
| conscious. To me it seems that one is either fully conscious
| (your definition of meta conscious) or isn't conscious.
| Otherwise I don't even see what this "consciousness is
| everywhere" statement would accomplish.
| canoebuilder wrote:
| Maybe one aspect of ant consciousness is humans thinking, "hmm
| what is it like to be an ant?"
|
| And maybe one aspect of human consciousness is ants thinking,
| "hmm what are these large things that seem to leave sugary
| refuse in their wake?"
| jstanley wrote:
| Can you clarify? You find the probability that you are human,
| conditional on already being human, to be too small to accept?
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| Not quite - I find the hypothesis for "consciousness is
| everywhere" to be too hard to accept based on the observation
| that I ended up as human (assuming that humans are somehow
| "higher" than other being of course).
|
| Or stated a bit fancier - the p-value of the null
| "consciousness is everywhere" is astronomically small, given
| this observation of me ending up as a human.
| hntrader wrote:
| I think this is confusing conscious entities with anthropic
| observers.
|
| Ants might be conscious but that doesn't mean that they
| count as anthropic observers.
|
| The probability that you are someone who is capable of
| asking the question you've asked is 1.
| jstanley wrote:
| But you can forget consciousness and ask the same question.
|
| The chances that the matter you're made of ended up making
| you is astronomically small compared to it just being
| random space dust or something. And yet it happened.
|
| I think it's just selection bias.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| No no, I disagree, these are very different things.
|
| The matter I am made of is nothing special - everything
| has same kind of matter so I am bound to have some of it.
| But the consciousness I have is very special - top shelf
| in all of biology.
|
| Say bacteria are conscious. Here is how special this is:
| the number of bacteria on earth is estimated to be "five
| million trillion trillion". And there are ~7 billion
| humans. So the chance that I randomly end up as human,
| instead of bacteria is ~ 0.0000000000000000000001. And
| that is disregarding all other creatures.
| hntrader wrote:
| There's no paradox here. When a lottery is drawn, someone
| _has_ to win it and be left with the question "what are
| the odds?". Well, the odds that there will be a lottery
| winner in a position to ask that question is 1.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| If someone wins a lottery we can then say "what are the
| chances of this specific person winning - they are very
| low" - that would be Texas sharpshooter fallacy, because
| the chance of _some_ person winning somewhere is high, we
| simply drew a target around the winner and restated the
| question.
|
| But this is not what is happening. What is happening is
| more like you finding three tickets under your rug in the
| morning, checking the numbers and finding out that you
| won jackpots in all three, and then choosing to believe
| that they are winner tickets by chance (believing in
| consciousness is everywhere) as opposed to someone
| planting them there (only humans are conscious or some
| other similar explanation).
|
| The key difference between the two is that in the second
| case there are no multiple possibilities - it's about one
| person - you, you either win or loose, so we cannot
| select "winners" after the fact in this case.
| hntrader wrote:
| I think you're making a good point, but anthropic
| reasoning is hard so I'm still mulling it over.
|
| What you're saying is that panpsychism implies a lower
| probability of you ending up as you, because you may have
| ended up as a conscious bacteria instead.
|
| I'm going to tentatively disagree with that because the
| counterfactual of you ending up as a bacteria instead of
| a human is impossible, and therefore it doesn't factor
| into the probability estimates. Whether a bacteria can be
| conscious is besides the point. I may be committing some
| kind of Monty Hall fallacy, but don't currently think so.
|
| The Veil of Ignorance is false if we're talking about
| physical reality.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| The argument I am pondering over here is very similar to
| the one about human population, you might have heard
| about it, it goes something like this: "human population
| is now likely highest it will ever be and will be
| drastically reduced in the future, because if we were to
| be born as any human randomly we would likely be born
| during a period where there are highest number of people
| alive".
|
| Sadly I don't remember the name of it, but this argument
| about consciousness is in the same fashion. Except the
| odds are a _lot_ more surprising when compared with the
| population argument.
| hntrader wrote:
| It's the Doomsday Argument and I can see how you're
| applying the same logic.
|
| Doesn't this logic also imply that solipsism is true? 1
| observer is less than 7 billion observers and therefore
| more likely under the logic of the Doomsday argument.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| Thank you for naming it, now I can see if there are
| criticism of the doomsday argument that also apply.
|
| And I do see how this can lead to solipsism. In
| particular when combined with "Self-Indication
| Assumption: The possibility of not existing at all" [1] .
| Solipsism would be a theory that explains both - the
| doomsday original argument and this criticism.
|
| But I haven't thought much about that.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument#Self-
| Indicat...
| captainclam wrote:
| It sounds like you're suggesting that you are a "soul"
| that was "put" in a body.
|
| Try to see it from this perspective; your experience as
| an individual (soul) is a feature of the structure we
| call Homo sapiens. It's a characteristic of this species'
| brain structure, in the same way that the colors of a
| flower are characteristic of its phenotype.
|
| It would be silly to ask, "What are the chances that that
| shade of yellow ended up on that particular daffodil?"
|
| The notion of "you" being in a "body" is extremely
| difficult to shake. Even if it's intellectually
| approachable, understanding it intuitively is something
| else entirely, though certainly attainable through
| sustained meditative practice or a hearty dose of
| psychedelics.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| Yes but - I am that consciousness. That makes all the
| difference between this comparison and the yellow color
| example.
|
| The fact that I am "seated" in a human body is an
| argument for only humans having this feature or phenotype
| called consciousness, and against the "consciousness is
| everywhere".
| TriNetra wrote:
| How about you start with a premise that you're a drop in the
| ocean of consciousness which is eternal, imperishable - the
| ocean was always there and so it'll always be in future - what
| about if it's even beyond time because time is a construct of
| the mind and consciousness is subtler than the mind. Now you
| have infinite time to take different manifestations as per your
| desires.
| visarga wrote:
| Mind and consciousness are feeble while the universe is
| complex beyond our capacity to grasp. I don't think "time" is
| just a construct of the mind. If you do, then your mind must
| be God-like in powers.
| mr-wendel wrote:
| Despite other comments dismissing this, I do think this is a
| compelling and humbling question.
|
| I think its best answered with a few related questions to
| consider what makes us lucky:
|
| 1) Longevity clearly matters, but the relativity of it is hard
| to assess: some sea mammals with emotionally-rich lives live
| twice as long.
|
| 2) Quality of life clearly matters. It's easy to imagine (and
| hopefully you personally know some!) pampered pets who have it
| unbelievably good: tasty food and nutrition, regular fun
| exercise, a fulfilling social and family life, a sense of
| purpose, etc.
|
| And on the other end of the spectrum:
|
| 3) There are untold numbers of us who pulled the short straw in
| life and have lives marred in tragedy and suffering -- if they
| even are "lucky" enough to live long enough to comprehend it.
|
| I think some of us are _incredibly_ lucky and very much in the
| minority. The "luck" spectrum in life is so both deep and wide
| that I'm perfectly happy accepting "consciousness is
| everywhere" in order to focus on the question of what to do
| with the consciousness (and unfortunate lack of it at times) I
| have.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| I think this explanation goes a bit sideways - comparing
| emotional states and happiness, which is not directly related
| to consciousness.
|
| What I am surprised about is not how sentimentally lucky I
| am, but how unlikely it is that my consciousness (which by
| the theory of consciousness being everywhere) ended up in the
| being that we consider to be "most conscious" (human). Even
| if I lived a very short life full of terror and pain - I
| still would be just as surprised that consciousness that
| could have been "planted" anywhere ended up in me - a human.
| And so the alternative theory of "only humans have
| consciousness" would be more attractive.
| [deleted]
| visarga wrote:
| > everything down to ants is conscious
|
| Probably anything that self replicates and has to fight for
| resources. Even a cell can have perception and behaviour. It's
| actually fascinating, but a network of DNA and proteins can
| function like a neural net inside a single cell.
| thendrill wrote:
| I don't understand your logic.
|
| The chance of being and ant or a human is the same....
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| Survivor bias much?
| TriNetra wrote:
| A verse comes in Chandogya Upanishad: "Sarvam Khalvidam Brahma"
| (all this is consciousness)
| namero999 wrote:
| For a superb and rigorous account of the ontological basis of
| consciousness, and why it might be superior to panpsychism while
| being more in line with scientific evidence, check "The idea of
| the world" by Bernardo Kastrup (or any of his work/youtube
| interview). Really compelling case.
|
| He used to work at CERN, and was the youngest executive at ASML,
| till recent when he decided to dedicate himself solely to
| philosophy. He's not your regular wanna be woo-guru for sure.
| alyx wrote:
| I also vouch for Bernardo. I have read all his books.
|
| His approach, reasoning and explanations have been very
| appealing to my analytical Mind.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| He's a really good Platonist! Hardly anyone is these days. Too
| bad--he is easily the greatest philosopher of all time.
|
| I made a doc that introduces Plato and uses a keyword search to
| show his understanding of "Harmony" as the nature of goodness,
| pleasure and experience. Comments welcome
| https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lqXpXgWI5YMBCz1O0gCmrEwz...
| coolspot wrote:
| It is well-known that people working in ASML don't have soul,
| as it is etched out by Extreme Ultra-Violet.
| tim333 wrote:
| >defining it is actually straightforward. Here goes:
| Consciousness is experience.
|
| Doesn't seem very useful to me. A bit like brexit means brexit. I
| mean machine learning gains from experience of new inputs - does
| that mean the thing is conscious?
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| Here is a link to Panpsychism
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism
|
| As an aside to all the comments regarding a definition and
| defining consciousness:
|
| It's possible for things to not be reducible to objective
| language constructs. The nature of subjectivity is that it can't
| be defined. I fear (at least in science contexts) we will chase
| our tails forever!
| triska wrote:
| This seems related to _Conscious Realism_ and the conscious-agent
| thesis:
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.0057...
|
| Both articles address the combination problem. However, the one I
| linked to goes into more detail about it and in fact addresses
| two separate combination problems:
|
| _"The first is the combination of phenomenal experiences, i.e.,
| of qualia. [...] The second problem is the combination of
| subjects of experiences."_
| KingFelix wrote:
| Don Hoffman and Bryan Keating conversation came out a few days
| ago
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMJ03rzPVHE
| gilbetron wrote:
| "shifting from evolutionary biology to quantum physics" -
| always a bad sign to find this, it just means some woo-woo
| explanation based on a very poor concept of quantum physics.
| thom wrote:
| A powerful reminder of why I quit my philosophy degree after a
| year, thank you.
| boonware wrote:
| While Tononi's theory is interesting, it cannot be a complete
| explanation of conciousness at any level; it does not answer the
| Hard Problem of Conciousness.
|
| Fundamentally, we need to understand why we have inner subjective
| experiences that feel the way they do. It sometimes keeps me
| awake at night troubling over how we could even begin to cast an
| explanation for this intimately subjective phenomenon in the
| objective language of mathematics and physics.
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