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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Personally, if it's the latter I don't really see why consciousness would bother with physical reality at all - so messy and constantly churning - what would be the point of imbuing meat brains with minds (and why brains)? It's woo plain and simple from where I sit, not to mention a form of bizarre exceptionalism indicative of a loathing of the any aspect of the idea we are mere animals.
With the evidence we see around us I don't see how we can think of ourselves or animals for that matter as "mere" anything. Why does the exceptional nature of consciousness have to be thought of as woo? It must stand as one of the most remarkable things in existence in this solar system.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Consciousness is animal behavior and not woo. What is woo is the belief that meat is mindless and somehow imbued with consciousness from some externality.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
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My entire life's work has been focused on the subject of this thread, which is of the greatest interest to me. Not to convince anyone else, but just to reach for myself a level of practical understanding...to convince myself.
It appears from my perspective that everyone contributing regularly to this thread is possibly more intelligent than me. Yet I find much of the discussion extremely frustrating, as I seem to see resolutions to the issues that more or less make all of you right.
I would like nothing better than to share that perspective and bring analysis to bear from the various intellects participating in this discussion. However I can't. Whenever I try to lay out a system map, the revealing of any piece of the map starts off a long line of distractive discussion, before I can convey a sense of the overall systems map.
At NASA and elsewhere, my work as a project manager and systems engineer was based upon my ability to visualize the overall systems model and produce a model-based systems engineering framework that others could share and validate, i.e. for the Space Station, launch vehicles, the air traffic system, etc.. That doesn't work in a linear textual discussion forum like this, any more than it works in a NASA engineering meeting where different people bring different perspectives on the overall system.
As with any subject of study, there have been layer after layer of understanding gradually revealed, much of it during the course of the discussion on this thread. I have reached a level of understanding that appears to me to resolve pretty much every issue being discussed here. This has been with the help of many sources, including many here on this thread.
However I don't seem to be able to contribute much to this thread, as every attempt wanders off into a thicket of fascinating distractions. You don't have to agree with me, but I'd at least like you to see what I'm seeing. I don't have to be right for my own sake. The reality is what it is and we are just trying to understand the reality, each in our own way.
I would very much like help from each of you in my quest. The only way I can currently imagine this happening is in one-on-one side-bar conversations. Accordingly don't be surprised if I reach out to perhaps meet for lunch or a beer and nachos, as my travels bring me into your area. I think you will find it well worth your time.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Consciousness is animal behavior and not woo. What is woo is the belief that meat is mindless and somehow imbued with consciousness from some externality.
Consciousness is more than just animal behavior it is the realization and experience of that behavior as well. For all we know consciousness may be extant in the universe in much the same way light is, produced from a verity of sources but ultimately the product of energy. The notion that it is a fundamental element of the universe doesn't have to be thought of as woo.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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At NASA...
At NASA one can only suppose and hope you weren't spouting off on one conspiracy theory / fantasy after another (and didn't propose faking a Moon landing).
Consciousness is more than just animal behavior it is the realization and experience of that behavior as well.
It is not 'more' in any sense of the word - it, in toto, is [explicitly] advanced animal behavior.
For all we know consciousness may be extant in the universe in much the same way light is, produced from a verity of sources but ultimately the product of energy. The notion that it is a fundamental element of the universe doesn't have to be thought of as woo.
Well, that would be the very definition of panpsychism so woonish would be in the eye of the beholder.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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It is not not 'more' in any sense of the word - it, in toto, is [explicitly] advanced animal behavior.
You enlarge the term behavior to include neurological processes such as taste or
introspection. When we begin to think that knowledge of behavior is a behavior and knowledge or our knowledge of behavior is a behavior and on and on into a solipsistic tailspin. Knowing and experience are knowing and experience and behavior is behavior.
I'm not talking about panpsychism. I suggested that consciousness is like light, it requires a source, there are many sources, though ultimately energy is the source. There are, however, many forms of matter that don't spontaneously produce light.
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WBraun
climber
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Behavior and consciousness are still two different things.
You're still insane Joe masquerading yourself as a knowledgeable person .....
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Paul said
I'm not talking about panpsychism. I suggested that consciousness is like light, it requires a source, there are many sources, though ultimately energy is the source. There are, however, many forms of matter that don't spontaneously produce light.
I think that Healyje is holding up insanely well. Sheesh, you got some word-of-the-day thing going on Werner?
Evolution provides a very plausible path from barely conscious (maybe even only capable of perceiving light) to Einstein -- not that Einstein is anything other than a node on a particular(ly smart) branch on the tree. It works in a decidedly discrete, not continuous manner. We know it works, even if the not life/life interface is still not quite worked out. Oh yeah, and it involves the DNA molecule which just happens to have a very good infrastructure for saving and disseminating information. Certainly a continuous model of the evolution of consciousness is not out of the question. But you got to have more than a plausible idea.
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WBraun
climber
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Consciousness is NOT material in any shape or form.
Joe and You are both implying that consciousness is material.
The gross materials have proved by their actual words that they are clueless to consciousness itself.
That IS the complete defect all while they make absolutes about consciousness.
The source of consciousness never arises out of any material form.
Behavior is none other an effect of consciousness.
Consciousness is never mechanistic although consciousness manipulates matter.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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I'm starting to believe your assessments, Werner.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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It appears from my perspective that everyone contributing regularly to this thread is possibly more intelligent than me.
Didn't Chris Mac warn us about name-calling?
Please don't imply that I might be an intellect.
If we ever got a chance to meet you would quickly see why.
I would like that.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Evolution provides a very plausible path from barely conscious (maybe even only capable of perceiving light) to Einstein -- not that Einstein is anything other than a node on a particular(ly smart) branch on the tree. It works in a decidedly discrete, not continuous manner. We know it works, even if the not life/life interface is still not quite worked out. Oh yeah, and it involves the DNA molecule which just happens to have a very good infrastructure for saving and disseminating information. Certainly a continuous model of the evolution of consciousness is not out of the question. But you got to have more than a plausible idea.
The implication of what you wrote is fascinating because the plausible path you describe doesn't have to terminate with Einstein. The implication of a continuum of consciousness is a consciousness beyond human capability/ability and where is the end of that continuum, God? Plausible ideas are just that.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
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that resembles an intelligent comment, MH2
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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https://www.inverse.com/article/38240-mini-brains-organoids-rats
Stem cell technology has advanced so much that scientists can grow miniature versions of human brains — called organoids, or mini-brains if you want to be cute about it — in the lab, but medical ethicists are concerned about recent developments in this field involving the growth of these tiny brains in other animals....
Some researchers are growing the organoids attached to blood vessels but not in a host... so:
1. Is there a mind there?
2. What does a mind think about in the absence of input sensors or actuators?
3. Are there a minimal number of input sensors or output actuators required to define a mind?
If this does constitute a mind...
4. When it is put in a mouse, does that become one augmented mind or two minds?
If only one augmented mind...
5. What happened to the other one?
The merging of two minds into one implies that a mind is a just collection of objects that can be merged, and that mind itself is an empty container. Or, perhaps something is lost in the merger? Does the merging of minds imply the death of a mind?
Inquiring minds want to know.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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The implication of a continuum of consciousness is a consciousness beyond human capability or ability and where is the end of that continuum, God?
It's not important, but I guess I haven't made the point yet, that just because something continues to rise doesn't mean it goes beyond a certain limiting level. For example, the function f(x)=x/(1+x) continues to go up indefinitely as x grows larger and larger, but f(x) never gets up to, much less beyond, the value one. What you are saying is speculative and not an implication. but you say it well, as usual.
The notion of a kind of consciousness field has a certain appeal, in light of the mysterious nature of electromagnetic fields. I wonder what properties such a field might have? Could there be a way to quantify it and use tools of mathematics to illuminate its features? Could it be considered a physical field? How could one experiment? Are there any meditative examples of linked consciousnesses? Certainly, when we talk to one another we link consciousnesses in a sense. Is communication then a kind of force in a field of consciousness?
Just babbling.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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here is the sheep article Jan referred to:
http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/4/11/171228
Sheep recognize familiar and unfamiliar human faces from two-dimensional images
Franziska Knolle, Rita P. Goncalves, A. Jennifer Morton
One of the most important human social skills is the ability to recognize faces. Humans recognize familiar faces easily, and can learn to identify unfamiliar faces from repeatedly presented images. Sheep are social animals that can recognize other sheep as well as familiar humans. Little is known, however, about their holistic face-processing abilities. In this study, we trained eight sheep (Ovis aries ) to recognize the faces of four celebrities from photographic portraits displayed on computer screens. After training, the sheep chose the ‘learned-familiar’ faces rather than the unfamiliar faces significantly above chance. We then tested whether the sheep could recognize the four celebrity faces if they were presented in different perspectives. This ability has previously been shown only in humans. Sheep successfully recognized the four celebrity faces from tilted images. Interestingly, there was a drop in performance with the tilted images (from 79.22 ± 7.5% to 66.5 ± 4.1%) of a magnitude similar to that seen when humans perform this task. Finally, we asked whether sheep could recognize a very familiar handler from photographs. Sheep identified the handler in 71.8 ± 2.3% of the trials without pretraining. Together these data show that sheep have advanced face-recognition abilities, comparable with those of humans and non-human primates.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Behavior is none other an effect of consciousness.
Cart entirely before the horse, unless you are a panpsychist, in which case that would be the right order of things. There are plenty of organisms which do not exhibit conscious behavior.
You enlarge the term behavior to include neurological processes such as taste or introspection.
Hmm. Well, assuming you mean the subjective experience of tasting as opposed to the gustatory system which serves it up then yes, I consider both taste and introspection to be facets of conscious behavior along with the ability to see red.
When we begin to think that knowledge of behavior is a behavior and knowledge or our knowledge of behavior is a behavior and on and on into a solipsistic tailspin. Knowing and experience are knowing and experience and behavior is behavior.
Behavior is again a response continuum along which the ability to experience (contextualize) and know (memorize) are indeed advanced behavioral capabilities. Regardless of the 'hard problem' and providing an explanation for subjective experience, the ability to [subjectively] experience and know are behavioral attributes of humans and other advanced species.
I'm not talking about panpsychism. I suggested that consciousness is like light, it requires a source, there are many sources, though ultimately energy is the source. There are, however, many forms of matter that don't spontaneously produce light.
Well, a sourced consciousness would be different than the universality of panpsychism - but I would then presume you're talking another name for god. Either way you run into the same imbuing-meat / brain-as-antenna problem.
Consciousness is never mechanistic although consciousness manipulates matter.
"Mind over matter" - not particularly insightful in this context. And 'mechanistic'? That seems crude and it's terribly odd there is always some of that nasty mechanistic meat about any time consciousness appears on the radar.
Evolution provides a very plausible path from barely conscious (maybe even only capable of perceiving light) to Einstein
Eeyonkee, personally I'd say it's not only plausible, but also compelling given we have a clear behavioral path from the former to the latter in extant and evolutionary species.
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The implication of what you wrote is fascinating because the plausible path you describe doesn't have to terminate with Einstein. The implication of a continuum of consciousness is a consciousness beyond human capability/ability and where is the end of that continuum, God? Plausible ideas are just that.
Well, if god were the end result then I would assume gods are probably created every day somewhere in the universe in an endless loop. And it still kind of begs the question of what's the point of externally imbuing meat with consciousness - wouldn't god either pre-exist or exist after the very first evolutionary cycle obviating the need for a celestial gerbil wheel? But then I suppose that's right up Werner's vedic alley.
The merging of two minds into one implies that a mind is a just collection of objects that can be merged, and that mind itself is an empty container. Or, perhaps something is lost in the merger? Does the merging of minds imply the death of a mind?
If one considers a brain / mind to be an incredibly complex and dynamically tuned system which is always seeking some form of 'equilibrium', then I'd think it would be more an adaptive integration for both organs. That said, the pantheon of psychiatric disorders speak to just how delicate the tuning is relative to operating within a 'normative' envelope. I should think gross intrusions or forcings of the kind described would throw a system into a crisis of adaptation with as many undesirable outcomes as desirable ones.
...possibly more intelligent than me...
Tom, don't get me wrong, as a software engineer I know and respect what you've accomplished and consider you one of the most intelligent inhabitants here, But that's all the more reason why I find it somewhat distressing in equal measure when you choose to go completely off the rails with all manner of conspiracy, fantasy and make-believe. I mean, at exactly what point is all that stuff not completely and utterly indistinguishable from flat Earth claims and those that we never went to the moon?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Hmm. Well, assuming you mean the subjective experience of tasting as opposed to the gustatory system which serves it up then yes, I consider both taste and introspection to be facets of conscious behavior along with the ability to see red.
A tap dance predicated on the ambiguity of the term facet. Given the course of evolution how subjective is the taste of chocolate? The experience of the color red? Experience may result in behavior but by claiming it as behavior, a kind of radical behaviorism, it is dismissed.
Behavior is again a response continuum along which the ability to experience (contextualize) and know (memorize) are indeed advanced behavioral capabilities. Regardless of the 'hard problem' and providing an explanation for subjective experience, the ability to [subjectively] experience and know are behavioral attributes of humans and other advanced
species.
If behavior is a response, response to what if not experience or Knowledge? This is simple cause and effect. The cause is not the effect: the experience is not the behavior. Knowing is not memorizing.
Well, a sourced consciousness would be different than the universality of panpsychism - but I would then presume you're talking another name for god. Either way you run into the same imbuing-meat / brain-as-antenna problem.
The brain as antenna? Really? Light sources aren't antennas receiving light waves, light is a product of energy's release and my point was perhaps we should start with a preliminary theory of consciousness as such. When someone describes the potentially limitless possibilities of consciousness/intelligence how are they not talking God?
There is very often an arrogance of assumption in the world of science, an unfortunate fetter to a wider understanding.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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It's interesting to contemplate if this is the result of domestication or the reason these animals are domesticated is because they could more easily identify with humans?
Yes, it is interesting. We can learn from animals a good deal about, "What is Mind?"
It may help to hear from people who have spent a lot of time around animals, which is rare today except for cats and dogs.
From not too long ago:
What a variety of individualities a herd of cows presents when you have come to know them all, not only in form and color, but in manners and disposition! Some are timid and awkward, and the butt of the whole herd. Some remind you of deer. Some have an expression in the face like certain persons you have known. A petted and well-fed cow has a benevolent and gracious look; an ill-used and poorly fed one, a pitiful and forlorn look. Some cows have a masculine or ox expression; others are extremely feminine. The latter are the ones for milk. Some cows will kick like a horse; some jump fences like a deer. Every herd has its ringleader, its unruly spirit - one that plans all the mischief and leads the rest through the fences into the grain or into the orchard. This one is usually quite different from the master spirit, the “boss of the yard.” The latter is generally the most peaceful and law-abiding cow in the lot, and the least bullying and quarrelsome. But she is not to be trifled with; her will is law; the whole herd give way before her, those that have crossed horns with her and those that have not, but yielded their allegiance without crossing.
John Burroughs
Birds and Poets
1877
There were six or seven hundred cows on Batchlett’s ranch by that Tuesday in August. And by that time, I must have known nearly half of them. I had one named for just about every woman in Littleton. There were some that were quiet and gentle, and that just looked at you with their big, soft eyes as you rode past. There were some that made a low, whispered moo when you came to them in a scrub oak thicket. And there were others that would stand up on a hill and bellow about how bad they felt, when you knew there was nothing wrong with them.
There were curious ones and jealous ones; timid ones and bold ones. You’d always find some of the oldest cows grazing with the young bulls, and the prettiest heifers with the oldest bulls. There were nice fat old grandmothers that liked to lie together all day long and chew their cuds. And there were skinny old ones that just snatched up a wisp of grass here or there, and were always on the go. There were some that always hooked their way through the circle at the water hole, took two swallows, and muddied up the water with their feet; and their were others that let themselves be hooked aside.
Ralph Moody
Man of the Family
1951
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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A tap dance predicated on the ambiguity of the term facet. Given the course of evolution how subjective is the taste of chocolate? The experience of the color red? Experience may result in behavior but by claiming it as behavior, a kind of radical behaviorism, it is dismissed.
there are many interesting ideas regarding this issue of "qualia," the one I've discussed in this thread is the need to describe what we are experiencing to others. The common attribute of all these things "qualia" is that they are descriptive, and while you might refer to them as "subjective" we have an agreement about what they are. Asking someone who is color blind what red is all about and you'll have a discussion.
Not only that, but color blindness is just an extreme form of a range of color perception which depend on the cellular constituency of your retina, and while on average humans are "tri-chromatic" there is a spectrum of color perception, color blindness being one side, but poly-chromatism another.
Given that "social behavior" is a powerful adaptation which conveys evolutionary advantage, attributes that promote strong social behavior should emerge in populations. Looking at the social insects and their ubiquitous presence on the planet indicates one successful way of creating a society that benefits the species.
Human social behavior is also a strong positive adaptation, made even stronger by our ability to communicate our intent in interactions with each other. One behavior that emerged from this is describing what we refer to as "subjective" feelings, even when those descriptions fail at a very fundamental level to actually describe what is going on "inside of us." Large parts of our descriptions are nothing more than confabulation. We have a behavior that makes things up.
So I believe that evolution provides a plausible explanation of "qualia," and I would also posit that you've picked up on "qualia" because you believe, or have been led to believe, it is some philosophical silver bullet that would slay the possibility of any scientific understanding of what you would consider the mysteries of human consciousness.
"and then a miracle occurs"
The scientific basis for consciousness provides a plausible explanation of consciousness and even of "subjective experience", and a physical one, based on evidence and observation, and detailed knowledge of biology and it does this without resorting to miracles.
Science is not the only explanation, you're certainly free to entertain whatever you wish as an explanation or even maintain that there is no possible explanation.
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